Two old women, sisters, were discovered lying dead side by side on a darkened street to the rear of the Sunset Bar by a passing neighbor who recognized them immediately and went for help. By the time he returned both bodies were gone, yet the street was awash with blood.
***
Dodgson’s group saw some of this too, though they didn’t know what it was exactly.
They were headed for the boat, two streets down from the Harlequin so that they could see the glow in the sky where it was burning and hear timbers pop like gunfire. People were racing past them back up into town or down to the dock. They saw frightened anguished faces, heard screaming, crying.
The town was coming apart.
They passed a fancy boutique and stepped carefully because the plate-glass window lay shattered in the street. Inside the store, shadowy slow-moving figures seemed inexplicably to be tearing all the arms and legs off the mannequins, stumbling through a rubble of tom scattered clothing.
At the kiosk dockside the boy who sold cigarettes lay facedown in a pool of blood.
Out on the street two middle-aged women were fighting, one of them a Greek and the other a tourist woman wearing a floral print dress. They fought silently, grunting, in deadly earnest. The Greek appeared to be winning. But Dodgson seemed to see a great open wound at the base of her neck just before she shifted, struggling.
“They’re crazy!” said Xenia.
They reached the dock. He watched her untie the boat. Her hands were shaking.
She had company.
***
Orville and Betty Dunworth climbed aboard the Balthazar and saw that it was just about the last boat of any size left docked there. Betty went below to deposit her shopping bags while Orville climbed to the fly bridge to start her up, cursing the other owners and rentals who’d left him a goddamn fucking obstacle course to get through, all of them anchored out there like a crowded checkerboard, just out of range of the sparks and debris from the fire.
He’d head through and beyond them. He was taking no risks.
She started up instantly with that lovely familiar roar he liked so much-to him the sound of power and cold hard cash. Oh, not a whole immense amount of cash by the world’s standards these days. But enough. Enough so he was proud of her and the way she showed him off.
He checked the instruments and everything was fine so he hit the lights fore and aft and carefully headed out. Running lights dotted the sea flickering like fireflies. Orville’s were fine, though. Over the sound of the engine he heard Betty rattling around below.
What the hell was the woman doing down there? She should be up here watching this, he thought, watching him maneuver through this bobbing checkerboard here, graceful as a swan.
Noisy old fuck, Betty was. Always had been. Always yap, yap, yap- always talking. And clumsy. Forever dropping something. It sounded like she'd dropped something now, in fact. One less present for her flit grandson or that wimpy, whiny little friend of hers, Dorothy. Well, fine.
Nice cruiser, he thought, as he steered past the big handsome Owens. In his lights he caught the makings of a party, young men with beer cans and tall drinks and a flash of young blonde thigh. Pretty odd time for it, he thought. But hell, I wouldn’t bitch. No party here.
He heard another crash below.
Damn that woman!
“Hey Betty!”
Jesus! What was she, drunk? They’d had about half a glass each at dinner. Even Betty had more capacity than that. So what was she doing, nipping down below now? He wouldn’t put it past her.
She starts going drunk on me and I swear I’ll dump her, he thought.
He listened.
That was better. He heard her coming up the stairs.
Just let me slip by this Striker here and then we’ll see what’s what.
There was plenty of room but he cut it close anyway. Give ’em something to think about. He wasn’t worried. The Balthazar handled like a Ferrari. He’d just set her bobbing a little just for fun.
He felt Betty’s hand on his shoulder.
“Hold it,” he said. “Just a second.” Then I'll have a little sniff of your goddamn breath.
He described a neat curve around the Striker’s bow. And that was the last of them. There was open sea ahead of him now.
The hand tightened on his shoulder.
Tightened a lot.
What the fuck?
He turned around.
It was Betty, all right.
And then again it wasn’t.
She was missing an eye, for one thing. And she didn’t seem to care much, either-just stood there grinning at him, her upper plate missing and the lower one askew. And behind her stood a man built like a truck who had something very wrong with his neck and shoulder. And it was like one of those crazy funny-car things in the circus because behind him were a bunch of kids coming out of the hold too, something wrong with each and every damn one of them and behind them stood a woman. A beautiful woman. One he vaguely remembered seeing somewhere-and the whole insane tableau slipped like a worm inside his guts and scared him so bad that his bowels went and his urine and yet apart from that he couldn’t move a muscle. Not even when Betty…I loved you Betty…not even when she raised the flare gun and pointed it into his open mouth.
And fired.
JORDAN THAYER CHASE
DELOS
He had dreamed this.
A mountain rising out of the sea, high and wild against the blue-black sky.
It was exactly that.
He could see ruins and fluted columns, a labyrinth of ruins, and a handful of shepherd’s huts-but mostly it was the mountain, dominating everything. In the moonless starlit night it looked like an ancient craggy pyramid looming closer as the small boat sputtered through the waves.
He could feel the place feeling for him, trawling. Laving him like a cat with crisp pinprick waves of energy. He chain-smoked. He was frightened. Down to his soul he was frightened. He was sure he had reason to be.
