by Ari Berk
Silas let the taunt pass. “None have fallen that I know of. Your curse against me has faltered. My mother saw to that. Its evil troubled her briefly, but she has quite recovered. The people of the town are scared. That is all. They will recover too. You are not the first ghost to trouble Lichport. Now, cousin, I ask you to leave this place.”
“I cannot grant your request. I have work here requiring my attention. I shall make of this place the New Hinnom.”
“There is no such thing as hell; at least, not as you mean it.”
“Why, this is hell. Or, it shall be soon enough.”
“Hollow words.”
“Your incredulity is the foundation of all your failures. If you had come here and taken up this throne, I could never have found this place. It is your fear of power that has opened the door for me, and has invited so many other ills besides.”
“I don’t rule over anything. This is my home. Any power I have comes from knowing where I belong.”
“And because you have set your sights so low,” Cabel continued, “I shall be Death and shall rule here.”
“You are not Death.”
“Look upon me, Silas Umber, and say it is not so.” Cabel’s skull shone from out of his blackened skin and his coronet caught the torchlight impressively. Dark flames leapt from his arms and torso, gathering and rising at his shoulders like a collar of crimson, gold, and sable.
“It is true. You look very terrible. But you are confused. I understand. I have seen others like you, spirits broken by time, their memories shattered or become absurd. Hear me, Cabel Umber: You are not Death. You are dead. There is a difference. Accept this and return to Arvale, or let me help you. I can bring you Peace at last. Cousin, aren’t you tired?”
Cabel Umber shook his head slowly. In the firelight the long shadows cast by the statues of the demons wavered about him.
“You cannot compel me, Silas Umber!”
“You still don’t understand. I am not trying to compel you. I am not threatening you. I am not forcing you to do anything. I am asking you to go.”
“You are no threat in any event. I am here because you are here. You made an oath and broke it, so I am here. You sought me out in my imprisonment and left the door open for me. I came. Now you wish to stand in judgment over me? But to no avail.”
“I will not stand or sit in judgment over you. Others may do so, but I shall not. It is not an Undertaker’s place to judge. Once, at Arvale, you asked me for sympathy and I offered it to you. I offer it again, if you will accept it. You are a shadow held together by fear and hatred. I can make all that go away. You may know Peace, as your daughter and granddaughter did.”
Cabel spoke through his teeth, and the muscles stretched over his skull pulled taut with anger. “I will suffer no man’s pity!”
Silas continued, his speech slow and measured. “Ah. There is such a difference between pity and sympathy. I am sorry you cannot see that.”
“You speak as though we are different. Not so! We are both come to the same place. It is no accident. But you carry loss in you like a tumor. It makes you weak. And it invites the intervention of others.”
Silas stood very still, unable to speak. There was a sharp angle of truth in his ancestor’s words. Cabel smiled, aware he had struck a blow. Slowly, Silas turned toward the bronze idol and looked into the fire. “Yes. It is true. We all carry our losses within us. But only when what we’ve lost is found may we free ourselves from fear and shame and hate.”
Cabel brought his hands together again and again, and the exposed bones clattered more than clapped. “In accord at last! Now, let me tell you what shall come to pass. I will, in time, hunt down all the living of Lichport and bring death to them, then—”
“No. That is not within your authority. That is my job. I am the Undertaker. When the time comes for any here to pass beyond, I will hold their hands and no one else.”
“So long as you live, they shall continue to fall. You cannot change this edict. Your life means their death, and death shall come terribly and from my hands.”
Cabel’s words beat down Silas’s patience and anger rose up to take its place. Silas quickly turned, his face hot and glowing from staring at the fire. But Cabel spoke again.
“You can do nothing.”
