by Bryan Camp
When she glanced down at Sal to see if she’d impressed him, the ’pomp only grunted at her to keep moving. She reached down and scratched the old grump between his ears anyway. “So how did you of all people know that Plumaj was quoting Moby Dick?”
“You instigating that I don’t know how to read?”
Renai smirked at his word choice, somehow both wrong and poetically accurate at the same time. “You’re just forever quoting old movies is all. Never heard you mention any books.”
Sal chuckled. “Yeah, I’m just bustin’ your balls. Ain’t a shape I wear can turn pages worth a damn. Only Moby Dick I know’s got Gregory Peck in it. Well, that and the one with Thor. I only knew Plumaj was quotin’ the book ’cause they always quote that book. Fuckin’ love it. Rumor is they used to be a Muse and that one was their Mona Lisa.”
Sal’s comment about Plumaj’s rumored Muse-hood turned Renai’s mind toward Muses and gods, psychopomps and mortal souls, and so she spent the rest of the walk to the Marigny—where Saint Roch’s Cemetery and the Fourth Gate waited—lost in thought.
Before she’d died, she’d thought she understood how the world worked. Raised Catholic but fallen away in her teens, she’d placed her trust, her faith, in technology. After all, praying for help on a history paper hadn’t done anything for her, but Google and Wikipedia had worked miracles.
So by the time she was filling out college applications, she’d settled into a quiet atheism, certain that the world she lived in was the only one that existed. Not having any beliefs of her own had made it easy to ask her Aunt Celeste for a job when Renai and her father had argued about her plans after high school.
She’d known Celeste’s genuine faith in the loa and voodoo rites would upset her father, the kind of man who was at Mass every Sunday, who confessed his sins once a month, a man who still toyed with the idea of becoming a deacon. To her, though, Celeste’s calling on Papa Legba to open the way for the other loa had seemed just as futile as her father’s prayers for the intercession of angels and saints.
And then, to her great surprise, death had carried Renai into a world where not only was she wrong, but both her father and Celeste were right. Where the gods of every faith existed, where the afterlife that every religion promised could be reached if you could manage the crossing, where a young woman who’d believed death was just an off switch could become the guide that led souls to their just rewards.
Most people would have found a way to accept the truth of this revelation after five years. For Renai, it was the kind of epiphany that gave birth to more questions. If Plumaj could be a Muse and an angel and a loa all at once, did that mean everyone’s roles were equally fluid?
She’d been there when a demigod became fully divine. Could a human attain that kind of immortality? What about psychopomps? Most of them that Renai had met were mere spirits, without anything resembling autonomy or personality. Was that what she had to look forward to, a slow slide into a kind of single-minded senility? Or did she have the potential to evolve? She’d bargained with Mason, told him she’d trade this Ramses St. Cyr for escape, but maybe she should have asked for more.
She hadn’t found satisfactory answers to these questions in her five years as a psychopomp, so she wasn’t surprised when she still hadn’t come to any conclusions by the time the entrance to Saint Roch’s Cemetery rose out of the gloom. Two brick buildings—squared off and crenellated like a couple of guard towers at the drawbridge of a fortress—stood on either side of the elaborate iron gate that bore the cemetery’s name, flanked by a pair of statues: two women, one with her palms pressed together in prayer, the other with her hands clasped together in penitence or grief. The gates were closed and didn’t open when Renai pushed on them. After a brief lurch of panic, Renai peeked through the iron bars and saw why.
The long avenue of the cemetery led straight back to a tall chapel designed to look like a miniature cathedral and, in front of that, an altar. In the living world, a statue of three women praying at the feet of a crucified Christ occupied this space, but in the Underworld, it was just a table of bare marble. A short row of stairs led from the altar to a dais that held a black iron cauldron, from which flames crackled and leapt.
The Gatekeeper—Maman Bridgette, a white woman with shockingly red hair done up in a bunch of elaborate braids—was there with an elderly dead woman and her guide, a fat little brown bird with a hooked beak that Renai didn’t know. Renai asked Sal if the other psychopomp was one of the ones they were looking for, but he answered her with a negative grunt.
