Mortality Bridge

by Steven R. Boyett

  He turns the redsmeared broken jar in his bloodstained hands. Just glass. Just a feather. Jemma will I see you again? We are spirits I have learned. Something in us immortal and irreducibly ourselves. But paired and forever bound? I don’t know. I fear perhaps we intersect we waltz and we move on. The music stops and we are all alone. Well if that is so I can accept it. When I set out to get you back it was because you had been taken from me. But on the way my reasons changed. It was because you had been taken at all. Taking you was wrong. Not unfair, not tragic, but wrong. A violation. You didn’t deserve to die. You don’t deserve to be there. And I don’t care what happens to me so long as I can make that right. My winning or losing no longer matters. I don’t deserve you back. I signed my soul away and can’t stand on some right to overturn that. Phil was right: a binding contract freely entered into. But you did not. They can have me. But not until we have you safely from them. That’s what’s different this time. That is what we have a chance of winning here. For even just the fact of change can be a victory.

  But now that we have broken free the story’s outcome is unknown. What will happen to you when we cross that boundary again? To think that you might simply be returned to where I brought you from.

  All I can do is what I do now. The rest is in the hands of the gods. Who are not known for their evenhandedness. Not to mortal men and especially not to those who set themselves against them. Even Orpheus before me did not get so far. Yet he was not blessed with such companions as I’ve had. Perhaps that was his failure, that he took it on himself. That in truth he went down for himself and not for her.

  So hold on Jem. Hold on. Soon we will be home.

  THE CAR TURNS off the freeway and Niko opens heavy lids. “Where are we?”

  “Las Virgenes exit.”

  “Go left.”

  They turn left and pass above the Ventura Freeway. Up ahead a McDonald’s and a liquor store and a gas station. “We need gas,” says Niko.

  “Look behind us.”

  Niko looks just as the black length of the Franklin turns left off the exit ramp. Shit. Nikodemus puts the hammer down and an invisible hand shoves Niko into the seat. Mournfully he watches the gas station whip by.

  The Bentley flashes by an L.A. County Sheriff car parked on a side road before a condo cluster. The patrol car kicks up dust and speeds onto the road where it is nearly broadsided by the Black Taxi before the big black car yaws into the lefthand lane and whips around the black-and-white.

  “Cop,” says Niko.

  Nikodemus merely looks at him.

  “Yeah right, never mind.” They lean hard into a curve. “This road is sort of glued onto a mountain range. It’s pretty curvy so be careful.”

  “I like this car. It’s much easier to drive than that one.”

  “I’ll will it to you.”

  Colored light plays about them. The sheriff’s lightbar. Its strobing backlights the Black Taxi racing between the Bentley and the patrol car and definitely gaining.

  Nikodemus sticks the Bentley round a tight right curve. The tires wail as they slide out toward the precipice in a mild fourwheel drift into the path of oncoming headlights. Nikodemus backs off on the gas and cuts in and a black Ford pickup streaks by honking and goes on to barely miss the Black Taxi and the pursuing patrol car.

  Whatever else Nikodemus might be he is certainly not the Checker Cab driver. The demon’s driving experience consists of three or four days driving a supernatural vehicle up a ramp full of dead people and mowing them down like grass.

  Niko tries to think. Okay. So. Malibu Canyon Road runs along the hillside above the sheer dropoff of the gorge that houses Malibu Canyon Creek. Near the crest of Malibu Canyon Road there’s Mulholland Drive but few other side roads. Mostly undeveloped state-owned parkland till you get to Hughes Research Labs and Pepperdine University near Pacific Coast Highway at the Malibu shoreline where the Santa Monica Mountains drown in the Pacific. Friday traffic on the canyon road. No wonder that sheriff had been parked there. He’s gonna wish he’d baited his line for smaller fish.

  Niko massages his forehead. His fingertips are cold. Okay. Stop worrying about the sheriff. He can’t stop us and if he radios for help they’ll just be waiting somewhere near PCH on the other side of the hill. Where the hell else are we gonna go?

