Page 1 of Hallow Hill at Halloween: Part Two

CHAPTER ONE Gone

Most of the time the dialogue of Medusa’s guards sounded more like the conversation of prisoners. They talked at length about when their punishment would expire, making them free to pursue lives with a measure of self-direction, if not freedom. It was a fantasy that became a fruitless preoccupation for men who were immortal, but also doomed to servitude.

Medusa’s brace of guards were ideal for the job. They didn’t need to sleep. They didn’t need days off. Best of all they would, albeit begrudgingly, tolerate endless boredom. Mostly because they believed there wasn’t another option.

The Olympians were big on punishment and unpredictable regarding what might count as sins against them. Medusa’s guards weren’t clear on why they’d been sentenced to oversight of her confinement. They just knew they’d been made responsible and that their lives could conceivably be worse if they failed in their duty.

Sons of Haephestus, the twins, Osocles and Piapetos, sinned against the Olympians by being born with physical deformities. Both inherited their father’s club foot and walked with a limp.

They were quite handsome and exceptional in every other way, but the gods would not suffer imperfection. So far as Greek gods were concerned, the only virtue that counted, other than lineage, was beauty. Osocles and Piapetos never saw the Olympian court. They’d been raised by humans, then assigned menial jobs as soon as they were old enough to be trustworthy. They came by trustworthiness the usual way of the gods, by being beaten into permanent submission.

The blacksmith had petitioned the gods to teach his sons his craft. Zeus not only grew angry at the suggestion, butproclaimed that they would never father children and pass on the handicap.

On that particular day, however,they were talking about something quite different.

“You see?” Osocles told his companion. “She’s gone.”

“How can you be sure?” said Piapetos.

“For one thing… the snakes.”

Piapetos looked at Medusa’s still figure again. The snakes on her head hung limp as if they slept when she slept. He’d been guarding the Gorgon long enough to know that wasn’t the case. In all the years that he’d dutifully watched, the snakes had never been still whether she slept or was awake.

“You see?” repeated Osocles. Piapetos had to agree it was unexpected. “Her eyes are closed, but she’s not sleeping.”

“She’s not?”

“No.” He looked at Piapetos and whispered, “She’s gone.”

“What do you mean gone?”

“I mean she’s not in her body.”

“Not in her body. Where would she be then?”

“Well, that’s the question.”

“No. That’s not the question. The question is, if you know this for certain, shouldn’t we tell somebody?”

“Who?’

“I don’t know.”

“Anybody we tell is likely to get us blamed for something.”

Again, Piapetos had to agree with that. He studies her limp form, from afar, of course. “It’s not our job to know whether she’s in her body or not. It’s our job to make sure her body doesn’t leave here.”

Osocles looked back at Medusa. “Yes. That’s right. Of course.”

“If anybody ever mentions it, we just say we never noticed anything unusual. We just made sure she’s in her cell. Right?”

Osocles sighed. Of the few options available, that seemed the most logical or at least the most prudent from their point of view. “Right.”

“You know that thing? The witch thing about spirits wandering around outside a body?”

Osocles nodded. “I think I heard something about that.”

“Well. You’re not supposed to touch the body when they’re gone.”

---