by Jonah Hewitt
Her daughter! She was amazed she hadn’t thought about her much since realizing she was dead. Nep was right. Somehow this place did make you forget. Lucy was alone up there with no one. Grandma Holveda had died years before, and all the other relations had passed on long ago, well almost all the relations had passed away. There was one, of course, but Maggie pushed that possibility far from her mind, until now. Where would Lucy go? Who would take care of her? She had tried so hard to keep Lucy away from all of that; she couldn’t imagine that all coming out now. No, she mustn’t second-guess herself. She had made that decision long ago, but of course, she wasn’t there to make decisions any more, and anything could happen.
Lucy was thirteen and not a child anymore. Lucy was strong and she knew her mother loved her. That had never gone unsaid. There was at least that. Lucy would find a way to get by; Maggie just knew it. Still, there was so much more that she needed to say, things she needed to know. And now she was gone and there was no way to tell her.
It didn’t help that Maggie’s last memory of life was the two of them tumbling violently in her car. She ran the accident over in her mind – the boy, where had he come from? And in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of the night? Still, he looked oddly familiar. Maggie had swerved but overcorrected, and the car had flipped, gone over the railing and then into the small stand of trees between the highway and the off-ramp. And then she was in the swamp, but then that swamp was here, wasn’t it? She wasn’t really sure when she had lost consciousness and only realized now she had no idea how Lucy had fared after the wreck.
“Where was Lucy now?!” she thought. How much time had passed really? It was so hard to tell! This morning in the swamp already seemed ages ago. Was she safe now or was she lying in agony in a ditch off the road still waiting for help? Or was she resting comfortably in a hospital? Or worse, was she weeping over her mother’s dead body? Maggie’s jaw clenched at the thought. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and pressed the heels of her palms to her face to keep from crying. She turned away and sniffed and pretended to wipe her nose on her sleeve as she pushed back the tears. She didn’t want that wretched blowfish to see her break up. In a weird way, she was grateful it was there. Its presence gave her an excuse to be tough. If she were alone, she just knew she would burst out sobbing again. She looked sternly at Hiero, but for once, other than its usual droning, it was mercifully silent. Lucy wasn’t here, she was still alive, she felt that much, and for the moment that was enough.
She thought about what Nep had said, that the dead don’t recognize each other. She desperately wanted to believe it wasn’t true, and that somehow, she could find her daughter when she came here to the underworld, but even now her memory was dimming and she knew Nep was telling the truth. She could feel it. She needed something resolute in her memory – something she wouldn’t forget about her daughter. She thought of all the things she could remember, her crooked smile, her sandy hair, her sarcastic voice, the way Lucy rolled her eyes at her whenever she didn’t want to do something she asked her to do…her eyes…that was it. Lucy had the most brilliant, green eyes. She could think of her daughter and remember her bright green eyes. She would always remember the eyes. And with that thought, Maggie Miller didn’t feel like crying so much anymore.
Maggie was so lost in thought that she had to stop and look around to figure out where she was. She was in an open square with tombs on all sides when she realized she was alone. She had outpaced Hiero by several steps. She turned around frantically looking for the little monster for a moment before she spied him. Hiero was panting at the sheltered corner of a crumbling tomb at the edge of the square where they had entered, crouching out of sight. To Maggie it almost looked…frightened. That made her snort in satisfaction but only for a while.
Maggie turned. “What’s got you spooked, you drunken Scotsman’s nightmare?”
The fact that there was something here that could scare a creature like Hiero was a suddenly horrifying thought. She heard the sound of doors slamming, and windows being shuttered in the square. She hadn’t seen anyone before, but they were obviously there and didn’t want to be seen. What was going on? This place was so exasperating. She felt a faint, chill breeze blow through the square. Slowly, she began backing up towards Hiero’s position.
“What is it…more shades?” she whispered at the little imp.
