The Second Wish and Other Exhalations Read online

  She shook her head. “An old Greek, I think. But there are — ugh! — these things all over him. Like … like—”

  “Like crabs?”

  She drew back from me, her eyes wide, terror replaced by astonishment. “How did you know that?”

  Quickly, I related all I knew. As I was finishing, her hand flew to her mouth. “Dimitrios? Putting their eggs in the tanks? But Jim, we’ve taken showers — both of us!”

  “Calm down,” I told her. “We had our showers before I saw him up there. And we haven’t eaten here, or drunk any of the water.”

  “Eaten?” her eyes opened wider still. “But if I hadn’t heard the kid bleating, I might have eaten!”

  “What?”

  She nodded. “I ordered wine and … some melon. I thought we’d have it before the fish. But the Greek girl dropped it, and—”

  She was rapidly becoming incoherent. I grabbed her again, held her tightly. “Dropped it? You mean she dropped the food?”

  “She dropped the melon, yes.” She nodded jerkily. “The bottle of wine, too. She came out of the kitchen and just let everything drop. It all smashed on the floor. And she stood there wringing her hands for a moment. Then she ran off. She was crying: ‘Oh Dimitrios, Dimitrios!’”

  “I think he’s crazy,” I told her. “He has to be. And his wife — or sister, or whatever she is — she’s scared to death of him. You say she ran off? Which way?”

  “Toward the town, the way we came. I saw her climbing the spur.”

  I hazarded a guess: “He’s pushed her to the edge, and she’s slipped over. Come on, let’s go and have a look at Dimitrios’s kitchen.”

  We went to the front of the building, to the kitchen door. There on the floor by one of the tables, I saw a broken wine bottle, its dark red contents spilled. Also a half-melon, lying in several softly jagged chunks. And in the melon, crawling in its scattered seeds and pulpy red juices—

  “Where are the others?” I said, wanting to speak first before Julie could cry out, trying to forestall her.

  “Others?” she whispered. She hadn’t really heard me, hadn’t even been listening; she was concentrating on back­ing away from the half-dozen crawling things that moved blindly on the floor.

  I stamped on them, crushed them in a frenzy of loathing, then scuffed the soles of my flip-flops on the dusty concrete floor as if I’d stepped in something nasty — which is one hell of an understatement. “The other people,” I said. “The three sisters and … and George.” I was talking more to myself than to Julie, and my voice was hoarse.

  My fear transferred itself instantly. “Oh Jim, Jim!” she cried. She threw herself into my arms, shivering as if in a fever. And I felt utterly useless — no, defenseless — a sensation I’d occasionally known in deep water, without my gun, when the shadow of a rock might suddenly take on the aspect of a great, menacing fish.

  Then there came one of the most dreadful sounds I’ve ever heard in my life: the banging and clattering of Dimitrios’s three-wheeler on the road cut into the spur, echoing down to us from the rocks of the mountainside. “My spear gun,” I said. “Come on, quickly!”

  She followed at arm’s length, half running, half dragged. “We’re too vulnerable,” I gasped as we reached the chalet. “Put clothes on, anything. Cover up your skin.”

  “What?” She was still dazed. “What?”

  “Cover yourself!” I snapped. Then I regained control. “Look, he tried to give us these things. He gave them to George, and to the sisters for all I know. And he may try again. Do you want one of those things on your flesh, maybe laying its eggs in you?”

  She emptied a drawer onto the floor, found slacks, and pulled them on; good shoes, too, to cover her feet. I did much the same: pulled on a long-sleeved pullover, rammed my feet into decent shoes. And all in a sort of frenzied blur, fingers all thumbs, heart thumping. And: “Oh shit!” she sobbed. Which wasn’t really my Julie at all.

  “Eh?” She was heading for the small room at the back.

  “Toilet!” she said. “I have to.”

  “No!” I jumped across the space between, dragged her away from the door to the toilet-cum-shower unit. “It’s crawling with them in there. They come up the plugholes.” In my arms, I could feel that she was also crawling. Her flesh. Mine, too. “If you must go, go outside. But first let’s get away from here.” I picked up my gun, loaded it with a single flap-nosed spear.

