"Excessive fear is always powerless."
-Aeschylus
viii.
The cavern below was dark and bitter cold.
She waited at the mouth where the stone stairs fell,
spiraling downward, hung by vines of shadow.
Water rushed beneath.
The black river coursed under the skin of earth.
The moisture's quick chorus was the only sound.
It echoed from the void of the cave below
and then the sunshine.
A head of golden hair rose to meet the sun.
Her beautiful daughter emerged from the dark
and was received without delay with a kiss
and a warm embrace.
"Tell me," the mother said, "did you eat something?"
"No," the girl said, shaking her head in reply.
"Not any more than three pomegranate seeds."
The girl did not know.
Her mother began to weep for her child's fate.
The trees grew dry and the leaves fell and rattled,
landing as brittle brown sheets and then rotting.
The air became cold.
Her mother looked back to the mouth of the cave.
He was standing alone in his ashen form.
He was smiling wickedly with pleasure.
He had won his bride.
***
"Modesty is the colour of virtue."
-Diogenes
VIII.
It was Halloween-- the real Halloween, though all of the parties and trick-or-treating had occurred over the previous weekend. Even though the main attractions were over, students still wanted to wear costumes and stuff their faces with candy corn. The dress code had permitted any costume that wasn't provocative, racially offensive, or involving any type of headgear that might obscure the face. This eliminated most of the costumes that students had worn over the weekend, forcing much of the student body to improvise a second costume.
Dr. Celene Davis had opted for a lab coat and a stethoscope. She got a kick out of being "Dr. Davis." The actual M.D. at Olympia Heights Senior High, Dr. Jason Livingstone, was dressed as Indiana Jones. He strapped a whip to his belt and wore a very nice leather fedora. He'd even shaved his beard, which made him look ten years younger and entirely unrecognizable.
"I didn't recognize you," Celene said as she stepped into his office in the afternoon, looking for a quick fix for a bad headache. Jason had set a roll of guaze and a disinfectant wipe on the sink. He was washing his hands. Valerie Hess, sat on the chair in front of his desk, waiting for him to change her bandages. It was her first day back at school since the incident at the Halloween Carnival.
"Yeah, I tried to pull off Harrison Ford. I don't think it's working."
"Don't feel bad, nobody can ever be Harrison Ford," she joked, "that's just reaching for perfection."
"I guess that's right," he chuckled. "What can I do for you?" He dried his hands and took his supplies to sit opposite Valerie. Valerie was silent.
"Acetaminophen. Headache," Celene said.
"Top shelf of the left-most cabinet," Jason said, though Celene knew by now. Her headaches were quite frequent.
Valerie grimaced as he unwrapped her old bandages. She had been quiet since the attack. Her mind was somewhere else, somewhere bad. Celene glanced down at the burns. Handprints. The burns were in the shape of handprints. Celene had heard a rumor to that effect, but she was startled to see that it was actually true.
The police suspected that Valerie's attacker had killed the Heckley boy found in the Olympia Heights woods. So now Epimetheus, as he had called himself, was being called a serial killer. It was Wednesday and, though Valerie had come back to school for the first time today, Teddy Wexler and Nick Morrisey had spent the whole week already being hailed as heroes. Their faces were plastered all over the news.
Jason wrapped her left wrist and continued to make quiet conversation as Celene fought with the child proof cap on the painkiller bottle. "You've been coming in here a lot with headaches. Have you considered seeing a neurologist?"
"Do you think I have an inoperable brain tumor, Dr. Livingstone?"
Jason smirked, "Unlikely. But even stress related migraines can be controlled with medication. Even prevented."
"I think I just need to drink more water and get more sleep," she said. Celene had other theories about her headaches, but the vivid nightmares that had haunted her for the past few months were definitely costing her rest.
"I've noticed a few of the students having frequent headaches," Jason observed. Of course he didn't name these students, as their confidence was important to him. He wasn't sure Astin Hill's headaches weren't related to his interesting glowing hand rash. "Maybe there's an irritant in the ventilation."
