by Ellen Datlow
“What the fuck, Nat?” Hunter said.
“You broke him,” Natalie said. She dropped the knife, stood, wiped her hand on her shorts. “He’ll go back to his doghouse until I can fix him.”
Hunter raised himself to his feet. He held out his right hand to Carl, who took it in his left and used it to help him up from the floor. The pain from his injuries was excruciating. “How’re you doing?” Hunter said.
“Have I mentioned how much this sucks?” Trying to keep the hand elevated, Carl pressed his right arm across his chest.
“You might have.”
“I don’t think I’m gonna be much good for anything else,” Carl said. Natalie had kicked the knife away.
“That’s okay. It isn’t too far from here. I’m pretty sure I can make it on my own.”
“You are going nowhere,” Natalie said.
“Are you sure?” Carl said. “Do you know which direction you’re supposed to be heading? Because I have no idea.”
“I said, You are going nowhere.” Natalie advanced toward them.
“Yeah, I think so,” Hunter said. “Hang tight; it shouldn’t be too long.”
“That’s assuming you succeed.”
“Ever the voice of encouragement.”
“I SAID, YOU ARE GOING NOWHERE.” Natalie was standing beside them. This close, hatred poured from her in freezing waves. “You are mine,” she continued, addressing Hunter, “and so is your friend. I rule here. What I want to happen, happens. I want both of you to suffer, so you will. There’s a box waiting for you, big brother. I’ve been preparing it for a very long time. Maybe I’ll sic what comes out of it on your friend. Maybe I’ll let the dogs have him, for what he did to their brother.”
“Nat—”
“Queen Natalya.”
“Yeah.” Hunter shook his head, and leaped at his sister, catching her in a tackle that brought them crashing to the floor. Almost too fast to see, Natalie twisted, planting her feet against Hunter’s chest and kicking with enough force to shove him away from her, mist rolling about him. She sprang up, ready for Carl, but he was hurrying to Hunter, who grimaced, his left arm wrapping his ribs. “Well, that worked,” Carl said, extending his left hand.
Behind him, Natalie’s voice thundered, “GIVE IT BACK!”
In his other hand, Hunter held his sister’s crown. Waving away Carl’s help, he staggered to his feet.
“GIVE IT BACK!” Trembling with fury, Natalie glared at the two of them. Loosed from the cardboard circle, strands of her hair lifted as if in a breeze. “GIVE ME MY CROWN, HUNTER!”
Hunter shook his head. “No can do, Nat.”
In response, Natalie screamed, an ear-splitting shriek which lasted longer than Carl would have thought humanly possible. Somewhere deep in the mist, a distant pack of laughs answered. “Now you’ll see,” she said. “I won’t bother putting you in your box. I’ll let the dogs get you. You’re going to be so sorry, Hunter. They’re going to hurt you so bad.”
“Thank you,” Hunter said to Carl, “for coming with me. I don’t know if I could have made it this far without you. I’m sorry about your hand.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I love you, man.”
“I love you, too. I hope you make it.”
“That makes two of us.” Crown in hand, Hunter turned left and ran.
“HEY!” Natalie shouted after him. “HEY! COME BACK HERE, HUNTER! HUNTER!”
Already, the mist was closing around him, rendering him ghostly, dulling the slap of his feet on the floor. For an instant, the strange red symbols written on him appeared to float in the air, then they faded from sight, as well.
Natalie didn’t waste any more time. Without another glance at Carl, she sprinted after her brother, her long black hair streaming behind her like a banner.
XIV
Laughter roared around Carl, raged, together with another sound, the rumble of many feet, of hundreds of feet, running at him. The floor shuddered with their approach. How many Hungry Dogs were there? Carl’s hand throbbed. If one of them left the chase, he was in trouble; two, and he was finished. Hang tight, Hunter had said. Easy for him to say. The laughter swelled. The floor jumped under him. Hang tight.
