And then I’d repeat the process, until some ten pages later I could feel the road underneath me touching the City’s streets.
Alicia kept the truck running while I worked. I’d taken her on short trips through the City as an apprentice, so she knew the process. She added bits of my writing to the truck’s front and back, anchoring it to me and through me to the road. When I hopped into the passenger seat, the Jester was lounging in the truck’s bed, waiting for the ride to begin. He gave me a thumbs up and lay back, hand under his head.
I wanted to blame him. I wanted to lay everything on his grotesque, smiling face. But none of this was his fault. I’d given Bill the tools to break how the world worked. The Jester was just another consequence of my pride and carelessness.
“You ready?” Alicia revved the engine, eyes fixed forward.
“Yes.” I stowed my typewriter in my backpack and pulled out a box of pre-written haiku.
“Will you need them?” Parking brake set, she spun the tires until smoke billowed behind us.
“I hope not. But just in case.” I laid the box in my lap. “Punch it.”
Alicia dropped the brake. The Ford surged forward, roaring. At the end of my typewritten onramp, the green countryside of rural Maryland gave way to a kaleidoscopic cityscape. Buildings—from massive skyscrapers to mud huts—grew and shrank alongside us. The road shifted from advanced solar highway to simple beaten dirt track and back again every time the wheels spun.
We were in the City with a day’s worth of driving ahead of us. I crossed my fingers, and hoped no one would notice one lonely truck on the road west.
* * *
We were just short of Van Nuys when the wraiths swarmed us.
Moments before, Alicia and I were talking like friends again. She hadn’t quite forgiven me, but the constant rumbling of the truck crossing an infinite variety of road surfaces only added to the silence in the cab. So she asked me: “Did I do something wrong with him? When he was my apprentice?”
“What? No, God, no.” I sat up. “Alicia, you were a better mentor than I ever was. You gave him a chance to see the world, meet people, and find a home. You taught Bill so much. All I ever did was put you in constant danger just so I could write my damn guidebooks.”
“What’s a little danger to the dead? No, I’m glad you found me and pulled my shroud off. I would have driven any other mentor crazy.” And then she smiled. “Like that one guy in Boulder City? Crazy feet?”
“Jeez. Haven’t thought of him in years. Is he still there?” The conversation spun on like that for hours, until we saw a tiny disc of California sun ahead, showing the way out. The City began to resemble Van Nuys. Buildings flattened out. Houses went from dark brick to light beige, with Spanish tile roofs. We were almost there.
And then the Jester pounded on the back window. We yelped. I turned around and saw him pointing to the buildings on our left. Gray figures darted across the manicured lawns, office parking lots, and hotel railings.
“Shit. Drive faster.” Alicia caught sight of the figures and floored it. The City’s wraiths had found us.
Like us, they were dead. But unlike a phantom, wraiths carry a deeply human anger into the afterworld. They are so hung up on their deaths, and the bitter memories they harbored, that they became ravenous for life. Any life.
Alicia kept her speed up. The wraiths threw themselves in front of the truck, a swarm of sentient locusts. Every one bore horrifying scars—broken faces, gutted bellies, shattered limbs—and from those wounds sprang ghastly features. Empty eye sockets sprouted barracudas. Hands became the rancid beaks of scavenger birds. The wraiths clawed at the truck, holding on even as the tires splattered their bodies along the road.
I grabbed a handful of typewritten pages from the box, folded them into strips, and held them like throwing knives. Every one carried three haiku. My breeching charges became anti-personnel mines. I opened the back window and slid out into the truck’s bed.
The Jester waved. A wraith snapped at him with a set of alligator jaws spilling from its crotch. He ducked. His assailant, unbalanced, fell over the side. It hit the road with a wet splat. The Jester raised his hands and offered me the rest of the wraiths.
“Thanks a fuckload.” I threw haiku bombs at the angry dead. The pages knew their purpose. They plunged into wraith skulls, one after another. The wraiths howled and tore at their faces. My words burning them, they leapt for the safety of the City’s shadows.
