Page 6

ARRIVING AT A SMALL HOMESTEAD along a lazy creek, Abyss slowed, then stopped, flicking his tail as a few flies found him. The day was warm and humid, and the small farmhouse cast off an aura of immense sorrow. On the front porch, sitting beside a small rocking horse made of dark cherry wood, sat Hamiel. His gold eyes found me as the carriage stopped. He looked downcast. I slid from the carriage, not bothering to tie the reins. Abyss would not venture far hitched to the carriage as he was. Also, he knew his job well and would wait until the judged one was in the brougham. For now, he was content to pull long wildflowers from the lawn.

It was distressing how happy I was to see that slim, flaxen-haired man in white. Something had to be wrong with me. Coveting someone while your heart is promised to another is surely a sin. Pastor Colfax would say that lying with a member of the same sex was an even greater sin, but I could find no reason to claim that affection for another could ever be wrong.

“Good day, Hamiel,” I called as I walked over to him, taking care to avoid stepping on the small, hand-carved wooden soldiers on the steps. I removed my hat and gave him a short bow as a gentleman in my attire would. I’d not had such fine clothes before. Even though I was still just a hulking stable hand, I felt more like a dandy with my duster and top hat. “You seem reserved today. Are you unwell?”

He exhaled slowly, his eyes damp. “A child lies within.”

My sight flew to the closed door. No wonder the home was cloaked in misery. “Is the child ill?”

“No, it was an accident. He simply fell from a tree.” Hamiel sighed.

“May I sit with you as we wait?” I asked and got a nod. Even his bouncy curls seemed melancholy. “It is a terrible tragedy for any child to leave this world. I am sure you will be escorting the young lad into the arms of the Lord.”

“Yes, I am sure of that. He said let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.”

I nodded, rubbing the brim of my hat with my fingers, elbows on my knees. “Your knowledge of scripture is impressive. I must confess I paid little heed to the sermons I was forced to attend every Sunday. Were you a pious man in your previous life?”

“I do not know,” he said as he stared down at his tidy boots.

“Oh forgive me. I forgot.” I glanced out at the yard at the clothes on the line and felt great sorrow for the parents inside this small home. They woke today assuming it would be a day like any other. And now it was one of the darkest. There was no knowledge of when one would ride with the coachman or be escorted skyward by a fair man with alabaster skin. “Perhaps it is crude of me to say this, but it seems most cruel to strip a person of their fondest memories.”

He peeked at me around a wayward curl. “I’m not sure I find it cruel. What is crueler? Not recalling those you left behind or mourning their loss daily for eternity?”

“Hmm.” I flicked my gaze to a grasshopper resting on a blade of grass. “I never thought of it that way. I see your point. In truth, I do wish I could forget some of my past. The way I died. The people I left behind that are mourning me.”

“Was your death particularly horrid?” he asked in a soft voice as a bluebird sang from a fence post. How peculiar it was to witness the world moving on as it would for all but those cloistered inside this small home.

I nodded. “I have terrible visions of a fire engulfing me at the stable where I worked. They are vivid, and so, I must assume they are not just random frights in the night but recollections of my passing.”

He touched my arm. Just a pat of comfort, but it seared through several sleeves to send a rush of solace and heat throughout my body. The sensation was unlike anything I had ever felt, and it startled me so much that I jerked my arm in response. Hamiel pulled his hand back instantly.

“I’m sorry. That was incredibly forward of me. I meant no disrespect, of course. It was a gesture of comfort, nothing more,” he rushed to say, cheeks glowing pink.

“It was me, truly,” I rushed to explain my gaffe. “Your touch was most consoling. I was just…it was unexpected is all. Do all rainbow walkers possess a healing touch?”

He stared at me in confusion over the top of his spectacles. “No, we do not have any special healing powers. Only those who have wings possess palliative skills. Why do you ask?”

My fingers still vibrated from his touch as did other parts of my body. I shot to my boots, babbling about my hand going pins and needles. Shaking my arm did little. The low burn in my abdomen could not be erased by pacing either, I quickly found out. As I walked, I blathered nervously, hat in hand, toy soldiers scattered as if someone had bowled them over. I wished not to think about how or why they were kicked aside.

“What do you know of dreams?” I asked as he watched me with curious amber eyes, the rustling wind pushing his hair into his face. He thumbed a curl from his eye.