  Leaving the chalet, I looked across at the ramp coming down from the rocky spur. The clatter of Dimitrios’s three-wheeler was louder, it was there, headlight beams bobbing as the vehicle trundled lurchingly down the rough de­cline. “Where are we going?” Julie gasped, following me at a run across the scrub between clumps of olives. I headed for the other chalets.

  “Safety in numbers,” I answered. “Anyway, I want to know about George, and those three old spinsters.”

  “What good will they be, if they’re old?” She was too logical by half.

  “They’re not that old.” Mainly, I wanted to see if they were all right. Apart from the near-distant racket Dimitrios’s vehicle was making, the whole valley was quiet as a tomb. Unnaturally quiet. It had to be a damned funny place in Greece where the cicadas keep their mouths shut.

  Julie had noticed that too. “They’re not singing,” she said. And I knew what she meant.

  “Rubbing,” I answered. “They rub their legs together or something.”

  “Well,” she panted, “whatever it is they do, they’re not.”

  It was true evening now, and a half-moon had come up over the central mountain’s southern extreme. Its light silvered our way through thorny shrubs and tall, spiked grasses, under the low grey branches of olives and across their tangled, groping roots.

  We came to the first chalet. Its lights were out, but the door stood ajar. “I think this is where George is staying,” I said. And calling ahead: “George, are you in?”, I entered and switched on the light. He was in — in the big double bed, stretched out on his back. But he turned his head toward us as we entered. He blinked in the sudden, painful light. One of his eyes did, anyway. The other couldn’t …

  He stirred himself, tried to sit up. I think he was grinning. I can’t be sure, because one of the things, a big one, was in­side the corner of his mouth. They were hatching from fresh lumps down his neck and in the bend of his elbow. God knows what the rest of his body was like. He managed to prop himself up, hold out a hand to me — and I almost took it. And it was then that I began to understand something of the nature of these things. For there was one of them in his open palm, its barbed feet seeming poised, waiting.

  I snatched back my hand, heard Julie’s gasp. And there she was, backed up against the wall, screaming her silent scream. I grabbed her, hugged her, dragged her outside. For of course there was nothing we could do for George. And, afraid she would scream, and maybe start me going, I slapped her. And off we went again, reeling in the direc­tion of the third and last chalet.

  Down by the taverna, Dimitrios’s three-wheeler had come to a halt, its engine stilled, its beams dim, reaching like pallid hands along the sand. But I didn’t think it would be long before he was on the move again. And the nightmare was expanding, growing vaster with every beat of my thundering heart.

  In the third chalet … it’s hard to describe all I saw. Maybe there’s no real need. The spinster I’d thought was maybe missing something was in much the same state as George; she, too, was in bed, with those god-awful things hatching in her. Her sisters … at first I thought they were both dead, and … But there, I’ve gone ahead of myself. That’s how it always happens when I think about it, try to reconstruct it again in my own mind: it speeds up until I’ve outstripped myself. You have to understand that the whole thing was kaleidoscopic.

  I went inside ahead of Julie, got a quick glimpse, an indistinct picture of the state of things fixed in my brain — then turned and kept Julie from coming in. “Watch for him.” I forced the words around my bobbing
Adam’s apple and returned to take another look. I didn’t want to, but I thought the more we knew about this mon­ster, the better we’d know how to deal with him. Except that in a little while, I guessed there would be only one possible way to deal with him.

  The sister in the bed moved and lolled her head a little; I was wary, suspicious of her, and left her strictly alone. The other two had been attacked. With an axe or a machete or something. One of them lay behind the door, the other on the floor on the near side of the bed. The one behind the door had been sliced twice, deeply, across the neck and chest and lay in a pool of her own blood, which was already coagulating. Tick-things, coming from the bath­room, had got themselves stuck in the darkening pool, their barbed legs twitching when they tried to extricate themselves. The other sister …

  Senses swimming, throat bobbing, I stepped closer to the bed with its grimacing, hag-ridden occupant, and I bent over the one on the floor. She was still alive, barely. Her green dress was a sodden red under the rib cage, torn open in a jagged flap to reveal her gaping wound. And Dimitrios had dropped several of his damned pets onto her, which were burrowing in the raw, dark flesh.

