The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  “Here.” Agnes tosses down an empty canvas bag. “Put it in this and then attach it to your rope,” she says. “I’ll pull it back up.”

  I lift the scroll carefully and ease it into the canvas bag, as gently as though it were a swaddled baby. The image catches me by surprise, reminding me of the one time I held Cory before she died. I feel my eyes filling up, but I don’t want to wipe them because my hands are stained with charcoal.

  I unhook the rope from my harness and hook it to the bag. “Go ahead,” I tell Agnes. I lift my head to watch the bag rise into the air and feel the tears stream down my face. I remember that as light as she was—four pounds, two ounces—I still felt the weight of her when they took her out of my arms. I felt it for months, that weight, like a phantom limb. Like I still felt the half of my lung that was gone and the loss of my mother. So many vacancies inside that it was a wonder I didn’t just float away.

  I blink and my vision doubles: two Agneses lean over the edge of the hole reaching for two bags. I blink again and the two bags become one, but there are still two heads leaning over the edge of the pit. Agnes and Ely. I think I’ve conjured him with the force of remembering our daughter, but then I remember that he had the key to the site. It really is Ely. He’s come to make sure I’m okay.

  “We’ve got it,” I say. “We’ve found The Golden Verses.”

  Ely doesn’t reply. He says something to Agnes I can’t make out and then Agnes says, “No, we can’t take the chance.”

  Ely nods and then looks back down at me. “Sorry, Sophie,” he says. Then he leans back so that I can’t see his face anymore. I hear a grating noise—stone moving on stone—and a black shadow moves across the circle of light. A cloud moving across the moon. I’m still staring up at it when I realize that Ely and Agnes are moving the stone across the opening. They’ve sealed me in this pit and left me here to die.

  I don’t scream at first. I have this feeling that if I start screaming I may never stop. But then, what choice do I have? My only chance of living is if Elgin and Lyros hear me and come for me.

  “Just sit yourself down, and think.” It’s Odette’s voice, calm and authoritative. Even if it’s only in my head, I trust it.

  I step backward until I feel the stone wall against my shoulder blades and then slide down to the ground, wrapping my arms around my knees and hugging myself into a tight ball so that I don’t accidentally touch the bones. I have a feeling that would really get me screaming.

  “She can’t do you any harm,” Odette’s voice says. “She’s dead.”

  “Well, so are you,” I think to myself. At least I’m pretty sure I don’t say it aloud. “And you’ve apparently developed the ability to speak to me now.”

  I hear a low chuckle that should alarm me for my sanity even further, but instead it makes me smile. “The bit of me that’s in your head is more real than any of those old bones, but honey, we don’t have time for a me-ta-fizz-i-cal discussion right now.” She says metaphysical just like she would in life, drawing out each syllable. “You gotta think about what just happened. You gotta think about Agnes. I mean, who’d have thought it! A face like an angel!”

  “So you didn’t suspect anything, either?”

  “I’m not psychic, honey, just smart—though that girl sure played her part to the hilt. Truth be told, I always did think there was something a little off-kilter about her, but I put that down to her being raised up a minister’s daughter in a small town. Didn’t know she was adopted and spent her babyhood in an orphanage. I don’t expect she got held much at all. Now that’s a big emptiness to carry around.”

  I think back to the morning of the shooting and picture Agnes in my office: her chewed nails and ragged cuticles, the dark circles under her eyes. I’d put it all down to nerves over her presentation and worry about Dale Henry, but what if she’d been sleepless and nervous because she knew something was going to happen at the interview? I remember how closely she watched my phone as it flashed its series of coded Pythagorean numbers.

  “What if Ely’s message wasn’t for me?” I say. Aloud this time. “What if it was for Agnes?”

  “You think?” Odette replies with a low chuckle.

  “But that would mean Agnes belonged to the Tetraktys.”

  “Think about it: Agnes grows up a God-fearing Baptist but then tosses it aside to study pagan mystery rites. She was looking for something to replace her childhood religion. Why would she stop at studying some crazy old cult when she could belong to a new one?”

