Authors: Jonah Hewitt
Lucy sighed. She sank down and sat on her heels. “Alright…Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” Lucy even raised her left hand and made the crossing motion over her heart with her right hand. She felt a bit childish doing this; who even did that anymore? But she needed to try to convince him. The eye looked uncertain, but slowly his hands lowered and the boy sat up from his defensive crouch.
They revealed a sweet but dirty face with freckles and big, blue eyes. There were bright trails on his face where his tears had washed away the grime. His short hair was tousled and mousy brown. He grabbed his baseball cap, shoved it down hard over his messy hair and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. His clothes were dirty and his sneakers were ragged. His large, baggy cargo shorts were oversized – probably hand-me downs. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old and he looked utterly pathetic. This boy had haunted her for the last several hours to the point that she had questioned her own sanity. She had been very angry. In fact, she wasn’t certain what she had intended to do to him, but it wasn’t nice. But now? Now that she saw him, touched him, knew that he was real; she was just relieved that she wasn’t crazy.
“Who are you?” she said a bit curtly.
“P-Paul…well…my name’s Abe Lyon, b-but n-n-no one calls me that. They all call me by my middle name…Paul.”
Lucy huffed through her nostrils. Now that she had finally caught the phantom boy, she wasn’t certain what to do with him. She had so many questions they all got stuck in her throat. Paul broke the silence first.
“Are-are you going to h-h-hurt me?” he stammered.
“Why would I hurt you?” Truthfully she had wanted to hurt him, to take out her anger on him, anyone, but not anymore. Now she just wanted answers.
“B-because. I k-k-killed your mother.”
Lucy’s face went white. “It
WAS
you!! I knew it!”
The boy flinched at Lucy’s anger. “I-I swear, I didn’t mean to…it w-was an accident.”
Lucy was fuming. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but made no sound. All at once the questions poured out, “What are you doing here?! How did you get here?! What do you want from me?! What were you doing on the road that late at night?!”
With so many questions hurled at him at once, the boy didn’t seem to know which to answer to first, so he started with the last one.
“I-I was running.”
“Running?!” Lucy said incredulously, “From what?”
“From…” the boy’s voice fell to an almost inaudible level, “From
her
.”
Lucy froze. It was just a simple pronoun, but it filled her with dread, and she knew exactly who the boy was talking about. Still she had to force herself to ask. She reached forward and grabbed the boy by the shoulders but gently this time.
“Who?!” Lucy swallowed, “Who are you talking about?”
“I d-dunno…” the boy in the big, oversized shorts stammered and then he paused and looked around as if the answer were floating above him. Finally, his gaze turned to meet Lucy’s directly as if he finally found a suitable way to describe the phantom woman, “T-the woman, the w-woman with the long black hair and the grey eyes.”
Lucy let go of the boy. She slid off her heels and fell softly to the sand. Her head turned and her gaze drifted. Her unfocused eyes moved past the boy’s face and out over the water ‘til all she saw was a distant haze and the bridge disappearing into it. She felt the world spinning underneath her and had to hold onto the ground to keep herself from slipping away. The dark-haired woman with grey eyes; the one she had seen in vision at the accident, the face that had lunged at her from the water stain. Surely she had imagined it all, but then she thought the boy was a figment of her imagination too, and he was here…wasn’t he? She tried to focus her eyes, but it was the boy’s voice that brought her back.
“You’ve seen
her
?” the boy got up from his defensive crouch, crawled over to Lucy and said it again, but this time not as a question but as a statement, “You’ve
seen
her!”
Lucy’s expression must have answered his question. Lucy sat up, breathing hard. The whole thing was impossible – it just didn’t make sense. Another stream of questions poured out of her mind, “Who is she?! Why was she chasing you? What does she want with us?” But all that came out was, “ it’s…it’s just impossible!!”
“I know! I thought I was the only one! But you’ve seen her too, haven’t you?!” The boy was alert now, happy to finally have someone else to commiserate with, but Lucy was more confused than ever. It just didn’t make any sense. So many questions! Why was this woman chasing this boy and how had the boy gotten here from the accident anyway? She decided to ask that last question first.
“The accident was outside Ephrata. How did you get here anyway?”