  The biggest worry is the tunnel itself. They’re not driving some tanklike Checker Cab with special buttons that enable it to do supernatural things. No sir. They’re driving a Bentley. A quarter million dollars’ worth of fine machine but a machine nonetheless. Its most supernatural controls are a GPS and personal environment controls and memory settings on the seats. When they reach the tunnel it may be just a tunnel. Not a Portal, not a Doorway to some other where. And what then? What if they drive into it and come out still on Malibu Canyon Road and heading downhill toward the highway and a row of Stop Sticks and a line of sheriff’s cars? But officer I can explain. This here’s my demon, see, and this jar contains my girlfriend’s soul, I was being chased by Death himself, you won’t believe the night I’ve had, can’t you just let me off with a warning?

  If we come out that tunnel and we’re still on Malibu Canyon then the only way to cross that boundary will be the way most people do. By dying. But if we, if we die close enough to the portal the cabbie swore would be there, maybe then the Black Taxi Driver won’t have time to strip us from ourselves and trap us like fireflies in a jar and head back to his master with us in hand. Maybe.

  We’ll jump that bridge when we come to it.

  A SHORT BLOOP of sheriff siren brings Niko back enough to make him realize that he’s been a little gone. Now he feels a tingling warmth like when you’re so cold it burns. The Black Taxi’s less than fifty feet behind them now and the sheriff’s car is on its ass.

  The Bentley’s engine lurches and sputters and catches and dies. Nikodemus stomps the gas and turns the key and whips the dashboard with a tendril and swears in a guttural reptilian tongue.

  “We’re out of gas,” says Niko.

  “What do we do?”

  “Keep driving. It’s mostly downhill now.”

  And it is. The serpentine road hugs the hillside downtending and tight turning. Niko tells Nikodemus to put the car in neutral and go easy on the brake. They’re still going so fast they barely have control as they slur around the curves and nearly trade paint with oncoming traffic. In the gliding quiet Niko hears the leonine purr of the Black Taxi’s motor and the bored out grumble of the sheriff’s car. The sheriff hasn’t bothered with the siren again.

  “It’s harder to steer now,” Nikodemus says.

  “Power steering went out when the engine died. So’d the power brakes. You’ll have to press harder to slow down.”

  “How much farther now?”

  “I’m not sure. Not far. It’s the only tunnel on this road.” They lean into a turn.

  “What do we do when we get there?”

  “Depends on what we find.”

  They lean the other way.

  “What if it’s just a tunnel?”

  Niko studies his demon. His whitepatched eye and broken wings. The pursuing headlight glare bright against the back of his roughcarved head. “Then I think you know.”

  Nikodemus is silent.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “What else can I do?” Nikodemus yanks the wheel. “I’m more married to you than she is.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” And astonishingly the demon grins. “It’s been fun.”

  “Nikodemus—”

  The demon steers them through a narrow S and makes a deep gargling sound that ends in a sharp click.

  “What’s that?” asks Niko.

  “My name. My true name. I remembered it awhile back. I wanted you to know.”

  Niko chokes back sudden tears. All he can do is nod.

  The canyon road is thick with mist from the encroaching marine layer piled up against the hills. The mist is silvered with the rising moo
n. Powerless the silent Bentley twists and turns among the earthbound clouds. Pursued by laws of man and nature both. Niko checks to be sure Nikodemus isn’t wearing his seatbelt. Not that it would have fit him anyhow but just in case. Feeling oddly calm and languid and logical he unfastens his own seatbelt and then leans forward and switches off the passenger airbag.

  On a downhill straightaway Niko lowers his window. The road ahead is free of traffic and they dip below the mist and up again into it. The car fills with an ancient odor.

  “What’s that smell?” says Nikodemus.

  “The ocean. It’s just over this pass.”

  “I’d like to have seen that.”

  In this time of final things. Here in the mountains I feel the sea. The two have traded places many times I know. Nikodemus will never see the ocean or the sun.

