Limbo's Child (Book One of The Dead Things Series)

by Jonah Hewitt

  Graber stood up from the hedge with Forzgrim in a headlock. Forzgrim pummeled him with body blows then tripped Graber. They fell over and disappeared again.

  Ulami stared at Hokharty. Hokharty stared at Ulami. She stared back. He stared back, only more so.

  Graber dragged Forzgrim from the bush by his ankles. Forzgrim kicked him in the face then pounced on him. The two tussled and then rolled into a patch of prickly-looking forsythias.

  Meanwhile, back at the main event, the staring in silence continued and continued and continued some more.

  Miles looked at Schuyler. Schuyler looked back with a “What the heck?” look on his face. Miles just shrugged and replied with a “Beats me” expression. The frozen silence was eerie after all that rapid-fire action. The best that Miles could guess was that Hokharty and Ulami were locked in some deep, psychic battle. Miles had heard about such things: raging, telepathic battles of sheer will between two arcane and ancient vampires. “Funny,” thought Miles, “These things always sounded a lot more exciting than they are in real life.”

  Forzgrim stood up from the forsythias. Graber was riding him piggyback, pounding on his skull like a blacksmith on an anvil. Forzgrim threw himself backward into a tree, dislodged Graber, and attacked again. The two tussled and rolled off behind some dense poplar trees.

  The staring went on and on.

  Things felt a little more stable now, so Miles and Schuyler got up slowly and carefully wandered over to within a few feet of the epic staring match. Miles looked around, rocked back and forth on his heels and stuck his hands into his pockets. Finally he spoke.

  “Pretty barmy, huh?”

  “You said it,” Schuyler replied. There was a crashing sound far away from the still-raging battle between Graber and Forzgrim.

  “So…you…um…ok?”

  “Yeah…but…” Schuyler sighed.

  “But what?” Miles prompted.

  “She ruined my best jeans.”

  Miles nodded in sympathy. Fashion was important to Schuyler and he wasn’t in the mood to kick him while he was down.

  The staring continued. Ulami trembled slightly. Somewhere in the distance it sounded like Forzgrim and Graber had rolled over a stray cat.

  The staring continued some more. More distant crashing and thudding. They turned around casually to look. Tim got up and joined them.

  “You ok, dude?” Schuyler asked as he rolled his lollipop stick between his fingers.

  “Yeah, but I landed on my iPod.”

  The distant crashing continued, as did the staring.

  “Does it still work?” Miles asked.

  “Yeah, but look, the glass is all cracked now.” Tim leaned over to show both of them. Schuyler shook his head in empathy. “Dude, that’s rough.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shame really.”

  “Yep.”

  “Too bad, mate.”

  The three stood around awkwardly as if waiting in an elevator for their floor, not knowing what to do. The staring continued. Every once in a while Graber and Forzgrim would pop up, try to trash each other, and then tumble off to continue the brawl.

  “So…who would ya put money on?” Miles said at last.

  “Well, I haven’t seen anyone go this many rounds with Forzgrim, so I wouldn’t bet against Graber, but this…” Schuyler gestured towards the frozen couple in front of him, “I wouldn’t even know how to call odds on what’s going on in there.”

  “Well, don’t count Hokharty out,” Tim added.

  Somewhere in the distance, Graber and Forzgrim rolled over the cat again.

  Schuyler regarded Tim intently while sucking on his plastic lollipop.

  “Say, tell me, Tim. Exactly how long have you been hooked up with these two?” He pointed his lollipop at Hokharty who was still staring at Ulami with steadfast determination.

  Tim didn’t look up but kept poking forlornly at his broken iPod. “Oh, about four hours, give or take.”

  Schuyler and Miles goggled at each other while Graber and Forzgrim were beating each other over the head with broken tree limbs somewhere behind them.

  “Four hours?! Ya gotta be kiddin’ me,” Miles said earnestly.

  “No, I’m serious, dude,” Tim replied frankly, “Five hours ago, these two were corpses rotting in the hospital morgue. Then this other weird guy comes in…”

  “Other guy?” Miles interjected; this was getting interesting.

