The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  I felt oddly detached from myself as I responded. My voice had become calm and quiet, which meant she probably couldn’t hear me very well. “The corpse is screaming. I should probably call Sophie to find out why. Can I call you back?”

  “The hell with that, girlfriend. I’m coming to pick you up. Let someone else handle this. You’re just an intern.”

  The line went dead in my ear. I continued to stare at the inflated plastic bag as I speed-dialed my sister’s cell. As it rang, I walked back and tried pushing the table inside the wall, but the mechanism had apparently jammed when I’d yanked it out. I put my hand on the plastic over the mouth and pushed down. There was pressure against my palm, but it did dim the noise a bit and gave me an idea.

  Sophie’s voice mail picked up just as I extracted the roll of duct tape I’d found in the bottom drawer of the desk while exploring. I hung up and dialed again. I knew she’d pick up eventually. She really needs to set her phone for a longer ring period.

  Two short and two long strips of tape were enough to put an “X” over the lips and press the plastic against the corpse’s mouth. Securing it to the table was just an added bonus, in case he suddenly got wanderlust and tried to leave. Yeah, I know. But again…dead guy…screaming.

  The ringing stopped just as the wailing dimmed a bit. “Dr. Thantos.” Her voice started all business, but she knows the sound of pain, and her next words were filled with controlled panic. “Who is this? Can you speak? Have you dialed nine-one-one yet?”

  “Sophie?” My breath was starting to come faster, and that worried me. “I’ve got a problem.”

  “Lia? Oh my Lord, sweetie. Has there been an accident? Where are you?”

  I spoke again in that calm, detached voice that, combined with the hyperventilating, told me I was probably hysterical. It didn’t feel as bad as I thought it would. “No, I’m fine. I’m still at the morgue. Can you think of a reason why a corpse would scream?”

  Now she sounded confused. “If it’s a corpse, it’s not screaming. By definition, a corpse is…dead.”

  I felt my head nod. “I know. That’s why I’m asking. But it’s definitely a corpse—the floater delivered by that guy you work with, Larry. Not a chance he’s alive.” I waved toward the table like Vanna White, even though I knew she couldn’t see it. “And he’s most definitely screaming.”

  “Okay…” There was a pause that held my attention, because it wasn’t from confusion; it was that brand of thoughtful silence that always meant Sophie had an idea. When she finally spoke, her voice was careful—the same voice she’d once used to tell me there was a rattlesnake coiled by my leg. “Lia, where exactly in the morgue is this corpse, and where exactly are you standing?” It was such an odd question that it sort of brought me to my senses. My breathing calmed, and my head felt clearer. I told her our exact positions, and there was another long pause. “Okay, you need to not move. And I mean not move. There’s not much time left. I’m calling Dad and coming straight over there. Don’t touch the corpse. Don’t call anyone else or move one foot past the exam table.”

  She hung up even as my mouth opened to ask why. Not much time left? For what?

  But I trusted my sister. She knew a lot of things, some sensible…some really weird. She slew everyone in Trivial Pursuit when we were kids, and was nearly savant about death and dying stuff.

  So I waited. I didn’t move, although I did finally resort to stuffing my pinkies in my ears to ease the ache that was pounding my temples. I’d never had a headache before. Not one. I suddenly had sympathy for my English teacher, Mrs. Grisham, who got migraines. If they were as bad as this, she lived through hell.

  I don’t really know how long I stayed like that. It was at least until my shoulders started to ache and my lips started cracking. “Lia? Where are you?” The sound barely registered in my brain, but I looked up as Sophie burst into the room. I’d actually expected Dani, but she lives way across town, while the hospital is only a mile away. I supposed it made sense.

  I started toward her, but she held out a hand to stop me. I froze and watched as she went over to examine the screaming corpse. She pulled out her penlight but then put it away when she realized it had no eyes to check for pupil dilation. I thought that the tape over the mouth and her stethoscope on his bloated, dissolving chest looked sort of funny, and a high-pitched giggle erupted from me before I used both of my hands to cover my mouth. She turned and raised her brows but then smiled just a bit. Mortician humor. Most people don’t get it.

