PIHM Short Story: Tiresias by R. Wren

Tiresias

1.

On the second day of the trip, Robbie woke up sobbing.

A burning in her throat, her fingers gouging the bedsheets, and she thought she would suffocate, but then she stopped. She sat up, alone in the bed. She held the sheets to herself. Halfway through an inward breath, the spell had broken, and now she felt faintly awkward, like she had gotten lightheaded and spoken too loud at a party. She dried her eyes on the grubby sheets. She couldn’t even remember what she’d been dreaming about.

She looked around the empty hotel room.

She had forgotten they had given her the room to herself.

2.

Her knuckles knocked twice, neither too hard. She saw movement through the peep-hole. A pinprick of light appeared and was immediately covered. The door cracked inwards and Yvonne, wet-haired, small and dungareed, retreated from the frame with her back decidedly turned. Robbie mumbled, conscious of her morning voice. Yvonne closed herself into the bathroom and locked the door. She let her hands fall by her side.

Rhynne sat on her side of the shared bed. Gaunt faced, dark eyed, she had shaved her eyebrows again during the night. Badly, too – they bled. She looked at Robbie once then away. Then arms around her as Ola surprised her with a hug. Robbie stiffened. For all she craved touch, she never knew how to take it. The other girl was tall, a few inches shorter than her, but softer in some elusive way that made her stomach hurt.

“Is she…?” Robbie mouthed, leading her eyes towards the bathroom door.

Ola’s curly hair tickled her cheek and her smile was hot-press warm.

“She’ll get used to you,” Ola said. “She’ll be okay.”

3.

“Can we stop here?” Robbie asked them.

They stalled to the hum of an antique air conditioner. Inside a squat little building, mossy guttered, paint like curdling cream, a tourist shop had grown. Beside the shop, goats wandered freely in a yard. They stubbornly tugged on fibrous weeds.

Ola placed a hand on the short girl’s shoulder.

“You wanted to find a statue, didn’t you?”

Yvonne sighed her assent.

Under the slow-turning fan, the shopkeeper sat while Robbie found a cardboard fruit-box of English paperbacks. Greek Classics, mostly – a schoolboy edition of Xenophon, an Iliad with Latinised names. The pages were chokingly dry. Robbie felt a scratch in her throat.

“Yvonne, here,” Ola called, waving her over. There was a sloping shelf stacked with cold-cast statues, spray-painted bronze. Athena with a bending spear, Artemis with an empty quiver. Rhynne didn’t follow, didn’t look. The girl stood rigid, only half through the door. Her dark eyes seemed always to be always watching the side of her face.

Robbie lifted a book named A Handbook of Ancient Magic, all about ancient Greek mysticism; the rituals of classic mythology, the burning of the thigh bone, the pouring of libations, the curse-carved tablets discarded in sacred places, and so on.

One corner was damaged with damp, and the pages were curling.

“What do you think?” she asked her.

Rhynne muttered something about tourist trash and left the store.

4.

The footpath until the bus stop was narrow. It would accommodate three abreast. Robbie had to crane her ear to hear; it was she who walked behind. Sky the colour of wet slate. Ola laughed high and often, Yvonne hugged her arm. Then, on the bus, she could hardly read - narrow, dizzying roads, up through obscure and winding hills. She leaned her head against that glass. It rumbled against her skull.

A half-remembered face lingered before her in the darkness. The image was obscure, a slippery thing, manifesting with no conscious instruction from her mind against the blood-red backs of her eyelids. Robbie tried to hide her eyes from the light. She blind-blinked and the image disappeared then reformed like mould growing on a curtain. She breathed into her elbow, worrying; was a fever starting?

She thought, I feel so awfully strange.

Yvonne shifted slightly in her chair. Leaning over the aisle, her voice was a strained whisper, trying to be heard. “Is he going to be like this the whole holiday?”

Ola’s answer must have been wordless; in any case, Robbie didn’t hear it.

5.