Inside the cemetery, Bridgette took the dead woman by the elbow and guided her to the top of the stairs and into position, her back to Renai and Sal, facing the flames roaring in the cauldron. The shadow she cast stretched out long and flickering behind her, darkening the altar where her whippoorwill psychopomp waited.
Beside her, Sal curled up on the ground, his head laying on his paws. For some reason that Renai had never gotten him to admit, he always tried to avoid this part of the dead’s journey. It wasn’t fear, exactly, that she saw in him. Something closer to sadness. Like watching Brigette at her work made Salvatore think about something he’d rather forget.
Renai turned back toward the Gatekeeper just in time to see her reach into empty air and pull out a large ornately decorated mirror. Holding it in both hands, Brigette angled it so that the dead woman could look into its depths.
Seeing the Gatekeeper using her mirror made Renai’s hands itch to reach for her own, which lived in the same nowhere place that her wings went to when she folded them away. Hers looked nothing like Brigette’s; hers was made of obsidian—smooth and cold and polished until it gleamed—an oval of black glass about a foot long and half a foot wide with a handle of bone wrapped in rough ancient twine.
Once, there had been two handles, but the opposite end of the mirror ended in a jagged crack, where the other handle and a sliver of the mirror had broken loose. She’d tried only once to grip the mirror on its cracked side, and the damned thing had sliced her palm open, its edge so sharp that she hadn’t felt the pain until after she’d seen the blood. Like the wings, she couldn’t remember the first time she’d used the mirror, didn’t know if Sal had taught her to use it or if she’d just known her role instinctively. Nor did she know why hers was different, or why she had one at all, since Bridgette always used hers on the dead who made it to the Fourth Gate. All she knew for sure was that when she needed it, the mirror was there.
Bridgette tilted and adjusted the reflective surface until she had it just right, until the dead woman facing this trial could, for the first time in her whole existence, truly see herself. Renai knew the moment that it happened, because the shadow she cast on the altar behind her took on definition and dimension, became a copy of the dead woman in every detail.
Every person alive, Renai had learned, had an image of the person they wanted to be, a single quality prized above all others. Courage or conviction or success, devotion or ambition, understanding or intelligence or wisdom. Though we’d like to think we possessed all of these, we knew deep down that perfection was unattainable. And so we chose one quality to strive after, one virtue on which to place all our hopes. Compassion sacrificed in the pursuit of success. Devotion to an ideal drowning out the capacity for understanding. Ambition allowed to die so that wisdom might flourish. It was not a conscious decision but a yearning of the soul, and as such happened without our awareness, even though it defined the trajectory of our lives and determined our consequences in the world to come.
Humans were beings defined by conflict, however. There were always two sides to a coin. It wasn’t as simple as good and evil. Choosing one virtue meant that its vice followed after. Within every courageous person, there lurked a coward. The truly compassionate were nonetheless capable of intense cruelty. The most intelligent person you’d ever met proved, once in a while, to be an idiot. They followed us always, these opposites, these traitors to the most fundamental aspect of our lives, h
ounding every step, mimicking every move, watching every moment.
They were our Shadows.
Sometimes—in drunken revelry, in fits of passion or rage, in the madness of youth or the infirmities of age, in dreams, whenever we are weak, in short—these Shadows drove our choices. They spoke with our tongues and acted with our hands. They ruined what we built, they hurt what we sought to heal, they hoarded what we would share, took when we would give. Weakness was human; times of failure were inevitable. No one could outrun their own Shadow. But if you weren’t careful, the Shadow assumed the role of the virtue. Isolated moments of weakness were replaced by occasional shows of strength. The compassionate child grew into a callous adult. The hardworking youth fell into sloth. The intelligent student, convinced of their own superiority, became a rigid, foolish teacher.
