After Death..., page 2
The bartender smiles, her perfect teeth framed by the curve of red lips, and pours two mugs of the House Special. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”
“Alex,” I say, “this is Lethe. Lethe, Alex.”
The man clambers onto a rickety barstool and looks up. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers, “you’re beautiful.”
She laughs. “I knew that man, but he and I did not get along. Drink,” she places a mug in front of him, “and you will know the bliss of the gods.” She places the other mug in front of me. “And you, my friend. Are you at last going to partake?”
“Do I ever?”
She smiles at me, and for a moment I feel like I could forget why I’m here. “You bring me so many customers, yet you never drink yourself,” Lethe says. She gestures to Alex, and winks at him. “This man, I can tell, appreciates the finer things in death. Go on.”
Alex sips from his cup uncertainly, and then she turns to me. “This fellow misses his daughter. You miss your Beloved. What makes him so different from you, that you would have him drink while you do not? Why shall he forget his life, and pass without pain or grief into the lands beyond, while you stay here and hold onto the misery of what is lost?”
I grit my teeth and push my mug away. “Because I made a promise.”
There is a mocking edge to Lethe’s smile, but she is no less beautiful for that. “What promise? Until death do you part?” She gestured to the room, then leaned in close. “I do not know if you have noticed, but death has happened, and it has parted you.”
“No!” I slam my fist down on the table and immediately regret it. What little conversation there was vanishes, and the bar is as quiet as outside. A shiver goes up my spine, and I lean in close to Lethe’s ear. “She will come here one day, and we will ride the ferry together. But until then, I will not drink.”
Lethe pushes the mug closer to me, and stares me in the eye. “You gain nothing by staying here. Even if your Beloved joins you, you will still not be able to cross into the afterlife.” There is no smile on her face any more, only a fierce determination. “None who remember life can set foot on the far bank of my river.”
“On the far bank,” I tell her, “is Hell.”
“No,” she whispers through gritted teeth. “Hell is right here, spending eternity yearning for a life and a Beloved you will never see again. You want to know eternal bliss?” She lifts my cup. “Then drink. Or bathe in my river. Either will cleanse your soul.”
I look around. The bar, like the land outside, is dim and bare. No color, except for the flickering sign in the window, which draws in the few of us who remember. The recently dead come here for comfort, for solace, for answers, and find all but the last.
There is a tap on my shoulder, and I turn to see my companion smiling, all hints of his former depression vanished. He raises his half-empty cup to me. “Care for a toast, stranger?”
Lethe holds out my mug. “Take it.” Her eyes gleam with an energy I’ve never seen. She’s never been this insistent; I guess she’s finally tired of my stalling.
I take the cup from her, and stare at the water inside for a long moment. “A toast, then. To Alex.” I raise my mug to his with a wooden click.
“Who’s Alex?” he asks.
“Someone to remember.” I raise my mug to my lips and take some of the water into my mouth. It’s cool and refreshing, and where it touches my lips and tongue it leaves behind a numbing sensation, as though I were rinsing my mouth with liquid painkiller. The numbness works its way through my skull, leaving me lightheaded. Without even swallowing, I could soon forget my Beloved, and the wait would be over. I could board Charon’s ferry and find out what lies beyond the river.
I barely have enough strength to spit the water back into the mug. With a quivering hand, I place it back on the bar top, and meet Lethe’s stare. There is anger in her face now, and I realize the room has fallen silent again. “No, Lethe. You will not claim me.”
“Oh, but I will,” she hisses, a fierce, inhuman edge to her voice. Then she turns to my companion, her face and words once again filled with beauty, and smiles. “Do me a favor, dear. Take this man to the river, and cleanse his soul.”
I turn to her in shock and watch as Alex rises from his seat. He shrugs his shoulders, an apology in his eyes, but then he grabs me by my shoulders. I punch him again, sending him sprawling, and turn to leave, but Alex is not the only man who has risen from his seat. Every person in the bar stares at me.
I try to run, but that only seems to animate them. Rough hands grab me, and I am carried, struggling, out the door. I fight, screaming and cursing, but that only draws more. The dead don’t like to be disturbed, but it’s too late to worry about that—all I can do is fight.
