Chapter Two
Perversely, his next thought was how to get back home. He walked cautiously to the gate and peered over. There was no alley, only a broad bank descending to a slow-moving gray river about a hundred yards from shore to shore. In the hazy dawn light, the river ambled through a hilly landscape devoid of trees, banks bristling with rank weeds.
He turned and surveyed the field before him. It had once been a vineyard but was now overgrown with dry scrub. The vines had died, leaving thick gray stumps tethered to stakes tilting crazily in dirt crusted with crisp, sere dead leaves. The weeds themselves weren’t faring too well.
As the smoky dawn brightened, the rear of a blocky rectangular mansion emerged from mist and shadows. Michael walked through the dead vineyard, squinting to make out details within the mansion’s dark outline.
It wasn’t in very good repair. One whole wing had been ravaged by fire, leaving only masonry and charred timbers. Michael was no expert on architecture, but the design seemed old and European, like a chateau in France. There was no sign of life.
He came upon a narrow path through the weeds and dead vines and approached the building, feeling as if he were an intruder. He hadn’t the slightest idea where he was. His arms prickled with goose bumps in the clammy, chill air, and his stomach growled for breakfast.
The house was even larger than Michael had thought: three stories tall, the bottom story recessed five or six feet. Five broad corbelled stone arches supported the overhang. As he approached, he observed that a yard-wide chunk of stone and plaster had fallen from the middle arch.
The path led up to the central arch, where Michael stopped. The air of desertion and decay didn’t encourage him. A dark oak door set into the wall beneath had been decorated with two carved mirror-image whorls occupying the top and bottom frames, surrounded by intertwining serpents. Two bronze lanterns jutted from the stone beside the door, their glasswork broken and jagged.
Michael made a fist and knocked on the door. Even after several episodes of heavy pounding, there came no answer from behind the rough, cracked wood. He backed away and looked to his left and right. To each side of the door were bricked-up windows, and beyond them more alcoves in the stone wall. He stumbled through old dead bushes to the next alcove on his right and found another door, again without an exterior handle. He tried prying it open with his fingers but it wouldn’t budge. The last door on the right had been plastered over. He returned to the second door and tentatively pushed at it with one hand, feeling the smooth rolls of the serpents beneath his fingers. It swung inward with a whining creak.
Michael looked over his shoulder anxiously: still alone, unobserved, though he couldn’t help wondering what might be hiding in the ruined vineyard.
With a stronger shove, the door swung open all the way, rebounding with a heavy thud from an inner wall. Indirect morning light allowed him to see a couple of yards into the gloom of a dark hallway. Simple brickwork walls, stone floor: empty. He advanced slowly. About fifteen feet in, the hall turned a corner. A bar of light slanted across the floor from that direction.
Michael peered around the corner. Beyond lay a large and long-abandoned kitchen. He stepped forward gingerly, his feet kicking up great black wafts of felt-like dust. Yard-wide iron pots and brick-based stoves and ovens filled a chamber at least seventy feet long and sixty wide. Everything smelled of old spilled wine and dusty decay. Light shafted down through a long, narrow horizontal window about twelve feet above the floor on the opposite wall. Apparently the kitchen was in a kind of basement; from the front it lay below ground level.
The hall through which he had entered flanked a brick enclosure which might have been a storage locker or refrigerator. A white-enameled metal door hung ajar on corroded hinges, revealing only darkness within.
On the south side of the kitchen a stairwell rose into deep shadow. He crossed the cluttered floor between the iron-grilled stove and the enclosure, feet striking mounds of broken crockery and heavy, smaller pots beneath smooth rivers of dust. He climbed the stair.
Swinging doors waited at the top, one knocked from its hinges and propped against the wall, the other kicked and splintered askew. He pushed the leaning door aside and stepped into a dining hall.
Three long dark wood tables filled about half the space, chairs upended neatly on the table edges. Carpet gave way to wooden parquet flooring beyond the tables. The room could have held a respectable-size ball, and stretched to the front of the house, where tall arched windows afforded a view of the rising sun. Morning light smeared silvery-gray across the table tops.
The room smelled of dust and a bitter tang of flowers. He looked to both sides and decided to try the broad door on the right.
That took him into an equally decrepit and impressive foyer. Here, modern-looking overstuffed couches had been spaced along the walls beneath more tall arched windows. A demolished grand piano cluttered a small stage like a crushed beetle. At the opposite end of the foyer was an immense staircase, transplanted from a castle or luxury liner, with gold banisters mounted on turned pillars of ebony. He looked up. A balustrade ran from the staircase across the length of an upper landing.
