by Dan H Kind
Chapter 30
. . . and Judgment
In an attempt to escape the babbling mind-pool, the shade sprinted
(breezed)
past the blood-spitting courtyard fountain. It plowed
(wisped)
through shades like a shark swimming through the sea, causing a great wake
(whisper)
to spread through the ocean of shadow. The shade ran
(breathed)
up the steps and into the Courthouse, ducked
(swooshed)
under the two harpy-bailiffs flanking the massive front doors, and bolted
(gusted)
past dozens of rows of black wooden benches.
The sides of the Courthouse were wide open like an airplane hangar, and two roads stretched off into the distance on each side. Apparently, once Judgment was dispensed, the Judged shade went straight to its determined destination. Nothing could be seen to the right but wasteland and a faint white-gold glow at the edge of the horizon: Elysium. To the left, the burning Phlegethon and gleaming adamantine gates that fronted the gaping black maw of Tartarus were visible, as well as the dark, coiled watchtower with its imposing figure roosted atop.
Soon the shade stood before a black pulpit that stretched up to the ceiling of the Courtroom, atop which a cowled figure sat like the rector of some dark church, looking down on all that transpired like an arrogant pope. The figure's thin, cruel-looking pink lips and pasty white chin poked from underneath its black cowl. A shimmer of emerald gleamed off the black robe it wore, causing the air around the pulpit to waver like a mirage. When the hooded one spoke, its amplified voice boomed throughout the Courtroom like the voice of a Higher Power.
“Who are you, shade, that comes before I, Rhadamanthus, unannounced?” The Judge of the Dead's remorseless eyes flicked to the harpies. “And tell me, vermin, who let this shade through without its name being called?”
The harpies—who had been trying to grab the shade (this did not work, as it was like grasping smoke)—squawked and screeched in a loud, discordant dialect of guttural clicks and shrill whistles; it was obvious they were giving excuses.
The Judge winced and waved the bailiffs to silence. “Styx, what a racket!” He pounded gavel upon wood, and the shade-audience ceased rolling around the Courtroom like a creeping black fog. He then adjusted his full attention to the shade standing before him. “What is your name, shade?”
The shade shrugged—or seemed to, at least.
(I am Trickster.)
The Judge appeared taken aback by this statement, and he peered down at the shade with a no-nonsense expression. “What was the name again?”
(I am Trickster, the One Thousand and One Tricksters.)
Rhadamanthus pulled a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez from the folds of his robe and placed them upon his nose. He plucked a scroll from the pulpit, unrolled it, and scanned it up and down, muttering something about “this day and age,” and “cheap bastards,” and “fucking scrolls,” and “godsdamned age of computers,” before he harrumphed and looked down over the rim of his spectacles.
“You're not on the docket today, shade. But since you're here we'll go ahead and get it over with. This'll be the last one of the session. It's about time for my dinner break.” The Judge's gaze whipped to the harpy-bailiffs, who clucked with nervousness. “Did you hear that, bailiffs?”
The harpies shrieked in confirmation; it was obvious they were scared to death of the Judge of the Dead.
Rhadamanthus chuckled and turned back to the shade. “Now name your deeds, Trickster, the One Thousand and One Tricksters.”
The shade shrugged.
(My deeds are too many to name. Seriously, we'd be here for eons. Although I must admit that I do have a few interesting tales. Why, one time I—)
“Who—or what—are you, Trickster, the One Thousand and One Tricksters?”
(I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam. Uk-uk-uk-uk-uk. So, who am I?)
Rhadamanthus's frown deepened. Dark creases appeared on what was visible of his smooth chalk face underneath the black cossack. He did not offer an answer to the riddle.
(I'm Popeye the Sailor Man. Duh.)
The emerald-black darkness emanating from the Judge's person seemed to expand outward, and the air at the apex of the pulpit wavered as if overheated.
