by David Green
Charon shrugs. “That is their lot, Fateless. I do not make the rules. I ensure the balance, until it is no longer required.”
Balance? The Ferryman takes a step back, and the darkness that follows him swells.
“Can’t you do something?” I growl. “I thought all children were innocent?”
“That is what your priests tell you to give you comfort. Ironic, given that many of them are sinners themselves. In God’s eyes, all that live have sinned. They must prove their innocence through life.”
“Not all kids, or Hell would overflow with them.”
“You think you understand how Hell works? Such arrogance. But no, children are taught innocence. Some lose it with haste.” Charon points towards the boy with the melted face, screaming near the cab and its oblivious driver. “He stole a toy from a neighbor. A spinning top. A trivial item, but the sin was there. Greed. Envy. Vanity in believing he deserved where others did not.”
“Why follow that fickle sonofabitch upstairs? You don’t have to follow his rules. Not for something like this.”
Charon stares at me, and his expression is almost reproachful. I pull out a cigarette and get to lighting it, trying to keep the tremble out of my hands.
“What? I can say what I like about Him. I committed revenge, remember? I ain’t getting into Heaven.”
Charon points over my shoulder.
“She stole food. More than once. Money from the cash register where she worked went into her pockets.”
I glance over and see Diana, standing near a boy her age. “Diana?”
“Your ward, yes. She has no passage into Heaven.”
Even though I’ve taken one drag, I throw the cigarette to the floor and stamp on it, taking out my frustrations in the only way I can.
“She did that to feed her family. Would He have been happier if she’d let them starve? Isn’t it a sin not to do your duty by your kin?”
“Stealing is a sin,” Charon replies, without missing a beat. His voice is like a shovel scraping through loose stones.
“So, you’re telling me after she meets her purpose, she’s stuck here? Forever?”
“Nothing is forever, Fateless, and some do not receive the pleasure of turning their faces towards the sky.”
What the Hell is he even talking about?
“Nick!”
I glance around as Diana calls. She’s waving me over, and the boy she’s talking to stares my way.
“Fateless,” Charon whispers, laying a bony hand with only a slither of flesh on my shoulder. I go numb, like that side of my body ceases to exist. “If it is of any comfort, her family are in Heaven.”
“Maybe it will be,” I bite out. “But she won’t see `em again. How’s that fair?”
I stride away, sensation returning as I shake off Charon’s touch. Felt like half my body had fallen into the grave.
I approach the kids. The boy Diana’s talking to blinks at me, a confused look washing across his face, followed by a blank one. He’s cycling, features slack, then surprised. He’s half-Aware, like his memories are coming back. Diana clutches his hand.
The little boy’s five. Maybe six. Small, nothing but skin and bone when he lived. His eyes are huge, standing out on his gaunt, innocent face. Fuck this. Fuck it all.
Diana’s jaw, below the crusted blood on her cheeks, is tight. She’s holding herself together. One tough cookie. Not sure I could do the same in her position. Almost can’t now.
If the boy she’s talking to ate more than one hot meal a week, I’m a saint. The kid suffered in life. Now he’s doing the same in death. Where’s the justice in any of this?
“Nick, this is Louis. I knew him. Louis, tell my friend what you told me.”
The boy squints up at me, so I crouch and give him a smile.
“It’s okay, kid. You can talk to me.” That unseen weight presses on me again. I glance over my shoulder. Charon’s gone, but out there, in the darkness of Redwood and Maine, something’s watching me. Again.
No mist this time. No screams, other than those of the dead, dying all over again.
“They came,” Louis says, before falling silent again. Diana’s looking the other way, but still holding his hand. He looks around, cowers a little, then furrows his brow. “White men came. They were saying we forgot our place, said they’d teach us a lesson. I heard Diana’s momma screaming, yelling at them about taking her girl. She said she’d gone to the police. That’s when the fire started. That’s…”
Louis pauses, his face slack. I grip his thin shoulder.
