The Gatekeeper's House (18 page)

“
Let the Furies handle it.
You come with me.”

Apollo steered the bright chariot past
the volcano and beyond the reef to a deep abyss that was ominously
devoid of sea life.

Apollo pointed. “There.”

Thousands of feet below, in the
profound depths of the Ionian Sea, Hip spied a castle made of rock.
Unlike Poseidon’s palace, which was built of transparent crystals
and effervescent mother-of-pearl, the castle belonging to Phorcys
and Keto was crude and rudimentary. The rock of the structure was
uneven and covered with algae and barnacles. It was also much
smaller than Poseidon’s palace and, apparently, less guarded.
Apollo pulled the chariot to a halt at the massive wooden door and
waited for someone to answer.

***

As the goat attempted to chomp through
the magically warded leather straps at Therese’s wrists and ankles,
Therese watched Than go in and out of consciousness. He lay beside
her, still paralyzed and unable to speak. Occasionally he connected
with her through prayer, but these communications were brief and
intermittent.

Therese pressed her lips to Than’s ears
and told him again and again how much she loved him and how sorry
she was for ever doubting his ability to remain faithful to her.
She told him she wanted to marry him and to spend all eternity with
him, as they had planned, and she promised that as soon as they
were out of this mess and things were back to normal, they would
plan a wedding and make it official. Whether Than was conscious or
not, she continued to speak to him tenderly, hoping to bring him
back. She spoke of happier times, of trips they had taken together
not long after she had first moved in with him.

She was especially fond of the time he
went with her to visit Asterion and Ariadne for the first time on
this very island. She had gone twice before without him and had
told him about their fun games of night Frisbee. This was a game
the brother and sister invented decades ago when Poseidon gifted a
golden disc to Asterion. Late at night when no tourists were
around, the siblings would emerge from the labyrinth beneath the
palace ruins, and they would toss the Frisbee high in the night
sky, often above the clouds, and race one another to retrieve it.
Whoever caught the disc earned the right to throw it.

The first time they had invited Therese
to play, she soon learned that being the disc thrower did not give
you an advantage over the others in catching the disc. With their
sharp godly skills, the gods not throwing could anticipate the
direction of the disc’s flight, and they often collided in their
efforts to win.

The first time Than joined them in
their game, he introduced a new technique in disc throwing. Since
he flew all the time, and had been flying for centuries, he better
understood the wind currents and could use them, along with the way
he angled his release, to throw the Frisbee like a boomerang. Than
could make the golden disc fly right back to him. Therese and the
siblings tried and tried, but they never had the same success with
the disc as the god of death.

As she recounted her memories of their
games to him, she called him her “expert disc thrower,” and she
kissed his cheek and begged him to wake up so they might soon again
play night Frisbee with Ariadne and Asterion.

***

Jen tossed and turned in her bed,
unable to fall asleep, which frustrated her because she wanted to
find Hip. She had so many questions and was terrified for Therese.
Glancing again at the digital clock beside her bed, she saw it was
already three in the morning, and she still hadn’t slept a wink,
yet she was so tired, and her body ached. Tears of frustration and
anxiety welled in her eyes as she rolled over for the hundredth
time and punched her pillow.

A creak on the floor outside her door
made her stiffen and hold completely still. She held her breath as
she anticipated hearing another sound. For years, that very creak
had filled her with dread, because the sound almost always meant
her dad was coming.

Now he was miles away in Durango at an
assisted living center, so who was creeping down the hall to her
room? She took another breath, grabbed her crown from the
nightstand, and listened.

A soft rap came at her door. She sat up
and turned on the lamp by her bed.

“
Who is it?” she
asked.

“
Pete.”

What? Why would Pete be at her door at
three in the morning?

She returned her crown to the
nightstand. “Come in.”

He stood in the doorway in his pajamas
with dark circles under his eyes.

“
What’s wrong?” she
asked.

“
I can’t sleep.”

“
Me either.”

Pete had never come to her room in the
middle of the night to report that he couldn’t sleep. There had
been other times, not frequent, when he couldn’t find a favorite
CD, and he’d come in accusing her of borrowing it. Another time,
he’d lost his iPod charger and he came in around midnight begging
to borrow hers. But never in their eighteen years of being brother
and sister had he come to her room to say he couldn’t
sleep.

“
I’m seeing them again,” he
explained.

“
What? Ghosts?”

He nodded.

Her mouth fell open. She wasn’t exactly
sure how to react to that. More than ever, she believed Pete. Her
heart raced in her chest and she gnawed on her bottom
lip.

Pete sat on her bean bag chair in the
corner of her room and folded his arms across his chest. “This
hasn’t happened since I was twelve or thirteen. I had stopped
believing in ghosts. Maybe I’m just sick in the head.”

Jen didn’t want her brother thinking
there was something wrong with him. “You’re not sick in the
head.”

“
How do you know? You can’t
see them. Can you?”

She shook her head, debating whether
she should tell him about what had happened to her. Would he
believe her if she did?

“
Do you see any ghosts right
now?” She pulled her covers up to her neck and glanced suspiciously
around the room.

Pete put his face in his hands and
nodded without meeting her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to
ask him to tell her how many ghosts and what they were like. In
fact, she was thinking maybe they should both grab Bobby and run
downstairs to their mother’s room.

“
How many?” she
asked.

“
Three. They followed me
from my room.”

“
What are they
doing?”

He glanced up and looked over at the
foot of her bed. “They look like they’re waiting around for
something.”

“
They’re right there?” She
moved her eyes to the spot he had indicated with his
own.

He nodded.

“
What do they look
like?”

Sweat broke out on Pete’s face, and he
wiped it away with the back of his hand. “You wouldn’t believe me
if I told you.”