“Oh…I…” The boy began, but he was cut off.
“Lucy!” It was the receptionist’s voice. The orderly’s voice was right behind her. They were close.
“Who’s that?!” the boy whispered. He looked terrified.
“It’s no one. It’s ok,” she tried to reassure him.
Lucy slapped her hand to her forehead. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten they were still chasing her. For a moment it looked like the boy was about to bolt again. His eyes were darting back and forth looking for a likely exit. She leaned forward and got low on her hands and knees and tenderly touched his arm to calm him.
“Look, I can’t stay and if they find you then I’ll never get any answers. Do you understand?”
The boy looked nervous but nodded.
“Good. They’re looking for me. I have to go. Can you stay hidden?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Looo-ceee!!” came the orderly’s voice nearby. Lucy winced, but turned back to the boy.
“Good. I’ll come back for you.” She was about to get up when he grabbed her arm.
“Wait!” he said frantically trying to keep his voice low, “What if they won’t let you out?! What if you can’t come this far?! What if…”
“Lucy!!” It was the receptionist again. They were getting closer. Lucy put her hand up to the boy’s mouth to silence him. They both remained silent for a while and Lucy thought. The kid was right. After this stunt, they would never let her get this far again. She instantly formed a plan.
“Do you know the lobby on the east side…just across the street?” She indicated the way by tossing her head in that direction.
“Yeah?”
“There’s a waiting room with a kid’s play area. Meet me there at…” she tried to think of a good time; it didn’t look like the kid had a watch, “Meet me there at sunset.” She was about to get up again when he grabbed her arm.
“Wait! What if they get suspicious?”
“Don’t worry, you’re a kid. They’ll just think you’re a kid playing…waiting for your parents or something.” She could tell he wasn’t certain, so she tried to reassure him. “Trust me. It will be ok.” She reached up and rubbed his cheek the way her mother sometimes did to her. She had always hated that, but somehow it felt like the right way to reassure him. He let go of her arm and nodded meekly. The receptionist and orderly were calling again.
“Ok, I need to go now, but I’ll see you then.” She stood up, turned to the bushes and took a breath. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say to them, or how she was going to explain herself, but she would think of something. She was ready to run out of the bushes when the boy called out one last time.
“Wait!”
“What?” She turned to face him. He was looking very fragile and was clutching his yo-yo as if it were the only friend he had in the world.
“What’s y-your name?” He stammered.
She smiled at him. “Lucy, and I’m sorry, I forgot yours already.”
“Oh…it’s P-p-p…” He was having a hard time getting it out.
“That’s ok,” she said, “I’ll just call you Yo-yo, is that ok?” Lucy’s mom had a penchant for nicknames, and it seemed she had picked it up too.
He smiled a little, which made Lucy feel a little better. “Stay low, Yo-yo, and wait ‘til I’m gone before you leave, ok?” Yo-yo nodded. Lucy turned to face the bushes, took one last breath and charged through. The sound of her thrashing obviously drew the attention of the receptionist and orderly because when she broke through, they were standing right there. She ran right into the orderly’s chest.
“Gotcha!” The orderly grabbed her by the back of the bathrobe, pulling it back to reveal all the goggling little princess kitties. The receptionist came right over to her.
“Lucy! Why did you run away like that?!” It annoyed her that everyone in the hospital seemed to know her name and talked to her like they were her mother, and she didn’t know any of them. Still, the woman’s tone was more concerned than scolding.
“I-I thought…I thought…” Lucy struggled for an explanation then she had a flash of twisted inspiration. She whipped up some quick ecstatic sobbing and bawled out, “I thought I saw MY MOTHER!!”
“Oh, honey!” The receptionist fell to her knees and pulled Lucy into a hug. Lucy just fell into her arms and shamelessly kept up the sobbing. She felt a little guilty. Her mother was not one day dead and she was already playing the sympathy card pretty heavily. She glanced back over her shoulder. The orderly had let go of her robe collar and just stood there with his arms folded. She wasn’t certain he was buying the performance, but after the receptionist wiped away Lucy’s fake tears, he patted her consolingly on her shoulder. He was probably still mad that Lucy’s escapade had interrupted his original game plan with the receptionist but had decided that showing sympathy to a little girl would get him a few more points anyway, so he went along.
