Half-Resurrection Blues

by Daniel José Older

  “Seen some too.”

  “Mmm, of course, we’ve had a few unfortunate encounters, yes. Well, I’d like you to understand the context of my actions a little before you write me off as just a mad sorcerer.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “But to do that, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”

  I almost laugh but remember it might kill me. “How would you like me to accomplish that? I’m slightly indisposed.”

  “Your body, yes. But I don’t need that part of you. You will be quite safe here, I can promise. The blade has successfully prevented a complete hemorrhage, and your body is remarkably proficient at survival.”

  “You’re going to take my soul.”

  “Not take, Carlos. Merely borrow.” When he laughs, I hear some chunk of phlegm get dislodged in his throat and he sputters and coughs a few times to clear it. Then he swallows loudly, and I throw up a little in my mouth. “With your permission, of course.”

  “Of course. And what makes you think I would ever give you permission to separate my soul from my body, Sarco?”

  “Because I’ve already done it once, my son. I created you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I think about Russell Ward and his divine infiltration theory. I have no idea what’s in store, and I don’t know how convinced the old wizard will be by me playing along, but I don’t have much choice. Also, there’s a part of me that’s truly curious. It’s almost a relief to stop resisting and give over control. As I come to my decision, I realize another thing: Sarco was right. The rational weighing of options distracted me from being terrified and yes, the feeling of sudden rot has subsided.

  “I’m listening.” Trying to ignore the sense that everything I say has been pre-scripted and plotted out by Sarco, from my trembling doubts to my grudging acceptance. He closes his eyes, magnanimous enough at this small victory to not gloat.

  “I was once like you.”

  “A pincushion?”

  He chuckles. “Well, that too, but that’s another story. I mean I was destroyed and resurrected, occupied that same uncomfortable inbetweeness as you, my son.” I suppress a shudder. “I was twenty-eight, a soldier of fortune roaming from massacre to massacre in the mess of fortified city-states and marshlands that later became Europe. I had dabbled in sorcery, of course, but they were burning witches at the time, and I figured there were better ways to die than as a mound of charred flesh.” He scrunches up his face in disgust and then gazes down at me. “Do you believe me?”

  I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore, so I just stare back at him. Sarco shrugs. “The head of a small province north of Padua wanted to swallow up all the surrounding battlements and form them into a protective ring around his own castle. A recluse living in a tower just outside of the realm returned all his messengers as dead bodies slung over their own horses. I had just barely made it out of the Florentine Black and White wars. My whole body was a festering wound and I couldn’t see straight, but war was all I knew how to do. We launched our attack on the tower, drunk, cocky, and reckless, as always. The ground started shaking, and before we could grasp what was happening, a hooded army rose straight out of the earth and routed our assault. It was over in minutes. We were torn from limb to limb, tossed aside like rag dolls, slashed, crushed, and beheaded. I landed in a heap beneath three of my fellow mercenaries.”

  Deep lines stretch across Sarco’s face. Two crease his forehead, cross each other, and then break off into tiny tributaries that disappear beneath that mane of greasy black hair. His cheeks are sunken in, speckled by dry patches and ingrown hairs. “You died,” I say.

  Sarco nods. “Mostly.” He opens his eyes, gazes down at me with something I can only call empathy. “The Towermaster came out at dusk. I sensed him. Even from the edge of death, I sensed him, sniffing through the corpses like a hellhound. He stopped over me—an enormous ancient man with no pupils in his eyes and hands like slabs of meat. Power radiated off him in heavy, nauseating waves. He pulled me from under those bodies—me and three others. Worked some sorcery on us and threw us in a dungeon to either rot or recover. I was the only one who made it. The others . . . I ate to stay alive. I was his slave and then his apprentice.” Sarco smiles. “And then his killer.”

  “And me?”

  “I wandered around the world like that, like you, for more than a century before it became tedious. I progressed. Half dead isn’t all there is, you know.”

  “Imagine my relief.”

