by Jack Ketchum
The blood hammered in her face, her head.
They moved through the tables and chairs, the stillness of the empty restaurant like a single sentient claw poised and waiting for the first show of panic. She felt the wildness of them. Cats just inches away. Cats no one had ever tamed. They walked in the shallow stillness of their own breathing.
Past them.
They did not look back.
So they could not see the bodies that scampered into full moonlight along the path they had taken, that stopped and continued to watch them with a concentration normally reserved, in their species, for smaller animals. For prey.
DODGSON
Take care of one another, Chase had said and this was the way to do it.
The first time had lasted a good long while and now he was ready again, still slick with sweat from before and from their bodies pressed close together in the warm Mykonian night. There was affirmation here and security, a poignant sense of life and he felt it could continue this way throughout the night, their last night on the island, until they exhausted each other and maybe slept a little.
Then she poisoned it.
He was inside her moving slowly in the warm depths of her watching the face he already had come to love move through a kind of fabulous agony of pleasure, the tiny cobweb lines at the eyes etched more deeply by the drawn muscles of her mouth, a gleaming hint of moisture in them, watching the breast flesh tremble, her shoulder muscles lengthen as she reached for him.
When suddenly she changed beneath him.
The eyes flashed open.
They were blue. Pale blue.
The broad open lines of her face shifted, narrowed.
On her pillow the hair grew and darkened.
He felt a cringing horror. The wide mouth grinned and the lips were Lelia’s. He began to tremble.
The soulless eyes stared up at him.
Insane.
He closed his own eyes and tried to feel her, just feel her, and she felt as she should-Billie, not Lelia. Yet when he opened them again Lelia’s face leered up at him, superimposed like a double image in a photograph. He saw the narrow hips beneath him, the pale wide nipples, the smaller breasts, the self-inflicted marks across her belly. “What’s wrong?”
It was Billie’s voice but Lelia’s too, the first one worried, the second mocking him and dripping with venom.
What’s wrong, asshole?
He felt himself shrivel inside her.
He wanted to hammer her, destroy her, filled with anger that she could do this and afraid of her too.
He pulled away. He sat shaking, fighting for control.
He had almost hit her, pounded at her. The way you’d destroy a snake.
“What’s wrong?”
It was Billie. Wholly her now.
“Lelia.” He felt a kind of vertigo, felt himself falling. “You were Lelia.”
“I?”
“You were.”
Green eyes again, a blessed green. Wide with disbelief.
“I’m not crazy.”
“No.”
He saw her try to believe him, to understand.
“It’s just that I…felt nothing.”
And then he saw her grasp at what she’d done to them.
“No! She can’t do that! Not here! Not here too!”
“She did it, Billie.”
“No!"
It was a howl of pain and despair that raced across his spine. Her tears came suddenly and hard.
“It’s not fair!”
“I know.”
He held her.
“We did nothing…"
“I know. I know.”
He continued holding her, rocking her, and the tears subsided a little.
“So long ago,” she said. “It seems so long ago. We did nothing to her. But that first night in Matala. I knew it. I knew something…even then.”
“So did I, maybe. But not like this.”
“No, never. Not like this.”
She began to cry again and he held her sobbing against his shoulder, the tears warm against him, until she stopped.
“That man. Jordan Chase. Can he help us?”
“I don’t know.”
“And if we leave tomorrow, can she follow us?”
He had no answer for that.
“I can’t lose you, Robert. Not now. Don’t let me lose you.”
“You won’t. I promise.”
The promise was empty. He fought back tears of his own now.
She drew herself up, wiped her eyes.
“Keep her out of here,” she said. It was like a spell, like magic. An incantation. And then she said, “Hold me.”
A murmur in the shapeless alien night.
JORDAN THAYER CHASE
“Elaine?”
“Yes?”
“It’s not a good line.”
“I know.”
“I just wanted to say…”
“What? I can’t hear you, Jordan.”
“I just wanted to say I love you.”
“What?”
“I love you, Elaine.”
“I love you. I hate this goddamn line, though.”
“Yes.”
“Where are you-still in Mykonos?”
“Still in Mykonos, yes.”
“For a while yet?”
“A little while.”
“Come back soon, Jordan. Will you? Please?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you.”
“What?”
“I said I miss you."
“Soon. Jordan. Okay? All right?”
“Yes. Soon.”
It was less than an hour before dawn, that time when most people die who are going to die, when the temperatures of men and of the earth sink lowest, that Chase leaned sleepless out of his window to gaze at the sea and saw Lelia Narkisos standing naked in the water, holding out to him a tiny bundle of likewise naked flesh that screeched and writhed in her hands while she smiled and then moved just the slightest bit away from him so that the writhing bundle, the baby, became his own maggot-white dripping severed head.
PART 4
HECATE
“I don’t want to hold the key To some ghostly mansion Where souls are set free.”
