by Chuck Wendig
“Great story,” Tundu says, obviously unimpressed. He brings his big hands together in a booming clap. “I tell it to my nieces and nephews at bedtime.”
“You could’ve told us this in the hotel room,” Cason says.
Frank licks a too-white canine. “Story’s not over, compadres. This isn’t the factory’s final brush with death. In 1957? Smallpox outbreak. Just here. Only here. Another seven dead, a dozen more disfigured and disabled by the disease. In 1969, one of the wire spoolers goes nutso, breaks off its mooring, the wire lashing about like a horse’s tail trying to chase away a fly. Result? Three dead. Two of them cut in half, the third left without a head. Then, 1980: suicide of factory foreman Ray Redman. Wrote a note, said he saw ghosts and that they wouldn’t leave him alone, so he jumped into the wire-cutting machine and chop-chop-chop, diced him like a salad. Come 1995, explosion on the floor of Factory Building B. Big boom. Ten men dead. Another ten wounded. Press got hold of it. Enough was enough. They shut the place down.”
Tundu throws up his arms. “What’s the point, Mister Ugly? Why you gotta tell us all this nasty business?”
“Because,” Frank says, moving fast, coming up on Tundu like a barracuda. “Because I think a god of death lives here, and I not only aim to prove it—”
“Frank!” Cason yells, incredulous.
“—but I aim to kill the sonofabitch. Kill death. Ain’t that a peach?”
Cason’s about to do some explaining, maybe try to spin this into some kind of juke, but he notices that Tundu doesn’t seem to care. The cabbie isn’t even looking at Frank anymore. He’s staring at up at the factory.
Frank turns, follows his gaze. Cason, too. They see the building with a thousand eyes, all of them blind and dark—broken glass and framed squares of shadow.
“I saw someone,” Tundu says.
“Huh?” Frank asks. “Who?”
“I dunno, I dunno. I just looked up and in one of the windows, a... shadow was there. A man. I could see his eyes. Watching. I… dunno.”
Cason looks. Doesn’t see anything. But a shudder runs across his arms, leaving the flesh looking like plucked chicken-skin.
THEY STAND CLOSER to the river. Just Cason and Frank. Tundu’s back at the cab. Sitting there, staring out, watching the factory from behind the windshield.
The sun’s not up, not yet, but the horizon’s edge is starting to show that creamsicle glow. One thing Cason can say for the sunrise and sunset in Philadelphia—all the chemical plumes make for a spectacular sky-show, day in and day out.
The river itself is quiet. Couple gulls at the edges. Couple more dogfighting out on the water, over what, Cason doesn’t know.
“Way to go, Frank,” Cason says. “Now you got him seeing goblins.”
“Goblins aren’t real,” Frank says. Matter-of-factly.
“I’m just saying, he’s seeing—”
“He saw something, not nothing. And that’s good. That means he’s in. He may not realize it yet, but he’s been touched. It doesn’t take much. You knew it the first time you met Eros. Don’t lie.”
“Maybe.” Cason clears his throat and Frank gives him a look. “Okay, yeah. I knew it. He was different. It wasn’t just what he did—which was unbelievable in and of itself. Stopping time. Bringing my wife and son back from death. E.—Eros—was on a whole other level.”
“That’s the thing, Case. Eros may be, er, have been on a whole other level, but these gods, they got rules. Things they can do, things they can’t. Like, a god of war can’t make you fall in love with him. A god of the sea doesn’t fuck with earth or air or fire. The Humbaba only knows the forest, the minotaur only knows the maze. Eros was a... a love god, a deity of sex and beauty and, and—and hedonism.”
“The hell are you saying?”
“I’m saying he didn’t resurrect your wife and kids. He didn’t stop time. He didn’t program their heads to hate you. He could’ve done the opposite. He could’ve made them love you forever and ever, regardless of what you did or what you wanted.”
“If he didn’t do it, then...”