  “Oh, yeah.” Tim put his iPod away and began with interest, “Really creepy dude comes to look at this dead chick.”

  “Dead chick?”

  “Yeah, we got her in the trunk…but she ain’t, y’know…moving.”

  Now Schuyler and Miles were staring at Tim.

  Tim went on, “Well he comes in, and I’m on duty and then…”

  “HOLD!!” Hokharty suddenly shouted.

  Tim clutched his heart, Miles nearly fell over and Schuyler practically swallowed his lollipop.

  “HOLD!!” Hokharty shouted again. Ulami was hissing and writhing like a snake in trap now. “Well, this is a little more interesting,” thought Miles.

  “Hold…” Hokharty said a little softer, “You will show us to your master…”

  “Never!” Ulami hissed. Somewhere back there, Graber and Forzgrim were still mucking about making noise, throwing boulders at each other.

  “Every vampire has a clan, every clan has a master, and every master has a master...” Hokharty began calmly. Miles remembered this bit from the alley. Hokharty recited the phrase like a magic incantation.

  There was a pause and then, finally, Ulami relaxed her tensed pose and spoke, “Until there is, at last, a master who is master of all.”

  Hokharty slowly lowered his hand. Tim, Schuyler and Miles all tightened for a moment, ready to flee if Ulami pounced, but nothing happened. She just turned towards the undergrowth and shouted, “Forzgrim!”

  Forzgrim came hurtling out of the bush. Whether he was thrown by Graber or came out by his own will Miles couldn’t tell, but Graber came out walking right after him. His sweatshirt was all torn and somewhere during the fight he had lost his stocking cap. Miles saw for the first time the hideous, gaping bullet hole over his left eye. “No wonder he wore the cap,” thought Miles. This guy really was a corpse five hours ago.

  Ulami turned and spoke politely to Hokharty, but with an air of barely veiled contempt. “We will take you to the master, but once you have spoken your peace to him, there will be no guarantee of safe passage out of Rivenden.”

  “That is all that I ask,” Hokharty replied politely as usual. He even bowed from the neck a little. Ulami curled her lip at him and turned and led the way, striding towards the manor house. Hokharty went next, followed by Tim, Schuyler and Miles. Last came Graber and Forzgrim, side by side, each eying the other venomously.

  “Everything is wrong,” thought Miles. Ulami knew the same phrase that Hokharty had used? Was this some secret code? Was there some super-secret club only the cool, powerful vampires belonged to? If so, it made sense that Miles had never heard of it before. And these guys were corpses five hours ago?!! Vampires turn at the moment of death, not later, so if these guys weren’t vampires, what were they? And who was this other guy Tim was talking about? It was all very confusing. Still, Hokharty had saved Miles twice that night. Of course, he was the one who got him into this trouble to begin with. As they made the grim walk to the manor house towards Wallach, the vampire Miles feared most, Miles couldn’t help but wonder if he was on the wrong team. Maybe there was a way out of this after all and it wasn’t by sticking with Wallach. And with that thought, he felt a small twinge of hope and instantly felt sick to his stomach.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Gardener

  As soon as Nephys was certain he wasn’t being followed, he stopped running and slowed his pace down to the usual slow plod. The funeral-like procession of the children of Limbo returning to their homes was always a quiet affair. Everyone walked slowly and silently t
o their houses and tombs and stayed there until they were needed again. No one ever spoke out of anything other than absolutely necessity, and Nephys had already done far too much to draw attention to himself that day. The slightly raised eyebrows of the children as he ran by them earlier were about as sharp a rebuke as one could give in Limbo. Standing out was just not accepted decorum. Nephys resolved to try harder to fit in. No more excursions with Hiero, no more being late, no more joke cracking and certainly no more running. From now on, he would simply just try to get by and be like everyone else, well…with one possible exception: his sight. He would fit in, get along, not stand out, but he wouldn’t succumb to the temptations of the Death Sight. He would keep his living sight as long as he could – keep the memory of colors and solidity and maybe that would be enough. That would be his only secret and no one would notice him for anything else from now on.

