Off the Beaten Path: Eight Tales of the Paranormal Read online

I didn’t waste any time as I dragged Ruth down Morte Avenue. The souls who worked at the Three Fates Factory were off work already, and they filled the sidewalks, spilling out of little shops like Athena’s Boutique and lining up for the early show at the Muses Union House. It was still early in the evening, so Purgatory Lounge was relatively quiet when we burst through the front door.

  “Lana!” Gabriel had started drinking without me. He’d also apparently made it through a basket of barbeque chicken. There was an angry hot sauce stain dribbled down his white work robe. He noticed the flapper soul next to me, and the goofy grin slowly melted from his face. “Uh, you miss a stop today?”

  I pulled back the hood of my work robe and shook out my curls. “I need a favor.”

  “Name it.” He stood up from his barstool and fluttered his wings, sprinkling the bar floor with bits of peanut shells.

  “When’s the last time you visited with the Fates?”

  Gabriel frowned. “I’m not really supposed to, now that…” I could tell he didn’t want to talk about his demotion. It was probably why he’d started with the sorrow drowning early today.

  “Ruth here has Heaven, Hell, and Duat tied up in a bidding war. She doesn’t really belong in any of those realms though, and I don’t really have the stomach to deal with many more higher-ups tonight. Think you could pull some strings?”

  Gabriel gave me a funny look and pulled me aside, asking in a hushed voice, “Since when do you care where your harvests end up?” He gave Ruth a sheepish smile.

  I huffed out a short laugh. “I don’t know. She seems like a decent person, and she doesn’t really belong in any of the afterlives. I guess I just though she deserved a fighting chance.”

  “Like Saul gave you?” Gabriel gave me a soft smile.

  I bit my lip and looked away. I didn’t want to talk about Saul. Not right now. Ten years, and his name still put a lump in my throat.

  Gabriel swallowed. “Let me see what I can do. Come on.”

  Ruth and I followed him across town, avoiding the major deity hangouts until we reached the looming, industrial block that the Three Fates Factory consumed. The Fates had setup shop soon after Grim founded Limbo City. The powerful goddess trio simplified and monopolized the soul recycling process by hiring on a chunk of souls with the guarantee of better futures in their next lives. Ruth didn’t know all that though.

  “You want me to work in a factory?” Her pretty face soured.

  “It’s no speakeasy, but it sure beats Hell. Wouldn’t you say?” I folded my arms.

  Gabriel cleared his throat and straightened his stained robe. Even he wasn’t fond of dealing with the makers and breakers of destiny. “Wait here. I’ll be right back,” he said, heading towards the foreboding entrance of the factory.

  Ruth shivered next to me. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

  “Me too.” I said, sighing. “But hey, if the Fates hire

  you on, I hear you get to pick out your next life.”

  “Really? How long would I have to work here?”

  “A century maybe.”

  Ruth cringed. “Ouch.” Then she tilted her head to one side. “What do you suppose Kansas City will look like in a hundred years?”

  I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Gabriel didn’t take long. He looked a little green when he joined us again. A soul tagged along behind him. The man wore a dark blue uniform. He was plump and cheerful, and he chuckled nervously as he held a hand out to Ruth. “Hello, Miss Summerdale. I’m Clark Herbert, the orientation supervisor here at the factory.”

  Ruth gave his hand a firm shake, casting a leery eye back at me. Clark’s eyes followed, and then he diverted his gaze away. Most souls were afraid of reapers; it was just in their nature to fear death. I didn’t hold it against him.

  “I hear you’re creating quite the fuss among the gods,” Clark said to Ruth. “Luckily the Fates are good at keeping the peace, so they’ve already contacted Grim and the Afterlife Council, and you can start at the factory in the morning. We’re closed for the evening, so I’ll set you up with a roommate tonight after we go over some paperwork. Follow me.” He waved her towards the building, giving me and Gabriel a polite nod.

  Ruth paused to grab my hand and give it a quick squeeze. “Thanks,” she whispered, and then hurried to catch up with Clark.

  Gabriel let out a breath he had been holding. “I’m going to be in big trouble in the morning.”

