Acheron

Listen (19 min) | Short story | Magical realism | Disturbing imagery

A man’s sins follow him into the grave. Arthur believed that. He’d never made a mistake, not since he’d been a child, and those wrongs were all accounted for. He was a man of his word. A man of principle.

The day he died, he’d been ready. Nothing left undone. No words unsaid. He was as prepared to cross the river as anyone could be, and cowardice had never been in his nature.

Taking a final look at the faces surrounding him—the doctor, the lawyer, the servants—he closed his eyes to the world of the living, thinking last of his daughter and becoming angry with himself for the thought.

When, as if from a long sleep, he woke, life and the world had drained away. He was in a cave. The passage, lit by a gray glow, tunneled through black rock, dripping with water that smelled of earth and sulfur.

Souls, wrapped in shrouds and funeral flowers, in rags and robes, marched past him, heading together in the same direction. Standing, he straightened his burial garment and joined the ranks.

Plodding through the passage, he squeezed against the surrounding bodies. In the gray light, naked figures slumped, glistening from the dripping water. The man beside him groaned, sobbing. The woman ahead of him tugged her shroud, wrapping it around herself, shivering. Arthur’s own robe slipped down to his waist. He held it, not wanting it to fall and knowing it didn’t matter anymore.

Thrumming swooshed past his ear. A bird perched, drinking from a rock pool. A yellow finch.

His daughter Hermia favored those creatures. Had fed them since she was a child.

Arthur preferred hunting them. Quail, grouse, and pheasant were good for eating and sport but not especially nice when stuffed. His smoking room at home was filled with taxidermy owls, hawks, cardinals, warblers, and a pair of condors.

When Hermia was a child, he even caught a finch and stuffed it for her. He’d expected smiles and gratitude, but instead she’d cried and said it must have hurt the stupid animal, and how she never wanted him to do it again. If she’d been a boy, he’d have whipped her. Instead, the old housekeeper had taken her to bed without supper, and they’d never spoken of it again. The bird he threw in the dustbin.

He watched the finches, yellow streaks in the gray, preening and chittering.

Someone grabbed his arm. It was a young man, brown haired, well built. “You must stay on the path. The birds go from the land of the dead to that of the living and back. Only they know the way. A human soul might get lost if he tried following them.”

Arthur shook him off. He’d heard such tales and saw now that there was something true in them, but he wasn’t the sort of man to get lost on a plain road. And he had nothing to go back for.

The young man tilted his head, watching Arthur and falling in step with the march.

The crowd sped forward, water coming in falls down the cave walls, the echo of currents in the distance. They were nearing the river.

Another finch flew past Arthur’s nose and into the right-hand tunnel. He watched it glide into the darkness, the yellow of its feathers flashing.

He stared, surprised he could see it at the back of the passage, not moving like a bird but waving, dancing, flickering.

He glanced about. No one was watching him, and the young man who warned him not to follow the animals was out of sight.

He wouldn’t go far. The tunnel wasn’t deep if he could see the end.

Struggling past his fellow travelers, Arthur crossed the path, feeling his way up toward the brightness.

The passage faded from black to brown, from brown to gold, stretching beyond the sound of water and cry of voices, rising to the rush of wind in tall grass.

It wasn’t a bird at the back of the cave. Before him, wavering in the breeze, was a single flame.

When he stopped, he was standing before a window, a candle burning on the sill.

Spinning, he gazed at the world. The cave had melted into nothing. In its place, wheat fields stretched for acres, shooshing in the wind, gilded by the late afternoon sun.

Turning to the window, he spied the house, a log hovel-of-a-place. Stepping up, he peered in. A table, a fire in the hearth, a boiling pot and little else were all the comforts it contained.

A voice chimed inside. “Come on now, we’ve got to keep the stew from burning.”

A young woman, brown-haired, too thin for as pregnant as she was, stirred the pot over the fire, a curly-headed girl child clinging to her skirts.

Hermia. He had warned her. Warned a thousand times, but that girl was willful, had more guts than sense. And Antony Strong, her dirt-scratching, good-for-nothing husband with his mud-floored shack was proving him right.

A letter sat unopened on the table. Arthur recognized his own handwriting.

His break with his daughter had been very public. In a town as small as theirs, nothing happened at the big house without everyone finding out.

He’d forbidden her to marry, told her marriage to Strong put her one rung above a beggar, but in the end, Hermia left and was wed in the next town over.

On his deathbed, the servants and his lawyer begged him to send for her.

