2019-11-23 - It Is Certain

Isabella rolls Archaeology: Great Success (8 8 8 8 8 8 3 2 1 1) (Rolled by: Isabella)

Είναι βέβαιο.

The words hammered into her skull, and clung to the back of her brain like a burr. On the way home after dropping August Roen off at his vehicle, the foreign syllables took on a life of their own. They stayed with her on her way out of the Jeep, on her way into her houseboat, pestered her with the strange woman's whispering, quiet inflection as her shadow fell over the signs of her feverish mind. The ink blot her body made, as streams of fitful moonlight spilled behind her through her open doorway, splashed over the small mountains of texts and academic treatises that have started to dominate her houseboat's living area, hungrily accumulating space that was already at a premium, and spanning numerous topics: the latest finds in underwater archaeology (and there have been numerous in the last few months, including the discovery of the Clotilda, the last American slave ship, at the bottom of the Mobile), what her colleagues have been publishing about Ancient Greece and Rome, the latest developments in marine conservation, copies of The Gray Harbor Gazette, issues of National Geographic History and others. Tired green eyes shot with gold took in the titles, knowing them without reading them and distractedly acknowledging their presence.

Είναι βέβαιο.

It was Greek. Ancient Greek.

Isabella dropped a few more items on the cluttered coffee table - her car keys, which skittered past her open laptop, the ruins of her smartphone and the waterproof disposable camera she took with her in her excursion to the Veil with August and Anne, with every intent to see whether digital or analog devices could capture images from there. There was also a white box, unpackaged and unwrapped in a hurry, having practically tossed her credit card at the sales representative in her haste to purchase a new phone; thank goodness for the 24-hour Android store in town. For all of her fascination for ancient cultures and times, there was plenty of the twenty-first century that she loved unequivocally - the ability to be connected to everyone she knew at any hour of the day was one of them.

Sim card fished out from the damaged device, she slipped it in the new one, and felt an outpouring wave of relief when it booted no problem. She looked for Alexander's text window immediately, worry curdling in her stomach. Everyone she knew who received an invitation from Their agents had been present except for him. She had to be sure.

Tossing the phone on top of her laptop's keys, she sank further into her couch and closed her eyes. The moss and lichen from the Pond, the tangles in her hair, the vestiges of gunpowder and cordite, oppressive heat and the dregs of the strange perfume that came from the Labyrinth stitched over her clothes in a persistent olfactory web, but her exhaustion kept her anchored on the cushions unable to move, her head tilted back. Sleep was in reach.

Eίναι βέβαιo. It is certain.

Her memories drifted over the strange woman's face, touching over her features and the picture they presented through a film of fatigue. They looked familiar, though the familiarity didn't feel like a recent thing. She ransacked through the clutter within, swung her internal telescope and lenses over the details she could remember while they were still fresh. It wasn't an identity that she had seen in town before, or anywhere else in her life, mentally charting the geography of it in futile search of a recollection to match it, finding nothing.

At least, not a real person.

It was that burst of inspiration, that sudden thought, that had her opening her eyes again and straightening up from her seat. Scrubbing a hand over her face, the other pushed her new phone off her laptop keys, poring over its two drives with its past notes, but anything later than the last two years couldn't be found within. It was approaching four in the morning, the fact that she could even still think was downright miraculous.

"Christ." The invective came out in a grunt, fumbling for her new phone again and searching for another name in her contact list, and his number in the United Kingdom.

He picked up after a few rings. "Izzy?"

"Hey, Randy."

"Bloody hell, what time is it?" She heard a rustle of sheets, followed by another groan. "It's the weekend. You know I make it a personal mission to never wake up before eleven on a Sunday."

She couldn't help the hoarse chuckle. "Wouldn't have if it wasn't important."

"What happened? You sound terrible."

Oh, you know. Nothing unusual. Just a traipse out to a twisted horrorscape full of dead bodies and angelfish that tried to drag us to the water and drown us while being guided by the living, melting wax effigy of one of my best friends constructed by a fleshblob creature that's probably obsessed with him, that ended up taking us into a labyrinth under the Twilight Zone version of my boyfriend's street in an expedition that ended up injuring a new friend, just before my fellow field researcher and I ended up being summoned by eldritch monstrosities who wanted to reward us for the overuse of our psychic powers by trying to kill us. But it's fine. Everything is fine.

