Better Off Dead (18 page)

I didn’t even imagine I could have spoken if I’d wanted to. Instead, my heart had taken up residence in my throat. I couldn’t remember being more frightened in all my life. Tallis turned back toward the river and I noticed the top of his wrist was now
healed. As to why his forearms hadn’t healed more quickly, I still had no clue.

I watched the boat approach us and then stop about four or five feet from the shore. The ferryman moved slowly, turning toward us as he nodded to Tallis. None of the spirits made any attempt to approach the boat.

As to looking the ferryman in the face, I didn’t have to because he didn’t have one. There was nothing but darkness under the hood, air. I glanced at Tallis, who simply nodded back at the ferryman before facing me.

“Lass, ye will enter th
’ vessel first.”

With a nod, I took his outstretched hand when he offered it. He led me into the water which was so cold, it felt like a thousand tiny mouths biting my ankles. Bill was behind me and I silently thanked my lucky stars that for once, he was obeying Tallis’s command and not making a sound.

The boat was still a good two feet away. I inched forward, the water now up to my knees, and smarting just as much as when I’d first stepped into the river. When we finally reached the boat, Tallis tugged on my hand to tell me I wasn’t supposed to get into it yet. Fishing inside the sporran he wore on the front of his kilt, he produced the small sack of coins he’d taken from the pine box earlier. He opened the satchel and dropped three gold coins, each the width of a small apple, into the palm of his other hand. The ferryman extended his cloaked arm, but there was nothing visible where his hand or arm should have been. Unfazed, Tallis simply dropped the coins into the open air of the ferryman’s cloak. I expected the coins to drop straight into the arctic water, but they simply vanished upon making contact (or not, in this case) with the ferryman’s invisible hand.

The ferryman withdrew his cloaked arm and nodded at Tallis again. Tallis looked at me and nodded in turn, apparently to let me know all was good now. With his eyes on mine, he propped his hands on either side of my waist and lifted me into the boat, only releasing his hold when the boat started to wobble. Gripping the side to keep it from tipping, he pointed to one of two wooden planks that were more or less benches in the back of the boat. The planks ran from starboard to port.

I ignored the first bench and took a seat in the middle of the second one, turning to watch Bill and Tallis. With a big smile, Bill hefted his fleshy arms into the air, showing he was ready for Tallis to lift him up onto the boat as he’d just done for me. Tallis muttered something unintelligible beneath his breath and Bill’s grin broadened even wider. When Bill simply materialized into the boat, it rocked so violently, I worried it might capsize. Tallis again stabilized it as I scooted over and Bill plopped down next to me.

The ferryman dropped his oar into the water adjacent to Tallis. I figured it was his way of saying he wanted to get a move on. Tallis took off his shield and backpack, before removing both his sword and mine from their scabbards across his chest. He handed them both to me. Then, gripping the sides of the boat with both hands, in a move that would inspire Mary Lou Retton, he crouched down into the water, leapt up and over, and managed to land right into the boat. He took a seat on the wooden plank ahead of us, and reached for the swords which I’d put in my lap.

For some unknown reason, my attention immediately dropped to my feet. Maybe I was just nervous about locking eyes with Tallis again. Whatever the reason, I was momentarily distracted when I saw that neither my boots nor my pants were soaking wet as they should’ve been. I reached down and touched my lower pant leg, only to find it completely dry. Eyeing Bill’s discolored, stained, and ripped pants, I saw that they, too, were dry. With visible surprise, I looked up at Tallis. His slight smile suggested that things were different here and about to get even more strange.

The ferryman started rowing and my heartbeat sped up again. I was well on my way to the Underground City, a place that housed only the vilest of souls. And that thought frightened me much more than the ferryman had.

“Through me the way is to the city dolent; Through me the way is to eternal dole; Through me the way among the people lost.”

—
   
Dante’s
Inferno

TEN

Sitting next to me, Bill began to struggle with something and when I glanced over at him, I realized he was wrestling with his back pocket, trying to extricate Dante’s
Inferno
. He huffed and puffed before managing to free the tattered book (which wasn’t quite so tattered before it was in Bill’s possession), and gave me a dramatic sigh. Tallis looked over at us while firmly shaking his head as if to say we, er, Bill, was making too much noise. Bill immediately held up his hand and nodded to assure Tallis he had everything under control.

Bill opened the book and started leafing through the pages, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he scanned the words. For my part, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the scenery around us. The farther we sailed down the river Styx, the darker the night sky became until only the starlight offered any illumination. Strangely enough, I could still see just as clearly as when the moonlight dominated the sky. Odder still, the scenery appeared to be changing. We were no longer surrounded by immense pine trees, verdant mountainsides and sandy beaches. Instead, it looked as if we were floating through some sort of bog or swamp. The trees gave way to the stick-like outline of leafless branches and trunks, long dead.