  On impulse Niko reaches for the radio button and as he reaches somewhere in a place without location on an infinite and sunless plain a glass tube slips over the ringfinger of a dark brown callused hand and as he pushes the radio button the glass tube slides along tight metal strings and as he scans across the static hiss of exploding galaxies a beatup shitbox of a pawnshop guitar begins to cry a world of pain back at a world of pain and in so doing somehow makes that pain abate. As the antique and ageless car behind them catches up and pushes them and tries to herd them from the mountainside with its own bumper the Bentley’s radio catches a weak ghost signal, a music relayed on the mist, a few bent notes on a bottleneck slide. Niko hears them crying on the radio as the rear end of the Bentley gets loose. It seems a mournful voice calls Niko’s name as he looks ahead and sees the tunnel mouth two turns away. Hard right and hard left. They head uphill and the Bentley begins to slow. The surging Franklin plows into them and tries to push them off the road.

  Now the siren wails again or is that a bending heartbreak chord.

  Nikodemus steers them skidding round the righthand curve and they head downhill once again and pick up speed. The Black Taxi falls behind but Niko knows it’s just a brief respite. The hills and mist around them strobe red from the sheriff’s whirling light-bar. The music Niko thinks he hears picks up a heartbeat shuffle. This last turn is going to be tight. No oncoming traffic. Tires chortle as the demon steers the Bentley toward the wall of mountain and then cuts into the oncoming lane to gain the inside line as he enters the sharp left turn.

  The sheriff’s car falls back. Maybe they want to kill themselves but the sheriff doesn’t.

  As they pick up speed toward the tunnel mouth the Black Taxi makes one last try and rushes into their rear bumper. Somehow Niko feels the Franklin’s rage. The Driver’s cool and certain fury. The Bentley’s back end gets loose and scrapes the mountainside. Sparks fly and rubble peppers road. Nikodemus holds the car around the hairpin turn and then he straightens out and they are in the tunnel.

  Nothing happens. It’s just a tunnel. Two lanes and overarching concrete.

  Oh well. Niko glances at the speedometer. Fiftyfive. That should do the trick.

  The tunnel isn’t very long, a couple hundred yards at most, and quickly they emerge. The road veers sharply right and Niko leans forward to grab the steering wheel but Nikodemus bats his hands aside. For a moment Niko thinks the demon means to outdrive their pursuers and survive. Then Nikodemus yanks the wheel himself, and as the Bentley veers left off the road and up the dirt embankment toward the insufficient guardrail looming in the headlights showing only emptiness beyond, Niko understands that Nikodemus steered them off the road because if he himself had done it everything would be for nothing. Because suicide is a mortal sin.

  The car tears through the white guardrail. The airbag explodes from the steering wheel and drives Nikodemus back into the seat. Nikodemus flails and the thick white bag goes limp. The car arcs out into the canyon night. In the sudden quiet Niko hears the ocean’s crash. The music on the radio is out of reach now.

  Moonlit mist fills the windshield.

  Niko cradles the mason jar. Clarity spreads through him. His stomach seems to rise. He floats above the seat. He smells the ocean. Hears the creek below.

  The front tilts down. The windshield fills with mountainside and scrub. Here it is. Here it is.

  Something dry and snakelike grips his arm. Nikodemus. Niko holds his hand out and the tendril wraps his palm and Niko grips it tight.

  See you there says Nikodemus.

  Last things. Jemma I am so afraid and I am not afraid at all. Then will I headlong run into the earth.

  The Bentley dies against the gully floor.

  SHERIFF ANDREW SAUNDERS’ report described the suspect vehicle as a late model Bentley sports car, deep maroon. The suspect vehicle violated posted speed limits and disregarded posted traffic signals as it exited the Ventura Freeway on the westbound Las Virgenes ramp. The vehicle was weaving and erratically driven. Suspecting intoxication Sheriff Saunders gave pursuit. The driver of the suspect vehicle was described as a large male, black or hispanic, the passenger a white male. The driver disregarded Sheriff Saunders’ instructions to pull over at the next turnout, and Saunders subsequently radioed for backup. Pursuit speeds exceeded seventy miles per hour along Malibu Canyon Road, a posted thirty-five mile per hour zone. The suspect vehicle entered the tunnel at an approximate speed of fiftyfive miles per hour, then exited the tunnel and inexplicably veered from the road. The vehicle traveled up the embankment and broke through the guardrail. At no time did the brakelights flash. Sheriff Saunders immediately pulled over and exited his patrol vehicle to render assistance but the suspect vehicle was at the bottom of the gorge on the far side of Malibu Canyon Creek. Visibility was limited due to an encroaching marine layer and the site was inaccessible until a rescue crew with winches arrived on the scene an hour later to find the vehicle smashed to half its former size. The occupants did not survive. Their remains were transported to the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner for autopsy and identification.

