Dead Boys

by Gabriel Squailia

  “No faces!” said Remington, giggling. “They’re so cute.”

  “Don’t stare at the debtors, Remington, it’s rude.”

  “What do those letters and numbers in their foreheads mean?”

  “Something to do with the term of their indenture, I think. I’ve always kept my distance, to tell you the truth.”

  Narrowly escaping a collision near the entrance, Jacob led the way through the drooping front gates into a thousand-throated roar that never found reason to end. At tables and around the edges of pits, gamblers and spectators howled, cursed, and celebrated in a thousand tongues, all obsessed with a single subject.

  “By no means are you allowed to play,” said Jacob as they passed by a high-stakes pit. Remington (and, through his eyes, Adam and Eve) peered down into a small room sunk into the dirt, its ceiling pried off, its doors and windows boarded up to discourage the game’s inevitable loser from fleeing into the Tunnels.

  Inside were two gamblers, a pit boss, a hefty pair of hand-carved dice, and the charcoal diagram that held the colored betting-stones. Side bets littered the lip of the pit, painted pebbles changing hands rapidly between spectators.

  “Can we watch?” said Remington.

  “Oh, I suppose so. But just one game.” Jacob stood behind the trio, listening closely to the crowd.

  Below, a wizened gambler with one dangling arm tossed the bones against the corner with an angular jerk. A glance at her opponent explained why the cheers celebrating her win were so raucous: he was the kind of gambler the Den despised, an immigrant fresher than Remington who had yet to lose the shoes he’d died in.

  “Are those painted rocks money?” said Remington.

  “More like chips at a poker table. We have no proper coinage in this city.”

  “So what do you spend?”

  “We spend time, whether our own or someone else’s. Let’s say you wanted to pay me to sew a pair of leather moccasins over your feet. You might offer me a year of your future for the service, and I could either put you to work in the shop or bring you straight to the exchange, where you’d be turned into a debtor.”

  “One of those skull-head guys.”

  “Precisely. The Magnate’s men would send you to work in the Debtor’s Pool, putting your face on their shelves for safe-keeping, and I’d get a full year credited to my account.”

  “So these guys in the pit are gambling the time they have in the bank?”

  “Until it runs out. Then, more often than not, the loser will get excited enough to start gambling fragments of his own eternity. Nine out of ten debtors begin their indenture right here in the Dens.”

  “But why would anyone gamble his own time?”

  “Time is the answer!” cried a woman beside Remington, a creature clad in rags of Lethean purple, whose body, despite its relative freshness, was missing nine fingers, six toes, both ears, both eyes, and a nose.

  “I’m sorry, what?” said Remington. “Time is why they gamble time?”

  “Ooh, you’ve got it, ducks; you’re nearly a citizen now! Too heavy to bear when it’s empty, too light to hold onto when it’s full: that’s time in the underworld, pumpkin. It might seem strange to you, who ain’t used to not sleeping at night, but for them, who bear the hours of their flibbertigibbet existences like boulders on their backs, servitude is a gift!”

  “What about you?”

  “Why, I’ve more sense than that!” She leaned her mutilated face close to Remington’s and whispered, “You’d be surprised how many men will gamble a year for the chance to win a toe.”

  Down in the pit, the newcomer called out his surrender. A hundred years was as much as he could stand to lose.

  “But what happens now?” said Remington, looking at the celebrations surrounding the pit, where the immigrant had slumped against a wall while the winner picked up the purple century-stone and held it over her head.

  “That man is a debtor now, indentured for the hundred years he lost. The Magnate’s men will come for the loser and remove his face,” said Jacob, threading his way through the crowd. “It peels off like a stocking, if you’re curious. For some, it’s the best entertainment the city has to offer, but we haven’t time to spectate.”

  “Right! We need to find our tour guide.”

  Jacob led the company on a long circuit around the room, combing through various games of chance, listening carefully all the while. There was no lack of variety in the Dens: low-stakes games of craps rattled on squares of linoleum next to the tracks laid down for twice-daily crow races, where wingless birds hobbled after a beetle dragged on a string; and, for the wealthy, there were private rooms where eras were swapped over actual decks of cards. Yet none of these sites held the dandy they were looking for.