  “Why’s that?” I raised a brow at him.

  “I told the Fates that Peter had sent me.”

  “Oh,” I said and winced. “Yeah. It probably won’t help that I was involved in this little scheme.”

  Gabriel fluttered his wings and looked back at the factory. “Let’s blow this joint. What do you say we head back to Purgatory Lounge and relieve them of all their giggle water?”

  “I can’t.” I had almost forgotten my little boat sitting at the gates of Duat. It wouldn’t go unnoticed. I dreaded going back, because I was almost certainly going to be confronted by Anubis or one of the other Egyptian deities.

  Gabriel huffed next to me. “I just stuck my neck out for you, and you can’t even have a drink with me?”

  “My boat’s docked at Duat, and I still have a handful of souls who need to go to Hell.”

  “Oh.” He blinked stiffly.

  “I’ll meet you back at Purgatory. Wish me luck,” I said, flipping my coin again. It was almost out of marks. At this rate, I’d be lucky if I could pay my rent next month. Grim was a cheap bastard… and well, I wasn’t exactly made of ambition these days.

  Duat’s harbor was empty when I arrived. My hell-bound souls were all accounted for. Dusk painted everything a hazy blue, but I still saw the little note pinned to the side of my boat. It was from Anubis. I could tell from the Jackal headed hieroglyph he used as his signature. Well played, reaper. That was all it said.

  I smiled. I still didn’t feel like gunning for a promotion, and I would still be meeting Gabriel for a mutual drowning of sorrows. But something about the day’s activities felt more productive, more justified. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I had done something good. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. I still had a long way to go, but Saul would have been proud.

  What happens when the dead cannot go on? Perhaps a little help is in order.

  Threads

  Kath Langdon

  Every night since my tenth birthday, I’ve had a routine. I lock my door, change into my pajamas, and curl up on my bed with a quartz crystal cupped in my hands. Settling into a slow and steady breathing pattern, I begin to meditate. I gaze into the stone, letting my eyes unfocus to look past the surface and see something like a flicker of life in the dead rock. That is when my body sleeps, and I pull out of my physical shell. The knots in my chest and brain slip out of place and curl tightly into an organized ball of yarn in the center of my being, letting my spirit rises above my body.

  The first thing I do when I reach the state of separation is to rise far above the surface of the world. Every living person is surrounded by threads connecting them to every person in their life, creating a massive tapestry that stretches over the earth like a snug blanket. When you’re a medium, you begin to see only the bad things humanity does to each other, so at least for a few minutes every night, I look for the beauty in human life relationships.

  That night was like any other. I watched the world for a few minutes before I sank through the clouds to do the duty I was born for. I drifted in the atmosphere, feeling the drag of the currents pull me several ways. If there was a competition, it was resolved quickly, and I rode the breeze to a small forest in Connecticut. My spirit drifted to settle on a boulder and rose again, walking over dry leaves to find the one who called me there.

  She must have died a very long time ago.

  Her clothing had lost all patterns and decorations, and the shape itself had simplified into a smooth semblance of a dress from the 1800s, made o
f impossibly fine fabric. Her face had lost definition as well, and her hair and the edges of her limbs had begun to fade out. Kneeling, I reached out to her. While neither of us could speak aloud, we would hear each other clearly in our own secret conversation.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Allison.”

  “I’m Isa. What’s wrong, Allison?”

  Her eyes, faded as they were, locked on mine. Without realizing it, she opened to my presence and dragged me inside the ghostly remnant of her mind. I don’t know if life really flashes across your eyes as you die, but if you don’t pass into the afterworld immediately, your most intense memories will be an endless cycle in your spectral mind. Allison needed me to listen to her and help her break the cycle. She had two memories, and in images and words they flowed in a frantic flood from her mind to mine.

  The man at the tavern, he asked for me. He’s so attractive, so kind. Every day, a pint and a coin pressed into my hand. Every day he watches me go home. He wants to marry me, he says. He’d rather die than not marry me. He loves me, because I am special, he says, something better he says, he can give me something better.