The two walked Lucy slowly back through the park on the riverfront towards the hospital – the arm of the receptionist firmly around her shoulders. As they got to the street and paused to cross, Lucy took a look back towards the bushes. She could see the little boy’s oversized shorts, striped shirt and baseball cap through the leaves and branches. He looked like something from another, simpler time, like a kid from a TV show decades ago. He wasn’t hiding very well, but fortunately, no one was looking for him. She had been very angry at him just moments ago, but now she was just happy she was a few hours away from some answers. She tried to smile a little at him to let him know it would be all right, but he must have not seen her because he didn’t smile back. Instead, he stood there impassively, blank-eyed. He was eerily calm and just slowly tossing the yo-yo, up and down, up and down in perfect rhythm.
By the time they had crossed the street and entered the lobby, she shot another quick look over her shoulder to see if he was still there, but he was already gone
Maggie Miller explained to Nephys that “Soup’s on” was just an expression that meant “dinner was ready,” but in this case it actually was soup. Anything to eat was unusual in Limbo. You didn’t really need to eat, and even when you did, it didn’t provide the least bit of satisfaction. Still, Nephys didn’t want to be rude.
Maggie had straightened up the small tomb, placing two small stools next to a tiny table. It looked odd to Nephys, but he carefully took a seat.
“I had to simmer this thing for hours – or maybe days, who knows really? – over one of the those fires, but it never ever really got hot enough to boil. What is it with this place, neither hot nor cold, but always...I dunno…just
blah
?”
Nephys said nothing. It wasn’t really a question anyway, she was just thinking out loud. She had used his stone bowl to cook it. He didn’t like that at all. It was one of his few possessions and had the rare quality of being unbreakable. He usually only used it as a mirror to see himself. He wanted, as long as he could, to see his face with the last traces of his eyesight. Seeing it full of limp, blue-black leaves and lumpy, gray, non-descript vegetables was very disconcerting. None of the other souls they had recovered had ever been this much trouble.
“Your garden had a lot of what looked like kale, only thornier, and some potato-like tubers, so I started with that. Seasoning was a bit of trouble. Your garden was absolutely chock full of stuff that looked deadly poisonous…nightshade and wormwood and worse, but then I realized…we’re
dead
…It can’t possibly kill us again, right? So, I went for broke and threw it all in.”
Somewhere, she had managed to scrounge up a couple of bowls and spoons, but Nephys had no idea where. She sat a bowl down before Nephys and then sat down herself behind the other. She sat there silently staring at Nephys who said nothing. Finally, she spoke.
“Usually my daughter and I would say grace…but…” she trailed off and Nephys had to endure another long silence. “Well let’s just say ‘
bon apetit,’
okay?” She looked uncertainly at Nephys and then at the unappealing concoction in the rough bowl in front of her. She picked up a spoon, cautiously drew up a spoonful, leaned over, paused just before putting it to her lips, then rushed ahead and slurped it all down. Her face froze.
Nephys searched the table for his own spoon, found it, languidly put it in the bowl and drew up a spoonful himself but didn’t eat it. He couldn’t remember the last time he had tried to eat something here. He looked down at the gray lumpy mass and then looked up at Maggie. Maggie was slowly rolling the soup around her mouth and pursing her lips as if trying to get up the courage to swallow. When she finally did swallow, she took a long time before she spoke.
“Wow. That is really…
bland
.” She put the spoon down slowly and pushed the bowl away. Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t that.
“I mean, it’s as close to eating nothing as I’ve ever come. I mean, I could tell I was eating
something
, but…there was no flavor whatsoever. Water tastes like nothing – this wasn’t
nothing
; it was worse than nothing – it was like…I dunno…
anti
-flavor. Not even school paste is that flat-tasting…wow. I can’t even taste the roof of my mouth anymore.”
She shook her head slowly from side to side with a look of utter frustrated despair. Nephys knew the look well.
“You don’t need to try it just to make me feel better, Neppy. It really is awful.”
