Psychro Killer: Chapter 12 - Into the Caves

The early light cast a pale hue over the horizon when Elena found Niko. He was slumped beneath an olive tree, its gnarled branches extending like fingers over his head, casting long shadows on the dry, rocky ground. His face was pale, eyes hollow from the night’s storm of revelations. She approached quietly, holding a small bottle wrapped in cloth—a bottle of Kykeon she’d stolen from the festival's stores.

“It’s all about these caves, isn’t it?” Niko said suddenly, his voice hoarse. He didn’t look up. “All that shit, the secrets, the pretence—my whole fucking life is somehow tied to those caves and here I am, and I haven’t even seen them.”

Elena crouched beside him, brushing his shoulder gently. "Then let's go," she said softly. “I know you need something... more.”

Niko glanced up at her. There was a sadness in her eyes, but also understanding, a kinship that made him feel less alone. The warmth in her expression tugged at the ache in his chest, making him forget, if only for a moment, the chaos that had consumed him the night before.

He pushed himself up to his feet with a sigh. “Alright then, let’s see what’s hiding in the dark.”

 

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The ascent to the cave was steeper than Niko had expected. As they trudged up the narrow path, the world around them began to blur. Not from exertion, but from the slow-acting Kykeon that had started to pulse through their veins. The first gentle waves of euphoria rippled through Niko’s body, lifting the edges of his grim mood.

Ahead, the tacky tourist signs for Diktaion Andron came into view, along with a tired-looking booth where a man sold tickets for six euros per person.

“Elena, you’re sure this is the place?” Niko asked, incredulity creeping into his tone.

Elena, flashing a sly grin, launched into a playful imitation of a tour guide. “Welcome to the legendary Diktaion Andron, cave of the gods, birthplace of Zeus, king of the heavens!” She gestured grandly, though the dilapidated booth and chipped sign hardly matched the mythic image she painted. “For only six euros, you too can walk the hallowed ground where a god once lived!”

Niko snorted, shaking his head, but couldn’t help a smile. “What’s the donkey for?” he asked, pointing to the scruffy-looking animal tied up by a sign advertising rides to the cave entrance for an additional ten euros.

“Ah, the true test of divinity,” Elena said, biting back laughter. “Zeus, baby and all, riding his noble steed up the mountain.”

They declined the donkey, joking all the while about how gods surely didn’t need such pedestrian assistance, and began the winding walk up the steep incline. It was a rough path, littered with loose stones that crunched beneath their feet. Each step felt heavier as the Kykeon’s effects deepened, reality starting to twist at the edges, shifting between the mundane and the mythic.

The sun was rising higher, but the light seemed distorted, refracted through the strange filter that was now overtaking Niko's senses. The air grew thicker, sounds amplified—the rustle of the wind in the olive trees, the soft scrape of their shoes against the path—and Niko began to feel as though time itself was stretching, bending under the weight of the walk.

“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Elena mused, her voice low as they neared the top. “This place... where they say Zeus was hidden from his father so he wouldn’t be devoured. The irony of it all.”

Niko glanced at her. “What irony?”

Elena’s eyes darkened, but she smiled. “That this mountain... these caves, they’re full of gods and monsters. And yet, here we are, humans, making our own monsters.”

Niko’s mind flickered with images—the night before, Yannis’ confession, the weight of his father’s alleged sins pressing down on him. A tension built in his chest.

As they reached the mouth of the cave, the ground seemed to slope unnaturally beneath their feet, the Kykeon’s hallucinogenic grip now fully taking hold. The entrance loomed before them, a dark maw in the earth. The tacky ropes and tourist signs faded from view, replaced in Niko’s mind with something far older, more ominous.

“Elena,” he muttered, barely aware of his voice, “do you think ...it’s all true? The stories? The myths?”

Elena shrugged, her smile dimming as she too felt the weight of the cave’s presence. “Maybe. Maybe it’s more about what we make of them. People say stories aren’t real, but then they live by them, die by them.” She stepped forward, her hand brushing the cool stone as she spoke, her voice tinged with a playful edge. “Shall we descend into the lair of gods, then? Where the truth hides.”

