Стивен Бойетт - Mortality Bridge

“You’re fuckin A, Jackson.” The man made longhorns with his fingers and whistled piercingly and then cupped his hands and shouted. “Yo Batman. Hey ugly. Cmere.” He put his hands on his hips. “He’s coming. Hey how the Yankees doing? Been in the series lately?”

“They lost.”

“Damn Yankees.”

Niko heard his demon splashing toward the shore. “What did you say to me?” his own approaching voice said.

Patchy Beard stopped with his yap half open as he recognized the demon’s voice and then the demon’s face. “Well put my dick in a blender. He’s fuckin ugly as you.”

Niko sidestepped and backed up until he stood before his demon and he craned his neck to look the waterlogged creature in the eye. His demon’s face was changed. The expression lacked the gleeful hostility and brooding menace hewn into cheek and brow and lip. More, his demon looked lost. Still frightening. Still powerful. But lost. “Do you remember who you are?” said Niko.

His demon’s look was unlike any Niko ever saw him wear. The pure befuddlement belied its very design. The demon slowly shook his head and Niko felt a little tug of pity. He sighed and walked past his demon’s burly shoulder, treading carefully on the ice, to open the passenger door. “Climb in,” he told the demon who did not know he was Niko’s demon.

“Whyyyy?” He sounded like a child.

“Because I can tell you who and what you are and why you can’t remember.” Niko smiled as he gestured for the demon to get in. “Trust me.”

NOW NIKO LISTENS to his passenger shiver and shift on the seat behind him. My demon. “Your name,” he tells the thrumming night unspooling there before him, “is Nikodemus.”

“Nikodemus.”

“Does that ring any bells?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Niko bites his lower lip and takes a deep breath and glances at the mason jar beside him. He doesn’t need to see the hairline crack, he feels it in his fissured heart. Is the feather’s glow a little dimmer? It seems to be. He gently lifts the jar and holds it out behind him without looking, left hand steady on the wheel. “Here. Careful with it.” He hopes he sounds less nervous than he feels.

Tendrils wrap the jar and take it from him. “What is it?”

“It’s somebody’s soul.”

Greenish shadows shift. “It’s broken.”

“It broke when we jumped the Lethe a few minutes ago and you fell in.”

“The Lethe.”

“It’s a river. The water causes amnesia.”

“I fell in?”

Niko nods. “It’s why you’re soaking wet.”

“I don’t remember falling in.”

“That’s because you fell in.”

“I’m cold.”

Niko adjusts the heater. “Better?”

A long pause. “You’re mortal?”

“Very.”

“I’m helping you?”

“You’ve been assigned to me. We’re like partners in a race. There’s a bet on whether we can get the jar to the gate. A lot of people are trying to stop us.”

A tendril taps the jar’s screwon cap. “Why don’t I just fly this to the gate?”

He is startled by the suggestion. But no. “There are conditions. I’m not allowed to look back, but you can. They can’t try to stop me but they’re allowed to try to stop you. You’d catch hell if you tried to make it out with that.” He glances toward the rearview to gauge Nikodemus’ reaction and once again is glad and frustrated at the mirror’s absence.

The demon actually scratches his head with a tendril as he concentrates. “Okay. Anything else?”

“If anything happens to the jar we’re screwed.”

Green light shifts. “But something’s already happened to the jar.”

“I think it’s still okay. Just don’t let it break.” The Franklin slurs on a wet patch and Niko nudges the wheel in the direction of the mild skid. The tires regain traction and the Franklin straightens out. “Any other questions?”

“What’s your name?”

Niko senses Nikodemus is distressed by the absence of what he feels should be there. Niko remembers the sensation well. He grips the steering wheel tighter. “Niko.”

“Niko.”

“Sound familiar?”

“No. It sounds like my name though. Are we friends?”

Niko frowns. “Well. We’ve known each other a long time. You kind of work for me.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Niko drives another mile with his mouth pressed tight. The darkness weighs around them with oceanic pressure. We do not drive across so much as tunnel through.

Finally he bangs the steering wheel. “Look,” he tells the hollow dark, “you don’t really work for me. We’re not partners. I made that up. I’m sorry.”

“Oh. What are we then?”

“You were assigned to me, but not for some bet. It was your job to lead me into temptation. To give me a nudge when I was wavering.”

“But now I’m helping you.”

“Apparently.”

“How come?”

“I don’t really know. I think you feel sorry for me.”

“Sorry for a mortal?”

“I don’t really know. I’m not sure you do either.”

“You could just be telling me all this too.”

“I could. But I could have not told you you’re my demon at all and you wouldn’t know any better.”

“How’d we end up in this, this situation?”

Niko barks a laugh and feels a sudden craving for a cigarette. He drives, and as he drives he talks to the advancing night that never tires of its own disgorgement. And for once he tells the dark the truth. And for once the darkness listens.

“SO THAT’S THE deal.” Niko’s throat is raspy and he wants a drink. Water, but he’d chug a double whiskey without a thought. He’s exhausted and his side is throbbing where his rib is fractured and the pain is probably all that’s keeping him awake by now. They’ve left behind the plain of ice and drive again upon the barren floor of Hell. Somewhere in the gloom a mountain rises, somewhere on its face a fallen god is chained. Far ahead a thin black thread has formed the flat horizon of the Ledge. Niko watches as it slowly thickens and he clears his throat. The heater’s off now. The windows are open and a hot and septic wind plays through the spacious car.

“And this is all true,” says Nikodemus.

Niko’s very aware his demon literally holds Jemma’s life in his—well, his tendrils. “Every damned word.”

“And if I go back they’ll obliterate me.”

“After they hurt you a lot for a long time, yeah. That’s what you said.”

Shadows shift as the jar is held up and turned about. “Will my memory come back?”

“Mine did. Eventually. I don’t think it’s gone, I think you just can’t get to it.” Now he sees the faint outlines of the ascending hills of the mounded dead fallen from the Ramp. The Meat Pie Mountains.

“Okay,” his demon finally says.

Niko frowns at the prow of the car plowing the dark. “Okay what?”

“Okay, I guess Nikodemus is an all right name.”

Tears sting Niko’s eyes. “Okay,” he says. As much to himself as to his darker version.

“So what do we do now?”

“Is anyone behind us?”

“Not a soul.”

“Okay then.” Niko takes a deep breath and yawns deeply and arches on the seat and stretches to his fingertips. He shakes his head and rubs his heavy eyelids. “Now we teach you how to drive a stick shift.”

HE WAS ROWING on Lake Arrowhead. The water red and the sky dark. From the bow Jemma grinned at him and said Pass me a bun, hon. Niko shipped oars and picked up the paper sack from the seat beside him. When he opened it something green and glowing flew out and disappeared into the sky. He smelled Jem’s perfume. He looked at Jem to ask her if she’d seen what just happened but Jem had turned into a husk. Her body collapsed as he watched. He knew he had to get her back to shore and get the green thing back into the sack but when he picked up oars again he saw there was no shore. Only bloodred water far as he could see. He called her name. Not to the empty Jemma suit that rippled like paper in the breeze but to the vacant air. He began to row without direction. Calling and calling her name.