Christopher Golden - The Chamber of Ten

“What’s at two o’clock?” Nico said, entering from the hallway.

“We’re going to watch the footage Sabrina shot,” Geena said.

“Of course!” he said, and his eagerness was troubling. He pushed past them with a vague smile and started picking up books and magazines, clearing the sofa, tidying Geena’s room in preparation for visitors. She watched him, wondering why she was unsettled, and it was only when Domenic touched her shoulder that it clicked.

“Geena? I said, do you want me to pick up some food?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, and she went into the kitchen to fetch her purse. He still smells of the canal , she thought. As Nico had passed her by, she’d caught a whiff of Venice’s old, dirty water, even after all that scrubbing.

As if it were as ingrained in his skin as it was in the foundations of the city itself.

Domenic brought pizza and Finch arrived with two bottles of cheap wine, wearing a bemused expression at actually being invited. Geena welcomed him in and chatted inconsequentialities, and when he saw Nico standing by her living room window he nodded once.

“Glad to see you’re well,” he said.

Nico only smiled in response.

Ramus and Sabrina arrived around two p.m., hot and hassled from their dash through the city. The temperature had been rising all day, and now the air had grown motionless and heavy with humidity. Geena had opened all her windows and turned on the ceiling fan in her living room, but all these measures only seemed to push the hot air around rather than provide a cooling breeze. She’d chilled the red wine, much to Finch’s consternation, and they drank from tall glasses filled with ice. She would happily forsake some of its subtler tastes to be refreshed.

With other people in the flat, Nico projected his normal self. There were familiar intimacies: his fingers playing across Geena’s as she handed him a wineglass; the touch in the small of her back that always made her weak at the knees; his smile, dazzling and beautiful, the best part reserved for her. But there was still something different about him that went beyond the faint aroma beneath his aftershave and perspiration. She did her best to shut out the strange time spent in the shower in case lingering sexual frustration was clouding her thoughts. Even then, there was a distance between them that had not been there before. And she could think of no better way to describe it than how she had put it to Domenic.

It’s like he’s been away a lot longer .

She was glad when Ramus closed her blinds and Sabrina loaded up the DVD player.

“Burned this an hour ago,” she said. “Dr. Schiavo wanted to see the footage first, so I left the camera in the lab, told him I had to get home for my grandmother’s birthday. He’s quite concerned.”

“You told him we’re all fine, though?” Geena said.

“Yes, yes,” Sabrina said, then looked away sheepishly. “Actually, I meant he’s concerned about Petrarch’s library.”

“Well,” Geena said, letting the word hang for a while.

“Maybe we fucked up,” Domenic said. No one answered, and for that Geena was grateful. This was her responsibility, and she usually had strong shoulders.

“I haven’t even had time to check that it works,” Sabrina said, slipping the disc into the machine.

“Now you tell us!” Ramus said.

“They usually work,” she muttered defensively.

“Yeah, I’ve heard about you and your home movies,” Domenic quipped.

“Make sure you’ve put the right one in!” Ramus seconded.

“Oh, you’ve seen them as well?”

The banter continued until Sabrina held up a hand, smiled as she made a gun with forefinger and thumb, and shot Ramus.

“Jealous boy,” she purred, and then the screen blinked into life. She paused the picture on the title card, which contained the date, location, and time of the filming. She glanced around at Geena, then her eyes flickered briefly to Finch.

“I invited him here,” Geena said. “Mr. Finch is more interested than ever.”

“I am,” Finch said. He sat at the small window table, wineglass already empty before him. He was sweating and uncomfortable, but there was an eagerness about him, too. “After what I saw, I’m certain this could be a fascinating documentary.”

“We lost about half of what was still down there,” Domenic said bitterly.

“And it’s the recovery of what was saved that will make the program,” Finch said slowly, talking down to him, though the silver-haired Domenic wasn’t much younger than Finch himself. Geena was still unsure whether she liked the British man for his candidness, or hated him for his vacuous pomposity.

“Nothing to do with a fucking flood and half of us almost dying,” Ramus muttered. The room fell silent for a few seconds, then Sabrina chuckled and pressed PLAY.

Nico tensed as soon as the first images appeared. Geena felt his thigh harden against hers, and another waft of dirty-water smell stung her nostrils. Doesn’t anyone else smell that? she thought. Perhaps afterward she would ask Domenic. She glanced sidelong at Nico, but his face seemed calm, eyes flickering with the reflected TV picture.

Heads bobbed on the screen as Sabrina and her camera followed them down the curving staircase. They paused at the bottom, then Geena opened the door and stepped into the lower chamber.

I should have held back , Geena thought. I was much too eager to see what was down there, and a lot of that came from Nico. I sensed his excitement. He projected it to me . She glanced at him again but he seemed enrapt with the picture. So why can’t I feel anything from him now?

She rested her hand on his knee—an intimate gesture that she had performed a thousand times before when they’d been sitting beside each other. But this time felt like the first, and he flinched before settling back against her. She gasped softly, confused, and his awkwardness bristled the small hairs at the nape of her neck.

“Get your hair cut!” Domenic said to Ramus. The younger man’s flowing mane filled the screen for a few seconds, and sitting on Geena’s floor he ran both hands through his hair.

“No way,” he said. “Gives me my sexual power.”

Nico shifted a little, but Geena did not move her arm.

On the screen, flashlights were shone around the chamber. She concentrated, trying to see anything they’d missed down there before. In their excitement there might have been obvious features that eluded them, or which the dancing lights had skimmed across too fast to see. She knew that a camera saw things differently.

“Strange columns,” Ramus muttered. “Why have three for support when one would do the job?”

“It’s a hiding place,” Geena said, thinking of how the man had stood within those columns, in his elaborate robes.

“Hiding what?” Sabrina said.

“None of us saw the urn until Nico touched it,” Finch said, and Geena started. It was the first time anyone had called it an urn, and the first she’d thought of it as such.

On screen they circled the room, examining the obelisks and then the granite disk in the stone floor of the chamber. Their voices coming from the TV sounded tinny and distorted.

“What is that?” Nico asked, nodding toward the screen.

Geena frowned. He’d only been twenty feet away while they’d been looking at the granite disk. He must have overheard them. But when she glanced at his face, she realized he had not. His entire focus had been on the stone jar hidden amidst those three columns.

“Some kind of plug, we think,” Domenic offered.

“Plug?” Nico echoed. “Covering what?”

“A drain or a well?” Geena suggested. “Or a subchamber.”