Crematorium for Phoenixes by Nikola Yanchovichin Read Free Book Online

sidewalks of
hewn slabs, various objects had been left as offerings. There were
rows and rows of flattened, ugly amphorae and canvas bags. They had
been stacked as dikes and impaled on poles along with entire
clusters of fruits—food ordered and left to boost the monsters.
    The city stood empty like a cell whose white
grid fins spread out along the backbone of a vampire returned from
the land of the dead.
    Desolation combined with the cry of
rancorous crows. Their cawing cut through the sky like a black
globular lightning bolt, creating the feeling of a wolf that is
stalking its prey and crawling from place to place. It seemed as if
each resident had become a wandering shadow that was disappearing
and reappearing in the holes of the city’s stone bosom.
    Outstretched cypresses still stood with
their once proud branches now little more than atrophic limbs.
Gushing fountains carved in the form of long-forgotten dusty books
told the tale of mythological creatures—of satyrs and centaurs with
glazed eyes. They used to recount the presence of life, and had now
fallen silent.
    Crossing the cobbled streets, past
marketplaces with flying canopies that billowed silently as ghosts,
the men of the Behemoth started to climb Kephala Hill.
    They carried with them reinforced carbon
bows that had been stored in the zeppelin and from time to time
would stretch the glowing spider cords of fiberglass.
    The men looked like the invaders of the
past, before the time of the Trojan heroes. They remained hidden
and were still in danger of being slaughtered by their reawakened
enemies who numbered into the thousands.
    They seemed to be at an amusement park in
which the machines—the dotted sun-white bulbs on Ferris wheels, the
shooting galleries, the bumper cars, the roller coasters, and the
carousels—would move when announced by music. Except, here it
seemed that they were powered by monsters.
    With each passing step, the company climbed
the acropolis, the abandoned city, the citadel of Knossos.
    Thus after a few minutes of their a
hypnotic, dizzy walking, with faltering gaits that resembled the
slow movements of an alcoholic, they arrived at the top of the
slope. The complex of buildings with their high colonnades stood in
front of them.
    We cannot hide the fact that there was some
beauty in Knossos but covered as they had become with fallen leaves
and old tops, the columns were warmed by the oozing beams of
sunlight and through the vegetation roasted reptiles.
    The fire in the pools along the alleys
looked like floating disks and were a bad omen. Here someone or
something was giving them a notorious final warning.
    Entering the porches decorated with
frescoes, the men faintly smelled urine; it irritated their noses
and lined the area, enhanced even more when they entered the hall
to a room.
    It was not the smell of hot manure,
golden-yellow and sprayed on dusted hay and fresh milk. Instead, it
was the stench of a male mixed with sulphuretted hydrogen that is
coming from a tank full of sludge.
    It penetrated from behind the walls, causing
all sorts of images to spring in their heads, as if a bull had just
been unleashed and was running toward them, having jumped away from
the adolescents. The snakes in the hands of the half-naked girls
that were painted on the walls seemed like they would come to life
at any moment; the men were certain their black shades would live
in a monstrous way.
    The beautiful rooms furnished with brick-red
ceramics and furniture in curved, rounded forms created the feeling
that somewhere hidden within them lay the placenta from something
that never should have been conceived, born, and allowed to
mature.
    But the men, led by Tammuz, went from door
to door, looking for the source of the stench, while like a
slippery snake or parasite, it slipped under the branches of the
water and hypocaust system.
    Tapping on the walls, they came to the
central throne hall—a small room with a suspended two-edged ax. Its
corners had