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

by Jonah Hewitt

  From the dining room, he stumbled into the kitchen and skidded across the tile floor, scattering several more meat golems that were resting there. While sliding, he saw the door he hoped went to the basement. He scrambled back to his feet, but then he realized he couldn’t open the door without hands. He transformed back into his human form, fumbling for the doorknob, waiting for the paws to grow thumbs. He managed to open it just in time, lunge into the dark stairwell and slam it shut. He heard the yelps and cries of the poor meat golems and the relentless pelting of the locusts on the other side of the door as if it was being hammered by a heavy, horizontal rain.

  “Nep?!” He screamed, struggling to hold the door shut while he searched for the lock and desperately tried to turn it.

  “I’m down here!”

  “Where’s dat bloody imp a’ yours?!”

  “I can’t get him out!!”

  Miles found the lock, turned it and stepped back for a moment. The door lurched forward but held. He stumbled down the narrow stairs in the darkness. The basement was little more than an old larder, small and narrow, and there at the other end wasn’t an icebox, but an upright coffin made of metal and bolted with heavy chains. There were several coffins in fact – some with small windows where the faces should be, some with only air holes. There were also stockades, manacles and chains around the walls, all designed for humans. It was a vampire larder! A place where Wallach and his court could keep their prey alive and fresh to feed on. It made Miles shudder, but there was no time to ruminate on Wallach’s eating habits. Miles left the buzzing, pulsating door that sounded as if it might buckle at any moment and went to the coffin Nephys was working on.

  “FLAAAABAAAARNT!!”

  The thing was in there all right, clattering away at the inside with its butcher knife. Miles could only guess that they couldn’t take the large knife away from him because it was actually part of the little monster somehow. Miles grabbed the large lock on the chains and began to pull but instantly he had to let go.

  “Ach! Bloody Heck!” Miles looked at his hands; they were red and smoldering slightly.

  “What’s wrong?” Nephys yelled back.

  “Silver!?” yelled Miles, “What in the bloody heck did Wallach need to make the chains out of bloody silver for?!” He thought frantically. Wallach must have been locking up more than just people down here. He was locking up vampires! But why?! The rattling door behind him, threatening to break under the strain of the thousands of voracious insects behind it, told Miles that that little mystery would have to wait for another day. Miles gritted his teeth and grabbed the lock anyway.

  “Aaaargh!” he screamed and pulled on the lock holding the thick chains in place. The pain was unbelievable, but finally it snapped. Miles dropped the broken pieces instantly and fell back, exhausted, to the floor.

  “You did it!” Nephys went right to work pulling the many chains off the iron coffin while Miles sat and contemplated his blistered hands.

  “FluBAAAAARNT!” Hiero shook the coffin from the inside violently.

  It was only then that Miles realized that the chattering of the insects had stopped. Miles stood up and spun around, but it was too late, the red smoke was already pouring around the cracks in the door and was forming into the recognizable shape of the Father of All Vampires. Miles rushed him, but Hokharty was even faster and more agile than he had been in that alley where he had first met him a day ago. Hokharty backhanded Miles into the wall.

  Nephys looked up just in time to see Miles crash unconscious to the floor. The Chamberlain stared down on him and was no less terrifying in these strange clothes than he had been in the Halls of Death – and now nothing separated him from the wrath of the Father of All Vampires.

  “On your left! ON YOUR LEFT!!” Sky screamed.

  Tim could barely hear Sky over the sound of screeching tires and “More Than A Feeling” that was blaring out of the eight-track. In the midst of the fight no one had thought to turn it off. Right now, Tim had more important things to worry about, like a giant corpse with the top of its head cut off.

  “I got it! I GOT IT!” Tim screamed back.

  “HIT HIM!! HIT HIM AGAIN!!” Sky’s panic forced its way even through his crushed voicebox.

  “I can’t hit him with the front of the car!! You have to back into your target! Haven’t you ever seen a demolition derby?!”

  “NO! And I haven’t been to a hog-calling contest either!!” Sky yelled back, the snark somehow still managing to rise above his panic.

