Winterland Page 9

  “What do I do?”

  “Complete the bridge!” he shouted above the din.

  She stared at Joseph, and then slumped forward. Did it have to be another riddle?

  “Eunice!” He gripped both of her arms and demanded her attention. “You’ve gotta complete the bridge!”

  Behind them, the bramble hedges rose like the Great Wall of China, dark and menacing. She had nowhere else to go but forward. Or go home. If you can get to the end of this highway, Joseph had said, my riddles will make perfectly good sense.

  So it came down to trusting a gimpy trekker in a dream world.

  She straightened and stared at Joseph.

  “I’ve done this before, huh?”

  “Yes!” Joseph laughed.

  “Okay,” she said to herself. “You haven’t failed me yet.”

  Eunice turned toward the chasm.

  A tempest burst around them, the storm becoming a tumult. Eunice’s knees nearly buckled. The hole in the sky now towered overhead, ten times bigger than before, a gaping celestial lesion swirling debris, ringed with fiery teeth. Wind tore over its rim, sucking smoke and flame into the void. The menagerie of voices filled the air.

  Eunice Ames shouted into the storm and hurtled forward, defiant.

  How long that journey took, she could not say. It was if some cognitive expanse were being traversed, a circuit through a season or a mode of being rather than any real highway in a physical world.

  Each step became heavier, burdening her with some new grief. The hellish cries awakened other voices inside her, voices from long ago. Demons she’d fought. Hungers she’d quelled. Like a scab torn free, the old wounds began oozing. The self-hatred that drove her into addiction, the loneliness and rejection that kept her there, the cheap, tawdry self-image rooted in her soul. She remembered the cold awareness that suicide ran in her veins and that her mother’s minstrel spirit haunted the corridors of her mind. Every step closer to the dark thing seemed to open another petal on a diseased vine that was strangling Eunice’s soul.

  Yet she managed to trudge forward.

  The monster had squared its body, preparing for their approach. The harpies now stood sentry at its side, like palace guards in a Dali-esque abstract. Their owlish eyes followed her. Behind them, the suspension bridge rocked precariously over the vast dark chasm.

  Complete the bridge.

  Actually, she was surprised any bridges were left in her mother’s world. Which was another reason to struggle onward.

  The monster roared again and the black sun yawned. Now she could see the beast clearly. Its body was oblique, craggy, as if it had been hewn from the depths of some cursed mountain. It hunkered before the bridge, an impassable presence. Sunken inside its black frame were two red eyes—cold, merciless, hate-filled eyes—glaring at her from a faceless pit. It was searching, probing, stirring the cauldron of pain and self-pity inside her...

  …pain and self-pity she thought she’d banished long ago.

  But Eunice resisted the urge to flee, to turn away. It was one of the advantages of having already looked into the face of hell.

  She stopped perhaps twenty feet from the hideous creature. Her hair whipped about her face. She fought to steady herself and stood tilted against the wind, staring into those abominable eyes.

  Joseph was right—she’d fought this thing before.

  Her company lumbered forward and stood beside her.

  “See what you’ve made?” Sybil shouted, looking sideways at her.

  “I’m not listening to you!”

  “Apollyon!” Sybil cackled. “You can’t let it go.”

  “Apollyon?” Eunice scowled. “What’re you talking about?” Ignoring the little girl, Eunice turned to Joseph. “The bridge—how do we cross it?”

  “We don’t!”

  She peered at him. “What?”

  Joseph pointed at the beast, his hair whipping about his face. “You complete it.”

  “Comple—” Eunice pursed her lips. Then she yelled, “Would you stop playing games with me! What do I do?”

  Joseph shook his head. “It came from the Abyss! It always does.”

  “So whaddo I do?!” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Regret!” Joseph’s voice was barely audible through the maelstrom. “It’s regret!”

  “It’s a monster!”

  “What else would it be?”

  The thought disarmed her. So she turned and gaped at the demon.