-Gordon Lightfoot
MELTEMI
THE THIRD DAY
“We’re stuck here!” said Danny.
It was nine-thirty in the morning and no planes were flying in or out of Mykonos and the word at the tourist office was that no ferries would be running either. Meltemi, the travel agent said-the high gale-force winds that periodically boiled the Aegean. And he sympathized because no one could remember when one had struck so early in the season or so hard.
Perhaps tomorrow, he said and went back to pushing whatever paper there is to push in a travel agency when no one is able to travel.
So Danny turned to the rest of them and uttered what they all were thinking in the same flat astonished voice any one of them might have used.
“We’re fucking stuck here!”
When the silence was over, when all the dire glances had been exchanged, Jordan Chase said, There are seven of us. From this moment on we stay together.
It was, in its way, a declaration of war.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
They sat encased in misted glass in the restaurant by the harbor listening to the patter of rain and the howling wind, watching the boats toss and roll. The restaurant was crowded. Nobody else had much to do either.
“Tell me about it, Chase,” said Eduardo. “What’s it like?”
Chase seemed to listen inside himself for a moment. He smiled.
“Sometimes it’s actually kind of enjoyable. I’ve…eavesdropped, I guess you’d call it, on some funny things. Ever wonder what goes through a lawyer’s mind when he tells you he’s billing you for one hundred eighty hours of his time? I can tell you.
“T
hen sometimes it’s damn depressing. You hear the most godawful things. Cruelty, pettiness, the most incredible stupidity…
“But then you get a real intuition, a knowing and it can be one of the most exciting things in the world. Because you get it first, before everybody else. To see things before the event, before the turn of the wheel. Though that can be unsettling too. I knew about the Iranian hostage situation-when was it, ’78?-almost a week before it happened. A company of mine was based there.”
“What did you do?” asked Michelle.
“Nothing. That’s just it. Sometimes there’s not much you can do. You know the story about Cassandra in the Iliad? Apollo fell in love with her and gave her the gift of prophesy. Then he turned against her when she refused him. Since he couldn’t take the gift back, he decided to make it useless to her. He arranged it so that nobody would ever believe her. So she’d always know when disaster was coming and be completely unable to avert it.
“What could I have done? Called the White House? Uh, Mr. President, there’s some rich crackpot on the phone… And then later, when I’m right, what do I tell the CIA?"
“No, I just got my own company out of there and let it go at that.”
“You’re rich, huh?” said Danny.
“That’s one of the benefits, yes.”
“Me too. Fat lot of good it does us, huh? Where’s a Cunard liner for sale when you need one?”
Chase laughed and shook his head. “I tried every ship on the island. I’ve called Athens. Nobody’s willing to buck the meltemi. ‘As soon as it’s over’ is the best they can do.”
“Can you get any handle on Lelia now?” asked Dodgson. “On what she’s doing?”
“On what she is?” said Eduardo.
“No to the first question. You get blind spots. Nothing you can do about it It’s frustrating, like having a single thumb instead of two. You can catch a ball, sure. But what you can’t do is swing the goddamn bat in order to hit the thing. Plus I know from experience-she’s good at concealment.
“As to the second, I don’t know. I know something’s happening here. I’ve felt it all through Greece. Like something’s changing, or about to change. You’ve been here before, Dodgson. Xenia and Eduardo, you live here. You notice how things seem to have…decayed so rapidly? Just three years ago Greece was a really good place, content, really happy.”
Xenia shrugged. “Everyone made money. It is not so now.”
“That’s part of it. But there’s a lethargy about the place too. People don’t seem to care. Things fall apart and don’t get repaired. Terrorists waltz into airports, shoot a few people, waltz right out again. A lot of the old values are going-the openness to new ideas, to people, the really deep respect for what was good about the old ways, the hospitality. “Filokseneea!” said Xenia.
“That’s right. Filokseneea. This country's ripe for some kind of change. I’m feeling it very strongly here-some kind of readying. And I’m wondering, what if we’re in the middle of that?”
“What do you mean?” asked Dodgson.
“I don’t think it’s any accident that we’re just across from Delos. In ancient times, remember, it was the power spot, the place you’d look to for any kind of regeneration or renewal, be it spiritual or physical. The doctors were the best and most learned in Greece. I feel something happening out there. I feel it even as we sit talking. I’ve never been to that island but I bet I could almost describe it to you. I feel something growing, some power surge. Something.
“And maybe Lelia’s tapped into that somehow. Something about this time and place. I don’t know.”
The wind had tom a small boat loose in the harbor. A plastic tarp careened around the comer.
“What happened between the two of you?” asked Billie. “Do you mind saying?”
Chase sighed. “An affair of sorts. I’m sure you’d guessed as much. Very brief and very…”
“Nasty?” Dodgson said.
“Yes. Extremely. I’d rather not go into it, if you don’t mind.”
He and Dodgson gazed across the table at each other.
“She was something, wasn’t she?” said Dodgson.
