by Tim Pratt
“That bridge,” Darrin said. “It doesn’t have a deck. There are towers, and dangling cables, but there’s nothing to walk or drive across.”
“Yes,” Ismael said.
“I’ve seen photos of the Bay Bridge when it was being constructed, before they built the deck, and it was like this. But . . . who’s building this? Will it ever be finished?”
“That bridge is finished,” Ismael said. “It is all that it will ever be. It is simply not a bridge the likes of you or I are permitted to cross.” He sounded sad. He always sounded sad, but this seemed deeper, less weary, more profound.
“Ismael—” Darrin began. He didn’t know what he was going to say. Ismael didn’t give him a chance to say anything.
“Come, let us go. This is a dark place.” Ismael beckoned, and started down the far side of the hill. Darrin looked at the strange dark span of the bridge—a bridge he could never cross, as far as he could imagine; and where would it lead, if he could? Then he went after Ismael, into a hole in the base of a hill, and into yet another world.
2
Perhaps an hour later, if time could be trusted in the briarpatch, Ismael said “Here. We’re here.”
“Here” was pleasant enough, green grass and marble ruins, hills and a deep blue sky. “There,” Ismael pointed, and Darrin saw something like a spotlight shining from the sky, a beautiful golden light pouring down onto some blessed bit of earth.
“It looks like the light we get in summer afternoons, in the living room,” Darrin said. “Bridget used to curl up on the couch by the window and look out at the light. She said it even made dirty rainwater in the gutters look beautiful.”
“She went into that light,” Ismael said. “Come, we’ll go closer, and you can stand in it, and understand why she felt it was worth giving up everything to reach.”
Mesmerized even from afar, Darrin followed as Ismael picked his way down the slope, past chunks of marble. Then something glistened, among the clouds, and Darrin stopped. “Wait, what’s that?” He gestured, and a cloud moved, and there it was, the perfect arc of the moon-coloured bridge Darrin had first glimpsed in San Francisco all those months ago. It began somewhere beyond the horizon, and its far end disappeared into the golden light seeping from the sky.
“What?” Ismael shaded his eyes, looking up. “I don’t see—”
Darrin reached out and touched Ismael on the back of the neck. Ismael gasped, and reached up to clasp Darrin’s hand to his neck, as if afraid he would take it away. “What a lovely bridge,” Ismael said, voice shaking. “Do you see how it stretches to the light?”
Darrin eased his hand away, and left Ismael blinking and staring. “I hope that, in time, I will be able to see paths only you can see,” Ismael said after a moment. “I have always been able to pass my gift for sight on to others. The way, in fairy stories, the fairies can give second sight to mortals, and allow them to see the secret world. My old friend Harczos, he believed fairy stories were told about people like us, visitors from the briarpatch, and this may be true. But Harczos was never able to grant me his vision. When he touched me, I could see the corridors and stairways he perceived, and when I touched him, vice-versa, but neither was contagious in the usual sense. We saw many of the same things, but we each perceived passages the other did not. Perhaps you and I will, hmm, rub off on one another? You will see what I see, and I will see what you see? I can hope. Until then, we will hold hands for the difficult crossings, yes?”
“Sure,” Darrin said, amazed to hear hope in Ismael’s voice. The world-weary immortal, burdened by centuries, finally had something to hope for. “Whatever helps me find Bridget.”
Ismael seemed to sag a little, at that. “We will find her there, ahead of us, in the light, perhaps across that silver bridge of yours.”
“Or maybe he’ll find me right here.” Bridget stepped with another man from behind a cracked marble half-dome. “And then he’ll find out what a lying sack of shit you are.”
“Bridget?” Darrin said. It looked like her, in her red coat, her expression fierce and serious. But that thing in the hotel had looked like her too, hadn’t it, and—
But no. Ismael was backing away, scowling, and muttering under his breath. Darrin didn’t hear most of it—something about spoiling things, something about the light—but he wasn’t interested in anything Ismael had to say now. He was interested in Bridget, here, right here before him. All the anger, all the sadness, all the acid in his gut and pounding in his head, faded away, and he only wanted to go to her. So he did, closing the distance between them in a few steps, and threw out his arms to embrace her—
—and she just slipped away, out of his arms, so smoothly he couldn’t even feel her, and he fell to his knees from the momentum.