  My daughter! Where is Amelia, where is – Oh God, why is her face all bloody, why is her dress torn? Why, who, why? Just four years old, so young, why? The man – my darling girl – something better – why – Amelia – he wants me.

  The images flooded Allison’s mind, just fragments as she saw her daughter’s body on the hearth. The blood on her hands as she tried to rock the child to life, before she saw that Amelia was stabbed clean through her heart. Her memories were shattered mirrors, and she chose to see the least gruesome images.

  A child’s death would drive anyone to desperation, and Allison saw Amelia’s death repeating in an eternal loop. Now Allison was dead and she had wandered alone with her grief for hundreds of years. I held her, and we rocked gently with the breeze. There were no words because I had none to say. I felt her pain nearly as intensely as she did, and I knew that no words could soothe her. As long as she walked the earth, Allison’s torture could not fade. The only comfort I could offer was to show the road out to the better place.

  I cradled her and told her stories of the place she needed to go to, repeating the stories about the air smelling of a thousand splendid things, and the great peace that washed over every resident of the land of the dead. Slowly, she relaxed and slipped into the realm where her daughter had waited for so long. My skin tingled where it touched hers, and then she was gone. As her spirit faded, I focused on the familiar presence I felt behind me.

  “Phyllis, how long have you been waiting?”

  I stood and turned to the dumpy ghost standing behind me. “I felt you arrive a while ago, why didn’t you say anything?” Phyllis smiled as she saw me and opened her arms for a hug. I don’t make it a habit to hug ghosts unless I am shepherding them to the afterlife, but Phyllis had been my teacher and confidant until her death five years ago.

  When Phyllis died, I had lost the only living person who understood me. At least she was sort of still here – mediums can’t go to the spirit world for a hundred years after their death. Instead, deceased mediums must act as messengers between the living mediums and the mysterious and all powerful upper management.

  As she held me tight, I blinked back tears. I hadn’t realized until Phyllis died just how bitter it was to watch people avoid me because of the dull uneasiness they felt from being around me; the uneasiness they couldn’t name.

  She loosened her hold but I clung to her, still looking for a heartbeat and warmth that I knew wouldn’t be there. When I did let go, her eyes were serious. “Sweetheart, please understand, I didn’t want to give this to you. I told them to have one of the others do this job, but they said you’re the best to complete the assignment.”

  We both know her bosses lost human emotion long ago – they’re just calculators now, dissolving mediums and spirits into numbers. There was no arguing with them. Rumors were that the last person to argue has spent the last several thousands of years living out the most painful deaths imaginable.

  “Nature didn’t do its job correctly, and now you have to fix it. Isa, sweetie, you have to call a soul out of its living vessel.”

  What a pretty phrase for ‘murder.’

  Phyllis’s words rushed out in a soothing stream, claiming that I was simply correcting an error of the world and it was less moral to allow the error to remain. Phyllis stroked my hair, telling me the particulars. A teenage boy, Mark, had come home that night, and something had popped in his head. He was dead before he hit the ground, but his soul didn’t depart his body the way it should have. Bodies don’t lose their pulse until they lose their soul, and so Mark still breathed.

  My job would be to find him and convince his soul to pass on, letting his body die. If I did not, his spirit would slowly die inside of him, and he’d be in anguish for decades. Even now, his spirit was dying without the peace of passing on, but this wasn’t a job I wanted. I argued with her, trying not to cry. “I’ve done every job they’ve ever asked, but this isn’t leading someone to peace. If this guy is walking and talking, he’s alive, and I’ll be killing him. I can’t kill anything, I can’t even eat meat! How could they expect this of me?”

  “You know I would never ask you to do this, but they say it has to be you. Isabelle, look.” Phyllis held out her arms to me. The moonlight threw into relief deep gouges that swirled in a pattern, from her shoulder to her wrist. My stomach rolled. This was the sacrifice she had made just in trying to protect me. How much harm would come to her if I refused? I nodded and clenched my eyes tight.

  “I’ll do it.” My eyes popped open. “Wait, what if I’m caught?”

  She shook her head and I guessed, “I can’t be, can I?”

  “Only this boy, Mark, will be able to see you once you set out to do the task. Make it fast, sweetie. Our bosses aren’t patient.” Her words followed me as my spirit fled back to my sleeping body.

