She Wakes (13 page)

    

    

    …so that suddenly Xenia was standing, screaming, a hoarse yell filled with startled pain and Dodgson was on his feet beside her lunging for Lelia. Billie reached instinctively across the table to restrain him but there was no need. Eduardo had her-he’d appeared out of nowhere in the crowd behind her. back in his street clothes now and had one of her arms while the man in the Stetson hat had the other, they were dragging her back…and she could see the muscle in Eduardo’s jaw twitch and thought, He’d like to kill her and I really don’t blame him and Lelia was yelling something as they pulled her away but at first the crowd was yelling too so she couldn't hear. And then she did hear, she could see the twisted gash of mouth and the head whipping back and forth and back and forth.

    “I own you!”

    

    

    …he heard and thought,
no, this is not possible-I made love to that woman and she can’t be this thing they are dragging screaming away through the astonished snapshot faces staring at us, at her, at me. Can’t be.

    

    

    “No. It’s over! I’m all right. I’m all right now.”

    At least they were away from the fucking gawkers, the faceless meaningless crowd, out on the street away from them.

    “I’m all right!”

    “The fuck you are,” said the smaller one, the one without the hat and she’d remember him, his hands were hurting her where he gripped her arm so she said it again and again until they believed her- I’m…all…right…out…of…control…sorry, sorry…and finally the one with the hat let up and then the fucking puking little cocksucker dragqueen on the other side though he still stood staring like he’d like to kick her teeth in but she was doing the kicking tonight and while the other one the cowboy began to move away scared of her the other stood hating her she could tell and she wished but she couldn’t let him see what hate was really like because the wind was blowing and all her life had led to this, these moments, and the little man’s mouth was good only for sneering and sucking cock and she wondered if he went down on Dodgson too, the little fuckface bastard.

    
I’m all right. I’m sorry. Really. I’ll go away now, all right? I swear I will. I’ll go.

    He released her.

    She started to walk.

    Then so did he.

    She waited in the shadow between two houses. The winds, the dogs began to howl again.

    
This is what I have come to do,
she thought.
I have come for this. They will not deny me.

    She waited in the shadow. She lit cigarette after cigarette and watched the night drain slowly away like wave upon wave of cold seawater moving down the tideline, watched the people in the courtyard drift off like leaves upon the tide.

    The havoc winds were unrelenting.

    She felt a moment’s panic.
Where am I going?

    Men and women passed her but most did not see her standing there in the shadow and those who did and who recognized her leaned and whispered but did not stop. They had better not stop.

    Her patience was a living thing inside her.

    The man with the hat walked by. She watched him from the shadow. She peered around the comer. The bar was closing now. The crowd was a thin milling crescent

    She didn’t need to wonder if they were gone. She knew they were there. The hounds could smell them, the winds bore their scent on the low broad tide of blood. She hugged the shadows.

    She lit a cigarette. Then lit another and another. Four of them burning. She bundled them together.

    This time she would…

    She moved from the shadow into the dim light.

    This time she would…

    She walked toward them easily, quietly. Unnoticed. The remains of the crowd gently parting.

    This time she would…

    …claim him…

    …put out their fucking eyes…

    

    

    …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.

    

    

    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.

    

    

    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.