Nephys’ eyes widened. He
wasn’t
going to eat it, but now that she had mentioned it, it seemed rude not to. He eyeballed the spoon and then quickly shoved it in his mouth and closed his eyes.
“Froontooot?” Hiero tooted in surprise.
Nephys rolled it around his mouth and the back of his tongue. The thing had mass, but no real substance or texture and a flavor even less noticeable than the inside of his own mouth. As he continued to move it over and over his tongue he started to sense something. He opened his eyes. What was it? Clinging to the farthest reaches of his tongue…it was…
bitter
. Yes. It was definitely…extremely faintly…almost imperceptibly…bitter. He took another spoonful. The bitterness was infinitesimally, slightly more than before. He took another and another, savoring each time the almost impossibly small sensation of incremental bitterness.
Before he knew it, he began wolfing down the entire bowl. He only stopped, embarrassed, when he noticed that Maggie Miller was staring at him, smiling.
“Sorry, it’s only just…I haven’t eaten anything in a very long time.”
Maggie laughed, “Don’t be. I’m just glad
somebody
likes it.”
Nephys smiled for the third time that day.
“Fwhork! PAFAAARNT!” Hiero was lurking around under the table like a hungry dog, impatient.
“All right, if you want some you can have mine.”
She put her bowl on the floor and Hiero didn’t eat it as much as he rooted around in it and spread it everywhere, but he seemed to enjoy that all the same. Nephys finished his quickly and looked expectantly back at Maggie.
“More?”
“Yes, please,” he said, wiping his mouth on a sleeve.
She smiled and dished up some more and Nephys went back to gulping the soup. It was bitter enough now it almost had an aftertaste. Maggie didn’t take any more herself but just watched Nephys intently with an air of affection. It suddenly made Nephys nervous and he stopped eating.
“What?” he asked at last.
“Oh…nothing,” she said, but started again, “It’s just that this place is so…odd, but you and Hiero are the oddest.”
Hiero paused from his rooting around in the mess he’d made to make a sound not unlike purring, as if he took what she said as a compliment. Nephys wasn’t so sure.
“What do you mean?”
“Well…the kids here, they are so odd. Just before you got back a bunch of them starting filing through the streets. I called to some of them but no one answered. Not one of them looked at me. Instead, they went to their individual houses…tombs I guess and sat down or stood in open windows and just stared. I’m not used to kids, especially young kids, just sitting and staring like that. It’s downright creepy. They don’t run or talk or play games or roughhouse or anything. They make a classroom full of kids on Ritalin look like a cage of monkeys by comparison.”
Nephys continued to eat the soup. He had no idea what Ritalin was but he understood monkeys. It was true. The children of Limbo were only children in the strictest sense. They were small and young, but other than that there was no resemblance. Falco was as stern as any adult he knew in life.
“And then there’s you.”
“Me?!” Nephys said in surprise.
“Yes,
you
. You’re different.”
“How so?” Nephys went back to nervously eating his soup. The bitterness was delicately clinging to his tongue now.
“Well…for one, you hang out with that
thing
.” She gestured to Hiero who snooted a flatulent, indignant toot her way.
“I…don’t actually hang out with him; he more kind of hangs out with me.”
“Well you don’t have to follow him out into the swamps, do you?”
Nephys shrugged. That was true he guessed.
“And nobody else goes around rescuing stranded lost souls, do they?”
Nephys looked down and shook his head slightly from side to side as if he were ashamed. It was true, he wasn’t a proper child of Limbo, but he had resolved to change that…hadn’t he?
“See?” Maggie continued, and with that word, Nephys looked back up. “You’re different. You care about more than just getting by. You’re…” she paused and seemed to be looking for the right word, “
Compassionate
.”
Nephys raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, no…I’m not compassionate,” he stammered. Maggie looked sideways at him. Nephys continued, “I don’t know why I let Hiero drag me out there, but it isn’t because of compassion.”
“What is it then?”
Nephys shrugged, “Curiosity I guess.”
Maggie looked right at him in a way that made him think of the grandmother he could barely remember, “Well then…thank you for being
curious
.”
She looked at him in a way he couldn’t quite understand and he almost smiled again before she interrupted him.
