She Wakes (2 page)

    Agamamnon’s tomb, Schliemann had believed.

    Agamemnon.

    The king who led the Greeks to Troy. Heir to the curse of the House of Atreaus, which began somewhere in unrecorded time with brother feeding brother the flesh of his own children. King to a rough Bronze Age people sixteen centuries before Christ whose gods and goddesses were of earth and harvest-not pacific sky gods of Olympus.

    Agamemnon. Murderer of his daughter. Killed by his wife and queen.

    The male, generative principle. Sacrificed to the female, reproductive principle.

    It happened again and again all over the world whenever the earth was starved and needy. There probably was such a man, thought Chase, and truth behind the story. A man sacrificed, like many kings before him when they grew too old-their judgement questionable or their power spent-to the goddess earth, to replenish it and begin the process anew.

    These were the Myceneans, the people who had built this place.

    A gust of wind cuffed his thin brown hair and he pushed it back over his forehead, wiped a line of sweat off the stubble at his chin.

    The tomb was still vigorous, still magnetic. Even standing out here he felt it

    He stood at the entrance and looked in. It was empty. He’d beaten the tourists here. They would still be at the fortified city on the mountain.

    Good.

    He felt excited, receptive, almost passive. Open to whatever was inside, the adrenalin gently flowing. Exactly as it should be.

    Go on, he thought.

    He stepped inside.

    At first footfall the tholos began to sing to him.

    Physically sing.

    He heard the droning of bees-from where? He could see none. Mud daubers probably, in the niches between the stones. And then the chattering of birds, dozens of birds, sparrows, growing louder and louder as he moved inward, scolding him from their nests and swooping through the circular beehive chamber constructed in such a way that with each footfall the entire room seemed to shudder with short staccato tremblings of echo. He walked to the center of the chamber.

    He stood gazing at the walls blackened by shepherds’ fires, at the great stones of the base cut smaller and smaller as they ascended the wall until they were only brick size, set in concentric circles at the top. Soon the birds subsided. The air inside was cool and still. The single bright shaft of sunlight from the entrance washed him with gold.

    He emptied himself, lay open.

    
Not quite,
he thought.

    He felt a sense of past but not of power. The power was elsewhere. But near. Very near.

    There.

    To the right was a doorway maybe six and a half feet high-a smaller, man-sized version of the gigantic entranceway he’d just come through. He was sure he was right.

    This place.

    The sparrows protested again as he crossed the floor and stood in the doorway, its massive lintel only inches from the top of his head. He looked inside.

    Perhaps this morning there had been some spill of light into the chamber but not now.

    He peered blindly into a deep rich darkness.

    His eyes would not adjust. He felt the dark like a physical shock.

    He raised an arm, held it straight in front of him.

    From the elbow on it disappeared entirely.

    He strained to see, then closed his eyes and a moment later opened them. There was nothing. Fingers, wrist, forearm-all completely gone. Something shivered across his spine.

    He raised the other arm and started forward.

    It was not like night. It was not like closing his eyes. It was not like both together.

    It was deeper than that, much deeper, like the bottom of a pit that had never seen the light. He could feel his pupils dilating rapidly, trying to accommodate to this impossible environment.

    He inched along, working forward in a direct line from the doorway. The air was much cooler here and damp. But there was no musty smell-just the smell of earth, of something clean and hard. He felt sure he was in nothing man had made now. It was a cave-a natural chamber deep in the belly of the mountain. He was wary of breaks and pitfalls. He scuffled forward groping like a blind man. He was a blind man. Oedipus. Ten feet. Twenty. Twenty-five.

    Still there was only darkness. He did not look back.

    He could hear nothing but the sound of his feet on the rough pitted floor, that and his own breathing. Even the birds were silent.

    He wondered if he was alone.

    Then finally his hands found the cool sweating stone.

    Its touch was electric. He felt something race inside him-a strong, wonderful presence here. So strong he almost spoke to it-yes, I hear you. Yes.

    He turned his back to the wall and stared toward the entrance, its honey glow, the muscles of his back relaxing, relieved to finally see again. He felt the scrape of rough stone across his shoulders.

    And then he froze there.

    He shook his head in disbelief.

    He’d been walking through the dark. Swimming through it.

    Yet ten feet back on either side, spaced evenly apart and resting on slabs of stone, a pair of candles stood burning. Birthday candles. Very small, illuminating only a tiny space of floor.

    But burning.

    

    

    

    It was late by the time she got rid of the Greek boy at the bar and then walked home, and her roommate, the Swedish girl, was already sleeping.

    
Cow,
she thought.

    The girl slept nude and though the night had started out cold it was milder now so that the sheet and blanket were down around her waist. She lay to one side, one hand beneath the pillow and the other draped over it, mouth slightly open. Her shoulders and back were brown and firmly muscled, the breast flesh very pale and slack by comparison.

    She knelt beside the girl’s bed and blew gently into her face. The eyelids fluttered.

    “You awake?”

    The girl slept on.

    She watched her, thinking of the Greek boy on the dance floor as he’d tried to hold her, thinking how easy it was to get rid of him once she’d wanted to. 'You know what Greek boys like, don’t you?' she’d said, deadpan, and the boy thought he understood so he smiled knowingly and laughed and watched her as she nodded toward his friend at the table, who smiled too, and then she said, 'Am fucking. Go fuck yourselves. The two of you. I’ll watch.'

    She smiled now. There wasn’t much worse you could say to a Greek. He’d wanted very much to hit her but he hadn’t. He hadn’t dared.