  “You can’t hit something that big with the front of the car! It will kill the engine fan and the radiator!!”

  “This is no time to worry about your precious land yacht, Tim!! Geez can’t this thing turn any faster?!! The Titanic could turn tighter than this thing! On the right! He’s over there!!”

  “I’m on it!! AND I’M NOT WORRIED ABOUT THE DANG CAR, SKY!! If we kill the radiator, the engine turns into a four hundred pound doorstop! And THEN what are we gonna hit Graber with?!!”

  “OK, OK!! JUST BACK UP FASTER, WILL YA?!!!”

  “I’M TRYING!!! It’s just really hard to back over someone!! OK? NOW SHUT UP!! What the? OH CRAP!!”

  “WATCH THAT TREE!! OK, YA GOT HIM NOW!! HE’S RIGHT THERE! PUNCH IT!!”

  “NAIL HIM!! NAIL THE DEAD EVER-LIVING SON OF A…AAAARGHHH!!”

  “WHERE’D HE GO?!”

  “I DUNNO! He just…disappeared. Stop the car!!”

  “What?!”

  “Stop the car!!”

  Tim came to an abrupt stop. Grabe was gone. The final guitars of Boston’s most famous ballad faded away on the eight-track and were replaced by a silence interrupted only by the irregular rhythm of an engine on its last legs and Tim’s hyperventilating. Tim could tell he was close to a throwing a rod just by the sound it made. Dang new pistons! Why did he have to put those in last week?! Any moment now the car would be dead and their only defense against Graber gone. He gripped the steering wheel like a life preserver. Sky craned his neck to look around for any sign of the missing Graber.

  “Did we hit him?” Tim whispered.

  Sky just held a finger to his lips for silence as he struggled to listen for any telltale sign of the monstrous corpse. A long pause followed. Then suddenly, a gigantic, metal, crunching sound came from over their heads and the roof dented in more than a foot.

  “He’s on the roof!! DRIVE!!”

  A single, massive fist punched straight through the roof and Tim screamed and stomped on the gas while leaning as far out of the reach of the grasping hand as he could. He couldn’t see where the car was heading so he just closed his eyes and prayed.

  Hokharty slowly stepped over the body of Miles. He fixed his eyes on Nephys and approached him like a cat stalking its prey. Hiero was furiously rocking the coffin back and forth, but the chains weren’t sliding off very quickly. Nephys wasn’t certain if Miles was dead or not, but he knew he was alone. The little imp would not be coming to his rescue and Miles was motionless on the floor. It was all up to him now. He called out to the Chamberlain in the old tongue and tried to speak it the way his grandmother taught him.

  “Chamberlain!” Nephys implored as the Chamberlain and Father of All Vampires slowly approached him threateningly. “Stop this! You’re not yourself!! You’re Ba is here, but your Yib, your heart is still in Limbo!”

  Hokharty paused, but only so long as to retort back.

  “I am myself, Nefer. I am Hokharty-Ra. The Father of All Vampires. I swore an oath to defend life at all costs and that is what I am here to do.”

  “But you’re going to kill billions of people!!”

  “Only to save the world for as long as time will suffer it to exist.”

  “But…” Nephys stammered but Hokharty cut him off.

  “Enough of this, Nefer. I have no wish to kill you, but if you must die, you should meet the end with dignity, which is the most anyone can hope for. Stop this foolish opposition to what is inevitable.”

  Hokharty
lunged at the boy with an open hand, but Nephys clawed his way back to the far edge of the larder out of the way of the slowly advancing vampire. Hokharty didn’t hurry, he didn’t have to, there was nowhere for Nephys to go. Nephys thought desperately of what to say. What might change Hokharty’s mind.

  “But back in the Halls of Death, you said we had to protect life as long as we could!!”

  “By saving the Great Master, we will be preserving life. We will be preserving it for those yet to live in the future. And they will have a future, as soon as the earth’s population is reduced to sustainable levels.”

  “Sustainable?!!” Nephys yelped, “You’re going to kill six billion people!! You talk about them like they are cattle! But they are not cattle, they are people with lives and families!”