  “Then she’s been the one all along? The one sending Ely the scans of Phineas’s journals. She’s the Tetraktys member inside the Papyrus Project, not Lyros. How could I be so stupid?”

  “Don’t feel so bad, honey. She had everybody fooled—although I think Elgin was starting to cotton on to her.”

  I consider this, recalling Elgin’s interest in Agnes, which I had thought was of a different nature altogether. Elgin had watched his sister fall under the influence of a cult; had he recognized the same signs in Agnes? Was he just worried about her, or did he suspect that she was working with the Tetraktys?

  “And what will he think when Agnes tells him I’m lost? Will he believe her?”

  There’s a silence inside my head, whether because Odette—or whatever her voice represents—has deserted me or because she simply has no answer. Will Agnes just leave with Ely, taking the scroll with them? Or will she try to convince Elgin and Lyros that I got lost? She could easily say that I fell into that bottomless pit we passed. She could drop my bag into it and Elgin and Lyros will waste their time looking for me there. They’ll never come this far.

  “Elgin won’t buy it,” I hear Odette’s voice say. “He doesn’t trust Agnes. He’ll keep looking for you.”

  “But he doesn’t know how to follow the path we took. No one but Agnes and Ely knows it.” I feel despair creeping into my mind, like the blackness that surrounds me. At the thought of Ely, I begin to cry. I’ve been so focused on Agnes that I haven’t let myself think of his betrayal. How can he care so little for me that he’d leave me to die?

  “Never you mind, Sophie, some people just lose a piece of themselves along the way and when they fill it up with something else they give themselves up to it completely. There’s no room left for love or conscience. That’s not religion, it’s just hiding from all the emptiness. Don’t think about Ely; think about Elgin…. I know, you never thought to hear me say a word in Professor Romeo’s favor, but I’ve come to see things differently. He may not have been the bravest man on earth, but when he saw you were going for Dale he got himself up off that floor and went for him first. He made you come along on this trip because he was worried if you stayed home you’d just brood. He showed up at your hotel ’cause he was worried about you and he’s kept an eye on you ever since. He’s still looking for you, only you got to give him a little help.”

  “But how?” I ask.

  “Well, let’s think about this for a second. This pit you’ve gotten yourself in—what led you to it?”

  “Night,” I answer. “The face of Night. This is the pit of Night…a trap….”

  “But remember, Night always turns to Day eventually, so it makes sense that the pit of Night has a way into the Day—”

  “You mean that there could be a tunnel inside this pit leading back to where the path marked by Day…”

  I don’t hear a reply, but I don’t need one now. I get onto my knees and feel around the circumference of the pit, cringing when my hands come into contact with the bones, but moving them aside so that I can feel along the bottom where the stone wall joins the floor smoothly, except in one place where I feel a rock bulging from the surface…like a boulder that’s been laid over something. I run my hands over it, searching for crevices where it meets the smooth wall, something I can get my fingertips into, but the boulder fits so smoothly into the wall there’s no space for me to get a grip.

  I sit back on my heels, gasping in the diminishing oxygen. Is that ho
w I’m going to die in here? By suffocation? Or will there be enough air to sustain me so that I’ll have time to starve to death instead? I remember what Iusta said: her mistress had designed these traps to prolong her victims’ suffering. Which meant there were tunnels that let air in.

  I force myself to stay perfectly still and concentrate on the air touching my face. It feels like a damp cloth lying over my mouth and nose, smothering me. I resist the temptation to claw at my own skin to get it off my face. Is that how I’ll die? Will future archaeologists find my mummified body, my skin torn to shreds by my own hands?

  Hush.

  It’s less a word than an expulsion of air, a mother comforting a fretting child. I turn my head a fraction toward the sound and feel the word tickling my forehead like cool fingertips pushing away my sweat-damp hair.

  It’s coming from a place just inches above my head. I reach toward it gingerly, afraid of what I’ll find. My fingertips graze the smooth wall and then scratch against something rough that peels away in my hand. Iron bars framing a round hole. Frantically, I trace the circumference. It’s barely wider than my shoulders. I wonder if Calatoria deliberately had it made just big enough for escape and then barred it to taunt her victims, but it doesn’t matter. The iron bars have rusted through from the slow drip of an underground spring. They crumble in my hands, splintering under my fingernails and tearing my skin, but I don’t worry about that. I dig toward the air.