“C’mon Alicia. I’m not a haiku machine!” Another handful of wraiths fell, faces disintegrating
“It’s a fucking truck, not a super car!” She tried to power through the swarm, but every wraith Alicia hit slowed us down.
For the second time in the space of minutes, I was happy the Jester was there. When the last of my haiku bombs cracked a wraith’s face in half, he took over. The Jester sent wraiths off the truck with flicks of a finger. I may call them locusts, but to Death’s Jester, they were literal insects.
“Almost there!” Alicia pounded the truck’s roof. The end of the road, Bill’s old house, shined like a stained glass window. She howled, as if her voice would push the truck further. I kicked a wraith from the cab. The Jester dusted off his suit and sat down once again.
When the truck hit the gateway, the last of the wraiths dissolved into a howling wind of blood and bone. Behind us, the door to the City closed, pulling the wraith remnants with it. Alicia slammed on the brakes. We skidded into the driveway of Bill’s old home.
I hugged Alicia through the open window, laughing like an idiot. “Welcome to California…”
* * *
Bill’s old house looked like an advertisement for Southern California living. A split level home resting on a small hill, it had two garages and a side parking lot—a shrine to the American automobile. A red tile roof, now faded from years under the sun, topped the beige stucco walls.
For all the visual warmth, the air was blisteringly cold. Thin films of ice grew over the house windows. Frost collected on our clothes. The normal numbness in my fingertips crawled up my arms. Even the Jester shivered when the wind picked up.
“Fuck.” Alicia pulled our backpacks from the cab. She threw me mine. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
I nodded. “Inside. Quick.”
We phased easily. Bill was in the living room, seated on a black office chair. A mandala of photographs surrounded him. Each picture was carefully arranged and annotated. Bill was shirtless, so cutting himself open and bleeding on the photos was easier. Phantom blood—thick as printer ink and just as black—trailed in a circle around him. It wept from dozens of hateful words cut directly into his skin.
“Hey, Alicia.” Bill waved. Blood dripped down his hand like wax on a candle. “Guessed you’d be coming after me, but I figured you’d be too late. I forgot about Trish, though. Hi, Trish.” He smiled an exhausted smile. “I’d have finished days ago but it was hard to find the chair.”
“Bill. Please—” Alicia stepped forward, but Bill whipped a line of blood into the air. It sizzled and boiled when it hit the edge of the circle.
“Sorry. This is a private dance.” Bill laughed when the Jester stepped past us and sat on the couch. “He’s here, too?”
“Of course he’s here,” I said. “Bill, please, this won’t work.”
“Yeah, it will. I found the key. It’s the chair. I need this specific one.” He looked to Alicia. “You know how I died?”
“You said it was an accident.”
“Yeah. In this chair. A manufacturer’s defect. Daniel was at a ‘conference’ in Hedonism II. He thought I didn’t know. So I sat down, started to write him how I felt. And I leaned back. Boom!” He laughed, wiping bloody tears from his cheeks. “The cylinder exploded. Drove a sliver of metal into my spine and killed me, instantly. Well, sort of killed me. I just need to finish the job.”
“Bill, please.” Alicia knelt on the floor. “Why? Just tell me”
“I can tell you. He couldn’t let it
go.” Bill blinked when I spoke up. “The fact Daniel kept cheating on you, over and over, and you never got a chance to say anything. At most, what, he read your half-finished letter? That wasn’t enough, was it? It lingered with you.”
And then he laughed. He laughed, shook his head, and said, “Nope. Well, half-nope. Yeah, I couldn’t get over it. I knew Daniel was living two lives. I saw the club membership bills. I knew the extra days on the road were spent swinging with his friends. I knew all of it. But I said nothing.”
“No one wants to believe they’re being cheated on—” said Alicia.
“No, no! I didn’t care about that! The thing that hurt was Daniel never asked me if I wanted to join him. And I never got up the guts to tell him I knew, and I wanted to be there with him.” Now the tears outpaced the blood on his face. As he wept, the ice on the windows cracked. “We said nothing. I said nothing. Years of missed opportunities. And that’s why I’m here.