“This trial, shade, is to determine where you shall spend the rest of eternity. Do not take it so lightly.” The Judge's pinprick eyes bored into the deceased. “Now name your deeds, Trickster, or I shall find you in Contempt of Court. If found in Contempt, your case shall go unheard for a good long while, as your soul will be spending one hundred Earth years trapped within the waters of the Cocytus.” He allowed a small smile to adorn his lips. “You will be forced to tell all who pass by of every dark deed you committed during your lifetime, as you relive them over and over again in your memory.”
(Dude, you can find me whatever you want, just don't find me guilty of not sexing up the ladies. What I do is all perfectly legal, you know. At least in fourteen U.S. States.)
What was visible of the Judge's face flushed crimson. Steam began pouring from underneath his cowl, and there was a noise like a teakettle whistling. “Still full of jokes, aren't we? I assure you, Trickster, you will be laughing all the way to hell, roaring with mirth as you fall the million miles to Tartarus!”
(A million miles, huh? Jeez, it's a wonder anybody ever hits bottom. Wait, wait, wait. Note to self: remember to bring a flashlight, a pack of batteries, and a good, loooooooooooooooong book the next time you go to hell.)
The gallery of watching shades swished and swooshed chaotically at this comment, and another worried whisper (or perhaps this was what passed for laughter among the dead) arose in their misty midst. The harpy-bailiffs chirruped and squealed and shuffled their clawed feet upon the ash-covered Courtroom floor. Above it all, Rhadamanthus looked like he was about to explode. He picked up the gavel, and for a moment it looked as if he was going to fling it at the shade before him. In the end, however, he restrained himself.
“At a whim, shade, I can have you tortured for the rest of Time in the pit of Tartarus. After all, 'twas I who sentenced Ixion, for coupling with a cloud he thought was Hera, to be attached to a burning wheel for all of eternity. And 'twas I who sentenced Sisyphus to roll a boulder up a hill all day, every day, only to have it roll right back down over his hubristic toes for believing that he, a mere human, was cleverer than the gods. Trust me, shade, I can be very inventive in my sentencing. Now name . . . your . . . deeds! This is your last chance, Trickster, the One Thousand and One Tricksters!”
The shade sighed with melodramatic aggrandizement. (You know, of all the times I've died, this has got to be the worst. Why, I've never met such a jackhole that demanded so much of a poor dead guy! It's ridiculous, especially considering you're not even in charge down here in this dump you call hell. What are you, like, fifth in the chain of command in this Spirit World?)
“What in Hades did you just say?!” roared the Judge of the Dead like a demon king. He banged his gavel for order. The audience of shades churned, while the harpy-bailiffs screeched and sent blasts of putrescence into the air when they flapped their wings. By the time order had been restored, Rhadamanthus's face had regained its stone facade, though his eyes seeped vengeance.
“Trickster, the One Thousand and One Tricksters, I sentence you to walk down Tartarus Trail to the gates of hell. There you shall be admitted by Tisiphone—”
“NO!”
It was Stephone, divine flesh and blood Persephone, who had spoken. Tom and Becky, alive once more, flanked the Iron Queen.
Rhadamanthus's face registered shock at their appearance among the sea of non-living. But he soon composed himself, grinned, and went into a mocking bow. “My . . . Queen. What brings you to my humble Courtroom? Shouldn't you be on Earth, or visiting your mother, or whatever it is you do at this time of—”
He was cut off by the sound of
an air siren, although in truth it sounded more like all the Earth's air sirens, after being collected at a single location, had gone off at once. Every being in the Courtroom, alive or dead, turned and looked down Tartarus Trail.
Atop the watchtower, Tisiphone's silver hair streamed behind her despite there being no wind in the Underworld. The wailing issued from her wide-open mouth, and it went on for a full minute, unbearably loud. Just when Jack thought he would go insane if he had to hear that ear-splitting racket for one more second, the Fury went silent and sprang from the tower like a zombified Superwoman, disappearing into the churning clouds.
There followed a few moments of feet-shuffling confusion—and then Tisiphone dropped like a bomb, landing at the entrance to the Courthouse via Tartarus Trail. She had covered miles upon miles of ground in a single bound!