Niko hesitated for a moment at the cave’s entrance, the darkness within swallowing the last tendrils of sunlight. The Kykeon pulsed in his veins, making the world feel both heightened and distorted. He glanced back, the mountain stretching behind them, then followed Elena into the cave.

 

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Inside, the temperature dropped sharply. Stalactites dripped overhead, their ghostly forms shimmering in the dim light. Niko’s breath seemed louder in the hollow space, each exhale reverberating off the stone walls, as though the cave itself was alive, breathing with them. The deeper they walked, the less the outside world mattered. His father, Yannis, Helena—everything blurred into the echoes of the cave.

The Kykeon spiralled deeper into his mind. At first, the high was soothing, even warm, as if the cave wrapped them in an embrace of mystery and myth. They joked about Zeus hiding as a child, Elena guiding him as if she were narrating some bizarre, surreal tour. But the deeper they ventured, the more reality began to melt.

Niko felt it first—the sense that time was no longer linear, as though they were walking both forward and backward. Elena’s voice grew distant, muffled, as if she were speaking from a dream, her words swirling in his mind alongside whispers he couldn’t quite place.

He blinked, and in the darkness, shapes began to emerge. Faces—familiar, yet impossible. His father, younger, his eyes filled with torment. Helena, her face shadowed with sorrow. And then another—Zoe.

“Zoe...” he whispered, but his voice was swallowed by the cave.

Elena took his hand, her touch grounding him, but even that began to twist into something else. Was it Elena’s hand? Or was it Eurydice’s, pulling him deeper into the underworld?

His breath quickened as the hallucinations thickened. The cave walls rippled like water, and in the cracks, faces emerged—Yannis, but twisted with fear. Vassilis, standing over a body. And there, in the darkness, a figure—unseen, but felt.

"Did he love her more?" Niko muttered under his breath, his mind replaying Yannis' words. "Did he kill her?"

The shadows morphed, shifting into a woman’s silhouette, cradling her swollen belly, blood dripping from her hands, a warning—you’ll be just like him.

Niko recoiled. His heart raced. The world around him no longer made sense. His footsteps faltered, but Elena pulled him onward.

"It's not real," she whispered, her voice an anchor in the storm. "None of this is real."

But the hallucinations did not relent. The faces in the rocks became clearer, their eyes accusing, whispering. Then he saw it—his father’s face in the stone, cold and lifeless, watching him. Behind it, a baby was crying, the sound bouncing off the cave walls, growing louder and more shrill.

"Stop!" Niko cried out, clutching his head. "Stop it!"

Elena tried to pull him closer, to soothe him, but he was slipping away, lost in the storm of his own mind. She leaned in, trying to bring him back, her hands on his face. Her lips brushed his, a desperate attempt to anchor him, to share a moment of connection before everything spun out of control.

For a moment, he responded. His hands tangled in her hair, the warmth of her body cutting through the chaos. But then, something twisted. He heard Yannis' voice, deep and harsh in his ear. Don't go too far, Niko. The truth is buried here, and it will destroy you.

A flash of his father’s hand, a knife glinting in the dim light. Blood pooling at his feet. The woman's cries. The baby’s wail. He wasn’t sure if he was Vassilis or himself. Was this his fate too? Was this what he would become?

“No,” Niko whispered, his voice cracking as the terror gripped him. “I won’t... I won’t become you.”

Elena tried to comfort him, her voice pleading, “Niko, it’s me. It’s just me.”

But her words became tangled in the hallucination. His hands lashed out—pushing her, shoving her into the darkness.

Elena stumbled, falling backward, the world slowing in that moment of horror. Her body disappeared into the cave’s shadows, swallowed by the endless black.

Niko gasped, his chest heaving. “What have I done?”

He staggered to the edge of the cave, the sound of his breathing ragged and harsh in the silence. The Kykeon gripped his mind, the hallucinations flickering between myth and reality. Eurydice. Elena. Helena. All the women he had lost.

"Eurydice?" His voice echoed in the cave, breaking the stillness. "Eurydice?"

But the cave did not answer. The myth wasn’t real. None of it was real.

And yet, here he stood, alone again, having pushed away someone who had seen him, who had believed in him.

Niko stumbled toward the mouth of the cave, the cold air rushing against his face. His scream shattered the morning calm.

"Help! Someone... help!"