I curse every god and demon I can name, I cry for my Beloved, I struggle with every muscle. Through the crowd, I see Lethe standing by the door, watching as the mob pushes me toward the river. I try to push back, but the crowd is too strong. They drag me out onto the rickety wooden dock, and the last thing I see is Alex, as he gives me one final shove.
A moment of free-fall, then the shock of the water. The river is cold and deep, so cold it freezes my muscles, and I struggle to keep moving, to reach the surface again. Already I feel the numbness in my limbs, a paralysis that creeps along my arms and legs, crawling relentlessly toward my head and my heart. I cannot drown here, but that does not lessen my panic, and I struggle toward the surface.
Looking up, I see the wooden dock shimmering in the water and faces staring down at me. But for all I push my arms, the surface gets no closer.
I’m sorry, Beloved. I tried to wait for you, here on the banks of the Lethe. But your face is slipping from my mind already, and the cold water is fading into a bliss that envelops me. I could hang here, suspended forever—perhaps that is my fate, to be held for eternity in Lethe’s grasp.
Something hard hits me, and I slip even deeper. The dock is invisible now—all around me is cold blackness, but it feels as though I am being wrapped in an embrace by pure bliss. Lethe is everywhere, gripping my legs, my torso, my hands—my left hand.
Then the water rushes past and suddenly I am pulled upward again, dripping wet. Charon is kneeling on the dock, holding me easily with one strong arm. He pulls me close to his face. “I told you, and I know damn well I’ve told her. Everyone rides the ferry in the end.”
Then, as if he were tossing a rag doll, he flips me over the railing and onto the deck.
The wheelhouse of the ferry is sparse—it’s the only part of the ferry that sits on the upper deck, separated by a stair and two locked gates from the masses below.
There are no chairs. I sit against the wall, still trying to clear my head, staring up at Charon’s back as he pilots the ferry. It feels reassuring to be here—the floor is uncomfortable, and the smell of diesel is everywhere—but it also feels familiar, in a way I can’t place. The waters of the river may have been heaven, but this is home.
“Tell me about this woman you waited for.”
I cross my eyes, trying to remember. “Who?”
“Every day you spoke to me of love, of life, of waiting for the woman you called Beloved.” He turns back to look at me, disgust in his expression. “A little dip in the Lethe rid you of all that? You’re weaker than I thought.”
I brace myself against the wall and struggle to my feet. “I’m not weak.” I stumble forward to put my hands on the window, looking out across the river. A reddish glow pierces the far gloom, and I can see the outline of the far bank. “What’s over there?”
Charon’s expression doesn’t change. “Eternity. Rebirth. Hell. Maybe you get what you always wanted. Maybe you get what you never wanted, or what you didn’t know you wanted. Or what you don’t want.”
“You mean,” I ask him, “you don’t know?”
“When we dock,” said Charon, “you’ll be as far into the underworld as I’ve ever been. I’m just the ferryman. Ain’t my place to know what’s beyond the banks.”
In the distance I can make out the edge of the water and an empty dock. Only a single pathway leads away, looking much like the pathway on the other bank. It’s as if the path runs under the river and just keeps on going.
Charon swings the wheel and throttles back the engine—the wheel is solid oak, the nicest thing I’ve seen since I got into the underworld. I reach out my hand and touch it—it’s solid, and real . . . and memories come back to me. I look up at the ferryman’s face. “Mind if I guide her in?”
He looks at me like I’ve grown a second head.
“Please,” I say. “I remember how. I’m sure. And I need to do this.”
He stares at me for a moment, then steps aside. “All right. I’ll go down and throw the ropes. But,” he stabs a finger in my face, “you hurt my boat, and I’ll find a special Hell just for you.”
I can’t help but smile. “Yes, sir.” Then I wrap my fingers around the wheel and watch as the dock approaches, pressing the engine into reverse as we glide in. I remember it all now, guiding ferries across the sound where I lived, back and forth for years. On one trip, I happened to meet a girl with a pert nose and auburn hair framing a beautiful face with the most perfect green eyes . . .