The Fury looked more like an animated, rotting cadaver than a living being. She wore a blood-stained wedding dress, and her hair flowed behind her as if she were floating, dead, at the bottom of some dread lake. Blood poured from her eyes like unstoppable tears of anguish. Inflamed red boils, some broken and secreting pinkish pus, covered what was visible of her body. She carried a spiked whip in her hand that writhed on the Courtroom floor as if hungry to bite into living flesh.
Tisiphone advanced on Team Myth, the index finger of her free hand pointing at them accusingly, her bloody face a mask of hatred, while the shades of the dead poured out of the south doors of the Courtroom like shadow-planets caught in a black hole.
Stephone grasped Jack Whiskey's incorporeal essence with her own corporeal palms and concentrated. She could give life or take it, and this time she gave, gave, gave . . .
. . . and Jack Whiskey, physical body restored, materialized in the Courtroom.
“Whoa,” he said, blinking rapidly. “Strange, being dead. Well, it's always something, isn't it?” He groaned and pawed at his throbbing skull. “And why do these somethings always happen to me?”
Stephone smiled and squeezed his hand. “Same old Jack,” she said.
The harpy-bailiffs screeched and took to the air, circling over their heads like dead, giant bats with droopy, deformed tits, and there was no time for any more small-talk.
A harpy dove at them, claws flashing, and they ducked. Jack saw a blurred movement from the corner of his eye, and the harpy screeched in pain as three holes appeared in its left wing as if by magic. The monster crashed to the floor of the Courtroom in a flailing ball of wings and claws and jiggling breasts, where it twitched for a bit before falling still.
There was yet another blur from Jack's right, and another of the circling harpies let out a high-pitched squawk as a gaping hole bloomed in the middle of its mottled forehead. The harpy crashed into Rhadamanthus. The Judge cried out, and the two denizens of Hades disappeared behind the pulpit in a ball of wings and limbs and flowing black robes.
The last harpy squealed and dived at Team Myth like the Angel of Death, though its yell of fury quickly turned to one of pain. The fiend slammed into the ground no more than three feet in front of them, two holes in its head where its eyes had once been, and lay still.
Jack and Stephone turned and looked at the grinning, slingshot-wielding duo of Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher in astonishment.
Tom shrugged. “What? You think I carry this thing 'round with me jist for show?” Becky just smiled.
Rhadamanthus cursed and fumbled above, struggling to get the unmoving harpy off him. But there was no time to worry about the Judge, for Tisiphone was almost within striking distance.
The Fury cracked her whip, which split the stagnant Courtroom non-air. Jack scampered backwards, shoving Stephone behind him. Tom unleashed another steel ball from his slingshot. The projectile sliced through Tisiphone's chest and popped out the other side, leaving a hole where it passed through her heart. Maggots poured from the new wound and dropped to the ground before her to twitch and die. The Fury paid the grievous injury no mind and continued to advance in a jerky manner. Rivers of blood poured from her eyes and down onto her dress.
“Stop, Tisiphone! This is your Queen speaking! (YOU MUST OBEY ME!)”
Tisiphone hissed like an undead viper and spat crimson in their direction. Then she spoke, and her voice was the voice of anger, the voice of wrath, the voice of that unexplainable, uncontrollable rage that lies dormant but throbbing underneath your soul.
(It is not your time here, Queen. You are living beings, and you are trespassing in the Land of the Dead. Only shades and demons and dark gods and monsters—the dead—are permitted here. Hades is closed to living tourists, be they human or mythological, and has been for all of time.)
The Fury shuffled forward like a nightmare you just can't seem to wake up from. Team Myth backed away from the approaching horror, but there was nowhere to go. They might have run down Heaven Way or out the front door of the Courthouse, but the Fury would leap and be upon them in no time. So they turned to face the oncoming danger.
Tom fired off two quick shots of steel that went through each of Tisiphone's knees, and Becky buried one between her eyes. This slowed the Fury down for a moment, but like an unstoppable army of darkness she kept on coming, taking spasmodic step after spasmodic step forward, her whip poised to strike. She did not seem to be in any particular hurry, as if she knew they had no chance to subvert her will. One way or another, they would be punished for their trespass.
