by Devon Taylor
“Ah…” Basil said, sounding amused. “He’s got a bit of tough skin on him after all. Good for you, mate.” He smacked Rhett on the shoulder. “You ready to meet the rest of the gang?”
“The … rest…?”
The stairs had led them up what must have been a few dozen or so different decks of the ship. Now they were standing outside a set of polished steel doors, a look that was a little more modern and familiar. They reminded Rhett of so many doors in New York, battered and commonplace. Here, the sight just freaked him out. He willed his skin to break out in goose bumps and, miraculously, it did. They crawled across his arms in a delightful chill. He could see them breaking out and then fading away. It seemed that the mind still held an insurmountable amount of control over the body. If Rhett wanted a physical reaction, he could force himself to have one—feeling with the senses was no longer involuntary. Deep down, below all the layers of confusion and anxiety that had been settling in on him like strips of tight, smothering gauze, he was fascinated.
Basil pressed a button near the doors and they split apart, disappearing into cavities in the walls. Rhett stared.
Beyond the doors was an entirely different part of the ship, an up-to-date, twenty-first-century paradise. It was a large atrium, wide open, with winding stairs to different levels that went back down into the ship for as far as Rhett could see. Here there was no rapid change in decorum. Everything was polished steel and glass, lit by a soft, bluish glow. Rhett felt like he was standing in the belly of a starship rather than some rusty old sea vessel. And besides that, there were other people. Throngs of them, milling about, working behind the glass walls of some of the rooms, talking together with folded arms and invested stares. They were all in darkish clothing, and they all appeared to be human. At least, on the outside they did. There were races and ethnicities from all over the world. But no space aliens or monsters that Rhett could see. For now.
Here was a group of middle-aged men, hunched together around a wide sheet of paper, pointing at it, commenting, nodding in agreement.
Here was an elderly woman, trotting up a set of steps to another deck with the same stamina as a twenty-something jogger in Central Park.
Here was a little kid, tinkering under the light of a workbench in another room, her hands busy with some kind of contraption, putting it together or taking it apart.
Rhett stood at the railing, peering down at the hivelike commotion, feeling the ship list and pull. He wanted to be nauseous, and for a moment, because his brain made it happen, he was. But he was also excited. More and more, the notion that he might be dreaming, that this was all just some sort of mental interpretation of the damage he’d suffered, was fading. His imagination did not have the capacity to think any of this up. He hadn’t been a jock, but he hadn’t been too deep into creative arts, either. He had no talent for artistry or writing or music. He couldn’t catch a football to save his life. Rhett Snyder had been a pebble wedged into the tiny divide in the concrete pillars of high school, dropping between the cracks and vanishing there.
But this. This was no product of Rhett’s—or anybody else’s—subconscious. And the fact that there were other people, people who were like him and would understand him and might even be able to explain what was happening to him, was more exciting than anything he’d seen so far. It gave him hope. Hope that his parents were here somewhere, waiting for him.
“We call this the Column,” Basil said. “Pretty much the only part of the ship that we stick to unless our … uh … duties take us elsewhere.”
Rhett glanced sidelong at Basil and caught that irritating, know-it-all grin.
“And these fine folks,” he continued, gesturing around at the busy clusters of bodies, “are the crew of the Harbinger. Myself included. And now you.”
He was so matter-of-fact about it that Rhett almost missed the last part. But he did catch it, and his resolve hardened again.
“I’m not going to be part of any crew,” he said. “I don’t know why you brought me here or even who the hell you really are. But I told you, I’m just interested in finding my parents. I … I don’t think I’m supposed to be here, and I don’t plan on staying.”
Basil’s cheery demeanor was unfazed. “We’ll see, mate. How about you come have a chat with my team and you can see how you feel after?” He was gesturing across the open part of the atrium, to the other side of the deck, where there was a tiny collection of people who looked close to the same age as Rhett and Basil—two girls and one massive guy. Basil was already moving in their direction.