  Finally, she wrapped the scope around her neck and heaved a breath. “Okay, give me the exact series of events. Did you, at any point, move this body to where you’re standing? Or anywhere on that side of the table?”

  I shook my head and told her what happened. As I was finishing, an odd rumble began to vibrate under my feet and the lights started to flicker. I pointed behind Sophie and called out over the screaming, “Is that smoke coming from the vents, or dust? Are we having an earthquake?”

  My sister came across the room and wrapped her arms around me—panic seeping from every pore. “Worse, Lia. Much, much worse. Kharon has just realized he’s missing a passenger.”

  * * *

  Who was Karen, and why was that bad? Sophie was trembling, sweating enough to stink, her heart pounding so hard I could feel it through my shirt as she held me tight against her. My sister, raised in a mortuary and surrounded by pain and death every day, was afraid? It instantly sobered me, and I started to watch the room with a wary eye. The cool white fluorescent light was warming to burnished copper as I stared. The light was getting richer, more orange and red than blue and white. The walls were changing too. White painted drywall was dissolving to become rich earth studded with stone.

  “He’s coming.” Her voice was a whisper in my wounded ears, and it held equal parts of respect and horror. “I’ll do everything I can to protect you, Lia. I swore to Daddy I’d keep you safe. It was just a mistake, after all. You didn’t mean to hurt him.”

  Protect me? “Hurt who? Sophie, you’re confusing me.”

  She grabbed me by the shoulders, hard enough that her nails cut through my jacket into my skin. “It’s real, Lia. All the stories Granddad told us. The ones about the river and the boat and the ferryman of—”

  “Souls…in torment. Who is responsible for this?” The voice was a deep bass, so low it vibrated my eardrums. I turned around to what should have been a wall of polished metal doors. But instead the room had expanded outward in all directions. I was staring at a dock next to a river and a long, low-slung boat packed with people who were all staring vacantly across the water.

  A line of people stood on an ancient wooden pier—nine men and women looking as empty and silent as those on the boat.

  And if none of that was enough to freak me out, I could see right through the people on the dock and the boat. They were…ghosts. My voice had a bit of a strangled tone to it when I was finally able to speak. “Jesus H. Ch—”

  Sophie hissed in my ear. “Watch what you swear here. We’re not in the same religion anymore. It’ll only make him madder.”

  A heavily muscled man with a coarse, tangled beard was wearing a tall hat and what looked like a filthy toga. He stepped off the boat onto the rocks, using a long wooden staff to keep his balance. He started toward us but stopped and turned toward the people on the dock. “Onto the boat! Go!” The staff became a weapon, and as the men and women cowered, cried out, and tried to run, he repeatedly hit them until…I grabbed the staff to stop the next blow.

  I swear I don’t remember leaving Sophie’s side. The moment when I’d had enough and couldn’t stand to see those poor people in misery anymore had come upon me so suddenly it wasn’t a conscious thought. “Quit hitting them!”

  His head turned, and his eyes locked on mine. They weren’t a color I could describe, even if I tried. The pupils shifted from red to black and a million shades of blue—all in the space of a heartbeat. “Who dares to deny a god’s duty?” The w
ords were a dangerous sound, like a dog’s growl, and the staff began to heat until I had to let it go. The pain in my palm was immediate, and I clutched it to my chest as Sophie grabbed at my arm to pull me backward.

  “Please forgive her, Kharon. Lia’s only a child. She knows no better.”

  Wait. Kharon, not Karen? The Kharon? The ferryman of souls across the river to the underworld? Whoa. He was my favorite character in the old myths. Little known, curmudgeonly, and usually given a short shrift by the other gods. But very cool. Still, I couldn’t help but voice my shock. “Those are just stories, Sophie. Ancient mythology.” I realized I was whispering to myself, trying not to look at the man who had grown in height. When I finally turned, he towered over us, his calves the size of tree trunks, his breath fetid and hot on our hair.

  Eww.

  “You are the bringer of death?” His voice was the rumble underfoot now, drowning out even the scream in the background. He sounded seriously ticked off. “The new conveyor of souls, who has left this soul in torment?”