She had to turn around to look at Hiero to see his response because he was so quiet. The imp just flicked its barbed tongue through its trumpet snout and said nothing. Even its constant droning was practically silent. Maggie narrowed her eyes and scanned the square. What was she missing? She thought of that morning and how at first she had thought Nephys was just a passerby or that Hiero was a…well she didn’t know what she thought Hiero was, a very ugly search dog maybe, but she certainly didn’t think he was a demonic bagpipe. She thought about everything that Nep had told her, how unreal things were real here and that people saw what they wanted to see. She suddenly realized that seeing here was not a matter of actual sight. After all, she wasn’t looking with her actual eyes – those were back in her real skull with her body, along with her real flats on her real dead feet. Seeing things here was something entirely different.
What was Hiero seeing that she couldn’t? She narrowed her eyes and then realized that squinting was pointless. She was still thinking like she was alive and looking through her real eyes. There was nothing to focus on anyway, so she tried doing the opposite. She attempted unfocusing her eyes instead. As she relaxed her eyes and panned across the sandy square, she saw it, if only for a fleeting moment: a tall, white, shrouded, female figure with black pits for eyes and what appeared to be long, black hair. It was wandering the edges of the square unseen looking for something, but as she saw it she gasped, and it turned its empty sockets on her suddenly. In that instant she knew two things, it had seen her, and it knew that Maggie had seen it!
The specter raced across the square at frightening speed, it s black hair flying madly behind it.
“Guh-WOONK!!” Hiero was instantly there, bashing up against her urging her to move. She didn’t need to be told twice. She turned and fled. Hiero was tearing along at a terrific pace, hooting and shrieking in high tones as she was desperately trying to keep up. She knew instinctively that the thing, the black-pitted specter, or whatever it was, was right behind her and gaining. She was trying to think and run at the same time without much luck. What did this thing want? If shades eat misery and imps eat frustration, what does this thing eat? Fear?! If so, it was going to have a heckuva banquet because she couldn’t for the life of her stop panicking now. She was terrified. Their feet pummeled the soft sand sapping her strength as she ran down the rows and rows of tombs, away from the square and deeper into the tortuous paths of the city.
Hiero was turning and running side to side, searching for something. She kept tailing him hoping he would find what he was looking for, but she wasn’t certain his escape plan included her. Finally, Hiero gave out a loud honk and led her to a big tomb with two large, Egyptian-looking cat statues framing the entrance. She barely had any time to make the turn and had to grab one of the statues frantically to keep her feet from slipping out from under her. Once inside, she screeched to a sudden halt.
Cats! Thousands and thousands of cats! Calicos and Mau-Maus, blues and tabbies, but ghostly, pale and translucent, lounging about everywhere. They stopped whatever they were doing and instantly trained their eyes on her and raised their hackles. What on earth were they doing here? How was this going to help?! She had no time to think because Hiero was right behind her. Hiero plowed into her, knocked her down hard and stomped on her back to make sure she was down. Ouch! It wasn’t fair she could feel so little of everything else and yet pain was as livid as ever. At least he hadn’t used the butcher knife.
Instantly, the dark presence of the specter was over her. Hiero was standing right on her back jumping up and down and bleating up a horrible cacophony. She covered her head in he
r arms waiting for the inevitable touch or blow from the specter. She wasn’t quite certain what happened next, but if you can imagine a sound like a thousand hissing cats fighting in a metal barrel, that was close.
Thousands of cats poured over her, or more accurately, through her. The ghostly cats passed right through her and their tiny claws felt like they were made of ice and broken glass. Each one that passed through was like a sharp jab in her stomach followed by icy pricklings. The screeching sound of the cats just barely masked a rasping howl like a screaming woman and a sudden burst of icy wind. Only when it was silent did she dare to peek out from under her arms. Hiero was still on her back, hooting a little less triumphantly than usual, but still in his annoying tone.
“Get off!” she yelled. She brushed him off, pulled herself up out of the sand and glanced around. The tall spectral figure had vanished, and so had all the cats.
Hiero gave off several snorfling sounds that sounded like mocking laughter.