    The Swedish girl’s breathing was shallow and even. She slept deeply. Lelia did not and was glad of it.
What if someone came to you in the night? Robbed you? Touched you?

    Like this.

    She pressed her forefinger to the girl’s shoulder, rested it lightly there for a moment, then drew it down behind the shoulder blade across the rib cage and finally to the base of her breast. Then she stopped and looked at her. The face registered nothing.

    She turned her hand palm upward and gently moved it down and with the back of her hand to the mattress drew the breast out toward her so that the weight of it rested in her hand. It was warm and slightly damp. The girl hadn’t moved. She looked at the nipple. It was large, a pale brown color, soft now.

    She wondered how long it would get.

    Let’s see.

    She moved her thumb and forefinger together and gently turned. She felt the skin wither and tighten.

    It got long. Very long.

    There was a tiny sound, almost a purring in the girl’s throat and she saw the eyelids move in the side-to-side motion that told her the girl was dreaming. Lelia almost laughed aloud. The Swedish girl was having a little dream. She moved in closer so the girl could smell the scent of her, the fine dusting of expensive perfume.

    Maybe she should lick it. Or bite.

    See how it tasted.

    But no.

    Leave something, she thought, for later.

    

    

    

    “Paracalo.”

    He called the waiter and ordered another Metaxa, draining the glass in front of him. “Meh pagukia?" asked the man.
With ice?

    “Sketoh," said Chase. Add nothing.

    There was a white elastic strip around the tablecloth holding it down against the evening wind and somebody had penciled in TOO MANY FOREIGNERS IN GREECE along the front of it. That was true enough, thought Chase, though whoever had written it was probably a tourist himself-the English was just too perfect. The sign above him, for instance, read RESTAURANT BAR HOMER. HERE WE HAVE GREEK SERVICE. ALL GRILLDED.

    That was more like it.

    He watched the waiter move off toward the bar.

    He was drinking more than he should, he knew, three empty glasses lined up in front of him and he didn’t know why except that he needed it. The power of a place took a while to roll off you. Sometimes a long while.

    He kept coming back to the candles.

    He presumed they were left by an earlier tour group though he had seen no such tour group. And that only explained the least interesting thing about them.

    How could he have missed fire?

    He’d read somewhere that black holes in space had the capacity to suck in light like a vacuum cleaner but that was space and this was a cave in the countryside of Greece.

    So how could he have missed them?

    By the time they’d guttered out and his eyes finally adjusted to the dark he’d found himself alone in what turned out to be a roughly circular cavern about twenty-five feet deep by twenty feet wide with high pale limestone walls. For a while he’d inhabited the silence like a ghost.

    Like a very humble ghost. There was awesome power in the place.

    It calmed him.

    Then it frightened him.

    He’d felt it before. In Mexico once, and once in England. And worst of all on a foggy New England afternoon, the very last day of his childhood. Times he didn’t like to remember and wouldn’t remember now.

    He felt too much. Too often.

    Murder in the eyes of a man in the streets of Toronto. A hotel fire in San Francisco that killed two children and a fireman. The imminent deaths of his favorite aunt, a teacher in the eighth grade, his father.

    
Stop it,
he thought.

    It was always the same but always different too in the way that anything elemental was, like water in a stream or like fire. You recognized the familiar power. It was the configurations that surprised you.

    He recognized the feelings too-the tuning-fork intensity, the sense of having access for a moment to some impossible vantage point where you could see worlds turning, growing green or barren, imploding or exploding, mountains formed and seas going dry. It was wonderful and terrifying. And it was meant to be watched with humility if it was meant to be watched at all.

    Even the elation of it, even the joy, was painful.
It could drive you crazy if you let it.

    
You had to lighten it, make it livable.

    
Like you’re doing now,
he thought.
Sitting here drinking
.

    So that in a way he’d been glad when the tourists arrived. They couldn’t see him. They’d stood in the post-and-lintel doorway and held their lighters and matches inside but they wouldn’t go in. Instead they’d done the sensible thing and gotten the hell out of there. He’d sat back on his heels and watched them, feeling like a spook, feeling almost like laughing out loud. They’d dissipated his tension and he was glad for that but he’d resented them too. Nothing spoke to them. Nothing ever would. He was alone in that. There was room to love this gift of his but room to hate it too. It defined him and made him one of a kind, and lonely.

    There was another reason for resenting them too. The cave had broken off with him once they’d arrived, stopped communicating. He was jealous of that communication. It was what had called him here.

    And now he’d have to go back again.

    
Which,
he thought,
is the main reason you’re drinking.

    The waiter set down the Metaxa. Chase thanked him and raised the glass. The waiter nodded. The amber liquid felt hot and smooth.

    He thought about going back in.

    There were only two options, really. One was to wait until morning and beat the tourists but beat them early this time so that he’d have at least a half an hour or so before they arrived. It might be enough time.

    The other was better, and more threatening. Even slightly embarrassing. Something a kid might do.

    He could go tonight and jump the fence.

    If he did he wouldn’t have to worry about tourists-just the police-but from what he’d seen police were in short supply here. He hadn’t seen a single uniform since arriving.

    Still it was risky.

    He supposed a Greek jail could be nasty. But his connections were international so that even in a worst-case scenario, jail wouldn’t be much of a problem for long. It wasn’t that. It was something much simpler.

    It was night.

    He’d be jumping the fence at night, walking the dromos alone, entering the tomb. The prospect worried him. Places got stronger at night, they often did. And in daylight, this one was strong enough.

    He could still hear it humming like the droning of a thousand bees.