by Idella Breen
Double shit!
Standing, I waited impatiently. Glancing down at my watch told me it was coming any minute. I sighed. “Okay, I can do this. It’s easy. I just put one foot in front of the other then I'll sit down towards the front like I always do. Easy. The worst thing that can happen is someone farts next to me.”
The hum of the bus brought me out of my pep-talk.
I whispered. “Okay, girl. You got this.”
The bus stopped, the doors opened, I froze. My mind just went blank, and the sounds around me disappeared, as I stared at the black grooves of the first step. Someone shoved me from behind. Suddenly, the hum was loud, my heart was pounding in my chest, and I was shaking. I can’t do this. Shit! I can’t do this.
“Miss? Are you getting on?”
I looked up and met the kind gaze of the bus driver.
“What?” I gasped.
He smiled. “Are you going to climb on?”
I swallowed, getting my breathing under control, and shook my head. “I don’t know if I can.”
He chuckled. “Sure you can. Just place one foot on the first step and move on from there.”
“I…” I trailed. My palms were sweaty.
He stood, and walking to the top of the stairs, held out his hand. “Here, let me help you. Sometimes, the first step is the hardest. We all just need a bit of help to get us going.”
I swallowed again. Nodding, I reached out and gripped the offered hand. It was big, rough, and strong as he pulled me forward. One step. Two steps. Three steps.
“There you go.” He led me over to a seat towards the front and helped me sit down.
I gripped his hand tight; I was still trembling. He patted my hand, squeezed it reassuringly, then let go. “We should be on our way, now. Places to go, things to do, people to see.”
He turned back to the few other passengers in the back. This stop was after the hub, so I wasn’t surprised at there only being a few people on board.
He chuckled. “Sorry about that folks.”
Taking his seat behind the wheel, he moved it out of park, and the bus began to move again. Glancing out the window, I flexed my hand in my lap, and took a deep breath. The city whipped by, the bus hummed, and my stop was only two stops away. The most important thing, though, was that I was okay. I was on a bus, after six weeks of avoiding them, and I was alright. I was just fine.
***
The bus dropped me off about a block away from Pioneer Square. I had to push through the afternoon crowd to finally reach my destination. I pushed through the doors of Bill Speidels Underground Tours and walked into a lobby filled with eager tourists.
“Single file everyone, please! Follow me in single file!” A young woman called out from the front of the line.
I jogged over to the front counter where a teenage boy was blowing bubbles with his gum and playing on his cellphone. I slapped a twenty down on the counter, startling him off of his phone.
“I want to go on that tour!” I pointed to the group following the woman down a flight of stairs.
“Um…”
“Give me a ticket now!”
He started from the intensity of my demand and the desperation in my voice and quickly jumped into action by taking my money and printing off a ticket. It only took him about five seconds before he was handing me what I requested,
“Enjoy Miss.” He called out as I jogged to catch up to the tour group who was still filing down the stairs.
“Sure!” I called out over my shoulder and hopped down the stairs bringing up the end of the tour group. At the end of the stairs were a set of double doors. As I pushed through them, a draft of cold air brushed against my face and through my hair. I walked into a dark hallway made of stone. It was almost like walking into a cave as it was lit entirely by lamps and old antique chandeliers.
“Please stay together! On your left, you’ll see the remains of an old Tellers box. Did you know…”
The woman continued to tell a humorous story of an adulterous teller as she led us down a wooden walkway. Several tourists were snapping photos with their smartphones and posting the pictures to some social media. I mused as I remembered being just like them on my first tour through the Underground.
I could still remember the history that my tour guide had imparted on me. After the Great Fire of 1889, a stage of the rebuilding of Pioneer Square took place. By that time several laws had been passed on road and housing regulations. Thus what used to be the ground floor of a building suddenly became the basement and so on.
Virtually an entire network of interconnected underground passageways that were once roads as well as businesses became a town beneath the city. Thus the Underground became a historic site. It wasn’t until many years later that a very curious and brave man and his wife jumped through many hoops to begin giving tours of it to prove the historical value of it that the Underground became popular. Now, thousands of tours are given annually, and the place was preserved.
The tour guide led us across a walkway and pointed to the right. “To your right, you will see what used to be an old parlor. It was commonly frequented by travelers passing through Pioneer Square. Did you know…” She jumped into another wild story of life on Pioneer Square before the fire.
I tuned her out as I glanced around. This was where June told me to separate from the group. The other tourists were too busy on their phones to notice when I ducked through the small opening between the guardrails and walked across unsteady cracked concrete. I quickly made my way to the parlor as the tour guide led the group down another walkway.
I pushed through the dimly lit remains and walked through cobwebs. “Gross!” I muttered as I walked through the overturned tables and made my way to what remained of the bar. It was nothing more than rusted wood and metal now. I pushed passed it until I reached a hidden door in the back. Gently I edged it open. It creaked ominously, and a gust of cold air burst out causing me to cough from the dust that came along with it.