When Basil approached, one of the girls rolled her eyes at him. She had dark hair, brown eyes, and long legs in a pair of dark pants. She was also muscular, toned through her arms and shoulders—obviously not a physique that was gained after her death but something she must have had prior to it. In other words, not someone that Rhett would have had the courage to ask out on a date.
The other girl was scrawny, probably the youngest of them all, and up close Rhett could see that she was probably closer to middle school age. There was a smattering of dark freckles across her cheeks, some of them the same color as her red hair, half-hidden by the too-big pair of glasses she had on. She was hunched over some sort of tablet—an actual electronic device, from the look of it—poking at it, biting her lower lip, not really acknowledging anybody but still appearing to be tuned in to the conversation.
The guy, who was standing beside the girls with his arms crossed like a dam about to break, was an easy six foot seven, six foot eight, maybe. His arms were roiling pockets of sinew and wiry veins. His neck was a bunch of dense cables, popping and flexing. His skin was thick, and his skull was probably thicker. You could have sharpened a knife on the guy’s bicep and he wouldn’t have noticed.
“So you’ve returned from your supersecret mission,” the first girl said to Basil, the malice on her tongue almost visible. “And it appears to have gone well. Not sure why it needed to be such a big secret, though.” She turned the malice in Rhett’s direction. He didn’t waver. He might not have been brave enough to ask her out, but he knew how to stand up to people like her. “We just got back from there,” the girl continued, eyeing Rhett with a mixture of fascination and repulsion. “We got his—”
“Mak, Rhett. Rhett, Mak,” Basil said, cutting her off without any deficit in cheer. He patted the scrawny girl on the shoulder. “This is Treeny, our resident technological empress. And that enormous chap, whom you might have mistaken for a large tree, is Theodore Sampson Tinderbuff the Third. We just call him Theo.”
Rhett looked up at Theo, who was holding his hand out. They shook, and Rhett swore he heard something in his hand crack under the force of the grip. But he didn’t feel any pain, barely felt the handshake itself.
“Pleasure,” Theo said in a dense, almost comic New York accent. “You lookin’ for a spot on our crew?” He spoke like a 1940s gangster. Rhett was mystified.
“I … uh … I don’t…”
“What? Words ain’t ya strong suit?” He said words like woyds.
The first girl—Mak—interjected. “He absolutely does not have a spot on our crew, Theo. What he needs is a spot with someone else. Or maybe out in the water.” She smiled in a way that looked more like a grimace.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa there, ninja princess,” Basil said, stepping between Mak and Rhett. “I told you I had a feeling, didn’t I? I gave you as much information as I had. I didn’t know where I was going until I got there … and found him.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Rhett.
“You didn’t know where you were going, but you had to get off the ship to get there?” Mak asked. She squinted her eyes at him and licked her lips—a predator waiting out her prey.
But Basil just laughed. “And how exactly did you get aboard this luxury vessel?” he asked her. “Hmm? Did you ride in here with a cloud stuck between your legs?”
Mak’s mouth twitched, just slightly, and Rhett imagined that now would have been the time that, in the
living world, her face would have flushed with color. She said nothing.
“That’s right, love,” Basil jabbed. “I came and rescued you, too, didn’t I?”
Mak dropped her arms and stuck a finger in Basil’s face. “You did not rescue me.”
Meanwhile, Theo stared on from his separate altitude, and Treeny prodded her screen. Rhett stood just outside the confrontation, not sure what to do. He looked around at some of the other crew members lumbering around. A few of them glanced in the direction of the argument, but nobody spoke up or seemed bothered by it. What the hell did I get myself into? Rhett thought.
The exchange between Mak and Basil continued, with each of them poking the other with their verbal swords, most of the content going right over Rhett’s head. Mak asked Basil why he couldn’t have just used one of the regular doors on the ship to go run his “little errand.” Basil asked Mak why she was so “nosy and disrespectful.” Mak told Basil that they were supposed to be on the same team, that “gathering” was a “group effort.” To that Basil said only one thing: “Not this kind of gathering, sweetheart.” This seemed to set ablaze a whole new kind of fire in Mak.