As fast as his legs would carry him, Carl ran, aiming ninety degrees from the direction in which Hunter and Natalie had vanished. Laughter pursued him, enveloped him. The floor bounced like a trampoline, throwing him into a stumble that almost sent him sprawling. To his right, a stand of birches waved like reeds in a wind. He considered sheltering in them, rejected the idea. An arm’s length in front of him, a dog loped from right to left, its head an assortment of blades. Closer still, another crossed behind him. This direction, the mist was heavier, which he supposed was equal parts to his advantage and disadvantage.
Snow rushed against him. He slowed, shielded his face with his left hand. “HUNTER!” Natalie’s voice boomed on his left, made him flinch. He quickened his pace. The Hungry Dogs’ laughter ebbed, swelled, ebbed. The shaking of the floor subsided. Ahead, someone panted with exertion. “Hunter?” Carl said. Faintly, he heard Natalie shouting, but could not decipher her words. Snow stuck to his skin, clung to his hair. At least it numbed his injuries.
His feet were starting to drag. There was something to the right, a squat form about which snow swirled. Its outline was too regular for a tree. Carl jogged over to it. Made of gray brick, it stood waist high, a foot and a half on each side. Set in its flat top was a shallow bowl of dull metal. Snow silted the bowl, spackled the column’s sides. Carl walked around it, but could see no markings on it, no hint of its purpose. One of Natalie’s creations? He couldn’t be absolutely sure, but didn’t believe so. He squatted to study it more closely, using his left hand to balance himself. As he did, he realized his fingertips were touching not wood, but soil. Pulse leaping, he brushed his hand over the ground, confirming his discovery:
He had left Natalie’s domain, and Madame Sosostris’s path through it. He was lost.
XV
For a long time, Carl stood beside the brick pillar, as snow drifted against it and the blood flowing from his wounds began to freeze. He could attempt to find his way back to Natalie’s kingdom, but there seemed little point in doing so. If Hunter had succeeded in escaping her, then Madame Sosostris would have performed whatever action was necessary to unlink Limbo from the world of the living, and Carl would be entering a hostile environment from which there was no escape. He did not imagine Annie would or could keep the worlds locked indefinitely—she had mentioned the tremendous power required to do so, hadn’t she?—so if Hunter did not reach his goal, if Natalie caught him or if he ran off course, there would come a moment when she would have to effect the separation, anyway. Which would yield the same result of him returning to Natalie’s domain, except he and Hunter would be suffering together. He could continue into this new precinct of Limbo. The brick column was evidence at least one other person inhabited or had inhabited the area. But what if that individual was as hostile as Natalie, another feral ghost? What if they were worse, at the head of their own army of monsters? He could not risk wandering further into this territory.
The snow continued.
XVI
At some point, he crouched against the brick pillar, thinking it would offer him a modicum of shelter from the elements. He supposed it did; although it sharply curtailed his view of his surroundings. He was too cold to let that sway him. How long had it been since Hunter and he had set out on their journey? A couple of hours? Was that possible? It felt as if he’d followed Hunter along the hallway out of the kitchen days ago. Attempting to conserve body heat, he huddled tight. Could he die, here? Given that he could be hurt, it seemed likely. What would it mean, to die in the afterlife? Would he notice? Or was there some deeper level of existence waiting under this one?
His family would not know what had happened to him. Presumably, Annie would call 911 to report Hunter’s lifeless body. One look at the empty pill bottle beside it
would tell the cops how he had exited his life, while a conversation with Hunter’s doctor would explain why. No doubt, the investigating officers would have plenty of questions for Annie, but Carl didn’t think she’d have any trouble answering them. He was less certain how she’d respond when they asked about the owner of the other car parked in the driveway. Her best option would be to hew as close to events as she could, to admit she didn’t know. In short order, what started as a call about the death of a famous photojournalist, apparently at his own hand, would have developed into a missing person case involving his long-term friend, the owner of a shotokan karate studio in Beacon.
