by Jack Ketchum
DODGSON
…they sat inside at the bar because there was room there now and the terrace was too public after what had happened. They were joking with Xenia, who was still pretty shaken but whose sense of humor had returned enough to allow her to wonder who would be first to ask her if she’d cut herself shaving. Fingering the Band-Aid on her chin.
All but Billie had their backs to the door and she must have come gliding up behind them like a ghost. It was still poor Xenia she was after-was it just that kiss she’d seen? that one small gesture?- because all at once they saw Billie’s face go white with fear and by the time he turned she’d put a handful of cigarettes into Xenia’s face-she was going for the eyes-but Xenia jerked away and he saw them sink into her cheek as though it were butter, the smoke and flesh bubbling up liquid like teardrops.
And then he was on her with Eduardo and Danny, and Michelle was clawing air to get at her, Billie still recoiling, and Danny reached out and hit her openhanded in the face while Dodgson and Eduardo grappled for the hands that were reaching for the women, a wild wiry strength lashing out for them. She was tossing her head and spitting, eyes shot red, head whipping up and down and back and forth and she didn’t even seem to feel Danny hit her except that the mouth began to froth and drool, white froth flying off the bared clenched teeth, spraying them all as her body jerked and slammed against them.
Then somehow they got her to the door. He heard Eduardo screaming dammit! goddammit! and Xenia, who seemed to be gasping and moaning and sobbing all at once, and worst of all he heard Lelia growling and snapping at them, the growl set deep in her throat, her voice as deep as a man’s, a big man’s if you could believe it was human at all and not some animal’s, the teeth snapping shut and spittle flying at him. He felt her fingernails rake his forehead as she reached for him and as he looked into her eyes he saw something reaching for him there too and he turned away from her as though afraid he’d turn to stone while they propelled her out the back door to the terrace. And he thought, Who is she?
The eyes had not been human.
And suddenly he was afraid, more afraid than he’d ever been in his life because they were pushing her back and he could tell it was coming, he could feel it, see it even with his back to them, as though it had to be. He turned and knew he was right and that she could see it too.
The hand clawed out for him, the eyes pleaded-no, they commanded him to - what? help her? join her? - yet he was frozen there unable to do anything but watch her driven back between Danny and Eduardo and then watch Eduardo let her go, as though he sensed the danger as well now, a danger that was more than her own physical peril but was immutable and final for all of them.
For a moment it seemed as though all that would happen from this time forward stretched out before him in one clear terrifying vista and he yelled No! and Billie was yelling too behind him but it was too late now as he’d somehow known it would be, it was going to happen and nothing and no one would dare to stop it happening.
He saw Danny take her one step backward. And then she was falling and Danny was reaching for her, realizing finally, a look of anguish on his face-that strange mad smile on hers-lurching wildly toward her and nearly falling too. They heard the crack that was loud as a gunshot in the still night air as she fell the three steps down and her neck snapped at the impact, saw the mouth blurt blood and foam into the astonished milling remains of the crowd, the head lolling slowly to the side so that he could see the bloody spill growing fast like an ink stain behind it, spreading, the eyes flickering once and then settling into something cold and composed and utterly, monstrously empty.
For a moment no one moved.
A man stepped out of the crowd and reached down for her wrist and someone behind him darted back as though he’d stepped into a nest of spiders, her blood spackled all across his trouser leg.
Dodgson looked down at the one taking her pulse. It was the big man, the Frenchman. His eyes nearly as blank as hers.
“Dead.” He shrugged.
Danny looked frantic.
“Easy,” said Dodgson.
“I didn’t…I didn’t know…”
“Nobody knew,” he lied. “Easy.”
Eduardo was behind them. “I’ve walked these stairs a thousand times,” he said. “And I never saw it coming. It’s not your fault.”
“I killed her.”
“She killed herself,” Eduardo said. And then more mildly, “it was an accident.” Dodgson saw he was shaking. He turned and went back inside to Xenia.
He felt Billie come up beside him. He moved away from her down the steps.
The Frenchman stepped back, staring at him.
Dodgson looked down into her blood-splattered face.
“Damn you,” he said.
The mouth yawned red and wide.
GEOLOGICAL NOTE
At 4:55 Saturday morning, approximately two hours following the death of Lelia Narkisos on the steps of the Harlequin Bar in Mykonos, an earthquake off the volatile coast of Santorini measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale sent homes, hotels and tavernas tumbling down the cliff-side into the sea. It failed to activate the island’s volcanic core.
Seas were high all day throughout the Cyclades to the north, and as far south as Crete. Because of the early hour few people were about and only twenty-one casualties and sixty-eight injuries were reported. But because it was the morning of Megalo Saturday, the day before Easter on the Greek Orthodox calendar-the most important holy day of the year-the event was variously interpreted.
Among the local ministry some said it perfectly symbolized the resurrection of Christ-the deaths occurring on the morning of the final day of fasting with rebirth scheduled quite appropriately for the following day. Others, who saw it more in terms of human tragedy, speculated darkly that Christ had abandoned his followers and would not in fact arise at all that year.