  Just as Jacob had begun to despair, wondering if his former client might be less predictable than expected, he heard the sound he’d been searching for, that unmistakable, unforgettable peal, wildly theatrical and unbound by breath, swooping and oscillating through all the octaves in human range, that was the aural signature of Leopold l’Eclair.

  “That’s him!” cried Jacob, making a beeline for the origin of that rippling hilarity.

  “You mean that lady screaming?” said Remington, the headless at his heels. “Wow, he is a scoundrel.”

  “No, that’s actually him: that’s the Hanged Man’s laughter. All a part of the persona Leopold drummed up after his treatment. Foppery never went out of style here.”

  Pushing carefully through the crowd around a craps table, they caught a glimpse of Leopold at play. His face was caked with clay, paint, and powder, and topped with long, blond hair into which locks snipped from the heads of drunken women had been woven. His neck, which had snapped at the moment of his death, was held up by means of a crimson scarf tied to a broomstick jutting from the collar of his shirt. Though he could have bound it tightly, allowing the broomstick to support his spine directly, the scarf was loose enough to let his head dangle, so that he could turn it in a given direction by flinging his shoulders violently, whipping his head around in a most dramatic way. The same sense of drama informed Leopold’s dress: his tattered, sky-blue topcoat was the outer layer of a parti-colored proliferation of matted ruffles, moldering frills, and manky scraps of lace that descended to the rusted buckles of his boots. “It’s like a bomb went off in a costume shop,” muttered Jacob.

  Just then, Leopold was rattling the dice in his fist, keeping the table waiting while he held forth. “My history, you say?” he cried, though no one had. “Oh, but everyone here has already heard the Legend of l’Eclair a thousand times over, and surely wouldn’t—oh, you insist? Very well, then, but may this telling be my last!

  “I was hung a century ago, or maybe three, in France, or was it England? You’ll understand when you’ve been dead as long as I have: the details of a life so long extinguished begin to fade.

  “What offense was I hanged for? Pathological caddishness, resulting in an epidemic of bastardy!” He waited for a response, and when none was forthcoming he supplied it himself, laughing long and trillingly. “A chorus of three hundred and one weeping milkmaids stood by the gallows, with mischievous babes at their milk-white breasts.

  “Why, no, it’s not enchantment that keeps me so well! I’m no warlock, friend: the splendor of my corpus is the result of simple pickling. Yes, I was an opium fiend, and now those twenty grains per diem are my greatest blessing. Which goes to show that living vice paves the way for deathly virtue. If only the vicars could see me now!”

  “By the mask of the Magnate, fling the bloody dice, or we’ll have your deathly virtue cut off at the root,” snarled a bone-bag by his elbow, whose face was wrapped in a plastic sack emblazoned with the name of a supermarket chain in the Lands Above.

  “Don’t get your wrapper in a bunch!” cried Leopold, tossing his head back and tittering. He made a show of dangling his face over his fist, as if he were about to blow on the dice for luck. “Oh, dear: fresh out of breath!”
he cried, dissolving in giggles as he tossed them at last.

  When the dice came up in Leopold’s favor, he cried, “The wages of sin are mine!” At the ensuing chorus of groans, he threw open his arms and began scooping up his winnings, an action that led to a far larger uproar.

  “This blight-born bollock-boil swiped half me betting-stones,” roared the bone-bag to the dealer as Jacob shouldered in. “I demand a count! I demand justice! I demand—the Mortar and Pestle.”

  “A moment, now,” said the dealer, creaking to his feet for what looked like the first time in a decade. “A moment, no more, and we’ll have the pit boss over to handle it.”

  “Outrageous!” cried Leopold, his hands in a frenzy of motion as he tucked betting-pebbles into every pocket on his person. “Nefarious! Scandalous! To think that an establishment as renowned as Caesar’s would even entertain the word of a man whose skull is ensconced in plastic. I promise you I’ll take this indignity to the highest authority, unless—”

  “Unless we can come to a more expedient understanding,” called Jacob, stepping into the fray with an engraved account-stone held high. “Maybe your friend could be convinced to overlook this unfortunate imbroglio, Leopold?” Dangling the account-stone over their heads was crass, but effective: the bone-bag went silent.