  Nephys walked slowly now down the streets of Limbo to avoid attention. Just one more corner and he would be home. Nephys’ tomb was a small, understated thing: plastered mud brick, an atrium, a garden and a single chamber. That was all, but it was comforting, and he had lived in it long enough it felt more like any home than any he had had in life. It may not have warmth or comfort, or even company, but it had the one thing you really craved in the afterlife: familiarity.

  That was why when Nephys turned the final corner, his newfound resolve fell straight through his stomach. He turned around quickly to make sure he was on the right street, but after walking it for more than a thousand years he knew it was. In most tombs and on most streets in Limbo, only a few lights could be seen, and no tomb had more than a single candle or spare lamp to light it, but here was his tomb and it was lit brightly by a dozen or more.

  “Oh, no,” Nephys thought as he quickly went to the entrance and looked in.

  Four braziers full of bright blue coals were in the entrance illuminating the whole atrium. Walls that Nephys had long thought dark grey and blank were nearly white, and where had the frescoes of lotus blossoms and ducks nesting in papyri beds come from? Obviously, they had always been there, but he must have forgotten them when they became covered with dust. When had he forgotten them he couldn’t remember, but the dust was gone now. Maggie must have done this. She had cleaned up! He always felt he was a tidy spirit, but he had no idea it had gotten so dirty. Either way, this had to stop and quickly.

  He rushed into the back and was even more shocked by what he saw. There in the garden the weeds were gone and the remaining plants organized into tidy rows. The plants were still blue-gray but seemed somewhat brighter. Maggie was on her hands and knees grubbing around in the grey, dry dirt, but most surprising was Hiero. He was using his butcher knife like a makeshift hoe, making crooked furrows around the bigger plants. He was doing this half-heartedly with a look of murder in his eye, but he was cooperating!

  “Wheef-paaaarnft,” he hooted in the most annoyed tone Nephys had ever heard.

  “What are you doing?!” Nephys squeaked.

  “Nep! You’re back.” Maggie got up and brushed her hands together to knock most the dirt off. Then she wiped the remaining dirt on her pants and spoke while rubbing a small patch of dirt off her nose in the crook of her elbow, “Good thing too, I was getting worried. It’s felt like you’ve been gone for weeks!”

  Nephys didn’t know what to say, as far as he knew it had been weeks. Falco’s sense of time wasn’t exactly objective, but that wasn’t important right now.

  “What are you…” he began weakly, but she wasn’t through yet.

  “I always loved gardening – still can’t figure out how things grow down here without any sun, but weeds can figure out how to grow anywhere, can’t they?”

  “What? Oh. I don’t know…but…Maggie…you…” Nephys stammered.

  “But if the weeds can make it, I figure the other plants can too...with a little help.”

  “I guess,” Nephys said, annoyed, “But…you can’t just…”

  She interrupted him again, “They just needed a little tending and some water.” She stuck her hands in her back pockets and took on her confident pose. “Fortunately, the water’s pretty close. Took more than a few trips though. I had to improvise a watering can.” With that, she tossed her head in Hiero’s direction.

  Nephys looked at Hiero.

  “You don’t mean…” Nephys furrowed his brow incredulously.

  The imp gave a shudder and then sneezed like a pathetic, wet cat and black water sprayed from all three pipes, the nose trumpet and the blowpipe.

  “Of course, I had to rinse him out a few times first,” Maggie said flatly.

  Hiero stabbed the ground murderously, as if he were torturing some small animal.

  Nephys put his hand over his mouth and turned away to cover up the smile. Not a shadow of a smile, not a memory of a smile, but an actual smile. He wondered at it a moment and then composed himself and turned around.

  “But how? I mean I can hardly get him to do anything.”

  “Him?” Maggie strolled slowly towards Nephys and then smiled towards Hiero over her shoulder. “He’s not so bad. I’ve had cats that were worse.”

  Hiero looked as if this was the most insulting thing anyone had ever said about him.

  Maggie smiled at Hiero and then at Nephys, who smiled back, broadly, and didn’t even bother to cover it this time. A small moment passed, and Nephys forgot what he was upset about.

