She Walks in Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

windows?”
    “A little.”
    Most old Tuscan villas have towers, relics of the days when every country house was both farm and fort. I ran to the windows and looked out, then caught my breath.
    The tower was squat, unimpressive. It had not been remodeled for the bride, but the garden below us had. Statues gleamed ghost-pale among a glowing riot of roses and jasmine. One was a gigantic, white-winged woman carrying in her arms a life-sized youth of red terra cotta.
    I said, startled, “What’s that?”
    “The goddess Eos carrying off Kephalos?” Richard’s eyes had followed mine.
    “What for? To eat him?”
    “Lord, no! She was in love with him.”
    “Well, I’d certainly hate for her to love me!”
    This was not Homer’s rosy-fingered Eos; I remembered the story now. All the tender radiance of the Greek dawn-goddess was gone. This giantess’s mouth, bent to her unwilling prey’s, seemed more likely to bite than to kiss. One felt immense appetite, savage strength, but no tenderness. Her very whiteness made her seem like death, seizing upon warm human life.
    “She’s gone native.” Richard surveyed her quizzically. “Etruscan ideas very likely went back to the old Triple Goddess, the Killer-Mother: Queen of the Underworld as well as of Heaven and Earth.”
    “Whatever the lady is, I could do without her.”
    “Oh, Kephalos got home eventually.” Richard raised an eyebrow. “To find that his pretty young wife hadn’t been exactly inconsolable during his absence.”
    “I’m sure she can’t have thought it was any use to wait.”
    Richard laughed and went out. I went back to our bathroom-kitchenette and began putting things away, but first I put on a pot of coffee. The long fierce heat of the day was gone. Now that night was near, a dank chill seemed to be rising from the thick, old stone walls, in spite of all the gaily painted figures that ran riot over them. I found cups and saucers, and began to set a little table.
    And then I heard it. The crash outside!
    I seemed to be crawling though I was running, ages seemed to pass before I was downstairs and outside in the cool evening. Before I found that screening wall Richard had spoken of and ran round it.
    The car lay overturned in a little ditch that ran along one side of the tower. And Richard lay inside it, his crumpled body somehow looking different, horribly different from the way it does when he is asleep.
    I tried to get the car door open, but I couldn’t. I don’t know much about cars, but this one, being a Volkswagen, had its engine in the rear, so fire ought to start in the back seat. But would it stay there more than a minute? I was wearing a blouse and skirt. I tore off the skirt, stamped it down into the inch or two of water in the ditch, then, using the muddy mass of it as a shield, I scrambled in over the car door.
    Richard was heavy—how could a long, lean man be so heavy? For hideous seconds I thought I could not budge him, but finally I got him halfway across the car door. Then, as I pulled and tugged at his inert weight, my heart feeling as if it would burst, the thing I feared came. The smell of smoke, the crackle of flames. I must get Richard out—I must! With all my weight, I strained against his. The muddy skirt still shielded us, but through it I could feel the hissing heat; at any second the soaked cloth must burst into flame. Tug—pull—tug. My heart was hurting as if Eos were squeezing it between her giant fingers. Trying to squeeze the life out of me, the mortal wife who was fighting her for Kephalos. I could see her hungry eyes, feel the power of her outspread wings....
    Then Richard woke up. He opened his eyes and coughed.
    Together we squirmed over the car door. We fell into the ditch, but that was good. The mud put out the fires that were starting in his clothing, and what was left of mine. The whole ghastly struggle can have lasted only for seconds, but it had felt like years.
    Richard seemed dazed. I led him back to the