  The bringer of death? I had to look then. His face showed a god’s fury. “Um. No, I don’t kill people. I just work at a morgue. And I’m not really a child. I’m fifteen.”

  “Of course you are not a child. Children may not convey souls. But you are the bringer of death. It is your given name. Evangalia Thanatos…bringer of truth, and death. It is your birthright…the reason your petition was accepted. Why have you denied this soul entry across the river? Why have you disturbed my schedule? Where is his coin?”

  I felt my eyes open wide with a sort of revulsion. My parents actually speak Greek. Our family had an Ellis Island change of spelling of our last name, but Mom actually let Dad name me bringer of death? What sort of sick joke was that?! Wait. Coin? “What sort of coin?”

  Sophie grabbed my forearm. “You don’t know? Oh Lia! Dr. Morgan was supposed to explain all this to you the very first thing. The morgue was built over the Acheron River. Not the Styx, the Acheron. It flows right down the center of the room. There were so many deaths so suddenly during the influenza epidemic. They had to build the morgue so the souls would move quickly across the river. But they couldn’t rebuild the whole building, so only ten are on the right side of the river.”

  “Only the drawers on one side of the room.” That’s why she asked if I’d moved the floater past the exam table. That must be where the river runs. There are nine bodies, and nine drawers were locked. Or is that just coincidence? I was staring at the rocks, listening to the water lap against the dock, breathing in the stench Kharon was filling the room with, and everything suddenly made sense. Not just the job…but everything. My whole life. All the dreams, all the twitching sensations when I saw dead bodies before the funeral. But then a few days later, it would all be better. They were…peaceful. They’d crossed the river. The river must run under the cooler at home too.

  Cool.

  The voice above us turned cold and angry. “You had no right to deny the soul entry. He is in torment, and now you must pay his price to enter the fields.”

  I just had classical mythology in social studies last term and struggled to think back to the lecture from the college professor who guest spoke. Kharon or Charon was the ferryman, formerly a demon in the service of Hades who gained demigod status. He wasn’t mentioned much in literature except as an aside. About the only time he got much play was in a version of the myth of Hercules, where Athena got the better of him, allowing Hercules to gain passage even though he wasn’t dead. But the one thing Kharon was known for was getting his due. A coin under the tongue was the only entry across the river. “But I have no coins of bronze or gold. Nobody does. They’re not used as currency anymore.”

  “That is not my concern. Either you must pay the fee or forfeit your body for the soul’s use. Look upon your mistake, woman. See what you have wrought.”

  I found myself turning, even though I wasn’t doing it. I looked up, because the whole rest of the room had elevated until it was at the top of a steep hill. The body on the slab was still just a body. But the bubble pressing up the plastic wasn’t due to the scream. It was the soul trying to get out. It couldn’t move forward or back, stuck in the jaws of a trap. Trapped and in such horrible agony.

  I tried to turn away, to shift my gaze, as tears ran down my cheeks and I sobbed, just like Sophie was sobbing. But I couldn’t turn. He wouldn’t let me, and it hurt me—physically hurt to see that sort of pain. Eternal, never-ending, and it was my fault. Just because I was too lazy to do one simple thing.

  “I brought a coin, Lord Kharon.” I looked over to see Sophie detaching a gold coin from her keychain and holding it up. The coin glinted in the light, and I realized I recognized it. Dad always kept one just like it on his dresser. Said it was a “get out of jail free” card. How come Sophie had one? Maybe I’d live long enough to ask her. “Please accept this man’s soul onto your ferry.”

  I looked up hopefully, breathlessly. But Kharon just shook his head. “It was not your mistake, and it is not her coin. She must give a coin belonging to her. No other. Or give up her body. You have but ten minutes to make your choice.”

  Why ten minutes? But then I looked at my watch. It was ten to five. The underworld works on the freaking clock?

  There was nothing I could do in ten minutes. There was no way to fix what was wrong and nobody I could call to help.

  Or…was there?

  Maybe I could call somebody. But it was the riskiest thing I’d ever considered doing. I was terrified he’d strike me down on the spot. Still, it was all I had.