  Regret. Of course! If Mordant, Ash, and Sybil were incarnations of her mother’s psyche, why not Regret? But perhaps even more enthralling than this realization was the notion that an abyss existed inside her mother’s soul. It made Eunice wonder as to one inside herself.

  “So how do I get rid of it?” she yelled. “It’s hers! She’s gotta give it up!”

  Joseph looked at her, and then slowly, knowingly, shook his head.

  What was he saying?

  “Eunice,” Joseph said, “it’s yours!”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s yours! You brought it along with you!”

  Eunice’s heart seemed to dull to a thudding standstill.

  “My regret?” she said to herself. “It can’t… This is mine?”

  “How do you think you got here?” He stepped closer. “It’s the bridge that binds both of you.”

  She looked at the monster. Its burning, hateful eyes were locked on her. Foam and spittle burst from its mouth as it bellowed. And the dreaded lamentation unraveled inside her. How could this be?

  “I’m keeping us from going any further.” The words seemed to fall out of her mouth. “I’m keeping her from going any further.”

  It was a confession, something that had been there along, just waiting to be voiced.

  Some people nurture such things, she thought. Where else would regret rise but from some hellish place inside ones’ psyche? But if anyone saw this monstrosity, they’d probably have second thoughts about coddling such emotions. However, other than her admission, how exactly did one relinquish a demon the size of a tour bus? Especially when it was birthed from their own anguish?

  The beast stomped and released a howl, and the fiery sky above it whirled. The confluence of devilish voices rose. Yet knowing what this thing was suddenly seemed far more important than any amount of fireworks it could generate. In fact, it caused her to look more shrewdly at the monster of her making.

  She took a step closer.

  Aside from a roughly humanoid form, there were few discernable features—no face, ears, forehead, or nose. Just piercing, red eyes staring out from a black pit.

  Apollyon, demon of the Id.

  If regret took a form, she imagined it would look something like this. But the closer she studied it, the more it seemed to be a patchwork of pieces. Stone-like fragments. A jigsaw of sediment. Assembled from shards of graphite or mineral.

  Or crystal.

  Crystal.

  Suddenly, she remembered.

  Eunice patted her thighs until she felt the lump in her right front pocket. She removed the onyx crystal and held it in her palm. “It’s the last thing she gave me. She said it was… blessed.”

  Joseph stared. “It’s a bridge, a physical token of her madness. Now she’s sorry. She recants her witchery. But you hold a piece. You took it!”

  Eunice stared at the onyx crystal. Then she extended it to Joseph as if it were a hot potato.

  “I don’t want it,” he protested. “It’s a splinter from the gargoyle! It punctured your world.” He stepped closer. “Regret—it crossed over. You shared it, nurtured it. Now you’re joined by it! The bridge. That’s the bridge you must complete.”

  She looked at the onyx crystal. Then she looked at the monster it had been carved from.

  “I don’t want it, either!” Eunice stared at the black glinting stone. “Never really did.”

  “Good!” Joseph steadied himself against the cyclone. “But you took it! You fed the engine. So give it back!”


  “That’s all?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  She stared at the crystal and nodded. In the future, perhaps she could ponder the implications of such apparently minor concessions. But right now, unloading her personal regret was too inviting.

  “You’re going with me?” she said.

  “You bet!”

  She gripped the crystal, squeezing it as if to wring the rock of poison. Taking a great breath, she plowed into the storm.

  As they draw near, the loathsome black body grinded within itself. The vortex spun chaotically overhead, splashing red and orange refractions across the ground. Eunice fought the urge to look away from the monster. But she wanted this thing undone. God, she wanted this over. And if a stare-down was what it took, there was enough grief inside her to burn holes through a titanium tanker.

  She may have yelled, shook her fists at the monstrosity. Nevertheless, she moved forward.

  And that was all you ever need to do.

  Finally, they passed into the shadow of the onyx gargoyle. Eunice was dwarfed by the beast. It towered over them, flailing and snarling, radiating cool dark. Winterland seemed to reverberate with the creature’s fury. But Eunice had crossed a line of terror into abandoned placidity. She stood in the eye of an emotional hurricane. So what if this monster could stomp her into oblivion. She was tired of carrying regret. So very tired.