What would the cops assume had happened to him? More importantly, what would Melanie think? She would have leaped in the car the instant the call to her ended. An accident would seem the most reasonable explanation. In this version of events, he went for a walk in the woods surrounding his friend’s house and suffered some kind of mishap, tripped, fell, knocked himself unconscious, then froze to death in the storm. A heart attack would work as well, despite a clean bill of health at his last checkup. The lack of any trace of his body on Hunter’s grounds would lead to the search being expanded to neighboring properties, possibly down to Lake Champlain, whose cold waters would offer a compelling explanation for the absence of his remains. The cops might posit he had slipped and fallen into the lake. How long would it be until the search was called off, suspended? What would the official verdict be? Missing, presumed dead? Yet the coincidence of him vanishing at the same time his friend ended his life would lend his disappearance an aspect of mystery which would birth conspiracy theories as quickly as the internet could midwife them. The prospect was almost enough to bend his mouth into a smile, except that the same open-endedness would haunt Melanie and the girls.
From Carl, from Dad, names which over a lifetime had become synonyms for stolid, calm (if unexciting), dependable (if forgetful), the man who had been one quarter of the family would assume a new identity, or rather, lack of identity. He would become a cipher, a blank onto which Melanie, Deb, and Karen would write whatever anxieties and doubts they’d had about their relationships with him. Melanie would fear he had left her for a new life with another woman, one of the younger black belts whose fawning she teased him about. Deb and Karen would worry they’d been abandoned by a father who had only ever feigned interest in them and their lives. With time, perhaps the girls would accept that he had died in an accident which had hidden his body, but he doubted Melanie would. She would know something was not right about his vanishing; the low-level marital telepathy they had developed over their decades together would tell her the situation was off. Would she seek out Madame Sosostris, demand more of an answer than the woman had provided the police? And suppose Annie acquiesced to her request, told her everything? What then? Assuming Melanie didn’t take Annie as either lying or insane, what could she do? What options could Annie offer her? Without the power she had drawn from Natalie, she could not access this place. The best Melanie could expect was to know her husband was forever lost to her. Grief for her, for what she had not learned she already had lost, shot through him like a steel pin fixing an insect to a board.
Nearby, footsteps crunched in his direction. Wondering if Hunter had failed in his efforts and had managed to track him here, he raised his head. But no, he did not recognize the young man advancing toward him. For one thing, he was clothed, wearing a peach dress shirt, charcoal slacks, and black loafers. For another, everything about him, the colors of his clothes, the tone of his skin, even the shine of his eyes, glowed with a rich light, as if the midday sun were shining full on him. The man’s expression, however, indicated he knew Carl. Squinting at the snow pelting his face, the man approached Carl until he was standing over him. In a pleasant voice, he said, “Your ride’s here, kiddo. Time to go.”
XVII
“Who are you?” Carl said through chattering teeth.
“The gift horse you’re looking in the mouth.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, bracing himself against the pillar as he struggled to stand, his legs complaining as they unbent. “It’s just—”
“Your friend’s sister, yes.”
“You know about her?”
“Some.”
“Can you tell me if Hunter got away from her?”
The young man shook his handsome head. “I can’t. What I can offer you is a way out of here.”
“Is this a trick?”
“This is not a trick.”
“Then why are you doing this?” Sudden suspicion widened his eyes. “Are you an angel? A god? God?”
The young man burst into hearty laughter. “That’s terrific,” he said. “What a difference a change of clothes makes, I swear.” Noting the blend of consternation and embarrassment on Carl’s face, he added, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have expected you to know me. The last time you saw me, I was in considerably worse shape. Actually, the last time you saw me, I was lying in the coffin in the Miskowski Funeral Home in Fishkill.”
