Storming Paradise (4 page)

“I think you . . . may want . . . to look at . . . yourself,” Iolaus said slowly, standing up from the shady stoop.

Dancing before Iolaus, the once-beautiful woman held her arms out and beckoned him again. “Nonsense,” she said in a voice no longer musical but rasping as if her throat was constricted. “I'm free, I made it. Nothing can change that now.”

The woman scampered forward, her grasping hands reaching for Iolaus with taloned, skeletal claws at the end of bony, twig-like arms. “Come on! Come and dance!”

Iolaus felt a grave-like chill cross his flesh as the woman's hands touched him.

The woman looked like a walking corpse now. Her hair was white and twisted, her eyes sunken in a face of sharp planes and angles. Her flesh was too pale to be healthy, bruised dark in spots as if ravaged with some hideous skin condition. Her smile was worst of all—it was the same pretty grin she had flashed at Iolaus when he had first seen her, hours ago when he and Hercules had first joined the street party. Only now that same grin came from a lipless mouth, the flesh strained back, tendons showing as they tore the skin apart to animate the face, ripping like wringing wet paper.

“Get off me,” Iolaus said as the woman pulled him to his feet.

“Feel the sunlight, feel the fresh air and the freedom,” she trilled in response, dragging Iolaus into the dance.

She was preternaturally strong. Iolaus found himself dragged step by step in her madly twirling tarantella, like the dance of a child on a summer's day. He strained in her grip, but the spinning was all too much and the wine he had drunk threatened to initiate a rebellion in his stomach. He capered along in the dancing monstrosity's wake, trying to remain upright as she moved him through the steps.

“Get off me,” Iolaus said again. “Let me go!”

“Enjoy the dance,” the woman replied in her hoarse, deteriorating voice. “Enjoy the fruits of life.”

She moved forward then, inclining her head to kiss Iolaus, her lipless mouth pressing against his. Iolaus tried to rear away but her grip was too strong, and suddenly she was touching his face with hers. Then—

Crack!

A blur before Iolaus as the woman was yanked away, freeing her grip on his arms. In the aftermath, Iolaus sank down to the ground in a confused twirl, landing hard on his butt.

When he looked up he saw Hercules standing before him, clutching the dancing girl—or at least the foul, ruined creature that had once been the dancing girl—at arm's length, raising her off the ground by the cinched front of her dress. “What's going on here, Iolaus?” Hercules demanded as the woman in his grip kicked and shuddered, trying to get free.

“I . . .” Iolaus was at a loss for how to explain it. After a few seconds' thought he settled on that old standby: “She did it!”

Hercules looked at the skeletal thing grasped in his grip, brows knitting in confusion. “She who? Who is this . . . woman and what happened to the one I saved?”

“Same woman,” Iolaus said, making to stand only to slump back on the ground with dizziness. “She . . . changed.”

Hercules turned his stare on the corpse-like creature he held aloft in his hand. “Is this true?” he demanded.

The woman—or at least what was left of her—seemed to smile. It was hard to tell whether she meant to do so or not, for her lips had gone and her teeth were rotting in her mouth, turning from pearly blocks to yellowed stumps in blackened gums. “You have . . . such bright . . . eyes,” she said, her voice strained and breathy with the effort of speaking. “They glow . . . like . . . the sun. Give me . . .”

“Where is the pretty girl?” Hercules asked. “What have you done with her?”

“Pretty . . . ?” the corpse-like thing replied, bemused. “I . . . was.” One of her feet fell to the ground, just bones now, the muscles and tendons that had once connected it to her leg having withered away. Then one of her arms slipped from its socket and crashed to the ground in a clatter of dry bones, followed by the other. As the bones landed, they seemed to disintegrate, like snow caught on the wind. Both arms had gone, both legs too. She was just a torso now, more dress than body, her head a skull with skin stretched taut as a drum. “It's not . . . fair,” she hissed, the words a hoarse croak through her now-toothless mouth. “I . . . was . . . free.”

Hercules let go as the woman's body crumbled into nothingness, watched for a moment as her body disappeared until all that was left was a few strips of material and a tiny sprinkling of dust. In a moment, the dust disappeared on the morning breeze.

Still sitting on the ground, his aching head held in his hands, Iolaus spoke slowly. “What just happened?” he asked.