In the stone above the fountain where they stopped, a woman stood with three bodies merged and overlapped. It looked like a photographic error, like triple exposure. In the centre, her arms were held wide apart as if welcoming a weary traveller to drink. Her scraped-stone eyes watched them approach. At her left, a snake writhed in her duplicate’s hand. On the other side, she held a dagger and an eagerly waiting bowl. Below this image, a humble stone basin sat. It looked almost like a bird-bath.

 “Rhynne,” Robbie said.

She gave the scrawny girl a start. Rhynne looked over one shoulder, stiff as a startled hare. A pitter-patter of blood dripped from her offered palm. Something dropped from her hand with a metallic glint. “Silly accident,” Rhynne explained. “Sharper than it looked.”

Robbie rubbed her aching temple and tried to prick the tension from the air.

“They’ll take it as an offering if you’re not careful. What did the old gods like, again? Was it blood, honey, wine? Barley seeds to mix?”

“Is that what you read that in your book?” she sneered.

“Just remembered it from the Odyssey.” Robbie smiled weakly. “That how they brought up Tiresias, the blind prophet. I studied a bit of classics.” Robbie clenched her fists at her side. A deep inhale. “Rhynne, why are you being so tense around me?”

The girl’s scabbing brow narrow tightly. “Was Tiresias’ ghost a man or a woman? You know that story, right? Hera cursed him to live as a woman because he dared to trample a pair of mating snakes. Maybe his ghost was something else. Probably neither one nor the other. It’s the same as being a ghost, I’m sure – dead, but pretending to be alive.” She spoke quickly but without intensity, a throwaway tone in her spidery voice, as though she were only thinking aloud.

“So that’s it?”

Rhynne said nothing. Passing the fountain, Yvonne flicked a coin into the basin. As the water was low, it clattered down the side of the stained and sloping stone and landed, without a whisper, in the basin’s mossy depth, beside a rusting and blood-flecked nail.

6.

On the bus, then, a shadow over her shoulder. A brief shade passing. Rhynne dropped in beside her, more snug than she would have liked. Robbie froze, half-way through searching her backpack. “Why are you sitting next to me?”

A row away, Yvonne’s head swivelled. “Why shouldn’t she?”

Robbie bit her tongue, looked away.

Conscious of the tight space, her nudging shoulders, Robbie exhaled slowly. Maybe it was something about the minute, almost doll-like proportions of the other girl. Robbie felt cringingly aware of her space.  She thumbed through her creasing pages, picking a page at random to begin.

 “I wouldn’t read too closely,” Rhynne whispered, a shroud of cobwebs between her words. “You might start to feel…” Sick? Maybe that, or sleepy – the drowsiness that accompanies a fever. The rocking of the bus. The cold glass rattled against her sweat-sticky brow. When she suddenly tipped forwards, her skull tightly-wound, it was as though no time at all had passed, but now the window showed ragged trees passing by the bus in haste, and the other girls were talking in low voices.

Yvonne cackled and clapped her hands. The sound pierced Robbie’s ill-pressured ears. She nudged forward, while the air was like a hot towel wrapped around her face. Ola’s voice, protesting, was hard to hear –

“That’s not fair at all… Oh – Rhynne, I wish you wouldn’t…”

They were close. Outside, the ruins of an ancient temple still stood; it was a place where black rams had their heads lifted and their throats slit, their steaming blood gathered in upheld bowls, their thighbones heaped in burning piles, their innards cast into crackling fires.

7.

In their next hotel, the low-hanging sun cast long, misshapen shadows from the tumbledown walls. Ancient, twisting olive trees grew. There were two rooms, and Robbie was to be alone once again. “I’ll just stay in,” she said to them. Then, wincing, still afraid of sounding sullen, she had to add, “I’m still feeling pretty sick.”

Ola cried out with dismay. It was the way you might react to a small child stumbling or taking a mild fright. The tall girl held Robbie tight, smoothing her back with soothing semi-circles, murmuring apologetically. “It will be such a shame to miss it!” The ruins, she meant. They intended to visit. “At least take the spare card for our room. I have some medicine in my suitcase, if you need it...”