“The things I do…” I trailed off and walked over to a stone wall. There was nothing special about the wall beside the white chalked circle on the center of it. Hesitantly, I rested my hands on the circle.
“Here goes nothing!” I set my shoulders taking a deep breath before I spoke the words that June had made me memorize.
“Door to ice, door to fire, the dead demands entry to the next plane, grant me entry, it is my desire!”
As I spoke the last words, I felt an insistent pull on my hand before the room around me blurred, and I was being pulled through time and space. The feeling of leaving my stomach behind as well as a wrongness filled me, and I closed my eyes. It felt like someone was trying to pull my soul from my body! I wrapped my arms around my torso to hold myself together, but before I could gain control over my limbs again, soft warm arms were suddenly wrapped around me and the smell of burnt cinnamon filled the air. I was pulled into a soft body.
A quiet voice sighed next to my ear. “Eliza.”
I wrapped my arms around the solid figure. “June!”
She pulled back and studied me “Are you alright?”
“I think so-“ Suddenly my stomach caught up and flipped and I pushed away from her before I emptied my breakfast on the tiled floors.
“You’ll get used to it. First timers always struggle with their first jump.” She soothed and held my hair out of the way.
I gained control of myself after a few minutes and leaned against her heavily. “Where am I?” I asked and took in my surroundings only to shudder as I realized that June was once again wearing her bone mask. The room we were in seemed to be a bathroom if the stalls and sinks were any indications. “And what did I go through?”
She pointed behind me to a mirror. “That’s a portal that physical beings can pass through without the aid of a bone walker. Don’t ask why it’s in a bathroom just be thankful that it’s in the women's and not the men’s.”
“But I thought you didn’t need to eat?”
She sm
iled. “I don’t. The bathrooms are sort of a joke. They’re mostly used as a place to escape from the office.”
“The office?”
She shrugged. “You’ll see what I mean. But for now, I need you to put these on.”
June produced a Halloween mask along with a hoodie practically from thin air. “What are those for?”
She pointed to her face. “No one can know that you’re human. It won’t end well. Put these on quickly. We have to get you out of this building before Death figures out that I brought you here.”
“Death? Like the dead Death? The real Grim Reaper?”
“Yes, now hurry!” She shoved the mask and hoodie into my hands. I nodded dumbly and slid the plastic mask over my face before shrugging on the black hooded sweatshirt. I belatedly realized that I had been cold.
“Where am I June?”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me behind her. “This is the Otherworld.”
“The Otherworld?”
June nodded. “The realm in which spirits rule. It’s Death’s realm.”
“Am I dead?”
“No. You’re still alive. Come on.” She pulled me through the bathroom doors and out into the hallway.
I looked around only to see an open space of cubicles and hear the sound of phones ringing. The only thing it was missing was the smell of coffee.
“The office.” I mused.
A man walked passed us, and I gasped when I saw the lower half of his face was covered in a mask of white bone. He nodded to us politely as he walked by holding a stack of papers in his hands.
“Morning!” He chirped and the bone along his jaw clacked together making me shudder. I saw June nod curtly to him before dragging me faster.
“Are we in an office building?”
“Actually, it's Death's main headquarters,” June whispered as she pulled me along.
We walked down a hallway covered in windows. I glanced out of them only to stumble forward. The world outside was nothing like where I came from. The sky was a peach pink, and there was no sun. There seemed to be a courtyard down below us. The strangest thing though was that instead of there being a skyline of several neighboring buildings there was nothing but vast open fields. What looked like blue grass for miles upon miles on end.
“Come on Eliza. We have to hurry.” I hadn’t realized that I had stopped until June was pulling me forward again.
“Outside-“
She nodded. “I know. It’s different.”
“Yeah. Different.” I whispered as June dragged us towards an elevator.
She pushed the call button, and we waited for a moment before the doors slid open only to reveal several business men and women all wearing different types of bone masks. Some had the top of their faces covered while others had their bottom halves covered but none had a full faced mask like June’s. They were all shapes and sizes. While June’s mask looked like a human skull the people on the elevator had masks representing animals. One man had a long beak covering the bottom half of his jaw while a woman had what looked like hamsters teeth jutting passed her mouth. One man even had a crescent moon tattooed on the center of his mask’s forehead.
I quietly gasped as June pulled me forward. The doors were beginning to close, but a hand suddenly shot out making them open again. June stiffened next to me as a man with a mask covering only the top half of his face climbed on and stood next to her. I studied him closer from the corner of my eye. The bone covering the top of his face was white and looked much like a human’s but there was an insignia of some type printed on each side of his head when he glanced down at me. It seemed to be of a small blue circle, with a white circle within it, and a small black circle at the very center, almost like the pupil of an eye. An awkward tension filled the elevator as several people fidgeted and twitched. My hand tightened around June’s. At the next floor, the doors opened, and everyone besides June, the man and I, hurried off. June stepped forward, but the man's hand shot out and pulled her back.
“Now, June. Where do you think you’re going?”