“I’m so sorry, Darrin,” Bridget said, kneeling beside him and putting her hand against his cheek—but instead of warm flesh he felt only something like the brush of wind. “I wish I could hold your hand, feel your touch, but I can’t, I . . .”
“She’s dead,” Ismael said. “She doesn’t have a true physical form anymore, just . . . a very persistent psyche. She set her soul free and threw away her body in an attempt to reach the better world, but she failed. She did not let everything go. I never thought of it before, but it’s right here in front of me. She’s wearing that red coat. You gave her that coat, didn’t you, Darrin? I told her to dispose of all her meaningful possessions, but she went to the bridge, to her death, wearing a gift from you. That was what held her back, I think, or rather, it is emblematic of what held her back. You. You are the reason she is a lost thing now, Darrin, haunting that idiot Orville Troll.” He lifted his chin toward the man Bridget had appeared with.
“You were supposed to help me find her.” Darrin turned toward Ismael. “But you knew where she was all along. Fuck you. I’ll never help you find your way to the light.”
Ismael shrugged. “Yes, well, it’s all ruined now. But it’s not the first time my plans have failed. I am nothing if not patient. And there is always another plan, isn’t there? I had hopes for this one, but I’ve grown used to disappointment, and moving on. I’ve got my eye on a nice piece of property outside the city. I could stand to spend a little time in the country, perhaps with a few like-minded seekers. I already have some good prospects in mind, and a new approach that may prove fruitful—”
Darrin’s fury at Ismael overcame his interlaced joy and grief at seeing Bridget again. “There is no plan B.” He stalked toward Ismael. “Not for you. I’m going to make ruining your life my life’s work. I—”
Darrin froze when he heard the unmistakable ratcheting sound of a shotgun being pumped, and they all looked up the hill. “Sorry to break up the party,” Echo said, standing entirely too close to them, with a chrome-plated shotgun in her hands. “But I really think it’s time to talk about my problems.”
Arturo was there with her, improbably, standing just a few feet behind her, and Darrin was trying to wrap his head around that—was Arturo in on this, somehow, too? And what was Echo doing here?
“Darrin, honey, Ismael hired me to fuck you,” Echo said. “Is your dead girlfriend ghosting around here somewhere? She should hear this. Ismael recruited me, told me where to find you, and sent me to turn on the charm. It wasn’t hard—you were so broken up about miss blondie being gone that you just needed some comfort, and I can be good at comforting. Besides, it wasn’t too bad—I’ve been with worse.”
Darrin’s eyes stung, but he was damned if he was going to cry now. Any affection he’d had for Echo had vanished when he found her going down on Nicholas in his living room. “Did he get to Nicholas, too?”
Echo nodded. “Sure.” She gestured in Ismael’s direction with the shotgun. “He promised Nicholas eternal life, if you can believe that bullshit. At least, it better be bullshit, because if he has access to that kind of shit and didn’t tell me�
��”
“So what did he promise you, Echo?” Darrin said. Arturo was creeping closer to her, a look halfway between terror and concentration on his face, and Darrin thought maybe he wasn’t a willing travelling companion.
“He promised me entertainment,” Echo said. “That I wouldn’t be bored. There’s nothing in the world worse than being bored. Just ask Ismael—that’s why he wants to go live in magical la-la land, because it’s all just too fucking tedious. And then he tried to take off without paying me.”
“Don’t be so tiresome, Echo,” Ismael said, with his full weight of weariness. “Just shoot me and have done with it.”