  She saw me through eyes already filming over, whispered something. I got down on one knee beside her, wanted to hold her hand, stroke her hair, do something. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want those bloody things on me. “It’s all right’ I said. “It’s all right.” But we both knew it wasn’t.

  “The … the Greek,” she said, her voice so small I could scarcely hear it.

  “I know, I know,” I told her.

  “We wanted to … to take Flo into town. She was … was so ill… He said to wait here. We waited, and … and …” She gave a deep sigh. Her eyes rolled up, and her mouth fell open.

  Something touched my shoulder where I knelt, and I leapt erect, flesh tingling. The one on the bed, Flo, had flopped an arm in my direction — deliberately! Her hand had touched me. Crawling slowly down her arm, a trio of the nightmare ticks or crabs had been making for me. They’d been homing in on me like a bee targeting a flower. But more slowly, thank God, far more slowly.

  Horror froze me rigid; but in the next moment, Julie’s sobbing cry — “Jim, he’s coming!” — unfroze me at once.

  I staggered outside. A dim, slender, dark and reeling shape was making its way along the rough track between the chalets. Something glinted dully in his hand. Terror galvanized me. “Head for the high ground,” I said. I took Julie’s hand, began to run.

  “High ground?” she panted. “Why?” She was holding together pretty well. I thanked God I hadn’t let her see inside the chalet.

  “Because then we’ll have the advantage. He’ll have to come up at us. Maybe I can roll rocks down on him or something.”

  “You have your gun,” she said.

  “As a last resort,” I told her, “yes. But this isn’t a John Wayne Western, Julie. This is real! Shooting a man isn’t the same as shooting a fish …” And we scrambled across the rough scrubland toward the goat track up the far spur. Maybe ten minutes later and halfway up that track, suddenly it dawned on both of us just where we were heading. Julie dug in her heels and dragged me to a halt.

  “But the cave’s up there!” she panted. “The well!”

  I looked all about. The light was difficult, made every­thing seem vague and unreal. Dusk is the same the world over: it confuses shapes, distances, colours and textures. On our right, scree rising steeply all the way to the plateau: too dangerous by far. And on our left a steep, in places sheer, decline to the valley’s floor. All you had to do was stumble once, and you wouldn’t stop sliding and tum­bling and bouncing till you hit the bottom. Up ahead the track was moon-silvered, to the place where the cliff over-hung, where the shadows were black and blacker than night. And behind … behind us came Dimitrios, his presence made clear by the sound his boots made shoving rocks and pebbles out of his way.

  “Come on,” I said, starting on up again.

  “But where to?” Hysteria was in her whisper.

  “That clump of rocks there.” Ahead, on the right, weath­ered out of the scree, a row of long boulders like leaning graveyard slabs tilted at the moon. I got between two of them, pulled Julie off the track, and jammed her behind me. It was last-ditch stuff; there was no way out other than the way we’d come in. I loaded my gun, hauling on the propulsive rubbers until the spear was engaged. And then there was nothing else to do but wait.

  “Now be quiet,” I hissed, crouching down. “He may not see us, go straight on by.”

  Across the little valley, headlights blazed. Then came the echoing roar of revving engines. A moment more, and I could identify humped silhouettes making their way like beetles down the ridge of the far spur toward the indigo sea, then slicing the gloom with scythes of light as they turned onto the dirt ramp. Two cars and a motorcycle. Down on the valley’s floor, they raced for the taverna.

  Dimitrios came struggling out of the dusk, up out of the darkness, his breathing loud, laboured, gasping as he climbed in our tracks. His silhouette where he paused for breath was scarecrow-lean, and he’d lost his floppy, wide-brimmed hat. But I suspected a strength in him that wasn’t entirely his own. From where she peered over my shoulder Julie had spotted him too. I heard her sharp intake of breath, breathed ‘Shh’ so faintly I wasn’t even sure she’d hear me.

  He came on, the thin moonlight turning his eyes yellow, and turning his machete silver. Level with the boulders he drew, and almost level with our hiding place, and paused again. He looked this way and that, cocked his head, and listened. Behind me, Julie was trembling. She trembled so hard I was sure it was coming right through me, through the rocks, too, and the earth, and right through the soles of his boots to Dimitrios.