Hercules scratched his head, pushing back his mane of hair. “I wish I knew,” he admitted.

The two friends were shook up by the incident with the disintegrating woman. Hercules checked on Phoibe, but other than being fast asleep she seemed to be fine—or at least she was alive and in one piece at least. They decided to leave her to sleep it off, and to take a look around while she did.

Iolaus whistled as they wandered down the streets towards the harbor. “This place sure is empty,” he said.

“It is dawn,” Hercules pointed out. “Most people are probably still asleep.”

Iolaus shook his head, pointing out at the harbor where the moored boats bobbed on the water. “Guess again,” he said. “This is a fishing village. Every fisherman I ever met liked to get up early, go out onto the waters, and bring their catch home in time for tea.”

Hercules pondered his companion's words for a few seconds, staring out at the crystal blue water. “You may have a point,” he agreed.

“I feel like there's a point—right inside my skull,” Iolaus told him. “How much did we drink last night?”

“The wine
was
flowing,” Hercules confirmed, “and I believe you partook in a few of the more exotic concoctions as well.”

“Yeah,” Iolaus said dourly. “Remind me not to do that again, will you?”

Hercules assured him that he would, and then they started to discuss the matter of the disintegrating dancing girl and the mysterious street.

“The woman was fine,” Iolaus explained, “until she stepped into the sun. Then—
poof
—she started to fall apart.”

“Interesting,” Hercules mused. “I wonder how she fits into the street.”

“That all seemed pretty normal,” Iolaus recalled. “People were nice, no freaky walking corpses that I noticed.”

“Yes, it was all very welcoming,” Hercules agreed, a subtle edge to his voice.

“I know that tone,” Iolaus told him. “You're thinking of something. Come on—spill it?”

“Phoibe, the woman I spoke to while you were doing the dance with death, said she had been alerted to the party by the sounds of music,” Hercules said. “As a local, she decided to explore and, well, it seems she found the company as pleasant as we did.”

“And not just her,” Iolaus said. “Look around you—there's no one else here.”

Turning from the harbor, Hercules looked at the buildings and the streets arrayed before him. Iolaus was right—there were no signs of human life, no drapes being drawn, no barely-awake people shuffling to the well. There were birds in the sky and the sound of the lapping waves against the boats and the shore, but there was nobody—not one single human soul—apart from Iolaus, Hercules and the woman that Hercules had rescued.

“We should speak with Phoibe again,” Hercules said.

“I never saw the street before,” Phoibe admitted when Hercules and Iolaus pressed her on the matter. They had left her for a couple of hours to sleep off the worst effects of the night, and then plied her with cups of water from the well until she felt clear-headed enough to answer their questions, just so long as they kept their voices low. “I guess I assumed it had always been there, but now that I think about it I can't recall seeing it before.”

“Who else was at the party?” Hercules asked. “We're strangers here, you see, and we wondered if it was just intended for locals.”

“The whole village was there,” Phoibe said, thinking back to the night before. “I'm pretty sure even Galene was there, and she's eighty-eight years of age.”

“There were definitely children there,” Iolaus confirmed. “Little tykes running about—”

“Oh gods,” Phoibe gasped, plunging her head into her hands. “Oh gods, oh gods.”

“What is it?” Hercules asked gently.

“Kyros,” Phoibe said in a strained wail. “My son. Oh gods, where—?”

Hercules reached for Phoibe, laying his hand gently but firmly on her wrist. “It's all right,” he said. “We'll find him. He can't have just disappeared.”

Iolaus glared at Hercules when he said that, but said nothing.

“This street,” Hercules said, locking eyes with Phoibe. Hers were red now, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You say it never existed until the party started?”

“N-no,” Phoibe sniffled.

“And you'd never seen it before,” Hercules pressed. “Not ever.”

“No, it's always been like you see it now—just a passage running along the back of the buildings.”

“Did you see anyone at the party that you did not recognize?” Hercules asked. “Or perhaps acting strangely?”

“There were so many people,” the woman admitted, thinking back. “But no, other than the musicians and the dancers that is. I supposed whoever organized the party had them brought here for the—” she stopped, midsentence, and began to cry again. “What happened to my son? My husband? Where did they go? I should go home, I should wait for them.”

Hercules tried to calm her, but he could see that she was edging dangerously close to hysterics. “Okay, let us take you back home, make sure you get there safely.”

