Chapter 3: The Pool of Suicides
Antigone broke the surface to find herself treading the icy waters of a subterranean pool. She could hear the unmistakable lapping of water against marble. The obelisks that bordered this hidden chamber were of not of tar and wood, but of carved stone. Their markings were clearly of an older order, hieroglyphs both ancient and authentic.
She paddled slowly to the edge of the pool and pushed herself up. Water streamed from her lithe form as she walked dripping from the silent waters. The marble was cool against the soles of her feet.
But what was this place?
When she was back on the Widow’s Walk, everything had seemed so certain. So right. All that was necessary was the proper resolve, the proper conviction. A leap of faith.
She had pulled off the trick before, many times. Her dramatic leaps between life and death had become ritualized, almost theatrical. It was now something of a disappearing act. Now you see her, now you don’t.
True, she had never played her game of ledges on such a grand scale before, but the height should not have mattered. Even the epic scale of the plunge from the Observation Deck should not have proved too great an obstacle. If anything, the heroic scope made her stronger, larger than life. And, she hoped, larger than even death.
But surely something had gone amiss. She should not have been here. She should have awoken in some hospital bed, broken in body but triumphant in spirit. She would smile at the attendant through the bandages (her most winning smile) and express her hope that she hadn’t worried them.
This was the best part of the act. The look on their faces was priceless; it was all the applause she craved. That one look made it all worth while, worth coming back again and again. To be needed. To be somehow essential. So much so that it seemed life itself simply could not bear to go on without her.
Death was not big enough to hold her. It always disgorged her, deposited her back here, under the sterile glaring lights.
“Worried us? Jeezus, lady, you’re lucky to be alive.”
He would have been half right.
The sound of a footfall in the darkened tomb ruined the moment. It jerked Antigone out of her reverie. She froze, instinctively dropping to a fighting crouch at the water’s edge. The plish of water falling from her body and striking the floor sounded overloud in the darkness. It pinpointed her position.
A torch hissed to life, momentarily blinding her. When she had blinked her eyes clear, she saw that the brand was held aloft by a huge ebon claw. Beyond it, she could make out only a hulking shadowy form that seemed to swell in the torchlight to fill the room from corner to corner. Her eyes squinted, but the only detail of it she could make out was the glint of torchlight off wicked canines, a mocking Cheshire Cat smile.
The voice was gentle, but as vast as the sea. It filled the tiny grotto and caught her up in its undertow, nearly sweeping her feet from under her. "You are shivering, little one. Come closer, into the light and warm yourself."
She was suddenly aware of her nakedness and her vulnerability. She wavered there, both afraid and ashamed to approach the light.
"Suit yourself," the voice washed over her. "You will probably catch your death of cold. But perhaps that is not so grim a prospect for you as it once was. Some manage to make themselves quite comfortable here, at the water's edge. Some linger for years without ever daring to approach the light."
Something brushed past Antigone's shoulder. She wheeled to confront her unseen assailant, but found she could barely budge. She was caught, wedged in a great press of bodies, all crowded here at the water's edge. She felt as if she were trying to draw breath, but she could not. She could not even remember why this might be important.
She tried to twist free, but only found herself pressed face to face with the man next to her. The top and back of his head had been violently blown outward. His eyes widened in recognition, but when he opened his mouth to address her, the only thing that emerged was a wash of blood from the gaping hole in the roof of his mouth.
Antigone tried to push free of him, to spin away, to lose herself in the press. She reached out, groped blindly and latched onto something firm. A hand in the dark mass of flesh. She tightened her grip, clung to it, pulled herself closer. A face swam towards her through the sea of bodies. For an instant she saw her look of relief mirrored in the other woman's face. Then, just as suddenly, the look dissolved into one of horror and repulsion.
Antigone could not hold the other woman's stare. Her eyes dropped to their clenched hands and for the first time she saw long exaggerated shreds of flesh trailing from the other's forearms. They seemed to drag the floor in her wake.
She would not scream. Antigone clenched her teeth over the rising panic and revulsion and cast about for some way out of the throng of bodies. The pool! She fought her way back towards the sound of lapping waters, lashing out about her on all sides indiscriminately.
With a cry of relief, she picked out the outline of the pool's edge just before her. A bloated blue hand burst from the waters and groped at her ankles. She kicked out at it, backing away as it splashed heavily back into the water. It was not the pudgy bluish fingers of the drowned child that repulsed and alarmed her. It was the sheer volume of bodies clamoring and clawing their way out of the Pool of Suicides. Their numbers dwarfed even those of those huddled and packed in around the water’s edge.
