Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

Even so, he almost missed the path he wanted. It was so dark that he did not notice it at first. Then he moved along it and let his instincts feel for the egress.

The hobgoblin slid from the shadows inside the wreckage of the train. The car was turned on its side, windows shattered and metal walls torn like paper. Seats had been ripped from their moorings. Squire breathed through his mouth, prepared for the wretched stench of blood and death.

But all he could smell was smoke and dust.

Confused, he looked around the wreckage. It took a moment for him to realize what he was seeing. There were no bodies. None of flesh and blood, at least.

Medusa had turned the passengers to stone.

The crash had reduced them to rubble.

The River Styx did not crash and churn, no whitewater foamed its banks, yet it ran deeper than imaginable, fast and steady and inexorable in its strength. To attempt to swim its breadth would be foolhardy. Suicidal. And though Nigel Gull knew his soul was likely damned — whatever that really meant — he did not want to discover what would become of his spirit if his body was destroyed here in Hades’ realm. There was the additional complication of Eve. Hawkins carried the vampire over one shoulder. The man was stronger than he looked, but no one was strong enough to swim the Styx carrying one hundred and thirty odd pounds of dead weight.

They had to cross the Styx. And according to both myth and reality, there was only one way to do that.

"This is it, then, huh?" Jezebel asked.

Gull glanced at her. She looked so small, so young to him now, this teenaged girl who had left her whole world behind for him. He wanted to protect her. But there were other things he desired more.

"Yes, Jez. This is the Styx. It only gets worse from here. We’ve been descending all along, but once we cross the river it will not be a simple thing to get back." He fixed her in his gaze. "In truth, we may not come back at all."

A flicker of fear went across her face but it disappeared quickly. "If you’re going, Nigel, then so am I. What are we waiting for?"

Hawkins shifted Eve from one shoulder to the other, spreading out the burden of her weight, and took a step past them, nearer the river’s edge.

"Isn’t it obvious, love? The ferryman. We’re waiting on the ferryman."

Gull nodded. "Charon."

Jezebel glanced past him and she flinched with a sharp intake of breath and pointed out across the water. "That would be him?"

A trickle of dread ran down Nigel Gull’s back and he shivered, even as he turned to gaze out over the river. In his long life the twisted mage had seen extraordinary things, impossible things. Hideous and terrifying things. They were in the Underworld, now and were about to cross into the land of the dead. Yet the sight of that small craft skimming across the top of the river gave him a chill that made him feel very small, as though he were a child again.

This was no nameless demon, no Slavic bogeyman, no trickster spirit. This was Charon, a figure unique in myth. Not a god, not a man. Not a monster or a demon. Simply Charon, who carried the spirits of the dead to a land of endless nothing, a place of waiting, where waiting was the only destiny, and at the end there was only more waiting. Gull had always envisioned this ancient vision of Hell, left over from the Second Age of Man, as an asylum filled with muttering, ghostly madmen, their eyes darting to follow imaginary pests, their bodies rapt with anticipation of something, anything, that might happen next.

But there would never be a next.

Not on the other side of the Styx.

The fabric of human faith had created entirely new Hells, new spirit destinations, in this Third Age of Man. Gull had reasoned that very few crossed the river anymore.

Yet Charon frightened him. That eternal asylum frightened him.

The ceiling of the cavern was so high above it was lost to sight, and though there clearly was no sky there, no sun, still a strange illumination cast a dim gray light upon the river and its banks.

The boat moved swiftly toward shore. Gull felt he could not breathe and both of his companions seemed equally unsettled. Hanging from the prow of the boat was a lantern whose jaundiced light shone upon the surface of that perhaps bottomless river. The current ran swift and deep and yet the narrow launch was uninfluenced by its power. No sway or eddy nudged that vessel from its course.

In the rear of the craft stood a solitary figure in dark robes the color of river silt. If the ferryman had hands, they were lost within those robes and whatever grim countenance might be hidden beneath his voluminous hood, there was only darkness.

So entranced was Gull by the ferryman’s progress that when the prow of the boat lightly touched the riverbank he flinched away as though he had been slapped. Jezebel watched him, gnawing her lower lip and twirling a lock of her hair in her fingers. Hawkins dumped Eve’s inert body on the shore, her arms flopping onto the damp black soil. The vampire’s eyes were wide and unseeing, but a glimpse of her heartened Gull’s resolve. He thought of all the planning that had gone into this excursion.

He thought of Medusa.

Gull brought up a hand and ran the pads of his fingers lightly over the contortions of his face.

He turned toward the ferryman and though a thin tendril of his dread remained, he ignored it.

"Charon, will you carry us?" Gull asked, and the river seemed to swallow his voice.

The ferryman was perhaps twenty feet away. Even this close no trace of a face could be seen beneath his hood. Charon was entirely still — as frozen in place as his craft — master and vessel unmoved by ticking seconds or by the rush of the unfathomable river. It was as though they had ceased to exist for him and Gull watched him for any sign of recognition. Even so, when it came he was startled.

Charon extended his right hand, palm up. The skin was gray, colorless, and as dry as parchment. There seemed on that flesh the seared imprints of a thousand thousand coins, the images on that currency pressed into the ferryman’s very substance.

Gull hesitated.

The ferryman beckoned with his spindly fingers.

They were not dead. Not yet spirits. But apparently he was willing to deliver them to their destination. Perhaps with so few passengers Charon was not as discerning as he might once have been. Or perhaps the laws that governed this realm had withered away, just as the faith in old myths had, all of them losing their power.

"What are you waiting for?" Hawkins whispered.

Gull had never heard him afraid before. He glanced at the Englishman, saw Hawkins lick his lips. The man’s hands were shaking. Gull nodded twice. They were his people, Hawkins and Jezebel. His agents. He had brought them here. He was the catalyst for everything that was happening, everything that would happen.

Jezebel came up beside Gull and slid her hand into his as though seeking protection. There was ice on her fingers. "Don’t you still have the coin?"

"I have it," Gull said.

His throat was dry as he pulled the silver coin from his pocket. It had been struck in Mycenae in 1404 B.C. and bore the face of a ruler whose name had long since been lost to antiquity. Gull strode to the riverbank, hesitated a moment, and then waded in up to his knees. The water dragged at him and he could feel it leeching vitality from him. He felt unsteady on his feet, and not merely from the powerful pull of the current.

He placed the coin in Charon’s hand. The ferryman inclined his head, hood draping low, then that parchment hand disappeared once more within his robes. Charon once more gazed at Gull, or so it appeared, though it was impossible to know for certain when his eyes were lost in shadow.

The ferryman extended his hand again, palm up, thin fingers scratching the air, demanding.