“Finished?” Maggie started clearing up the dishes. Nephys was surprised. Aside from the contents of the bowl Hiero had splashed around the floor, he had eaten the whole thing. Still, when Maggie reached for his bowl, he had to grab back the spoon and lick the last faint traces of bitterness off it.
As she tidied up, she asked Nephys a few more questions about Limbo. Had he saved many souls? If so, where were they now? Nephys told her that he and Hiero had only saved a few overall and that most simply wouldn’t see reality. In fact, he was pretty amazed Maggie had not been lost too. Generally, souls would hang around his house for a few hours but then they would begin to wander, and within a week or two they had wandered so far Nephys usually never saw them again. Whether they turned into shades or not, Nephys didn’t know. Some found a place to haunt in the city and stayed there, diminishing slowly, while others crossed the swamps to the wastelands and beyond, but none had ever stayed very long, and certainly none had ever made him soup before.
She asked him more about crossing back over as a ghost and the cats, but he wished she hadn’t.
“So if a cat can cross over unharmed then why not a human?”
“Fhunt!” Hiero seemed to take a sudden interest in what Maggie was saying.
Nephys shook his head. “The only way for a human soul to get to Limbo is by…um…the usual way,” Nephys replied nervously.
“The
usual
way?” Maggie asked. Hiero made a frustrated spluttering noise. Maggie shot him a cross look.
Nephys got quiet. “You have to die.”
“Oh.
Of course
.” Maggie rolled her eyes at her own naivety and got quiet then too. Hiero hooted out muted laughter. She shot him another dirty look. “There’s
no
other way? I mean, the stories…Orpheus, Tondal, Dante.”
“Not that I know of,” Nephys shrugged. Then he furrowed his brow and looked at her quizzically. For a school librarian only recently deceased, she sure seemed to know a lot about Limbo. “I’ve heard that there were once a few other doorways from the world of the living, and that a few living came here and returned through the Gates of Erebus but that’s long past. You could never do it now.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, curious.
Hiero hooted impatiently. What was he upset about?
“You could never survive the torrent these days.”
“Torrent?!”
“Oh, yes,” Nephys sighed. “Centuries ago only a few dead came through at a time, a nice steady pace. They would line up, wait for the ferry and come across. But now…there are just too many.”
“Too many?”
“Of course. Think of how many more people there are today up there. There are just that many more people dying each day – the gate is overwhelmed. They pour through like a fast-moving river. You can’t even tell they’re souls at first; it’s just a stream of ghostly, icy whiteness. Anyone living who found a way to the Gates of Erebus would find himself standing in the middle of millions of dead souls. You wouldn’t last long.”
Maggie touched the tips of her fingers where she had touched just
one
shade. They were still slightly numb. “I guess not,” she said quietly.
“Even if you could survive the trip down, you’d never get back,” Nephys continued, “It would be like trying to swim upstream in a rapid, glacial river. You’d be finished in seconds.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause and then Maggie started again.
“What about ghosts in Limbo?”
“What?” Nephys looked up, confused.
“Well, when spirits go back to the land of the living they’re unsubstantial, nearly intangible…and cats who come here are like ghosts to the deceased. Could a living person find a way to come back but not through the gates of Erebus? I mean, if a cat can do it, why not a human?”
Hiero began running in circles and panting loudly like a deranged cat, but Maggie just ignored him.
Nephys had never thought of that before. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“Well, earlier today…well, we saw something…and…” Maggie began, but before she got very far Hiero threw a fit and started stabbing the ground around her feet so she had to dance out of the way. “Ow! You vile little thing!!”
“Hiero!!” Nephys called out to scold him, but this really wasn’t unusual behavior for the little imp, in fact, it was the most normal he had acted all night. Hiero ran to the far corner of the room under Nephys’ bed and hooted a short, violent raspberry at them.
Nephys looked at Maggie who was narrowing her eyes at Hiero.
“Sorry, I wish I could say he isn’t like this most of the time, but the truth is, he’s usually worse.” Nephys looked down embarrassed and then spoke again, “What were we talking about?”
“Hmm?” Maggie had been distracted looking at Hiero as if she were trying to figure something out. “Oh! Oh, it’s nothing, forget it.”