The Embarcadero
Mar. 1st, 2011 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolMom and I went down to the Embarcadero. We took a taxi; there’s no place to park. Most people who go there don’t go by car.
The Embarcadero is downtown and right on the water, sandwiched between the piers. It’s an old building, painted like a carnival, with great gaping windows and a high dome. It hasn’t been well taken care of; there are handbills plastered over handbills on the outside, and the old gaslamps outside are broken. Tourists walk by and take pictures. There’s always a crowd outside, most of whom you can see right through.
We went in the front doors. The high foyer had a marble floor polished by countless feet, and the whispers and scuffing of the crowd echoed all around us. Ahead of us, in the central section of Embarcadero, we could see the long snaking queue of the people who had passed on. They were all sad and tired, slowly shuffling forward as the line glacially advanced toward the terminal doors. I could see the far walls through their semi-transparent bodies. I didn’t want to look at them; they reminded me too much of Dad.
Off to the side were some booths marked ‘Tickets’. They were mostly shuttered, and the one that was open had no line in front of it. Mom led me there.
“We want to buy passage,” she said at the window. She looked nervous, jittery. Mom had withdrawn a lot since Dad died, but the past few weeks she had been a complete black hole. I didn’t know what was eating her, and she didn’t want to volunteer anything.
The clerk at the window was very much alive. He gave me and Mom a cold, calculating once-over.
“You want tickets for yourselves?” he said dubiously. “For you and your son? That’s hard to believe, madam. You yet breathe; passage to the other side is not for ones such as you.”
“Don’t give me that crap,” Mom said, putting her purse on top of the counter. “We’ll pay. Just tell me how much.”
He told Mom how much, and Mom froze. It didn’t take a mind-reader to know Mom didn’t have that kind of money. She didn’t have a tenth that much.
The clerk leaned forward ever so slightly. He had dark pouches under his eyes. He licked his lips. “Madam,” he said softly, “there are alternative payment plans available.”
“I know,” Mom whispered.
The man at the window said nothing. He simply waited. I think he knew that all he had to do was wait.
“All right,” Mom said. “We’ll do it. The standard arrangement.”
“Yes,” said the clerk, smiling thinly. “I knew it. And you knew it too, well before you came here. You knew we’d be making this bargain.” Mom flushed.
“But,” added the Embarcadero man in a cheerful tone, “two tickets it is. First class berths for the living. Enjoy complimentary drinks in the lounge.” Mom scooped up the tickets, and I followed her out of the lobby.
Across from the loading area for the deceased was a door with a sign reading EMBARKATION – LIVING PASSENGERS. It was blocked off with velvet ropes. An attendant moved them aside as we approached, and he threw the doors open. Tied up alongside the Embarcadero was the ferry, a triple-decker paddlewheeler in the style of Mississippi riverboats. A narrow gangplank led on board. Further down the pier we could see a much larger platform where the transparent dead trudged dejectedly on board the vessel that would take them to their final rest.
“Please don’t stare at the dead, young master,” said the cadaverous man who took our tickets, “and welcome aboard the Phlegyas. I hope you enjoy your journey.” He smiled coldly at me and Mom. We walked into the corridors of the ferry. They were carpeted with floral patterns, and the walls were gentle pastels; the place aimed for warmth but missed, like an old hospital wing.
We found our cabin. It was cramped and smelled like old newspapers. Mom and I didn’t have anything to unpack; she just had her huge purse, and I had my backpack. I sat down on the lower bunk.
“Mom,” I said, “what are we doing here?”
“We’re going to see your Dad,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. Mom didn’t say anything.
“I mean, we can’t bring him back, can we?” I pressed. “We’ve already said our goodbyes. I don’t want to…to remember….” I couldn’t go on.
“We just need to talk with him a little,” Mom said. Her voice sounded flat, like one of the people at the Embarcadero who dealt with the dead all the time. A chill ran down my spine as I thought about the price Mom was told she’d have to pay for passage. I wondered if Mom planned on coming back from this trip.
The ferry rumbled and I heard a horn sound, like the ghostly wail of a train in a dense bank of fog. I felt the floor vibrate, and I knew we had pushed off. I took out my IPod and listened to tunes for a while, but Mom just sat in the room’s one threadbare chair and stared into space. I couldn’t stand the oppression of being in the same space with her, so I left the cabin.