“Go on, kid. Hey! Stick with me.”
He sighs. “Her mom said a white man took her girl. They came during the night, a mob. They…they started it. The fire. I can still hear them laughing. They said they’d teach us all a lesson about respecting our betters.”
Diana lets go of Louis’ hand, and he cowers on the floor, hands over his head, peering up above him. He screams and falls flat, as if the rafters just collapsed on him.
I pull Diana close. She’s shaking with sobs. I stoop, lift her up and head back to the cab, ignoring the presence watching me, questions turning over in my mind.
Diana got a kid stuck in a loop to communicate. How’d she do that? The Empathy? Smells like more than that.
And what Charon said… It’s clear I ain’t got Hell figured out yet.
If I don’t figure some of this out soon, the two of us are in real trouble.
…
The cops, Marvin and the mist are out there, tailing me, and that’s assuming my old friend, the Amarok, ain’t still on my trail too. We take the cab to a motel on the outskirts of Haven instead. ‘The Ace in the Hole’. I tip the driver and advise he forgets all about us. The guy in reception gives me a funny look when I ask for twin beds, but I reckon he’s had stranger requests.
Diana sits on the edge of her single as I scroll through my cell, looking through articles sent by Zia about Redwood and Maine. I asked her to see what she could find when we left the vacant lot and she worked fast.
The place burned down alright. At the time, the investigators filed it as an accident. In the late-90s, the case was reopened and reclassified as racially-motivated felony murder. The press wasn’t interested in an almost 30-year-old cold case, though more likely too many of the people involved held positions of power, or were related to those who do.
Louis’ story checks out. A lynch mob came for the woman accusing a white man of taking her girl. Things got ugly when the folk in the building didn’t hand her over.
Diana stayed silent for the entire cab ride. Then, when we got to the room, she asked me what Charon and I talked about. Taking a lesson from my date with Rosa, I told her the truth.
Look, I know she’s a child, but she deserves to know what happened to her family.
She only said four words. “I’m happy they’re together.”
What can you say to that?
“We used to have a record player,” Diana says. It’s good to hear her talking so I just keep my trap shut and listen. “Daddy brought it home one night. We set it up by the window, even though we didn’t have much of a view. Momma would sing, the girls would dance. It seems like yesterday, but… So many years have gone by, haven’t they?”
A question to no one. Coming to terms with Hell is tough. I know from experience, and, in all honesty, I don’t think I’m quite there yet. Can’t imagine how a kid deals with it.
“It’s my fault,” she whispers.
“Hey! Don’t start thinking like that, kid. You want someone to blame, blame the creep who took you. Blame the corrupt bastards at the PD who turned a blind eye when your mom went asking for you. Blame the scum that did the burning, or the ones who stood by and watched while those folk died. It’s their fault because they had a choice. Got that?”
Diana turns to me, her sockets wide.
I picture her the way she must have looked before, and my heart breaks a little more. She’s just a kid, alone in Hell.
“What do I do now, Nick?”
She lets out a sob that tears through my gut. She’s trapped in this place and everyone who knew her, cared about her, has moved on. But that doesn’t mean there’s no one here for her. I ain’t her family, but I’m something. Ruby too.
“Whatever it is, kid, we’ll figure it out together. Me and you.”
She sniffs, fighting to hold it together. “You mean that?”
I swing my legs off the bed so I’m facing her. I mean what I’m going to say and I want her to know it.
“You say this guy’s still out there?”
Diana nods.
“That’s good enough for me. We’ll find him, we’ll make him remember you, then we’ll decide what happens to him. The two of us.”
“The two of us.”
Diana lies back on her bed and rolls on her side to face the wall. Ghosts don’t sleep like the living do, but they rest. I guess staring at the cracks in the beige panels is comforting. It’s all she knew for sixty years.
I go back to my cell and text Zia again.
Any updates about my office?