“Oh. Well, a goodly deal. I’ve read up on such things. Dreams are used by heavenly beings as a way of communication. Take the stories of Daniel and Joseph. Do you think that your dreams are the Almighty speaking to you?”

“No, no, I doubt that he would be communicating with a servant of Lucifer.” I pushed my hand through my lank hair. I needed a bath badly. If my servant isn’t a pile of ash forever, I could try to persuade him to heat some water and find a tub sizable enough to hold me.

“Mm, yes, maybe not, although your position does not preclude you from being saved once your tenure as the coachman is completed.”

I stopped cold. His eyes flared as I stared down at him. “This you know to be fact?”

His pale cheeks reddened. “Well, no, it’s conjecture.” My sigh was long. He quickly reverted to dream talk. “I do recall seeing some other material in the heavenly library that dealt with dreams and their meanings. Mayhap you are revisiting your death in your sleep to try to clarify the reason for your demise.”

Abyss snorted to my left, his tail swishing lazily at several flies attempting to bite his backside.

“What do you mean exactly?” I returned to the porch to sit at his side.

“For instance, the Greeks and Romans believed that dreams could give us information about the past, present, and future. Quite a few American Indian tribes considered the dream space to be sacred grounds where a mortal could escape the boundaries of our everyday lives and reach out to interconnect with the consciousness of the universe.”

I could not look away from him. He was excited now, the pallor he’d been draped in when I arrived lifting as he chattered about dreams and portents.

“So, you think that I may be able to plumb my dreams to discover how it was I came to be locked in the tack room?” I chanced and got a brisk nod.

“Yes, well, it could offer a clue.” He seemed to drift for a moment. “You know, I could try to sneak a peek at the book of lives. Just to see if it lists anything about your passing that might help you in your search for answers.”

“Would that be allowed? Might you get in trouble if you’re caught?”

He smiled, just a little, and it lit up the porch just like someone had put a match to a torch.

“There are no set rules about who may peek at the book of lives. Yes, Saint Peter may become cross if he catches me, but I’m always nearby, handing off those that I help cross over…” One of his slim shoulders lifted.

“But that is…I don’t wish for you to get yourself into trouble over some sinner’s nightmares.”

Again, his hand landed on my forearm. I did not jerk my arm away this time. Instead, I let the warmth suffuse me.

“You are not a sinner. And even if you were, which I do not think you are for your dark eyes are soft with caring, there is always redemption. Luke said there would be more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people.”

I dropped my hat to place my hand over his. Our gazes met and held for a long moment.

“Thank you, Hamiel. For being a kind person.”

“You’re very easy to be kind to.”

The door opened behind us, a creaky hinge announcing the arrival of a recently departed. We’d been so caught up in each other we’d not sensed the child passing. We both rose quickly as the little boy slipped outside, his sight going back to his home. The soft wail of grieving parents floated out the open window. I stepped down to the grass, hat in hand, and watched in silence as Hamiel took the child’s small hand in his.

“Have no fear, child, for your days will be forever filled with sunlight and games from here on,” he softly said. Then, with one last look at me, he turned to lead the boy into a fat beam of sunshine.

“Mama says Pap-Pap will be there to greet me. Is that so?” the boy in raggedy slacks and a loose homespun shirt asked.

“I am sure it will be so,” Hamiel assured the frightened lad.

I watched until they were naught but sparkling bits of light that danced on the warm wind like dragonflies, then wept for the little boy, his family, and the life that had just started. What a pity. I had at least lived for close to thirty years before my end.

Heat erupted in my chest. I closed my eyes, scrubbed at my face, and then opened them to look back at Abyss. Another summons. Another judgment to be made. Another ride into the fires. My job was rather terrible…

During my days on Earth, I had been considered a rather kind soul.

Many people who came into the stables commented to Uncle Norman that his nephew was a good boy with proper manners. As I grew, I felt myself to be a conscientious man who thought the best of people for the most part. Aunt Hester had been a great influence in my temperament, I was sure, or mayhap a man was born with his personality already intact. I read a good deal despite my great uncle’s dislike of books and had never seen any solid reply as to what crafted a man—or a woman—into the adult they grew into. Nature or nurture. Who could say? What I could say with some certainty is that some people were miserable. Most while alive, some even after death. Of the dozen or so passengers that I had ferried to the brimstone realm, the majority had been contrite. They now saw what their earthly aggressions had wrought. They wept, they wailed, and they wheedled. One man, a wealthy bookbinder, offered me a hundred ten-dollar U.S. mint gold coins to return him to his mansion in Boston. I’d snickered at the offer. As if tipping Lucifer’s coachman would help his cause. He cursed me as he was hauled off to the pits, but not once in his diatribe and blandishing did he ever once ask for forgiveness of his sins.