Arturo made a grab for her shotgun, but Echo must have sensed his approach, because she pivoted smoothly on her heel and drove the gun stock hard into his gut. Arturo gasped and folded up, falling to the ground and rolling partway down the hill. Echo didn’t even look at him, just turned back to Ismael. She walked down the hill, coming within killing range . . . for those who could be killed. “You want me to shoot you, Ismael? So you can pop out of here and land someplace safe and warm? No, I got bored trying to kill you a couple of days ago. But there are other ways to hurt you. Like taking away your latest playmate.”
Echo swung the gun up, aimed it point-blank at Darrin’s chest, and pulled the trigger.
The last thing Darrin heard wasn’t the gunshot, but Bridget screaming “No!”
3
At first, Orville thought the gunshot had somehow disintegrated Darrin, because he disappeared instantly when Echo fired. But there was no wounded body, no body at all, and Echo said “God damn it!” and stalked toward Ismael, who was backing away again.
Bridget went to the place where Darrin’s body should have been and began pawing at the ground, as if looking for some sign of him, making a long low keening noise.
“All you fucking briar-patch babies can do that? You never told me Darrin was unkillable!” Echo pumped the slide on the shotgun again, ejecting the spent shell. “Damn you, Ismael, I’m tired of shooting things I can’t kill.”
“Do it,” Ismael said. “Do it, do it, shoot me!”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, your get-out-of-shit free card,” Echo said. “No way. I think I’ll run you down and tie you up and see how much I can hurt you without triggering your flight mechanism.”
Ismael turned and ran past a tumble of broken columns. Echo cursed and gave chase.
The middle-aged man with the walrus moustache limped toward Orville, wincing with each step. Orville had never been good at processing lots of new information quickly, but since Echo had hit this guy in the stomach and left him on the ground, he was probably no friend of hers, right? “Hey,” the man said. “While she’s chasin’ him, what do you say you and me and your ghostly friend get out of here?”
Bridget looked up from her study of the ground. “Who . . . who are you?”
“Name’s Arturo. Me and Darrin were drinkin’ buddies.”
“You were with Echo,” Bridget said, rising.
“Yeah, and I’d rather not be with Echo again, so maybe we should get a move on, huh?”
Bridget looked at Orville, and after a second he realized she was looking to him for guidance—seeing Darrin shot (or shot at, anyway), and watching him disappear, had unhinged her a little, it seemed, and done something to her usual forward-charging confidence. “I don’t know who to trust,” Bridget said.
Orville had never considered himself a good judge of character. He tended to think the worst of people, and was generally not disappointed. But this man—Arturo—wanted to take them away from the crazy woman with the gun, and that seemed fairly trustworthy to Orville. Maybe there was some complex conspiracy afoot, the kind that Ismael and Echo had worked on Darrin, but Orville had a hard time imagining that someone would expend that kind of energy to fuck with his head. “Okay,” he said. “I think we should go with him, Bridget.” To Arturo: “Do you know a quick way out of this place?”
“The Wendigo knows,” Arturo said. “Come on, my car is this way.”
“You’ve got a car?” Bridget said, incredulous.
“It’s sort of a car,” Arturo said, setting off away from the direction Echo had gone. “It’s a car that drives through the briarpatch. I can’t find my way around this place worth a damn on foot, I get lost every time.”
Orville looked back over his shoulder, toward the shining light in the sky, the oval of illuminated ground in the distance. He’d been looking forward to another look at that light, but staying alive was better than standing in the reflection of something beautiful. He hurried along after Arturo. “How did you know Bridget was a ghost?”
“Darrin told me Bridget was dead. Which means, if she’s still here, she must be a ghost, or somethin’ like that.” He paused. “Or else Darrin was wrong. Funny how that didn’t occur to me right away, even though it makes more sense. Not that this place makes sense, necessarily.”
“No, I’m dead,” Bridget said. “It just didn’t stick.”
“What happened to Darrin?” Orville asked, expecting it to be a rhetorical question, and was surprised when both Arturo and Bridget started to speak. They both stopped, and Arturo laughed. “You take this one,” he said.