  “I do not expect you to understand, young Nefer,” Hokharty said tonelessly as if speaking to a little child. “The Great Master must survive, or everything will end. The burden is too great for him. If the numbers of dying continue as they have, Death will falter, and the whole afterlife will empty out into the land of the living. All will perish. So, Death must survive. The only answer is to reduce the numbers of the dying to a more manageable pace. Only then can Death last the ages as he was meant to. Those who die today, die to ensure that the world will continue for millennia to come. Six billion may die now, but how many billions yet to be born will never live if they are not sacrificed? By killing them, we will guarantee that humanity will survive.”

  Hokharty had cornered Nephys against the back wall and slowly extended his right hand as if to grab him by the neck in one final, crushing grip.

  “Humanity may survive but what about all the people! What about them?! You can talk about saving humanity all you want, but it matters a whole lot more when you’re the person being eliminated. You can’t just move persons around like numbers in columns on a ledger or weights on a scale! THEY MATTER!” Nephys spoke out abruptly and wildly, cringing against the terror of his impending death or re-death. “They aren’t just numbers to be arranged until the columns on the left add up with the columns on the right! People aren’t like numbers, they’re…they’re…” Nephys thought frantically what to say and reached for the only experience he really had, copying all those books in the scriptorium. “They’re like stories!”

  “Stories?” Hokharty paused, his hand just inches from grabbing Nephys’ throat.

  “YES! Stories!! People are like stories!” Nephys was thrilled he had managed to get Hokharty to pause long enough to think. He kept going, “You can’t just rearrange the words to fit the pages. The order of the words matter. You can’t rearrange the chapters from shortest to longest, or however you like, you have to hear the whole story the way it was written. And you’re cutting the stories short, Chamberlain. You’re cutting them off before they even have a chance to finish!”

  Hokharty paused but looked as if he were about to reach out again. Nephys thought furiously of how he could explain it to him when he blurted the first thing that came to his mind.

  “Think of Egypt…I mean Kemet, the black land!” Nephys corrected himself, knowing that Hokharty wouldn’t appreciate the Greek name of his native land. Hokharty paused again, uncertain. Nephys kept going, “Think of our country! Think of our stories! The restoration of Osiris...ASARI, the triumph of Horus…I mean HARU!...over Set! All the great and glorious legends of our people!”

  “Myths and legends long forgotten,” Hokharty mumbled, “Useless tales that had no meaning.”

  “They are not forgotten!” Nephys insisted, thinking of his grandmother. “Think of the black land and all those thousands of years of history! Even though I came near the end of her glory, I am glad that I saw it. Think of its grandeur, its temples! Those temples were built on those stories. What if someone had decided to cut it off years or centuries before its time?! What if those stories had been lost?! That’s what you are doing now.”

  Hokharty paused and looked down for a moment. His outreached hand fell slowly to his side.

  “Kemet is ruined and desolate,” he said in a melancholy voice, “The black land is but a memory. Her story is finished.”

  “Ruined or not I would rather walk the pillars of a ruined Karnak and know that once men could do such things than to never have lived to see them, but at least it ran its own course. Right now, you are dictating the end to others. Why don’t they get at least as much a chance as our own land for glory and honor? Why don’t those stories get to be told?!”

  Hokharty paused again and looked away. Nephys could see that his eyes were clouded, just as everyone’s were in the afterlife. Hokharty looked to the wall and then up, staring as if he could see straight through it to the rooms above, which of course, Nephys realized, he probably could, since he had the Death Sight. Was he thinking about the gate and the terrified girl so desperate to have her mother back she was willing to risk the end of the world? Was he looking at her right now?

  “I’ve remembered things here, Chamberlain, things I thought I had forgotten. Tastes! Sounds! People! Such wonders as life offers I had forced from my mind. I had become numb. I had become blind. I had lived so long in darkness I thought it was easier to live not remembering what life was really like, rather than to live in pain of their memory. Then I came here and I realized that everything, even the bad things, even a stubbed toe has a certain sweetness impossible to explain.”

  Hokharty looked up at him with clouded eyes. Was he really seeing him? Or was he just using his Death Sight with its numbing clarity? Nephys went on, hoping he was really seeing him, really listening.