  I looked up to the ceiling and shouted for all I was worth. “Oh great Athena! We require your wisdom to settle a dispute. Please, I beseech thee. Come to my aid!”

  Sophie gasped, and Kharon roared in fury. He lifted up his staff and brought it down hard and fast. The blow caught me in the side. I can’t remember ever hurting that bad. I couldn’t draw in breath and was pretty sure he’d broken several ribs. I was swept off my feet to land in a heap halfway in the river, spots of light filling my vision. “How dare you, human!” Sophie was at my side instantly, even though I tried to wave her off. We both screamed as he raised the stick again. He was about to bring it down on our heads when it…stopped. In midair.

  “Stay your hand, daemon.”

  I couldn’t decide whether to cry or laugh, but the pain in my chest made the decision for me, and salty tears dripped down into the water. Athena looked different than what I would have expected. She was always portrayed in a toga, often with an owl on her shoulder. But she was dressed in a simple pair of jeans and leather vest, her long auburn hair held back in a seriously cool French braid. Now that she’d materialized, I could see that she was gripping the end of Kharon’s staff

  “This is not your concern, goddess.” He tried to yank his staff away.

  Athena raised one eyebrow but didn’t remove her hand. “My name was invoked and an honest dispute exists. Does it not?”

  “It does!” I shouted to be heard, and it felt like fire was burning in my lungs. The goddess turned to me, and her eyes were the same weird shifting color as Kharon’s. Those eyes. They compelled me to talk, and even the pain didn’t matter. “I messed up. I know that. But I didn’t understand! Doesn’t that mean anything? And we have a coin. My sister has it right here. Can’t we just make this stop and get the guy on the boat?”

  She sighed and began to shrink until she was a regular-sized person and was standing next to me. She didn’t touch me, but I got the feeling she wanted to help. “Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy, Lia, and you know it.” My eyes must have widened at her knowing my name, because she smiled. “Goddess of wisdom. I already gathered most of the information before I arrived. Yes, you’re right about the drawers. Once the body is inside and a coin placed in the mouth, the door locks until the soul crosses. No force on earth can open or destroy the drawers until the ferryman arrives. But you’re wrong that you didn’t understand. You did. You were told to circle, star a
nd underline it…were you not?”

  I closed my eyes and felt a hot blush come to my cheeks. Sophie stopped gently touching my ribs and hit me on the shoulder. “Damn it, Lia. Why don’t you ever listen? Can’t you just once do what you’re told?” She paused, and I suddenly realized she was crying, angry tears that matched the words she spit at me. “Now I’m going to lose you because, once again, you decided you knew better. And I won’t have a sister anymore, and Mom and Dad will be the ones who’ll have to bury you!”

  Crap. “Sophie, I’m…I’m sorry.” I couldn’t even express how bad I felt. I didn’t want her to hurt, and Dad must be totally freaking out, waiting to hear. And if I died…

  I looked up at Athena. “Isn’t there anything I can do? Anything at all?”

  She let out a slow breath. “The rules are very clear, and they’re not mine to change. An item of sufficient value or a body to end the torment of the dead. Those are the only choices. And yes, it must be yours to give.” She stepped back and increased in size until she was slightly larger than Kharon. “I once did you wrong, daemon. I forced you to accept a soul onto your boat and you had no choice but to obey. I believe this time, I have the duty to right that wrong.”

  Crap. She was going to decide for him. I was going to lose…and die.

  She raised a finger thoughtfully. “Lia is an adult in our ancient culture, but a child in this one. Both must be taken into account. If an adult, she has assets. If a child, she has none because all is owned by her parents.”

  “Children cannot convey the dead. Zeus has forbidden it.”

  She nodded. “True. But physical age isn’t all that must be considered. She is a woman, and women cannot own property without a male.”

  He nodded, grudgingly. “This is true.”

  “So if I say she is a child but you claim she is an adult, she is still a woman and therefore unable to offer a coin that is her own to give.”

  I was starting to think she had a plan but had no idea where it was going. Sophie was likewise looking at her with interest.