“This ain't working!” yelled Tom. “Somebody do something!” He and Becky let loose with another barrage of steel, but Tisiphone did not falter in the slightest. The missiles passed through her flesh, leaving bloody holes in their wake. More white worms poured out of the wounds, until there was a sea of bloody larvae writhing on the Courtroom floor. And as the barbed whip cracked one more time, no more than three inches from his head, Jack Whiskey did what Tom had urged.
He did something.
Jack reached out and grabbed the spiked whip. He had seen the whip as if it were in slow motion, and he had moved almost outside of time, Master Mirbodi-style (thank the bleeding old gods for that kung-fu class). For a moment, he had let go of thought, and become it.
But now the barbs dug into his hand, and searing pain shot up his arm and into his shoulder, moving in waves throughout his body. His grip on the whip slipped as agony sliced into his brain, destroying will and conscious thought. The barbs ripped through his palm, leaving his fingers in tatters. He grunted against the pain, focused, and somehow pulled the whip towards him.
Not wanting to give up her favorite torture-toy, Tisiphone was jerked forward. She began to tug at her end with a strength that belied her wraith-like frame. Jack stumbled and gave ground, screaming at the top of his lungs. The barbs dug deeper into his flesh as he tightened his grip, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it, yanking back with all his might.
Tisiphone seemed to be in ecstasy at the pain. Holes riddled her body, she was gushing blood and maggots all over the place, and she screamed out with her klaxon wail like she was having the greatest orgasm of her life. Her face a mask of blood, she cried out (Give it to me, bitch! Yes! Yes! YES!) and pulled with furious strength.
Jack gritted his teeth, refusing to give up an inch of ground, and strained with all his Trickster might. The excited grin on the face of the Fury cracked when she was jerked forward once again, this time with more force—just enough to send her sprawling.
Shot after shot of enchanted steel flew from Tom and Becky's slingshots, their hands moving faster than Jack had ever seen hands move. Tisiphone screamed in fury, or pain, or pleasure, or all of them at once, and dropped the whip, which proceeded to squirm on the ground before Team Myth. The barbs lining the whip's tip glistened with wetness in the wan pink light: Trickster blood. With a start, Jack dropped his end of the weapon and stared at his mangled hand in horror.
Tisiphone's wail soon grew muted, and then died away entirely. After about twenty seconds and fifty or sixty kenned-up steel pellets, it was over. The Fury lay on the Courtroom floor, a
chunky wet mess of blood, skin, larvae, hair, and bits and pieces of wedding dress.
Before a word could be said, a harpy hit the ground nearby, sending up a heinous cloud of undead monster dust. Team Myth jumped back, instinctively covering their noses, and looked up. The Judge of the Dead peered down at them from atop the podium, a malicious look in his eyes.
Rhadamanthus looked around the Courthouse and clacked his tongue on his teeth. “Would you just look at this Courtroom? Blood and guts and dead harpies everywhere! Do you know how long it's going to take to clean up this mess?” He peered at what was left of the Fury and smiled with benevolent amusement, like a parent who has discovered her child up to some harmless mischief. “And what have you done to Tisiphone? Why, you've left her in tatters, the poor old girl! Just look at her! She's . . . she's . . . she's everywhere!”
And so she was. But already the Fury's shredded flesh and the maggots that seemingly made up her organs were inching across the ground—gathering, connecting, congealing, merging. And who knew when the harpies would reanimate?
Jack realized it was going to be necessary to take care of the Judge quickly and be on their way, or they would once again have to deal with Tisiphone and the bailiffs.
Rhadamanthus waggled an admonishing finger. “She can't help how she is, you know. She was simply doing her job, doing her duty, doing what is expected of her. She will attack you, regardless of who or what you are, if you are alive and trespassing in the Underworld. She was weaker than you, yes, but she is far from the cream of the crop down here in Hades.”
The Judge cackled. He pulled off his cowl, and his exposed jowls elongated. His mouth stretched across his face, his forehead expanded to obscene proportions, and his skin turned a glowing-toxic-waste shade of green. Darkness swirled around him, alive and hungry, catching emerald fire.