“Katherine!”
The memories flow like the dam of a river has broken, and now I remember everything about her, the fog of the Lethe fading like mist under the noonday sun. The sound of her laugh, the feel of her hand in mine, the conversations we had over coffees and dinners and early morning breakfasts, and the way she looked on a sunny Spring day when we promised each other everything.
The memories are so bright and vivid that I almost forget to cut the engine before we sail back out into the current. The boat taps lightly against the wooden dock, and when I walk out of the wheelhouse to find Charon, I’m grinning ear-to-ear. He’s already off the boat, standing on the dock as he takes a long drag off a cigarette and watches the dead make their way to . . . well . . . wherever it is they’re going.
He nods gruffly. “Welcome back.”
“Thank you.” Then I realize where I am: the far side of the bank. And no one sails the opposite direction—the ferry is a one way trip. If I stay here, I will never find Katherine before she joins the ranks of the dead, claimed by Lethe. I look at Charon, panic filling my mind. The Ferryman nods slightly, as if affirming my thoughts.
“I’ll give you this,” he says. “You know what you’re doing with a boat. That was a mighty smooth pull-in.” Then he stubs out his cigarette and beckons with a rough hand. “Follow me. I want to show you something.”
Mounted on the back wall of the wheelhouse is a wooden oar, rough and worn from centuries of use. Charon reaches out and takes it.
“This here is all I have from the old days.” He handles it like a priceless artifact, touching it softly, running his hand along the grain of the wood. “When you asked me if I missed the rowboat, well, I have to admit, my words weren’t all truthful.” He didn’t take his eyes off the oar. “For a long time now, I’ve guided a ferry. Before that I had a steam-powered riverboat, and before that I had a longboat. But I was always a rower, first and foremost.” He laughs. “Times change, even here.”
He looks at me. “And these days, one ferry’s not enough. You’ve seen the crowds we’re leaving behind on the docks. They’re getting bigger every day.”
“So you need a bigger boat?”
Charon’s expression is impossible to read. “A bigger boat, or two ferries.”
“But you can’t pilot two ferries.”
“No,” said Charon. “I can’t. Someone else’d have to pilot the other one.” He pauses. “You don’t want to leave the river, but now that you’ve set foot on the far bank, Lethe will never let you off her dock on the side of the living. People just don’t go that way.”
“But—”
“You keep an eye out for your Beloved on your ferry, and I’ll keep an eye out for her on mine. Either that, or you get off the ferry on this side, go wherever you’re supposed to go, and the powers that be send me someone else.”
The second ferry is already waiting for us on the close side of the river. Charon shakes my hand, and then the hordes of the dead board his boat. I look for my Beloved but, as usual, I do not see her. I’ve told Charon everything I could—maybe one day he’ll find her, maybe he won’t. But if she remembers me, then she’ll be looking, just like I’m looking for her. All she needs to do is wait long enough for the second ferry. And we’ll find each other.
Then, together, we will guide the dead across the waters of the Lethe.
Andrew S. Williams lives in Seattle, where he tries to write stories worth remembering. His work has appeared in various anthologies, including Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations and Flush Fiction. You can find him online at www.offthewrittenpath.com.
Boy, 7. It’s a simple, telling title that leads us into this next story by famed noir writer, Alvaro Rodriguez. Grim and stark, the author presents a nightmarish scene for anyone to envision: the thoughts of a kidnapped child. Like the young protagonist, we all wish we could change the circumstances of our lives sometimes, wish we could take away the pain and tragedy, wish we could “have everything we ever wanted.” Can our wishes come true after we die? I like to think so . . .
Someone would open the trunk.
That’s what the boy thought. Someone would come along and open the trunk, and he would be safe. The bad man would be gone—dead—if he could have everything he ever wanted. If he could have everything he ever wanted, the man would be dead from a gunshot to the face, and then he’d fall to the ground and be eaten by dogs. If he could have everything he ever wanted, the man would be torn apart, his arms and his legs pulled so hard they would come off his body like a plastic doll.