She pressed the plastic card into Robbie’s hand. Touched by affection – touched with affection – Robbie immediately craved that freedom that she had, to touch lightly and to hug freely. The mere idea of it paralysed Robbie with fear. But suddenly buoyed –

She kissed Ola lightly on the cheek.

Ola blinked, half-startled, and laughed.

8.

Now, alone, safe, Robbie allowed herself to feel how off she really was.

She sank like lead into the empty bed. Her muscles ached. Her bottom lip tingled, going numb – she drove her teeth into it to keep them from chattering. She wasn’t cold. On the contrary, she was burning. She seemed to chafe wherever the blanket touched, and there was discomfort in the late hour, too; they prickled against the coarseness which grew like lichen on her jaw. She threw the pillow away from her. It landed with a flat dense thud, peculiarly heavy.

Her imagination was no longer hers to command. She tried to relax; in the darkness behind her eyelids, a half-remembered face lingered. Last night, she thought, she must have suffered nightmares. She must have dreamed of a woman in her room, leering over her bed.

Even now, three girls were basking in the hazy sunset. The burning sun hung like a medallion before her eyes.  Robbie lay flat on her back, inhaling, holding, exhaling, filling her lungs. Suddenly, she found she could not breathe out. Something was sitting on her chest; some weight was bearing down on her ribs, compressing her, making her choke.

She looked up and met Rhynne’s lifeless eyes, her cold, insubstantial fingers. The expressionless above her. She tried to push it away, but she was transfixed. She felt the bony points of knees digging into her side. She gasped for breath, found none, felt the tendons in her neck strain, here was something in her mouth, someone was holding her jaw open, forcing fingers past her tongue and squeezing coppery blood into her throat.

Robbie felt bile rising and knew she was about to vomit. At the first choking gag, the weight lifted, and Robbie bolted upright into a bare, illuminated room. She was alone. It was a fantasy. Panting through a half sob, she could breathe. She was alone.

She fell to her hands and knees off the side of her bed and retched until the spasms hurt. Stomach acid, bright yellow and frothy, spilled from her lips and pooled on the carpet. In the pool of bile before her, sodden wet and pasted to the floor, was a clump of discoloured hair.

9.

“How are you?” Ola exclaimed, peering through the ajar door. “You look… tired.”

Robbie shrugged. She felt pale and grubby, felt coated in sweat. Disbelieving, she felt neither awake nor asleep. “I don’t think I’ll make breakfast.”

“We thought so.” So the others were already on their way down, Robbie realized. Ola shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Rhynne stayed back last night. In case you needed anything. I don’t think she slept well. Maybe watch out for her today.”

Robbie blinked.

Ola left to join the others downstairs. Once she was gone, Robbie produced her spare key card. Their room was next door, again. The door opened with a suppressed chirp and closed behind her with a light click.

She became still.

 The light was on in the bathroom. Yvonne’s bag lay half unpacked on the edge of the nearest bed She heard the hum of a water-pump. Moving quickly, feeling like an intruder, Robbie pulled out Rhynne’s bag. She unzipped it, began sorting through layers of clothes.  She slowed for a moment. Then she remembered the cold fingers pushing into her mouth, forcing blood and hair into her throat.

She shuddered and continued digging. Her fingers touched something chalky and cold. She withdrew a roll of thin, dull metal – lead, she thought? Beside it, a thin plastic baggy containing many somethings that clinked like coins. Robbie spilled them out. Nails, the old kind, crooked and red with age. Wrapped around them, one or two long, curling hairs. Her own.

A thud. The room became quiet as the shower stopped. Robbie heard the rattle of the sliding door, the soft pat-pat of Yvonne’s bare feet on the tiles. Quickly, she pocketed the strange objects from Rhynne’s bag, covered up her disturbance, and hurried back outside. In her room, she found her paperback.