“So you’ve said. But I’ve been thinking about that. Silas Umber owes you a debt and so cannot strike you down. I am he, yet I am also more. I am Mors. I am Osiris. I am Janus, Serapis, Atis, Hermes, Anubis. It is from one of these names I might cast you down.” And as Silas’s imagination colored in the threat, his throat and mouth filled with words of power and punishment from the Book of the Dead, from the Undertaker’s ledger, and from hymns of anger hidden in his heart. Here, at the ready, were terrible words that tasted bitter on his tongue. Cabel moved swiftly back from Silas, fear beginning to tear at his form. Silas drew in a deep breath, ready to cry curses upon the ghost, but he stepped back too, swallowing his words. He would speak no evil. Cabel Umber had cursed himself by his actions in life and in death. Cabel would rise or fall now by his own will. And if he would not embrace Peace, others waited to help him meet another fate, others whose job it was to punish and not comfort.
Silas looked back at the idol and felt his own losses keenly and knew, without doubt, the fire was the only way. Cabel had a road to travel. Silas did too. Time for both of them make a start of their conclusions.
“Cousin,” Silas said, “let us make an end of this.”
Cabel Umber did not come closer, but anticipation sharpened his voice.
“As you will. A firstborn is all my ancient rite requires. I will walk the world again. That is the bargain. By the offering of a firstborn child, I will be born again and not die. Not as you see me now, but as I was before I saw too much of the world, before the darkness came. I will be as Adam in the garden. I shall hunt down the living. So the god of Canaan and Hinnom has promised me.”
“I will make good on my oath,” Silas quietly said, interrupting him. “Now.”
Surprise briefly replaced Cabel’s arrogant stance.
“Life for life,” said Silas with absolute calm.
Cabel seemed nervous again. His form wavered on the air.
Silas looked Cabel in the face and said, “I believe the terms were I was to bring you the Mistle Child. I failed to do so at Arvale. I’ve brought you another one.”
Cabel turned away from Silas’s stare. “That cannot be.”
“There is another, I assure you. And I give him to you. Let us be clear. When the Mistle Child is offered to the fire of your idol, my debt to you is paid?”
“It is. You make this offer willingly?”
“I do.”
“Silas Umber, I—”
“Do not speak. It’s bad enough I’ve had to hear so much of your talk already.”
He walked toward the idol and did not look back at Cabel.
The doors of Moloch’s massive bronze belly stood wide open, a gateway to the conflagration within. Silas reached into his pocket, stopped the dial of the death watch, and looked into the flames. In his mind rose the memories of other fires: Mother Peale’s hearth, his own fireplace, the candle at this mother’s funeral, the little floating flames of the dead that danced above the marshes. He looked in the fire and saw all fires. All one. He felt the presence of the children that had come this way. Far off he could hear their crying. So many had died here within the idol in ages past. Bodies, put inside, never taken out. Their bones were all ashes now and scattered. But even the idol of the horror-god was hallowed by their deaths. The path was lych. And his father had once passed this way. Silas could feel it. And as he understood the nature of what stood before him, the land of bones appeared beyond the flames. The way lay open now.
He said to Cabel, “It seems for one so learned in lore and so dedicated to filling the belly of this abomination, you understand very little about the nature of sacrifice. But I do. Eternity is not gained by sacrificing others. You need to have t
he guts to do it yourself.”
Cabel Umber stared and gibbered, and then began to laugh.
“Here,” said Silas. “Let me show you what I mean.”
Without another word, Silas walked into the fire. Flames clutched about him but he moved through them and past them, and in the distance, the familiar smell of asphodel drew him on.
LEDGER
If birdsong should be heard in Avernus, the reign of its present king must end and free shall be the dead.
—ANONYMOUS MARGINALIA, CIRCA EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
DOLORES UMBER SENSED HER SON leave the world, and it felt like she was being pierced with knives. The pain went right through her, even though all the flesh of her body, the flesh of her womb, was dead. This was the second time she’d felt her son go out of the world. Once had been enough. It was unbearable, and so she screamed like the old wailing women, and in that moment she understood: For some terrible things, there were no words.