So that there were optimists on one side and pessimists on the other.
The Church itself refused to comment except to say that seismic events and cosmic events were not the same thing at all and to warn its parishioners against magic and medievalism.
TREMORS
When the seas began to rise Orville and Betty Dunsworth were smack in the middle of the Aegean and it was questionable whether the thirty-four-foot cruiser Balthazar was up to it. By 10:00 a.m. Orville was pretty frightened.
He stood on the fly bridge scanning the dials, alert to disaster- checking temperature, oil pressure, rpm’s, like a doctor hooked up to his own private cardiograph and waiting for his heart to stop. Nobody’d told him the Aegean could get this bad. Sure, they’d warned him about meltemi winds in July and August but this was only late March for chrissake and the swells were lifting her up god knows how high in the air and slamming her down with a tilt and a crash and a grinding sound that was frankly scaring the shit out of him.
Dockside Balthazar had felt big and new, secure. She didn’t now. She felt like a sixteen-footer. And sounded a hundred years old.
Exactly how he felt.
They’d overloaded her for one thing. Fuel and water tanks full and gear enough to last them their entire two-month vacation in the islands. Enough for six months actually. The goddamn beautiful scenic Greek islands. It was Betty’s idea, naturally. What in hell was wrong with Florida, anyway? He’d be sipping a daiquiri by now.
He squinted through the dripping fiberglass and saw the biggest one yet come rolling toward him, a sliding solid wall of water. He braced and prayed. This was no damn business for a retired optometrist. Just get me through this one. he thought. Just this.
The wave lifted her high and he felt the sickness rise in his stomach, not from the buck and roll so much as the fear. For one roller-coaster moment he felt weightless, felt the hull beneath him slide and shift and then the sharp swift crack that seemed to grind at his bones, that stunned him like a blow to the head.
Where the hell was Betty?
Damn that woman! Not that she’d do him any good up
here. But he could use the company. Somebody to yell at, anyway. He was in a trough now, starting to lift again. It wouldn’t be as bad as the last one. Couldn’t be.
“Betty!”
“Coming, dear!”
She moved up unsteadily beside him. He nudged her away. He didn't want her crowding him. He meant his glance to be reassuring but from the look of her it wasn’t. A handsome sixty-year-old woman with the body of a forty-year-old and now, the face of a scared old crone of a hundred and five.
“Is it getting any better?”
“Not much. No chance to make Santorini now. Mykonos isn’t far, though.” He tried for a hearty tone and failed completely.
“But we were going to do Mykonos at the end of the trip, dear.”
“Jesus Christ, Betty! We’ll be lucky to make it at all, for god’s sake!”
He was screaming into the wind now.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
She patted his arm. “Don’t worry. Mykonos will be fine.”
Crash. Roll. His stomach took a leap.
It better be fine. It better be.
***
…Linda McRae and Will Sandler were going to get off the island when the storm hit, to spend the last four days of their vacation on Crete. Now they rethought that idea. With one day wasted and so little time left it was hardly worth it. They couldn’t afford to fly. And the long shipboard journey there and back to Pireaus would only give them a day, barely enough to see Knossos. So they decided to stay on Mykonos where it was cheaper, anyway, living out of backpacks and camping on Paradise Beach and where they knew they’d be having a good time. Which was what they’d come all the way from Forest Hills to do in the first place.
That and dump their parents.
It wasn’t easy being seventeen and in love despite what you saw on TV. You had to sneak around for one thing. You made it in cars and behind bushes at the country club and at friends’ houses when their parents weren’t home. And when you couldn’t make it, it killed you.
They’d managed to fix that here.
Neatly too. Coming away on vacation without either Linda’s parents or Will’s knowing that the other guy’s kid was going. Luckily the McRaes and the Sandlers didn’t talk. Luckily they hated one another.
The old Romeo and Juliet routine, thought Will, had its points.
It was a nowhere beach day because of the storm so they’d hiked to the old monastery, which was pretty boring.
Linda killed a ladybug.
And that was about the height of their day.
Unless you counted the evergreen. That was kind of neat. Who’d expect to find an evergreen tree in Greece?
Linda broke a branch off that.
She was a big strong girl, Linda. Athletic.
And Will guessed she just liked to break things.
***
…he cursed her and cursed her. Cursed the day he’d married her, cursed the pretty oval face and bright black eyes, the slim figure, the flirtatious smile. At heart she was a village girl and would always be. When what was wanted was a city girl. Or better yet, a tourist girl. A blonde, maybe. Yes, a blonde from England or Sweden or California.
And now of course she was pregnant. A year after now she’d be pregnant again. That was the way with village girls. And in five years or maybe less, he thought, slim lovely Daphne Mavrodopolous will be fat the way they all are fat and the eyes will not smile for me anymore but only for the children.
Five years after that she’d have a mustache.
I have never seen a tourist girl, he thought, with a mustache.
Kostas Mavrodopolous watched his eighteen-year-old wife clean the tables of his waterfront taverna with a damp cloth until he could not stand to watch anymore and stared out angrily over the rough dark waters.
