A hand touched my elbow. I jumped.
“Have you lost your way, dearie?” The speaker, standing at my side, looked normal compared to the coachman. He was a diminutive old man in a faded blue shirt and jeans, wispy white hair clinging to his age-spotted scalp. A few of his teeth were missing, and his eyes were red and watery, but at least I could see his face. Although I didn’t know where he had come from.
“Yes, thank you,” I said, my heart pounding. “I know this sounds silly, but I got lost, and now I can’t remember—”
“Tsk, tsk,” the old man chided, pulling me toward the carriage. “It always happens. Get in, get in,” he insisted, when I tried to pull away. “It’s always nicer inside than out.” He gave a conspiratorial wink.
He joined me in the carriage, and it was much nicer. I hadn’t noticed any windows when the carriage pulled up, but as we rolled along my companion and I were able to gaze out at the countryside through small, diamond-shaped panes of glass.
I didn’t have to offer a word of explanation, as the lively old man chattered enough for both of us. Tomorrow’s programs would be especially nice, he confided. Or perhaps I wanted to spend the morning shopping, or strolling in one of the gardens, or at the beach? I smiled and nodded and made occasional interested noises, trying to pretend I knew what he was talking about.
We were dropped off in front of what appeared to be a luxury hotel. As I stared, a black limousine pulled away from the curb and headed into the night; another had stopped behind us and was disgorging four passengers in evening attire.
“Our staff will show you to your room,” the old man assured me. “Just tell them your name, and everything will be arranged. Oh, and wouldn’t you like me to dispose of that for you?”
He was pointing to my basket. I almost handed it over, but changed my mind at the last minute.
“I’d like to keep it for now. If that’s all right.”
I thought at the time that it was only my imagination, but it was as if something flickered in the old man’s eyes, tiny darting black shadows. But not a hint of it reached his voice.
“Oh, certainly! Whatever our guests want, they must have.” He chuckled. “Run along, dearie. A comfortable bed awaits.”
The lobby was a splendour of marble floors, mirrored walls, crystal chandeliers and lampshades of coloured blown glass, gorgeous guests crossing to and fro like butterflies. As my guide had promised, I had no trouble checking in. The receptionist simply handed over a sheaf of papers and told me to sign on the last page. I didn’t read it; it was in legalese, and the receptionist assured me that it was “exactly like the one you signed Upstairs.” Of course, I didn’t tell him that I hadn’t signed anything.
Then it was up to my room. A king-sized bed, hardwood floors scattered with soft carpets, French windows opening onto a balcony, an enormous marble-tiled bathroom—I had never stayed anywhere this nice. The foil-wrapped cork of a Champagne bottle rose proudly above the rim of a silver ice bucket, a basket of tropical fruit decorated the second dresser, and an open box of chocolates I could smell all the way across the room beckoned from atop the nightstand.
And yet, Adam had warned me not to eat anything “out there.” If he was with David Hirsch—Hammond’s lawyer—I didn’t think I could trust him. I was sure Hirsch was also involved somehow in the disappearances. But could I trust anyone else down here?
I flipped open the lid of the basket Adam had given me. Inside were nestled half a small loaf of whole grain bread, a wedge of cheese wrapped in waxed paper, a cup of raisins, and a plastic bottle of water. I ate about half the bread and a third of the cheese, chasing them with a handful of raisins and some water.
The shock of having been hustled at gunpoint into a mysterious magical world was starting to wear off. I decided I couldn’t really be in an underground cavern. This place had a sky, and trees. The stairs must have been a gateway to some other place. I had never imagined that the novels about that sort of thing might be based on anything that could actually happen. But I had been wrong about a lot of other things, too.
Chief among those being my thought that picking up the threads of this investigation would be a good idea.
After I had eaten, the chocolates didn’t smell as appealing. In fact, the aroma made me slightly ill, and I had to close the box and leave it in the bathroom with the door shut.
I woke to daylight pouring through the windows.
I sat up. I must have been exhausted, to have been able to sleep.
Was this where all the disappeared people had gone? And if so, why? Hammond had refused to answer any of my questions, so I didn’t know any more than I had before his thugs grabbed me off the street. I did know that he ran a large private equity firm, and was phenomenally well-connected, but so elusive that it was unusual to talk to anyone who had met him. He seemed to work mostly through people like Hirsch.
I almost ate a papaya out of the hospitality basket, but then put it down at the last minute and returned to the food Adam had given me. To my surprise, when I opened the picnic basket, all the food I had eaten seemed to have regenerated itself! I had dried figs instead of raisins, but everything else was identical.
After eating, I wandered outside and found several sandwich boards in the garden courtyard behind the hotel, advertising activities for guests to choose from. I decided to join the “Gardens and Grounds” tour: “a perfect introduction for our newer guests: experience the timeless mystery of the Borderlands through guided visits with our permanent residents & taste the wealth of our orchards and vineyards.” It seemed the best way to figure out where I was and what was going on.
