BURN IN HADES

by Michael L. Martin Jr.

  “So, Clem Balfour is just another pseudonym?” she asked.

  “That’s a big word. If it means fake, then yeah. Clem Balfour is just another fake name.”

  Diamond Tooth leaned over him and showed him the makeup kit he had stolen from Balfour. “This doesn’t look fake,” she said. “The name Tivoli is stitched inside it. That was Balfour’s true name.”

  He played dumb, as if he’d never seen it before and reached to grab the makeup kit. She shackled his wrist to the arm of the chair with an iron cuff.

  The singing outside swelled.

  Ignatius burst into the shack barely fitting. Cross’s heart kicked at his ribs. He yanked his wrist up. The restraint held his arm in place. He sat helpless as the red giant thumped over to him like pissed-off steer.

  The giant kicked his chair away from the table and out from under Cross. He tumbled to the floor, dragging the chair by his wrist. He scrambled to his knees.

  Ignatius kicked him in the face. The room spun. He slammed back onto the floor. He caressed his numb jaw to make sure it hadn’t fallen off. Still there, but lights were blinking in his eyes.

  “Start talking about the last Toran,” said Diamond Tooth.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Cross through his throbbing jaw.

  Ignatius wrenched him by the shoulders off his feet. The chair swung at Cross’s wrist by the chain, and the weight strained the joint in his shoulder. The giant rammed Cross into the wall. The chair split apart. Ignatius reached down to his limp body, gripped a hand around his torso and squeezed.

  “You know how this goes more than any other soul,” said Diamond Tooth. “You were never like these other idiots. That’s why I kept you around. I always knew you’d be an asset. You still can be an asset. Don’t go and get yourself burned for nothing. Just tell me what you know, and I’ll let you go, old friend.”

  More voices joined in on the chorus outside. The souls beyond the walls sang for him and invoked the name of the Great Goddess. The power of their hymn entered his spirit and gave him strength. It instilled calmness in him, and he trusted that Magna Mater was watching. She wouldn’t allow him to endure any more than he could handle. She would not abandon him like everybody else had. The Last Toran was meant for him. It was his destiny, like Sinuhe said.

  “All I know is,” said Cross, “I’ve swatted gnats with bigger wings than your friend’s.”

  Ignatius wrung his fingers tighter and choked off his air supply. A sharp pain pinched up his left side. Cross opened his mouth to speak, but without any breath left in his lungs, nothing could escape. Ignatius loosened his clutch.

  Cross took a few gasping breaths. “Just let me ask you one thing. When people ask if you’re chicken, do you answer ‘only half’?”

  Ignatius tossed him into the wall, picked him up again and slammed him onto the table. The voices outside resonated in the walls. The cabin shook with their sound.

  Diamond Tooth banged on the window and yelled to someone outside: “Make them stop singing!”

  The red giant flexed his bricked muscles, and his puny wings fluttered.

  “So those things really work?” said Cross in between gasps. “I thought you just rode some poor crow’s back to get from place to place.”

  Ignatius clamped his enormous thumb and index finger onto the soft spot in Cross’s head and pinched. Bones in his face made tiny snapping noises like glass buckling and preparing to shatter. His head felt on the verge of exploding.

  The choir outside roared, but the Great Goddess obviously wasn’t paying attention. Either she wanted him to give up the information, or she had forgotten about him long ago, which would mean all those times he escaped certain second death were pure luck and determination on his part alone. If so, he was a goner whether he revealed the location of the bone orchard or not.

  He wanted to believe in the Great Goddess as he always had, but he smothered in the giant’s pressure, and his own black blood clogged his throat. Only a miracle from Magna Mater herself could save him now, and he had endured as much as he could. It seemed Magna Mater dismissed him like she did all the souls outside being tortured.

  Living in the underworld was punishment enough, and those innocent prisoners had done nothing to deserve the extra punishment. They all sang in vain and Cross was now one of them. No one special. Sinuhe was wrong about the Toran being his destiny, or the Great Goddess had picked a fine time for tough love. Evil always prevailed in the underworld, and Diamond Tooth always got what she wanted.