  “But it is a necessary beginning. A first step, so to speak. So yes, I did this to you, or had it done, I should say. And you survived. And yes, there are others. I gave you this gift, life, and turned you loose in the world. You didn’t know; you can’t ever fully understand what that means, of course, but now I’m here to ask something of you. You don’t have to decide now. All I want is to show you what I mean.”

  The truth is: I want to know what the hell he’s talking about. Even if it’s all lies or insane ramblings, he seems to know a thing or two about who I am. More than I do even. And it’s becoming more and more important that I figure that out. What was once a simple acceptance of the void grew suddenly and steadily into a curiosity and now a hunger.

  I look up at Sarco and nod. “Okay,” I say through clenched teeth. “Do it. But don’t think I trust or believe anything you tell me.”

  Surprisingly, he doesn’t laugh again. Instead he furrows his brow in concentration and places his long fingers on my chest. And then I black out.

  * * *

  I wake up light-headed. No. It’s not just my head. My whole body. I’m floating. I’m barely there. I scuttle backward, dizzy with these new strange physics. A wave of nausea rises, but I get a handle on it before anything drastic happens. Sarco stands in a far corner of the room, looking smug. And I . . . No, my body is lying on the couch, still impaled, looking grayer than usual. A dark red splotch has formed on my shirt where the blade sticks out. At first I think I’m dead, that the bastard hoodwinked me somehow, but then my de-almafied body takes a shallow breath. I live, however tentative that lifeline may be.

  “You see,” Sarco’s voice says from the absolute wrong part of the room. I whirl around and find myself face-to-face with a devastating void. Something like an empty television screen—just nothingness. Its shape is tall and gangly like Sarco but somehow . . . different. A twisted face glowers out at me—it’s too blurry to identify, but I can see it’s frowning something fierce. I realize the body in the corner is an empty husk, a mannequin. The guy knows what he’s doing if he can leave his physical body behind in a standing position, on a whim apparently. From what I’ve heard, that’s usually the kind of slick move that takes hours of preparation.

  I have now established beyond a doubt that Sarco does not fuck around.

  * * *

  The rain doesn’t land on my not-flesh. It sears right through it and leaves a tingling trail of sensation in its wake. I’m still marveling at the lightness, the dizzying freedom of being only spirit. Sarco is all business now that he’s secured my go-ahead. Once I’d gotten my shit together enough to move around, he shot me a quick, “Come with me,” and slid out the door into the rainy midnight streets without looking back.

  We’re moving fast, blazing through the darkness like plastic bags blown by the wind. I get the hang of it pretty quickly: thought controls movement. You want to go somewhere, you point yourself in that direction and propel forward on the engine of your own desire to arrive. Our long, translucent legs lunge with graceful steps just above the pavement. We brush past some night walkers, a few crackheads, and a security guard on his cigarette break, and they each shudder and look around as we slither by.

  This is what Riley deals with. This is death.

  “Where are we going?” I ask as we round a corner past a deserted lot.

  “You’ll see.”

  Asshole.

  We head steadily south. Bed-Stuy passes in a blur of brownstones, corner stores, and Chinese j
oints; everything else is shuttered up at this hour. Even the Junklot is deserted: no old men malign one another over the domino table; the monstrous yard dogs are huddled away in their little tin shelters. Sarco slips across Atlantic Avenue without pausing, and I don’t want to show fear or hesitation, so I do the same. A tractor-trailer plows right through me, all climaxing shushes of rainwater and grinding engines; I cringe even though I know better, open my spirit heart to accept whatever traumatic death awaits, but of course nothing happens. The truck is not one of those objects that can reach out of the physical world and into the spirit one, and as long as I’m not putting out that special effort to manifest myself onto some real-life object, it’s like we never touched.

  I saunter-float along behind Sarco, marveling at the many mysteries this phantom sorcerer holds. My life, my death: I do want to know. I can’t pretend I don’t. I want to know everything. About my life, my death, the Council, what would drive a man to throw so many lives to the wind. I won’t like him, or the answers I’ll get, probably, but I have to know. I’m done with not knowing. Then I’ll realize it’s all bullshit and walk away content. And then I’ll fuck his operation up. But first I have to know.