The only sound in the stillness of the night air was the ferryman’s oar lapping through the water as it propelled us forward. I found my attention riveted on it every time it came up and out of the water. From what I could see, the droplets rolling off the oar were pitch black and thick. It seemed more like inky sludge than river water.

“Oh, hell no!” Bill suddenly yelled out. Both Tallis and I
faced him, my eyes wide, while Tallis’s narrowed in irritation. Bill, however, took no notice of either of us. Instead, he stopped reading the book in his hands, and looked at me with disbelief written all over his face, before turning his stricken expression on Tallis. “We’re on the wrong fuckin’ river, yo!” he railed out, shaking his head. “Unfreakingbelievable!”

The wrong river?

I looked at Tallis, my heart hammering as I wondered what Bill was talking about. Could there be more than one river to the Underground City? And if so, why would Tallis have led us to the wrong one? He said he’d traveled to the Underground many times! “Bill, what are you talking about?” I whispered. My eyes fell on the form of the ferryman, as I wondered what his reaction would be to Bill’s outburst. Tallis had been pretty emphatic about telling us not to make any noise … Luckily for us, the ferryman paid Bill no attention at all. He just dipped his oar into the water, first over one shoulder, then the next.

Looking back at Bill, I found him gaping like a fish out of water, with an expression that said he’d been duped. “Right here!” he bellowed, pointing to the open book in his lap. “Fuckin’ Dante says we’re s’posed ta cross the Acheron, not the Styx!” Then he eyed the ferryman. “
So I don’t know who the hell this goon thinks he is, or where he gets off pretendin’ ta be Sharon!” He took a deep breath before nodding furiously. “I call that getting swindled and pimped!” he sang out in a terrible rendition of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.”

“Nae,” Tallis began to intervene, but Bill’s diatribe wasn’t over because he silenced Tallis with a wave of his pudgy hand. “Turn this shit around, yo!” he called out to the ferryman while frowning at Tallis. “Do ya think someone needs ta go back and read his
Inferno?
I don’t know, Slick, but somebody sure got his rivers wrong.” Taking another breath, he sang: “This is NOT fucking awesome.”

“’Tis the same bludy river!” Tallis growled, his voice growing increasingly louder. “The Acheroon floows inta the Styx, ye bleedin’ dunderheid!”

Bill was silent for a second or two as he bit his lower lip. “Oh,” he finally said with a frown. “Well, run and tell that to Dante, yo!” He closed the book and flicked his fingers at the cover. “Flippin’ useless thing.”

Tallis looked more than frustrated, but I was more nervous about the ferryman’s reaction. Strangely enough, the ferryman just continued to silently row the boat and I could only wonder if he could talk, since he didn’t have any vocal cords, or a face, or even a body, well, one that I could see anyway. Could he even hear us?

“Sorry, yo,” Bill said to the ferryman’s back. “Honest mix-up, that’s all. Didn’t really mean ta call you a goon. I actually think you’re pretty cool, ya know, diggin’ the cloak thing.”

“Bill, shush!” I whispered to him, elbowing him in the arm while shaking my head in utter annoyance.

“Okay, okay,” he whispered back. “I just wanted to make sure everything was cool so the dude didn’t drop me off in some …” his voice trailed off as he glanced around, “… scary ass tree.”

After Bill’s outburst, everyone remained quiet for the remainder of the ride, which was maybe another fifteen minutes. The scenery didn’t change much, the eerie, skeletal outline of dead trees still dominating the landscape. The darkness was just as murky and engulfing as before.

The ferryman steered the boat to a long, wooden bridge that led from the river to the shore. Tallis stood up and reached out to grasp the wooden railing. Taking my hand, he supported and stabilized me as I stood.

“Dinnae lit the river tooch ye,” he said in a throaty voice, his eyes piercing.

I watched the waves slosh against the rocks that lined up like a natural staircase, leading up to the bridge. The only step that wasn’t wet was four steps up and required that I do the splits at a forty-five degree angle. “Um …” I started dubiously.

“Ah shall assist ye.”

Bracing his feet shoulder-width apart, Tallis tried to compensate for the shifting of the boat. Once he had his balance, he secured both of his hands around my waist. Then he lifted me up and over the side of the boat as I gripped both sides of the railing and hoisted myself over the top step. Bill simply materialized beside me while Tallis reached for our swords in the bottom of the boat to hand them up to me. I accepted them and watched him hold the shield and backpack up to Bill before he gripped the railing and started up the stairs, the inky water seeming to swallow up his boots.

It took me a second to realize he was standing in the same water he
’d just warned me to avoid. I didn’t say anything, but continued to watch him as he nodded at the ferryman. The ferryman took off, no doubt on his way to retrieve the souls I’d seen earlier, waiting on the banks of the river.

“Your feet touched the water,” I pointed out.

“Aye.”

