by Bryan Camp
When Jude opened the door, its rusted hinges squealing, the light spilled out, blinding him, though he still felt nothing, no anxiety, no surge of anticipation at what might be revealed. When he could see again, he saw floral wallpaper, the pattern like that on Barren’s skull, faded and curling at the seams. A cat-shaped clock clung to the wall, sharp horns sprouting from its head, the lower half a sinuous, scaly curve. The felt of a poker table glared bright green, the color of money, like the eyes of someone he knew. Memory assaulted Jude, sudden, heavy, and sharp. He remembered this room full of gods, the air thick with smoke and noise. He also remembered it cold and empty, the silence of the grave, a dark stain on the table and the stink of blood. He remembered turning over the blank cards dealt to him by a fortune god.
He remembered.
Dodge Renaud sat at the far end of the table, fat and bald and ever smiling, a deck of cards in his hands. He wore his tie loose and his shirt unbuttoned as though proud of the gash across his throat, the slick and gaping second mouth. He shuffled with deft, sharp motions: cut, riffle, cascade. The angel Hē perched on the edge of the seat to Dodge’s left; a handsome young white man sprawled to his right, chair leaned back on two legs, running shoes flopped insolently on the card table. As Jude watched, stricken by the return of memory—memories of Dodge, memories of his own—Dodge paused to take a drink. The liquor oozed out of his wound as he swallowed, but the fortune god seemed not to mind. He looked up at Jude with eyes as cold, as hard, and as green as cash—quick as the snap of his shuffling cards.
“’Bout time you got here,” he said.
Chapter Seventeen
Fear, Jude knew, lived in the body. Adrenaline in the blood, the painful clench of a frenzied heart, a tight fist in the abdomen, stomach dropping and balls shrinking, the prickle of flesh as hair stood on end, tongue dry as old leather, vision sharp and pinpoint-clear. Standing in a room with gods and feeling none of those things finally, truly convinced Jude that Legba hadn’t lied when he told Jude that he was dead. The only way he couldn’t feel fear in this moment is if he had no body left to feel it with.
“Pull up a chair,” Dodge said. “We’ll play a few.” Jude slid into the seat across from the fortune god, remembering the blank hand of his own fate. Dodge shuffled, spreading the cards into fans in each hand, a chaotic sprawl, bridging them back into order. “What’s your pleasure?” he asked. “Five-card draw? Atlantis? Crazy eights?”
Jude opened his mouth, strained to speak, but despite the return of his memories, his voice still eluded him.
Dodge’s smile faltered for a moment, then burst again into its fluorescent glare. “Oh, right,” he said, “the speech thing. Don’t worry, it’ll come. Not your real voice, ’course. Nothing with any power. Ain’t nobody would stay dead, otherwise.” He laughed at his own joke and dealt two cards, face-down, to everyone at the table but himself. “Hold ’em, then. No need for talking.”
Jude looked at his cards, not at all surprised to see that he’d been dealt two blank cards. Neither Hē nor the other god had bothered to look at their cards—the young man was too busy thumb-typing on his cell phone, and the angel was staring intently at Jude with those unnerving eyes. Jude wondered if Dodge knew he sat at the same table as his murderer. Without a voice, he had no way to ask. Dodge flipped a chip from his stack to the center of the table, waited, cleared his throat, then shook his head and took one from Hē’s pile as well. “That’s small and big blinds,” he said, “bet’s to you, Jude.”
The chips in front of Jude were nothing but cheap plastic. He scooped up enough of them to cover the blind and tossed them forward. Dodge raised his eyebrows but continued. He added more of his own chips to the pile, then dealt three cards in the center of the table, face-up: THE MAGICIAN, THE HERMIT, and THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE.
This was ridiculous, and Jude tried to say so, trying to force lungs that weren’t there to squeeze a voice out of a throat that didn’t exist. He remembered the power his voice had held, a word to open any lock, another to summon flame—words of healing or destruction. He remembered the magics he had once called forth with such ease. And now this, humbled and muted, playing a childish, castrated version of the game that had cost him and Dodge and who knew how many others their lives. He was more than this. He was a demigod, a Trickster. A trickle, a faint shadow of that rage he had once felt smoldered in the center of him.