But for now, he was in the trunk. Tied up. Tied up good. His mouth, too. His head was wrapped in something that stank. Maybe it was the bad man’s shirt. It smelled bad, like the bad man smelled. Like sweat. And fear. Maybe the fear was his. Yes, the boy thought, it was his own.
The car moved fast. It had swerved many times but was steady now. That meant the bad man still drove, but maybe if it swerved again that would mean policemen or someone else chased after him. He prayed for the car to swerve again.
It did.
His body, cinched up like it was, bounced inside the trunk. Bounced against the spare tire. Bounced against something else, something hard. Bounced as the car swerved, two things in motion, moving around.
Everything was black inside the bad man’s shirt. It covered his mouth and his eyes. Tight. But even in the darkness of the trunk, he saw light. He didn’t know where it came from. Maybe from God. Maybe from his own head. He prayed for the light to go away. It bothered him, the not-knowing. The light bothered him, too. It appeared spangled, like stars, and it wasn’t bright. Instead, it was dull, and sometimes colored, but not brightly, and still it was light . . . but it was the wrong kind of light.
The bad man made the car swerve again, harder this time, and this time he didn’t bounce, he didn’t bump. He went airborne. Nothing touched him for a full second or two—not the floor of the trunk, not the side. Nothing.
The car came down hard, and so did he. He bled from somewhere, but with his eyes shut tight, and the ropes around him, and the bad man’s shirt sleeves crisscrossed over his head, he couldn’t tell where the bleeding was, but he knew. He knew he leaked blood.
Bam!
Something hit the car, or the car hit something, or both, and he was airborne again. He didn’t like the feeling. It made him sick inside and even his stomach felt like it was airborne in the car trunk of his body, this thing inside another thing, weightless for a full second or two, touching nothing.
The car swerved. The bad man was still driving. The boy prayed he would stop and give up, or stop and get shot by the policemen who followed him. Maybe he could hear sirens, or maybe, like the lights, the sound they made came from God. Or inside his head. He prayed the sirens were real.
Then came the biggest bam of all . . .
Bam!
And he felt himself being crushed. His lungs, like his stomach, weightless a moment, then his body was a sandwich around them, his front and back the bread, his lungs the meat.
And a sound, a horrible metal sound, like the big thing in the junkyard that eats cars and spits out boxes.
And then, nothing. No light, no sound. Nothing any more.
He leaked a lot.
He heard a scratching sound. Not a mouse, but something else, like a key trying to find its way into a lock. It was close—real close—and he almost let himself believe it was someone trying to open the trunk and he hoped, he prayed, it wasn’t the bad man who had put him there in the first place.
All the sounds that came before gave the boy hope it wouldn’t be him. It would be someone else. The fire department with the jaws of life opening the smashed car like a tin can while the policemen emptied their guns into the bad man. That’s who it would be. The fire department.
But the key wouldn’t go in the lock. He heard someone trying, trying really hard. Maybe it was the wrong key.
If he could have everything he ever wanted, it would be the right key, and it would be his mother holding it. She would pop the trunk just like she did when they had a flat tire, and she checked for the jack and the spare. If he could have everything he ever wanted, she would be the one to open the trunk, and she would be surprised and happy to find him there. She would take the bad man’s shirt off his head and pepper him with kisses and wipe his face. She would untie the ropes and find the place he was leaking blood, and she would stop it. She would make a call, and the ambulance would come and take him to the hospital, and the doctors would make him well.
If he could have everything he ever wanted, his mother would give him an ice cream sundae with caramel—not hot fudge—because caramel was better. He would be in the newspapers, and on TV, and on the internet, because people would want to know what happened to him, and how the bad man had taken him, and how he had bounced in the trunk and gone airborne, and how the man’s shirt wrapped around his head had smelled, and the lights, and the sirens. He would tell them everything because everybody loved a good story, and it would make good television, and a link to the clip would be passed around through email, and his grandparents would call because they got the email, and they clicked on the link, and they would be so glad he was safe and alive, and they would never let anything like this happen to him or anyone else again.