  “As hard as it is to watch others suffer, the sweetness of life is bound up with the sorrow and they go together, but even together they are better than the nothingness of non-being. The stone brought that all back to me, Chamberlain. You remember the stone don’t you? Not just how it felt or looked or how rough it was and all its imperfections but how it made you feel? Like all the glorious joys of life had meaning and could go on forever? Think about that feeling, Chamberlain, and think how many people you are going to deprive of that feeling forever. Think about how many stories you are about to cut off before their time! Not finished because their authors stopped telling them but finished because you finished them.”

  Nephys looked up at the Chamberlain and Father of All Vampires. Hokharty looked dazed and confused. He seemed to be considering the matter intently. He brought his fingers close to his face and rolled them together. Nephys had seen him do this before. He only realized now what it meant. Hokharty was trying to remember the stone and how it felt, and something passed over the vampire’s face. It was as if he were realizing there was a difference between knowing which stone amongst all those glassy pebbles was the stone, and actually knowing the stone – knowing its warmth and light and power. He was looking back towards the ceiling but was he looking at the ceiling or at something beyond? Was he looking at ballroom and the girl who right now was bringing about the destruction of the world with that very same stone? Was he reconsidering?! Nephys even dared to hope that Hokharty would change his mind, but then the dead eyes of the vampire abruptly snapped back to him.

  “Everyone’s story is cut off eventually, Nefer, many before they have written the ending, even our own. Yours ends today.”

  The iron coffin began rocking violently and emitting all sorts of horrific, discordant notes. Hiero was nearly knocking it over from the inside but the chains weren’t shaking loose fast enough.

  Hokharty’s hand reached out towards Nephys’ throat. Nephys closed his eyes, but even through his eyelids he could see, with his Death Sight, the glass-like outline of Hokharty’s hand coming for him, but behind the hand was a swirling mass of shadow forming into something larger.

  A massive dog-like head with crocodile-sized jaws erupted out of the swirling mass of black smoke. The gaping maw turned sideways so as to take an enormous bite, a bite big enough to cut Hokharty in half mid-torso. Hokharty turned in time to face the attack just as t
he jaws clamped shut on him with a horrifying crunch. He didn’t even wince but immediately began grabbing the jaws, pulling them apart. Miles didn’t wait long enough to let him try. He knew how this had ended for Wallach when he held onto Hokharty for too long, so instead, he thrashed the ancient vampire back and forth violently, before flinging him out of the narrow larder and back up the stone steps where he crashed through door and into the kitchen.

  Nephys stood panting as the dog reformed into Miles. It was only as the smoke gathered into the red-haired vampire’s form that Nephys realized Miles was screaming at him.

  “What?”

  “I SAID GET THAT THING OUT OF ITS BOX!!”

  Nephys instantly turned to the rocking iron casket and began pulling the chains off the box. Miles jumped in to help. The chains seared Miles’ flesh as he pulled it hand over hand. They tore off yard after yard of thick, heavy, silver chain. It must have cost Wallach a fortune. Whatever he was keeping down there he never wanted it to get out.

  Miles was scrambling over the last several yards, his hands smoking when a gigantic hand made entirely of golden locusts reached out of the smashed doorway and grabbed him yanking him back into the cloud of ravenous insects. Miles instantly turned into smoke and then his dog form and tried to claw his way out of the swarm, but soon he completely disappeared into the massive fist made up of the cloud of glittering grasshoppers.

  Nephys screamed and closed his eyes and the world descended into crystalline iciness.

  “KhaaaraPOONNT!” The imp burst forth out of the casket, breaking the last of the silver chains. It leaped forth and, with an enormous honk, swept the large butcher blade through the air. Nephys saw the whole thing from the perspective of a child of Limbo who could see the unseen with this Death Sight. Any ordinary blade would have passed clean through the swarm of insects, leaving them unharmed, however the blade was not shaped in any mortal forge, but in the depths of hell where it existed to torture the dead and not the living. Forged of shadow, it sliced clean through Hokharty’s shadow essence animating the insects.