  I shudder as we pass Mama Esther’s. The block is sleeping, oblivious to the terrible ticking clock that has been born in their midst. Oblivious to the fury of the ngks. I wonder, briefly, where those young lovers from back when have gone to. I wonder if Mama Esther’s up there stewing in her confusion, or perhaps plotting some elaborate scheme to set things right. I’ve seen more of the real Mama Esther in this past week than I had in the whole time living at her place. And then it hits me: this area’s probably crawling with soulcatchers.

  I make a hissing noise at Sarco to let him know, but he’s already ground to a halt and is waving at me to do the same. We hover just above the pavement for a minute, panting and taking in rain. Nothing moves on the block besides the windblown oaks. The streetlights show ugly orange splotches of the never-ending drizzle. And there’s the soulcatcher: a tall fellow, all cloaked and helmeted, hunched forward and strutting toward us.

  “Back!” Sarco hisses into my mind. I hurl my body behind a building and wait. The soulcatcher bristles with the knowledge that someone is lurking. I can feel his sudden focus from around the corner. And then it dawns on me that I’m hiding from one of my own soldiers. I know why and how I got here, but still, the thought is jarring. If he stumbles on us, there’ll be a horrible moment of recognition and then . . . Sarco will probably kill him.

  We wait for a few minutes, breathing heavy breaths into the night, and then the soulcatcher wanders off. “Come. Quickly.” We dash across the street, long spirit legs carrying us through the rain, and then move fast down Franklin Ave. and hook a right on Eastern Parkway. And then I realize where we’re going.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  You’re taking me to the entrada.”

  “The entrada is only a means to an end, Carlos.”

  “You’re taking me to Hell.”

  Sarco smiles for the first time since we left my place, a gaping empty grin across his static-laced visage. It’s better when he’s just serious-looking, actually. “There’re things you must see there.”

  “Why? What’s this about?”

  “It’s about me having a chance to explain myself. I told you, I need your help. And I know your mind is already poisoned against me. Fine. Just see things as I do for a moment and then do what you will.”

  The park is all darkness tonight. Those lamps and their dim haze are a joke. We enter, and immediately I feel that pulsing of supernatural park life. It’s even stronger now that I’m fully spirit, as if I’ve somehow tapped into a vast, swarming network of otherworldly creatures and undead souls. Every move I make sends a tremble along the weblines, and the park fluctuates and exhales on the whims of all its haunted guests.

  And then we’re standing in front of that hovering emptiness in the shadows of the trees. I realize that Sarco’s staticky void is probably made up of something quite similar to the entrada; he becomes almost invisible standing in front of it. And then he’s gone. And I know he wants me to follow. I’m full of dread—an unnatural feeling for me until pretty recently. Everything in me wants to turn around and float back through Brooklyn to where my body lies pinned to the couch. I stand there, perched on the brink of two universes, gazing dreamily into this hypnotic gate of Hell.

  I have to know.

  I have to find out what’s going on. For Riley, for me, for Dro. For Sasha, in spite of everything. The only way to end this is to get to the bottom of it, even if that means walking into obvious damnation. I take a deep breath and feel my barely there body flap gently in the wind like laundry on the clothesline. Then I step into the entrada.

  * * *

  Most afterlifers spend their time in the Underworld. The Council does its best to keep it that way, but of course, there are always stragglers. Life has that certain magnetism; it draws death in even as it repels it. They chase each other like high school sweethearts, now loving, now fighting. Teasing explodes into full-blown warfare, which leads to great make-up sex. The sun sets and the moon rises; the cycle begins again. The dead will always strive toward living, and the living will always cruise inevitably toward death. What keeps things stable, as Mama Esther pointed out, is that divine inexplicable balance.