  When I’ve cleared away as much of the bars as I can, I scramble into the hole. Shards of the corroded iron scrape at my belly as I pull myself in, but I ignore the pain. I ignore, too, the mean little voice breathing its metallic-smelling breath in my ear. This could lead nowhere, it hisses, you could be digging your own grave. Instead I listen to the softly sibilant whisper of clean air at the end of the tunnel. I concentrate on it so hard it seems to be crooning my name. Sophie. Sophie. Sssssophie.

  It is calling my name. At first I think it’s Odette’s voice again, only fainter and weaker, but then I recognize it. It’s Elgin. It takes all the breath in my one and a half lungs to answer him, but it’s worth it to hear his reply moving down through the dark tunnel. I crawl forward as fast as I can, the walls of the tunnel so tight I have to keep my arms stretched out in front of me and claw myself upward and forward. There’s one bad moment when my fingers graze rock and I think the way’s blocked, but then I feel someone grasping both my hands and pulling me out.

  Then I’m in the larger tunnel. It feels like a palace compared to what I’ve just crawled through. In the dim light of Elgin’s lantern I can make out the carved head of Day. I feel like kissing her. Instead I kiss Elgin, who’s still holding on to both my hands.

  He’s surprised, but it doesn’t keep him from kissing me back.

  “Sophie—” he begins.

  “You kept looking for me,” I say at the same time.

  “Agnes said you fell into a chasm a ways back because you took the wrong turn,” he says, taking off his jacket and wrapping it around my shoulders. I wonder why and then realize I’m shaking. “We could see your bag hanging from a rock and even hear your walkie-talkie crackling down below, but I just couldn’t see you making that mistake. I mean, the tunnel was clearly marked by a poppy and you’d know that had to be a sign of death because of its Eleusinian connections and associations with sleep. I knew I covered that in my Ancient Religions seminar—”

  “So basically you thought I couldn’t have taken the wrong path because you’re such a good teacher?”

  Elgin looks down at me sheepishly. “Well, um, yes.” A look of genuine embarrassment crosses his face. Although it’s hard to tell in this light I could swear he’s blushing.

  I start to laugh, but the laughter quickly turns into convulsive sobs. Elgin puts his arm around me and pats me awkwardly on the shoulder.

  “I know, I know,” he says, “I’m an ass, but at least I’m the ass who came looking for you.”

  “Did you tell Lyros and Agnes what you were doing?” I ask when I’m able to speak again.

  “No. It seemed pointless to argue and I felt funny calling Agnes a liar, but, you know, it wouldn’t have been the first time I caught her in a lie. I’m pretty sure she cheated on an exam once. She’s so innocent-looking I kept thinking I must be wrong, but then I wasn’t. I’ve had an uneasy feeling about her since.”

  Although I’m curious to know more, I suddenly realize that we can’t stand here talking about Agnes. “Well, you were right,” I say, heading back down the tunnel. “She and Ely sealed me in here after they got the scroll.”

  “Ely was here?” He catches up to me at the fork of the two trees and turns me around, holding me at arm’s length. “You don’t sound surprised that he’s here in Italy.”

  “No,” I say, trying not to look away, “I knew he was here. I’ve seen him twice. He told me that he was working with the FBI.”

  “And you believed him?” I see the look of incredulity on his face and it makes me embarrassed and then angry.

  “You told me there was a former Tetraktys member working with you and the FBI. I thought you meant Ely.”

  He shakes his head. “No, I most certainly did not mean Ely. What else did he tell you?”

  “That Lyros was the magos of the Tetraktys. You were acting suspicious of Lyros, too, and he had gone down to the tunnels right before Simon was hurt…. But that was Agnes, wasn’t it? She must have struck Simon in the tunnels and later changed his records in the hospital so they didn’t know he was a diabetic…. Did you know?”