He closed his eyes and for the first time he thought he knew who she was, and what his own role might be.
The mountain reached out to him, found him, flayed him gently.
DODGSON
“Did you know that the first Immortal was a woman?” Chase said.
Dodgson sat beside him in the prow of the boat, Billie on his left and Michelle, Danny and Eduardo behind them, with Xenia at the tiller steering toward the mountain.
In the starlight Chase looked pretematurally pale, his skin translucent.
“Gaea, her name was-Mother Earth. The Greeks called her the Daughter of Chaos. It’s not unusual. In most civilizations the first and oldest deity is a female. The male seems to start almost as an afterthought, as a consort for the goddess. But the real power’s with her, with Mother Earth, Mothers of Com, of wheat or barley, that sort of thing.
“She’s the first step out of a system drenched in magic with one foot still planted there. In times of drought or when the crops were bad, it was magic the ancients fell back on. So they’d kill in the name of the goddess and sow the fields with blood. Sympathetic magic, like to like. Blood to feed the thirsty com, com to feed the people.
“And guess who died, Dodgson?
“A man. Some human stand-in for the consort of the Earth Mother. Always someone in pretty high standing in the community. If he was old and past his prime, the king. If not, if he was still too useful to let go of or too shrewd to kill, his surrogate-some noble who would masquerade as king and even be treated as though he were king for a while.
“Thousands of years ago the same thing happened here in Greece. Then later, as life got more civilized, people tried to forget about all that. You had the Golden Age-laws, citizenship, philosophy, art, mathematics, architecture, justice. But you were left with charming old stories about handsome young men who died for the love of some goddess, of a Narcissus or an Adonis. It was watered-down metaphor, but a memory of the real thing.
“They began in blood, these s
tories.”
Dodgson looked at the mountain. Under different circumstances it might have been beautiful. Now it looked cold, blasted, as though despite the few shepherds’ huts nothing could ever live there.
The waves were rising again. There was nowhere else to go.
“You don’t see what I’m getting at exactly, do you?” said Chase.
“Not really.”
“Remember we talked about Greece changing, decaying-being badly in need of renewal?”
Dodgson nodded. “Sure I do. Hell, the whole world could use some refurbishing if you ask me.”
“I agree. And for all I know something similar’s going on elsewhere. Maybe any number of places. But we’re talking about Greece now. And the point is, renewal’s the province of an Earth Goddess.”
He pointed to the mountain. “Look at that. It’s something like three hundred and seventy feet high, surrounded on every side by the ruins of the most venerated place in the ancient Greek world. The entire island consecrated to Apollo, god of the sun. And to his sister Artemis.
“It was venerated for a reason.
“I’ve been thinking about Lelia. Remember I said I thought she was drawing power from something?
“Well, I’ve been doing a lot more thinking about Artemis. Because it wasn’t really Artemis who was born here, not exactly. The goddess who was born here was much older, pre-Hellenic. Gaea, the earth goddess, the female principle. Her myths are very ancient. There’s even speculation that Apollo began, not as her brother, but as her consort.
“And then later she became particularized, what they call a tripartite figure. Her functions split. She was known as the Goddess with Three Aspects.
“So that as Selene she was goddess of the moon-the lighted, full moon-sort of a counterpoint to her brother Apollo, the sun. Up until tonight, by the way, you notice we’ve had moonlight. And the moon is no small influence on the tides. Anyway, you’ve got Selene.
“But then as Artemis she’s the Huntress, goddess of the hunt-the hunt for food, not sport. For sustenance. And sustenance is renewal. Which is probably why she eventually became the most important of the three. Also of a kind of primitive ecology. She’s protectoress of the animals as well. She commands them, informs their destinies. And as Artemis, she’s patroness of childbirth.
“So. Tides and moonlight. Animals, hunts and childbirth. Beginning to sound at all familiar to you?”
Beside him Billie sat silent, gripping his hand, listening close. He could hear the irregular chugging of the motor. His stomach lurched as they bottomed out of a high crested wave. He said nothing.
“Then there’s Hecate,” Chase said. “And believe me, Hecate is something else, my friend."
Dodgson looked to the mountain. He could feel what was coming. There was an urgency, a fever to the man now, a fever to his voice.
“There’s nothing like her in the entire pantheon, Dodgson. Greece is the cradle of humanism, after all. Of light and reason. There’s very little left in its mythology that would really frighten anybody, that would harken back to the old days. Very little except Hecate.
“What you’ve got here is a clear representation of the dark side of the ancient Mother figure. The death before rebirth, all the bloody sacrifice. Hecate was goddess of the dark of the moon. She was patroness of witches. The mother of Circe and Medea. Like a good, observant Mother she was said to walk the earth much more often than her brothers and sisters.
“And where did you find her? You found her in graveyards or where three roads meet. People would leave sacrifices there-tethered-up dogs, or eggs or honey.
“She had an entourage. The dead were her entourage. She had the power to raise them up. She walked with them. And howling dogs announced her coining.
“You see what I’m saying, don’t you? You see what kind of night we’ve got here?”
