Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (11 page)

Just the memory of the odor from those open graves was
enough to make him feel queasy. The air had been filled not only with the
stench of the disinterred, but with swarms of flies, feasting and depositing
their eggs on the scattered remains. As he stood there with the other officers
and the grief-stricken families of those whose graves had been violated, he had
thought of the number scrawled upon the worn piece of paper in his wallet.

Something unnatural.

The hum of an approaching plane stirred him from his
recollections, and he squinted into the nighttime sky. The plane descended in
the distance, touching down expertly in the field that was once rife with olive
trees. But that had been long ago, when Yannis still believed that the world
was sane. He chuckled as he took another puff on his cigar, amused that he
could ever have been so naive.

In that case, years past, he had called the number, and a
strange gravelly voice had answered. In broken English, Yannis had described
what was happening in Athens, about the desecrated graves and the cannibalized
bodies. The voice on the other end had grown silent, the open phone line
hissing in his ear, and for a moment, Yannis thought he had been cut off, but
then the voice returned and said that someone would be along to help.

Yannis took a final pull on his cigar, and for the sake of
his upset stomach, tossed the remains to the ground. The plane rolled toward
him, its landing lights pulsing as if to the beat of the craft’s mechanical
heart, and again his mind traveled back through the years, to a time and place
when he had met another plane.

He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but the man who stepped
from the small private plane certainly was not it. He had imagined a
wild-haired scientist, with thick glasses and perhaps a German accent, but as
the man approached him, Yannis realized that perhaps he had seen too many
American horror films. The stranger was a fine looking gentleman, handsome as
far as Americans go, with dark, close-cropped hair and an air of authority that
seemed to radiate from him in waves.

There had been very little by way of formalities. The man
had instructed Yannis to take him to the First Cemetery immediately, and once
there had told the detective to remain in the car no matter what he heard or
thought he saw. It had all seemed very unusual to Yannis, but he had accepted
the orders, especially since the man had given him an envelope full of cash
before leaving the car. For that kind of money he would have spent the entire
night there if need be.

The plane’s engines whined down and he ambled toward the
craft, adjusting his clothing as he went. The bottom of his shirt had come
undone, the pull of the material across his expanse of belly making it
difficult for the last buttons to remain fastened. But he quickly lost interest
in his appearance as the door to the craft swung open and a set of collapsible
stairs unfolded from within.

The first person to exit was very small, almost dwarf-like.
Yannis wasn’t sure if he had ever seen anyone quite so strange.

"How’s it hanging?" the tiny man asked him in a
voice that could have been the one to answer that first call he had made, years
past.

Yannis simply stared. The man’s eyes were a sickly shade of
yellow, and both his ears and teeth came to points.

"What? No speaky da English?" the ugly little man
asked, before bursting out in a braying laugh. "Don’t worry about it,
pally. I don’t speak Greek."

Next off the plane was a handsome black man whose movements
reminded Yannis of someone moving underwater.

"Pay him no mind, sir," the man said in a low,
tremulous voice.

Yannis could have sworn that for the briefest of moments he
was able to see right through the stranger, but he blinked and the gauzy effect
went away. He told himself it must have been a trick of the light.

"Yannis Papathansiou," called a strangely familiar
voice from inside the plane, and the police detective looked up to see another
figure emerging.

The man looked exactly as he had more than twenty years ago.
Exactly.

Something unnatural
, he thought again. It was almost
funny. He called this man when the extraordinary presented itself . . . but who
was he to call about the passengers of this plane? No one, of course. They were
the solution, not the problem.

"It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir," the
ageless man said in Greek, extending his hand, and Yannis remembered how he had
disobeyed this man’s instructions that night so many years ago.

He had been dozing behind the wheel of the car when the
screaming began. It had been unlike anything he had ever heard, and he had immediately
reacted, climbing from his vehicle and running into the cemetery before he even
realized what he was doing. After all, he was a policeman.

It had been dark that night, and he had strained his eyes to
see what was happening, and then the clouds parted for an instant, and beams of
moonlight shone upon the burial grounds. Then Yannis had seen what he would
never forget.

The man he had brought from the airfield, the man whose hand
he now shook, had been in the midst of battle with a creature the likes of
which Yannis had never seen. Its body was covered in filthy, matted fur, its
eyes glowing red, like burning coals. Strands of dead flesh dangled from its
gnashing teeth. Yannis had never believed himself a particularly brave man, but
he had found himself moving toward the struggle, weaving around the tombstones
to help the stranger in his struggle.

When he had been only a few feet from the battle, the man
had noticed his approach and ordered him to stop. Yannis had frozen in his
tracks and watched in awe the scene that played out before him. The creature
tore at the man with its claws, rending his clothing and flesh, but the man
seemed unharmed. Then he had begun to change, to grow, his body transforming
into something of great ferocity, his flesh as malleable as clay.

The years have not been kind to Yannis Papathansiou
,
Clay thought. He was sitting in the front seat of the detective’s car as they
drove toward Athens. He remembered a much different man than the one beside him
now, but then again, twenty years had passed. The blink of an eye for Clay, but
not so fleeting for humanity.

"So, Yanni," Squire said, leaning forward from the
backseat.

"It is Yannis," the detective corrected, eyes
still on the winding road before him.

"Yeah, yeah, that’s what I meant. So, you had any other
tourists turn up petrified?" the hobgoblin asked.

Yannis shook his head, jowls wiggling. "No, the bodies
found at the Epidaurus are the only ones."

"So far," Squire added, sliding back against his
seat. "But I’d bet we get a few more statues before this is over. Crap
like this is never easy."

