The Hermaphrodite's Curse

PART ONE - LONDON

- 1 -

The corridors and rooms of London's National Gallery are used to unusual sights. The Gallery is, after all, home to one of the finest collections of paintings from all around the world and, on any given day, visitors are likely to be greeted by thousands of unexpected moments within their ageing canvases. However, the sight that greeted tourists on this particular rainy Monday morning was an especially strange one as it did not exist in any of the myriad images displayed on the Gallery walls.

Martin Wilkins, the guard standing behind the tall classical style pillars of the Gallery's 19th Century portico, had spent the morning idly watching the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. His job rarely, if ever, involved any actual security and his mind liked to wander. However, this morning, he suddenly caught a flash of something moving very fast across the square, dashing towards the entrance of the Gallery.

As the figure approached the steps up to the Gallery entrance, Martin was able to discern that it was a middle-aged woman. She was dressed curiously for the weather in nothing but a thin white smock. Even stranger when crossing the dirty wet flagstones of the square, she was wearing nothing at all on her feet. She seemed to be in a great rush but every now and again threw a panicked look over her shoulder as if paranoid that she was being followed. Martin glanced in the direction of her frightened looks but could see nothing. He concluded the woman was probably suffering a mental episode.

Entrance to the Gallery was free these days so the strange woman would not be requiring a ticket. She wasn't exactly causing any trouble with her unusual dress and panicked hurry. After weighing up his options for a moment, Martin decided that perhaps he had better stay out of this, there was no cause to go challenging someone in her mental state, it would only cause more trouble than good. He would let the other Gallery staff inside deal with her.

Penny Scott had come to the Gallery every Monday for the past two years. She was gradually working her way through the collection. She was retired; her husband had passed on, leaving her to pursue her interest in art alone. Each week she would spend the whole day studying each painting she came across individually for sometimes hours at a time, peering into the tiniest little details of the paintwork.

On this particular Monday, Penny was distracted from her close up study of Peter Paul Rubens' Judgement of Paris by something of a commotion from the Gallery's other visitors. A hushed but judgemental whisper was running through the usually quite corridors and it was accompanied by a sight that Penny, with her hours of study of still images was almost two slow of eye to see properly. It looked to her, however, like a woman racing through the gallery in her bare feet, rain dripping from her body. She seemed to be heading with some purpose and little regard for others.

Penny simply tutted to herself, muttering under her breath about how a woman like that should be old enough to know better, and turned back to the baroque image of the prince pondering over the full figures of the three naked goddesses. She gave the woman's unusual behaviour no further thought until she saw a report on the ITN News later that evening.

Student Persephone Cross found herself in the National Gallery that morning almost by accident. Increasingly these days, she found that she had a lot of time to kill and decided that wandering amongst the works of the great masters would be a pleasant enough way to achieve this, especially if it got her out of the rain. Like many others that day, she was more than a little surprised by the sight of a rain soaked, barely dressed woman running through the galleries.

Standing in the room of 17th Century Spanish works, Persephone got a good look at the woman as she ran in. There was an expression on her face of pure terror the like of which the student had never seen before and hoped never to see again. Persephone could see in the frightened woman's face the certainty that her time was almost up and she could do nothing about it. The thought sent a shiver down Persephone's spine as the other woman's hurried sprint stopped abruptly right beside her.

Even though her body had stopped dead still, her face was still animated in panic. Her breathing was deep and heavy after the effort of having run who knows how far. Persephone could see the woman's eyes darting about all over the place, flitting across different parts of the room, never settling anywhere for too long until they looked right into Persephone's. The student girl was now the one who didn't know where to look when faced with that stare of pure desperation. Curiosity mingled with fear in Persephone's breast as the terrified woman opened her mouth to speak.

Photographer Gabriel Herrison had come to look at the National Gallery paintings for inspiration. He was in need of ideas of ways to set his work apart. A friend, well, an acquaintance really, who was a rather more successful photographer, had told him that perhaps the greatest artists of previous centuries might be able to help him out and had recommended that a day at the National Gallery could bring all the inspiration he needed. One thing he had not expected to see through his camera lens, however, was the young woman who had rushed in off the street and now stood transfixed in front of a painting.

Diego Velazquez' Rokeby Venus is one of the best-loved paintings in the entire gallery and, even without the unusual presence of the bewildered and frightened woman, it would normally draw a bit of a crowd. Now, everybody in the room began to push closer, eager to find out just what was going on. Instinctively, feeling he was watching something that doesn't really happen every day, Gabe began to snap pictures of the scene with his camera.

Everyone waited with bated breath as the woman opened her mouth to speak. She seemed to be about to enunciate something but nothing came out but a gasp. It all happened so suddenly that many of those watching took a few moments to work out why she had said nothing. She gave a cough and it was blood bubbled up from her lips not words. Blood began to gush from her throat; there was an open wound there. As she dropped to her knees and slumped forward, the cause of the injury was obvious. Sticking from the back of her neck was a long, feathered shaft. She had been shot with an arrow.

Instantly, the watching people spun around looking for the archer but there was nobody else in the room. Gabe, continuing to watch from behind his camera viewfinder, still took photo after photo. Afterwards, he was convinced that he had seen a flash of white, like the material of someone's dress, fluttering rapidly away from the doorway but this did not show up in any of his photographs.

Turning back to the body slumped on the floor, Gabe could see a group of people already bent over her, feeling her pulse and pronouncing that there was no life in her. At the same time, he saw that she was not slumped on the floor where she had fallen. Her hand was stretched out in front of her, her fingers stained with the blood of her neck wound. On the wall beneath the famous painting, the dying woman had scrawled a picture or design in blood. It was a circle with a cross protruding beneath it and an arrow coming from the upper right hand side, at roughly the six and two positions if it were a clock face. Gabe didn't have the slightest idea what it could mean but, feeling it could be important, made sure surreptitiously to snap a photo of it.