Nightjack (25 page)

PART III

The Lost Art of Odyssey

twenty-four

The children were scared of the dark and started crying. Pace offered them ice cream but they refused. He thought back to when he was a kid sitting in the bleachers of the circus and how his father bought him a little blue flashlight on a strap. You held the strap and swung the light around and waited for the ringmaster or the dog act or the tiny car with a million clowns hiding in it. Pace gave little blue lights to the kids who swung them around and ran up and down the cavern alcoves and started playing Marco Polo. Their laughter eased his heart but irritated Jack and made Pacella wrench to one side because he and Jane had always wanted kids, and the sound of them made him ache even now.

Pace was struck by the beauty of the arched walls and colonnades of the temple, the scale of the stone structure. The cave roof was thirty feet high and the columns nearly touched the top of it. Friezes on the walls showed scenes of tree worship from the prehistoric goddess cults. The temple appeared to have been built on a holy site from a much earlier period. Pace ran his hands over the pocked stone and felt some kind of energy alive in there.

“Old gods die, and new ones are built on the bones of them,” Faust said, his voice taking on the quality of a history professor lecturing. “Their temples vandalized, their flesh and rituals cannibalized by new belief systems.”

Hayden said, “Sister Lurteen would’ve busted your ass with a yardstick for saying such things.”

“You had Sunday School at the home?” Pia asked.

“Oh yeah. Mostly we just sat around and made pictures of Jesus out of construction paper, but sometimes the nuns would give a sermon while we did it. If they caught you eating your paste they’d really wail on you.”

The cave branched. Triangular stone chambers opened. Sometimes the ceiling was only inches above their heads, and sometimes it slanted upward three or four stories high.

“There’s a kind of courtyard here,” Faust said ahead of them. “In the center of these rooms. There’s a round section that contains a tomb of some kind, I believe.”

“Any markings?” Pace asked.

“No symbols or Greek letters. Some of the stone doesn’t seem to be as old. They’ve been cut with modern equipment. And food’s been set out. Some kind of cake and dried fruit.”

Kaltzas must have rebuilt the tomb for Cassandra’s mother. But why place it here where the woman died? What did that say about Kaltzas’s personality? Maybe he was trying to merge the present with ancient history, reality with myth.

A conical structure rose up near the tomb. A twining design had been carved around it as it rose, serpentine and polished to a lustrous white that shimmered with reflected lamplight. “It's an omphalos stone,” Pace said. “It means ‘center of the world.’ They're found in most shrines. In Greek mythology Python is a guardian serpent. It was the original name of Delphi, which means dolphin, before it was renamed after Apollo. He took the form of a porpoise in order to lead sailors to safety and become his priests.”

Pia said, “How do you know all that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Think about it, Will.”

“I’d rather not.”

But he did. He recalled that he’d read about it on the laptop in the house on Long Island, the night he and Sam Smith had done research online. He hadn’t even realized he’d remembered it all until it started coming out of his mouth. His hands far ahead of him, and now his mouth too. Pretty soon there’d be nothing left behind, and Pace would be gone.

“There’s a fire,” Faust said, moving into another chamber. The rest of them walked forward and met him at a small pyre.

A gas pipe led along the edge of the tunnel. More of Kaltzas’s updating of the ancient. An eternal torch burning for his wife.

“This is a
heroon
,” Pace said, wondering what his mouth would tell them now. “A kind of monumental tomb built for heroes and VIP’s and their families.”

“You sure got smart fast,” Hayden said.

“No fast enough,” Pace told him.

“Tell us more, Will,” Pia said. She held her lamp high, near his face, so she could see him clearly. “You know more. Tell us.”

He wanted to say, I don’t know anything. Sam Smith was the researcher.

His lips parted and he listened to himself as if from an adjacent but unseen place. “On a typical visit, it was adorned with colorful ribbons or anointed floral wreaths. Vases filled with oil were the most popular gifts brought on a visit to a crypt or cemetery. A feast was laid out at the tomb in honor of the deceased. However, it is unknown whether the living ate any of the food or not. Among the foods left were honey cakes, celery, pomegranates, and eggs.”

“Honey cakes and pomegranates,” Faust said. “That’s what’s on the tomb lid.”

Pace imagined Cassandra coming here, with or without her father, to visit the place where her mother died, and relive the moment over and over again. Each visit driving a deeper wedge into the fracture, splitting her psyche farther apart.

Staring at the pyre as if he wanted to immolate himself, Faust’s eyes wavered, shifting in color from gold to orange to red as the flame flickered. He brought the lamp up higher until it looked like he might set his beard on fire. Pace’s hand lashed out and gripped Faust’s wrist and forced him to extend the lamp away.

“Something’s happening to me,” Faust said.

“I noticed. Can you describe it?”

Faust’s mouth moved absently and he gagged trying to form words. His tongue jutted a few times and withdrew. He swallowed and shook his head. “No.”

“Does it have to do with the long green spinach?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“What’s going on now?” Hayden asked.

Pia said, “Sh.”

“Sh? Did you just shush me?”

“Shh.”

“Do not ever fucking shush me!”

“Shhh already!”

“Sister Lurteen used to shush the shit out of us all the time!”

“Shut up!”

“You afraid I’m gonna wake somebody?”

Whatever hex Faust had been under, he snapped free of it. His shoulders relaxed and slumped, the strange force having seeped from him. “We’re all going to die here,” he said. “We’ll be entombed together, breathing each other’s stale air for our remaining hours. These lamps are all we’ll have to hold back the endless, eternal darkness.”

