Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

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.

The souls of murder victims never passed on to the afterlife immediately. Always, they clung to their old shells for a time, crying out for vengeance, hoping that someone would hear their anguish. The Creator had touched him, and over time, as he saw the sins of humanity evolve, Clay had developed the ability to see the ectoplasmic trail left behind by a murdered soul. The victim’s spirit clung to the murderer, creating a tether of soul stuff that connected corpse to killer, and if he reached the dead soon enough, Clay could follow that trail. He could catch the killer.