by P. J. Hoover
Shayne presses his lips together. “The River Lethe. Passageway to the Asphodel Meadows.”
Clay cakes under my feet, pulling at my sandals until I toss them aside altogether, letting my toes sink into the oozing redness. Along the shore lie skeletons of boats marooned in the thick clay, falling to pieces. It’s a dead world and a dead river with nothing alive except the monsters waiting for us. In a way, it reminds me of how my world will look should the Global Heating Crisis continue. And there’s no reason to think it won’t. I imagine the Botanical Haven as a singular oasis amid a world of barren desert because I know my mom would never move to a city below ground. And I know she’d want me by her side.
Will the world really come to that? Will my life really come to that?
Shayne and I walk to the dock; its piers aren’t even submerged until halfway out, and when we reach the water, thankfully the monsters stay away from Shayne. It’s like he’s got an invisible force field surrounding him, and I happen to be lucky enough to be ensconced in it.
I motion to the monsters. “They never bother you?”
Shayne unclips the Helm of Darkness and holds it out. Around us, the monsters move back, increasing the distance between them and us. “The Helm makes the wearer invisible, Piper, but it also helps maintain control of the evils here in the Underworld. It’s one of the final remaining gifts from the Cyclops. One of the only few that still exists.” As he moves it, the monsters shift, keeping the distance even.
“They’re more active than the others.” And I let out a small laugh that even to me sounds like my throat is shaking.
“They’re fed well.” Shayne steps down into the mud-caked boat, and I follow, not waiting for his hand. I don’t want to spend even a second too far from him with these things flying around.
“More sorrows?” Like the monsters in the River Acheron, I figure these monsters must eat sorrows.
But Shayne shakes his head and shoves the boat off from the dock. He hoists the rope in, and it drops on the floor of the boat with a thud.
I scoot away, not wanting a drop of the tarnished water to touch me.
“Memories,” he says. “When souls head to Asphodel, they leave everything behind. And the monsters eat it all.”
“Everything?”
“Everything. Names. Happiness. Fears. Goals. Every piece of thought which makes a soul what it is stays behind in the River Lethe.” Shayne clips the Helm of Darkness back onto his belt. The monsters edge back in, but still stay outside our boundary.
“And that’s what happened to Randy?”
Shayne motions back to the red river. “He left everything here. Randy doesn’t even remember who he was.”
I bite my lip, trying to piece this out. “Then I can’t talk to him?”
“Why would you want to?” Shayne asks.
I push the lump in my throat back down. “To tell him I’m sorry.”
Shayne shakes his head. “It’s not your fault.”
But I know it is. Even if Shayne wants to deny it, I cursed Randy to this place as surely as if I’ve killed him myself. And somehow I’ll make it up to him. “Does the Helm only work here?” I ask.
“It works anywhere. The sea. The Earth. The Underworld.” He links his fingers with mine. “And trust me—there are monsters everywhere.”
We ride in silence. The only sound is the snapping of the monsters’ jaws. They bump against the boat, some hidden below the thick red of the river and some jumping until I fear they may join us in the boat. But none do. Overhead, the sky is as lifeless as the world around me. There’s no sun to speak of. No light, but also no darkness. Only that in between gray of a lifeless world.
I lean against Shayne, feeling the muscles of his arm holding me. I try not to focus on the death around me, but my mind can’t help the comparisons that keep forming.
“Do you think Earth is going to die?” I ask.
He brushes his cheek against my hair. “From the Global Heating Crisis? Yeah. I do.” There’s not a bit of doubt in his voice.
“What about the other gods? What do they think?”
Shayne looks out across the red water. “They’re divided. They have been for years. Some of the members of the assembly fight to do everything in their power to restore the world to how it was. And others…they think the crisis is a good thing. They think change on any kind of massive scale is needed to keep humanity moving forward. They relish the struggles for power, and they enjoy choosing sides.”
“Like Ares,” I say.
“Yeah, like Ares.”
