Alex Adams: White Horse

The wall yields easily beneath the toe of my boot. Only about twenty good kicks before it punches right through the Sheetrock. A pile of crumbles amasses on the synthetic beige pile, like Pop Rocks half pulverized by a brick. Guilt is a serial killer, stabbing me for losing control of my anger, then choking me for being foolish enough to think: To whom do I send the check for the damage?

Nausea washes over me, using me like I’m the shore of a long-abandoned beach. Once again I’m on my knees, praying to the gods of cheap carpeting.

Please let death be swift.

Shadows stretch across the cobbledpath, from east to west. The sun is still new in the sky and hasn’t yet gained her confidence. From room to room I wander without pausing to contemplate the relics of the dead. There’s a stillness in the air that tickles my intuition, telling me I’m alone, so I put it to the test and establish that my instincts are sharp and true: Irini, the Medusa of Delphi, isn’t here. There was a time when this wouldn’t have bothered me, but that was before. I’m calm. Honest. The museum’s expansive windows tell me so. The bouncing pulse in my throat is the lie. A fabrication concocted by my hormones and fears for the sole purpose of feeding my paranoia.

The steps are empty. So is the path as far as I can see. Only Esmeralda is there, and she’s busying herself with grasses and the other things donkeys deem important. Her calm state presses a cool hand on my forehead and tells me to chill. My ears listen. My brain processes the message. My pulse continues to thump, regardless.

We walked up there yesterday, Irini and I, just far enough for her to point out the areas of interest: the stadium, Apollo’s temple, the tholos—a circular structure with three of its original twenty Doric columns still standing—but we didn’t move close enough to do more than admire the passage of time from a distance.

I’m trapped in a déjà vu loop. Only the scenery changes, but the dangers and the accompanying reactions are the same. Something is following me, someone disappears, and I chase after them, only to be too late to help. In truth, there’s nothing to suggest Irini is in trouble. There are no signs of a struggle, and if she’d called out, I’d have heard her. But my intuition whispers its brand of poison, and I listen.

The ruins are tall and proud and blond in the morning glare. A noise trickles between the rocks and spills into the sunshine. At first I think it’s Irini talking to herself, but it soon separates into two distinct voices: Irini’s hesitant lilt and another, thicker, harsher, struggling against itself.

Go. Stay. Go. Stay . I do my own internal dance. Then the decision is made for me.

“Come. I know you are there,” says the thickened tongue.

I move as if in a dream.

“Closer. I want to see you.”

Around a corner. Along the Sacred Way until I see the Polygonal Wall. Then I stop, because there’s a rock jutting up from the path and my mind is trying to make some kind of sense out of what it’s seeing. Yes, it’s a strange, pale rock, but with a human center. Arms and legs spring forth from the boulder’s core, hang there like laundry in the sun. These useless limbs are topped by a woman’s head, her hair piled high in a loose bun, her eyes keen as if she knows all. A vine creeps up to her middle, spreads itself around her like a thick green belt. She’s older than Irini, but their eyes are the same shade of nut brown and their noses hold the same curve.

Jenny lying inert on the sidewalk, a red circle marring her forehead . The hole in my soul widens another inch.

“It is true,” she says in hesitant English. “You are carrying a child.”

My hands move to cover my belly. “Yes.”

“Come here.”

“No.”

“You don’t trust?”

“Almost never. Not now.”

She nods. “Why did you come up here?”

“To find Irini.”

“And what would you have done had she been in danger? Would you have risked your life and that of your unborn child to save her?”

“My child has been at risk since the beginning.”

“Irini tells me you are looking for your husband.”

I don’t correct her. “Yes.”

“You have traveled across the world, all the way from America, to find this man?”

“Yes.”

“How many women would do such a thing? If our world was not dead, they would write poetry about you—long, gamboling stories filled with half-truths, all of them predicated on one solid fact: you are a hero.”

“Heroes die.”

“We all die. Heroes die gloriously, for things bigger than themselves.” She glances at Irini. “Water, please.”

Irini lifts a bottle to the woman’s lips and tips slowly. They’ve done this before, perfected the art.

“What happened?” I ask. “Can we get you out of there? There have to be tools somewhere near.”

Her laugh is more wheeze than mirth. “It is not rock. It is bone.”

Shock steals my words. My cheeks pinken with embarrassment.

“I was sick before with a disease that was turning my body to stone, as they say. The tissues, the bones, all of them stiff and fused. But it was slow. Then the disease came and my own skeleton began to consume me.” Another wheeze. “My sister became Medusa and I became part of the landscape.”

“Why here? Why not stay closer to the shelter?”

“I like the view. It makes me believe I am free.”

The whole world has become a house of horrors. Women made of snakes and bone, men with tails, primordial beings who feed on human flesh. Those of us who survived are clinging to the edge of the soup bowl, trying to find a spoon to ride to safety.

“I have to keep moving,” I tell them. “I have to find Nick if he’s still alive.”

“He lives,” says the rock woman.

“How—”

Irini bows her head. “My sister has the sight. She knows many things. She is the sibyl, the oracle of Delphi where there hasn’t been such a thing for centuries.”

“Hush, Sister. The gods have been cruel enough. Do not give them reason to take more from you.”

“What more can they take?” she asks simply.

“You still live, do you not?”

“This is not a life,” Irini snaps. Immediately she dips her head in contrition. “I’m sorry. I did not think.”

The woman of the rock looks straight at me. “Take her with you. I implore you.”

Irini’s head jerks up. “No.”

“Go with her.”

“I have to stay with you, Sister. Who will feed you, bring you water?”

“My time is short. You will go with the American, deliver the child into this broken world. Maybe some good will come of her birth. Everyone needs a purpose. This is yours.”

The screaming wakes me onthe third morning. Holding my belly, I race up to where Irini is standing, her face melted in horror. My brain processes the scene like an investigator, in explicit, full-color snapshots. The rock woman’s head dangles at an unnatural angle, her useless limbs hacked off and used to form the letters I and N in one single word painted on the ground in scarlet letters.

ABOMINATION .

My mind flips through the searing photographs with gathering speed.

“We have to go. Now.”

Irini doesn’t argue. With methodical detachment, she gathers her things and stacks them neatly in a sleepover bag. It’s high-quality leather, the kind that improves as it is passed down through the generations. Within minutes we’re moving on with Esmeralda in tow.

There’s a hole in my soul and it’s filled with the dead.

“Not a ghost.”

“No.”

“Who, then?”