What was going on was that the place did not follow the laws of nature. As our group of twelve trudged along after the guide, the terrain kept changing in impossible ways. First we saw a stretch of palm-shaded beach, small groups of tourists wading or sunbathing. I say “sunbathing” even though there was no sun, despite the clear blue sky, and the heat. Five minutes’ walk from there took us to a gorgeously green garden in late spring, lilac-shaded paths competing with linden-shadowed statuary courtyards paved in worn flagstones. A river meandered around one edge; we saw no bridges, but farther downstream passengers were being directed onto a flat-bottomed boat propelled by polemen. Next on the route came hills of saguaro and prickly pear, then a gondola ride up the slopes of a mountain lush with snow. No barriers separated these incompatible climatic zones. There would be snow banks on either side of the path; then all of a sudden the snow would end and our trail would be hemmed in by jungle palms and wild pineapples.
I tried to make conversation with my companions as we trudged through a vineyard, but no one seemed to want to tell me how he had discovered the Borderlands Resort. “You know how it is,” one man told me. “You know people, they’ve heard of someone who can get you into places no one else has been. I’m sure my story isn’t much different from yours.” I murmured agreement. Were we all kidnapped copy editors trying our hands at investigative journalism?
As we strolled through an orchard of ripe fruit, familiar peaches and cherries alongside figs and pomegranates, our guide called a halt. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee beckoned, with two attractive women ready to serve us.
I walked around a bit. I didn’t want coffee, but I was hungry again, and had left my basket at the hotel. I had never seen pomegranates except in the produce department, and I couldn’t tear myself away from these, scarlet globes weighing down drooping branches. The colour was so much more intense than that of the grocery store pomegranates. Would it be so terrible if I were to eat one? Suddenly, I couldn’t imagine that Adam’s warning had been intended to include food still growing in its natural habitat.
I tugged on one, and it came away readily in my hand. I had to use my teeth to break into the peel, and the white pith beneath puckered my mouth. But soon enough I had a section of the jewel-like, juice-encased seeds exposed. They burst under my tongue and lips, filling my mouth with their bright sweetness.
> Every bite was better than the last. The membrane around the pulp of each seed was so thin it seemed to dissolve in my mouth, and the juice was sweet but not the least bit cloying; deep with layers of spice and fruit like I imagined a really good wine must be, the sort of wine I could never have afforded. I lost myself in the taste and the aroma. I think the orchard could have caught fire around me, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Suddenly, I was licking dark juice from my fingertips, a small pile of discarded peel and spent seeds at my feet.
I glanced up, and to my surprise the guide and most of my fellow tourists were staring at me. A few of the guests nodded sadly. And, although I wanted to believe it was only my imagination, I was pretty sure that the ugly little guide was leering.
I returned to my room to find housekeeping about to take away my basket. “What are you doing with that?” I demanded.
The tiny maid smiled, to my horror revealing two rows of sharp, cat-like teeth. “I hear you won’t be needing that, since this morning.”
“What are you talking about?” I snatched the basket off her cart. “Give it back!”
She laughed. “They’ll take it from you in the end, when your time comes. You should know that. It’s all in your contract.”
“What contract?” I snapped. “I didn’t sign anything.” Except upon checking into the hotel. A vague sense of unease crept over me.
The maid chuckled as she wheeled her cart away. “Don’t they all say that, when the barge comes for them.”
I remembered the people being herded onto the boat. As I recalled it, something seemed sinister about that scene. The passengers had not looked like happy tourists. Every head had been bowed as they shuffled onto the vessel. Had one or two of my companions seen, and looked away quickly?
It was the same room. Adam was sitting on one of the two couches, staring at me. On the other, in person this time, was David Hirsch.
Adam was still wearing the Dylan t-shirt. But I hadn’t changed my clothes either, so I guess we were even.
David stood, Adam following. “You’re back,” Adam said, no less suspicious. “Obviously,” I said.
David took several steps toward me, then stopped. In his late forties, he wore a white shirt that must have gone about a month since its last pressing, and black dress pants.
“What’s that on your fingers?” he asked. I looked. “Pomegranate juice.”
Adam swore. When David turned an accusatory look on him, he exclaimed, “I told her not to eat or drink anything!”
“You didn’t mention drinking,” I retorted.
“So, what then?” Adam demanded. “You swished your fingertips around in a glass of pomegranate juice while you were knocking it back?”
Yes, Adam was as charming as I remembered. “It was a fresh pomegranate. Right off the tree. I’m only pointing out that you didn’t say I shouldn’t drink anything. I didn’t, but you didn’t tell me not to.”
“No, you just ate a pomegranate instead.”
“Adam.” David’s voice was mild, but you could tell that he expected to be heeded.
“What?” Adam snapped. “A pomegranate. Not only does she not listen to me, she eats a pomegranate. Has she read a single Greek myth?”
“Hello!” I said. “I’m right here. You can talk to me. And yes, I have read Greek myths. Several.” I tried to remember any Greek myths featuring pomegranates.
David Hirsch was nodding. “Persephone.”
“My name is Alison,” I corrected. Then, a second later, “Oh.”
David and Adam exchanged glances. “I think she’s beginning to understand,” David said.