“I am!”
The Judge of the Dead let out a piercing howl and leaped from the podium. He descended upon them in a cloud of darkness, his robe flowing behind him, his face a demon's visage.
A paw with perfectly manicured doggie-nails painted pink materialized in Team Myth's paralyzed midst, in an instant growing bigger than the shrieking, dive-bombing Judge of the Dead.
The giant paw gave a simple swat, and Rhadamanthus went crashing into the base of the pulpit, which shuddered and crumbled to the ground like oversized Tinker Toys. Dust and debris shot out from all sides of the Courthouse. As the paw shrank and retracted back into Stephone's sleeve, Herby yipped as if to say, “Yeah, you guys owe me one. And I will accept payback—in doggie-biscuits. Lots and lots of doggie-biscuits.”
“Jack,” said Stephone, “let me see your hand.”
Jack obliged and gave her his bloody hand. Stephone grasped it between her palms. A white-gold glow emanated from her cupped fingers, and Jack felt the energy that mythological beings call ken pass from her spirit into his: the energy of life, the energy of story, the power of myth.
When he gasped and pulled his hand away a few seconds later, it was healed, without a scar left behind. Clenching and unclenching his fist, Jack looked down at the seamless flesh in astonishment.
A groan issued from the snarled black wood of the pulpit, and Tom Sawyer ran over to the wreckage and began kicking away rubble. He soon cried out in triumph, reached into the mess, and pulled out Rhadamanthus, who rather than an all-powerful Judge of the Dead, now looked like a skinny old fart of a human being, tufts of gray hair sticking up askance from his balding head.
Tom hauled up Rhadamanthus by his tattered black robe and dragged him over to the others, keeping a heavy hand on the Judge's shoulder.
“What are you doing dispensing Judgment, Rhadamanthus?” asked Stephone. “I thought it was your brother Minos's shift.”
The Judge shrugged. “I switched shifts with him. Someone suggested I do that. Said to keep an eye out for anything strange going on at the Courthouse. And I should have noticed something was up when he”—he pointed an accusing finger at Jack—“came through the Courtroom.”
“Who's someone?” asked Stephone. “The Unseen One?”
“He is my Lord and Master, and I do as I am told.”
“Just like a good little puppet, huh?” said Jack.
Rhadamanthus glared daggers. “We can't all be free-wheeling and -dealing Tricksters. I am a Judge of the Dead, and I am a fair judge, just as I was during my lifetime.” He sighed. “And what was my reward for being true to justice during my time with the living?” He seemed to deflate, all the fight going out of him at once. “Why, to spend eternity in the Underworld. What else?”
“But you were just about to send me to be tortured in the depths of Tartarus—and you hadn't even heard my case. No, you skipped right on by all that 'Contempt of Court and imprisonment in the Cocytus for a hundred years' thing you were blabbering about and went right to eternal damnation.”
Rhadamanthus's face flushed, as if in embarrassment, although Jack found it hard to believe that this wretched little man/deity could be embarrassed.
“You . . . upset me. Shades are usually so tame, all the fire of life snuffed from their souls when they enter this World.”
“Judge,” said Stephone, “do you have any idea what's been going on on the Key World? What the Unseen One's been doing?”
Rhadamanthus shook his head. “No. I don't pay much attention to what's going on up there. Too busy down here dispensing Judgment.”
Stephone peered at Rhadamanthus for a long moment, then looked at Jack. “I think he's telling the truth, believe it or not.”
“What are you blabbing on about?” grumbled Rhadamanthus.
Stephone's gaze turned to frost and nails. “Whistle, Judge.”
“Wh-what?” stammered Rhadamanthus.
Stephone's iron eyes said she was going to get what she wanted, in one way or another. Looking at her in astonishment (and just a little bit of terror), Jack suddenly understood why she was called the Iron Queen.
“Whistle, Judge. Now.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“Do it. You're in (MY) World, no matter (WHAT) time of year it is. Don't make me use (MY VOICE OF DEATH ON YOU.)”