There were shades in the halls. They didn’t look at me and I didn’t look at them; we passed in the corridors and all I felt was a little cold. I found an outside railing and watched the wake of the water foam around Phlegyas and disappear behind us. Seagulls cried out and hovered behind us, sometimes diving down into the water for fish. A translucent dead man came to the rail next to me.
“I should jump I can’t jump I should jump I can’t jump,” he repeated, his voice sounding hollow and indistinct, like he was talking with his head in a cardboard box. It was too depressing, so I went up a deck. I found myself outside the wheelhouse.
“Hello,” said the old man steering the ferry. He didn’t look like a skeleton with a hood. He looked like a kindly old sea-captain with powder-white hair and beard, wearing maritime blues and an actual cap with an actual anchor on it. He winked at me.
“How’s it going?” I said.
“Beautifully, young sir,” replied the pilot. “All is well in the world. Those who need rest are going where they can get some, and coincidentally they shall leave the living in peace. I couldn’t ask for more.”
I cocked my head at the fellow. “Is your name Charon?” I asked.
“I go by Carol these days,” he said. “But yes; I’m your captain and guide and psychopomp.”
“Psychopomp?” I said. He grinned.
“It just means captain and guide,” he admitted. “Are you here on business or pleasure?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Then you’re here on business,” Carol said solemnly. “If you were here for fun, you’d bloody well know it. Plus, you’d be a sick twist, and I don’t think you’re that.” Down on the lower decks I could see some of the anemic dead milling around a shuffleboard marked on the floor. None of them had the initiative to play, and one of them was holding a disc and weeping.
“Mom’s taking me to talk to Dad,” I told Carol. I didn’t know why I was saying anything to this guy who I had only just met.
“Ah,” he said neutrally.
“I think Mom is planning on staying,” I continued. “She kind of fell apart when Dad died. I don’t think she knows how to go on. I think she paid for our passage with her life.”
“Look yonder, young sir,” said Carol, pointing to starboard. “Sea monster.” There was something huge and serpentine roiling out on the water there, its coils arching gracefully out of the waves.
“I don’t know what I’d do with both of my parents gone,” I told Carol. Suddenly I was bawling like a little kid, and Carol had his arms around me.
“Now now, young master, don’t go on so,” he said kindly. “You shan’t be left alone or cast adrift, I promise you that.”
“Crap,” I said, backing away and wiping my eyes. “You can’t know that.”
“Oh, I know,” said Carol softly. He looked sad.
I ran back downstairs. I bowled over a dead guy on the stairs; he was cold and barely there at all, and as he tumbled over he apologized even though it was all my fault. I ran into our cabin and hugged Mom. But she was asleep, and she didn’t wake up.
**
The lonely horn of the ferry sounded again, waking me from a shallow sleep. I collected my backpack, and me and Mom debarked from the ferry. The sky was dark where we were, and I realized the darkness was clouds of birds. Structures jutted from the ground, jagged and bleached-white, like old bones partially buried in sand. We landed on a gravel beach; down the line of the surf, I could see the dead getting off as well. Most of them were being locked onto a chain by their necks.
A jeep pulled up near us, and a man in a pith helmet and khaki shorts got out. He called Mom by name and waved us over. “First class service to the Interrogatorium,” he said in his chipper British accent, held the door for Mom and me, and sped off into the city.
There were tall pallid towers like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, only perfectly erect; there were crumbling old arenas where roars and crashing sounds echoed over the walls; there were skyscrapers so grey and washed-out that they were just as much shades of buildings as the dead were shades of living beings. We saw no other vehicles on the streets, but sometimes we saw shapes behind windows, peering out at us, sometimes waving.
“Don’t mind them, sir,” said our guide. “Shan’t bother you at all. Harmless, the lot of them. We keep the dead too busy to make trouble for the living.”
“Busy doing what?” I asked.
The guide smiled at me thinly. “Work, sir. I shouldn’t trouble yourself about it. Ah, here we are.”
We pulled up at a building with a dramatic façade, like a courts building, or a museum. Two large statues of jackals flanked the entry stair. I thanked our guide and followed Mom up through the colonnade, and we passed through the open doors of the Interrogatorium.
A statue of a man with an overflowing cornucopia dominated the foyer. A half-dozen shades waited, bobbing nervously in front of the statue, cringing pathetically. One stepped forward.