“You were wrong.” Bill jabbed the knife right towards me. “That first guidebook you wrote. What was the first line? ‘Life is wasted on the living?’ No. Not the living. Us.”
Bill jabbed the knife into his palm with every word. “Life was wasted on us. On phantoms like us. That’s why we’re here, aren’t we? We wasted our lives and this is our punishment. We subsist on memories and suffer, while the rest of the world lives.”
“Bill…” Alicia pleaded. By now, only the Jester wasn’t crying. Every time Bill hurt himself, the windows and doors shuddered. My skull ached. It felt like a tornado drawing close, about to rend the house to pieces. The sound system kicked on and dialed itself to an old tune. I knew it: John Coltrane and Duke Ellington playing “In a Sentimental Mood.”
“It’s too late.” He spun in the chair. Blood dripped from the red words in his arms. It spiraled about his feet. “She’s here.”
The door opened. The Jester stood up and doffed his hat, bowing like the gentleman he pretended to be.
The Dancer had arrived.
* * *
My descriptions of the Dancer had all been second-hand. While writing my guides for phantoms, I met only one person who had seen her. At first, I thought he was exaggerating. But I was very, very wrong.
Death’s Dancer was painfully beautiful. She wore a bandeau-style dress. The silken fabric, rose petal red, flowed around her like splashes of water frozen in time. A sheer scarf, sparkles woven into the fabric, covered her bare shoulders. Frost spread from her bare feet when she took a step.
The Dancer also wore a mask, but it was night black and Venetian in design. Tiny crystals, bright as ice, spread from the mask’s eyes in a damask pattern. They matched the jewels in her wavy black hair.
Bill sobbed. He held out his bloody hands to her. The rivers of inky life around him spun like leaves in the wind. They rose and circled him. Drops drifted up towards the ceiling. Physics gave everything a pass because it was distracted by the Dancer.
She reached out her hand.
“No!” Alicia dived for the Dancer. I grabbed her…and so did the Jester. He held onto her shoulder, smiling mask now nothing but compassion. He put a finger to his mouth, whispered “Shhh.”
“Please…” Bill sniffed, wiping his nose with a gore-streaked hand. “Please.”
“No.” The Dancer reached up and touched one of the droplets of Bill’s blood. It froze; a floating chip of onyx. All the other droplets followed suit. One by one, they fell. Not onto the floor. They all fell back onto Bill’s skin and into his wounds and through his veins. The blood he spilled for her was returned. And when the last drop vanished, she faced him.
“You have other dances on your card. So many other dances.” She wiped away his tears and drew him out of the circle. “Our dance is yet to come.”
“Then why did you come?” I shook, hands bound into fists, and growled at the dancer. “Why bother with any of this if you were just going to say no?”
“Because he needed to know Daniel wasn’t his only real dance. And he wouldn’t believe it from anyone else.” As she spoke, the Dancer took the Jester’s hand in hers.
“And because she needed to stop blaming herself.” Now the Jester spoke, voice low and resonant. “Teachers are not responsible for every choice their students make.”
“You, though…” The Dancer looked right at me. “You stopped the dance.” The sound system went quiet. Ellington and Coltrane vanished with a squeal.
“You do not get to be careless with your words.” The Jester’s mask cracked, and shifted. The smile contorted into a deep frown. “You should know better. You need to do better. And you would not have believed it from anyone else.”
“Now, go back to your dances, and leave us to ours.” The frost under the Dancer’s feet grew, stretching out over floor and furniture, crawling up the walls until the living room became a ballroom cut from ice. The Jester took the Dancer in his arms, a smile returning to his mask. The sound system, now clear as crystal, sprang to life. Leonard Cohen crooned “Dance Me to the End of Love.”
“After all,” said the Jester. “Not everyone gets a second turn on the dance floor.”
I could set my watch to their steps. They were precise, but never mechanical. There was nothing but comfort and love here. The Dancer and the Jester knew this waltz well and adored dancing it together.
We piled our coats onto Bill, helped him off the floor, and took him out into the sun.