  There was only one thing left to do.

  Eunice stood before the onyx gargoyle and extended the crystal.

  “Take it back,” she said. “We don’t want it anymore.”

  The gargoyle bellowed.

  “Take it!” she countered, thrusting her open palm even closer.

  Its eyes grew into crimson slits. And it bent forward. The harpies scattered, drawn up, up into the vortex, where they became little more than autumn leaves fading in the night sky.

  Eunice closed her eyes and grimaced as the creature snatched the crystal from her palm.

  It was as if a Volkswagen had been removed from her body. How long had she been carrying this weight? Eunice collapsed. She was semi-conscious as Joseph slipped his arms underneath her and dragged her back, away from the contorting mass.

  In some faraway place inside herself—perhaps a memory untainted by her own rot—she remembered her mother. Young. Vibrant. Full of life. Unspoiled. Maybe places like that still existed in some distant corner of Winterland. Patches of Eden that, with care, might flourish again and overtake the wasteland. If those places did exist, perhaps one existed inside Eunice as well. She could only hope.

  Eunice came to herself and sat up. Her eyes fixed on the onyx creature.

  The gargoyle raised the glinting crystal before its bottomless face, as if admiring it. From deep within, a hole opened, a gash that seethed and expanded. The mouth was ringed with flaming teeth, like the hole in the sky. Vile sounds emerged, cackling and endless sobs. Air howled through the black vent.

  Eunice scrambled to her feet and stood next to Joseph.

  The gargoyle’s red eyes rolled back up into its head and its mouth grew. The orifice was misshapen, not at all oval, and its edges ebbed, stretching wider and wider. Its eyes disappeared in the expanding maw. And it kept growing, swallowing everything. The creature was becoming a Mouth. Like a star against the night sky, the crystal danced before the tunnel that was a mouth, swinging in wide arcs as it had from Eunice’s rear-view mirror, splashing light. Suddenly the crystal was plucked away and disappeared inside. The monster flailed, sucking its own limbs into the cavity with horrid, gulping sounds.

  It was eating itself.

  Didn’t regret always do this?

  Shrieks rose and the gale beat on them. Eunice staggered back, hands over her ears to stifle the cries. The onyx gargoyle grew smaller and smaller. Finally, the creature collapsed, folding in upon itself, leaving little more than an atmospheric smudge.

  Little by little, the cyclone died. Dust and debris swirled to a stop across the highway. The fiery sky faded to a dusky pall. And Winterland grew still.

  “Regret,” Joseph mused, looking up into the halcyon twilight. “It’s what held it all together.”

  Eunice shook her head. What other monstrous emotions provided the glue for hellish worlds?

  “The Coronation!” Joseph cried, scaring the tar out of her.

  He gazed across the chasm.

  Eunice traced the bridge with her eyes to a single throne. And her heart sank. Because she knew she was too late.

  SIXTEEN

  The moment her feet touched the bridge, she felt the first snowflake.

  “It’s her!” Eunice lunged forward. “Mother! I’m here!”

  “Ain’t made for bridges!” Mordant yelped.

  The bridge swayed terribly as they ran, jostling them to no end. She dare not look into the abyss below her. Where it went and what other monsters it held, she could only imagine. Her oddball brigade trudged behind her, snorting, piping, and sniveling. Overhead, the silence continued—the soft, eerie quiet that snowfall brings. The red sky was gone, replaced by solemn gray.

  “I tried to make it!” Her voice echoed in the chasm below. “I tried!”

  The snow fell around her, obscuring her vision of the throne. Winterland was changing. Pockets of pristine glistening white gathered here and there.

  Despite the exhaustion, Eunice ran, pushing herself forward across the bridge. She was crying, unsure whether it was from sadness or abject weariness. Finally, she stumbled off the bridge and collapsed. There was no time to wait for her party. Heaving herself off the ground, she brushed snow crystals from her eyes, and located the throne.

  It was suspended in mid-air and looked like a large teardrop, jet-black, frozen between sky and earth. A solid obsidian droplet. Fear tore at her heart.