“Nobody’s going to die,” Pace told him.

“You can’t be certain of that.”

“But I am. Let’s go on.”

Some of the small stone rooms and alcoves held more burning lamps. The dark rock of the cave walls was streaked with light-colored powdered minerals. They stepped through pools of water on occasion. The tunnel narrowed farther on and they had to walk single file again.

Hayden began singing
To Vouno
. His voice carried into the far corners of the cavern, echoing across all the black crevices.

“There’s another incline, feel it?” Faust sounded almost joyous.

“We’re moving up the mountainside. Toward Kaltzas’s villa.”

“There’s a draft. The flame is brighter.”

“We’re reaching the end of it.”

“That means we’re nearly to Kaltzas,” Pia said.

“And to Cassandra.” Pace’s stomach tightened. He just wanted to see her face.

“We’re almost dead,” Hayden said. “So much for my band.”

The far end of the tunnel broadened and brightened with daylight.

Pace opened his fist and there was another note in his hand. An entire sheet of paper folded up several times. He held the lamp closer.

The symbolism is obvious. You’re in the bowels of your own brain, with these various aspects of yourself, weaving through the dark labyrinth of your diseased mind. Here are more tangled subplots, another foray to understand your many failures. This too is uninvolving. This is not resolution. The story is convoluted, blurred, confusing, and jumpy
.
You are not as funny as you think you are. We are left wavering and wanting. We do not find you a likeable or sympathetic protagonist. We hope you die soon.

Sincerely, The Editors
.

twenty-five

They stepped out into the world and Vindi stood there before them with a group of three men holding machine guns.

The Minotaur, coming at you.

Even in the heat he wore a suit, and that huge diamond stickpin caught the sun and flashed it back into Pace’s eyes. The man-bull snorted through his flared nostrils and blew little dust devils at his feet. The tangled beard wafted in the breeze and he held his strong stubby arms out to his sides like he wanted to charge forward and wrestle somebody in the dirt.

Jack had good eyes in the sunlight too. He put on his leather apron and got ready to make his move. Pace placed the burner down on a shelf of rock, took three quick steps forward and got within arm’s reach of the men. Machine guns at such close range were stupid, they’d chop each other up in the crossfire. All Jack had to do was take a step left or right and he could kill them all with four quick swipes of the blade.

“Welcome, friends,” Vindi said. “You’re just in time for lunch.”

Hayden said, “Hah?”

“You must be hungry. And thirsty. Here, we’ve brought canteens of water.”

“No hideous death?” Hayden looked unconvinced. He crouched with his feet half-turned so he could sprint back into the tunnel if need be.

“Pardon me?” Vindi asked.

“You’re not going to put us inside a large metal bull and cook us? None of that chaining us to a cliff side and letting the birds chew us to death for days, picking away at our livers?”

Pia whispered out the side of her mouth. “Don’t be giving him ideas, idiot.”

Vindi let out a grunt of puzzled laughter. The security men either didn’t know English or didn’t find any of this amusing. Pace looked up at the villa and wondered if Cassandra or her father were staring down at them right now.

“Oh, do not fear,” Vindi said. “The Kaltzas family has many enemies, industrial and otherwise. A defense force is necessary. These men are certainly not here to threaten you.” He spoke softly in Greek and the guards made a show of angling away their weapons and putting on accommodating smiles. “You are our esteemed guests. I apologize for not meeting you at the harbor. We expected you yesterday.”

“We were held up,” Pace said. “In a
taverna
.”

“I hope you enjoyed yourself.”

“We did, and you really weren’t expecting that, were you?”

“No. Although you were left with maps and guides of the tourist spots, I did not think you would participate. Forgive me for my breach of etiquette, as well as for misjudging you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“But let me ask,” Vindi said. “Why do you have these lamps?”

“The lights wouldn’t work in the caves.”

“No? How can that be?” He turned to a guard and barked an order. The man rushed off into the tunnel. “But tell me, why did you go through the caves?”

“It was the only way.”

“That is not even on the main road. How did you find your way there?”

The others looked at Pace. Pace wasn’t sure if he should mention that he thought he’d seen the face of Cassandra through the Judas trees and had followed her to the excavation.

Hayden, bolstered by the fact that he wouldn’t be roasted in a bronze bull this afternoon, said, “Stop messing with us, it was the only way, man. You think we wanted to go through dark tunnels? We don’t have enough problems?”

Pace asked Vindi, “How did you know to meet us right here?”

“There are monitors at the site. They are necessary due to archeological pillagers. Museums and unethical private owners would pay handsomely for even fragments of these ancient finds. Those lamps you were holding are over thirty centuries old. Each one is worth tens of thousands of dollars.”

“Then why were they just left around in there, burning?”

A shadow of confusion crossed Vindi’s broad face before his expression changed to anger. His jaw tightened and he began to snort. “I do not know.”

The wind rose and blew a heavy musk in from the sea. The sky had shifted to a vivid glaring violet, lined with crimson, the color of cracked flesh. You looked at it and thought of contusions, punctures, lacerations. Dark clouds swept in like the tide and moved steadily in front of the sun.

Vindi said, “It’s about to rain. Please, let us retire to the villa.”

Pia looked up. “It’s the storm. It’s found us again.”

~ * ~

They were led up a lengthy mosaic, balustraded walkway that widened into a marble courtyard at the villa. They stepped into a large entrance hall. Marble pillars supported the roof. On pedestals sat statues of warriors and goddesses missing limbs, heads, faces. Relics and artifacts brought up from digs, shattered pieces of history that ought to be in museums.