Jude tucked his two blank cards together and tore them in half.
Dodge set his cards on the table, his smile vanishing. “You try to throw somebody a rope, and they hang themselves with it. You wanna play the hard-ass, you go right ahead.” He snatched his scotch up off the table and gestured in Jude’s direction with it, the ice clinking against glass. “He’s all yours.”
The young man finally looked up from his cell phone and gave Jude a devil-may-care grin. “So here’s the real game. Most folks get whatever afterlife they’ve got coming to them, but you, you lucky son-of-a-gun, you get to pick your own.” His words had a rich, sonorous quality to them, as if he were always just about to break into song.
Hē made a scoffing noise, before speaking with an echoing memory of the voice Jude had left behind. “Always games with you. This choice is no game. Besides, he’s already made it.”
The young god dropped his feet to the floor and sat forward. “How you figure?”
“He wears his choice around his neck.”
Jude reached up to his throat, found the rosary he’d pulled out of the satchel hanging there. He’d been wearing it when he died.
The young god laughed. “Wearing a symbol don’t mean shit. If it did, these”—he kicked one of his feet back up to the table, showing the tiny wings growing from the ankles of his sneakers—“would make me an angel.”
Hermes. Hermes was Thoth, and Thoth was dead. Which meant that Hermes got to live. Had Hermes and Hē planned this? Or was the Greek god just making the best of a bad situation? Either way, Jude didn’t trust him, not one bit.
Hē turned back to Jude. “As a being granted free will by the Highest, you are able to choose the eternity that most appeals to you.” The angel lifted both hands palms up, a soft light emanating from them. Jude noticed a second Red Door—or maybe the same door in two places at the same time, the thing was impossible to predict—behind the angel that he was fairly certain hadn’t been there a moment before. Mist curled across the threshold from beneath the door; given what Hē was, however, maybe those were wisps of cloud. Jude couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard a choir singing, soft and reverent. “Seems to me, when Paradise is on the table, it is an easy decision. It is not always so readily offered.”
Hermes threw his head back, groaned, and shook his fist in front of his groin, pantomiming jerking off. “Oh, blow me,” he said. He now also had a door behind him, from which emanated the rich, loamy scent of fields in the summer, the salt of ocean breezes. “You ever notice how much Paradise’s people like to talk about Hell? You wanna know why? Because Paradise is fucking boring. You want to spend eternity contemplating how sparkly white your holy robes are, you go with Feathers over there. But don’t think about slipping those robes off and getting frisky with one of the hotties from the choir, or you’ll get a fast elevator drop down to the hot place. That’s where their real creativity goes. Now Elysium? That’s where you want to be. No sorrow, no toil. Instead, you get great food, strong wine, and the dress code is a little, uh . . . less restrictive, you get me?”
Dodge chuckled. “You left out a thing or two, Herms. You make the Summer Isles sound better than a slow fuck on Christmas morning. I’m sure you just forgot to mention that you ain’t had a new guest in, like, millennia. And then there’s this.” He clapped his hands twice. Hermes’ handsome young face twisted and stretched into the long-beaked bird’s head of Thoth. “If you still looked like this, would you be trying to convince him that Aaru is where he needs to be?” He shook his head, clapped again, and Thoth became Hermes once more. “I think you could sel
l redemption to the devil, son, quick as you hustle, but Jude here ain’t buyin’, are you?” This last was directed at Jude, who had no answer, even if he could speak.
The fortune god stroked his chins, a mockery of contemplation. “No, Jude knows where he belongs. Where he’s always belonged; just like me.” He aimed a thumb toward the door at his back. “What they ain’t said, what they don’t want you to know, is that you ain’t gotta go nowhere. That party out there? It’s always happening. Sometimes it’s Mardi Gras. Sometimes it’s New Year’s. Saints game tailgates, hurricane parties . . . hell, sometimes just because.” Dodge winked. “You lived in Heaven all your life, little one. Why’s a small thing like death gonna make you leave?”