  Sometimes it’s nostalgia that keeps a spirit swinging back up into to the sunlit earthly plane. Could be an open thread or some unanswered question. Or the perception of one. The dream of a memory can go on haunting a soul well past the grave, can reap supernatural havoc for ages; it drives many a glowing shadow to late-night wanderings through the Brooklyn streets.

  Besides a few notable exceptions, the living tend to wait till their time has come before going downstairs. I mighta passed through during my however-long-it-was period between death and resurrection, but if I did, I have no memory of it. Since then, the closest I’ve come is the Council’s wide-open misty warehouse.

  Until now.

  First it’s just darkness. Gradually, shapes waver into existence around me. They’re abstract, though, and don’t really seem sure whether they exist or not. Far off in the murkiness, swirling misty towers jut into black skies. Is there a sky in the Underworld? Whatever it is that surrounds me, it’s splashed with grayish clouds and seems to go on forever. What’s gone is the striking contrast between my own semiexistence and the solidity of the physical world. Here, everything is vague and ethereal and at first it’s disconcerting as shit.

  Sarco stands a few feet away, staring intently at me. He’s excited. I can feel it bristling in the air around both of us, see his body panting up and down with anticipation. He’s gotten me this far—some massive check on his to-do list for fucking up the planet, I’m sure. And now gears are turning for the next series of steps.

  “Welcome to death.” Sarco’s voided face breaks into another grin. He loves this shit.

  “All right, man. Show me what you brought me here to show me and let’s get this over with.”

  “Why the hurry, Mr. Delacruz? Your body surely has a few more hours before it begins to decompose. Enjoy yourself. Few mortals have been where you stand.”

  “Charming. I’m charmed. Now, if you please.”

  There are shapes congregating around us, fluttering shadows, hunched over in vague humanoid forms. They lope toward where we stand, humming with curiosity. I start to feel suffocated, like the gathering swarm of ghosts is hoarding all the oxygen in the place. But then, I probably don’t even deal in oxygen in this state. Either way, the feeling is not pleasant. Sarco draws a blade and waves it in a great semicircle. The wandering ghosts fall back with murmurs of shock and anger. A wide berth has been cleared around us, but I notice that the shadowy crowd keeps growing exponentially. Death seeks out life like a drug.

  “Come,” Sarco says, and for the first time, I detect a hint of something off in his voice. Is it fear? Frustration? I have no way of knowing. Either
way, maybe all is not going quite according to the plan.

  “This way.” He sweeps his arm again, clearing a throng of whining, whispering shrouds. “Stay close. I would hate for you to get caught up in the swarm. You know how the dead love to make things their own.”

  He sounds somewhere in between genuine and mocking. I don’t even care which it is anymore. The thickness in the air is making it hard to concentrate. I try to focus on his towering form as it glides on those long legs through the clearing of ghosts. The shadows close in behind us, reach out with long, icy fingers. They’re hungry, lonely, aching with wrath and desire but otherwise empty. Empty and they sense something else, something full and alive, even if it’s just the torn-out soul of a living man. Still, it’s different, an anomaly in this place of death. And they want some.

  “The whole Underworld is like this?”

  Sarco is a pretty wack Virgil, but he does seem to know what he’s talking about. Even if I can’t trust a word he says. “No, this is like the first sight of any third-world country. These are the neediest that clutter around the airports and train stations to get a glimpse or grapple a shred of the world they can never have. A sickening horde.” He swipes his blade again, grunting with irritation, and the ghosts cleave away like windblown leaves. “Always wanting something. Wanting, wanting, wanting. Their whole essence is neediness. Tragic, really. Tragic and disgusting.”

  My whole flimsy body goes cold suddenly and I can’t move. Sarco sweeps on ahead, not realizing I’m detained, and I watch as the shadows close around behind him. They’re all over me, sliding in and out of my feeble existence, merging cruelly with my shroud, wrapping cold tentacle-like arms around and around me. I try to call out, but nothing happens. Try to project my mortal terror across the telepathy waves toward my enemy and savior, but all I hear is the silence of death and the occasional moans of these ghosts.