“Other gods, Case. Other gods. This wasn’t just a one god thing. Many hands built the trap that snared you. And, oh, what a trap it was.”
“Trap. What the fuck do you mean, a trap?”
“The SUV that hit you. They ever find the driver?”
“No. They said... whoever he was, he fled the scene.”
“They didn’t even have the right name for him, did they? Car was registered under somebody else. And no fingerprints, either.”
“That’s what they said, yeah.”
“I don’t think anyone was driving, Case. I think it was a setup from the get-go. A conspiracy. The gods had their sights on you and they spun this all out for a reason. No one god can make time stop and people rise from the dead with new brains. Even beyond that boy-slut Eros, you got... three, maybe four others involved.”
Cason feels suddenly hot, though the wind coming off the river is cool. He grinds his back teeth. Anger and confusion spar with one another in his head.
“Why?” A croak. Almost like he doesn’t want to ask.
Worse, he doesn’t want to hear the answer, which is:
“I don’t know.” Frank offers a shrug. “I don’t. But I’m here to help you find out, and I figure that getting your cabbie buddy there in on the parade is a good fucking idea. We need whoever we can get. Especially for this next part. Because I’m not kidding when I say I think a god of death lives in this place. First I thought maybe it was Ereshkigal; I knew she was... up and down the East Coast.”
Cason’s brows scrunch up. The name’s familiar from his reading—but retention isn’t his strong suit. “She’s not Greek pantheon. She’s... Middle Eastern.”
“Old, old Middle Eastern. Sumerian. Real wicked chicky. Likes to trap people down in the dark with her. And that’s the thing, here—the death factory isn’t underground. And then there’s the smallpox thing? Came out of nowhere. So I got the idea that it might be her boyfriend, Nergal. Another god of death—he got kinda trapped into it by her way back when, and he’s got a real boner for pestilence and what-not. So I’m thinkin’ that’s him up there in the factory.”
“A death god.” Cason chews on that. Tastes bitter. “Why do we need to go up against him? Seems...”
“Dangerous? Like a bad idea? Yes and yes. But someone had to bring your wife and kid back to life, and I want to know whose hand was the one that pulled those particular puppet strings. Only someone with command over life and death could’ve pulled them out of the fire—not just alive but unharmed.”
“Aren’t there gods of... life? The books said there were.”
“Sure. Dumuzi. Osiris. Ehh, Demeter, kinda. But none of them are around. That doesn’t necessarily preclude them, mind you. But I’d rather look local, first. Gods tend to shit where they eat. So. Here we are. God of death.”
“Nergal.”
“Mmyep.”
“Shit.”
“SO WHAT NOW?”
Tundu asks the question. Frank’s gone. Dropped off at his apartment above the falafel joint on South Street. It’s morning, now, officially. The streets filling with people walking to work—bankers, fry-cooks, baristas, black, white, immigrant.
“Go home,” Cason says. “Have a nice life.”
“So. Leave you to this, then.”
“Sounds about right, T.”
“Okay. Okay. I do that. I go home. I forget about all this.”
“Probably wise.”
“You be safe.”
Not likely. “I will. Thanks.”
Tundu goes to shake his hand, but then holsters the gesture and goes in for a big hug instead. Cason feels like his bones are being pulverized in the bag that is his skin. The guy hugs like a bear trying to break a tree to get at the honey inside of it.
And that’s that. He drops Cason off there on South Street. The cab drives away and Cason fights the crowd coming out of the subway to head back to the
hotel.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Director Of Traffic
AH. THERE SHE is.
She sits inside the hospital room, the blinds half-turned so that she is hard to see, but not impossible. A child lays on the bed. Asleep. No—something else. Something beyond sleep. The woman is talking to someone: hard to see now, but when she moves, he sees that it’s another, different woman. Oh, but not so different. Same look. Heavier. Older. But same look. The woman’s mother.