The book had described such things. Binding tablets. Etched into folded lead, pierced with a nail, enclosed with a lock of the desired one’s hair. A love charm, or a curse. Or both. Now certain, Robbie lifted her pillow. A little grey scroll rolled out, dabbed with blood.

10.

Rhynne’s brow raised almost imperceptibly when the door cracked open later that afternoon. Robbie stood with her backpack slung over one shoulder, trying not to sway. Her hair was tied back to hide the grime. She shifted the weight of the bag with a metallic clink.

She said, “Ola told me you stayed back last night. I appreciate you looking out for me. I’m sure you wanted to see those ruins. And, well, I think it might help us clear the air. If we went together, I mean.”

Rhynne watched her with narrow eyes. Eventually, she nodded. So they walked out together on the roadside, unspeaking, while the traffic whizzed by with the howls of tearing air. Reaching the dusty, brick-littered field in which a row of shattered columns still stood, Robbie dropped her bag at her feet. She stretched her aching shoulders; even a small quantity of lead was heavier than you’d expect. She sat on a sun-cracked bench.

Rhynne sat opposite her, watching warily.

“Do you know who this temple was dedicated to?” Robbie asked.

“Shouldn’t you know? You’re the one who studied it.”

“And you’re just a hobbyist.” Robbie shrugged. She took her paperback from the bag, tossed it at Rhynne’s feet. “I’m not even sure that it matters. Maybe a place just needs to feel significant - like a fountain, right? I guess the classical world was a little more fluid about these things.”

“About some things more than others.” When Rhynne grinned, Robbie thought for a moment she was missing a tooth. It was hard to be sure; the girl did not smile often.

Robbie nodded wordlessly and relaxed back, feeling the sun on her skin. She tried to imagine this place as it would have been, then. She saw it shining, painted, bustling with bowed heads, swishing veils. She heard the lowing of animals, the sharpening of blades. Opening her eyes, she saw the darting movement of the little green lizards – geckoes or wall lizards? She also saw Rhynne bow to take up the paperback and bring it towards her.

“Why did you really ask me to come here with you?”

“Just for the company. Why did you really stay back last night?”

Rhynne turned a bony shoulder. “Just out of concern.”

Robbie smiled and took the offered book. She buried it in her bag. As she did, she felt the strip of lead inside, the sodden hair squelching inside. The inscription was placed. The nail was plunged through. She concealed this in her fist, and she rose, scattering startled lizards. All she needed was a moment’s bravery, a quick inward breath, and –

Hissing, Robbie split her palm.

The other girl looked back at her sharply. What had she felt? Her raw and cracking brow lifted in an unreadable expression, a mingled bleed of shock or despair. Robbie walked another few steps and let the daubed lead tablet drop at her feet. Then she pressed her burning hand to her mouth, feeling the hot, coppery burning between her lips.

Already, the wind was picking up.

The other girl wobbled on her feet.

By the time they reached the hotel, Robbie was supporting her into the elevator and down the corridor to their room. There was no need to knock. She had the card. Then, to the cries of dismay and concern, Robbie had to help Rhynne explain - how the high and burning sun got the better of her, how she began to feel faint by the side of the road, how she took a turn and very nearly hadn’t made it home - what more could be said? Thank goodness Robbie had been there.

Yvonne threw her arms up. “First Robbie takes sick, now Rhynne.”

And Ola bit her lip and said, “Oh, I hope that there isn’t a bug going around – but she did sit beside you on the bus. Maybe you really are better off in your own room, Robbie. If it starts spreading now – I just hope we don’t all get it. I’d hate something like this to ruin the holiday.”

THE END

R. Wren (they/she) is an Irish writer of weird tales. They write because they don’t believe in ghosts, but wish that they could. R. Wren’s story “Becoming” appeared in Beyond the Veil: Queer Tales of Supernatural Love, "Zoey" appeared in Dread Imaginings,"To Mirror Lake" can be found in Tower Magazine Volume 2, and "Carrigan" is upcoming in InterZone. Their twitter can be found at @ro_wren.