An ancient cry.
The razor-sharp mesh ripped his fingertips to shreds. The presence was everywhere. Darker shadows dancing in the darkness.
He grabbed his pistol from his shoulder holster. He hung from the fence with one hand and shot with the other. Shooting in all directions. Indiscriminately. Silent shots out into the ancient forest. No return fire. The shifting continued unabated around him. Unchanged. Undaunted. Uncontrollable.
He managed to shove the pistol back into its holster, a couple of shots left, one last safety measure, and the closeness of the shadows gave him superhuman powers, at least that’s what he thought as he heaved himself upwards and outwards and grabbed hold of the barbed wire at the top of the fence.
Superhuman powers, he thought with an ironic smile, working the metal barbs out of his hands and swinging over the top.
Now then, he thought as he hopped down into the greenery on the other side of the fence, get over that if you can.
And they could. He immediately felt their presence. He clambered up out of the shrubbery where he had landed and found himself staring straight into a pair of slanted, yellow eyes. He cried out. Pointed ears pricked up above the eyes and a row of razor-sharp teeth appeared beneath. An animal, he thought, throwing himself to one side. Straight into another similar animal. The same slanted, yellowish eyes seeing a completely different world to the one he was seeing. Ancient eyes. As he staggered on through the woodland, suddenly he was back before the ice age.
Wolves, it occurred to him. My God, weren’t they wolves?
What kind of city is this? his mind was screaming. How the hell can this be a major European city?
He jingled. His path was a roaring motorway. He snatched at his thick gold chain and tore it off, hurling it away into the vegetation. Straight out into nature.
Then he reached a wall and he grabbed it with his bloody, throbbing fingertips, pain pulsing through his entire body; like a mountain climber he clambered straight up the vertical wall, heaving himself up and over it, over a fence on top, and beneath, nature itself seemed to be wrapped up in shifting shadows, the trees seemed to be moving, the forest drawing closer, the motionless wolves part of the movement with their entire collective, ancient indifference. He reached for his pistol and shot in the direction of the animals, towards the whole shadowy nature. Nothing changed. Other than his pistol clicking. He threw it towards the shadows. His entire field of vision was warped. He didn’t know what it hit.
Suddenly, he found himself on a road. Asphalt. Finally asphalt. He hurled himself up a slope, and all around, animals were staring at him, dark and indifferent, and the stench and the noise filled the whining air and he tried to find a name for these shifting shadow beings which were following him and which never never never seemed to give up.
Names can be calming.
Furies, he thought as he ran. Gorgons, harpies. No, not quite. No, what were they called? Goddesses of vengeance?
Suddenly, he realised that that was exactly what they were. That they really were the goddesses of vengeance. Irrepressible primordial deities. Female revenge. Though what was their name? In the midst of the insanity, he searched for a name.
Names can be calming.
He ran and ran but it was as though he wasn’t getting anywhere. He was running on a treadmill, on sticky asphalt. And they were there, they materialised, they kept shifting but became bodies. Bodies. He thought he could see them. He fell. Was felled.
He felt himself being hoisted up. It was pitch black all around him. Ancient darkness. The ice-cold wind was whistling. His body was spinning. Or was it? He didn’t know. Suddenly, he didn’t know a thing. Suddenly, everything was a nameless, structureless chaos. All he was doing was looking for a name. A name for these mystical beings. He wanted to know who was killing him.
Then he saw a face. Maybe it was a face. Maybe it was many. Female faces. Goddesses of revenge.
He was spinning. Everything was upside down. He could see the moon peeping through between his feet. He saw the stars burst out into blinding song. And he saw the darkness growing darker.
Then he saw a face. It was upside down. It was a woman who was all women he had ever hurt, raped, abused, degraded. It was a woman who was all women who became an animal who became a woman who became an animal. A cute little weaselly snout which cracked into an enormous, murderous grin. It bit down on his face and he could feel his bloody fingertips dancing on the soft ground and he felt a pain beyond all comprehension, one which made the animal’s attack – the animal which had just made off with his cheek – feel more like a caress. He understood nothing, absolutely nothing.
Other than that he was dying.
Dying of pure pain.
And then, with a last burst of satisfaction, he remembered the name of the shadowy figures.
Earth seeping into his bloody fingertips was the last thing he felt.
It calmed him.
2
THE OLD FISHERMAN had seen a lot. In actual fact, he thought he had seen it all. But that evening as he packed up the watermelon stall which had long since replaced his fishing nets, he was forced to admit that there were still some surprises left. Even that had surprised him. Life – and above all tourism – still had plenty of madness to offer. It felt… comforting. A sign that life wasn’t quite over yet.
It had been years since the old fisherman had first realised that the money he could earn selling watermelons to tourists vastly exceeded the amount his nets could bring in. And that it required much less effort.
This particular fisherman wasn’t especially keen on effort, which any fisherman worth his salt probably should be.
He looked out over the Ligurian Sea, rising and falling in the spring evening like it was enjoying it just as much as the casual observer. The old fisherman’s gaze wandered up towards the wooded slopes surrounding the little town and then on towards the walls ringing the old town, which had once been an Etruscan harbour. Not that the old fisherman knew anything about that. But what he did know, as he let the pine-scented sea air fill his lungs, was that Castiglione della Pescaia was his home and that he was happy there.
He also knew that today he had been surprised for the first time in a long, long while.
It had all started relatively harmlessly. With his slightly darkened vision, he had spotted a blue-and-white parasol in the middle of the beach on which the majority of sun worshippers were lapping up the spring sunshine with as little protection as they could. But under the parasol, three children of different ages had been sitting, each of them chalk white, their bodies as pale as their hair. Another had appeared and sat down beneath it, followed by a woman holding another small child by the hand. Six utterly chalk-white people were cramped together beneath the parasol, sharing the little circle of shadow it was casting down onto the moderately sun-drenched beach.
Fascinated by the strange sight, the old fisherman had forgotten all about his business for a moment and heard, as though in the distance:
‘Cinque cocomeri, per favore.’
His surprise at the strange family beneath the blue-and-white parasol was compounded by his surprise at this enormous order – and was given yet another boost at the sight of the customer’s good-natured smile.
It belonged to a thin, utterly chalk-white man dressed in a loose linen suit and bizarre sun hat with a bright yellow Pikachu on it.
Despite the strange pronunciation, his order had been perfectly clear. If somewhat absurd.
‘Cinque?’ the old fisherman exclaimed.