  When I opened my eyes in the morning, I couldn’t move. I curled into a fetal position and claimed sickness. I guess I looked it, because Mom didn’t try to make me go to school. My brain was numb, but a sharp pain from my left leg eventually caught my attention. I slid off my pajama bottoms and saw that my hip and thigh looked just like Phyllis’s shoulder. The shallow slices swirled and grew every hour I didn’t go to Mark, creeping down towards my knee. I wrapped gauze around my leg and grabbed keys, limping to my car.

  The fifteen minute drive to Mark’s town was torture.

  Every second, I was hoping as hard as I could that he was just a shadow of a living person – comatose, even – with his soul roaming like a balloon cut from its ribbon.

  I followed a gray, fraying yarn that my intuition told me would lead to Mark. Leaning against a tree, I watched as he read a book. He looked strong and healthy and so very alive. He was there because of a mistake, and I had to rewrite his miracle.

  My thoughts kept spinning in dizzying dark clouds, but there wasn’t clarity at the heart of my storm. I couldn’t go to him at first. My feet would not move, and even feeling my thigh burn from the growing gouge could not make me walk towards Mark’s bench by the river.

  Finally though, I walked up to the bench and sat beside him. I swallowed and tried to smile, turning to Mark as he flipped the page. “Hey, what’s up?”

  His finger kept his page as the book snapped shut. “Not much, you?”

  “Nothing.” My foot bounced with nervous energy. “What are you reading?”

  He raised his eyebrows, smiling a little. “Why so interested?”

  “Um… good question. Because you’re cute?” I cringed and covered my blushing cheeks. I was flirting with him and I’m supposed to be killing him. He laughed and flipped the cover to me so I could read the title. I smiled and leaned in to read the cover, watching our connection out of the corner of my eye. It was there, but only barely. Like all the threads surrounding him, our little yarn was uneven and even invisible in
places.

  Seeing a boy enveloped in dying connections convinced me. He was dead, and his relationships were just shadows, exactly the cosmic flaw Phyllis said it was. I still felt like a murderer, but at the same time, part of me felt that I really might be doing the right thing.

  My throat was dry, but I managed to ask more questions about the book he was reading, getting a relaxed conversation started. We talked about squirrels and getting mustaches from foamy cappuccinos, and I tried to ignore the growing ache from my leg. Finally, I turned and looked at him. He was the kind of guy that is cute and nerdy at the same time, and I was willing to bet that a lot of girls had crushes on him. However, if I thought of the hearts I was breaking, I would fail, and the consequences of my failure could range from my personal torture to a crack in the world where things went wrong.

  “What’s your name?” My voice cracked instead of the world.

  “Mark. Yours?”

  “Isa. Short for Isabelle.”

  Mark leaned back, tilting his head to the afternoon sun.

  “So why’d you talk to me?” He grinned. “It’s not every day a pretty girl tries to hit on me.”

  I let a shrug be my answer. “I have something I have to say.”

  He nodded, mischievousness in his eyes and the set of his mouth. “You’re madly in love with me, and had to see if I was truly the man of your dreams. I am, of course.”

  Now, I liked him – genuinely liked him. If he were alive, we would have made great friends, but…no! Do the job, Isa. Just do it.

  “It’s – it’s something else.”

  I sighed slowly, trying to undo the knots in my jaw and throat. “Um, Mark, do you remember when you collapsed? It was last night, I think. You were making chili.”

  He stiffened, his eyes going wide, and his jaw clenching. I put my hand up as he drew breath to shout, but instead, his shoulders and jaw relaxed, and he was ready to listen to me. I realized that he was feeling the trust only the dead give me.

  “I know more things than most,” I said, “and I can do some really weird things, like talk to the dead. And sometimes it’s part of my job to do other things, and this is one of those times. Right. Okay.” I filled my lungs with the taste of dying leaves, trying to calm my frantic mind. My words felt as dry and crunchy as those leaves. “When things are messed up between the dead and the living, I have to fix it. In this case, I have to fix you. You’re both dead and alive right now, Mark.”