Chapter 18
Come Sail Away
It would be totally accurate to say that standing there, under the gate, I was more scared than I’ve ever been in my life – however, that would be a gross simplification of my feelings. I was scared, yes, but I was also excited, energized, determined. So I was about to march through the depths of the underworld, so what? I’d been to Cleveland. How much different could it be?
As I stepped through the gates, I heard a tremendous creaking sound. Rust falling from the hinges, they screeched and swung shut behind me. The brilliant sunlight of the Greek morning narrowed to just a sliver, and when the gates shut, I was left in blackness. Blackness, curiously enough. Not darkness. I could still see the ground in front of me, an ancient, dusty store that seemed to stretch out into infinity. In the distance, I heard the unmistakable sound of trickling water. With no other input to guide me, I began walking towards it.
It felt like I walked for an incredibly long time, and when it occurred to me to check my watch, the digital face had gone blank. My cell phone, I realized, didn’t work either, not that I expected much in the way of service in the depths of the underworld. Having a GPS would be nice, but I was sure it would be useless as well.
I kept walking in the direction of the water and, slowly, it started to grow louder. Eventually a black strip appeared in the distance, breaking up the endless gray stone of the floor. As I got closer, it became clear that the black strip was the source of the trickling sound – it was, as I suppose I should have expected, a river.
I got closer and the river got wider. It really was much more than a strip, I realized, it was enormous. I could barely see the far shore in the distance. However, it was moving very slowly, very steadily. Somehow, it reminded me of a soldier on the march, stomping away towards the battlefield.
When I reached the edge of the river, a light flickered on in the distance. When I saw it begin to move, I decided to wait and see what it did – after all, I had absolutely no idea how to proceed at that point. The light started moving across the river, undeniably drifting in my direction. Just as the blackness wasn’t really dark, the light declined to grow any brighter just because it was growing closer. After what felt like several minutes, I could see that light was burning in a lantern, dangling from a pole, lighting the way for a small boat. There was a figure standing in the boat, a hooded man guiding the craft with a long pole that he plunged into the river with each stroke, pushing himself along. As the craft slowly approached, zooming towards me with all the rapidity of a depressed turtle, I could see that the man in the boat was not a living skeleton, as I had prepared myself to encounter. He wasn’t much better, though. His skin was ghostly white, and pulled tight against his bones. His eyes sank into their sockets, surrounded by heavy black bags. He was the most impossibly slender, miserable-looking wretch I had ever seen in my life.
And somehow, he was smiling.
“A person! A real person!” he said, bringing his boat up to the side of the bank. “Oh, Heavens, it’s been so long. You do have the fare, I hope?”
“Fare?”
“The coin to pay the ferryman. Oh, please, tell me you have the fare. Please tell me I didn’t come here for nothing.”
“Uh…” I fished around in my pocket, pulling out a handful of change. How much did he want anyway? He said “the coin,” singularly… Not really sure what to do, I took a quarter and handed it to him. “Here ya go.”
He smiled wider. “This will do nicely. Come, boy, join me. I am Charon, the ferryman of the River Styx.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” I mumbled, gingerly climbing into Charon’s boat. The ferryman waited patiently while I tried to situate myself in the slender, gondola-like boat. I remembered reading about some of this – the Greeks believed that you needed to cross the River Styx to get to the underworld, and there was a ferry that brought you from the shores of the living to the dead. Typically speaking, it was a one-way trip. Still, it was kind of snug in the boat. There must have been some fat Greeks, I thought, didn’t they invent hedonism? How could they even have fit in the boat?
Charon was actually giggling a little as he pushed away from the dock. “What’s your name, body?” he asked.
I paused, wondering how much I should tell him. I had no idea if this guy was the sort to rush off and make reports to Hades or not. I sputtered and said the first name, other than my own, that came to mind. “I’m Charles.”
“Ah, Charles. Welcome to the Styx, gateway to Hades. I trust you’re comfortable?”
“Peachy.”
“Good, good. It’s been a long time, you see, such a very, very long time. I used to be the busiest man in the Underworld, you know. People would line up, just waiting to cross the river, and if they didn’t have the fare…” he snickered. “I would send them away!”
“Dead spirits? Where would they go?”
“I don’t know. Back to where they died, I suppose, to haunt the place for all eternity.” He sighed, drifting across the glass-smooth black water. “Not anymore. Now it’s been years, centuries maybe, since I had a fare across the river. Tell me, has the wolf of the living changed as much as the land of the dead?”
“Oh, I don’t know how much it’s actually changed,” I said. “People are people in any time period, right?”