  “Campbell!” gasped Leopold, and for once that was all he had to say.

  The bone-bag snapped his jaw shut behind the tear in the shopping bag that served as his mouth. He’d zeroed in on the pebble’s carvings, which any time-conscious citizen could decode: it was linked to an account that held far more than they were squabbling over. “Possible. Probable, even. We’ll let the matter drop. Though I’d caution you to consider who you cozy up to, citizen.”

  “The account is Campbell Preservation,” said Jacob, handing over the pebble and whispering a short alphanumeric code. “And I thank you for your concern, but this isn’t my first encounter with Monsieur L’Eclair.”

  “Indeed,” said Leopold, regaining his composure as he staggered into the crowd, “what a surprise to meet you here, of all places! I’ve been meaning to stop by your flat for ages, old spoon. The preservation you performed has held up impeccably, for which I feel I owe you a great length of gratitude. Well, I’ll just deposit these stones, shall I, and then we’ll make a date sometime in the near future—”

  “I’ll pay you six months to forget these trifles and escort us through the Tunnels,” said Jacob.

  Leopold, who’d been dodging and weaving in an obvious attempt to lose the company, stopped short, head swaying at the end of its scarf. “Sorry—six months, did you say?”

  “I did,” said Jacob. Shuddering as he brushed against Ma Kicks’ wriggling finger, he withdrew an intricately-carven pebble from the pouch around his wrist. “Leopold L’Eclair, this is my ward, Remington, and his—compatriots, Adam and Eve.”

  “Hiya! Your hair’s real pretty,” said Remington.

  “Jacob, that boy has a bird roosting in his head.”

  “And precious little else.” Jacob unfolded the map. “We need only to reach this point, near the Bottomless Vat, here. Once we’ve arrived, half a year is yours.”

  “Half a year,” whispered Leopold, making some rapid calculations on his fingertips. “And the drinks are on you? Splendid!” Jacob stammered as the map was whisked from his hands. “A generous offer, Campbell, and one you won’t regret in any lasting fashion. Bring your little menagerie along, then, and we’ll wet our whistles whilst wending our way to your treasure!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Underground University

  So if we’re just going to a bar,” Remington asked Jacob, “why do we need to pay this guy to take us? Can’t he just tell us where to go?”

  “Just going to a bar!” cried Leopold, his head jerking wildly with laughter. “Oh, Jacob, what an adorable little halfwit you’ve adopted. Remington, allow me to enlighten you now, as you’ll soon be too confused to formulate a coherent question.

  “One would be better off giving directions to the Minotaur’s residence than to a place as well-hidden as this. It’s quite impossible to overestimate the difficulty of travel in the Tunnels, and the primary reason is that they aren’t a neighborhood at all: they’re Dead City itself, buried and re-buried over the centuries by the caprices of Lethe. Each time our royal river floods, driving the citizens into the hills for safety, she thoroughly reorders the cityscape, tossing its buildings about like a child’s blocks while dragging in new ruins from the Lands Above. Old-timers tell of a Great Swelling in which every building on the surface was driven underground by the weight of half-destroyed architecture, and lesser disasters occur constantly, making navigation below the streets a constant source of adventure.

  “Thus, there are myriad strategies for exploration. A timid reveler might climb down through a gaping hole in the street, mosey to the nearest watering-hole, drink away weeks or months, and climb up again when he’s had enough, or run out of gewgaws to trade for swill. Most guzzlers, however, end up too muzzy-headed to stay in one place, and end up lost in the labyrinth, emerging after an absence of years in some far-off corner of the city! And those are the lucky ones: go alone, and you’re liable to be caught in a collapse, or trapped by a riot, or swallowed in a flood. The whims of the city are wondrous; why, I could lead you to the lip of a well at the bottom of which two lovers are arguing in Sumerian, where they’ve been trapped for thousands of years! Every so often we drop a bottle down to them by way of rope and bucket, and are rewarded with their renditions of ancient Babylonian drinking songs.