“Ismael is immortal,” Bridget said. “Which you knew. But it’s more than a matter of not getting cancer or aging or whatever. He’s protected from death by murder or accident, too. If he’s about to die, some sort of self-defence mechanism kicks in, and he’s transported instantly to somewhere else in the briarpatch, somewhere safe. And, I guess, Darrin is the same way.” She shook her head. “All the time I was with him, I had no idea he was a . . . a magical person.”
Arturo grunted. “He seemed like a pretty good guy to me. Ismael seems like an asshole. Those are more important than whether they’re magical. They’re briarpatch babies, people who were just plausible enough to exist at all.”
A gunshot sounded far behind them, and they all hunched instinctively, even Bridget, who had nothing to fear from a shotgun. “Do you think Echo tried to shoot Ismael?” Orville whispered. “Or did Ismael get the gun away from her?”
“Who knows?” Arturo said. “She only had two shells, though, so she’s all out of ammo now. But even if she can’t come over here and shoot us, I don’t much want to see her again. Let’s hustle.” They went on, toward a series of gradually rising hills.
“Are you a briarpatch baby, too?” Bridget asked.
“Nah. I’m just a poor slob who used to be a mechanic.” He puffed a little as he spoke, out of breath. “A little while after my wife died, I found the Wendigo, and I’ve been drivin’ around with it ever since.”
“Just driving around?” Bridget asked. “Or trying to get somewhere?” She glanced back, toward the receding oval of light.
“I’m not lookin’ for that place with the light. Don’t worry about that. I do have a purpose, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Lookin’ for my Marjorie.”
“Your wife?” Orville asked. “The one who died?”
“Yup. But just because she’s dead doesn’t mean I can’t find her again.” He inclined his head toward Bridget.
“How did she die?” Bridget asked.
“It was a car thing,” Arturo replied.
They walked in silence for a moment. Then Orville said “What does that mean?”
Arturo looked over his shoulder at Orville, his shaggy eyebrows raised. “Well. I found her in the garage, in the car, with the motor runnin’. Dead from the carbon monoxide.”
“Suicide,” Bridget said.
Arturo stopped, turned to face her, and said, “I don’t know.” His hands were balled into fists, and Orville instinctively took a step forward, as if to protect Bridget, but of course Arturo couldn’t hurt her. Arturo relaxed, took a step back, a
nd sighed. “Marjorie wasn’t always as careful as she could’ve been. Maybe she just started the car to run some errands and got distracted, looked for somethin’ in her purse, dropped somethin’ on the floor, started listenin’ to somethin’ on the radio—she had this funny thing, she wouldn’t listen to the radio when she drove, said it was too dangerous, because she might get distracted while drivin’, so sometimes she’d sit and listen to the end of a program before she drove off. So maybe she just didn’t think about being in the closed garage, and passed out and died. There wasn’t a note or nothin’, so I can’t know for sure.”
“Unless you can find her and ask,” Bridget said.
“We were happy,” Arturo said. “I want to be happy again. And I won’t be until I see her.” He walked off again, faster, leaving them behind, and Orville exchanged a glance with Bridget. She shrugged. They went after him, up the hill, and there was a big boat of a car parked on the grass, improbable as a cherry on top of a cheeseburger.
“Meet the Wendigo,” Arturo said, leaning against the side of the car.
“This car . . . it can go anywhere?” Bridget asked.
“All over the briarpatch and beyond.” He patted the hood. “I’ll drop you guys off wherever you want.” He paused. “Well, anywhere the Wendigo wants, I guess, but it sometimes takes requests.”
“If you’re going looking for Marjorie,” Bridget said slowly. “Do you think we could . . . tag along? Darrin is out there somewhere, lost, and he doesn’t know his way around like Ismael does. If you’re searching for someone anyway . . .”
Arturo rubbed his chin and chewed his moustache. “Look,” he said finally. “The Wendigo goes where it wants. It has its own, whatcha call them, search protocols, I guess. If you guys want to tag along, I don’t see any reason why not. It gets lonely on the road. But the briarpatch is a big place. So . . . don’t get your hopes up, okay?”