Her eyes were hard when they turned to meet his. “Matt.”
His green eyes seemed to have a hidden humor. “Death is most eager to meet our guest. You wouldn’t want to keep him waiting, would you?”
She shrugged his hand off but stepped back into the elevator. “I find the thought of him being anything other than bored, disturbing.”
Matt chuckled. “As do we all.”
He reached forward and pushed the button for B13 before studying me. “Hello, Eliza. You won’t need that Halloween mask now, It was a nice touch though. I wouldn’t have suspected anything if Death didn’t warn me beforehand.”
I glanced at June, but she seemed to have found something interesting on the wall to study. I turned back to the man while taking off the mask. I set it down on the floor before turning back to the man. “You know me?”
He nodded. “Usually when I see you, you’re nothing but a spirit, so I’m not surprised you don’t remember me. It’s nice to meet you officially when you’re a whole person. I’m sorry it couldn’t be under better circumstances.”
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Matt. I’m Death’s assistant.”
I frowned. “You don’t hear that job title every day.”
He chuckled. “No, I’m sure you don’t.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. He motioned forward. “Right this way please.”
June pulled me forward as we followed Matt down the dimly lit hallway. It seemed to have dropped in temperature as we progressed. We paused in front of an ominous wooden door, with what looked like gargoyles engraved into it, before I heard a muffled voice call out and Matt pushed the doors open. June dropped my hand as we entered. The room was tastefully decorated with a Victorian decor and sitting at the far end of the room, behind a monstrous cherry wood desk, was a thin, sickly pale man with a bored expression on his face.
Matt bowed. “Death, I have brought them as requested. Will you need anything else?”
Death absently waved his hand, and Matt bowed again before leaving the office.
Death sighed. “So you’ve brought the Lamb or Essence into my realm?”
I glanced at June, but she seemed to have turned to stone beside me. I turned back to the pale man. “What’s going on?”
***
“She didn’t tell you?” Death asked.
I glanced at June out of the corner of my eye. She was studying the carpet. I looked back to Death. “Will you?”
He picked a piece of imaginary lint off of his impeccable suit jacket. “I suppose so. It’s not too complicated. Do you know what it means to be the Lamb?”
I shook my head. “Not quite.”
“Very well. June and you were souls that one day became extraordinarily bright.”
“What do you mean?”
“One could say you were luminous and filled with positive energy the likes of which we have never seen before.”
I frowned. “Do you know why?”
He shrugged. “I suspect it was the result of the love you share for one another even before June signed my contract.”
I blushed.
“So, as I was saying, your souls were vibrant, and I needed a powerful soul to give the all important duty of the Lamb of Essence. You see, Eliza. The Lamb must keep the balance of the physical world and the Otherworld. It needs a lot of positive energy to accomplish that and when June signed my contract, becoming an eternal soul, the energy from the both of you increased exponentially. If I remember correctly, you lit up the whole of the Otherworld like a supernova.” He said this all in his apathetic tone, so I wasn’t able to determine how he felt about it. He didn’t seem to hold any grudges against June nor I. Then, why did he do this to us? Maybe this all happened as a result of my ever present bad luck.
“What contract did June sign?”
His dark eyes met my gaze, and a chill ran down my spine. “She signed the bone walker contra
ct, but it had a little extra to it.”
“What extra?”
“Since you are both soulmates, you each hold equal dominion over each other's souls. Soulmates are two halves of a whole, after all. When June signed herself over to me, she also signed your soul into my service as collateral. Therefore you have indirectly signed yourself over to me. As the Lamb of Essence your life essence is used to tip the scale of energy one way or the other. It was the only way at the time that I could stop the fighting between the angels and the demons which would have eventually destroyed both the physical world as well as the Otherworld.” He sighed as if speaking was some great chore and it probably was. He was most likely used to using as few a words as possible to order people around.
“But why would she do that?”
He shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her.”
I turned to June, who had yet to look up from her inspection of the floor. “June?”
She met my gaze. Her gray eyes blazed in barely restrained rage. I stepped back, and she softened slightly before turning back to Death.
“Are we here for a reason? Or, are we free to leave?”
Death nodded. “Yes, of course, you are here for a reason. You know bringing a being from the physical world here is against the rules. Punishable by fifty lashes if I remember correctly.” He said thoughtfully.
“No!”
He looked to me. “No?”
I moved to block June from his view. “I won’t let you hurt her again.”
He seemed confused by my words. “But she broke the rules. There must be a punishment, or others will start doing it, and that would be a disaster.”
I shook my head. “It’s my fault.”
“Eliza!” June grabbed my shoulder, but I shook her off.
“Punish me!”
Death sighed. “That simply won’t do. As the Lamb of Essence, you’re impervious to the punishments we inflict here in the Otherworld. I cannot punish you. It’s against the rules.”
I squared my shoulders. I might regret this later. “Then make a contract with me.”
***
Death frowned. “A contract?”
I nodded. “I want to make one with you.”