The Wrong Goodbye

there, engine ticking, refusing to move.

Poor Bertha, I thought. She gave her all. Of course, every war’s got its casualties —I hoped to God Bertha would be the only one tonight. I stole a glance at Gio and Theresa, and muttered a silent prayer to that effect. I’d lost enough friends in my life already.

Yeah, I called them friends. Shut up.

I glanced at the clock on the dash —an old, round analog dealie with light-up numbers at three, six, nine, and twelve. The second-hand was stopped dead, and the display read nine-thirty. Which meant I had no more than two hours and change before Charon plunged me into Nothingness. And that’s assuming bug-monsters are on Pacific time.

“You two OK?”

“Yeah,” said Gio, though he didn’t sound it.

“Never better,” said Theresa. “Did you really die back there?”

“This body did,” I said. “But only for a sec.”

“A sec. Right. ’Cause that’s a lot less fucked up than dead for good.”

“Not saying it’s less fucked up. But from where I’m sitting, it’s sure as hell preferable. Looks like we’re on foot from here. You up for it?”

“You askin’ ’cause I’m blind? That’s discrimination, friend.”

“Actually,” I said, “I was asking Gio.”

But Gio didn’t hear me. He was just sitting there, one hand to his chest, his face pained and slick with sweat.

I put a hand on Gio’s shoulder, tried to rouse him. “Gio?”

“I can feel it,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.

Theresa leaned forward, put a hand to Gio’s cheek. “Feel what, hon?”

“I can feel his hands around my soul! Clawing,

gouging, tearing it free of my flesh… Jesus, Sam, is this what it’s like to be collected?”

“Afraid so. And when we take you, we feel everything you’ve ever felt —up to and including your collection. Which means that’s what it feels like to collect as well.”

“But why… why didn’t I remember?”

“Shock,” I said. “But that particular get-out-of-jailfree card only comes up once a deck —next time, you’ll feel it, and you’ll remember.”

“If there is a next time,” Theresa said.

“Right,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell her sooner or later, there was bound to be a next time. “But right now what matters is that feeling means Danny’s close.”

Theresa cocked her head and frowned. “Let’s hope he’s closer than those sirens,” she said.

I listened for a moment. She was right. They were distant, but approaching fast. “We need to move.”

We set out at a trot past the strip mall down a gently curving street that some overzealous city planner likely thought of as “organic.” Arc-sodium orange from the streetlights lit our way past lowslung ranches on modest lots, and put me in mind of faded sepia photographs, pale golden-hued mementos of better times that never were. The night air was cool and crisp, low seventies at most, and was alive with mariachi music, spiced meats, and something more sinister —the faint ozone scent of magic. At first, we saw no signs of celebration save the makeshift altars set out on stoops and sidewalks: votive candles, marigolds, children’s toys, and sugar skulls surrounding pictures of the departed both young and old —the flowers, sweets, and trinkets intended as ofrendas to the dead. But as we ran —me out front, the shotgun held tight to my chest so as to attract less attention, Gio and Theresa hand-in-hand behind me —we happened upon passersby bedecked in their Dia de los Muertos finery: their outfits a garish funhouse reflection of their Sunday best, their faces painted up as skulls, or hidden behind ornate calavera masks. As they made their way westward toward the festivities, they laughed and hooted and whooped, and shot off rapid-fire Spanish at one another. If they noticed us, they gave no sign. It was as if we were the spirits that walked invisible among them.

Invisible to them, perhaps, but not to all. For all around us —on every streetlight, every rooftop, every fence post and power line in sight —were the jagged silhouettes of thousands upon thousands of crows. Their heads turned as one as they tracked our progress, their ink-black eyes unblinking as they watched us pass.

We’d lost the chopper when we abandoned the commercial strip right off the freeway and disappeared into the relative darkness of the neighborhood beyond, but it hadn’t given up on us. It hovered low over the rooftops, its searchlight tracing out a grid below. Searching. Probing. Advancing ever toward us. But the costume-clad around us paid it little mind. Even blocks away, the music from the festival was loud enough to drown out the thrumming of its rotor, and perhaps the sight of searching helicopters was all too common to the residents of LA.

“What exactly are we looking for?” asked Theresa. “Uh, metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Gio, where are we going?”

He considered the question, his face sweat-slick and deathly pale. “That way,” he said, indicating the direction most of the foot-traffic was headed —the direction of the festival.

Theresa frowned. “How do you know?”

“’Cause my gut is screaming bloody murder to run the other way.”

“Yeah,” Theresa said, flashing a wan smile, “you never were one to listen.”

We pressed on. As we did, what had begun as the odd passerby coalesced into a crowd. Into a party. Into a sea of deathly faces staring back at us. The neighborhood to our right gave way to a city park, its rolling lawn flush with people dancing, its parking lot a makeshift marketplace where booths sold sugar skulls and loaves of pan de muerto, cheap sombreros and calaca figurines.

The rooftops of the booths and tents were alive with crows —silent, watching. Tree limbs sagged beneath their weight. Occasionally, some celebrant would snap a cell phone pic of them, the flash piercing the night and reflecting off the liquid black of their feathers —but still, they did not move. They remained as stock-still as the Yeomen Warders who stood guard before the Tower of London, Charon’s own dark sentinels of the In- Between.

“Why come here?” Theresa said. “What attracted your Danny to this place?”

“Belief is a powerful thing,” I said. “If everyone you see here tonight believes a little bit —even if it’s only in that deep, primal place in their mind that still fears the dark and makes them cross themselves when lightning strikes —that this night provides a window between the land of the living and of the dead, their combined force of will is enough to nudge the universe such that it’s closer to being so. Believe me when I tell you,” I said, my thoughts turning to my encounter with Abyzou in the nightmare realm I’d traveled through to return from my unintended skim-trip, “you have no idea what might be pressing up against the glass right now and looking back at us. Or how easy it might be to crack that glass and unleash a cleansing fury on this world. And I hope to God you never find out.”

“Dear Lord,” she said, “I bet you’re fun at parties.”

Gio clutched his chest and took a knee. A woman in a tattered orange ball gown and a matching veil looked down at him as she pressed past us through the crowd, a churro in each hand. As she noted his obvious distress, her bone-white painted face creased with worry.

Her eyes met mine, her intent clear —does he need help? —but I shook my head and smiled what I hoped was a reassuring smile, the shotgun tucked behind my back out of her line of sight. She hovered for a moment until Theresa took Gio by the elbow and helped him to his feet, and then she disappeared into the teeming throng.

“You OK, hon?” Theresa, her voice tinged with worry.

“We’re close,” he said, sucking wind like he’d just run a marathon, his face gray and slick with sweat. “Too close, if you ask me.”

I caught a glimpse of flashing red and blue two blocks to our east, and shook my head. “Not close enough,” I said.

“Could he be masked? Mixed in with the crowd?”

“I doubt it. The kind of ritual he’d be working would require space. Someplace where he wouldn’t draw too much attention. Somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“So… somewhere like that?”

My eyes tracked to where Gio was pointing. Diagonal across the park from us stood a construction site,