  “But we won’t be touring such wonders on this trip, I’m afraid, due to that cross on Jacob’s treasure map, which needs baring, and quickly! Am I right, Master Campbell?”

  “You are, Leopold, you are,” said Jacob from the rear of the train, gazing up at the mangled buildings of his erstwhile neighborhood as if he didn’t know whether to curse them or bid them a maudlin farewell.

  Remington, fascinated by Leopold’s stories of the Tunnels, kept up a steady stream of questions as they walked. “Why do they call it the Underground University?”

  “It’s the best place in the underworld to learn new languages. Simply sit down at a table where everything’s Greek to you, let the liquor flow, and a few months later, you’ll stand up fluent in a language lost to the Lands Above for hundreds of years.”

  “Where do we go to get down there?”

  “I’ll tell you all,” said Leopold, “but first, I have some difficult news to break. Bring that bird below, Remington, and you’ll never fluff its feathers again, for nothing is more unwelcome than a crow in the Tunnels, except for an open flame. Crows go for the eyes when they’re cornered, you see.”

  “Oh,” said Remington, knocking at his skull. The crow flapped out and perched on a nearby turret, squawking mournfully at their backs.

  “Excellent! Now, regarding entrances and exits, the Tunnels have all sorts: some are no more than ragged holes punched into aboveground buildings, while others are great ramps built for the masses. We could take one of those, but then we’d end up in a bar full of immigrants—no offense, boy, but the ones with brains are often odious. The die-hard debauchees prefer out-of-the-way apertures, such as this shaft you’re about to plunge into. Watch your step, boy, or you’ll never walk again!”

  Remington tottered at the edge of a mineshaft echoing with distant voices, located incongruously at the end of a zig-zagging alley. At Leopold’s urging, he climbed out of Dead City’s perpetual afternoon into an equally endless night, lowering himself down a rope of knotted bedsheets into pure, obliterating darkness. “You guys, I’m blind!” he shouted as his feet scraped the bottom, but then he raised a hand in front of his face. “Oh, wait,” he said as he waved it around, perceiving its dark outline, the downy hairs on the backs of its knuckles, even the fading color in its cuticles, “I spoke too soon. There’s no light, but I can see—everything!”

  “Indefatigability. Post-mortal im
mortality. Sight without light. Death does have its benefits, I suppose,” said Jacob as he touched down.

  “Not to mention freedom from the humiliating pain of a stubbed toe,” said Leopold. “Onward, fellows. Follow the sound of flowing booze!”

  “Not that you’ll be drinking any, Remy,” Jacob warned. “You’ll need to keep sharp—and stay close.”

  “Don’t you worry, my boy,” whispered Leopold to Remington, “we’ll loosen his apron-strings even if we have to force the swill down his throat.”

  Remington laughed as he followed Leopold’s head down a tilted hallway overflowing with echoes. As they crouched down, then crawled on their hands and knees, he struggled to identify the cacophony. It was only when he’d tumbled through a tiny doorway and into a startling openness that he succeeded: it was the oceanic babbling of the human voice rebounding through a chamber as wide as a football field. Remington goggled as he stood, for the space between this gargantuan pub’s improvised pillars was so crammed with the dead that the taboo against physical contact had been abandoned. Skeletons in rags threw their arms around leathery corpses in top-hats and tails, tin cans and brass goblets clanking before a bar built from a shipwreck. Islands of battered furniture shone with the swill that dribbled from a thousand chins, and everyone Remington could see was either laughing, narrating, sobbing, or involved in some combination of the three. Leopold was greeted with fanfare as soon as the party stepped into the room, and when he emerged from the first round of greetings, he pressed a clay cup of swill into Remington’s hand. Remington poured it down his throat before Jacob noticed, and whatever happened from that point on involved so many strangers offering him so many drafts out of so many containers that he soon found himself with a drink in each hand and another clenched between his knees.

  “It’s bad enough that our guide is inebriated,” muttered Jacob, “but you—why, you’re but a child! To say nothing of the damage the swill is causing your untreated corpse. At least try to keep it on the inside of your body, Remington!”