What she actually said was: "Flu season's doing its best to get me, I think." She faked a cough.

"Ugh. Shite timing. Isn't it Thanksgiving there, now? That thing you Americans do where you eat yourselves to death while watching your mongrel version of rugby?"

"That's the one. Listen, do you remember that lecture series we put together for Richard a few years ago? The one about..." She grumbled, rolling her fingertips over closed lids as she attempted to remember. "...Art History of Ancient Greece from the Twelfth Century BC to the End of Antiquity?"

"Our first major project? How could I forget."

"Do you still have copies? I need the notes, and especially the slides."

"Not hard copies." Randy made a thoughtful grouse over the phone. "But I've got the CDs here somewhere. Want me to put the files in the Bodleian Cloud?"

"Yes, please."

"Do you know which period you need, at least? This is a lot of material, Izzy."

"That's just it, I don't know yet. I'm acting on a hunch. But at the very least, I need the slides that Richard used for his presentations."

"Alright, I'll get on it this morning." After a pause, Randy continued, "When are you coming back here?"

"Probably the Spring. The paper's almost done, I just need to revise, finalize my submissions paperwork and get ready to be called to defend it. Catch up when I get back?"

"You better. Before I start thinking Oxford lost you to a tiny crap town in the Pacific Northwest."

"Ha." Awkward. She was unable to help the twist somewhere in her stomach. "I appreciate it, Randy. Thanks."

"You're welcome, Doctor Reede."

"If you jinx me, I will obliterate you. Socially and biologically."

Randy laughed. The sound of it pulled a grudging smile on her lips.

The phone call ended, she kicked her legs up on the cushions, letting the phone rest on her chest, her half-lid stare finding the waterproof camera sitting on her coffeetable. That was another thing she had to take care of, a quick perusal of her digital camera roll indicated that none of the pictures she took there had been saved or captured, she couldn't exactly bring the thing to a twenty-four hour photography place to have the roll developed, and she knew nothing about the process to do it herself.

The sudden image of a pretty blonde schoolmate flashed in her mind. Before she took up Curl Up and Dye's proprietorship, Nicole Stein was a budding photographer, always armed with her camera during their high school years - a fact she had pointed out after reacquainting herself with her during Dante Taylor's ghost stories reading. Did she still take pictures? Making a mental note to look her up, her eyes slowly slipped closed again, letting sleep dig its talons into her and drag her under...

She woke up, suddenly, at the sound of an insistent e-mail notification from her computer.

Early morning sunlight cascaded through her half-shut drapes, hastening her journey back into the waking world when it brushed over her shuttered lids. Her groan filtered through her main living area, her bones and joints aching and sore. Rolling over, and forgetting that she had crashed on her couch, she sprawled onto the floor in a heavy thump, her phone clattering away from her grasp. She managed to pick herself up, eventually, finding an e-mail from Randall Waites, Junior Research Assistant for the University of Oxford's School of Archaeology, waiting for her in her inbox. She didn't read it yet, however, stumbling blindly into her kitchen to make herself a pot of very fresh, very strong coffee before settling in to take a look at the link and password sent to her from the ether.

The slide reels in the Cloud were numerous, her index swiping through her touch screen, poring through image after image after image. Faces carved in stone, marble, or etched in ink filled her eyes. Back in her early youth, Greek Mythology was her scholastic gateway drug, the subject which cultivated her interest in the classics; Homer, the works of Hesiod. Most were interested in it, she found, but in the end only a few she knew personally pursued it in their later lives. Fragments of pottery, ancient frescoes and old drawings continued to flood her laptop.

Two hours later, she found her face. And another, and another, and another.

It was only until she got to the later slides in Doctor Richard Langston's lecture series that she allowed herself to lean heavily against her couch, her fingers numb and nerveless on the keys of her computer.

"It can't be," she murmured to herself. "...can it?"

It is certain.

The classic painting loomed before her, Bouguereau's The Remorse of Orestes, wrought by the artist's hand in 1862, teasing her with the faces dancing at the back of brain. Ostensibly not of the eponymous hero depicted in antiquated oils, but the twins standing behind him, half-clothed and sublime faces contorted with fury and rage - a far cry from the stylish suits they were wearing the night before while they were trying to kill her and her friends.

Realization crashed down violently over her head. Bracing her elbows on her coffee table, she buried her face in her hands.