I’ve committed revenge once. My soul’s damned. The guy who killed Diana, who got all those folks burned alive, deserves what’s coming to him. His hands are bloodier than mine, and that’s blood that’ll never wash away. Not by all the rain in Hell.
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS
Morning comes. I think about what Charon said, the way he implied that one day it won’t.
Zia hasn’t gotten back to me about my office, which means she’s working on it. So we wait. It’s all me and the kid can do. Truth be told, being stuck in a dingy motel on the city’s outskirts ain’t all bad. Now I can finally recover from what Michelle Wheeler put me through and digest the new input.
The last few days have proven too interesting, even for me.
It also gives me a little respite from the growing list of folk following me. Butler and Gavin, Marvin Clancy, Charon, the Amarok, whatever the Hell is in that mist, and that other presence I feel wherever I go. The more I think about the latter, the more I’m convinced that lingering sensation of being followed is something new. Something that hasn’t revealed itself yet.
The weight I feel when it’s close is familiar. I felt it last night at Redwood and Maine. If it meant me or Diana harm, it had its chance to act after Charon disappeared. I can only hope its inaction is a good thing.
The Ferryman and the cops I can deal with. Neither’s gonna act now. Charon just wants to see the Fateless meet his end. Henry and Lori? Well, they’ve been up my ass like a suppository for years and it don’t worry me all that much, now Ruby’s cleaned up the Wheeler place. I know her friends will have left the place spotless, so as far as the PD can prove, I’m clean. Nothing to hide.
That leaves Marv and the fog, and whatever’s inside of it. If Harry still lived, I’d call him, give him the skinny, and he’d figure this all out while the coffee was brewing. Never met anyone who knew more about Hell than him.
Demons and fallen angels don’t count. Not exactly reliable.
Asking him ain’t an option anymore. Never will be again. I need to do my own homework from now on, stop muddling through shit, expecting I’ll come out on top. That’s a dangerous game, and I’m not in any rush to find out what Charon’s plan is for the Fateless.
We’re still in the motel room. Diana’s watching cartoons on the TV. Maybe parenting isn’t all that hard after all.
“Kid? I’m just stepping out for a spell. You okay?”
She waves a hand at me, glued to the screen. She’s got a lot of catching up to do. I reckon it takes her mind off the revelations of the night before. God knows she needs it. It’s all His fault, if you ask me.
The motel’s split-level, and I lean on the balcony rail overlooking the forecourt with one, lonely car parked below. I’ve seen a few places like this in my time. Used to use them a lot in my first life, tailing all sorts of folks, looking for dirt anywhere I could. Any time I followed someone into one of these places, I knew a payday wasn’t far behind.
The pine forest outside the city stretches for miles. Sun’s rising over the trees, and Hell’s looking mighty pretty from where I’m standing. I light a cigarette and enjoy a moment of peace. Almost, but not quite, I can ignore the ghost dangling from the roof, legs swaying all gentle-like.
Wonder if the poor sucker hung himself, or if something more nefarious happened. Chances of either are fair in a joint like this.
Wonder what kind of creature calls that forest home. Demons, I reckon. It’s secluded, vast, thick. They’d love it there. A cult, maybe? Seen that before. They love a motel by some trees. Travelling salesmen and sex workers. Perfect sacrifices.
“Harry and Maeve, they’d know.” A sigh rips out of me. “They knew everything.”
I take a deep drag from my cigarette and wipe away the stray tear that had the guts to leak from my eye. Not that there’s anything wrong with crying, but I gotta keep myself strong for the kid.
And I’m gonna keep telling myself that.
In my pocket, the cell vibrates. Fishing it out, I feel my pulse quicken when I see a new text from Zia. About time. Before I can open it, someone calls. My pulse breaks into a sprint.
It’s Rosa. Date must’ve gone swell. I don’t want to fuck up the fine work I did just last night, so I answer before checking the message.
“Hey, I know you said you were going to call me, but so soon?”
A pause.
“I am afraid Ms. Riberio is unable to speak just now, Mr. Holleran.”