The detective grimaced at Squire’s words, and Clay wondered
if he was remembering the last time he had phoned Conan Doyle for assistance. On
that night, years past, he had specifically told Yannis to stay in the car. The
man was never meant to witness what transpired in the cemetery. Clay’s battle
with the corpse-eating Mormolykiai was not for human eyes, but Yannis had seen
it, and there was nothing Clay could do to change that.

"What . . . what is responsible? What can turn a person
to stone like that? How can it be?" the detective asked, steering the car
around a sharp turn that would lead them to the first of numerous side streets
in the crowded city.

Clay gave him a reassuring glance. "That’s what we
intend to find out."

"You must suspect that it is bad," he said. "To
have come with others." He fixed Clay with large, watery eyes.

Clay had wondered if what Yannis Papathansiou saw those
years past had changed him in any way. Looking into those eyes now, he had his
answer.

"Better to be safe than sorry." He glanced over
his shoulder to see Squire looking out the window like an excited pet, happy to
be off the plane and to have somebody else doing the driving for a change. Graves
appeared lost in thought, but Clay suspected the ghost was probably already
beginning their investigation, listening to the whispering voices of the dead
prevalent in this ancient city.

"We’ll try to get this done as quickly as possible,"
he reassured the detective. "You won’t even know we’re here."

Yannis chuckled, a wet burbling sound that gave Clay the
impression that the Greek was filled with fluid. "I will know," he
said, taking a left turn in the Athenian West End, heading into the Kerameikos,
the pottery district. "And I will not sleep peacefully until I know that
you, and whatever it is that plagues this city, are gone."

"Nice," Squire squawked. "Is that an example
of Greek hospitality? No wonder I’ve been feeling all warm and tingly since I
got here."

The detective did not respond. Moments later he brought the
car to a stop in front of a dilapidated building at the far end of a darkened
street. All the other buildings around it appeared to be in an equal state of
disrepair, but scaffolding had been placed around some of the structures,
hinting that some form of renewal was on its way.

"We are here," Yannis said, unceremoniously
throwing open his door and extracting his large frame from the driver’s seat.

"And here is . . . ?" Clay asked.

"The man who owns this building is a former police
officer," he explained, lapsing into Greek now. "He has allowed us to
store the bodies here, away from curious eyes." The detective fumbled in
his pockets and produced a key. "This way."

They followed him to a padlocked door. Clay noticed that the
man’s hands were trembling as he inserted the key into the lock.

"I think we can take it from here," Clay reassured
him, also in Greek.

Yannis looked at him with those eyes again, tired eyes that
had seen too much, and could never forget. "They are in the back — three
of them — a family," he said as he tugged the key from the lock and
handed it to Clay.

"You look tired," Clay said.

Yannis nodded, saying nothing.

"Let me see about getting this taken care of so that
you can sleep peacefully again."

The detective took a long breath and let it out, then
shuffled back to his car. "Lock it up before you leave," he called to
them as he forced his stomach behind the wheel, turned over the engine, and
drove off into the night.

"Nice guy," Squire said sarcastically. "A
real life of the party, bet he’s a hoot at funerals."

"Give him a break," Clay said as he removed the
padlock and pushed open the wooden door into complete darkness. "We deal
with this kind of thing all the time, but ordinary people aren’t prepared for
what happens when the nasties come out of the shadows."

"Mewling babies," Squire growled, squeezing past
him, having no difficulty at all maneuvering in the dark.

The place smelled of dampness and rotting wood. Still
standing in the doorway, Clay’s eyes shifted to those of a night predator, the
darkness becoming as bright as day. Graves floated by on his right, eager to
begin their investigation.

"Yannis said they’re in the back," Clay told them,
and they proceeded across the open space. The large room appeared to be used
for storage. Clay noticed signs of decorations that would be used for some kind
of celebration or religious festival, as well as pallets of building materials.

Squire was the first to reach the victims.

"Here we go," he said aloud, carefully removing a
tarp that had been thrown over them. "Oh, shit, look at this," he
said, walking around the three stone figures, frozen in the act of having
breakfast.

Graves drifted closer, his face mere inches from a petrified
woman’s. He reached out, touching her stony cheek with ghostly fingertips.

"Any thoughts on what did this?" Clay asked, his
heart aching at the sight of a child whose granite body had been broken. The
pieces of her had been laid out on a tarp beside her parents.

"Nothing of the natural world can lay claim to this,"
the ghost said.

Clay thought he heard the slightest hint of disappointment
in the spirit’s voice. Graves had an extreme distaste for the supernatural,
preferring to work on cases that could be solved with the art of science and
deduction. This was not to be such a case.

"Ya think so, spooky?" Squire said, kneeling on
the tarp that held the remains of the young girl. He picked up the girl’s
broken stone hand. It still clutched what appeared to be a piece of fruit
— an orange. "I was thinking that maybe this might be the result of
some bad baklava or something." The goblin waved at them with the hand. "Hi
everybody," he said in a squeaky high-pitched, voice.

Graves showed his distaste by folding his arms across his chest,
shaking his head from side to side.

"Enough of that," Clay snapped. "Have a
little decency. If you don’t have anything to contribute, let us do our work."

The hobgoblin still knelt at the girl’s remains. He’d put
the hand down and was rummaging through the other, fragmented pieces. "I
can pretty much rule out a basilisk attack," he said. "Those sons of
bitches just solidify the outside, leaving a soft, chewy center. These poor
folks are stone through and through."

Abruptly the hobgoblin stiffened, looking about the darkened
space as if he had heard something.

"What’s up?" Clay asked.

"Think I’m getting a call." Squire climbed to his
feet and strolled from the room. "Give me a minute."

Clay and Graves remained silent, both staring at the remains
before them. Clay had been walking this world for thousands of years, dealing
with all manner of paranormal manifestation, but the sight of this family
transformed to stone disturbed him profoundly.

"Can you trace them?" Graves suggested quietly.