As the little man watches, his smile is tight and pained. He does not want to intrude upon the conversation. Time is on his side, and the tumblers in the lock have not yet fallen into place. That’s okay. He chuckles, does a little dance over to a set of chairs near to the nurse’s station, and sits.
For a while he contemplates the many doors and hallways of a hospital. So many junctures and apertures. As many crossroads here as in a small city. Deeper, stranger junctures lurk, too—many roads crossing. Sickness and health. Strength and frailty. Hope and loss. Life and death.
He lets his mind wander through the many permutations.
Just to see.
While he waits, he pulls a few dried chili peppers from within his pocket—little red things, dry and crooked like the walking stick of an old, destitute man—and chews on them. The heat fills his mouth and he laughs quietly to himself.
AN HOUR LATER, the child’s mother emerges from the room.
As she passes him, the little man gets up, totters after. Others watch him, suspiciously. They are right to be suspicious, but for all the wrong reasons. They think the color of his skin is worrisome. They think it strange that he’s so small, and that he’s smiling like he is. They may not like the red and black beads clacking together around his neck, or the way he walks with such a light touch that none can hear, or the way that he sat there eating hot peppers, one after the other, seemingly produced from nowhere.
They are right to think him strange, yes. Even dangerous.
But not for those reasons.
The woman turns the corner. Choices, choices, always choices. So many hallways, so many doors. She could choose to leave the hospital and never return. Could steal medications and use them to push away the pain and sadness that flicker like the light of a lightning bug. She could fuck a doctor, overdose on pills, jump off the roof, run screaming through the halls.
But instead she goes to the snack machines. A cup of coffee from one. A baggy of Ritz crackers from the other.
Humans always make such boring choices.
That’s okay. That’s why he’s here. Eshu Elegba. Master of the crossroads.
She goes and sits, and he totters over, settles next to her.
He introduces himself.
“I am Shu,” he says. A nickname he likes.
She seems startled. As if he jostled her free from some reverie—or whatever reverie’s grim opposite shall be. She blinks, then forces a smile. “I’m... Alison.”
“Hospitals,” he says, shaking his head, clucking his tongue, but never losing his smile or the brightness in his eyes. “Difficult places.”
“Yes. They are.” She pops the tab on her coffee lid, blows in through the hole to cool the drink, with a thin whistle. “Are you here visiting a patient?”
“Visiting,” he says. “But not a patient.”
“Oh. A doctor?”
“No.”
“Do you work here...?”
“Yes,” he says, deciding to lie. Lies are good sometimes to get what you want, equal to truth in that way. Neither better nor worse than the other. Both a tool, each with different purpose, each a different weight in the hand. Lies are light and effortless—a scalpel. The truth is heavy, hard to lift—a mighty hammer.
A scalpel is necessary. For the moment.
“Oh.” She laughs, light, airy, but awkward. “I’m here for a patient. My son. He’s... in a coma. There was... an accident.”
So she knows the power of the scalpel, too. Though her deception is not as far from the truth as she thinks.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” he says, never losing his smile. He can’t lose the smile. Well. He can. But it takes an effort equal to moving a mountain with a single finger—his smile is affixed to his face like paint on a wall, like skin on a skull. It’s because he’s so happy, of course. So happy just to be here. To be the cause of strife. And chaos. To be the rock in the stream that diverts the waters—diverts them always in an unexpected way. Waters run to strange places. If all of life did as you chose, if everything fell to a plan, what fun would that be? It would be no fun at all, and then his smile would truly go.
“The doctors don’t know what’s wrong.” Her voice creaks here like an old door. This was truth. Not a lie.
“You love him.”
“Of course.” Incredulous. “Of course. He’s my son.”
“Do not assume that all mothers love their sons. Yours is real. I can see that.”
“Oh. Well.” She sips the coffee. Wince. Still too hot. Steam rises from the cup, curling in the air like a winged sky-serpent twisting. “I just want him to be okay.”
