Solstice (34 page)

“Lovely. Simply lovely.”

Heat floods my face when I realize he’s talking about me. He turns sideways, propping his boulder up with the side of his body, and I can now see his genitals hanging there between his legs.

He chuckles, and I lift my eyes, realizing I’ve been staring directly at them. But my eyes keep trying to look back down as if they’ve got a mind of their own. I pull them away against their will.

“It’s okay to look.” He shifts, and I catch a glimpse out of my peripheral vision. “I don’t mind at all.” And he reaches down and holds his penis, cradling it in his hand.

“I’m only here to get some answers.” I point toward the top of the mountain, happy to have something to focus on besides his private parts. “I’m heading up there.”

“Ah.” The man laughs again, and I hear the melody pulling me in.

“Do you know who lives there?” I ask. I’m still looking at the castle, and this close, I can see the orange and purple storm clouds swirling overhead and the lightning striking so close, it must be hitting the stones.

“The master of Hell, of course.” The man wipes his forehead and blessedly turns away from me. “Do you mind if we get going? I still have to get this boulder to the top.” He doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he leans over, places both hands on the black rock, and begins to push.

“Do you mean Sha—” I catch myself, “—Hades?”

The man barks out a laugh followed by a huge grunt. The vein on his temple nearest me bulges out so far, I think it might burst. “Not that master.” And for the first time, his tone has a hint of disgust in it.

“Then who?”

He turns to me, holding the boulder in place while his eyes gaze my way. But he’s still smiling. “You know.”

It’s not a question. He knows I know. And I realize when he says it I do. “Aeacus.” Another of the ancient kings ruling over the domains of the Underworld.

The giant of a man nods and turns back to the boulder.

I motion at the rock even though he’s not looking at me. “Why are you doing that?”

“Somebody needs to. And seeing as I’ve been unfairly accused and left in this place of eternal damnation, I find it’s my job.”

“Unfairly accused?”

He gives a giant shove, pushing the boulder a good two feet ahead. And he’s fast; he moves up before it can slip even an inch. “Accused of killing innocent people. Travelers and guests to my house.”

He’s got the boulder moving at such a clip, I’m having a hard time keeping up. “And did you?” He’s almost jogging behind it.

Out comes another laugh, though, at this point, I notice it’s missing most of its humor. “Of course not!”

“So you didn’t kill anyone?”

He turns to me, and shakes his head, sending sweat flying in all directions, some landing on my arms and chest. I notice his naked parts shake when he does this, and I avert my eyes, looking instead at the rock. But he catches me looking and smiles.

“What is this? A trial?”

I don’t answer. I’m certainly not going to apologize for asking.

“Fine. Yes. I killed many, many people. But every single one of them was trying to kill me first. Or cheat me. Or rape my wife. And so I killed them all.” The man turns to me and licks his lips, and his private parts seem to grow in size. “And might I just say I enjoyed it immensely.”

My face freezes, and I know without a shadow of a doubt this man belongs right where he is. Here in Tartarus. Spores of evil coat him. I’m ready to leave him, and a weight lifts off me when I see we’re only steps away from the top.

His melodic voice sings to me. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

I shake my head. “No, you didn’t.” I don’t want to give this monster my name.

“I’m Sisyphus.” And with a final push, the boulder crests over the top of a ridge, hitting a plateau. Sisyphus moves it around, making sure it’s resting perfectly on flat rocks. He bends down, propping it in place with some smaller rocks to keep it from moving. And then he turns to me, and when he opens his mouth, I smell his breath—foul like he’s been feasting on the bodies of his victims. He narrows his eyes, and my skin begins to crawl.

Every part of me wants to run away. But I know I need to finish this.

Sisyphus licks his teeth and smiles. “I know who you are.” The melody has vanished from his voice.

He takes a step toward me, and I take a step backward.

“You do?”