“
Try me.”

Pete glanced at the foot of her bed.
“They realize I see them and are taunting me. One’s got snakes for
hair, another is just some random dude, and the third one is—I
don’t know how to describe her. Half of her body and face is black
and half is white, and…”

Jen jumped from her bed, grabbed Pete’s
arm, and pushed on him until he got up. “Let’s get out of
here!”

He followed her down the hall, spouting
objections, and into Bobby’s room.

“
Don’t wake him” Pete said.
“Let him sleep.”

“
No way. Come
on.”

Jen shook Bobby awake.

“
What’s going on?” he
complained. “What are you waking me up for?”

Jen looked at Pete and Pete looked at
Jen. Jen didn’t know what to say. Finally she lied and said,
“There’s a fire. Come on. We got to get Mom.”

Pete stopped her and said, “What’s the
plan? They’re just gonna follow us.”

A shudder snaked down her spine. “Are
they here? In Bobby’s room?”

He looked past her and
nodded.

Bobby grabbed a t-shirt from the floor
and slipped it on. “Did you call 9-1-1?”

“
Just come on,” Jen said.
“We gotta get Mom.”

Her brothers followed her downstairs to
her mother’s room. Outside the closed door of the master bedroom,
Pete grabbed her arm and said, “Wait. What can Mom do?”

Bobby spun around in bewilderment.
“Where’s the fire?”

Jen shook her head. “I don’t know,
Pete, but we need to stick together. Are they still with
us?”

He looked past her again and nodded.
“They’re laughing at us.” He turned to them and spoke to the air.
“Get out of here! Get the hell out of here!”

Bobby struck his palm with his fist and
shouted, “What the heck is going on, Pete? Is this a joke? ‘Cause
it’s not funny.”

Jen and Pete exchanged hard looks
again, and then Jen said, “Listen to me, Bobby. There’s no
fire.”

“
Aw, crap!” he interrupted.
“I’m going back to bed.”

“
Let him!” Pete
said.

Just then a loud howling noise shook
throughout the house.

“
What the heck?” Bobby
asked.

“
Holy shit.” Pete’s eyes and
mouth widened as he glanced about the room. Then panic took over.
“They’re everywhere! And this time, they ain’t ignoring us, like
this afternoon.”

Pete sat on the hardwood floor and
covered his head with his hands. “Make it stop! Make them go
away!”

Jen’s mom opened her bedroom door.
“What’s happening out here, kids? What’s that sound?”

When the kids looked at her blankly,
Mrs. Holt said, “Must be a tornado. Come get in the
tub.”

Not knowing what else to do, Jen and
her brothers followed their mother into her room. Together, they
hefted the queen-size mattress from the bed and hauled it to the
master bath. They all four sat on the lip of the garden tub with
their feet in the basin and the mattress like a lean-to sheltering
them.

“
It’s gonna be alright,
kiddos. You’ll see,” Mrs. Holt said, though she sounded to Jen as
though she were trying to comfort herself as much as
anyone.

The howling followed them into the
bathroom, and Pete started wincing.

“
Settle down, Pete,” their
mom intoned. “Take deep breaths.”

Just as Jen took a deep breath in, she
saw a long, bony hand—white as powder and covered with hairy
moles—reach around the side of the mattress.

***

The Old Man of the Sea and his wife
were not pleased by Hip and Apollo’s arrival at their door. After
leading them through a main corridor, Keto—who was an old woman
from the waist up and a serpent from the waist down—slithered onto
a couch of rock beside her husband. Phorcys was an old man from the
waist up, but his lower half was a scaly fish. Hip hadn’t seen them
for many centuries, since he was just a babe, and he shuddered at
the sight of them. As they sat beside one another on the rock,
bubbles floating from their mouths, they waved their tales though
the water, probably to maintain their balance.

Hip and Apollo were given heavy rocks
in lizard-skinned bags, which they carried over their shoulders to
keep from floating as they moved to their seats opposite their
hosts.

“
We don’t want trouble,”
Phorcys said in a deep, gravelly voice before either Apollo or Hip
had explained the reason for their visit. “The only time Olympians
come to see us is when they have a beef with Poseidon.”

“
Would you like us to call
on you more often?” Hip couldn’t resist sarcasm. “You do seem happy
to see us.”

Not the best way to get what
you want
, Apollo warned him. “What Hypnos
means to say,” Apollo began. “Is that we don’t want trouble either.
In fact, we are here hoping to avoid trouble. You see, Poseidon has
abducted Athena.”

“
Why?” Keto
asked.

Apollo told the sea gods what Cybele
had revealed, which, Hip (internally) questioned. What if the Old
Man of the Sea had greater sympathies for Zeus than for Athena,
especially since Athena had once turned their beautiful daughter
into the very monster Melinoe and Zeus had freed? Then again,
Apollo was the god of truth and probably couldn’t help
himself.

“
What do you want of us,
specifically?” Phorcys asked.

Apollo cleared his throat of a little
sea water before saying, “Hades has been an excellent steward of
your children, Cerberus and the Hydra.”

“
Perhaps,” Keto interrupted.
“But Thanatos slaughtered our Ladon last year into a million
pieces. And you know what Athena did to our daughter.”

Hip and Apollo exchanged worried
glances.

Apollo continued, “We are seeking your
support in our mission to rescue Athena and to restore balance
among the Olympians. No one is safe as long as the Olympians are at
war with one another.”

“
No
Olympian
is safe, perhaps, but my wife
and I would be better to remain out of this conflict,” the Old Man
of the Sea declared. “That is my final word. Now please leave.
Immediately. Scylla will see you out.”