DAVID SUTTON

Those of Rhenea

DAVID SUTTON’S horror and dark fantasy fiction has been published in such anthologies and magazines as Final Shadows, Cold Fear, Taste of Fear, Skeleton Crew, Ghosts & Scholars, Grue, 2AM, Kadath and others.

He has written Earthchild, a novel of elemental forces, Aboriginal myths and drugs, and is currently at work on a second, tentatively titled Feng Shui, set in Hong Kong.

He was one of the originators of The British Fantasy Society, has worked extensively to promote fantasy and horror in the UK since the late ’60s, and was instrumental in beginning the British Fantasy Conventions.

He is a winner of the World Fantasy Award and eight-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award for his co-editorship of Fantasy Tales with Stephen Jones. The same team is also responsible for The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales and two volumes of Dark Voices: The Pan Book of Horror. His other anthologies include New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural 1 and 2 and The Satyr’s Head and Other Tales of Terror.

Another example of holiday horrors, the following story may put you off package trips to Greece for quite some time . . .

EXCEPT WHEN SHE THOUGHT ABOUT IT, the frenzy of Athens was a million miles away. When she did, flashes of its rampant lifestyle tore through Elizabeth’s brain like an express locomotive.

The recent elections had daubed the city with myriadfold banners, hung between every available lamp-post and tree, or across buildings, advocating this party or the other. The equally strident calls to the faithful from the various political headquarters in Ormonia Square—their loudspeakers issuing the usual pre-election promises interspersed with Greek muzak at an ear-stinging rate of decibels—were guaranteed to inflame the heart of any Hawkwind fan. If it wasn’t the noise of the political canvassing, from which you were even at risk on the trolley buses, from leafleteers, it was the incessant roar of traffic.

Elizabeth’s hotel, the Alexandros, was just off Vas Sofias, up by the American Embassy, and the noise from the omnipresent automobiles and their obligatory horns had, in the end, become almost restful. Twenty-four hours a day Athens is penetrated, she thought, like some symbolic whore, by motor cars driving across the city at dizzying speeds. By night and the street lamps, the polluting fog of carbon monoxide fumes lay like a thick pale yellow duvet over the lower parts of the city.

Now though, Athens was a half-remembered dream. She had met Steve at a bar in Syntagma Square—no emotional entanglement so far, thank God—and they had both found they were going to Naxos in two days’ time. Although the largest of the islands in the Cyclades, Naxos had no airport, which Steve had found surprising. Elizabeth was initally pleased, she didn’t look forward to flying. The ten-hour ferry trip had, however, been crowded and unpleasant, with an unhelpful Greek crew. Only the barman made any attempt at friendliness and Elizabeth had been glad of Steve’s company.

From the Venetian charm of Naxos town—it seemed that every Greek island had at one time bent to the maritime will of the great Italian empire—Steve persuaded Elizabeth on a boat trip to fabled Delos.

Steve had won her over with his surprised-looking, but attractive crew-cut, his cheap black plastic sunglasses, his camera and his anecdotes from Greek Mythology. He was on a sabbatical from Boston University and had plenty of time for travel, and he seemed to like to keep moving, even when he was staying in one place. She’d have been just as happy to stay on the beaches soaking up the sun, and Naxos was relaxing, but a boat trip appealed to her, so long as it wasn’t akin to the crossing from Piraeus.

The only thing which dampened her enthusiasm, albeit briefly, was the curious incident in the National Museum of Antiquities, which had taken place the day before their departure from Athens. The day after she’d met Steve, he took her to lunch and then to the museum. It was a vast, staggering array of treasures and she’d felt dwarfed by the sculpture, the gold, the decorative eloquence of Greek history.

For his part, Steve was less interested in the magnificence of Agamemnon’s gold death-mask, or the bronze statue of Poseidon, and more inclined to the less dramatic pieces. Especially two steatite pyxis, flat trinket boxes. He lingered long over the cabinet in which they resided along with other, similar artefacts, looking at the items, labelled as having been discovered in a grave on Delos.

“See the carving on those lids?” he said to Elizabeth, who was itching to move on.

