No, he didn’t. He did anyway. He was a little unsteady on his feet, but he managed to stay upright through sheer force of will. That hook was still there in his chest, the cable still flashing dimly. For a moment, he thought he felt a gentle tug, but he couldn’t be sure.
“There we go,” Mei said. She patted his chest. “You’re doing well, Wallace.”
He glared at her. “I’m not a child.”
“Oh, I know. It’s easier with kids, if you can believe that. The adults are the ones that’re usually the problem.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing at all.
“Come on,” she said. “Hugo’s waiting for us.”
* * *
They reached the end of the village a short time later. The buildings stopped, and the road that stretched before them wound its way through the coniferous forest, the scent of pine reminding Wallace of Christmas, a time when all the world seemed to take a breath and forget—even just for a little while—how harsh life could be.
He was about to ask how far they had to walk when they reached a dirt road outside of the village. A wooden sign sat next to the road. He couldn’t make out the words in the dark, not until he’d gotten closer.
The letters had been carved into the wood with the utmost care.
CHARON’S CROSSING
TEA AND TREATS
“Char-ron?” he said. He’d never heard such a word before.
“Kay-ron,” Mei said, enunciating slowly. “It’s a bit of a joke. Hugo’s funny like that.”
“I don’t get it.”
Mei sighed. “Of course you don’t. Don’t worry about it. As soon as we get to the tea shop, it’ll—”
“Tea shop,” Wallace repeated, eyeing the sign with disdain.
Mei paused. “Wow. You’ve got something against tea, man? That’s not gonna go over well.”
“I don’t have anything against—I thought we were going to meet God. Why would he—”
Mei burst out laughing. “What?”
“Hugo,” he said, flustered. “Or whoever.”
“Oh man, I cannot wait to tell him you said that. Holy crap. That’s gonna go right to his head.” She frowned. “Maybe I won’t tell him.”
“I don’t see what’s so funny.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s what’s so funny about it. Hugo’s not God, Wallace. He’s a ferryman. I told you that. God is … the idea of God is a human one. It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“What?” Wallace said faintly. He wondered if it was possible to have a second heart attack, even though he was already dead. And then he remembered he couldn’t actually feel his heart beating anymore, and the desire to curl up into a little ball once again started to take over. Agnostic or not, he hadn’t expected to hear something so enormous said so easily.
“Oh, no,” Mei said, grabbing onto his hand to make sure he stayed on his feet. “We’re not going to lie down here. It’s only a little bit farther. It’ll be more comfortable inside.”
He let himself be pulled down the road. The trees were thicker, old pines that reached toward the starry sky like fingers from the earth. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a forest, much less at night. He preferred steel and honking horns, the sounds of a city that never went to sleep. Noise meant he wasn’t alone, no matter where he was. Here, the silence was all-consuming, suffocating.
They rounded a corner, and he could see warm lights through the trees like a beacon calling, calling, calling him. He barely felt his feet on the ground. He thought he might be floating but couldn’t bring himself to look down to see.
The closer they got, the more the hook tugged at his chest. It wasn’t quite irritating, but he couldn’t ignore it. The cable continued on down the road.
He was about to ask Mei about it when something moved on the road ahead of them. He flinched, mind constructing a terrible creature crawling from the shadowy woods with sharp fangs and glowing eyes. Instead, a woman appeared, hurrying down the road. The closer she got, the more details filled in. She looked middle-aged, her mouth set in a thin line as she pulled her coat tighter around her. She had bags under her eyes, dark circles that looked as if they’d been tattooed on her face. Wallace didn’t know why he was expecting some kind of acknowledgment, but she passed by them without so much as a glance in their direction, blond hair trailing behind her as she moved quickly down the road.
Mei had a pinched look on her face, but she shook her head and it was gone. “Come on. Don’t want to keep him waiting any more than we already have.”
* * *
He didn’t know what he was expecting after reading the sign. He’d never really been inside something that could be called a tea shop before. He’d gotten his morning coffee from the cart in front of the office building. He wasn’t a hipster. He didn’t have a man bun or an ironic sense of fashion, his current outfit be damned. The glasses he usually wore while reading were, while expensive, utilitarian. He didn’t belong in something that could be described as a tea shop. What a preposterous idea.
Which was why he was surprised when they came to the shop itself to see that it looked like a house. Granted, it was unlike any house he’d ever seen before, but a house all the same. A wooden porch wrapped around the front, large windows on either side of a bright green door, light flickering from within like candles had been lit. A brick chimney sat on the roof with a little curl of smoke coming out the top.
But that was where the similarity to any house Wallace had ever seen ended. Part of it had to do with the cable extending from the hook in his chest and up the stairs, disappearing into the closed door. Through the closed door.
The house itself looked as if it had started out one way, and then halfway through the builders had decided to go in another direction entirely. The best way Wallace could think of to describe it was that it looked like a child stacking block after block on top of one another, making a precarious tower. The house looked as if even the smallest breeze could send it tumbling down. The chimney wasn’t crooked, per se, but more twisted, the brickwork jutting out at impossible angles. The bottom floor of the house appeared sturdy, but the second floor hung off to one side, the third floor to the opposite side, the fourth floor right in the middle, forming a turret with drapes drawn across multiple windows. Wallace thought he saw one of the drapes move as if someone were peering out, but it could have been a trick of the light.
The outside of the house was constructed with panel siding.
But also brick.
And … adobe?
One side appeared to be built out of logs, as if it’d been a cabin at one point. It looked like something out of a fairy tale, an unusual house hidden away in the woods. Perhaps there’d be a kindly woodsman inside, or a witch who wanted to cook Wallace in her oven, his skin cracking as it blackened. Wallace didn’t know which was worse. He’d heard too many stories about terrible things happening in such houses, all in the name of teaching a Very Valuable Lesson. This did nothing to make him feel better.
“What is this place?” Wallace asked as they stopped near the porch. A small green scooter sat next to a flower bed, the blooms wild in yellows and greens and reds and whites, but muted in the dark.