“Ne there! Hoy ac!”
The largest woman he had ever seen leaned over the stone and metal railing of the balustrade, directly above him. She pulled back. He traced her elephantine steps by the agonized creaking of the floor as she approached the stairs. Through the rails her shapeless body appeared to weigh at least a thousand pounds; she stood six and a half feet tall; her arms, thick as hams and like in shape, were covered by the long sleeves of a black caftan.
“Hello,” he said, voice cracking.
She paused at the top of the staircase and thumped her palm on the railing. Her face was little more than eyes and mouth poked deep into white dough, topped with well-kept long black hair. “Hel-lo,” she repeated, her tiny eyes growing almost imperceptibly larger. He couldn’t decide whether to stand his ground or run. “Antros. You’re human. Where in hell did you come from?”
He pointed to the rear of the house. “Outside. The vineyard gate.”
“You couldn’t have come that way,” the woman said, her voice deepening. “It’s locked.”
He took the keyholder from his pants pocket and held it up. “I used this.”
She made her way down the stairs slowly, taking each step with great care, as well she should have. If she fell, she was heavy enough to kill herself and bring the staircase down with her. “A key!” She peered at it hungrily. “Who gave it to you?”
Michael didn’t answer.
“Who gave that to you?”
“Mr. Waltiri,” he said in a small voice.
“Waltiri, Waltiri.” She reached the bottom and waddled slowly toward him, her arms describing arcs with each step to avoid the span of her hips. “Nobody comes here,” she said, vibrating to a slow stop a few feet from Michael. “You speak Cascar or Nerb?”
He shook his head, not understanding.
“Only English?”
“I speak a little French,” he said. “Took two years in high school. And some Spanish.”
She tittered, then abruptly broke into a loud, high, sad cackle. “French, Spanish. You’re new. Definitely new.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “Where am I?”
“When did you get here?” she countered.
“About half an hour ago, I think.”
“What time was it when you left?”
“Left where?”
“Your home, boy,” she said, some of the gravel tone returning.
“About one in the morning.”
“You don’t know where you are, or who I am?”
He shook his head. A slow anger grew alongside his fear.
“My name,” the huge, corpulent woman said, “is Lamia. Yours?” She lifted one arm and pointed a surprisingly delicate finger at him.
“Michael,” he said.
“What did you bring with you?”
He held out his arms. “My clothes, I guess. The key.”
“What’s that in your coat pocket?”
“A book.”
She nodded as best she could, her head almost immobile on the thick column of her neck. The effort buried her chin in flesh. “Mr. Waltiri sent you. Where is he?”
“He’s dead.”
She cackled again as if that were ridiculous. “And so am I. Dead as this house, dead as a million dreams!” Her laughter scattered from the walls and ceilings like a flight of desperate birds. “Can you go back?”
“I don’t know,” he said. Then, plaintively, “I want to.”
“You want to. You come here, and you want to go back. Don’t you know how?”
He shook his head.
“Then you’re stuck here. You’re dead, too. Well, at least you have company.” If her unbaked features could convey any emotion, she might have appeared wistful. That turned to sudden, almost childish concern. “But you must leave this house! Nobody stays here come night!”
By this time Michael was trembling, and angry at himself for being afraid. The way the woman stared at him, saying nothing, made it all worse.
“Well,” she said finally. “You’ll learn soon enough. You’ll return to this house tomorrow morning.”
“It’s only morning now,” Michael said.
“You’ll need the rest of the day to straighten out your situation. Come with me.”
She walked around the staircase and opened a large door at the front of the house. He followed her shimmying form down a long flight of stone steps to a rocky field, then across a narrow path to a dirt road which wound its way through more low, treeless hills.
Lamia pointed a delicate finger at the end of an immense arm. “There’s a town—a human town—about three miles up this road, beyond the field and over a bridge. Go there quickly. Don’t loiter. There are those who have no great love for humans. There’s a seedy hotel in town, bed and board; you’ll have to work for your keep. They stick together in the town. They have to. Go there, tell them Lamia wants you put up. Tell them you’ll work.” She stared at the book bulging his jacket pocket. “Are you a student?” she asked.
“I guess so,” he said.
“Hide the book. Full morning tomorrow, come back and we’ll talk.”
She turned without waiting for any reaction and labored up the steps to the door, shutting it behind her. Michael looked this way and that, trying to squeeze meaning out of the barren hills, ruined old house, and rocky front yard.
He wasn’t dreaming. It was all quite real.