  The report made no mention of any other vehicle involved in the pursuit.

  XXXIII.

  BRING IT ON HOME

  NIKO CUTS THE engine and the boat floats on the quiet lake. The air is rarefied high up on Lake Arrowhead. Patchy early morning mist still haunts the water.

  She sits across from him, a frayed and faded blanket with a thunderbird design across her knees.

  Indistinct the shoreline turns and turns around them. Smell of gas from the outboard.

  She has a certain smile. As if she’s given him a present and she waits for him to open it.

  Niko doesn’t move because this moment is a fragile bubble and he doesn’t want to break it. Pearlescent mist beads Jemma’s hair. “Hi,” she says.

  Niko looks around. The boat. The lake. The shore. “We’re here? We made it?”

  A hundred tiny diamonds fall as Jemma shakes her head. “Not yet.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  They drift and they drift. Happy lap of water on the hull. He wants so much to touch her.

  They watch their separate shores slide by. He sees her artist’s eye appraise his face, sees the love that guided the hand that set his face to canvas.

  Something’s missing. And at that thought it’s where it ought to be, his old Martin in its case between them there and holding in it unborn tunes.

  Niko wants to close his eyes and drift with their own drifting but he is afraid that when he opens them all this will be gone. This is the core of things then. This was always home. We have always shared this little boat, we are what anchors this place.

  “You’re all right then,” says Niko.

  “You’re in here with me.”

  “Am I dead?”

  Her smile deepens. “You have to wake up.”

  Out on the mirrored plain a fish breaks the mist and writhes suspended in their alien world before it splashes back into its own. “I need you to forgive me, Jem.”

  And he sees the ache in her face. The simple ache when hearts misunderstand. “Oh honey. There’s nothing to forgive.�
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  And here at last is absolution.

  His face goes tight and he begins to softly cry. Where is the quiet of inner peace?

  He puts a hand to his chest and says Ow.

  Jemma nods. “If it was easy everybody’d do it.”

  Niko laughs and she laughs back. Their little boat rocks on the deep.

  “Your trip’s not over yet you know.”

  “No?” A shadow dread falls over him.

  “Soon.”

  “How do I end it, Jem? I just want it to be over. I just want you to be okay.”

  “Then wake up.”

  “Can I kiss you?”

  Jemma laughs, not meanly but surprised, and says Oh Niko. And they bump against the farther shore.

  GRIT AND PEBBLES press his cheek. Niko opens his eyes. He blinks. He gropes. Hard and flat and sandy.

  Suddenly sits up and gasps. Not in pain but in expectation of pain. He pats his chest, his head. No blood, no broken bones. Not even a bruise. He remembers his forehead slamming the windshield as the carfront crumpled toward him. The awful roar and tearing loose inside him as the dashboard crushed his chest.

  Niko rubs his forehead. Not even a bump. His hand finds his back. The Maxi-pad is gone and there is no sign of the slashes.

  Slowly Niko stands and explores himself in puzzlement and disbelief, his own hands assessing like a lover’s hands.

  Jemma.

  Chilled in desert heat he stops. He looks around himself and feels the heart he felt stop beating leap with sudden fear.

  The mason jar is gone. How could it not be here, considering what it held? Could Jemma not have made the crossing? Leached into the world, and everything for nothing?

  He clenches his fists and glares at the sky. The sun bright, the cloudless sky blue enough to break his heart.

  He looks away. He has awakened by the side of a paved road that cuts straight and long across a bright and featureless plain that looks like lower desert.