Marvin Clancy. Using Rosa’s cell. Without a doubt in my mind, I know I’m gonna kill that bastard.
“You lay one fucking hand—”
“Now, now, Mr. Holleran. Let us be frank with one another. You know very well I had to use force to subdue your woman after she came looking for me. Ms. Riberio followed me home in the taxi you put her in. Brave, but foolish. I have not harmed her more than I had to.”
I pound my fist against the balcony rail. “She came looking for you?”
“It seems your act of bravado at the restaurant only served to pique her interest. You are lucky. Even knowing the danger she was in, she only warned me to stay away from you. She must care a great deal for you. But make no mistake, it is you I want. Once I have what I want, once I have Lucifer, she will be immaterial to me. That is why it is in all of our best interests that you do as I say.”
“You want Lucifer, huh?” My words are thick, fast. A snarl. “I can’t do it, you crazy bastard. Even if I wanted to. Wheeler’s ritual had so many moving parts, I wouldn’t even know where to start. The only two people who might have known are gone.”
Another pause and I can hear muffled crying in the background. It makes my vision go black around the edges, makes my body itch to do something. Anything.
“The Devil will come, Mr. Holleran. He does not want harm to befall you.”
“You’re out of your goddamn mind.”
“I believe I will be vindicated. You will receive GPS coordinates on your cell from Rosa’s number. Arrive alone, tonight, after dark. No police, no assistance. If I see anyone else, Ms. Riberio dies. And remember, I can see just as well as you can. I will not hurt her if I do not have to, but do you believe I will?”
“Yes.” There’s no doubt in my mind.
“Very good. I wish we could have conducted business in a more progressive manner. Remember that this is all your fault. Be seeing you. Alone.”
The call ends and I squeeze the cell so hard I think it’s gonna snap. It vibrates again. The GPS coordinates. Rosa’s way out of town, in the countryside surrounding Haven City. Somewhere in that forest. Guess I know what lurks out there now.
I march back to the motel room, jam the cell in my pocket and throw the door open.
“Come on, kid. We’re leaving. I messed up, big time. Rosa’s in trouble.”
…
Another cab ride leaves me cursing that I didn’t take my Mustang last night, though with the speed I wanted to travel, I’d have cops on my tail for sure. Last thing I need is a trip to the station, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Butler and Gavin would get involved.
We head for The Styx. I need to speak to Ruby. With no Harry or Maeve, she’s my go-to now. Lucky her.
I need to prepare. Can’t head to Marv’s location with just my Ruger and a head full of steam. Fortunately, she’ll have what I need. Each night since the Wheelers’ place and my meeting with Lucifer, that goddamn mist has appeared, hiding something dangerous inside. I’d be a fool if I thought tonight would be different. I’m no use to Rosa if I die before I reach her.
By the time the cab pulls up outside The Styx, it’s early afternoon. Diana’s patting my hand. Has she been doing that all the way here? Maybe, I just haven’t noticed. With all the thoughts running amok in my head, I didn’t even consider sending Ruby a message to make sure she’s around, though I can count the times I’ve seen her outside the bar on one hand. If the joint’s open, she’s there.
It’s a hot day, like the sun’s trying its damnedest to remind us of summers gone-by, or maybe my boiling blood’s keeping me warm. Despite that, there ain’t many out on the streets. Haven’s usual bustle lulls. Maybe it’s the muggy weather, but my gut tells me it’s something else. I glance around at the living, passing by on the sidewalk. Most trudge with their heads down, avoiding eye-contact. Pale faces, tight with anger, others blank with inertia.
For a moment, I listen to my city, peer at it with open eyes. Haven—Christ, Hell for all I know—feels sick. Rotten.
“You sense it, too,” Diana says, those wide pits staring up at me.
I nod. “Feels like I’m about to walk into a room full of armed gangsters with just a toothpick for protection.”
“Something’s coming, Nick. It’s not just Marvin. It’s something else. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m scared.”