“Yes. Absolutely. But something here is troubling you.”
She says nothing. Which is just another way of saying yes.
He continues: “His condition is a mystery and that concerns you. I see that. But I also see that you are troubled by other things. Events have lined up, one after the other, and too few of them make sense to you. Is that right?” He gives her no time to answer, allowing only for a tiny, fearful nod. His smile broadens as he speaks. “Things don’t seem to add up anymore. As if you glimpsed a world that, had anybody else told you existed, you would say they were mad. You would ease away from them, trying to be subtle but failing, thinking them dangerous or deluded.
“And now you worry it is you who has become dangerous or deluded, and yet, there, in that room, is your son. A son who won’t wake up. Who seems healthy except for the fact he is not precisely with us, either. You haven’t told the doctors the things you know yet, and part of you wonders if you should—maybe it’ll help, you tell yourself, but in your heart you know it cannot. How could it? They haven’t seen what you have seen. They don’t have a specialist for the problems you and your son are facing. And so you sit quietly hoping it was all a dream, even though hope does little to erase the truth from your mind, for hope is a dangerous thing. Hope, a mirage in the desert, a curtain of vapor forming for us an image of that which we most sincerely desire. Hope is not an oasis but rather, a trap.
“So let us instead look at the truth, heavy as it may fall upon us. The truth is that you have seen things you do not understand. The truth is that you have holes in your mind—memories cut from you like a child cut from a womb and kept from you, alive but somewhere far away. The truth is that your own child lies still, caught in a trap of magic that you have no way of defeating.”
She’s crying, now, tears running soft and silent down her cheeks. This is pain. This is truth. Gone is the scalpel. Time for the hammer-blow. His smile tightens, lips pinched together. Eyes, too. The face of a little old grandfather offering platitudes and comfort. But it is not comfort his words offer. Not yet.
“I have something for you. I don’t know how it helps you, but it does.” He unfolds a little piece of paper—hardly bigger than the fortune in a fortune cookie—and he presses it into her cold and clammy hand. “On that paper is an address. It is far from here. But if you drive there—begin your journey now, not later, but now—then you will begin to solve the problem you face, and you will find answers to your questions. Most importantly of all, you will fill those cavities inside your mind, and your memories will again return.” His smile widens—comically, impossibly, stretching almost ear to ear as his eyes pucker to the point of disappearing, as his ears grow and his chin lengthens and all his features seem to stretch out of proportion. “But you must go now. Leave your son and go.”
The woman holds the paper and unfurls it like a little banner, pinched bet
ween the thumb and forefinger of each hand. Her hands shake. Her lips, too. She sniffles. Blinks back tears. Sees an address handwritten there.
And then she stands, pockets the slip of paper. Picks up her coffee and crackers.
“I... have to go back to my son.”
“He will never wake up if you do. Go now. The door is closing.”
More tears.
With trembling hand, she gives him the coffee and the crackers.
Then she turns and goes down the hallway.
Not toward her son’s room, but away from it, keys jangling in her hands.
Oh, humans.
Once in a while they do make interesting choices.
Eshu Elegba chuckles and opens the crackers, happily munching between sips of too-hot coffee.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
How Death May Die
NERGAL.
Nirgali. Ner-uru-gal. The raging king. The furious one.
God of fire and storms and destruction.
God of death.
Not by choice, it seems.
Stories say that Nergal didn’t play well with others. When other gods were asked to kneel before the Skyfather, he did no such thing. He stood, defiant.
The punishment for the transgression? Death. He managed to escape the sentencing with the help of his demons—creatures of plague and lightning!—but the bounty was on his head and if the gods caught him, he would die.
Normally, the gods of the above could not descend into the underworld, and the opposite was true, too. But as Nergal was marked, he carried with him the stink of death and thus was allowed to descend into the Underworld to meet with its queen, Ereshkigal, in order to plead for his life and to have his coming death undone.