  “I’d begun to suspect—” Before he can finish what he’s going to say we hear a moan coming from below. “That sounds like Lyros,” he says.

  We both hurry down the next tunnel, to the spot where it forks between the iris and the poppy. “This is where I left them,” Elgin says. “Lyros had set up a belay right here”—he points to a boulder—“but the rope’s gone.”

  “Help,” a voice calls from the tunnel. “Is anyone there?”

  I lean over the edge of the chasm and my flashlight catches the terrified face of John Lyros. He’s clinging to a rope that is snagged on one of the jagged outcroppings, but I immediately see that the rope is fraying on the sharp edge of the rock. John’s hands are torn and bloody—no doubt from trying to climb the razor-sharp rocks.

  “I’m going to let down another rope,” Elgin tells John, “and set up another belay. We’ll have you out of there in a minute.”

  Elgin goes to attach the rope, but I keep my flashlight trained on Lyros. I know what it feels like to be left alone in the dark.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I was trying to climb down to find you—Agnes was above watching the rope—when all of a sudden the rope came loose. I called for her, but she didn’t answer. I figured out then that she’d meant to leave me here. Apparently she also lied about where you were.”

  “She sealed me in a pit farther up in the tunnel,” I say. “She and my ex-boyfriend, that is. They’ve taken a scroll that I think might be The Golden Verses. I’m afraid they’ve gotten away with it.”

  “This ex-boyfriend of yours,” Lyros says when he’s out of the pit, “did he happen to have a boat called The Persephone?”

  “Yes,” I say, wondering how he knew.

  “Then we’d better hurry. I have an idea where they might be headed.”

  When we get to the Chamber of the God we find that the rope has been removed, but luckily Maria is leaning over the opening. Lyros tosses her up one of our ropes and explains how to secure it.

  “What’s going on?” she asks when we all get up to the stairs. “A strange man came out of the tunnel and then Agnes came out a little later. She refused to explain what was happening.”

  “She left?” Lyros asks.

  “Like a bat out of hell, as you Americans say. I thought there must have been some accident so I came down here.”

  “She’s heading for the marina,” Lyros says as we all rush up the stairs. “But she’ll
have to walk there. I imagine she’s supposed to meet Ely there. Let’s hope he’s waited for her. If we can find someone to drive us we might catch them before they launch the boat.”

  When we get to the gate we meet the two guards who are arguing with each other, gesticulating angrily in the air, apparently about who left the gate open. Maria steps in between them and demands a car—Pronto!—and miraculously they immediately quiet and point to a dusty Fiat listing to its left on the side of the alley. Lyros grabs the keys from the guard before he’s got them all the way out of his pocket and we all pile into the Fiat and take off down the narrow streets that lead to the marina.

  “The Persephone looked pretty fast,” I say as we draw closer to the marina.

  “Not faster than the Parthenope,” Lyros says. “But let’s hope we can catch them before they put out to sea.”

  “That’s it,” I shout as we drive into the marina. “The Persephone! It’s at the end of that dock.” I can see, too, that its engine is running and Ely is on the deck. I spot Agnes heading toward him on the dock.

  Elgin has the door open and is half out of the car before Lyros stops it. We all abandon the car and run onto the dock, Elgin in the lead, then me, and Maria. Maria mutters something under her breath—it could be a prayer or a curse. She passes me and catches up to Elgin. They are only a few feet behind Agnes when Ely looks up and sees them from the boat. He has my canvas bag strung across his chest, and I can see him make a quick assessment of the situation, calculating distances and velocities. He steps to the wheel and revs the boat’s engine.

  Agnes sees what he’s doing, and makes a run for it. She leaps for the boat, but just as her foot grazes the edge of the deck it moves away and she tumbles into the water. Elgin, right behind her, stops short, hesitates a split second, then dives in after her. Maria never stops at all. She makes one long fluid leap and lands on the boat, the momentum of her jump carrying her into Ely and propelling them both across the deck. They crash against the bench on the other side and hover there for an instant as the boat, captainless, spins, and then crashes into the dock. The force of the impact knocks them both into the water.