When the dead looked into Bridgette’s mirror, they didn’t merely look upon a reflection. The flames in her cauldron revealed both the virtuous self they were meant to attain and the Shadow self that had haunted them their entire life; the glass indicated which of the two they’d most often chosen to be. Above all else, the dead woman facing the trial of the Fourth Gate had been an honest woman. She’d broken laws—and promises, occasionally, which was more important in this place—but mostly she’d told the truth, even when it was inconvenient. She’d been a faithful lover, a steadfast friend, a straightforward employee. The lying, deceitful, untrustworthy Shadow at her back had been denied far more often than it had slipped into her shoes and twisted her tongue.
Which made it easy for Bridgette, drawing an ancient iron dagger from the sheath on her belt, to cut the Shadow from the dead woman in swift, decisive motions, like an experienced hunter skinning a kill. As Bridgette separated the Shadow self from the dead woman’s Essence, the dark shape shared less and less of her characteristics, first her facial features and clothing melted away, then her posture and even the semblance of hair, until only a vaguely human shape lay on the altar. As Bridgette worked, it coalesced into something like cloth, thick and billowing and fluid. It took only a few moments for Bridgette to slice the dead woman and her Shadow completely free from one another, gathering the dark material in her hands and stuffing it into a large cloth sack hanging from her belt. There was no blood, since the dead no longer had any, but that didn’t mean the process didn’t hurt. In the mirror’s surface, the dead woman was forced to examine every moment of weakness splayed out before her: every lie, every time she’d withheld the truth. Renai imagined that wounded her deeper than any blade ever could.
Whenever one of her own dead reached this moment in their journey through the Gates, Renai would have to fight down the tempest that lived inside her, that fierce, whirling power that responded to her joy with a zeal that bordered on euphoria. She didn’t understand what this power was, but she knew it was a contradiction as potent as the soul’s Shadow. It was a destructive force, but it was a cleansing, purifying kind of energy. The kind of destruction that paved the way for new growth, for reinvention. The kind of death that preceded resurrection.
Renai could feel it moving within her, waking in response to the dead woman’s change, her sloughing off of her Shadow like a snake shedding its skin. The storm wanted to help, wanted to facilitate that change. Wanted to scour away every last shred of the deceit from the dead woman the way a driving rain washed everything clean.
Because she was expecting it—because she’d braced herself for the storm’s surge—Renai was able to push that whirling wind back down to where it slept within her. Because in truth, the dead woman wasn’t truly free of the things she’d done.
Renai could hear her father’s voice reciting the part of Mass where parishioners would ask forgiveness from both God and their fellow faithful for having sinned: in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.
Once they’d truly seen themselves, the dead had to endure it all, the big mistakes they’d regretted their whole life, and the little failures that they’d mercifully forgotten. Bridgette’s mirror was a test, not an absolution. The Gatekeeper might cut away the Shadow self that had been drawn to those acts, but the dead had been the one to commit them. They would still bear their weight when they faced the Scales of Judgment. When they faced the Thrones.
By the time she finished quieting the tempest—restraining its power, even though she’d been prepared for it, felt like it got harder and harder each time—Bridgette had unlocked the Fourth Gate, which opened in the center of the altar, and let the dead woman and her whippoorwill guide pass through. Once she closed the Underworld Gate, the iron gate of the cemetery unlocked and swung open on creaking hinges. Renai went through first, with Sal sullenly shuffling close behind.
“Girlfriend, you look a mess!” Bridgette said as they approached, her voice thick with the burr of an Irish brogue. She wore a wide-skirted dress with a tight bodice that showed an intimidating amount of cleavage, an elaborately sewn garment full of pearls and lace, all in black, like a wedding dress designed for a funeral. “Has this mongrel the Thrones saddled you with got you digging graves with your own hands, then?”
Renai hadn’t fully realized it until the loa said it, but her run through the rain and the mud had left her filthy. Now that she thought about it, every part of her felt grimy, like dried sweat and dirt encased her in a second skin. Nothing she could do about it now, though. “You know how he does,” she said, shaking her head in an exaggerated rolling of her eyes. “He says we’re making graves, but he’s just hunting for bones.”