Desperately, she cast about for the only other landmark she knew in this vast landscape of flesh -- the torch. She could barely pick out the flicker of the distant light. Unless she had totally lost her sense of direction, it had moved since she had last sighted it. Step by step, she fought her way forward. "I am coming!" she shouted. "Don't leave me here."
She saw a momentary opening in the press of bodies and immediately dove towards it, twisted and rolled. She could feel hands snatching at her, but they could find no purchase on her wet, sleek form. There were no trailing robes for them to get a grip on, but she felt handfuls of hair tear away. She came to her feet, bleeding from a dozen small wounds. But she could feel the stirring of a draft on her face. She had broken free and there was only open space ahead of her. With all of her remaining strength, she sprinted away from the clinging hands of the damned.
She stumbled, fell heavily, caught herself and came to an abrupt halt against a pillar. At least she had thought it was a pillar. Looking up, she saw the blazing glow of the torch directly above her. In the light it cast, she could see that the "pillar" was covered in a coarse black fur.
"Here you are, little one." The familiar laughing voice wrapped around her like a blanket. But there was no warmth in it, only the whisper of the wind through exhumed skulls. "I had hoped you would find my company preferable to that of your peers, and here you are at last. But you are trembling! Where is the pelt that I made you a present of on the occasion of our last meeting? Surely you have not left it behind? A pity. You seem even to have shed your skin -- you are all pale and moist and wriggling. Hold still a moment.”
“But I don’t know how… I don’t know how I got here,” Antigone said miserably.
“Shh. Easy now, little one. Let us see.”
She felt his great soft paws close over her. As she sank into their warmth, she curled in upon herself. He rolled her in his palms like a ball of pliable clay.
It was as if her arms had gotten all tangled up in her legs and she couldn’t quite get them all sorted out again. She tried to cry out, but her words came out muffled as if her head were wrapped in layers of thick cloth.
“There, that is better. It is much as I first remember you.”
As the comforting darkness of the great paws peeled away, Antigone found herself faced with the indignity of being dangled upside down by one heel. She batted at the tangle of long black skirts that hung down over her face.
“Set me down,” she managed to choke out.
“Or almost as I remember you,” the Jackal amended. The room suddenly righted itself and Antigone found herself once more upon solid ground. As she smoothed the trailing skirts back into place, she was struck by the contrast between her slightly ridiculous position and the solemnity of the ensemble. The long black dress was formal, but simple, almost shapeless. She felt as if she were sheathed in rustling layers - a pale reed girded dark against the marshes.
The somber gown even smelled musty, of mothballs. It reminded her of desolate places - of moors, of gardens in winter, of churchyards.
There was no mistaking its function. It was mourning dress. Widow’s Weeds.
Even as she realized this, Antigone was struck with the similarity between this gown and her novice’s robes. It was not so much a visual similarity as one of feel, of purpose. She had put aside the robes of the novitiate back on the Widow’s Walk. Before stepping boldly into this new life. They were a badge of her years of servitude to House Tremere and her hopeless struggle against the monolithic and impersonal stasis imposed by the Tremere pyramid. It was not a burden she was eager to take up again.
She found her hand straying, as if by habit to where the interior cache pocket was on the novice vestments. She was startled to find a familiar shape there, nestled beneath the layers of fabric of her new garment. It was the well-known outline of an ancient straight razor. Occam’s Razor. It too should have been left behind, abandoned on the precipice.
“Now no more running,” the Jackal smiled down at her. “The way you flit between places it extremely distracting. It is a wonder you ever manage to finish a thought. Now, sit here at my feet. No arguments. I will be only a moment."
Far overhead, the torch swiveled, leaving Antigone in shadow. The light now revealed a set of stone shelves recessed into the wall of the tomb. There were fragile clay vessels there, canopic jars -- each one stoppered with a lifelike sculpted animal head.
The Jackal ran one hand absently along the row of jars, as if reading off their labels, searching for a particular one. "Ah, here we are," he called, removing one of the clay vessels from its perch. "Antigone Canis Aureus.”
He cocked his head at her curiously and smiled. “I am honored. I think that will do quite well. Come along now, you have wasted time enough already."
“But I don’t understand. What am I doing here? What the hell is this place?” She shivered involuntarily and self-consciously crossed her arms over her chest, feeling very lost, alone and exposed.
“Nothing so prosaic as that,” the Jackal said with a smile. “This is merely a crossroads along that path. Do come along.” The Jackal started off without waiting to see if she followed. He hadn’t gone far before he heard the slap of wet footfalls hurrying up behind him. He smiled his deathmask smile.