“Mmm.” She was sure her growing boredom was beginning to show. It was, after all, merely grooves cut or chiselled into the lids.

“A spiral pattern. Very simple.” He paused. What was he trying to say, Elizabeth wondered.

“Very like . . . very like spiral carvings in Britain and Ireland from four-thousand years ago.”

“Is there a connection, then?” Elizabeth asked.

“A mystery at least,” he replied mysteriously. “Prehistoric, pagan symbology . . .”

Elizabeth was about to say something, but noticed that Steve was lost, hypnotised, transfixed by the objects. She stared down at them too, trying to see what it was that he was finding so fascinating. Then she was subjected to an optical illusion, or so she thought at first. As when sometimes a particular type of pattern in carpet or wallpaper defies the eye’s usual ability to see two-dimensionality, and parts of the design assume a three-dimensional region of space between the observer and the flatness of the motif itself. Shake your head, but it still insists in occupying space where the logical mind tells you it isn’t. These coils were doing that to her. She wondered if that was why Steve was particularly taken with them.

She was about to phrase that question when she was overcome by a dizzy spell. The spirals, two maze-like hummocks, swum round making her feel as if she was turning in the opposite direction. A sensation of nausea tensed her stomach. Her legs were beginning to swing clear of the floor. Her arms flailed out to stop the unwanted motion.

“The breasts of the queen of ghosts,” a voice spoke, though it did not sound like Steve’s; it was harsher, rasping, ugly. The words stole over her emotions, taking on a weight far heavier than the mere syllables themselves. The voice continued:

“Are they not compelling?” It was spoken rhetorically. “The unwary traveller may succumb to her ways.”

The malignant voice was gone as suddenly as it had appeared and so too had the illusion. Elizabeth found she was leaning into Steve’s supporting arms.

“You all right?” he asked, his eyes expressing concern.

“Mmm. Dizzy, just a dizzy spell. It must be too warm in here.”

“Well, let’s sit you down for a while, eh?” Steve was leading her by the elbow to a nearby bench.

“No, really, Steve. I feel so silly. I’m okay. Really.” Several people were staring and she felt slightly embarrassed. They sat nevertheless and Elizabeth was grateful to be able to feel cool marble walls at her back.

“You look like you’re about to ask me a question?” Steve was rummaging in a bag for the guidebook.

Elizabeth was about to ask him whether the wormy carvings had had a similar effect on him. Instead, she said, “Who, or what is the ‘queen of ghosts’?”

“Quite a question for someone with a professed lack of mythological knowledge,” he replied.

She looked at him, smiled sweetly at his expression of mock disdain and said nothing. He finally relented. “She, the queen of ghosts, is Hecate, a minor deity in Greek myth, but she’s assumed a wider influence world-wide—darkly linked to the ghastly underworld,” he added with an amused, sinister flourish.

“Any connection with those trinket boxes?” Elizabeth found herself asking despite the thought of having to explain to him her auditory hallucination.

“Well, not that I’m aware of . . . Might be worth a little research though. But—”

Elizabeth knew what was coming and interrupted. “Well, I’m feeling much better now. Fancy a trip down Mycenae way? It’s the next room . . .”

“I’m not too good in the sun,” he had said, talking about sunbathing. Naturally, Elizabeth had thought, his freckled body that had made him so attractive to her in the first place. And that wiry red hair. She also liked the soft New England accent in his voice and his lack of brashness. It was interesting to discover a man less outgoing and more reserved than her, especially in an American. Her own job, in catering, meant she led a busy lifestyle, travelling and talking to clients about menus and venues; preparing the food and presentation with her small staff, and so on. Elizabeth’s idea of a holiday, therefore, was to keep off her feet as much as possible.

The boat swayed rhythmically on a calm Aegean sea. The sensation was hypnotic. Elizabeth relaxed on a spare bit of deck in her bikini, her brown body deliciously warm, and she could almost feel her auburn hair becoming bleached in the hot sun. The mix of voices from the other passengers provided a background drone along with the sputtering of the boat’s engines. It was dreamy and pleasurable.