Theo and Treeny stood by like a couple of witnesses to a fistfight, not really wanting to get involved but thinking that they might eventually have to.
Rhett decided he had two options: turn around and try to find his own way off this damned boat, or …
“Hey!” he yelled at the squabbling pair, feeling a bit like a meek human screaming at a tornado to stop turning. “Hey!” he yelled again. His voice rang along the steel railings of the atrium. It was enough to get Basil’s attention.
“Just one second, ma—”
“No!” Rhett cut him off. “And I swear to God if you call me mate one more time, I’ll choke the life … or whatever … out of you before she gets a chance to.” He stabbed his index finger at Mak, whose eyes widened ever so slightly. “Someone needs to tell me what the fuck all this is about before I take off and start looking for my own answers.” He felt the anger absorb his courage, and he glared up at Theo. “Capeesh?”
There was silence among the five of them. Basil and Mak stared at Theo, who was staring at Rhett. Rhett wanted his heart to race, wanted to feel the pounding hooves of adrenaline quiver through his body. He thought about it, focused on it, and a second later felt that lovely, frightening sensation that so often accompanies moments of pure stupidity.
But Theo just looked over at Basil and said, in that mobster drawl, “I like this guy. He’s a character.” He looked back at Rhett. “You gotta be a New Yorker”—(New Yawk-ah)—“with a temper like that.”
“Oh Jesus!” Mak hissed. “Enough with this.” She stepped up to Basil until they were almost touching noses. “You can talk to him, then,” she said in his face. And then she stomped away, her boots making hard metallic thumps as she went.
Basil waited, then said, “She’s a right pain in the ass sometimes. I swear. Come with us, ma … er … Rhett. I guess I’m in charge of explaining things to you now. If you’re still interested.”
Rhett was. For now.
* * *
He felt like he was the one who was about to be interrogated, instead of the other way around.
The room was as cold and sterile as the rest of the Column, all polished steel and hard edges, a metal table and a couple of chairs, that same icy glow. If it weren’t for the subtle shove and tug of the waves, Rhett might have forgotten he was on a ship at all. He wasn’t sure if he was one to get seasick, having never been on a cruise or anything before. But when he tried to will himself to feel nauseous, it took a lot more effort than he expected. He decided that getting seasick probably hadn’t been a thing for him when he was alive.
Basil, Treeny, and Theo squeezed into the tiny room with him. They stood on the other side of the table, with the glass wall looking out at the rest of the atrium behind them.
“This is one of our workrooms,” Basil explained, finally sounding serious. “The crew is made up of teams, usually just a handful of people each. Sometimes we like to have meetings or get-togethers or shindigs or whatever. These rooms are good for that sort of thing.”
“I’m glad,” Rhett said. “I was beginning to think you tortured people in here.”
“No, there’s a whole other part of the ship for that. Shackles and chains. The whole bit.” Basil grinned.
Rhett crossed his arms and glared. “Tell me everything.”
“Everything? Oh God … well, I was born in Wales—”
Rhett stood up, shoving his chair into the wall behind him. “It was nice meeting you, but I don’t have time for this crap.”
“All right, all right, all right!” Basil cried, putting his hands up. “Sheesh. You’re just as bad as Mak, aren’t you?”
“This is my life we’re talking about,” Rhett said, his teeth grinding together. “Is that funny to you?”
Basil sighed. “Yeah, all right, I get it. And, more accurately, it’s your afterlife we’re talking about.”
Rhett nodded, letting that sink in, feeling the reality of it confirmed.
“Fine,” he said, more calmly than he expected. “So then, what is … all this?”
“Mak was supposed to be the one to explain everything to you,” Basil replied. “She’s better at being … well, blunt. But I’ll do my best. As I said, this ship, the one we’re on, is called the Harbinger. Its most important function is the transportation of … goods.”