“Yes, she was.”
Despite all the people seated there the restaurant was quiet. Maybe it was the weather but there was a heaviness about the place, Billie thought, a feeling of expectation.
“How about some wine?” said Danny.
“It’s pretty early. But sure. Why not?” said Dodgson.
They ordered. The waiter brought the wine, uncorked the bottle, placed a cash-register receipt under the ashtray along with the breakfast receipts, nodded and walked away.
Rain was falling steadily now in gray windblown sheets obscuring their view of the harbor. It was dark where they sat.
“So what do we do now?” said Michelle.
“I think we ought to do exactly what we’re doing,” said Chase. “The more people around us the better. I think we have to expect anything from her, absolutely anything. And she'd probably want to separate us if possible. It would make things easier for her.”
“And tonight?”
“Same thing. We stay together. There’s plenty of room at my place, though some of us will have to sleep on the floor.”
“Fine,” said Dodgson.
“After lunch we’ll check you and Billie, Michelle and Danny out of their rooms and settle up the bills.” He turned to Eduardo. “I presume you and Xenia are already packed.”
“I’m ready.”
Xenia nodded.
“Good. Then the same thing applies. We go to each place together as a group. From here on in, we’re a family.”
“Okay,” said Eduardo. “All that is going to take maybe an hour or two. What are we going to do the rest of the time? We can’t just sit here drinking all day.”
“Why not?” said Danny.
“At some point I tend to fall down.”
“Do it moderately, then,” said Chase. “Order Nescafe. Whatever. But I like crowds at the moment. I like them very much.”
“So do I,” said Billie.
“Let’s stay till the rain lets up a bit,” said Dodgson. “Then we can start getting the bags and bringing them over to your place. One question, though.”
“What’s that?”
“What if it’s the same thing tomorrow? What if we still can’t get out of here?”
“I don’t know. I guess we handle that when we get to it.”
There was as silence as they thought about that for a moment. Then Danny raised his glass.
‘To good company,” he said.
He drained it.
PARADISE
The first they took were a pair of campers, young men surf-casting for their breakfast and too busy to notice the figures moving toward them through the fog until there was only time to turn and recognize, as in a nightmare, the sharp stick skewering the neck of the teenage boy, the trailing entrails of the Greek, the charred black face of the thin young woman dressed in rags-time only for that before the big man with the open festering shoulder wound sunk his fingers into the eyes and mouth of the nearer one and pulled him down into the foaming sea, breaking his neck as he fell, while the others moved over his friend with open hungry mouths.
The big man watched them die.
Then later, watched them slowly rise.
There had been six of them. So that now they were eight.
They moved through the morning mist and afternoon rain, scattering along the shoreline and up through the rocks and down to the beach, wading into the sea, separating and coming together, moving toward town.
The next were brother and sister, twins. Germans, eighteen-year-old handsome blondes. It was raining by then, a light drizzle. They had strung up a line between a pair of trees so the rainwater could rinse out their clothes. The boy was naked. Everything he owned except a pair of socks was on the line already. The girl wore a white cotton blouse. She was hanging up her brother’s socks when the line went down and a girl no
older than she appeared and pulled her onto the sand, clawing at her.
Her brother tried to run. But they were much too close by then, a horrible proximity of pale reaching hands. He tried to run in one direction and then the other and then sank to his knees and cried.
And watched his sister die before they got to him.
The old Greek fisherman sat in a boat anchored twenty feet offshore. He was checking his traps, which unfortunately for him were not empty. So that in his distraction with the traps it was a simple thing for the twins to wade out to him and overturn his boat, then hold him under. The last thing he saw were three molting crabs peering out at him from inside a trap he would never live to harvest. One was a very good size.
The fisherman made eleven.
The rain fell hard and people stayed indoors. But even so there were stragglers and their ranks slowly swelled-and those few Greeks who lived along the way and noticed the slow-moving group of touristas trudging into the wind along the distant shore were accustomed to seeing strange foolish things from these foreigners, who stayed out all night and slept all day, who took the sun on their fair skin, who treated dogs like children and their children, sometimes, like dogs. They thought nothing of it.
They thought nothing, either, of the woman who walked alone well behind the rest, who seemed to drift in and out of focus in the shifting wind and rain. Except, perhaps, some of the men who saw her. Even at a distance the supple poise and strength of her was visible beneath the flowing white garment. Even at a distance she was desirable.
To some she looked like a goddess.
DODGSON
They walked the now-familiar maze of streets back to Chase’s room in Little Venice. It was eight o’clock, nearly sunset and turning cooler. The rain had stopped but the seas were still high. There was still no getting off the island.
Dodgson was tired. The tension, the inactivity, the wine-all of them conspired to make him yearn for sleep, for oblivion.
But she likes it when we sleep, he thought. No can do.
They waited while Chase fumbled with the key, then opened the door. All their gear was inside. The spacious room looked cluttered now.