“But you said …”

“Ah am noot ye,” he answered evasively.

Not knowing what else to say, I refrained from further conversation, and turned to take in my new surroundings. They looked very much like the surroundings we’d just left. Aside from the bony outline of trees, there was nothing more to speak of. It looked like we’d just entered a charred forest. But unlike any woodlands I’d experienced, this one was eerily silent, absolutely noiseless. Not even the sound of a lonely bird or a rodent scuffling through the dead branches littering the ground broke the silence of what reminded me of the macabre hush of a graveyard.

“Is this the Underground City?” I asked, my doubt unconcealed. I figured the Underground City would be at least that, a city.

“Nae,
‘tis ah lang way aff. ’Twill take us th’ better ah free days tae reach it.”

“Your next sentence better include something about your garage where you have a Range Rover waitin’ for us,” Bill said testily.

“Free days oan foot!” Tallis clarified, giving Bill a raised brow expression.

“Shit! Exercise,” Bill
griped as he kicked something that rattled before it clunked against a lifeless tree trunk. “I liked my stealth abs.” I frowned at him, and he patted his gut. “I gotta ripped six pack … it’s just covered by a layer of insulation.” Then he smiled and shrugged. “Stealth abs.”

I rolled my eyes and refocused my attention on the three-day journey that lay ahead of us. Tallis was busily sheathing our swords into the scabbard against his chest, before donning the backpack and pulling each of his arms through the handles of the shield.

Bill, looking at Tallis, immediately started laughing. “Dude looks like a turtle.” He took a breath. “Tallis Mutant Ninja Turtle!”

“So if the Underground is a three-day journey from here, where are we now?” I asked
, ignoring Bill.

“We ur nowhaur. The lain atween haur an’ thaur.”

Sometimes I wondered if I’d get clearer answers from the Riddler, but call me a glutton for punishment because I wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet anyway. “So if Dante’s directions said to get to the Underground City by way of the Acheron, why did we come up the Styx?”

“That’s what I’ve been sayin’,” Bill interrupted
, shaking his head.

“Shoort coot,” Tallis responded, without turning around to make sure we were still behind him. Instead, he continued his breakneck speed, although I had to admit I was getting used to it now. Good thing my long legs could sort of keep up with him.

“A short cut?” I repeated.

“Aye. Ha
d we gain th’ oother way, it woods hae bin ah fife-day trek tae th’ city,” Tallis replied with unmasked annoyance.

Yep, three days were better than “fife.” Good thing Tallis knew his shortcuts. “So we’re going to have to camp out in this forest tonight?” I asked, hoping and praying Marriott had real estate in pseudo hell.

“Aye.”

Well, so much for that thought. “Is this forest safe?” I asked hesitantly, glancing sideways, as well as over my right shoulder and then my left. There was nothing except the looming figures of blackened trees as far as I could see.

“Ye are near tae th’ Oonderground City. Naethin’ is safe.”

I wasn’t in the mood to further interrogate the bladesmith. His negativity drained me. Instead, I eyed my stubby neighbor, who looked back at me with a smile.

“Never fear, Bill is here!” he said with a hearty chuckle.

“Except for the fact that you can’t protect me here,” I replied in a worried and dejected tone.

He nodded. “There is that.”

The three of us walked in silence for the next ten minutes or so, each absorbed in our own thoughts. Mine traveled from studying Tallis’s large physique, which I couldn’t help admiring, to his less than affable personality. Although I found his company exasperating (and sometimes downright hostile), I couldn’t help my inordinate sense of relief knowing he was on this trip with us. I couldn’t even begin to imagine
how I would have flagged down Charon and, more so, how Bill and I would have made our way through this forest without Tallis. I might have given up before our journey ever really started.

But, don’t forget, you won’t have Tallis beside you much longer. After this trip, you might be on your own,
I reminded myself.

But he said he would train me!
I argued back in somewhat of a panic.

Maybe he was just referring to this outing, which came along a lot faster than anyone expected …

Unable to fathom the idea of doing this same thing without Tallis, I had to banish the thoughts right out of my head.

“Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear,” Anthony Robbins’s words reminded me.

“There you go again with that self-help shit,” Bill grumbled.

“It makes me feel better,” I snapped back at him. “And at this point, I need all the help I can get.”

After studying me, he nodded, sighing to convey his acquiescence. “Yeah, I guess you gotta point. What else you got in that head of yours?”

“Um …” I tried to remember the various quotes I’d committed to memory, never imagining in a million years that I’d need them in this situation. “Ah, here’s one. ‘All that we are is the result of what we have thought,’ Buddha.”

“That one’s dumb. Say another one.”

I frowned at him but lacked the urge to argue. “How about this one: ‘You are essentially who you create yourself to be, and all that occurs in your life is the result of your own making.’”

Bill considered it as he chewed on his lip in silence. “I like it. Who said it?”