Arthur refused.

Writing would serve the purpose, and she couldn’t argue with a piece of paper. This time, he’d have the final word.

He wrote, with instructions that it be sent after his death, saying how he forgave her foolishness and disloyalty. There was even a small inheritance for her children.

But she hadn’t opened the letter. Not yet.

A bird, flapping and tucking its wings, landed on the window ledge.

Its eyes took him in. Arthur saw his face reflected in the beady black as the cabin, the pasture, the sunlight faded to stone cavern.

He stumbled and found himself back in the side passage looking into the cave, the press of souls still on the path to the river.

The wailing of the mob swelled. They smelled the water, sour and mineral. All the flower crowns and farewell blossoms couldn’t drown that out.

Overhead, the birds hopped from one side of the cave to the other, drinking, lighting on ledges, flicking their heads to stare down at the crowd.

If he’d followed them to Hermia once, maybe it could be done a second time.

He trailed them, treading on toes, ignoring the screeching for him to get off.

Someone caught him by the shoulder and spun him around. Arthur stared into the face of the young man who had warned him before.

“I told you not to follow them.”

It was the same face, but the eyes—amber and circled by black—were a hawk’s. A god’s eyes. They were the eyes of the Guide who leads souls to the river.

Arthur fled, shoving past shoulders, trailing the finches.

No thought came to mind but the image of his letter sitting unopened on his daughter’s table.

Fingers clawed at his back. The Guide was after him, fighting to pull him into the throng.

To his right, a bird crouched, cocking its head, aiming its flight at a drinking pool on the opposite side of the tunnel.

Flitting its wings, the creature leapt.

Straining upwards, Arthur caught at it, feeling the feathers brush his hand, gritting his teeth, and closing his eyes to the cave.

Quiet settled. He opened his eyes. The breeze smoothed his cheeks, setting a sea of wheat rustling. He was outside Hermia’s house looking in the window, the red of evening coming on, the candle burning.

Birdsong called his gaze westward. On the horizon, in the dying light, a flock of finches ebbed and flowed, swishing north to south, rising and falling on waves of wind. He watched them grow distant, feeling himself running out of time.

Returning to the window, he saw Hermia sitting with her child and husband at supper, the unopened letter in the center of the table.

Antony peeked up from his plate. “Aren’t you a little curious about what he’s got to say?”

Hermia sighed and wiped her mouth. “I don’t know. I suppose so, but if he wanted to see us, he’d be here instead of sending a letter. I imagine he writes that he’s willing to welcome me home if I agree to an annulment.”

Her husband smiled, looking at her belly and their child. “Sort of late for that.”

Laughing, they finished supper, clearing up the dishes and putting their little one to bed.

Arthur felt himself watched. Turning toward the field, he saw an animal jerk against the ground. A hawk, chestnut and white with amber eyes, ripped at a finch, crushing it with its talons, pulling bowstrings of sinew. Blood coated the hooked beak. Their eyes met.

Arthur tried to fight, but the hawk’s gaze drew him down, past the red light of sunset into gray. The rush of wind became the fall of water.

He was back in the cave on the march to the river.

The Guide stood at the front of the trudging, panicked crowd. His head, crowned with a winged helmet, bobbed and twisted, the body poised to swoop down on his prey.

Arthur’s feet moved, pulled to the amber glare. He thought of Hermia, of the unopened letter, but his steps were not his own.

A blaze of yellow and black wings broke the hypnosis.

Turning, Arthur ran.

The elbows and fists of his fellow travelers flew up, striking him.

Birds drifted overhead.

Smashing his body into the available space, Arthur clawed, pushing faces, teeth, and thighs away from him as he grabbed the rocks and climbed.

A scream shook the stones.

Arthur scrambled, not daring to look behind, leaping toward the finches.

The grip of talons, greater than a man’s hand, clamped his shoulders.

His fingers closed on a squirming bundle of feathers.

Candlelight struck the darkness.

Cave faded into homestead, and the first stars of evening dotted the dimming sky.

He was lying at the cabin window.

Dragging himself up, he looked in.

Hermia and Antony sat beside the fire, him smoking a pipe and reading the paper, her staring into the flames, the unopened letter in her lap.

Arthur tried to tell her to read it, but his words made no sound, even to him. He tried stepping through the window, the door, the wall, but he couldn’t go further than the lit candle on the sill.

Hermia lifted the letter. “I suppose he says he forgives me. He always did like being benevolent when he was in the wrong, it’s easier than apologizing.”