She wasn’t at all certain what had just happened, but she had a nagging feeling the little imp had just saved her life – well, her afterlife at least. She paused for a long time and observed the foul Hiero with a critical eye and was about to say “Thank you” when Hiero suddenly spat a particularly ugly piece of phlegm from his blowpipe onto her left shoe. She gave him a contemptuous look and forgot any sudden feeling of gratitude she once had. She wasn’t certain if the little monster hadn’t planned the whole thing as a way of torturing her. In fact, she wondered if she had ever been in any real danger at all.
“You vile little thing. You knew that would happen.”
“Wharant?” the bile-spitting creature replied.
She narrowed her eyes at it, but it was inscrutable.
“Well then, if you’re quite pleased with yourself, I think we should go. I’d like to get to Nep’s place before some other horror jumps out of the woodwork.”
Hiero didn’t hesitate but gamboled off like a dog that was altogether too happy with itself. Maggie sighed, wiped the spit off her shoe on the backside of her pant-leg and followed.
Chapter Twelve
The Stone
By the end of the day, Nephys had worked his way through several soggy books and was now carefully going through the actuarial tables of the Philadelphia Assurance, Savings and Loan. The schoolgirl with the long, blond braids to this left was staring intently at a stack of silver disks with holes in their centers. The boy who brought the works to be copied had set them on her desk. Neither she nor Nephys had the foggiest clue what to do with them, but Falco had insisted they were, in fact, books and needed to be recorded all the same. She started to trace them, but since they were all the same that hardly seemed adequate, so now she was looking intently at the reflections they made as if the mystery would be revealed that way.
Things were changing awfully quickly up there, thought Nephys. He wondered if books would disappear altogether and be replaced by silver disks, just as books had replaced scrolls and paper had replaced parchment and parchment had replaced papyri. The thought that he would be trying to copy down inscrutable silver disks for the next several millennia made him very nervous.
Attendants began snuffing out candles and lamplights and collecting finished copies to be moved to the sacred libraries of the Great Master. It was the sign that the day’s work was nearing its end. There was no objective way to tell time in Limbo. As far as Nephys could tell, he could have been there for days, not that it mattered, but he wondered how they knew when to close up shop. Perhaps Falco told them. Perhaps he only closed up shop when he got tired. Nephys was in the process of winding down the final few touches, using red ink to write the word, “Indemnity.” When he heard some kerfuffle (another red-letter word) coming from the entrance.
A large, hulking figure was in the door, broad and dark and armored. Though in shadow, it was clear he was no child of Limbo. Death had many attendants. The children were the civil servants, valets, scribes and guides, but they were not warriors. This was a soldier of Death. He towered over Falco, and the two were discussing something intently. The figure had to bend nearly in half to communicate with the eight-year-old Roman taskmaster. Falco also bowed, but not out of necessity, out of deference. Falco hardly bowed to anyone. Usually, the rule was that he did not bow to someone who couldn’t help his ascent up the hierarchy of Death’s minions. Falco obviously thought this soldier was worth some overt sycophancy.
Falco clapped his hands once. That was the signal that the day was over. The long queue that Nephys had mercifully managed to miss this morning due to his excursion in the swamps was now lining up. A thousand pencils, pens and quills were set down in unison, and the oily press to Nephys’ right side hissed once and stopped. Everyone dutifully lined up without a sound except for the muffled footsteps. No one was really eager to come and no one was eager to leave either, but, for some reason, the line was moving even more slowly than usual.
Nephys leaned to one side to look around the blond schoolgirl in front of him. The line paused at the entrance. As each scribe passed, they were directed to look at something in Falco’s hand all while the massive soldier looked on. Nephys leaned back in line and shrugged. The day had been full of strange events. As the line trudged ever slowly towards the door, he thought of Maggie and Hiero and wondered how they were getting on together. Somehow he was more worried about Hiero than Maggie. And then he thought of something he didn’t expect…Maggie’s daughter. Maggie had had a rough entry into the afterlife, but he couldn’t imagine things were any better for the girl she left behind. She was now an orphan, and that was something Nephys could imagine very well…all the children in Limbo were orphans.
