The Best New Horror 2 (64 page)

“No,” he answered, “the cadavers. They were re-buried over there, behind Hecate’s Isle.” There was that name again! He pointed to the nearby island which was clearly visible from the hill. It looked much like any small Greek island from where they sat, but Elizabeth thought it would be better not to visit such a place. She hoped that there was not some additional boat trip available to Rhenea. It was unlikely. After all, they’d only two hours left on Delos before their little Greek craft would drift, seemingly unaided, back to Naxos by way of Myconos. That deep Aegean sea beckoned to her, a safe haven from the morbid marble statuary of Delos.

It was with a feeling of immense relief to Elizabeth when finally they reached the sanctuary area, despite its history of despoiled graves and disinterred corpses. That last few minutes and she thought she might pass out. Mount Cynthus had been beaten on one of the hottest days of the season. She could see that Steve was also visibly wilting. His camera had for some time hung unused from its neck strap, swinging slightly as he negotiated the tumbled terrain. The panorama below them was magnificent, but Elizabeth was in no mood to appreciate it. She headed numbly for the sanctuary.

She had expected something more imposing, but it was merely more tumbled masonry. There was a cave, however, albeit one man-made. It consisted of a natural fissure with a pitched roof of large, dressed
granite slabs forming a peak about six feet high. At the entrance there were also a number of smaller stones forming a wall and leaving a narrow passage into its short twelve foot length. The most immediate thing Elizabeth noticed was that it offered the one thing that the whole of the rest of Delos did not—shade. She gratefully scrambled inside.

“I wonder if we’ll have time to look round the museum?” Steve slid in beside her.

Elizabeth looked at her watch, frowning at the thought of a hasty scramble back down the hillside. “I don’t think there’s time . . .” She began to feel terribly tired and wanted most of all to sleep, just forty winks before venturing out. “I must have a breather, Steve.” Her worried frown caught his wandering attention.

“Sorry, Liz, I wasn’t thinking. We’ve still got an hour. You relax here for twenty minutes.” He stood up. “I’ll do a bit more exploring—around the old boneyard! Here—” He opened his rucksack and took out a couple of cans of beer, still reasonably cool despite the temperature to which they had been subjected.

“Oh, manna!”

“Forgot I’d brought them until now. Delos is a pretty striking place!” Steve gave her one of his idiotic waves from his brow with his head leaning to one side and a half-sick smile on his face. Elizabeth smiled at him encouragingly. He departed the cave, for a moment his body engulfing the light and making the interior suddenly very dark.

Elizabeth relaxed, savouring the relative coolness of the cave. She took the rucksack and bundled it behind her head, stretching out. Gritty dust clung to the film of perspiration on the back of her legs, but she forgot any discomfort as sleep insisted her eyes close and her mind begin to drift right-brain-wards, slowly spiraling into slumber, down like a journey back through time’s indefinable continuum. She snapped back alert briefly, her left brain rightly reminding her that she had not quenched her undoubted thirst with one, or possibly both the cans of beer. The moment passed unfulfilled and sleep gratefully came.

“Oh no!”

“Mmnn . . .?” Elizabeth was, curiously she thought for her, quickly pulling off her shorts. Bits of sharp stone cut into her buttocks. A figure leaned over her in darkness, its face totally obscured. She could feel heat coming from its body and she knew it was a golden, beautiful body, like a classical Greek statue. She gasped as the masculine shape moved forwards.

“Wake up!” She felt her shoulder being shaken vigorously, but not the expected penetration.

“Oh . . . Oh! Steve . . .?” She was at last awake and didn’t much like the timing. “What’s the matter with you?” It was only then that
she noticed that in reality it was nearly as dark as in the dream. “What time—”

“We’ve missed it, damn!” he cursed. Elizabeth stood and ran to the cave’s entrance. Dusk was beginning to carpet the distant sea a rich, wine-dark red from the setting sun. So, they’d missed their boat back to civilisation.

“Where’ve you been, Steve?” Elizabeth felt slightly angry, but it was tempered with a desire to laugh at the absurdity of their situation.

He looked her her sheepishly. “I fell asleep as well.” No more explanation was necessary. Delos had secured their undivided attention for at least the next eighteen hours.