  “I’ll talk!” he cried out before he could lose the ability to speak. The red giant let up.

  “What did Balfour say about the gate?” asked Diamond Tooth.

  Cross coughed up blood and through his swollen face could barely get a word out. “It’s…buried under a skull.”

  Diamond Tooth hunched over him. “Where?” A necklace dropped from between her breasts and swung in the blurred sight of his bloody eye.

  “Skull Hill,” he said.

  “Which skull?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. The Raven. She knows. She knows the name of the skull.”

  Blood from his eye dripped down the side of his face, and he could see clearer. At the end of Diamond Tooth’s necklace dangled a brass astrolabe exactly like one he had seen when he was alive.

  A mysterious man and his daughter showed up to the Carson mansion, bringing with them a carved pumpkin in celebration for All-Hallow E’en. Kate and the man’s daughter, Phoebe, were instant friends. They chatted like sisters reunited after many years of separation. Phoebe was a much better friend for Kate than Vivian would ever be. Phoebe was much more considerate. If he could have replaced Vivian with Phoebe, he would.

  The only part he disliked about this new friendship between Kate and Phoebe was all the giggling they did behind his back. They spied on him from around corners and from the windows as he performed him chores. Every time he’d turn their way, they would hide or run. It annoyed him greatly. He was glad that Kate enjoyed spending time with her new friend, but he wished they would have found something better to do and quit distracting him from his work.

  At one point, they did leave him be, but their sudden neglect after observing him for so long only made him curious of what they were doing now that was so better than watching him from afar. Not that he was doing anything special, but he assumed that they were, and he wanted to find out what.

  He ditched the house duties that he knew he could make up later, and went to spy on them. He checked around for Mr. Beckwourth and was happy to have memorized the majordomo’s schedule. Mr. Beckwourth was in the kitchen baking a soul cake. Mrs. Carson sat in the parlor knitting, and Mr. Carson was in his study entertaining his guest.

  With everyone’s attention occupied, Charles snuck upstairs to Kate’s room and peeked inside the crack in the door. Kate and Phoebe sat on the throw rug in front of the floor mirror in total darkness. The curtains were drawn tight, and mysteriously the lantern wasn’t lit.

  “So, I showed you mine,” said Phoebe. “Now let’s see yours.”

  They whispered chants in front of the mirror, and a green mist filled the glass. A head without a body manifested within the green haze, floating.

  Charles leaned into the door for a closer look. Wood creaked. The girls shot up from their bottoms and raced to the door. Before he could run away, they swung the door open.

  Phoebe shoved Kate into Charles and high-tailed it, laughing. Kate stared up at him as if he had turned into a pot roast and she was a hungry coyote. He could feel her breath on his neck. His heart knocked with the beat of Cupid’s drum. She leaned into his face and laid a buss right on his cheek. His face warmed with affection, and life seemed to brighten with the light of paradise his mother used to tell him about.

  Kate shot down the staircase along with Phoebe and skipped out the front door. Charles remained stunned and in a trance-like state. He pressed his palm on the cheek where she had kissed him.

 
; The sound of a person breathing hissed from Kate’s room. But Kate and Phoebe were the only ones in the room earlier, and everyone else was accounted for. He grabbed one of Mrs. Carson’s precious statue heads off the wall shelf and ventured into the dark room, shaking and hoping it was just the wind and not an intruder.

  “Come out,” he said into the darkness. “Whoever you are. Come out.”

  The whispering came from the floor mirror. His face stared back at him in the glass. His shoulders shot upward, and his heart climbed into his throat.

  It wasn’t his normal reflection. His head filled the glass, and it had no neck. It wasn’t even connected to a body at all. It floated in the center of the mirror, surrounded by the green mist. It followed his movements with its eyes as if it could see him. He had the sense that that it was peering right into his soul. He was terrified but entranced and couldn’t look away. The cloud of black smoke bloomed over the face, and the skin melted off his head, revealing an ugly skull underneath.