She felt herself drifting off, hypnagogic, aware of a dream she was about to have, a strange encounter on Delos, deep into the phantasmal past when Zeus chained the wandering island to the bottom of the Aegean with adamantine chains.

“Here, hold this,” Zeus said, his voice a soft lilt for such a god. Elizabeth stirred, unwilling to allow the waking dream to finish, but Zeus—no, it was Steve—shook her shoulder. “Don’t fall asleep in this sun!” She opened her soft brown eyes and frowned at him.

“I was just about to have a good time with Zeus,” she said, smiling. “And don’t worry about me—it’s you who needs to keep out of the sun, Steve.”

“Don’t bother about that now, here, take hold of this.” He handed her his rucksack loaded with camera equipment. “It might slip off the boat.” He then turned to the rail and pointed his lens seaward. In the distance were islands. You couldn’t escape them in this part of the world, but the tour guide was telling everyone that they could now observe Delos.

“There she blows,” Steve puffed as he pushed his sunglasses back on his head, squinting his pale blue eyes briefly before hiding them behind the camera. Tourists were stirring, their lethargy over as the distant island closed towards them.

The dusky female Greek voice boomed from the loudspeaker once more. “Well ladees and chentlemen, we are nearly at the ancien’ islan’ of Delos. I c’hope you will enjoy your afternoon here. Remember, please,” she continued while Elizabeth pulled on a pale pink blouse and shorts, “you belonck here only four ’ours and you mus’ return back to the boat by four-thirty. Thankyou.”

Within half an hour they had all disembarked from a small jetty and began to wander slowly inland under the dry, burning sun. Steve was risking his arms, exposed from the sleeves of a tee-shirt, but he wore jeans and hot-looking hiking boots. Elizabeth began to wonder briefly if her flat shoes were the right choice after all, looking at the terrain. Some people, she observed, had gone straight to the small museum to be in the shade or to find refreshments. Delos might well be an unmissable stop for Greek history, Elizabeth thought, but four hours in this heat, with virtually no shade, was almost frightening. The island spread out in front of them as Steve headed for the Agora, the large, worn grey blocks of the old market place reminding her that time had stood still here. In the distance the gentle slope of Mount Cynthus rose up out of the small island. Steve’s camera began to click, providing a counterpoint to the never-ending rasp of the cicadas hidden in the sparse, sun-bleached grasses that grew between the tumbled blocks of the ruins.

It had been hot in Athens, but this! Elizabeth began to perspire. How did Steve manage in those clothes, and the rucksack, she asked herself. Cynthus’ domed peak was hazed by the rising heat and it made her think back to that evening, the lovely cool evening on Lykabettos where Steve had taken her after the museum. At night the distant lights of Athens had spread below them, a twinkling, moving wash of jewels. They had drunk some wine at the restaurant and felt the cool breeze while moths flitted around the lamps. And, she thought, they’d gone up Lykabettos hill in the cable car. Mount Cynthus had no such luxury to reach its ancient theatre and sprawling ruins. No cool wind either, but instead an open blue sky through which the sun flared, white-hot.

The heat-haze was apparently making arabesques in front of Elizabeth before she realised she was walking on the ancient floor of a house, its remarkably preserved mosaic surface a disturbingly familiar labyrinthine pattern. Steve had sat by the remains of a wall and was changing film. “Did you know,” he said, “that this place was once the cultural and trading empire of the Greeks?” He clicked the back of the camera shut. “Got it.” Elizabeth had heard the tour guide on the boat, but knew that Steve probably had even greater knowledge about the island. She sighed. It wasn’t that she lacked interest, but the heat . . .

A lizard, the palest green colour, scuttled across marble walls. Cicadas hummed. Suddenly, she realised that there was no one else, other than Steve, nearby. The harbour was invisible, hidden by the contours of the land. The only sound was the island’s ancient insect inhabitants. They stood between what remained of the walls of what was probably a merchant’s house, on hot mosaics, with a well in the corner. Elizabeth looked down to see black water deep below, as unmoving as the fugitive shadow she glimpsed within it. Other crumbling buildings surrounded them, with a profusion of tall, yellow grass finding hospitality everywhere.