  Maggie broke the silence first, “Oh! That reminds me…about cats.”

  “Hmm?” Nephys shook himself from looking at the sodden, miserable bagpipe. “Oh, cats? Sorry, I should have warned you. You want to stay away from the cats here.”

  “You don’t say?” Maggie said as she folded her arms across her chest.

  Nephys couldn’t be certain, but she seemed to shoot a sideward glance at Hiero. The soggy imp just kept stabbing the ground harder.

  “Yeah, they can be kind of temperamental. One at a time they’re pretty easy to avoid, but you don’t want to touch one. It…well it hurts.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out.”

  “You had a run in with one?” Nephys asked hesitantly.

  “Something like that.” She narrowed her eyes at Hiero again who was nervously looking over his shoulder, blowpipe spluttering out inky water.

  “Yeah, it’s never good when a dead person touches something living.”

  “Living?!” Maggie turned her attention from Hiero to Nephys. “What do you mean? Those cats aren’t dead?!” She said somewhat surprised.

  “Oh, no…” said Nephys as if this were common knowledge. Maggie’s face tightened and he realized he was unintentionally being condescending. She was a grown woman after all, and his elder, sort of, even if he was a thousand years older than her.

  He went on cautiously, “No. Only human souls come to Limbo, no animals souls ever come here – not even a mosquito.”

  “Where do they go then?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

  “I don’t know, somewhere else…I guess,” Nephys said shrugging, “Or maybe animals don’t have souls.”

  Maggie turned her head but kept her eyes trained on Nephys. He could tell she was not happy to contemplate the possibility that animals had no souls, but then she softened and looked away past the garden and towards the swamp where they had found her that morning. “Well, if this is the afterlife, perhaps they got the better end of the bargain.”

  She paused, then turned back to look towards Nephys. “So, those cats…those cats are alive now…on earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how do they get to Limbo?”

  “Not sure how, they just do.”

  “Really?”

  “Certainly. See…the boundaries between our worlds aren’t exactly fixed.” Nephys shrugged and looked up as if the answers were written in the air above and to the left of his head. “Most come in by the gates of Erebus, but some….” He paused and looked at Maggie until she got nervous and looked away. Then he looked at his s
andals. “Some come in other ways.”

  Maggie nodded meekly. Her memory of coming in an other way was still a bit too livid for her. After a while she started again.

  “But why cats? Why not dogs or mice or…I dunno…cockatiels?”

  “Not sure actually,” Nephys shrugged, “On rare occasion I’ll see something else but mostly cats. I guess it’s just the way Limbo works.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the Pits of Punishment and the swamps of lost souls feed on negative emotions – rage or fear. Limbo runs on neutral emotions – indifference, apathy. What’s more indifferent than a cat?”

  And, at that, Maggie smiled. “So my cats have been making trips to Limbo all these years?” She snuffled a short laugh through her nose and stuck her hands back in her back pockets again. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” The thought obviously made her laugh inside, and Nephys smiled again too, twice in an evening, and probably only the second time in centuries.

  “Sorry, I should have warned you,” Nephys said nervously, “I was in a rush this morning.” Then after a short pause to think he said, “Whatever you do, don’t go into one of the shrines of Bastet; that’s where they like to congregate. They hate that.”

  “Do tell,” she said flatly.

  Nephys couldn’t tell completely in English, because it wasn’t his native tongue, but she sounded as if she were being sarcastic.

  “And how might one recognize one of these shrines?” Maggie said inquisitively, “Are there large statues of cats outside perhaps?”

  “Yeah, actually, there are…Why?…Did you see one in the city?”

  “Lucky guess,” Maggie said it coolly but didn’t look at Nephys, in fact, her gaze never left Hiero. Hiero didn’t return the look. He just dug more furiously as if he were digging his own grave. Maggie and Nephys exchanged awkward glances for a moment.

  “Neppy?” she asked again.

  He didn’t really like the nickname but felt it easier to accept it rather than correct her pronunciation all the time.

  “Yes?”

  “If cats can cross over while they are still living, can the dead…I mean …can we… go back there?” And on the word “there” she looked upward once, quickly.