* * *
“So, what do I do now?” Bill sat on the truck’s tailgate, Alicia’s coat draped over his shoulders.
“Same thing as the rest of us.” I looked back at his old house, now completely covered in ice. “Live. And learn. You were right. Life was wasted on us, and we knew it. But we got lucky. Someone gave us a second turn on the dance floor. We can’t waste it this time.”
“So let’s dance.” Alicia looked round her. “We’re in Van Nuys, aren’t we? Let’s crash a porn shoot. One of the parody ones! They’re still filming those, right?”
“Or we can go to Deep Creek.” I rubbed my hands together. “It’s a clothing optional hot spring, just outside Los Angeles. Nude hikers by the ton—”
“How about I just start by heading home?” Bill ducked his head. “Seeing if Simon will forgive me a little?”
Alicia nodded. “Sure. Let’s get you home first. You can decide what you want to do from there.” She stopped and looked at the page of my writing still taped to the truck’s bumper. “Um, shall we take the short cut?”
I reached down and tore the page off, crumpling it into a tight ball. That was all the answer they needed.
“The ghost roads it is,” said Alicia, and hopped into the driver’s seat. Bill let me get into the jump seat before taking shotgun. I lay back with my backpack—typewriter, paper, and all—held close like a dance partner.
“It’ll take a while.” Bill buckled in, glancing back at me.
“What’s the good of being dead if you rush everywhere?” The truck rumbled to life, pulling out of the frozen driveway. I closed my eyes, listening as the music faded into the distance. “We have time. Let’s enjoy the dance while we can.”
…For Leonard. Hallelujah…
THE FALLOW GRAVE OF DREAM
Jim C. Hines
Every birth casts a chain about Death, an obligation and a promise. For some that chain stretches a century; others receive but a single link, ephemeral as moonlight on a pond. The fragility of new life calls to Death like the Earth pulls the moon.
At your birth, as you linger on the boundary of death, so too does Death linger. Not because this is your time—Death knows, even if your parents and the doctors don’t. Something else holds Death’s fascination. Not pity. Potential, perhaps. A grain of stolen power. Kinship.
Sterile hands hurry you from your mother to a place of piercing lights and razor-edged sound. You’re isolated from human contact, nourished instead by plastic tubes and stiff wires. While other infants nurse at their mothers’ breasts, you stretch your deformed limbs tow
ard Death, suckling that mote of power.
Doctors whisper words like ataxia and skeletal malformation and febrile seizures. You wave a hand as if to collect the sounds from the air. Death watches in silence as your stiff, flailing movements brush death across your parents’ dreams. Over visions of smiles and laughter and perfection, you paint stick limbs and misshapen features.
You’re too new, too distracted by bright lights and the pinching of needles and the flutter of idly passing dreams. Your power is as fragile as your infant bones. And so your parents repaint their dreams with defiance and hope. You are theirs, and they will care for you. They will fix you.
But Death recognizes and names you, giving your power form and purpose. Cold, dry air carries a whisper, unheard by any other.
You shall be the Death of Dreams.
* * *
If you are a painter, your parents are crude sculptors. Month after month, you endure their hammers and chisels. Surgeons carve your young bones into new shapes and emboss scars into your soft skin. Metal braces stretch and reform your limbs. Sickly-sweet medicine replaces mother’s milk.
You’re four years old when you walk for the first time. Butterfly stickers decorate the aluminum bars of your tiny walker. Each clumsy step across the living room strains your tight, fragile muscles. You know nothing but determination to reach your parents’ outstretched arms.
When you succeed, you sound your triumphant yawp and collapse against them, giggling. In those moments, your family is one in pride and triumph and hope…
Their hope soon turns to a flood that threatens to drown you. Their dreams grow stronger, smothering you like dirt and clay. Gone are nights of sitting together, marveling at the glowing fireflies beyond the windows. Gone are days of collecting fallen leaves for your room, decorating in red and yellow and brown. Each day the hammers strike harder, the chisels drive deeper. The more they wring your body, the more tears you shed.