  He took another two paces up the track, came level with us. Now he stood out against the sea and the sky, where the first pale stars were beginning to switch themselves on. He stood there, looking up the slope toward the cave under the cliff, and small, dark silhouettes were falling from the large blot of his head. Not droplets of sweat, no, for they were far too big, and too brittle-sounding when they landed on the loose scree.

  Again Julie snatched a breath, and Dimitrios’s head slowly came round until he seemed to be staring right at us.

  Down in the valley the cars and the motorcycle were on the move again, engines revving, headlight beams slashing here and there. There was some shouting. Lights began to blaze in the taverna, the chalets. Flashlights cut narrow searchlight swaths in the darkness.

  Dimitrios seemed oblivious to all this; still looking in our direction, he scratched at himself under his right arm­pit. His actions rapidly became frantic, until with a soft, gurgling cry, he tore open his shirt. He let his machete fall clatteringly to the track and clawed wildly at himself with both hands! He was shedding tick-things as a dog sheds fleas. He tore open his trousers, dropped them, staggered as he stepped out of them. Agonized sulphur eyes burned yellow in his blot of a face as he tore at his thighs.

  I saw all of this, every slightest action. And so did Julie. I felt her swell up behind me, scooping in air until she must surely burst — and then she let it out again. But silently, screaming like a maniac in the night — and nothing but air escaping her!

  A rock slid away from under my foot, its scrape a deafen­ing clatter to my petrified mind. The sound froze Dimitrios, too — but only for a moment. Then he stooped, regained his machete. He took a pace toward us, inclined his head. He couldn’t see us yet, but he knew we were there. Then — God, I shall dream of this for the rest of my life!—

  He reached down a hand and stripped a handful of living, crawling filth from his loins, and lobbed it in our direction as casually as tossing crumbs to starveling birds!

  The next five seconds were madness.

  I stumbled out from cover, lifted my gun, and triggered it. The spear struck him just below the rib cage, went deep into him. He cried out, reeled back, and yanked the gun from my hand. I’d forgotten to unfasten the nylo
n cord from the spear. Behind me, Julie was crumpling to the ground; I was aware of the latter, turned to grab her before she could sprawl. There were tick-things crawling about, and I mustn’t let her fall on them.

  I got her over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift, went charging out onto the track, skipping and stamping my feet, roaring like a maddened bull. And I was mad: mad with shock, terror, loathing. I stamped and kicked and danced, never letting my feet stay in one place for more than a fraction of a second, afraid something would climb up onto me. And the wonder is I didn’t carry both of us flying down the steep scree slope to the valley’s floor.

  Dimitrios was halfway down the track when I finally got myself under a semblance of control. Bouncing toward our end of the valley, a car came crunching and lurching across the scrub. I fancied it was Nichos’s taxi. And sure enough, when the car stopped and its headlight beams were still, Nichos’s voice came echoing up, full of concerned enquiry:

  “Mister, lady — you OK?”

  “Look out!” I shouted at the top of my voice, but only at the second attempt. “He’s coming down! Dimitrios is coming down!”

  And now I went more carefully, as in my mind the danger receded, and in my veins the adrenalin raced less rapidly. Julie moaned where she flopped loosely across my shoulder, and I knew she’d be all right.

  The valley seemed alight with torches now, and not only the electric sort. Considering these people were Greeks, they seemed remarkably well organized. That was a thought I’d keep in mind, something else I would have to ask about. There was some shouting down there, too, and flaring torches began to converge on the area at the foot of the goat track.

  Then there echoed up to me a weird, gurgled cry: a cry of fear, protestation — relief? A haunting, sobbing shriek — cut off at highest pitch by the dull boom of a shot fired, and a moment later by a blast that was the twin of the first. From twin barrels, no doubt.

  When I got down, Julie was still out of it, for which I was glad. They’d poured gasoline over Dimitrios’s body and set fire to it. Fires were burning everywhere: the chalets, taverna, gardens. Cleansing flames leaping. Fig­ures moved in the smoke and against a yellow roaring background, searching, burning. And I sat in the back of Nichos’s taxi, cradling Julie’s head. Mercifully, she re­mained unconscious right through it.