I turn so I can see him better, but he’s not looking at me. “So which side are you on?”
Shayne lets out a low chuckle. “Neither, which is the root of my problems with the assembly.”
“Why neither?” Because if I had to guess, I’d have been sure that Shayne wants to restore Earth to how it had been before the Global Heating Crisis ever started.
“Because I have enough problems of my own, Piper. The Underworld keeps me plenty busy. I don’t need two worlds to take care of.”
I’m not sure this is valid reasoning, but I don’t argue. Who am I to tell Shayne he should do more? But maybe he can read my mind.
“You think I’m horrible,” he says.
“No. Not horrible. Just…” I struggle to come up with the right word.
“Obsessed?” he suggests.
“Dedicated,” I say. “You’re dedicated to the Underworld.”
“Someone has to be,” he says.
I look back across the water, and soon I see the opposite shore, and Asphodel there beyond it. We’re almost to the dock, and the souls wait for us. As we pull up to the dock, empty stares surround us. One grabs the rope Shayne throws, tying it to a wooden pier. Another clears the path in front of us.
Shayne walks like he is Lord of the Underworld. He holds his head high, and he doesn’t look anyone in the face. I make the mistake of doing so and am met with eyes which seem to penetrate right through me without seeing me. But then one face in the crowd catches my eye, and I gasp when her eyes meet mine.
“Chloe!”
Shayne turns to face me. “What?”
I point into the mass of faces, but she’s gone. “Chloe. She was right over there.”
Shayne looks, craning his neck over the crowds, searching. “Chloe isn’t here, Piper.”
I realize I haven’t taken a breath since I saw her, so I inhale. “I saw her. She looked right at me.”
He shakes his head. “You couldn’t have, Piper. Chloe is back above. Alive. You know that.”
I do know that. But it had looked so much like her. And there had been recognition in those eyes. It had been Chloe. “She knew who I was.”
Shayne takes my hand. “She couldn’t have. Even if it were Chloe, people here don’t have memories, remember?”
“But she looked right at me.”
Shayne narrows his eyes and searches the crowd again. I see the same thing he does. An ocean of empty faces. Thousands of them, pressed in on each other. None of them familiar. And none of them meeting my eyes. I must have been wrong. Chloe is still alive. Back on Earth and waiting for me. And then I catch the scent.
“He’s here,” I say.
Shayne’s face turns away from mine and back to the crowd. He’s smelled it to. Reese’s aroma hangs in the air like thick, dry acid. I hold my ground, promising myself I will not show my emotions. I will keep Reese out of my mind. And then I spot Randy Conner’s face looking back at me.
“There.” I point to Randy Conner, but when Shayne turns to look, Randy disappears. And the scent shifts to the right. My head snaps over, and again I see Chloe. But instead of casual recognition, her face is painted with malice. Cold. Hatred. She despises me with those eyes. She blames me for her death. A death which never came. A death I helped prevent. But her face is steel. And her look is poison. It’s a look I never want to see on Chloe’s face.
Shayne must see it to. “Stay here.”
An
d before I can protest, he’s off, putting the Helm of Darkness onto his head; he vanishes in front of my eyes. As I watch him disappear, Chloe’s mouth turns into a sneer, and she laughs. And then she’s gone also. But the scent remains. Reese’s scent.
I’m alone then, in the middle of a growing crowd of empty ghosts pressing in from all sides. I steady my nerves which threaten to send me running for the clay river. But thoughts of the monsters halt me. I can do this. I can wait for Shayne who should be back any moment. I can keep my thoughts from Chloe who is safe back above ground and from Reese who is looking for a tunnel into my mind.
Reese’s smell surrounds me and pushes its way into my nose, but it’s only teasing me. I shift my feet as if firm footing will steel my resolve. The scent plays with me, coming from all angles, and I squeeze my eyes and hold my breath to keep it out.
“Piper.”
The voice is a whisper. But there is no doubt whose voice it is.
“I want you.”