“Come,” it said, its voice as soft as a whisper. “Please. This way. Come.” It tried to take Mom’s hand; she shied away violently, and it cringed just as fast. But it was insistent. “Follow. Must come. Yes,” it whispered pathetically. Mom followed the shade, and I trailed along. The remaining dead peeked at us from behind the statue as we went into a side hall.
We were escorted to a room where there was nothing but a table and two chairs. Mom sat in one. I sat in the other. I looked at Mom. Mom looked at her hands. Soon the door opened and Dad came in.
At least it was a little like Dad. It was thin and pale and empty, even though it had Dad’s outline. I could see Mom right through him. He smiled, but it was a sad, empty shadow of my father’s true smile, and it made me ache inside.
“Hello, son,” he said.
“Hi,” I said back. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Hello, dear,” he whispered to Mom. She didn’t say anything.
He stood in the middle of the room and wrung his hands. “I don’t have much time here,” he said. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want,” said Mom. “I want the numbers.”
“I…I don’t remember them,” Dad said. “Those are things of my life, far away now. Those are memories that don’t last when one crosses over.”
“You wrote them down,” Mom said insistently. “The numbers for the accounts. I need to know where you wrote those numbers down.”
“The numbers. For the accounts. Yes.” Dad had trouble concentrating on anything; his consciousness was now as insubstantial as he was. I found my emotion ebbing. This was a shell of my Dad; it wasn’t really him.
Mom stood up. “I need the numbers!” she shouted. “Give them to me!”
“The numbers. Yes.” Mom’s shouting agitated Dad, gave him energy. “I wrote them down. Wrote them on the underside of the top drawer of the file cabinet. Just pull it out. It’s on a card. Taped to the bottom.” He subsided, shrank in upon himself.
Mom stood quietly. Then she retrieved her purse, opened the door to the room, and stepped outside. She never looked back.
I stared after Mom. Dad looked at me.
“I guess we’re done,” I said.
“No,” Dad said mournfully. “We’re not.”
The door opened. Shades came in, the room filling with them. “There was a price your Mother paid for your passage,” Dad said. “That price was you.”
My blood froze. The dead looked at me without malice, but there were many of them, and only one of me.
“Will I die?” I asked.
“Oh no,” Dad said. “We’re beyond that. But you can never leave.”
The dead came to me then, took my hands, patted me on the back, whispered things in my ears.
“Will I be with you, Dad?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Forever.”
And after a fashion, I was.
The Embarcadero is downtown and right on the water, sandwiched between the piers. It’s an old building, painted like a carnival, with great gaping windows and a high dome. It hasn’t been well taken care of; there are handbills plastered over handbills on the outside, and the old gaslamps outside are broken. Tourists walk by and take pictures. There’s always a crowd outside, most of whom you can see right through.
We went in the front doors. The high foyer had a marble floor polished by countless feet, and the whispers and scuffing of the crowd echoed all around us. Ahead of us, in the central section of Embarcadero, we could see the long snaking queue of the people who had passed on. They were all sad and tired, slowly shuffling forward as the line glacially advanced toward the terminal doors. I could see the far walls through their semi-transparent bodies. I didn’t want to look at them; they reminded me too much of Dad.
Off to the side were some booths marked ‘Tickets’. They were mostly shuttered, and the one that was open had no line in front of it. Mom led me there.
“We want to buy passage,” she said at the window. She looked nervous, jittery. Mom had withdrawn a lot since Dad died, but the past few weeks she had been a complete black hole. I didn’t know what was eating her, and she didn’t want to volunteer anything.
The clerk at the window was very much alive. He gave me and Mom a cold, calculating once-over.
“You want tickets for yourselves?” he said dubiously. “For you and your son? That’s hard to believe, madam. You yet breathe; passage to the other side is not for ones such as you.”
“Don’t give me that crap,” Mom said, putting her purse on top of the counter. “We’ll pay. Just tell me how much.”
He told Mom how much, and Mom froze. It didn’t take a mind-reader to know Mom didn’t have that kind of money. She didn’t have a tenth that much.
The clerk leaned forward ever so slightly. He had dark pouches under his eyes. He licked his lips. “Madam,” he said softly, “there are alternative payment plans available.”
“I know,” Mom whispered.
The man at the window said nothing. He simply waited. I think he knew that all he had to do was wait.
“All right,” Mom said. “We’ll do it. The standard arrangement.”
“Yes,” said the clerk, smiling thinly. “I knew it. And you knew it too, well before you came here. You knew we’d be making this bargain.” Mom flushed.
