Luckily, that doesn’t preclude conversations with myself as I follow him into a dip between two steep slopes. The valley is freezing in these dark shadows, temporarily distracting me from our tenacious trudge—until I’m stopped where I stand by a slam of blazing insight.
I lift my stare to Gio, who has thankfully waited up for me ahead. Even so, I suddenly understand all the reasonings for his incessant rushing.
The second I emerge from the tiny valley, onto the marsh that leads up to the shores of the river ahead, every tormented scream from the banks coalesces into a chorus of immutable misery. They join together to form just one line of shrieking sorrow.
“All hope abandon, ye who enter here!”
The chant is such an invasion, I swear I can taste it as well as hear it. I sway in place, fighting the onslaught. Gio isn’t so lucky. He’s knocked to the ground, doubled over as if kidney-punched in a bar fight.
At once, I sprint to his side. “You okay?”
He nods while finding his way back to his feet. “Nothing I wasn’t prepared for.”
Just like my moments back in the cemetery, I’m assured and unnerved at once. But maybe it’s a teaching moment too. Like him, I order every instinct in my being back to high alert—and command my brain to be ready for anything.
I’m able to accomplish that task as the screaming souls back off, perhaps convinced that their message has been delivered. Or perhaps by an edict from the boatsman waiting on the shore up ahead.
He’s a nameless gondolier. Except every step I take toward him, matched to the rising banging of my heartbeat, confirms that he’s not nameless at all.
If this place is anything like the hell I’ve already come to know on the page, I’m about to come face-to-face with Charon.
As Gio and I approach the shore, my curiosity has moved in to throb along with my nerves and awe. I’ve imagined this moment in my mind a thousand times or more. Now I’m truly living it. Taking in the captain’s eyes of fire and haggard beard, as long and red as an ancient Scottish laird’s. The ginger lengths on his head are interspersed with long braids fashioned around sets of teeth that chomp at empty air and eyeballs that dart around with vacant purpose. He’s wearing nothing but a low-slung kilt, its pattern made up of colors to match the sludge at our feet. Every inch of the hem is tattered beyond repair.
“That’s him, isn’t it? Charon?” I say it barely above a whisper, too scared I’m right.
Gio pushes me along with nervous energy. “Yes, that’s him. Now hurry, son.”
By the time we get to the slick waterside, the infamous boatman is clearing the path, beating back the souls clawing through the mud with the flat of his oar.
“Don’t look at them,” Charon dictates.
I wince, disturbed equally by the desperate beings reaching for us and his violence toward them. “Why not?”
“Because they know you’re not like the rest. They can smell it on you.”
Once that thought reaches full fruition in my mind, the crowd of futile souls and doomed angels presses in like I’m a cup of tasty Darjeeling, this time without the burly boatsman to beat them off. I slough them off my back and legs, but Gio’s begun a strident string of nonstop Italian. There’s enough of the filthier words for me to pick out what he’s getting at, but his panic isn’t what spikes mine all over again.
“Don’t hurt them!” I bellow at the incensed ginger who’s barreling back toward us, his oar raised again. But my appeal is unnecessary. The moaning wretches skitter away, leaving Gio and me alone in the middle of Charon’s brutish assessment.
“Well, well, well,” he drawls in his smoky semi-brogue. “Woe to you wicked spirits.”
“We’re not here for trouble,” Gio says breathlessly. “Just passage across the river.”
Charon thrusts down, giving his oar enough footing in the ground so he can lean on it. “Which I should grant to you two reprobates because…why?”
“We’ve got these.”
Gio steps up and extends his palm. In its center is not only the coin from the velvet box in his office, but another form of payment: an obolus in amazing condition. I have no idea where he got the ancient Greek silver in the hour between his place and the church, but I’m damn glad he pulled the necessary strings.
Charon snatches up the coins and quickly bites into them with pointy teeth, testing their authenticity.
“This is an agreeable start,” he grouses, as if meaning just the opposite.
Gio huffs. “A start? That obolus is worth thousands!”
“On earth maybe.” He holds up the coins, one in each hand, and they twinkle in the weak light from the dock lamp. “Two coins for two souls is usually a fair deal. But I can see as plainly as these coffin rockers that neither of you are average souls.”
“We’re asking for simple passage, not special treatment,” Gio argues. “The task for you is no greater. The journey no longer.”
Charon answers with a snide chuckle, his eyes fixed on the obolus now shimmering in his palm.
“A devious mortal should have a better mind about these things. Taking bribes from deserters isn’t exactly what I’m paid to do.”
Gio’s expression turns weary. I cut him off before he persists with his persuasion.
“If the coins are of no value to you, then give them back. We’ll find another way.”
Charon tears his gaze away from the coins, only to clutch them tightly in his palm. “I said no such thing. And mind you, there is no other way.”
I shrug, confident Charon’s already received all the payment he needs. His posturing is just wasting our time.
“Maybe there isn’t,” I say, not backing off from his scrutiny. “But maybe there is. Have you ever had anyone down here actually exploring the matter?”
The boatsman flares his nostrils and lunges a few inches at me. Gio steps to the middle of the fray, slamming his hands to our chests.
“Here, now!” he shouts. “We could stand here arguing about all of this a little longer, or you could accept this generous payment and we could all be on our way.”
“All right, then,” Charon snarls, already knowing he’s been outsmarted. At least for now. “All aboard with you miscreants,” he barks. “The sooner I’m done with your sickening swaggers on my river, the better.”
As we hustle toward the gangway, Gio stabs me with a new look over his shoulder. This time, the injection spreads warmth through my chest while I give myself an inner high-five. We’re really doing this now.
Just as Charon hoists the vessel’s sails—one big, one small—a warm wind flows down the river, filling them both. Despite that, the voyage feels slow. Just when the opposite shore feels close, it seems to scoot back by matching increments.
What is going on?
I don’t dwell on the frustration. I can’t. It’s wasted effort, and that’s the last thing I want or need right now. I walk to the boat’s rail and brace my elbows. Peering into the dark waters, my thoughts drift to Kara again. It feels like a million hours since Saturday night, when she and I were snuggling, watching the constellations from the Malibu sand.
What I wouldn’t give to know those moments now. To feel the soft rain against my extremities. To breathe in the salty air. To gaze up at the stars in their spectacular peace, their serene sparkle…