Steve stood up and began looking at his guidebook. “The French first started excavating here in eighteen-seventy-three,” he offered. “And it’s continued right up to the present day.”

“Yes I know. This place is ‘second only to Pompeii for archeological completeness,’ ” Elizabeth quoted. “I heard the guide tell us.” The parched grass was so still, like a photograph. Nothing stirred.

“But isn’t it magnificent,” Steve added, apparently unaware of an atmosphere Elizabeth was too easily detecting. “The shrines and temples and houses of a cosmopolitan city . . .”

“It’s beginning to give me the creeps.”

“What?” Click went the shutter. “It’s all ruins. There’s nobody here except us tourists.”

“Where are they then?” She shuddered, despite the burning she felt on her legs. Elizabeth struggled with her thoughts, to find coherence, but the nagging worry didn’t surface. “There might be snakes.” It was the first thing she could think of saying.

“Well there are supposed to be poisonous snakes here . . .” Steve suddenly thought better of continuing. He put his arm round Elizabeth’s shoulders and kissed her lightly on the lips. They embraced. No emotional entanglements, she reminded herself. She’d never see him again after her holiday. Nevertheless, she found the press of his body against hers comforting amidst those dry, ancient, watchful ruins.

Mount Cynthus’ human artefacts climbed in front of them. Both Steve and Elizabeth were sweltering, sweating profusely now. The island was spreading out behind and below them, the sea a rich blue, invitingly cool. Steve was running through his films, this time using a zoom lens, back down to the distant architecture of the Terrace of the Lions and the four remaining columns of the Poseidoniasts building. Elizabeth could at last see people, in the distance, like gaily coloured ants crawling about, and behind them the reassuring harbour and the tourist boats, lazily bobbing.

“Those lions used to border a sacred lake which was fed from a spring somewhere on this mountain, if you can call it a mountain.” Elizabeth mumbled that she had heard as they stumbled on upwards, past the half-moon of the amphitheatre. She could hardly believe there had ever been surface water on such a desiccated island.

“Who was it again,” she asked, “that this island was sacred to?”

Steve turned back to face her, his sunglasses a burnished black, hiding his weak eyes. “Delos was the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, you know, the offspring of Zeus and the mortal, Leto.” Wasn’t Artemis related in some way to Hecate? Steve asked himself inconsequentially.

“God of the Sun and Goddess of the Moon?”

“Yeah!” He was pleased that at last she seemed to be taking an interest in their expedition.

On a different tack Elizabeth sat and said, “D’you mind if we have a rest, Steve?”

He didn’t say anything, but stood wiping the sheen of wet from his reddened brow. They had been on the island for an hour and a half and to her it had seemed forever. It was a fascinating place, of that there was no doubt, but the sun was merciless and the quiet stillness unnerved Elizabeth. It was so unlike the ruins in Athens, those ponderous columns and temples, full of people, surrounded by the heartening life of the modern city. Here a dreamlike atmosphere washed over her and curious, unsurfaced fears slowly paced the depths of her mind. She had heard of the unseen presences supposed to stalk the island, Steve had told her that. She could believe it.

“Why did they take away all the graves?” Elizabeth asked. It was merely one mystery, if not another, but those thoughts disturbed her, especially now they had almost become part of Delos. The rest of the four hours might be an eternity.

“In five-forty BC Delos was purified and all corpses removed from ground visible from the Sanctuary,” Steve recapitulated his Greek history, nodding to the peak of the hill. “Then later all ancient tombs were excavated and removed. Since then,” he added, “no births or deaths have been allowed on the island, nobody is allowed to stay permanently.”

“And nobody lives here now . . .”

“They were all taken to Rhenea.”

“Who, the inhabitants?” She removed a wet-wipe from her bag and breathed a languid sigh as she wiped her face with the cold tissue. Dust scrambled as her foot slid quickly away from an unusually inquisitive lizard. A few forlorn poppies stood out against the stones from whose cracks they grew.

“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 . . .