Even that man, with his blustering ways, did not hold a candle to the threesome stuffed into my carriage at the moment. Three souls who bickered endlessly amongst themselves. The man had married two women. When both women discovered his perfidy, they attacked each other in a marketplace. The husband tried to intervene, but they all stabbed each other to death in front of a fisherman’s stall in Newburyport. When I arrived, their judgment had been served, and they were waiting for me to take them from where they had fallen.

Judgment went quickly in certain circumstances, it seemed.

The bickering and name-calling were so severe I was overjoyed to ride through that flaming portal. No, that is a lie. I was not overjoyed at all. The flames rushing up to swallow me made me feel sick to my stomach, but the slowing of the carriage was a blessing.

I bounded from the brougham before it had completely stopped. Abyss whinnied as he flicked his ears.

“They make my ears hurt as well,” I told him as I threw open the door. The pallor of green light fell over me as they continued to fight, scratch, and punch each other. They reminded me of a traveling puppet show that had visited Avers Mill when I was younger. “Your ride is over. Please exit the carriage.”

They flung vile words at me. With a sigh, I stepped back, folded my arms, and watched the winged demons descend. My shirt collar was damp and dirty. The threesome was ripped from the carriage, their shouts at each other fading away as the nether harpies toted them off.

I caught the wings of a large crow in my peripheral. Malphus transformed several dozen feet away from Abyss, taking a moment to run his hands over his day suit as small black pin feathers rode the hot, dry currents.

“I see that your entrance to our world no longer requires smelling salts and a fainting sofa,” he tossed out in that raspy voice that grated along my marrow. It was an unholy timbre.

“Surely making a servant who passed in a fire ride through flames to finish his route is beyond cruel,” I snapped, taking off my hat to slap it on my thigh to remove the road dirt.

“Coachman, what realm do you think you serve? Would you prefer kittens scampering about your boots and tiny golden cakes for you to nibble on when your ride is complete?” His smile was malevolent.

“You are a hateful soul,” I growled. He wet his index finger and ran it over his left eyebrow.

“Thank you,” he purred, the sound making the damp hairs on the back of my neck rise. “You have a need to discipline your servant when you return to your hovel.”

“So he is alive?” I was oddly happy to hear that. The dark lord’s second nodded. A piercing scream floated by us, a sound that was, morosely, far too common here.

“He is a demon. He cannot die unless he is ground under the foot of Lucifer. Though he can be punished, and I expect you to whip him severely for his foolish attempt to leave purgatory on your carriage.” I glanced at the empty glass jar on the seat. I’d drank it down several hours ago to quiet my riotous gut. “If you do not get the tiny bastard under control, I will be forced to do so. I dislike dirtying my hands or feet as it were, so I leave his punishment in your hands.”

“I’ll speak to him,” I ground out as a geyser of dark smoke shot into the sky several hundred feet away. Mottled faces in the smoke twisted and cried out silently as the eruption spewed the condemned skyward. “He was with me only to hunt for rabbits. In case it has escaped your notice, I am moribund. I require food to survive.”

He stopped picking at his lapel to level a flat look at me down his beak-like nose. “You ride the earthly realm day in and out. Take what you need from the humans.”

I shoved my hat back onto my head. “You expect me to steal from people?”

He huffed in exasperation. “Livingstone, you are not planning to cling to your shaky morals now that you’re in our employ, are you?”

I was slightly shocked that he had used my name. “Your predecessors had no qualms about taking what they wished from the earthly realm. Food, drink, women, men. You are a condemned soul, locked into a contract with our Lord, the dark one. There is no redemption for you, so why shackle yourself to those ancient tenets?” He gave me a lascivious wink. “We know what you did in the hay mound with the mayor’s son. Your pretense of being sinless is stained already, so why cling to the ways of the pious unless you plan on taking vows of chastity, poverty, and silence to make your acclimation even more painful?”