Today, because of the sea, there would be even fewer tourists than usual.
He was twenty-two years old.
He had only just learned he was about to be a father.
So far his taverna had not caught on. Only in July and August, when everyone in Mykonos made money, did he make money.
His wife was happy. She sang as she worked. She was going to have a baby and all the women were happy for her. For the village girl.
Two years now he had tried and still had nothing.
He could think of only one thing that would comfort him. Tonight after closing, after the chairs were stacked and the tables tucked away he would go to the bars, where she could not follow. Tonight and however many nights it took thereafter. It would help nothing. He would find no answer to his problems there. But it was something.
He would find himself a tourist girl.
SANTORINI WINE
Among those present on the island of Santorini when the earthquake hit was Tasos Katsimbalis.
Koonelee Tasos, industrialist, landowner, importer and rabbit thief had arrived the day before in order to supervise the loading of crates of Santorini wine worth 2.2 million American dollars, bound for New York City on the Greek freighter Herakles. Absences due to the forthcoming Easter holiday had caused delays and half the crates remained to be loaded when the quake hit at 4:55 that morning.
The crates survived.
Tasos did not.
He had chosen a hotel overlooking the bay. From the terrace it was possible to watch the Herakles far below. At 4:55, like nearly everyone else on the island, he was asleep, having sampled three glasses of the local product. Wine made Tasos sleepy. He had been reading a book- Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. It lay open on his lap when a four-foot slab of concrete from the floor above fell sideways onto his chest, cutting him nearly in half and it plummeted down beside him when an entire quarter-section of the bedroom slid screeching down the mountain.
JORDAN THAYER CHASE
ATHENS
He finally made the phone call to Elaine from his hotel room in Athens Saturday night. It was just after ten o’clock Holy Saturday. In another two hours it would be Easter.
The line was good for a change.
“Jordan! My god! Are you all right?”
He could hear the concern and relief in her voice and wished he hadn’t waited so long to phone her.
“A little head-cold. Otherwise I’m fine.”
The cold was more like flu. He’d been gobbling aspirin and what passed for vitamin C here-a dissolvable pill like an Alka-Seltzer that tasted like some evil orange Kool-Aid. But the fever held on.
“You’re in Athens?”
“Yes. You have the number on the pad there by the phone.”
“I know. I tried to call you.”
“I got the message. I’m sorry.”
There was a pause on her end of the line. The wire crackled.
“Jordan, what are you doing there?”
Good question.
“I’m on my way to Mykonos. Soon as the holiday’s over. It’s silly trying to travel now. The whole country’s traveling. And Tasos is right-Greeks board a ship as though it were the last one going anywhere and get off as though it were sinking.”
“You’ve seen Tasos?”
“A couple days ago, yes. He’s well, sends you his love.”
“So what’s going on in Mykonos?”
“I’m meeting someone there. Business. I’ll call when I have an address for you. I'm sorry to keep you waiting like this. I really am.”
“It’s been days, Jordan.”
“I’m sorry, honestly. Things just got…out of hand here.”
There was another long pause on her end. He had the feeling she was reading between the lines, gathering more than he was telling. He couldn’t help that. He wished he could read her now but he couldn’t. The ability was fickle. He didn’t suppose the fever or the overseas line helped much either.
When she spoke again her voice was softer, more composed.
“Your Ampcomp people are making me crazy. They call here twice a day.”
He smiled. “Hold them off awhile, will you?”
/> “I will.”
“I miss you, Elaine.”
“I miss you too. You know I do.”
“I’ll phone as soon as I get to Mykonos. Promise.”
“You’re not an easy man, Jordan, you know that.”
“I know.”
“So promise me something else then.”
“What.”
“Promise me you won’t do anything…that isn’t business…without telling me.”
He laughed. “Like what? Take a lover?”
“Don’t play games, Jordan. I’m serious.”
“I know. I promise. I love you.”
“I love you too. You take care of that cold. You sound terrible.”
“I will.”
“I love you.”
He hung up and leaned back upon the bed. His head pounded.
He sat up and took two more aspirin and skimmed through yesterday’s International Herald Tribune.
His stocks were mostly up in a generally lousy market. That was nice.
Mount St. Helens seemed set to erupt again and geologists were pulling their study teams out of there.
In France they were still stalling after nine full months on the execution of a major Iranian terrorist whose photo stared out at Chase bale-fully. The government was fearful of reprisals. An editorial accused them of cowardice.
And the Italians seemed to have found themselves a brand-new miracle. In Porto Ercole the figure of a Madonna kept appearing in the bole of a cypress tree.
He folded the paper and put it aside. Maybe a walk, he thought, to clear my head. Fresh air.
***
He walked slowly up to the plaka, the old town. It was nearly deserted. Normally this time of night it would be churning with hustlers, vendors, bouzouki players, tourists. But with most of the tavernas and shops closed up for the holiday the American kid on the comer, with the guitar and the rotten nose-to Chase it looked like skin cancer-was getting no action at all and sat there in his dirty jeans strumming intro-spectively.