"Then we might all mutate from the toxic substances in our school," she said with a smile. It was only half a joke. Some of the strange abilities she had begun to notice in herself and the students had lately made her wonder if there was something in the water.
Jason was about to remove the bandages on Valerie's right wrist when his phone rang. He excused himself and got up. Celene washed her pill down with a cup of lukewarm, chlorinated tap water.
"You seem upset," Valerie said. The sound from the previously silent girl surprised Celene and made her jump a little. She was so quiet and inconspicuous that it was easy to forget she was there. "Very upset."
Celene looked at the girl for a moment. "I am a bit distracted," she said slowly. She was distracted by supernatural abilities that appeared to be cropping up around her. She was distracted by the fragmented dreams that constantly flashed in her mind whenever she closed her eyes. She'd been having these dreams for weeks before school started. They felt like memories. They were so detailed and the grief was so real.
Were they metaphors or reality? Yes, Celene was aware of the mythic parallels of her dream. The rape of Persephone was a subject she'd studied in undergraduate Art History. This didn't seem to her like an archetypal image she had latched on to in her worry for her daughter's fleeting innocence. This seemed like she'd lived it before.
"Worried. I can tell." Valerie was very soft-spoken. It made Celene really have to listen.
"How about you?" Dr. Davis tried to turn the subject, "Are you okay?"
"Traumatized? Sure. A little. But with the spotlight shone on me I don't think anyone would be foolish enough to try anything again. I feel pretty safe."
Celene sat on the edge of the desk. She could hear Jason's muffled voice on his cell phone from the bathroom. Valerie continued, "It's the others I'm worried about, whoever he might attack next."
"I think serial killer is a stretch," Celene said.
"He tried to kill me. He killed that Titans player." She shrugged. "The funny thing is, I feel like I knew him."
Celene watched Valerie for a while, hoping she would go on if she just gave her a silence to fill.
"I only heard his voice," she said eventually, "but I felt like... well you know when you were a kid and you did something wrong, how it felt when your mom found out? Like you were waiting for the axe to fall and here it is?"
"You couldn't have done anything to deserve this."
"I can feel people's emotions when they're angry or worried or aroused. I feel a lot of uneasy feelings from people and his anger felt righteous, like he believed it was justified. I felt like I knew what he was talking about."
"I'm sure there's a lot of confusing feelings when you experience something that horrible." Celene was still caught up in the thought that Valerie believed she could read other people's feelings. She had heard of empathy but this was either extreme emotional perception or madness. It was amazing how many supernatural things she noticed around this school when she was looking for them.
"Maybe. I just feel like I remember him."
Celene stopped breathing. Like she felt she remembered those dreams? Like she felt she remembered Peter?
Jason came back into the room and Celene got up from her spot propped against his desk. He sat down and started on the right wrist bandages. Celene stood there, thinking. Valerie had won the role of Semi-formal Committee Chair, but she was also the president of the abstinence club. Maybe she could be a good influence on Penny.
"Valerie? Abstinence Club is doing a pledge drive for the Semi, yes?"
She nodded, "Outside the cafeteria the week of the event. We're going to give away purity rings from a drawing. Cameron's Jewelers is donating."
"My daughter, Penny, was looking to get involved in some clubs. Could you talk to her?" Heck, even drama club would be great as long as it was after school and Penny couldn't walk home with Peter Hadley.
"Yeah, definitely. We need to reach out to the freshman class. They're usually the ones feeling the pressure to grow up the strongest. And they're easily influenced to make poor decisions."
That was not very comforting to hear. "Yes, I agree." Celene tried to smile.
Valerie hissed as Jason cleaned her burn.
"Sorry, I know that stings," Jason said. He took the clean roll of gauze and began wrapping it comfortably around the burn.
"Thank you, Valerie." Celene said. She started back to her classroom. When she got there she sat down, taking a moment to breathe. She unlocked her desk drawer and took out a black moleskin notebook. She had an addition to her list.