The woman called Phoibe agreed. She was feeling delicate and scared, and the help of a couple of kindly strangers was just about the only thing that she could still make sense of in the daylight.

Once they had escorted Phoibe home, Hercules and Iolaus did a quick circuit of the village. It was made up of thirty-nine buildings in total, including two stables housing two horses and three put-upon donkeys. Other than the horses and donkeys, the whole place was devoid of life.

“Everyone went to that party,” Iolaus began.

“And nobody left,” Hercules finished.

Hercules and Iolaus went back to the spot where the long street had been, searching for any evidence, however slim, of where it had come from and where it had disappeared to. Other than a little churned up ground where Hercules had initially emerged and later scrabbled to try to gain further admission into the enchanted street, there was nothing.

Phoibe, the local woman, came and watched, wringing her hands and biting her lip as she waited for a sign.

Eventually, Iolaus was forced to break the bad news. “There's nothing here,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

Phoibe shook her head as if she refused to accept his words. “What about my son? My husband? Where are they? They have to come back.”

Covered in dirt from the search, Hercules stood solemnly before Phoibe and offered what little consolation he could. “We will keep looking,” he said. “I promise you that.”

And they did. For two full days, Hercules and Iolaus dug at the narrow alleyway between buildings, trying to find a way back to the street that had descended into the soil.

Phoibe returned to her home to wait, but she was fretful and restless. The whole village had been abandoned, and it was eerie waiting there in a town with no life—unsettling, like something from a dream. She sat by the window of her kitchen and listened for the sounds of the two men who were working to recover her husband, son and neighbors—the shoveling of earth, the scraping of stones. She brought food to Hercules and Iolaus at regular intervals, and she welcomed them into her home for an evening meal, but neither man had much appetite, and Phoibe herself had none. On the first evening, Hercules insisted that she eat to keep her strength up, and so she picked a little at the salad she had prepared—but the food seemed tasteless now, the movement of chewing just a motion, an exercise of the jaw with no joy involved.

Two days passed, with Hercules and Iolaus testing the full length of the passage between buildings, and checking a few sites nearby just to be sure. In the end, none of it made any difference.

Finally, Iolaus was ready to admit defeat. “It's gone, Hercules,” he told his friend. “We've looked and looked, can't say we haven't tried.”

Hercules looked up from where he was excavating another patch of soil located behind one of the abandoned houses. “How does a street just disappear?” he asked for what seemed the thousandth time.

Iolaus shook his head. He didn't have an answer.

That evening as the sun began to set, Hercules and Iolaus returned to Phoibe's modest dwelling and gave her the inevitable news.

“We'll be leaving on the morrow,” Hercules said. “There's nothing more that we can do here.”

Phoibe nodded dourly. “I understand.”

“Come with us,” Iolaus told her.

Phoibe met his gaze with a long, slow blink. “No,” she said quietly. “That's very kind, but no. I shall stay. I must be here for when Kyros and Erastos return.”

“But what—” Iolaus began to ask—
if they don't come back?

Hercules shook his head in warning as he caught his friend's eye. “We will keep looking for your family,” he assured Phoibe, “and we'll bring back any news.”

Phoibe nodded. “Thank you.”

Hercules and Iolaus bedded down in the village inn as they had the night before. Like everywhere else in the village, the inn had been abandoned, but it still had comfortable beds and facilities to wash, and it seemed less intrusive than staying with Phoibe. Plus, it was only a street away from Phoibe's house and both men were certain that they would hear if she should raise an alarm.

Despite their exertions during the day, sleep proved elusive. The mystery of the disappearing street only seemed to be more taxing in the small hours, and the sight of the deteriorating dancing girl plucked at their minds' eyes like a fisherman's hook.

At one point, Hercules woke up believing he heard the music of the party echoing through the village, but when he went to window he realized he had only been dreaming.

Tomorrow, they would move on.

The morning sun was bright in the cloudless sky, the air crisp. Hercules and Iolaus were glad to be leaving the abandoned village, despite their regrets at how they were leaving things.

“There's nothing more that we can do,” Hercules said as he and Iolaus waved to Phoibe having said their goodbyes.

“You really believe that?” Iolaus asked.

“I have to. Questioning that is a sure way to madness.”

Iolaus saw the logic in his friend's argument. They had spent more than enough time sifting through soil with nothing to show for it but the dirt under their nails.