Dodgson nodded.
“Dark of the moon,” he said.
The boat drew nearer.
He could see the dock now, empty. From here the ruins along the base of the mountain were a dark shadowy maze.
“Get ready, Robert,” said Xenia.
She threw him one of the lines. He stood carefully and glanced at Chase as they pulled up dockside. He wondered if the man had any plan at all. He saw him wince.
It’s not cowardice, he thought. It’s us.
I’d rather have ignorance, he thought, than this gift of his. He can barely control his own fear yet he feels our dependence on him, feels responsible for us. He’s the only one of us with any equipment for this at all and it must be terrible.
Despite the waves Xenia docked them neatly, barely scraping the dock. He stepped out and tied her off.
Without the motor the night was deafeningly quiet. He found himself listening for wind but there was none.
There were supposed to be a handful of shepherds here, caretakers for the French archeological team who worked the island in the cooler months and when funding was available. He wondered if any of them had heard them. In this kind of stillness they should have. It ought to have caused a stir. It was illegal to be out here at night.
No one appeared.
“What now?” said Danny.
“Let’s find someone,” said Chase. He didn’t seem optimistic.
They headed out through the broken city.
BILLIE
They walked along a broad flat dusty avenue past a row of pillars and broken pedestals, of porticoes overgrown with tough wild grass. Low thorny growth scraped and pricked at her ankles.
Five marble lions crouched above them, luminous, features worn smooth by centuries of rainfall. There were empty pedestals for four more.
She clung to Dodgson’s arm.
It wasn’t fair, she thought.
She’d come so far with him in so short a time, forgotten her fears, learned to enjoy a man again. And now here she was, reduced to a miserable insecure frightened woman again, reduced by half from what she was only days ago. Walking through a city where everything was long dead.
It wasn’t fair because they’d done nothing to deserve this, nothing commensurate with the revenge she’d already taken much less what might lie ahead for them. Her death had been an accident. She’d brought it on herself. It was as though that greed she’d seen in Lelia from the start had flowered like some unwholesome, night-blooming thing into a monstrous gluttony that had nothing to motivate it beyond greed itself. She’d become a kind of feeding machine-feeding on the fear in them and their caring for one another.
Long ago while she was still a girl she’d given up believing in god and thus far the world had proved her out. The world was random and capricious in the extreme. But now she wondered bitterly about a different god or gods. Now, when her happiness with Dodgson should have been a delight to her all she could feel was fear for him and for herself, all she could do was tightly grasp his arm-and she wondered about what Chase had said, if there were such things as gods, delighting in the torment of men and women. Cruel, rapacious.
“This way,” murmured Chase.
They climbed a low stone fence and saw a small one-story hut ahead of them on a hill.
***
Inside there were candles burning. Flickering through the tiny window.
In front of them Xenia was holding onto Eduardo and ahead of them, Michelle to Danny, mirroring her and Dodgson.
The path was uneven and overgrown with weeds. She stumbled. Dodgson supported her. They scuffled along, unsure of their footing in the dark. Through his sweater she could feel dampness at his arm and waist, a light warm humidity.
The path narrowed. They crested the hill. Her eyes held to the candlelight in the window as though it were a lifeline. Her pupils contracted. The rest of the world darkened.
Michelle began to whimper.
“What is it?” Danny said.
Billie could just see them. Two dark figures moving back and forth ahead of her. Michelle trying to pull away, Danny holding her gently back.
&
nbsp; “It’s okay…Michelle…it’s okay…”
“No!”
“…really, honest, I swear it’s…”
“It’s not. It’s not! No."
Then suddenly she was running, a shadow darting past her down the path. Billie saw Xenia turn around and there was fear in her eyes too. She looked away from the candlelight and when her own eyes adjusted saw Michelle standing facing them, arms rigid at her sides.
“Michelle!” she said and started toward her.
"I won’t go in there!”
It rang on the night air, echoed.
Snakes, Billie thought.
“I won’t!”
“All right,” said Danny, moving past her. “Okay. You don’t have to. I’ll stay here with you. We’ll be fine. All right?”
He reached for her hand and she took it hungrily. She was crying. He turned to the others.
“We’ll stay here, okay?”
He’d addressed it to all of them but everyone knew that only Chase could answer him. So they waited. But Chase just shook his head. She thought he looked strained.
“I don't know…there’s so much going on here. I…I think so. I think it’s all right. But be careful.”
Danny nodded. “We’ll stay right here on the path. That okay, Michelle?”
“Yes.”
Billie looked at Chase. Why? she thought. Why doesn’t he know? If Chase was blind to the place she didn’t think she wanted to go in either. Not anymore.
She knew she didn’t.
Why had no one come to the door?
Michelle’s screaming had been enough to…
To wake the dead.
She was trembling. She supposed there was safety in numbers. She supposed they had to see.
They started forward. This time she kept her eyes off the lighted window. That had been a mistake. It could have been a bad one.
Pebbles danced out in front of her. She could feel the presence of Michelle and Danny behind them, watching, imagined their silent embrace.