Sisyphus nods. “Uh huh. Even in your disguise. You can’t fool me. And I know why you’re here.”

“Why?” My throat’s so dry I can barely squeak it out.

“You’re checking in for him. I knew you’d come. Aeacus said you wouldn’t. Said he’d be lord forever. And maybe that’s your biggest mistake. You never should have come.”

He takes another step toward me, but my head shifts at a sound. I look past his broad shoulder and see the boulder rock on its pedestal. Sisyphus hears it, too, and turns, but too late. The boulder moves again, shifting around the rocks underneath it. Sisyphus lunges backward, throwing his arms out, but the momentum can’t be stopped. His fingernails bend backward as the boulder pulls out from underneath his grip. And then it begins to tumble, picking up speed, until it’s a blur on the side of the mountain.

“No!” Sisyphus doesn’t even look my way a final time. He’s off and running so fast, he blurs into the mountainside, and I’m left alone on the plateau with the dark castle ahead.

W
hen the slick naked form of Sisyphus disappears, I expect to be able to breathe again. But as I face the dark castle, my chest tightens so ferociously, I can’t force air into my lungs.

“Come inside.”

“Come to us.”

“We’ve missed you.”

The voices again. But they aren’t in my head this time. They’re seeping out of the walls of the castle, as if a chorus of dead souls has been used to form the stones.

I want to turn and run, but I need to go in. Sisyphus said he knows who I am. And I want to know. Need to know. My answers are only footsteps away. I lift my right foot, forcing the knee to bend, and plant it in front of me. Dust lifts from the ground, swirling at my feet and then growing until I’m standing amid a nebula of dead ground. I lift my left leg and plant it ahead of the right. My feet feel like stones. The dust engulfs me. And all my senses are screaming at me to not go inside.

“Yes. Come closer.”

The voices pull at me, and I am a slave to my own curiosity and to their promises.

“We have answers.”

“We’ve missed you.”

Overhead, thunder booms, and purple lightning hits a high tower, electrifying it for a moment—outlining it against the stormy orange sky. The castle holds in the electricity as the stones sizzle, unwilling to let it go, but finally the outline of the building disappears, and the tower remains unscathed.

One step at a time, I make my way forward. I’m almost there when a skeleton hand reaches out of the ground. It doesn’t grab for me but instead beckons with a long, bony finger. Drawing me forward. Another one comes up beside it, and then another off to the left and closer to the thick doors. All around me, I see the bony hands, palms up, fingers curling inward, making me move. They stay out of my way, and soon I’m at the side of a moat, and a drawbridge slams to the ground.

I jump back but only for a second. Once the dust settles, I set my feet on the wooden planks, my legs trembling under me.

Never leave us.

You belong with us.

The voices come from every part of the castle. The stone walls. The wooden drawbridge. The cobblestones up ahead. I close my eyes, trying not to think about Minos and the dead phoenix, and I remind myself—they’ll tell me what I want to know. What I need to know. And then I’m out on the cobblestones, and the drawbridge rises behind me.

I stand in the middle of a gravel courtyard with only the smell of death to keep me company. Fountains sit in the four corners, but they’re dry and cracked like the fountains in my world above ground. I think of Sisyphus. Of him gripping his penis and of his melodic voice. And then there were his words.
I know who you are.

“Who am I?”

I don’t realize I’ve said it aloud until I hear the echoes of my whisper all around me.

Who am I? Who am I?

It taunts me as it mixes in with the other voices. It blends into their chorus. I put my hands over my ears to hold out the noise, and then another voice takes over. One which drowns out the rest.

“Come join us. We will show you.”

To the left, a carved wooden door gapes open. Yellow light pours out from inside, and I know I need to go there. I steel myself against my fears, and walk across the gravel toward it.

I shield my eyes when I walk in, but the door slams, and the blinding yellow light extinguishes. I’m left standing in a room with just enough light from the torches on the walls to see a long wooden table ahead of me and three men seated around it. My eyes move from one to the next, trying to figure out what I’ve gotten myself into. But before I can take them all in, the man at the head of the table stands up.