Reese sounds like a melody, but I stay in place, not breathing. Not opening my eyes to see if he is really there.
“Don’t fight me.”
I want to grow my feet into the ground. I want to close my nostrils and live without air. But instead I inhale, trying to get as much of it as I can.
“I can give you everything.”
Could Reese give me everything? Does he want me? I don’t want to fight him. I want to stop fighting. But I exhale and then stop my breath, seeing how long I can last. Will I die here in the Underworld if I don’t breathe? Is it possible to die in the place of the dead?
I’m pretty sure I’m about to find out. I keep my mouth closed and plug my nose. And just when my lungs vow to retaliate if I don’t suck in air, Reese’s voice fades along with his scent; it disappears into the air above me. And only then do I inhale once again.
All at once, Shayne is at my side. He pulls off the Helm of Darkness and appears next to me.
“Reese was here.” I’m gasping at this point from holding my breath, but Reese’s smell is a drug.
“It’s not possible.” His face twists in frustration. “The Underworld may be weakening, but nobody should be able to penetrate it. Not even Ares.” He attaches the Helm of Darkness back to his belt and takes my hand. “He’s gone now.”
“But he was here.”
“Only a shadow of him,” Shayne says. “He wasn’t here physically.”
I glance around. “Will he be back?”
Shayne’s eyes settle on the mass of dead faces. “Not if I can help it.” He motions out to the black clouds. “I need to see how bad things actually are.”
I push the thought of Chloe out of my mind, wanting to erase any connection between her and this godforsaken place as fast as possible. It was not her, only Reese…Ares…made to look like her. Chloe is alive, though living on a stolen life thanks to me.
We’re on a paved walkway, and ahead are buildings with walls made of gears as big as houses. One connects to another and then to another, and they turn like a perfectly synchronized clock. It’s like a giant metal organism. The scent of oil hangs thick in the air, and the gears crunch over and over with clicks and whirls. “What goes on here?” I whisper, but even my whispers draw stares from the dead faces around us.
Shayne tightens his arm around me. “Everything happens here. Asphodel keeps most of Hell running.”
“Running? Like what?”
We walk to the largest building in the front. Shayne has to wait until the gears click past, and only then is there an opening we can fit through. No sooner are we inside than the gear moves behind us again and seals out the light. Inside, we’re greeted by dead faces which are attached to people who are buffing and polishing metal everywhere. Control panels cover the walls, but they have so many buttons and lights, I can’t even distinguish one from the next. Red blurs into blue and green. People sit in front of the controls, and their hands move in the same motions over and over.
“The Underworld is just that. A world,” Shayne says. “There’s plenty to do. Just because almost everyone here is dead doesn’t mean there’s no effort involved in running it.”
“But look at these people.” I motion around at the scene in front of me. The residents of Asphodel stare back at me with their stygian faces filled with only emptiness. It’s like they aren’t even aware of the tasks they’re doing, and yet they have to do them forever. “This is Hell.”
Shayne shrugs. “They don’t know they’re unhappy. They don’t know anything. Not even who they used to be.”
I can’t believe his lack of emotion. “How can you stand this? How can you stand to even come here?” Is Randy just another one of these people, oiling some giant machine?
Shayne considers this. “I have to come here. Whether I like it or not. It’s my job, and there’s no one else to do it.”
I wave my hand across the scene. “But why this? Surely there’s some better solution.”
Shayne lets out a laugh which doesn’t reach his eyes. “Let’s face it, Piper. Not everyone deserves to be in the Elysian Fields. Being sort of nice won’t get you there.”
The dead faces surround me. These faces used to be people. People with lives and families and dreams. People like Randy Conner. “Well, that stinks,” I say.
“Maybe. But being sort of bad won’t get you sent to Tartarus, either, so it’s kind of like a compromise.”
It makes sense, though I don’t want to agree with him out loud. “How many souls come here?” The dead are packed in like cockroaches; they hardly can move.
“Lots of people have died over the years, Piper. But Hell grows to fit them all.” Shayne stands a little straighter when he says this, and I realize he must be proud of his world.