My mouth fell open. Shame coursed through me. They knew of my trysts with Theo. Then it occurred to me. Of course they knew. I knew not who sat on the judgment counsel, but whomever it was certainly read over every sin committed while the dying was alive. But I was not here based on a deathbed adjudication. I was here to fulfill a promise my father had made, or so this vile beast had said.

“I care not what you know about who I bedded.” Malphus tittered like a drunken strumpet. “I serve you and your Lord only because of a supposed deal between my father and the prince of darkness. My sins are mine to carry. What I need from you is clarification as to this reputed deal. My father was a doctor, and my mother was a nurse at his side. They were good, caring people. Your lies about his giving up his only son to Old Scratch only serve to show what a cowardly creature you are!”

His eyes flared. In the space of a blink, he was before me, his hideous breath in my face, his long fingers around my neck. My feet left the ground as he raised me into the air, the calls of the winged demons all around us. I clawed at his hand, unable to draw in a breath, my toes above the rocky soil.

“You speak with no knowledge of me, this realm, or the dealings of our master. Our master. You are his, Coachman, for as long as he bids. So, I suggest you temper your mouth, take your servant into hand, forget the sniveling sermons from your past, and tend to your duty lest I tire of your prattling and find a new coachman to tend to the ingrates who flow in through our gates.”

“Kill me then and let your Lord find another,” I wheezed. His brows knitted. With a snarl, he flung me to the dirt, my head connecting with the side of the carriage with a sharp crack.

“You think of yourself as above us, but you are not so mighty as you think.” He flung his hand out at me. I braced for an explosion of hell fire but all that hit me were coins. Gold coins. Several dozen of them. They lay on my legs glimmering softly. “Take the coins. Leave them for the humans when you take provisions if doing so assuages your tender guilt.”

“What of my questions about my father?” I snarled as I ran a hand over the back of my head. No blood, but a goose egg was forming already.

His lips curled into a wicked smile as his arms began to feather. “Make an appointment with Lucifer. I’m sure he’d love to have you in for tea.” He laughed as he took to air, the cackle turning into a throaty caw when his body finished the transformation.

I glowered at him until he was but a dot above the far-off castle. “I shall knock on Satan’s door someday…maybe,” I mumbled as I gathered up the coins like a beggar. When my coat pockets were full of more cash than I had ever seen in my life, I picked up my hat and climbed into the carriage. The brougham hummed at me as I settled my ass to my hard seat. Abyss looked back at me, his white eyes curious.

“Let us venture to the nearest town for food,” I called as I snapped the reins. Knowing what was to come, I forced my eyes to remain open as we barreled through the fires, a scream held tightly in my chest. I would not give Malphus the pleasure of hearing me cry out in fear. I would choke on it first. And nearly did as we left the realm of the damned behind to pilfer from hard-working people. Since they could not see me, buying outright was impossible. Instead, I took what I needed from closed stalls or butcher shops and bakeries. I crept into springhouses, taking milk and butter, leaving coins where crocks of fresh butter, buns, or hanks of ham once hung.

With the inside of the carriage seat filled, and my pockets lighter, we went home. The rush of the wind in my face made my eyes water as did the vortex leading to limbo. As we cleared the border, I heard the cry of a tiny imp being run over, yet again, by a hell horse. This time, Delmar rolled like a ball across the dusty yard, landing against the stable with a yelp. When the carriage stopped, I jumped to the ground, smiling at the imp massaging his head. The wooden spoon he had been holding lay beside him, broken in half. Abyss began to vocalize.

I kneeled down beside him. “I’m glad to see that you still live.”

“Your horse is mean. Mean, mean, mean! I smell hams!” He righted himself and wobbled to the back of the carriage, scaling it with ease and dropping inside. “Ham! Breads! Potatoes!” He peered up at me when I opened the door, his arms filled with produce. “I make good soups for you! Best soups! Pig meat and bone soup! Beans, beans, beans too!”

“I look forward to your soup.” I chuckled as he bit into a raw potato with a sound akin to a fine lady biting into a sweet cake. The imp curled around his bounty, chewing merrily as I unhitched Abyss and tended to his needs. When I exited the stable and removed the demon as well as our provisions, I looked down at Delmar. “I’ll need a bath. Is there a tub for me to use?”

“Hmm, yes, a washtub. I find! Fill with hot water. Soap too! Wash your back and cockery!” He dashed off in search of a tub, his belly podded out after his meal of a whole, unwashed potato.

I decided that I would wash my own cockery despite his kind offer.