The two men walked out of the village, along the road that led away from the mountains, away from the direction from which they had entered. The road here was flat and followed parallel to the coast, the land dotted with trees and bushes, clumpy grass sprouting at the sides of the track.

They had gone less than a mile when they spotted another traveler walking along the road toward them. As they approached they saw that the man was dressed in brightly colored garb, albeit a little worn, and that he carried a lyre.

“Greetings, fellow travelers,” he called as he neared Hercules and Iolaus. “Might I play you a song?” As he said this, he raised the lyre and strummed a chord.

Iolaus sighed. “Just what we need,” he hissed at Hercules. “More music!”

The traveling balladeer looked hopefully at Hercules and Iolaus as they approached. “A song about a lost love, or a found one? About the perils of challenging the gods, or the triumphs?” he asked. “I take requests and it will surely brighten your journey.”

Hercules shook his head. “We have no money,” he told the balladeer, “so your services would be wasted.”

The man pulled a face and lowered his lyre. “Ah well, I appreciate your honesty, if not your custom,” he said and he continued on his way in the opposite direction to Hercules and Iolaus. As he passed them, Hercules spoke up.

“I fear there's nothing for you that way, minstrel,” he said.

The traveling singer halted and turned, his brows furrowing. “I was told there is a fishing village—” he began, confused.

“There is, but sadly it's been abandoned,” Hercules told him.

A look of growing consternation appeared on the balladeer's face. “Is there some plague doing the rounds that I've not heard of?” he muttered, shaking his head. “Or perhaps a curse? This would be the third village I've known that's been abandoned.”

Hercules and Iolaus started. “Did you say—?” Iolaus began.

“Third?” Hercules finished.

“Yes,” the musician confirmed. “I happened upon one not three days ago in that direction—” and he pointed vaguely behind him, “and before then, on an island to the east, two weeks prior.” He sighed. “I tell you, it does not make it easy to make an honest living when one's audience has packed up the whole town and left.”

“Where did you say these villages were?” Hercules asked. “Would you describe them for us?”

The balladeer nodded, and then a bright smile crossed his lips. “Would you like me to explain in the form of a song?”

It was Hercules' and Iolaus' turn to sigh then. “If you must,” Hercules said, “but please don't leave out any details.”

The balladeer plucked at his lyre and began his song. “'
Twas a bright and sunny morning when the stranger came to town . . .”

The best that could be said about the balladeer's song was that it was inoffensive. The puns were admittedly dreadful and the rhymes occasionally left something to be desired. But by the end of the impromptu recital, Hercules and Iolaus had a clearer idea of what the singer had discovered. Added to their own discoveries, it made for a worrying scenario.

It was clear that the party street, as they had come to think of it, had appeared in a number of locations throughout the nearby islands. While the balladeer had only discovered two empty villages, he had happened upon one of those shortly after dawn and had heard the strains of music and laughter just before arriving in what had proved to be a silent, abandoned village. Which, as he sang, “made as much sense as a hat made of grapes” (rhyming with the promised “merry japes” of the preceding line).

Joined by the balladeer, who had wisely decided to make his way back the way that he had come, Hercules and Iolaus discussed what it could all mean.

“This whole tale reeks of the supernatural,” Hercules complained. “The use of a snare—the party—to trap unsuspecting people. Sailors have recited similar stories for years, with the harpies, the sirens and so on, all magical creatures hoping to lure the unwary.”

A few steps behind them, the balladeer perked up. “Did you say sirens?” he asked. “I know a song about—”

“Not now!” Iolaus instructed. Then, turning back to Hercules, he put the scant information they had together. “You think this isn't so much Main Street as
Pain Street
?”

“That's what our musician friend here infers,” Hercules said solemnly.

Iolaus leaned close to his partner, pitching his voice low. “You know, you can't trust everything a balladeer sings. They make stuff up.”

“They're supposed to, that's their job,” Hercules reminded him.

Iolaus shrugged. “I just don't see a pattern to this.”

“Not yet,” Hercules agreed. “But there must be one. An impossible street cannot stay hidden forever—can it?”

“I guess not.”

“Then we shall track it down and find it once more,” Hercules cheered.

“I don't know,” Iolaus said, scrunching up his face. “It sounds dangerous.”

Hercules laughed. “What party worth the appellation is not?”