  “Shepherd the girl,” said the skull. “We will wait for you, Charles Hill. Our savior.”

  He smashed the mirror with the statue head. The servant bell rang. Charles raced to the staircase and leaned over the banister. Mr. Carson stood in the doorway of his study.

  “I’ll bring you your coffee right away, boss,” he said.

  “Forget the coffee,” said Mr. Carson. “I need a word with you immediately.”

  Judging by the stark tone of the boss’s voice, Charles was definitely in trouble for not only ditching his duties, but for the commotion made breaking the mirror and possibly for making a mash with Kate. The boss, with all his magic, somehow always knew what was going on in his home, as any man of the house should.

  Charles wiped the sweat from his palms onto his pants and followed Mr. Carson into his study, preparing himself to get disciplined in his favorite room of the entire mansion. Most of Kate’s books sat on those shelves, along with hundreds of others that she had read to him. They were never truly hers solely; the books were more so owned by the entire household, which Cross liked to include himself in. Kate would have.

  The boss’s guest waited inside, standing in front of the fancy hand washer that painted talking and moving portraits. The man turned around, aware of Charles’s presence, and shut the water off with a squeak. The watery portrait vanished, and the water dripped.

  “This is Mr. Rowings,” said Mr. Carson.

  Excitement got the best of Charles. “You’re from the Isle of Man,” he said. “You know all the fairies!”

  Mr. Rowings glanced at the boss.

  “Sometimes I tell Kate about what we do,” said Mr. Carson. “And Charlie eavesdrops.”

  Charles dropped his gaze to the floor. “Sorry, sir.”

  “It’s quite all right, Charlie. I always try to speak loud enough to make sure you hear everything.”

  Charles raised his chin. “Really?”

  “You’re here for a reason. Mr. Rowings has traveled a very long way to meet you personally.”

  “Meet me, sir?”

  “I don’t know all the fairies,” said Mr. Rowings. “There are a great many of them in the world. I’ve been lucky enough to meet just a few of them. Each has a special ability, like you. I understand you possess a unique talent that’s extremely rare in human beings.”

  “Before we get into that,” said Mr. Carson, “I think we should address the more pressing matter first.” Mr. Carson removed the Colt Peacemaker from the case on the desk.

  Charles choked. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “It will never happen again. I promise. Just don’t kill me, boss.”

  “Kill you?” Mr. Carson sat the pistol down on the desk. “What on earth? What’s troubling you, Son?”

  “Well, K-Kate and m-me—?”

  “Kate and you, what?”

  The boss seemed genuinely curious and didn’t appear to be aware of his kiss with Kate. Charles opened his big, stupid mouth for nothing. Now, he was too afraid to confess, but had to say something. “I broke her floor mirror. It was an accident, I swear.”

  “I don’t know anything about that, but it doesn’t sound like anything I’d ever kill a boy over. Now, I know I’m not around much, but I do hope I don’t give off that sort of impression. Why don’t you have a seat in my chair?” Mr. Carson stood up and carried his chair around to the front of his desk. He tapped the seat with his palm.

  Charles sat in the comfy chair as he was told. The two men loomed above him.

  “I believe this is about more than just some broken mirror,” said Mr. Carson. “I think I know what you were on about at first. And given the circumstances, I suppose it’s alright. I have to be okay with my daughter possibly finding comfort in you. I don’t know what else I can do or say, except give you my blessing. Though, I’m not so sure that it’s a blessing. There are many societal challenges that will make that an extremely tough road to travel down. It’s definitely not what I would have ever planned for Kate—”

  Mr. Rowings cleared his throat loudly as if to get the boss’s attention.

  “Right,” said Mr. Carson, nodding. “There’s a much larger perspective at play. It’s the reason you’re in the room with us now. For the moment, wash your mind of everything else.”