“What goods?”
“Souls.”
Rhett opened his mouth, closed it again.
“Souls,” he said. Not asking, just restating. It wasn’t really that hard to believe—he had already come to terms with the idea that he was dead, but to hear it out loud … “Like, our souls? Yours, mine, theirs?” He gestured to Treeny and Theo.
“Well, yes,” Basil replied. “But we’re different.”
“Different how?”
“You see, the Harbinger has collected millions upon millions of souls since the beginning of … well, forever. And they’re all still on board.”
“How is that possible?” Rhett asked. The ship was big, but not that big.
“We’ll get there. But what’s important to understand is that those souls don’t just appear on board. They need someone to collect them. That’s us.” Basil swept an arm around the room and motioned at the window behind him. Everybody, he was trying to say. “And you,” he continued, leveling his eyes at Rhett.
Rhett lowered his gaze, trying to absorb the words, letting the pieces fall into place.
“C’mon, mate,” Basil said quietly. “You’re an intelligent bloke. Do I need to spell it out for you?”
“You’re … Death,” Rhett said, mostly to the hard surface of the table. “As in capital D, cloak and scythe, Death.” He looked up.
Basil was grinning appreciatively. “That’s right. Although, the cloak and scythe are a bit seventeenth century. And not really our style, as you can see.” He tugged at the lapels of his blazer. “We go by our original name now—syllektors.”
“And … I…?” Rhett raised his eyebrows.
“Correct. You’re a syllektor. An official member of the club. Don’t expect a membership card or anything, though.” Basil shrugged.
“I still don’t understand,” Rhett said, standing because he couldn’t help but pace when he was anxious, even when his body felt nothing of the anxiety itself. “Why am I so different? Why are you? I mean, if every soul ends up on the Harbinger, what makes someone a … you know?” He didn’t want to say it. The word would have felt funny in his mouth, like trying to pick up a foreign dialect. And there was something even more concerning about the way this conversation was headed, something else he couldn’t quite muster the courage to speak out loud.
“Trauma.”
The voice was so tiny that Rhett almost didn’t hear it. It was Treeny, speaking for the first time. Her face was still glued to whatever she was working on, but her eyes flicked towar
d Rhett just long enough to confirm that he had heard her. Rhett waited for her to explain, but she wouldn’t elaborate.
Rhett turned back to Basil, who was nodding solemnly.
“What does she mean?” Rhett said.
“There’s no definitive algorithm,” Basil started, “but the ones who become syllektors when they die are usually the ones who die as a result of some sort of traumatic event. Murder, war, plane crash…”
Then all three of them—Basil, Theo, Treeny—spoke at the same time, all of them staring at points in the distance that could have been a foot away or a mile away.
“Gunfight,” Theo said.
“Train accident,” Basil said.
“Drowning,” Treeny said.
Rhett could only stare, trying to absorb their meaning. “So … all of you…?”
Basil nodded again. “Mak, too. In her own way, of course.”
Rhett sank back into his seat, emptying his lungs with a shew sound. What he was releasing, he didn’t know. It could have been air, it could have been nothing at all. But it felt good to let it out. He looked around at the other three. Kids, like him. That’s all they were. And all of them were dead because of something stupid and horrible and pointless.
And now that he understood why they were all here, he had to ask the question that he’d been avoiding.
“And … what about my parents?” Rhett asked slowly, bracing himself.
“They’re here.” Treeny again, still staring into the washed-out glow of her tablet. “But they’re not syllektors. They’re not like us.”
Rhett put his hands over his face, resisting the urge to scream, to grab the chair he was sitting in and toss it through the window and down the spiraling stairs of the atrium beyond.
“But … why?” he groaned. His brain felt like it was breaking apart and putting itself back together over and over again. But the tears that he expected weren’t there. Of course not. The only way he could truly feel anything anymore was when he made the conscious effort to do so. And he had no interest in showing his grief to these people.