Antony put down the paper and took her hands. “I’ll apologize if you think it’d help. I’ve never liked your father, but I hate to think I’m standing between the two of you.”

Hermia looked into his eyes. “It’s not really you, even if he says it is. It’s my being what he calls willful, meaning I see the world different from his way. With or without you, that isn’t going to change.”

Antony relit his pipe, staring at the letter. “So, what do you want to do?”

Arthur tried to shout, to kick and beat the walls and window frame.

Hermia lifted the letter.

Birds flitted from the roof to the sill, gathering around him, preparing to depart.

He called his daughter’s name, begging.

Rocking two, three, four times in her chair, she moved her hand toward the fire, dangling the letter over the flames.

Screaming, Arthur grabbed the only thing he could get his hands on and threw it into the cabin.

The letter fell into the fire.

The bird hit the table with a thump.

Arthur stared at the body of the finch lying on the wood slab. Hermia and Antony jumped up, creeping toward the limp smudge of feathers.

Hermia touched her belly. “Poor little thing. What in the world could’ve made it do that?”

Antony looked out the window. “Must’ve gotten confused, maybe an owl or a hawk was chasing it.”

In the fireplace, the last of the letter blazed, curled, and blackened.

Tears caught in the old man’s beard and fell on his lips, tasting of salt and stone. He felt them rushing down his cheeks, watched them plink onto the windowsill, the candle, and extinguish the flame.

In the darkness, he smelled mud and sulfur, watched a gray glow spreading and lapping at his feet. Voices surged into one trembling groan.

He’d returned, standing with the others at the water’s edge.

The throng mobbed, begging at the knee of the amber-eyed Guide, his two-serpent staff held aloft.

Across the river, a boat floated out of the mist.

At Arthur’s feet lay the body of the finch. He watched it, hoping the creature, with its power to journey between worlds, would return to life, wishing for its animating force to rise above its carcass and join them on the last ferry into eternity. But the little songbird was gone. The injury could never be undone.

Slumping to his knees, Arthur let his head fall, his own selfish cruelty pressing him to the ground.

He thought of Hermia. Of the tears in her child eyes at the sight of the stuffed bird. Of her stalwart grief when he’d told her not to come home with Antony Strong. Of all such times.

He saw his smallness in writing the letter, his last stunted love to her, his desired words of farewell wrapped in idiotic pride.

It was ashes now. He could never hurt her again.

Scooping up the light-as-air creature, he tucked the wings, careful to keep the head from lolling.

Earth squished beneath him. Digging out a hole with one hand, he lowered the bird into the grave.

Oh, little one, I—

He was at the cabin. Hermia was placing the finch in a hole just outside the window.

He wasn’t watching her, nor was he entirely there. Their hands, holding one bird in two places, moved, laying the animal in the ground and pausing.

Antony knelt beside. “Are you alright?”

Hermia watched the broken creature, wrinkling her brow, dabbing her tears. “I’m alright. I’ve always loved these birds, and with the letter coming, I was thinking about my father. He’s never been what you’d call warm. I suppose he raised me the way his father raised him.” Pushing the dirt onto the grave, she continued. “I’m not saying there’s any excuse for the way he’s treated us, but in his own gruff way—,” she shook her head, “he always wanted the best for me, but he never knew quite how to give it.” She got up, her husband helping her to her feet. “I may never see him again, but that doesn’t mean I’m angry at him anymore.”

Antony held her in his arms, and Hermia laid her head on his heart.

The sound of the wind in the wheat field stirred and rose, wrapping itself around Arthur. Like a drawing wiped away, the rocks, the river, the souls, the Guide, Antony, and Hermia vanished.

Blue and orange dawn painted a new sky, and golden stalks blew in, rushing past his arms.

When all was still, he stood.

The eastern horizon ignited. In the light, Arthur saw that he was standing in the wheat field, a sharpened sickle in his hand. In the distance, outlined by the coming morning, was his daughter’s cabin.

He knew, as one knows the truth in dreams, that in that field, time was meaningless. That when he’d finished the harvest, the sun would be up, and Hermia would be old and on his side of the window.

About and above, finches flew, landing and pecking for food. Arthur rubbed the wheat between his palms, throwing grain to the growing flock of his companions, smiling as they lighted on his head and shoulders.

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Feedback on this story was provided by my husband Michael and by Greta Valentine of Labyrinth Editing

Photo by Rahul: https://www.pexels.com/photo/lighted-candle-695644/