Then she heard laughter coming from below, and anger swelled in her.
“Si, I will put it right for you. Whatever you’ve left to do, I’ll do it. Now.”
Dolores descended the steps into darkness. When she reached the chamber below, she followed her son’s footsteps inward to the center of the room.
Cabel threw back his skull and howled with laughter.
“Now comes the lady of the house! How pale she looks.”
Dolores did not answer.
“You have come to find your son? Oh, lady, he is dead and gone,” Cabel Umber said with triumph in his voice. His eyes were wide and wild. Flames danced about his brow. But at the end of his laughter, was there a hint of fear? Was he scared of her? What had happened here? What did the ghost think was about to happen? Dolores scanned the space, looking for some sign. “Where is my son? Show me my son!”
“Lady, I am no Lycus to sit upon my throne, awaiting your little Hercules to wander back from hell and put me in the ground.” He laughed again. “I am already in the earth as you can see, and he is not coming back. Even now, my god, Moloch the Hungry, has bathed him in fire and shrouded him in smoke. . . .”
“That’s enough from you. Get out!”
Cabel Umber chortled low in his throat.
“Where’s my son?”
“As I’ve told you,” said Cabel, gesturing at the idol. “He is gone and shall not return.”
“I said, get out of my house.” Her voice surged along its lower range. “Did you hear me, you son of a bitch? Get out, before I set the dogs on you.”
Cabel Umber moved across the floor toward Dolores and looked her up and down. When he spoke, the tone was different. No more bravado. Here was deference and enticement.
“Yes. You are lady of the house, indeed. I now see from whence your son got his fine looks. How far you have come to be here with me now and rejoice in my offering to the god of fire, the eater of children.”
Dolores raised her hand as if to strike the ghost, but Cabel Umber lowered his voice and spoke again, his words rising and falling like a chant.
“Lady, you are, like me, a marvel. We need not make war on each other. This place might be ours.” The ghost’s voice was like liquor, smooth and warm, and though she hated what he said, the way he said it drew her in. If diamonds could speak, they would sound like the ghost’s voice. His eyes shone too, and the glow was enticing, like candle flames seen through a gin tumbler. Every word the ghost spoke made her thirsty for more. She could not look away from him.
“May I share a truth with you, lady? It is our children who steal immortality from us. Why, had you remained childless, you might have lived forever. You were always a great beauty, that is plain to see . . . although . . . the years have added lines of care to your brow. Had your child not served you so, you might have been queen of this place.”
Dolores spoke, her voice wavering. “I will not die. I will live forever.”
“Oh, lady,” said Cabel, shaking his head, “you may endure forever, perhaps. But to live forever! That is what Moloch offers those who give up their firstborn. As we have both done. Know this: If you love another, you lose your life. But love thyself and live forever.”
Dolores slowly rocked her head from side to side, as if she were falling asleep to a lullaby.
“Yes. There is no need to argue. You feel in your heart that I speak the truth. You know your child has stolen your youth from you. As every child has done since the beginning of the world. They are clinging vines upon every parent’s life, and they draw out our vigor and liveliness. What you must have been in your youth . . . what you might yet become . . .”
Before Dolores’s eyes rose a vision from the nightland of her past. She saw herself again, a young woman with a life ahead of her. She saw what might have been. A life abroad. Lovers. Everything she saw was shining. No one needed to die. No one needed to look back. There were only the lights along the river, leading ever away and away.
Dolores could see it now. How she had been both terrified and relieved on that day her son was born still and motionless into the world. The scene rose again before her eyes and she remembered with clarity how long the pregnancy had felt, how each long, uncomfortable day had sharpened her fears of what would come, and what motherhood might keep from her. She could hear her own mother’s voice, plying her with the usual truisms about what was expected from a wife, and so Dolores had let familial duty veil her fears. Now all was a blur. Whose fault had her life been? Her son’s? The father’s? Both?