“But,” added the Embarcadero man in a cheerful tone, “two tickets it is. First class berths for the living. Enjoy complimentary drinks in the lounge.” Mom scooped up the tickets, and I followed her out of the lobby.
Across from the loading area for the deceased was a door with a sign reading EMBARKATION – LIVING PASSENGERS. It was blocked off with velvet ropes. An attendant moved them aside as we approached, and he threw the doors open. Tied up alongside the Embarcadero was the ferry, a triple-decker paddlewheeler in the style of Mississippi riverboats. A narrow gangplank led on board. Further down the pier we could see a much larger platform where the transparent dead trudged dejectedly on board the vessel that would take them to their final rest.
“Please don’t stare at the dead, young master,” said the cadaverous man who took our tickets, “and welcome aboard the Phlegyas. I hope you enjoy your journey.” He smiled coldly at me and Mom. We walked into the corridors of the ferry. They were carpeted with floral patterns, and the walls were gentle pastels; the place aimed for warmth but missed, like an old hospital wing.
We found our cabin. It was cramped and smelled like old newspapers. Mom and I didn’t have anything to unpack; she just had her huge purse, and I had my backpack. I sat down on the lower bunk.
“Mom,” I said, “what are we doing here?”
“We’re going to see your Dad,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. Mom didn’t say anything.
“I mean, we can’t bring him back, can we?” I pressed. “We’ve already said our goodbyes. I don’t want to…to remember….” I couldn’t go on.
“We just need to talk with him a little,” Mom said. Her voice sounded flat, like one of the people at the Embarcadero who dealt with the dead all the time. A chill ran down my spine as I thought about the price Mom was told she’d have to pay for passage. I wondered if Mom planned on coming back from this trip.
The ferry rumbled and I heard a horn sound, like the ghostly wail of a train in a dense bank of fog. I felt the floor vibrate, and I knew we had pushed off. I took out my IPod and listened to tunes for a while, but Mom just sat in the room’s one threadbare chair and stared into space. I couldn’t stand the oppression of being in the same space with her, so I left the cabin.
There were shades in the halls. They didn’t look at me and I didn’t look at them; we passed in the corridors and all I felt was a little cold. I found an outside railing and watched the wake of the water foam around Phlegyas and disappear behind us. Seagulls cried out and hovered behind us, sometimes diving down into the water for fish. A translucent dead man came to the rail next to me.
“I should jump I can’t jump I should jump I can’t jump,” he repeated, his voice sounding hollow and indistinct, like he was talking with his head in a cardboard box. It was too depressing, so I went up a deck. I found myself outside the wheelhouse.
“Hello,” said the old man steering the ferry. He didn’t look like a skeleton with a hood. He looked like a kindly old sea-captain with powder-white hair and beard, wearing maritime blues and an actual cap with an actual anchor on it. He winked at me.
“How’s it going?” I said.
“Beautifully, young sir,” replied the pilot. “All is well in the world. Those who need rest are going where they can get some, and coincidentally they shall leave the living in peace. I couldn’t ask for more.”
I cocked my head at the fellow. “Is your name Charon?” I asked.
“I go by Carol these days,” he said. “But yes; I’m your captain and guide and psychopomp.”
“Psychopomp?” I said. He grinned.
“It just means captain and guide,” he admitted. “Are you here on business or pleasure?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Then you’re here on business,” Carol said solemnly. “If you were here for fun, you’d bloody well know it. Plus, you’d be a sick twist, and I don’t think you’re that.” Down on the lower decks I could see some of the anemic dead milling around a shuffleboard marked on the floor. None of them had the initiative to play, and one of them was holding a disc and weeping.
“Mom’s taking me to talk to Dad,” I told Carol. I didn’t know why I was saying anything to this guy who I had only just met.
“Ah,” he said neutrally.
“I think Mom is planning on staying,” I continued. “She kind of fell apart when Dad died. I don’t think she knows how to go on. I think she paid for our passage with her life.”
“Look yonder, young sir,” said Carol, pointing to starboard. “Sea monster.” There was something huge and serpentine roiling out on the water there, its coils arching gracefully out of the waves.
“I don’t know what I’d do with both of my parents gone,” I told Carol. Suddenly I was bawling like a little kid, and Carol had his arms around me.
“Now now, young master, don’t go on so,” he said kindly. “You shan’t be left alone or cast adrift, I promise you that.”
“Crap,” I said, backing away and wiping my eyes. “You can’t know that.”