The Judge screamed and covered his ears as Stephone's Voice bored into his brain. “Enough! I'll do it! I can't take that godsawful Voice! I hate it, I loathe it, I hate it! It makes me feel so powerless, so . . . impotent.”
After a moment of silence, Jack and Tom began hooting and hollering, grabbing their bellies and slapping their knees. They ended up hugging each other, tears of mirth streaming from their eyes. Stephone and Becky looked upon the scene impassively, while Rhadamanthus's face grew redder and redder as the guffawing went on and on.
“Impotent! What a choice of words! I can't believe he said that!”
“Well, jist look how old he is! I mean, is it really all that surprising?”
Another round of raucous laughter ensued, although this one wrapped up quicker when the boys caught the not-amused-in-the-slightest expressions on the girls' faces.
Stephone spun to Rhadamanthus. She didn't even have to say a word this time; the Judge brought two fingers to his lips and whistled.
The floor of the Courtroom caved in, the rows of black benches swallowed by the earth's opening maw. A ghostly neighing filled the the air, and a chariot drawn by two skeleton-horses with eyes of burning hellfire flew up from the chasm. The chariot alighted at their feet, and the skeleton-horses neighed, which sounded like someone chewing on gravel. The ground closed up, leaving the Courtroom just as it had been before.
Shining chrome rims gleamed on the carriage's four tires (Jack wondered at the wheels, since this was a flying carriage, but then shrugged it off as unimportant), a garish adamantine spoiler jutted from the rear, and glittering golden rails adorned the sides. The vehicle's new paint job, with two-pronged trident decal on each side, glittered in the twilight inside the Courthouse.
“After you, Judge,” said Stephone.
Without a word, Rhadamanthus cl
imbed into the driver's seat of the carriage and sat down with a huff, seemingly resigned to his fate.
While Tom and Becky followed suit, Stephone said, “Rhadamanthus was a contestant last season on Pimp My Mythical Ride. Hermes is the host. What they do is come to your World and turn your busted old death-carriage, or rickety haunted pirate ship, or wrecked 'possessed by a demon' roadster into a gangsta's dream ride.”
Jack and Stephone boarded the carriage. The interior was luxurious and bejeweled with gems of all colors of the spectrum, tricked out with heated and massaging black leather seats, thorax-thumping speakers, touch-screen LCDs with superhumanly fast Internet access, and a GPS system that spanned Worlds. The skeleton-horses grated out whinnies and flew off into the sky.
Not long after takeoff, out of the farthest corner of his eye, Jack saw an unknown figure—no more than a blurred shadow, really—sitting in the one empty seat. He gasped and turned around, but there was nothing there. He reached his arm out over the space above the leather seat, but felt nothing. Perhaps it had been a trick of the eye, although he now had the unsettling feeling he was being watched. He shook his head, and the feeling faded.
“Now this is the way to travel!” said Jack. “First-class all the way! But tell me, Rhady, old buddy, where's the champagne?”
Rhadamanthus ignored him, so Jack popped open the diamond-studded mini-fridge underneath his seat. His face registered surprise when there actually was a bottle of champagne nestled within its cool premises, along with a six-pack of Hoppy Heaven Ale!
Jack went for the beer, cracked one open, and passed them around. Then he sat back to enjoy the best brew the Worlds had ever known. After all, he was already a deity—it wasn't going to knock any Wheels of Birth and Death out of alignment if he drank some Hoppy Heaven Ale!
“By the gods, Rhady,” said Jack. “If this doesn't give away the fact that the Unseen One is your homeboy, nothing does!”
“Hades borrowed my carriage the other day,” mumbled Rhadamanthus. “He must have left that there. I haven't opened that fridge since it was installed.”
Jack glanced between Tom, Becky, and Stephone with upraised eyebrows, then shrugged. “You know, this really hits the spot.” Jack took an unashamed sip of beer. “I needed a little stress-relief after this endless trek across this abysmal Underworld, and this'll turn the trick!”
Jack's fellow travelers all laughed and voiced agreement before clanking bottles in a toast. And yet, despite their levity, they each knew a confrontation with Darkness was imminent.