  For the throne was empty.

  “I’m too late!” Eunice ran and then crumbled helplessly to her knees before the throne. “No! I couldn’t save her.”

  Joseph hurried to her side. Then Mordant, Ash, and Sybil encircled them, gaping at the empty throne. The snow swirled around them, a sepulcher of white.

  Even so, Joseph was laughing.

  “Why?” Eunice clenched her fists. “Why bring me here for this?”

  But it didn’t faze Joseph.

  To most, her words would have seemed accusatory. But even a losing battle, if well fought, carried its own virtue. She suspected this was why Joseph was cracking up. She wanted to be offended at his brashness. However, leaving this throne vacant was probably a good reason to celebrate.

  And now, Mordant, Ash and Sybil shuffled forward and stood before the empty throne like vassals to an invisible queen.

  Eunice rose to her feet, swept tears from her face, and stared at them, for they were changing.

  “Ain’t fair!” Mordant cried, as his skin sloughed away from its frame. Black liquid seeped from his overalls and pooled at his feet. “Doomed! Mmmph! Drawn-n-quartered. All doomed!” he wailed. “Every… last… one.” Sinking ever lower into the slimy puddle. Soon, all that remained was his grubby clothes sopping in the tarry substance.

  Reverend Ash swayed on his stilts, nose stuck high in the air in one last pious gesture. But his body had begun to fade. First his arms, then his legs. It was as if some atomic eraser was being passed over the venerable holy man, undoing him as it went.

  “Here I stand,” he warbled. “I can do no other.”

  Until he was completely gone. Only his stilts remained, teetering there by themselves, before they clattered to the ground before the throne.

  Sybil was the last to go. Yet she was no longer a child. She hunched forward, now old and decrepit. Her skin had grayed.

  “She loved us, Eunice.” Sybil tried to giggle, but it was the gibberish of an old woman. “She loved us.”

  “I know,” Eunice said. “She loved us too much to let us stay here.”

  Then Sybil’s body wilted, turning skeletal, before dropping into a fleshy pile.

  Eunice stare
d blankly at what remained of her oddball crew: a black puddle, a rickety pair of stilts, and a bag of bones.

  Homage to an empty throne.

  The snow was falling hard. Eunice brushed tears from her cheeks. She turned to Joseph who was laughing with even more abandon. His hair was disheveled, speckled with white powder, and it appeared now more than ever, that his skull was dented, caved in on one side.

  The atmosphere between them rippled.

  Exhaust fumes pelted her and she gasped.

  “…hot… id… er…”

  She steadied herself for the translucent dimensional curtain was nearby. It had always been there.

  Joseph’s eyes were bright, and there was a joyous timbre in his laughter. He had his head back, collecting snow crystals on his cheeks. She wanted to thank him and ask him more questions. But another sound pierced her brain.

  The sirens had started again. The ghastly wail of the banshees.

  No!

  She doubled over, clamping her hands against her head, wincing until she squeezed water from her eyes.

  “…ey’ll… ee… in… utt…”

  It was the Lexus man.

  She opened her eyes enough to see concrete and lane lines, tainted dusky red. Another set of feet were near hers. The shrieks became sirens, rapidly approaching.

  “It’ll be all right…” the Lexus man had one hand on her back. She was bent over. “They’re almost here.”

  Eunice straightened and looked around, at first frantically, and then with a sense of relief. She was home. Tears were on her cheeks and she brushed them aside. She was dizzy, braced herself against the man, and tried to re-orient. An ambulance cruised down the shoulder of the freeway, followed by a fire engine. The cry of Winterland was one with this world. Here and there, across the freeway, headlights awakened in the dusk.

  “Where’s Joseph?” Eunice asked, still trying to make sense of things.

  “Who?”

  “Joseph,” she said. “The guy I hit.”

  “Lady,” the Lexus man half-smiled, “you didn’t hit anybody.”

  Everything returned to her. She patted the front of her jeans and the crystal was gone. Had it even been there at all?