“Perhaps they’re still waiting,” Elizabeth said as the realisation sunk in, but no, she could still see the harbour and it was deserted. Nearby the museum building was in darkness. They were the only people left on Delos.

“I’m sorry, Liz.” He looked like he genuinely was too. “We can sleep in this cave and be down at the harbour by midday tomorrow. We’ll be back on Naxos in time for dinner.”

Elizabeth examined her surroundings, but the dream she’d half remembered had decided her. “I’d rather not,” she answered him. “Can’t we find a place nearer the shore?” But of course to trek down the hill in near darkness was foolish, it was bad enough trying to avoid the ankle-twisting, overgrown chunks of Delos’ former glory in daylight. Before he could answer, she said, jokingly, “No. I know this is the safest place to stay now. At least we have shelter should it rain!”

They both sat quietly for a hour, saying very little. The sun finally gave up the day and the night was blacker than they could ever have imagined, except that there were stars in the sky, and over on Rhenea a few lights twinkled. A far cry, Elizabeth recalled, from Athens’ bejewelled night, where every precious gem’s colour was represented by streetlamps, houses, automobiles, displays, and sudden diamond-sparks from trolleybus cables.

Dinner consisted of a can of beer each—how glad Elizabeth was that sleep had saved them!—and a few biscuits and pistachios Steve found in his rucksack. They both ate and drank slowly; there was a long night ahead and it was still quite early. There’d be no browsing down by the quayside to find a suitable taverna. No embarrassed look around the owner’s kitchen to choose their meal. No lingering, warm wash of wine and calm sea to lull the senses.

Later, the quietness began to make Elizabeth’s flesh crawl. The atmosphere didn’t appear to affect Steve, who was leaning, like herself, at the entrance to the grotto, breathing deeply and gazing enigmatically at the starry heavens. For some reason the expected rasp of the cicadas was absent and the sea was so calm and distant that any sounds it issued
did not reach them. She felt far from sleep now, yet yearned for a dream as powerful as that she had had earlier, as eloquent as all her dreams had been whilst on vacation. She hoped that the cool night would not drive her inside the cave. There might be snakes in there now. She was reminded of the serpentine forms that writhed beautifully, yet balefully she thought, in mosaics on the floor of one of the roofless temples they’d visited; of scorpions and the whole spectrum of beasts which, to modern Western minds, held evil intent but which soared to god-like heights in the ancients’ collective mind.

When she looked up again out of her reverie, Steve was no longer there. Now where had he gone?

“Steve,” she called gently towards the cave. There was no answer. The answer, she smiled, was simple: a call of nature. A small breeze cracked the dry grass at her feet and whispered around the sanctuary like a primeval, probing oread, wandering up the hill from its pleasures among the ruins and wondering at the strange being sitting in front of the antrum where once Apollo had been worshipped. Maybe that mountain nymph had never seen human-kind for hundreds of years on those desolate Delos nights?

A mist was drifting up the hill and before he knew it, Steve was engulfed in its clammy caress. If anyone had asked why he had wandered off just then, he doubted he could consciously say. It felt the right thing to do, but the grey swathes curling around him were nightmarishly unreal on this warm night. He ought to return to Liz and try to settle down and get some sleep. Nothing could be done until morning. If he turned carefully he could easily grope his way back without getting lost.

He took cautious steps, fretfully searching the ground for pitfalls and in his concentration the lone, quiet yowl of a dog went unheard. Had he heard the sound, his myth-imbued mind would immediately have realised its portent. It was made only once, though, before the hag came to him. Hecate, the Goddess that Appears on the Way, was monstrously garbed in the raimant of a cadaver, her dark hair like strings of snakes, her face dry and mummified, her eyes luminous shards. Under a shroud of fine-spun silk her withered breasts were clearly visible. His eyes met hers through the fog and he knew that time and reality had finally become spent forces for him. If the ritual purifications of Delos had been started by the Priests, these things were now continued under the guidance of Gods. Delos was still a place where no living being lingered after dark and if the dead returned, it was to ensure that sanctity was forever preserved.