“That so?” Her green eyes glittered and shined, literally glowing in the darkness like a couple of distant stars. “Well, if it’s a bone he’s wantin’, I’m sure my faithless husband will be willin’ to provide.” Bridgette was married to Baron Samedi, a skull-faced god who went by the name Barren. He was the chief loa of the dead, and though they were both famously promiscuous, they loved one another fiercely.
“Don’t mind me,” Sal said. “You ladies just go ahead and talk about me like I ain’t fuckin’ standing here.”
“Right you are,” Bridgette said, snapping her fingers with both hands like she was clapping at a poetry slam. “My dear old mam always said that men were creatures of the earth, the best of them dumb as a stone and hard as a rock.”
Sal barked out a laugh in spite of himself. “How is it every time we meet, you end up talkin’ about my prick?”
“Och, sensitive subject is it? Have the Thrones finally gone and gotten you fixed, then?”
Renai cut in before Sal could respond, knowing they could go on like this for a while. “Speaking of the Thrones,” she said, tilting her head in the direction of the Gate, “we’ve got an appointment—”
The loa showed Renai her palms, nodding. “Say no more, dear, say no more.” She reached into her impressive cleavage and took out an iron key. “Death ain’t exactly one to be kept waitin’.”
Chapter Nineteen
This deep in the Underworld, the trees had given up on any pretense of reality and were as flat and as uniform as the stage scenery in a high school play. Lights, camera, action! Renai thought, still a little giddy from the exertion of restraining the spirit within her. A few minutes’ walk brought the two of them to a huge house at the foot of Elysian Fields that didn’t exist in the living world, an old plantation-style mansion. The growling, frenetic horns of a brass band called from within, and a crowd in fancy evening dress spilled out onto the lawn, flirting and mingling and laughing. At least, they were as loud as they could be, band and crowd both, given that they played and spoke in the desperate whispers of the dead.
At the entrance to the property, a small white fence separating the revelers from the rest of the Underworld, a loa named Babaco waited. Babaco was an older black man, wearing a practical brown suit with a matching fedora tilted just so, who leaned on a cane and smiled wide as they approached.
Everything about the Fifth Gate should have been comforting: a fancy party where the black fol
ks were doing the eating and drinking, instead of the ones serving the drinks or carrying the trays, and a grandfatherly figure, clean-shaven and warm-eyed and kind. The sight of this place filled her with dread. She’d been here before—on her own journey through the Underworld, as part of Jude Dubuisson’s schemes—but her memories of that time were brief and jumbled and awful.
And the worst of them happened at this never-ending party of the dead.
At her side, Sal cleared his throat. “How ’bout I handle this one,” he said. “I know you ain’t exactly Babaco’s biggest fan.” Renai just nodded, thankful that they didn’t have any dead with them who would be forced to listen to Babaco’s line of bullshit.
It didn’t matter how many times she heard it, the offer made by the Gatekeeper of the Fifth Gate pissed her off every time. This was the last chance before the end, he’d tell them. Before the Thrones. Before the scales. Babaco offered the dead an extension. A deferral from judgment. What he didn’t mention—unless the dead could manage to ask, anyway—was that this choice would last forever. That if they chose to stay here at the party in the depths of the Underworld, their coin of Fortune would continue on without them, and they’d be trapped here for all eternity.
According to Sal, it wasn’t such a bad deal. The music was good and the food was rich and the wine was free—what more could anyone ask for? Every once in a while, Renai would remind him that he’d asked for more back when he’d made this trip. He didn’t like that answer very much.
She knew, logically, that she couldn’t have chosen to stay here. She had too vivid a memory of standing before the Thrones, awaiting her own judgment. No, her unease had something to do with all of Jude’s trickery surrounding her resurrection. She had flashes of an angel’s wings and a big heavy revolver like something out of a cowboy movie. Red doors and gods laughing and the dead fleeing and a great wave of fear.