“Yes, yes, right you are. I ferried people for millennia and they all died for the same stupid reasons – wars, murder, poison, jealous husbands, eaten by the Hydra… tell me, friend Charles, if I may be so bold as to ask… how did you die?”
Even though I knew I hadn’t died, the fact of the question chilled me a little. I felt an urge to check my pulse, but managed to resist. “I was run over. Um… by a bus.”
“A bus? What, pray, is a bus?”
“Oh, it’s… it’s kind of like a cart. You can use it to transport lots of people, very fast.”
“Really? My, my, the wonders the world must hold today. Everything except ol’ Charon.” He pushed again, grunting with the exertion. His voice was high and creaky, giving him an unmistakable and unwelcome Cryptkeeper-like vibe.
“I miss my task, Charles. I’ve sat on that bank, alone, for more centuries than I can count. When you arrived, when you lit my beacon… well, I’m very glad to make your acquaintance.”
“That’s kind of you,” I said, feeling more and more uncomfortable. He was standing behind me, with no way for me to turn and face him. I only heard his rambling voice, his cheerful tittering about how wonderful it was to have a fresh dead man for the first time in centuries, and the sloshing sound as he pulled his pole out of the water, moved it to a new spot, and plunged it in again. He giggled at me, again and again.
“You have no idea who mind-bendingly dull it is here, Charles. Sitting in the dark. Alone, quiet. Even the damnable unchanging river!” He stabbed his pole down as if he were angry at the water, and as he did so, I felt the boat rock beneath me. I gasped and he chuckled again. “Ah, did that frighten you? I’m sorry, Charles, I meant no harm. I’m just so sick… of… this… river!”
With each syllable, he stabbed down again, and the boat rocked some more. I saw ripples flowing out into the black, racing away from his craft as it pitched, and I felt myself grow uncomfortably close to the surface of the water. I could smell it everywere – cold, stagnant, like water flowing through a grave.
“Charon, please–”
“DAMNED RIVER! DAMNED RIVER OF THE DAMNED!”
There was no escaping it this time. He shoved so hard the entire boat listed to the left and, as snugly as I was crammed into the thing, I flipped overboard. I went underwater, all except my left hand – Charon managed to snag that before I plunged into the depths. Even as he started pulling me out, I screamed out in pain, swallowing gulps of the stuff. It was freezing. Not just the sort of “freezing” we so frequently misuse to mean “really cold.” This stuff was literally freezing. I could feel my skin growing stiff against the cold, needles of pain lancing into my body from all directions, then into my eyes and nose, down into my throat. I thought I would drown before Charon hoisted me out by my still-dry hand, dumping me into the Gondola, soaking wet, gasping for breath, and in agony.
“Oh, Charles, I’m so sorry. I never meant harm. It’s just this damned–”
“PLEASE! NO!” I hissed, gasping for air. Realizing why I was pleading, he nodded. “Yes, I… I am sorry.”
He rowed the rest of the way in silence, looking down as if he were embarrassed of himself. I tried not to be too angry at the poor guy – being alone for so long… it was unfathomable to me. On the other hand… freakin’ ow. It was hard not to be bad.
We finally glided to a stop on the far bank and he held a hand to help me up. “Thank you, Charles,” he said. “It’s been so long… it’s so nice to feel useful again.”
I shivered, feeling the insensibly cold water dripping down my body. The sympathetic part of me wanted to tell him, “Oh, that’s okay,” but the part of me that felt like a wet dog told the sympathetic part to shut the hell up. Instead, I settled on just muttering, “Thanks for the ride.”
“Oh, it was my pleasure! Remember, choose Charon for all your Styx-crossing needs.” He laughed at his own joke and I gave a weak grin, then turned to go. His voice stopped me. “Oh, Charles?”
“Yeah?” I looked back, not particularly interested in continuing this conversation.
“Are there any more like you back in the world of the living? Believers I can look forward to taking across the river? Parents, children, maybe a sick aunt suffering from dementia who has a tendency to wander onto archery ranges?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, Charon. I think the experiences that made a believer out of me are kind of unique.”
His face fell. “Ah, I see. Well, I thank you anyway.” He pushed off from the bank, the lantern on his boat fading away, and he drifted into the blackness. I turned my back on him and continued my journey alone.
Next: Chapter Nineteen — Hound Dog
Summer Love by Blake M. Petit is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.evertimerealms.com.
>>On the other hand… freakin’ ow. It was hard not to be bad. – mad?
>>“You have no idea who mind-bendingly dull it is here, Charles. – how
“has the wolf of the living changed as much as the land of the dead?” I don’t get it. The wolf?
Other than that, I LOVE the Charon character! I hope we see him again.
:sigh:
World. WORLD of the living.
Stupid spellcheck not catching real words…