“No,” I said. “I’m not. I know which story you’re talking about. Persephone eats some pomegranate seeds and gets stuck in the Underworld. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Actually,” David said, “the consequence was that she had to remain in the Land of the Dead six months out of every year, one for each seed she ate. But I don’t think the terms will be so generous, in this case.”
“Persephone wasn’t stupid enough to chow down on an entire pomegranate,” Adam added, glowering.
I didn’t believe what I was hearing. “The Underworld?”
“I did tell you not to eat anything,” Adam said.
David cast a quick glance at Adam before returning his attention to me. “Alison. Perhaps you would like to sit down.”
They were prisoners, and had lived in that one room for four months.
“One of my clients is responsible,” David said. “I’m here because he felt that I had been investigating his activities beyond a level that could add value to our professional relationship.”
“James Hammond?” I asked.
“You know Hammond?” he asked, warily.
“I know that at least six people have disappeared,” I said, “and that Hammond’s business card kept showing up. And I know that whenever police found out that a disappearance might have some connection to him, the investigation would stop.” I hesitated. “A couple of journalist friends told me this. Three days later, one of them disappeared. Three days after that, the other one was dead. He got hit by a cab.”
David nodded sympathetically. “You’re also a journalist?”
I shrugged. “Sort of.” I had been a staff reporter for a daily in New Jersey before my brilliant idea that I should take a steep pay cut to work as a copy editor at the Times. “Freelance.”
I told them the rest of my story, about quietly taking over Tina and Brian’s investigation of James Hammond, which led me to the law firm of Hirsch, Goldman & Green, which led to a gun in my back on the corner of 57th and Third.
David told me that James Hammond had discovered a way to create bridges between our world and others, like this one.
“At the hotel, they call it the Borderlands,” I said.
“Yeah,” Adam said. “This isn’t actually the Land of the Dead. It’s more like the Lobby of the Dead.”
“From time to time, people are sent across to the real thing,” David said. “Across the river.”
“Like the River Styx? How do they decide when to send them?” David looked at Adam.
“I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone,” Adam admitted, when it became obvious that David was going to keep staring at him until he answered. He scratched at the back of his head. “It should be in your contract.”
“What contract? Everyone keeps talking about this contract I’ve never seen!”
“Really?” David perked up. “Adam, if she didn’t sign, they may have no hold on her.”
Adam made a dubious face. “You never signed anything. What about Persephone? Doesn’t that set a precedent that it’s eating in the Underworld that matters, not the contract?”
David shrugged. “How many millennia ago was that? Who knows what really happened?” He shifted his sharp gaze back to me. “You’re sure you didn’t sign anything?”
“Yes, I’m sure. The only thing I signed was the papers they gave me when I checked into the hotel. I didn’t read them—”
“Argh!” Adam roared, throwing his head back. “You idiot! It didn’t occur to you to wonder why you had to sign a twenty-page legal document to check into a hotel?”
“No, it didn’t! But you know what? If you had taken five minutes to explain where I was and why I shouldn’t eat anything, I might have looked at those papers more closely.” I shot David a look of equal venom. “Instead, he shows me a picture of you. James Hammond’s lawyer.”
David understood. “You didn’t trust Adam. And he didn’t trust you.”
“Not everyone—” Adam said.
David held up a hand. “Let’s back up a bit.” He turned to me. “When I arrived here, I didn’t know about the disappearances. I had been investigating other irregularities in Hammond’s business practices, and was about to turn him in. I’m not dead because Hammond found it more amusing to send me to his personal Underworld kingdom.” At my confused expression, he said, “Hamm
ond has made some arrangement that puts him in charge of the Borderlands. Just like you, I was taken at gunpoint to Central Park in the middle of the night and forced to walk down a long set of stone stairs that Hammond somehow conjured up while I watched. When I walked through the door at the bottom, I found myself in this room. Fortunately, Adam was here to warn me against eating or drinking.”
“Nice of him to warn me,” I said.
“I did warn you,” he retorted. “It’s not my fault you didn’t listen.”
David cut in before I could tell Adam what a jerk he was. “Food and drink are not the only dangers here, Alison. Since my arrival, Management has sent others into this room through that door, trying to weaken our resolve. Other attractive young women. They pretend to be confused about where they are and how they got here, probably to appeal to our chivalrous instincts.”
I couldn’t imagine Adam existing in the same room as a chivalrous instinct. But the implication that David thought I was attractive sweetened my mood somewhat.
“That’s why you showed me David’s picture?” I asked Adam. “To figure out from my reaction whether you could trust me?”
He nodded. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea,” he confessed.
I figured that was the closest to an apology I was going to get. “What’s the deal with the contract? How does it work?”
When Adam didn’t answer, David said, “She deserves to know. Maybe not why, but at least what and how.”
Adam sighed, and leaned back into the corner of the couch. “Okay. Mine offers two months’ vacation in the Borderlands. Anything I want during those two months.” His eyes closed briefly. “Almost anything. In exchange for . . . well, for everything else. You know.”
“No, I don’t.” I tried to work it out. “You mean, all your money and other assets?”
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