Love in the rubble of history

Around me, the remnants of ancient pillars are scattered in the brittle grass, mute evidence of a long-lost culture. Here on the mountain, people now dead and forgotten have sung and danced and made love like there was no tomorrow – which, for them, there wasn’t. The volcano put a stop to that.

I wander up the path, almost forgetting my errand as I take in the petrified remains of those olden days. Happy at last, I take out my phone and switch it on to take a few photos. I walk into a square construction identified on a sign as the temple of Dionysos, and I stop there, turning around and running my gaze over the ruined walls that surround me. The stones whisper silently and I smile in reply. There’s no one here. No one at all, on this day of power cuts and broken routines. Just me. Just me and history.

Still smiling, I walk a little further up the road, past what was once a theatre and another temple, this one dedicated to Apollo. I glance down at my name tag. I owe my travelling companion a favour. Maybe I can find him and buy him a drink tonight.

I stop and sit on a boulder where I have a magnificent view of the sea, but where the cliff obscures the fallen plane from view. I prefer not to think about that little adventure right now. Sighing contentedly in the sun, I open my rucksack to dig into my Spartan delicacies. Once again, I find myself wishing that I will never have to go home. What would happen if I didn’t? As the figs melt on my tongue, I entertain the ridiculous notion with a passion. I could stay here, playing an acoustic at street corners and scraping by on coins tossed by tourists, perhaps seducing their purses open with my Nordic blondness. I could live like that, without a care in the world, nibbling on leftovers and drinking from the fountains like the stray dogs of the island.

Perhaps a little bit like the people who once inhabited this island, this mountain. Actually, how did they live up here? How did they grow crops in this blazing heat? How did they manage for drinking water? It’s a mystery, but one I don’t have to solve, one I can just wonder at and then leave alone. I have no obligations here. I’m an outsider, a visitor from the future, a ghost.

The thought sends shivers through me, as if someone’s watching me from behind. Spooked, I turn to scan the stones for watchers, but there’s nothing, only the minutely waving branches of short, gnarled trees. Snorting at myself, I turn back to my plastic mug of sour-tasting wine and swallow a big mouthful. Drinking before noon. I chuckle to myself. I am turning Mediterranean. I’d fit right in.

But something’s wrong. I can feel it. Someone rational and mature like Marco would laugh at me, but I just know that there’s something… something… there. I slowly turn again, half expecting to see Death himself standing with his scythe among the scraggly bushes, but what my gaze snags on is not a concrete shape. It’s a nothingness, a black hole. There’s a crevice or a cave of some kind behind me, a portal to the unknown. The shadows in there make it impossible to see if someone’s in there, but I can feel that there is.

Rising on legs which feel brittle like sugar, I take a few steps up the slope, ready to run at the first sign of danger. The air is warm and quiet, only the odd cicada chirping into the void. My knees are trembling beneath my weight as I approach the black opening, and I reach out a hand to steady myself. I duck my head and peer inside, and the darkness stares back at me, reluctant to divulge any of its secrets. My eyes slowly adjust, and I pick out the odd ray of light snaking its way inside the crevice. There are stones and sand, a turf of struggling weed in a crack.

And eyes.

My brain short-circuits. I stumble backwards. There are eyes in there! Someone is looking at me!

Heart thundering into presto, I almost fall down the slope and catch myself with my hands on the gravel, scraping my palms to bloodied shreds. Regaining my balance, I’m off down the path like a desperate escapee, running from I don’t know what, running like a rabbit from the hounds. The pounding of my shoes on the sandy ground echoes in a crazy counterpoint to my pulse and I imagine it magnified and doubled, imagine a pursuer hot on my trail, slavering jaws stretching to clamp down on my neck.

I reach the fence and rip the skin on my shin open while scrambling over it. The shock of it reverberates hotly through me, but I don’t stop to stem the blood. I have to get away from here, have to get back to civilization, to the dependable, predictable world of the everyday.

Only there is no such world. There’s nowhere to go. The island is beset by calamities of every kind, the small dot of human settlement is open to the elements, to forces we don’t understand, forces we thought we had conquered and tamed.

And up there, some creature just saw me.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Being seen can be a frightening thing, but also healing. Will Olov dare go back to whoever is up there? Will he take a chance on someone who’s as far from his usual type as they can get?

Coming soon on Amazon.