“Oh, I know,” said Carol softly. He looked sad.
I ran back downstairs. I bowled over a dead guy on the stairs; he was cold and barely there at all, and as he tumbled over he apologized even though it was all my fault. I ran into our cabin and hugged Mom. But she was asleep, and she didn’t wake up.
**
The lonely horn of the ferry sounded again, waking me from a shallow sleep. I collected my backpack, and me and Mom debarked from the ferry. The sky was dark where we were, and I realized the darkness was clouds of birds. Structures jutted from the ground, jagged and bleached-white, like old bones partially buried in sand. We landed on a gravel beach; down the line of the surf, I could see the dead getting off as well. Most of them were being locked onto a chain by their necks.
A jeep pulled up near us, and a man in a pith helmet and khaki shorts got out. He called Mom by name and waved us over. “First class service to the Interrogatorium,” he said in his chipper British accent, held the door for Mom and me, and sped off into the city.
There were tall pallid towers like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, only perfectly erect; there were crumbling old arenas where roars and crashing sounds echoed over the walls; there were skyscrapers so grey and washed-out that they were just as much shades of buildings as the dead were shades of living beings. We saw no other vehicles on the streets, but sometimes we saw shapes behind windows, peering out at us, sometimes waving.
“Don’t mind them, sir,” said our guide. “Shan’t bother you at all. Harmless, the lot of them. We keep the dead too busy to make trouble for the living.”
“Busy doing what?” I asked.
The guide smiled at me thinly. “Work, sir. I shouldn’t trouble yourself about it. Ah, here we are.”
We pulled up at a building with a dramatic façade, like a courts building, or a museum. Two large statues of jackals flanked the entry stair. I thanked our guide and followed Mom up through the colonnade, and we passed through the open doors of the Interrogatorium.
A statue of a man with an overflowing cornucopia dominated the foyer. A half-dozen shades waited, bobbing nervously in front of the statue, cringing pathetically. One stepped forward.
“Come,” it said, its voice as soft as a whisper. “Please. This way. Come.” It tried to take Mom’s hand; she shied away violently, and it cringed just as fast. But it was insistent. “Follow. Must come. Yes,” it whispered pathetically. Mom followed the shade, and I trailed along. The remaining dead peeked at us from behind the statue as we went into a side hall.
We were escorted to a room where there was nothing but a table and two chairs. Mom sat in one. I sat in the other. I looked at Mom. Mom looked at her hands. Soon the door opened and Dad came in.
At least it was a little like Dad. It was thin and pale and empty, even though it had Dad’s outline. I could see Mom right through him. He smiled, but it was a sad, empty shadow of my father’s true smile, and it made me ache inside.
“Hello, son,” he said.
“Hi,” I said back. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Hello, dear,” he whispered to Mom. She didn’t say anything.
He stood in the middle of the room and wrung his hands. “I don’t have much time here,” he said. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want,” said Mom. “I want the numbers.”
“I…I don’t remember them,” Dad said. “Those are things of my life, far away now. Those are memories that don’t last when one crosses over.”
“You wrote them down,” Mom said insistently. “The numbers for the accounts. I need to know where you wrote those numbers down.”
“The numbers. For the accounts. Yes.” Dad had trouble concentrating on anything; his consciousness was now as insubstantial as he was. I found my emotion ebbing. This was a shell of my Dad; it wasn’t really him.
Mom stood up. “I need the numbers!” she shouted. “Give them to me!”
“The numbers. Yes.” Mom’s shouting agitated Dad, gave him energy. “I wrote them down. Wrote them on the underside of the top drawer of the file cabinet. Just pull it out. It’s on a card. Taped to the bottom.” He subsided, shrank in upon himself.
Mom stood quietly. Then she retrieved her purse, opened the door to the room, and stepped outside. She never looked back.
I stared after Mom. Dad looked at me.
“I guess we’re done,” I said.
“No,” Dad said mournfully. “We’re not.”
The door opened. Shades came in, the room filling with them. “There was a price your Mother paid for your passage,” Dad said. “That price was you.”
My blood froze. The dead looked at me without malice, but there were many of them, and only one of me.
“Will I die?” I asked.
“Oh no,” Dad said. “We’re beyond that. But you can never leave.”
The dead came to me then, took my hands, patted me on the back, whispered things in my ears.
“Will I be with you, Dad?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Forever.”
And after a fashion, I was.
