"Gerassimos Flamotas: A Day in the Life" by Simon Clark
Cemetery Dance's A Halloween Short Story ebook series
Readers unfamiliar with "Gerassimos Flamotas: A Day in the Life" by Simon Clark may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.
"Gerassimos Flamotas: A Day in the Life" by Simon Clark has nothing to do with Halloween. But it is a superb horror story, one worth reading any time of year. It employs primal genre material magnificently.
Mr. Flamotas is out of hope and out of money. Stoney soul and a rocky beach have turned his dreams of vintner riches to dust. Frustrated, he destroys a roadside shrine to Saint Gerassimos near his home.
Once there, he mopes in the hot sun on the beach. He is joined by his mute daughter.
‘How much for the girl?’
 Almost dazed, Gerassimos Flamotas squinted up against the sun.
 A shape moved. A man certainly. Foreign, perhaps. Gerassimos shielded his eyes against the glare. The man was tall, thin. Still he couldn’t see the face. But he got the impression of wealth. Great wealth. Gentility almost.
 ‘How much for the girl?’ repeated the man.
 Gerassimos struggled to his feet, struggling also to assume parental outrage. ‘My daughter is no whore. Clear off before I beat you into the ground!’
 The tall man did not flinch.
 ‘Don’t you need the money?’ asked the man smoothly. ‘Everyone needs money, I would have thought.’
 Suddenly it occurred to Gerassimos that perhaps the man was a tourist who needed a maid. Yes, that was it. He had misunderstood. A sane man would never try and purchase sexual favors of a girl from her father.
 ‘Sir . . .’ said Gerassimos thinking quickly, ‘my daughter is mute, she’s not intelligent, but she can scrub floors, cook a little . . .’
 The man held up his hand. ‘No. Nothing like that. All I want is her . . . company. Just for a few hours. Until five o’clock, to be precise.’
 Gerassimos was bewildered. ‘Sorry, sir, I do not understand you.’ At least he pretended to sound bewildered. He’d been in the army long enough to know what men really meant when they said that they wanted the company of a girl.
 The man nodded out to sea where a yacht lay moored in the bay. Gerassimos squinted against the dazzling glare of the sun. The boat was large, a millionaire’s vessel—it may have been the angle, but the boat looked black.
 ‘I just want her to stay with me for the afternoon.’
 Gerassimos nearly asked why, but he was a shrewder man than that. ‘Eh, you said you, eh . . .’ Gerassimos plunged in: ‘How much? You said you’d pay?’
 ‘Indeed, yes.’ The elegant gentleman held a parcel wrapped in brown paper. It was the size of a small pillow. ‘One million Euros.’
 The blood thudded in Gerassimos’s ears. ‘One million?’ That was more money than he’d ever seen in his life before.
 ‘So . . .’ The stranger nodded at the girl who sat dumbly on the beach watching the pair of them. ‘My man will take us to the yacht in the dinghy. There we will spend the afternoon. Don’t worry, I’ll return your daughter in one piece. What’s her name?’
 ‘Rose,’ muttered Gerassimos as if only half awake. Suddenly the father in him tried to assert itself. ‘You won’t hurt her?’
 ‘Perish the thought.’
 Gerassimos now became hesitant. Rose was ugly, stupid—but she relied on him for protection. He didn’t want her hurt or frightened or . . . or violated. ‘I don’t know. I . . . I . . .’ He shook his bald head.
 The stranger held out the package. ‘One million Euros. Tax free. No questions. All yours.’
 Gerassimos almost snatched the package from the man and tore away the paper at the corner. Inside, tightly packed, were wads of banks notes. They smelt so good.
 ‘All right,’ Gerassimos said quickly. ‘Take the girl. But return her by five.’
 ‘In one piece,’ purred the man. ‘In one piece.’
 Gerassimos ordered Rose to go with the man. Obediently, she followed the stranger with the shadow face, down to the dinghy. The oarsman had hunched shoulders, giving him the appearance of having no head. Gerassimos Flamotas shivered.
 Then the headless oarsman, the faceless gentleman, and Rose looking trustingly back at her father, slowly floated out to the black yacht.
 She’ll be all right, he reassured himself. She won’t be hurt. In five hours she would be back in one piece. Besides, whatever happened she would never be able to tell anyone anyway, she could neither speak nor write.
In The Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror author John Clute has this to say about answered prayers in horror fiction:
It is not surprising…. that wishes, no matter how carefully phrased, become Answered Prayers: wishes which are fulfilled in a fashion which punishes the wisher, the biter bit; almost always, the god or other grantor grants the wish literally…. [emphasis in the original]
The faceless man on the beach who tempts Flamotas with a million Euros fulfills the role of grantor of "malevolent intent." Only at the end of the story, when father and daughter are reunited on the beach, does Flamotas begin to face his consequences: "Whoever had done this must despise humanity more than God loved it."
Jay