“Isn’t that convenient? And when you say lots, you mean like…?”
“…billions. And most are here.”
We leave one factory and then another. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all Asphodel has to offer. The entire place seems to be a city paved over with machines. Shayne tries to tell me how each machine has a purpose, but it’s all just so industrial. There’s no nature and no weather. Asphodel is like a giant void filled with metal. Shayne leads us further into the city, away from the sanctuary of the boat—a sanctuary surrounded by a clay river infested with voracious monsters.
“What are we looking for?” I ask. I don’t mention Randy because I know he’s not the reason Shayne brought us here. As we walk through the city of factories, they seem to fly by around us. Like they’re all in fast forward and we’re not. They’re a blur in my peripheral vision.
We step to the side as some kind of robotic car comes driving by. It’s carrying five dead people who don’t even seem to notice us.
“Checking in with the management.” Shayne stops and turns his head so he’s looking at me. “Do you mind coming along?” The way he angles his head lets me know he’s curious what my response will be. Like he’s testing me.
Something about his question makes me laugh.
“What?” When he asks, the red flecks in his pupils flash.
“I’d say that I’d follow you to the ends of the earth, but that doesn’t seem like enough.”
His smile lights up the gray world of Asphodel around us. “No, it’s doesn’t, but it still sounds nice to me.”
“Well, as tempting as it may be, I’m not going to let you leave me here alone.”
Shayne raises an eyebrow. “Scared?”
I glance back at the lifeless city. “I’m not quite sure that’s the right word.” The truth is I want to see what else is out there. I want to see more of the Underworld. And I still want to find Randy—the real Randy—even if Shayne tells me there’s no point.
“Good,” he says.
And I know I’ve passed his test.
We start walking again in our fast forward way, and before long, we pass through a flat, metal plane populated with the dead, empty-eyed souls. As soon as I see them, every bit of laughter and happiness is
sucked right out of me.
“You get used to it.”
I guess it shows on my face. But I shake my head. “I don’t want to get used to it.”
I don’t expect him to respond, but he does. “It’s reality, though, Piper. Just like above. Look at Austin. Some parts are nice, and you’d feel safe going out at night alone to walk your dog. But try to do that in the wrong area, and it could be the last thing you ever do.”
“Not if Cerberus were my dog.”
Shayne smiles and pulls me closer with his arms. “I could loan him to you.”
The image of me walking Cerberus around on the Drag fills my mind. Of course, there, he’d probably fit right in. “My mom doesn’t give me much opportunity to hit the seedier areas of town.”
Shayne leans over and kisses my cheek, making me want to press into him. “So maybe next time Reese comes around, you could employ Cerberus.”
The image of Cerberus tearing Reese apart limb by limb is a strange one. Would tearing the god of war apart limb by limb be able to stop him? I almost ask Shayne, but then decide killing gods is a conversation topic I don’t want to bring up given our bleak surroundings.
“Rhadam tells me there’s been trouble in Asphodel,” Shayne says.
“What kind of trouble?” I think of the pomegranate tree dying in the Elysian Fields. That had been trouble for Shayne, also. Things shouldn’t die in paradise. And I think about what else Rhadam said. About bad things brewing in other parts of Hell: secrets being kept and plans being made.
“Things not working right. Souls misplaced. Machines breaking. Even attempts to cross the river.” Shayne points to a house far off ahead of us. It’s up on a hill away from the city, and unlike the rest of the bleak Asphodel, the air seems fresh around it, and rays of light actually touch it. “And we’re going there to find out why.”
As to why Shayne decides to take me on this task, I have no idea. He can’t possibly think this is some kind of romantic date, and the closer we get to the house on the hill, the less I want to go. Even though it’s clear and crisp outside, the house itself seethes evil. But there’s no chance I’ll venture back through Asphodel without him. And anyway, if he is testing me, I don’t want to back down now. I want to prove to Shayne I’m tough like he is.