Steve was surprised at his mind’s ability to think rationally as the corpse approached. Large hands, talons of aged flesh, reached to grasp his skull and he managed to scream only briefly as the cold, hard white
thumbs forced their way between his lips and pressed his vibrating tongue down the back of his throat.

As the breeze died away a noise below startled Elizabeth, somewhere on the darkened slope of Cynthus. It sounded like tumbling stones or loose footfalls among the debris. Why would Steve go that far for a pee?

The night held a beauty that transcended her mundane thoughts. Its beauty was dark and alien, thousands of years old and still breathing a life as real as the lambent lights which now played over the remains of the cemetery. Elizabeth peered through the gloom, puzzling at the sudden flickering, flame-like flashes of light. Fireflies, maybe.

A glow seemed to lift above Hecate’s Isle, or it may have been over Rhenea beyond. Immediately Elizabeth thought about the purification pit where Delos’ long dead were re-lain. Loose chippings of stone began again to tumble down the slope, with the loud clarity only former silence can imbue such sounds with.

“Steve . . .?” Elizabeth stood and glanced around, finding only fear in her inability to penetrate the darkness. It was almost as if he’d never been here, a form as hallucinatory to her now as the city of Athens was. She began to feel anger at her descent into irrationality, but that descent was inexorable, driven by a growing terror at the dreamlike predicament she was in. She wanted to shout, to scream out Steve’s name, he must be nearby. He must . . . Had he caught the boat back to Naxos and left her stranded with a mischievious hallucination of himself for a companion? It dawned on Elizabeth that Steve may never have been real—

Now she was being absurd!

She finally overcame her fear of the benighted hill and took to the friendless maw of the cave. She felt her way in, choking on the dust her shoes raised. Something—only for a second did her mind feel relief that Steve had returned—with strong, cold hands grabbed her arms and she could smell an obnoxious, a poisonous fetor from the darkness a little above her face. “Ste—!” But it wasn’t, couldn’t have been him.

The invisible figure was merciless in its actions, which Elizabeth quickly realised were those of something not living. Above all, the stench of death was forced into her nostrils and dry, crumbling flesh pressed down upon her. She was saved by the darkness from seeing the face that belonged to the hard, cold, half-slimy tongue which opened her lips and forced its attentions upon her own. Elizabeth felt silken fabric between her and the pressure of iron-hard breasts; and the posturing proboscis opening her jaws to cracking point while long-dead saliva dribbled down her throat. The sensation sent her reeling into the safe haven of unconsciousness, but not before her
mind induced her to believe that this visitant to Delos was one of Rhenea’s long dead guardians.

Dawn was like a red curse over the slopes of Delos. Steve and Elizabeth mused over it as they gazed hypnotically across the bay. They didn’t really appreciate their changed viewpoint or their new flesh, such as it was. The vista from Rhenea was very familiar and had been for millenia. They sighed together, and gathering up age-tattered robes, made their way back down a long underground tunnel to join their purified dead as the sun’s strong light began to bask the empty slopes of distant Cynthus. They knew that Apollo’s birthplace could never harbour the dead, or the living, for long . . .

G
ENE
W
OLFE
was born in New York and grew up in Houston, where he attended Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School, an accident which he admits seems to have shaped much of his life.

In 1984 he resigned from his position as senior editor of
Plant Engineering Magazine
to write full time. Besides the four volumes that make up the award-winning “The Book of the New Sun” (
The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor
and
The Citadel of the Autarch
), his books include
The Fifth Head of Cerberus, The Devil in a Forest, Peace, Free Live Free, Soldier of the Mist, The Urth of the New Sun, There Are Doors, Soldier of Arete
and
Castleview
.

Some of his short fiction has been collected in
The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories
(“that’s the title,” he points out, “not a typo”),
Gene Wolfe’s Book of Days, Storeys
(“ditto”)
From the Old Hotel
and
Endangered Species
. His most recent book is
Pandora By Holly Hollander
, a mystery novel, and a new science fiction volume, titled
Nightside the Long Sun
, is forthcoming.

“Lord of the Land” is the author’s tribute to both Edgar Allan Poe and particularly H.P. Lovecraft, who he describes as “the only writer of stature to extend the tradition in horror Poe created.”