  Mr. Carson pulled out a key from the gun case and stepped over to the cage of rifles. He pulled one of the rifles hanging on the wall at an angle as though it were a lever of some sort. The cabinet slid aside, and the wall opened up, revealing a safe. He turned the dial, entering his secret numbers, and opened the safe. He pulled another box out of the safe. This box was bigger than the gun case.

  “Mr. Carson and I are members of an elite society,” said Mr. Rowings. “And we’ve been scouting for new members. But not just anyone. People with abilities such as yourself.”

  “Abilities? I don’t understand, sir.”

  “I’ve observed you over the years around the ranch,” said Mr. Carson, sitting the new box onto the desk in front of Charles. “You’re able to communicate with the animals in a way I’ve never seen. You have some kind of magic touch. The animals understand you. They listen to you. You remember how you stopped those runaway horses three months ago, when you saved Kate?”

  “I just did what needed to be done, boss. She was in trouble, boss, so I—”

  “I saw you. You spoke to those horses without speaking. They obeyed you without you needing to control them through the reins. And I believe there’s a reason why this talent of yours hasn’t presented itself until now. This is the year you turned thirteen.”

  “Thirteen is a very sacred number,” said Mr. Rowings.

  He wanted to tell them that he could use his magical touch before he turned thirteen. It had been with him for as long as he could remember. But the boss sounded so sure of his theory, that Charles was afraid to prove him wrong. He said nothing and allowed the two men to continue speaking.

  “My intuition has never failed me,” said Mr. Carson. “I don’t think it was by chance that Kate felt so strongly about saving you from that mob four years ago. It is not mere coincidence that you’ve become such an integral part of our family.”

  Charles had never had this long of a conversation with Mr. Carson before, nor one so informative. Something was off about the whole situation.

  “Let me show you something.” Mr. Carson unlocked the wide box and removed a funny-shaped object. It was like a clock but not quite round, and it was made of brass. After listening to Kate read all those books all those years, he had since learned how to read a little on his own. The words written on the brass object were from some other land or time. Possibly both.

  Mr. Carson displayed the round metal trinket in his palm for Charles to view closely. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything like this before.”

  Charles shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “It’s called an Astrolabe. It’s an astronomical instrument. What it does is…well it has over a thousand uses. It can predict the positions of the
stars. It can determine local time.” The boss glanced at Mr. Rowings and then back at Charles. “But this particular astrolabe is rather unique. It’s the oldest known astrolabe. We know this because it’s the only one with a creation date engraved on it. But what’s truly unique about this astrolabe as opposed to all the others is what we believe it can do. We believe this can bring a soul back from the dead.”

  Everything about the boss was magical, but Charles sat shocked at the turn of the conversation. It was too much to believe.

  “You see,” said Mr. Carson, “the Confederacy is more than aware of President Lincoln’s feelings towards colored people. Before he even signed the Emancipation Proclamation, his life has been in danger. We think something may happen to him. Something we don’t believe we can stop. But with this….” He closed his fingers around the astrolabe. “We can change everything. And you’re the only one we’ve told about this.”

  “I’m much honored, boss.”

  “Charles, this isn’t to be taken lightly. It’s very serious information. People have been….” The boss stopped himself midsentence.

  “Tell the boy,” said Mr. Rowings. “He should know.”

  “All the others who knew of the existence of the astrolabe have been killed. Murdered.”

  Why was the boss was telling him then, of all people?

  Mr. Carson must’ve seen the look on his face because he answered: “I’m telling you because if anything should happen to me—”

  “I don’t mean to give you any commands boss, but this ain’t the sort of subject I know too much about. Shouldn’t you tell Mrs. Carson about this?”

  “I can’t risk my family knowing anything about this. I have to protect them.”

  “Again, I’m sorry, boss, if I may be too bold, but that would mean you’re fine with placing me in harm’s way.”

  “It’s alright. You can make your true feelings known to me. Your bravery and critical thinking just confirms to me that I’m making the right choice with you. And your caution is very fair, but I believe you’re safe. Fortunately for us, and maybe unfortunately for you, no one would believe the truth if it came out of your mouth. You don’t have to worry.”