Jude stared at the table in front of him as though trying to bore a hole through it, just so he wouldn’t have to meet the gaze of any of the gods who sat there, watching him. How did you even begin to make a choice like this? He’d done so many things wrong in his life, failed so many people. Surely neither Heaven nor Elysium would have him, no matter what Hē or Hermes said.
He realized he still held the torn cards in his grip, had held on to them through each of the three gods’ sales pitches. They were still blank. Suddenly, the realization of what these gods were attempting hit him: He might be dead, but his fate wasn’t decided yet—the blank cards proved it, and these three were trying to influence his hand by taking him out of the game, by presenting him with a choice he didn’t have to make.
But he already had the only guide he trusted: Papa Legba.
Jude flipped the cards around so Hē, Hermes, and Dodge could see them—breaking the spell of the con they were trying to work on him; it felt like giving them the finger. Hermes rolled his eyes, Dodge barked out a laugh, and Hē just stared. “Guess that’s that,” Dodge said. “Y’all know the way out.” The angel went first, unfurling cinnamon-scented wings and vanishing in a flare of painfully bright light.
“Showoff,” Hermes muttered as he faded from view. Jude was left sitting at the table with the murdered fortune god, only the ticking of the monstrous cat clock breaking the silence.
Dodge seemed uncomfortable with the quiet. “That was a good play,” he said at last. He swept the cards together again, started to shuffle them. “You already learned the most important lesson: Don’t play any game you can’t win.” A sly, knowing grin slanted across his face. “Be honest, though. I almost had you.”
It took effort to not let Dodge’s charisma win him over, to not let him charm away Jude’s control.
The fortune god sighed. “It’s too bad you lost that bag I gave you.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to Jude. “It’s old, maybe older than the world itself. Some things are . . .” He paused, seemed to struggle for the right words. “. . . are too important to vanish entirely, even if they get lost. They gotta go somewhere, and that fucking bag is where they end up.” Jude thought of the thunderbolt, the strange artifacts whose purpose he’d never been able to decipher, of the way he sometimes felt like he was reaching into a vast space when he searched for something in the bag. “If I had what’s hidden away in that bag, then I could make myself whole again.” He grinned. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, y’know?”
The door behind Jude creaked open. A heavy hand grasped his shoulder, carrying with it the scent of rum and tobacco. “We must go,” Legba said. Jude was halfway out the door before he realized he’d risen to his feet and followed Legba without conscious thought. Was his will slipping away already?
“Later, gator!” Dodge yelled at Jude’s back, laughing once again. “See you soon!”
Jude followed the loa down the hallway and toward the crowded ballroom, leaving Dodge behind, alone with his booze and his cards. He felt nothing. And why should he? He could do nothing for the fortune god, could do nothing for himself. They were both dead. Even the semblance of anger he’d gathered had now fled. Only the numb detachment of death remained.
Coming out of the dark into the light and the noise of the main room, Jude saw the surroundings differently than he had on the way in. Though they retained their beauty, they had also now taken on a funereal quality. The satin curtains and hardwood floors became the lining and the confines of a coffin. The brass containers decorating the chandelier, once vases, were now urns. The marble statues of frolicking cherubs and graceful acrobats had become the mournful angels of gravestones, while the plaster walls and the exposed brick of a retro artists’ studio Uptown now looked like they had been taken from the aboveground tombs of New Orleans cemeteries.
As Jude and Legba slipped through a mob of dancers, Jude recognized many faces among the dead. Tommy, the street juggler, laughing as a woman in a ball gown guided him through the steps. The bartender and the blonde that Scarpelli had murdered and turned into ghouls. His aunt Sara, years wiped from the face he remembered.
Jude reached out to each of them, but they swept past him, seemingly unable to see him. Then there were people he had never met—faces he had only seen in visions, the lost his talent had sought out. He knew that their joy was merely a memory, a shade of the life they had once known. He knew, too, that if he stayed, he would join them and, in doing so, would regain a pale shadow of laughter just as he had remembered anger.