He’s got a close-cut dark beard, and on top of his thick curly brown hair sits a golden crown covered in gems which send reflections of color across the table and the room. When he stands, I notice he’s holding a golden goblet decorated with gems equaling the ones on his crown.

“I certainly hope Sisyphus didn’t scare you.” His voice is in my head and in my ears, and he raises the goblet to his lips and takes a long drink, leaving a red stain on the hair of his close moustache.

“He did. He did.” The man on the right cackles when he says it. “Look at her eyes. Such pretty eyes. Tasty eyes. One at a time. Savor them.” His own eyes cross when he speaks, and his lips are so dry, the skin is cracking.

The man—the king—at the head of the table whirls on the man who’s spoken. “Tantalus, we shall not eat our guest. It’s not polite.”

Tantalus, the man on the right, rubs his hands together. “But look at her neck. Like a pearl. And her breasts.” He licks his lips, and reaches for a plate of fruit on the table.

I want to turn around and run out the door. I glance over my shoulder, but can’t see the door anywhere. It’s vanished—blended into the stone wall behind me.

The king slams his goblet down on the table, sloshing thick, red liquid over the sides. “Can’t you see she’s scared, you idiot?” He raises a hand and points it at the man, and the plate of fruit moves until it’s just out of his reach.

Tantalus screams like he’s been wounded, and his fingers claw at the table, snapping against the hardness of the wood. There are scratch marks decorating the wooden planks in front of him. I force my eyes away from him and back to the king.

“Please excuse his rudeness, my lady. We don’t make a habit of eating our guests,” the king says.

The man on the left laughs. It’s the first time I look at him, and my breath catches. He’s about my age with light brown hair that reaches past his ears, and is muscular and sculpture-worthy. He’s clothed in a toga, and when he looks at me, his green eyes sparkle with humor.

“Perhaps Tantalus would make a habit of it if he could eat anything,” he says.

The king picks his goblet back up. The wine is back at the top, somehow magically refilled. “May I please introduce myself and welcome you to my kingdom.”

I still don’t trust myself to speak, so instead I nod, biting my lip until it hurts. The pain helps stem the fear I feel is about to bubble over.

“I am Aeacus, King of Tartarus.” He motions to the right. “You’ve had the pleasure of meeting Tantalus already.”

“And don’t forget about me.” It’s the man on the left talking. The one so good looking I can almost forget Tartarus is a place for the eternally damned.

Aeacus laughs. “How could anyone forget about you, Pirithous?” Aeacus extends his arms wide. “My lady, may I present the honorable Pirithous to you?”

I force myself to flash a brief smile, barely showing my teeth.

“Oh, her teeth. Her teeth. And what of her tongue? Just one glance of her tongue.”

I shut my mouth at Tantalus’s words and cross my arms over my stomach, trying to hide as much of myself as I can.

Aeacus motions, and a chair at the end of the table nearest me slides out, its heavy stone scratching against the hard floor underneath. “Please sit and join us.”

I don’t want to sit. I want to call for Shayne. I want to go back and hang out with Chloe. I even want to be with my mom. To let her comb my hair. But I also want answers, and so, against every nerve in my body, I walk forward and sit in the cold, stone chair.

Once I’m seated, Aeacus sits also. Pirithous pours a goblet full of wine, sliding it down the table to me. I watch his fingers as he pours, noticing how long and powerful they look. Veins pop from his arms as he flexes his muscles. Unsure what to do, I catch the goblet when it reaches me and raise it to my lips.

“Her lips. Must have her lips. So red. Always so red.” And Tantalus lunges up, nearly jumping across the table to me. His eyes roll around in his head, and his hand almost reaches my arm. I look down at his skin and notice it’s shriveled like a grape left in the sun.