Cabel’s voice whispered, “Always and always the child is the cause. . . .”
Yes, thought Dolores, it was Silas who had wrought all her disappointments.
As Dolores’s brow furrowed, Cabel Umber smiled.
“In its way, the child always slays the parent. Or rather, slays the person, and leaves only the parent behind. Child-changed fathers and mothers . . . that’s what we become. But there is another way. . . .”
Dolores could feel the lull of the river again, the dark eddies of fear pulling her, drawing her back to that perdition of a life framed in regrets.
She put her hand to her cheek and the visions froze. The dead skin still held the warmth, or the memory of the warmth, of her son’s kiss good-bye. Dolores closed her eyes, and Silas’s face was waiting there. She could see him, standing beside her on the night boat. She could see him standing over her corpse. She heard him saying, “I love you, Mom,” and with those words rising in her mind, Cabel Umber’s spell broke and fell away from her.
She looked at the ghost and her eyes went white.
Silas had said those other women would help her. Now she wanted them.
Dolores stood stock still, except for her lips, which began to move slowly around a whisper. Whatever else Cabel Umber might be, he was a rat in her basement. When she had traveled by reed boat through the realm of night, she had heard words in the shadows of the Tuat, words of judgment and reckoning, and she spoke those words out loud, never taking her eyes off Cabel Umber. Then Dolores opened her mouth and screamed, an unearthly sound that was not a cry like any human had ever made before.
The vaults and stonework of the ceiling began to fade. Stars pierced the darkness. Above their heads was now hung a tapestry of some ancient midnight strewn with constellations of destruction. Dolores heard sounds above stairs, like the whirring of a spinning wheel, the churring of locusts, the song of a storm. They were coming.
Cabel Umber moved away from Dolores and closer to the idol, into its dismal shadow.
Dolores looked at Cabel Umber with her white eyes, and said, “I am the lady of this house and sister to the fates. I consign you to yours. You have killed my son. Let your destruction come.”
The noises above descended into the chamber and a furious wind rose, throwing dust and ash into the air. The flames within the idol were blown down low.
In the middle of the chamber, between Dolores and the ghost of Cabel Umber, stood three women. Their long dresses were encrusted with ash and their faces wer
e streaked with soot. Dolores recognized the three. They bared their teeth and cruelty shone from their pitiless brows. In their hands, where once they held skeins of thread and yarn, they gripped writhing serpents whose mouths dripped with venom. When the three spoke, it was in one voice, and all the room shook at their utterance.
“You have spilled the blood of kin. You have set your hand against the just. The judgment is against you.” The three turned to Dolores. “Sister? How shall he be condemned?”
“Let him go to where even the dead die. He must never come here again.”
“So be it,” said the three. “Let him be consigned to the Second Death. He shall burn in the Lake of Fire.” The three slowly raised their arms and, with fingers like iron nails, pointed at Cabel Umber.
The ghost shook violently on the air and seemed to thin and tear.
From the side of the chamber, heavy footfall could be heard entering the underground hall. It moved swiftly, and an instant later a creature stood behind Dolores Umber.
The Ammit sat back on its thick haunches and opened wide its long crocodile jaws.
“Now,” Dolores said to Cabel Umber, “you go straight to hell!”
The ghost did not speak. He raised his arm as if to throw something. His mouth hung open, though no words came. Sinews and shreds were already coming away from him, and chunks of the bone of his skull, all being drawn into the mouth of the Ammit, down into the Lake of Fire that roiled in its belly, into that second, terrible death from which there was no returning.
The stars had fled. The ceiling was once again stone and wood.
The three had vanished as quickly as they’d come.
Already, the fire was dying inside the idol. Dolores leaned down to the hot embers and slowly breathed out over them, saying, “Come home to me, my son. Come home.”
LEDGER
“In both life and death, travelers always meet two times.”
—LATVIAN ROAD PROVERB