Here, Carl realized, was Wayne Ahuja, his older brother’s friend, dead these many years, one of the multitude consumed by AIDS and its attendant infections. The delay in his recognition was understandable. Even before his sickness, Wayne had been skinny, the type of kid, it was joked, who had to stand in the same place twice to cast a shadow, who had to run around in the shower to get wet. In contrast, the man in front of him had the robust dimensions of an Olympic swimmer. He wore vitality with the same ease as his immaculately tailored shirt. Nor did the difference end there. When Carl had known him, Wayne had been reserved, guarded, a consequence of being out at a time and in a place whose attitudes were struggling to advance. This Wayne was suffused with self-confidence. It was as if he was seeing Wayne not as he would have been had he lived, but as the best possible self he could have been. Wonder and bewilderment competed to find their way into speech; what emerged from Carl’s mouth was a compromise: “Why?”
“Are you saying you want to stay here?”
“No,” Carl said, “no, no, of course not. It’s—I don’t understand. I thought I was trapped in this place.”
“I supposed it does seem a little deus-ex-machina-y, doesn’t it? Just when all hope seems lost, the handsome ghost from your past swoops in to rescue you. Well, more like, trudges across a snowy waste, but you get the picture. It’s because of that,” Wayne said, pointing at Carl’s torn right hand. “Blood was spilled. Whenever that happens in this neck of the woods, it creates all kinds of opportunities.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t ask. Be glad your friend’s sister didn’t know about it, or she wouldn’t have spent two seconds on him.” Wayne turned to the pillar, on top of which a couple of inches of snow had accumulated. With the flat of his hand, he swept it clear, then scooped out the snow remaining in the metal bowl. He waved to Carl. “Give me your hand. No, the injured one.”
Carl removed his hand from its position against his shoulder and held it out. Wayne took it in his warm grasp and guided it over the bowl. Rotating the wrist this way and that, he inspected Carl’s mostly frozen wounds. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, and squeezed Carl’s hand tightly.
Pain burned his fingers and palm. He yelped, went to jerk away, but Wayne’s grip did not lessen. From numb, Carl’s hand was aflame, flesh and bones luminescent. Fresh blood streamed from the grooves in his skin and pattered onto the bowl, striking it with a tinny music. “That should do,” Wayne said, and released him.
“Fuck!” Carl said, cradling his reinjured hand.
“Again, I apologize.” Wayne peered at the bowl, watching Carl’s blood slide down its sides into a crimson bubble. The blood quivered, elongated, shooting up the bowl’s curve in a straight line. Wayne pointed in the direction it indicated, about twenty degrees to their left. “This way,” he said.
Snow whirled around them. “There’s a hell of a lot more walking in the afterlife than I expected,” Carl said.
Wayne chuckled.
“It isn’t far.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“You want to know what it’s like.”
“Heaven, yeah. Hunter called it the summer country.”
“What makes you think that’s where I come from?”
“You didn’t?” Carl glanced at him.
“No, I’m teasing you,” Wayne said. “If your friend reaches it, he’ll be happy.”
“I would hope so, after all this.”
They proceeded in silence for a minute or two, until Carl said, “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
In front of them, a low wall made of flat black stones layered thigh high barred the way. “Here we are,” Wayne said. “Do you think you can get over this on your own, or do you need a hand?”
The stones were a single layer deep. Carl stepped across with a minimum of effort.
“And there’s my answer,” Wayne said. “All right. Continue straight on and you should see your destination in about five minutes.”
“Thank you,” Carl said. “I wish I could come up with something better to say.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I still don’t understand why you were the one who came for me. Not that I’m complaining; I just wondered.”
“Do you remember the last conversation we had?”
“Yes. You told me about wanting to go to Paris.”
“That was a bad day. A horrible day. I was in a lot of pain, and I was starting to understand I didn’t have much longer. All the stuff about France had been such a central part of who I was, how I saw myself, and it was going to be lost, to go down to the grave with me. I was depressed and I was afraid. You allowed me to talk about something I loved one more time—for the final time, as it turned out. It was comforting, at a time when comfort was in short supply. For my remaining days, I appreciated that.