Nephys kept his head down looking at his shoes as the line shuffled forward, much like he and everyone else always did, but as he finally approached the door after a more languorous wait than usual, he looked up and saw what his dim eyes could not make out from farther away. Before him was Falco and behind him was the massive figure clad in a bloody, chain-mail hauberk that fell to his knees. A black tabard with a large, silver triangle emblem on it covered the middle of a broad gut, but the shoulders were so wide and the arms so thick he gave the impression of a massive wall of muscle and not someone given to over-eating. Above the broad shoulders was a thick neck surrounded by a black chain-mail coif.
The neck rose to a broad, grizzled chin and a wide mouth, but not much further up, past a thick mustache the head just ended! A small piece of the thick nose was left but above that, nothing. Like a tree stump, the top of the head had been cleaved right off by a broadsword or axe, Nephys didn’t know, but it just wasn’t there anymore. Nephys was tall enough he could just see the gruesome cross-section of the person’s skull, like the rings of a fallen tree, from just above the upper jaw to the back of the head, exposing the labyrinthine pattern of the brains. The brains had a texture like polished stone, grey and shiny. The figure’s helmet was under one arm, and Nephys wondered if the top of the head, with the eyes, hair and the rest of the skull was still in it.
There were many wounded things in the Great Master’s service, but this was far beyond the everyday abominations of Limbo. The horror of what he was looking at seemed to clear Nephys’ dim eyes and as he gaped up at it, his hand went instinctively to the gash at this neck. For the first time he felt grateful for such an understated wound. What would it be like to go around the afterlife without the top of your head?!
“Nephys?”
Falco’s cold voice brought Nephys’ attention back to the diminutive tyrant.
“Yes?” Nephys said a little too loudly, a little too tremulously.
“The Great Master wishes to thank you for your service.” And at that, Falco held out his hand. In the hollow of his hand was a small pile of glassy, grey pebbles like thousands of others that existed in Limbo. But Falco gestured for Nephys to take one as if it were some great treasure.
“Thank you,” Nephys said nervously. He reached to take one, but as he did, his eyes sa
w something glinting with an unfamiliar light at the bottom of the pile. It was cool and yet brilliant, but not blue or black or grey or even red…it was something else… a color that he remembered, but couldn’t quite place. It was so compelling and beautiful he could hardly stand it. It glowed with an intensity unlike any light he had seen below and he instinctively reached for it until he heard a grating sound like a millstone above him. The soldier was turning his neck to “look” at him; or rather he was turning the empty space above his mustache where his eyes used to be to look at him. Falco narrowed his empty white orbs at him. Nephys quickly picked a small, grey, mundane stone next to the brilliant one. Falco nodded his consent, and Nephys left.
Once in the street, the crowd thinned out, but the pace didn’t quicken at all. No one here was ever in a hurry, but Nephys felt the need to quicken his pace all the same. He glanced back over his shoulder. Falco was no longer holding up the line but was talking to the soldier. The soldier bent over so that Falco could speak into the empty space where his ear had once been. Then Falco went inside and the line moved much faster. The soldier stood up and looked with his half-missing face in Nephys’ direction. Nephys felt the urge to do something he hadn’t done in a thousand years, and as soon as he turned the corner out of the empty sight of the terrifying soldier, he did it…he ran all the way back home.
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Chapter Thirteen
Rivenden
The rolling hills and counties surrounding Philadelphia had once been filled with rich plantations and country estates with elegant manor homes. Back then the actual city of Philadelphia was confined predominantly to the modest and tidy grid of William Penn’s original city plan. However, as horse and carriage were replaced first by steam locomotive and then later the automobile, the city grew until it consumed all the farms and old estates. Small settlements and modest villages, which had once been separate communities, Manayunk, Darby, Mt Airy, were now just neighborhoods of the larger metropolis. Some of the grand estates were turned into public parks, but most had long ago disappeared and been consumed by the dense, urban landscape of row homes, apartments and storefronts. A rare few, however, had escaped this fate and remained in private hands, though they were now entirely surrounded by the city. Rivenden was one of these.