Something drew him forward, though, out into the night and onto the gravel path, which he now saw was made of crumbling bone and ash, the remains of anyone buried in a New Orleans tomb, different in function—but not form—from brick ovens. The type of tomb where his own body likely lay. He tried to step more lightly, but it was hopeless: his every footfall was a grinding, crushing sacrilege.
He walked down this path of ruin until he reached the gate between this illusion of life and the streetcar that would take him to the world beyond. He hadn’t seen Regal among the spirits, nor his mother. He hoped that meant they were still alive. He knew that if his mother had died, she would have chosen to stay here. She loved the city, had loved Mardi Gras more than Christmas. Jude couldn’t lie to himself the way these dead did, staying behind here in this halfway place.
He had to know what lay beyond. Jude followed Legba through the gates into the hot, wet night and toward the waiting streetcar.
Behind him, the dead drank and laughed and danced.
The black paint of the streetcar glistened as Jude approached, a flickering, greenish iridescence like the sheen on an oil slick or a beetle’s carapace. He heard arguing, raised voices: Barren’s and that of a woman. When Jude came around the front of the car, Barren filled the entrance, arms folded across his chest like a bouncer barring the door. The person he argued with, a young black woman in a white frilly thing of a dress, bounced on her toes, straining to reach her pointing finger into the skull-face of the loa, her bright red canvas sneakers untied and slipping from her heels each time she pounced forward.
“I’m ready to go!” she shouted. “I changed my mind, and I want to move on!”
Something about her felt familiar, but Jude couldn’t place her until he saw the white wires trailing down from her ears, recalling the brief echo of an overheard song. “I’m mad about you, baby,” she’d sung, back in Celeste Dorcet’s voodoo shop.
Renaissance Raines. Renai, to her friends. Part of the reason he hadn’t recognized her was the absence of her piercings. The memory of her came coupled with a burden, the sense that when he was alive, he’d been responsible for her death.
Legba made hushing noises as he and Jude walked up. “What is all this commotion?” Legba asked, his Haitian accent calm and quiet.
The girl dropped to her heels and turned, her eyes wide and shocked. When she saw that it was Legba who had spoken, her entire posture slumped, bent neck, drooped shoulders, a toe dug into the dirt. When she spoke, her voice matched her dress, abashed and kittenish, like that of a child. “He won’t let me on,” she said. “I want to go with you. I’m ready to go, but Baron Samedi won’t let me.”
“Nobody rides for free,” Barren said, his exposed jaw clenched sh
ut.
“But I paid already,” she said. “You know I paid. How else could I have gotten here?”
Legba made a clucking noise with his tongue, cupped her smooth face in the palm of his gnarled and knotted hand. “You chose this place, child. You. Not me, not him, not any of the ghede. You. There is always a cost when we make a choice. You gave us a coin and we led you here. Always a cost, you understand?”
She nodded, her eyes welling up with the memory of tears. With a heaving sigh, she backed away from the streetcar, making room for them to pass. Legba nodded at Barren, who stepped into the car and sat in the driver’s seat.
“Come, Jude,” Legba said. He gestured toward the stairs. Jude wondered what Renai’s fate would be, if she would be able to reenter that place of joyous self-deception, carrying as she did the memory of sorrow. Or would she become one of the legends of the city, a haunting presence whose reason for weeping was lost to history?
No, he thought. No more lost. Jude tried to speak once more and failed again. He rapped a knuckle against the side of the streetcar, to get the attention of the loa. He pointed at Renai, then to the entrance, then to himself.
Legba frowned. “You only paid for one,” he said. “Only one.” He tapped the tip of his cane against Jude’s pants pocket. “You have no more coin, remember? You can’t pay. Unless—” He touched his tie, making certain it lay flat within his vest. Something sly and hungry passed across his ancient face. “You have another form of payment? Something else we might trade?”
Jude shook his head. He remembered someone, the vampire maybe, saying something about side wagers. He made a circle with his fingers and pointed at Legba. Pantomimed holding a fan of cards, laying them on the table. Repeated the gesture of the circle and pointed once again at Legba.
Laughter came from within the torch-lit confines of the streetcar, Barren’s throaty chuckle. “You know what he’s saying, Pops,” Barren said. “You know you always like to double down.”