14 – Hall of Preservation

Erika let her fingers trail over a black marble column. It felt smooth and cold to the touch. Thin white fissures ran through in chaotic, disjointed patterns that stretched high up toward the vaulted ceiling of the corridor. Moving to the stained glass window, she pressed her face right up against it in an attempt to peer outside.

She couldn’t see a single thing. Even though the corridor curved slightly, and she should have been able to see the exterior of the part she just walked through, there was nothing there. Just a void.

The same as the last time she tried peeking out.

“I was half joking earlier,” Erika said as she carried on walking through the ambulatory, “when I told The Castle that I wanted my own little pocket dimension. But, honestly, if I could get some badass Gothic cathedral that I could pop in and out of at will, I’d totally take it.”

The ghost didn’t answer.

Erika hadn’t really expected her to, given that she didn’t seem capable of speech, but some acknowledgement would have been nice. The ghost didn’t even offer a polite nod of her head or a silent shrug of her shoulders. She drifted along, empty eyes fixed on nothing in particular.

“I don’t know about this cathedral,” Erika carried on despite the one-sided conversation. “I think I’d prefer no more than ten percent liminal space and twenty percent more Transylvanian vampire. But maybe you don’t get much choice with pocket dimensions.”

Erika had now been in four parallel spaces: the maggot ziggurat, the asylum, the stomach of the terror bird, and this Bench of the Final Judge. All except the ziggurat had some topological nonsense going on, and the ziggurat still might have, and she just missed it with how limited her exploration of that realm had been.

“You know, if you drag someone off into your nightmare realm, it should be common courtesy to at least send a guide. Maybe I should just break one of the stained glass windows…” Erika said, trailing off as she glanced aside.

She wasn’t sure how long she had been walking. It had been a minimum of five minutes, maybe as many as fifteen. Thus far, she had passed dozens of the windows, if not triple digits. Each was subtly different from the last, but all depicted roughly the same thing.

A skeletal figure, robed like a stereotypical grim reaper, sat in a slouch on a throne far, far too large for him. Rather than hold a scythe, however, the reaper carried a thick tome in one bony hand and a golden hourglass in the other.

The Hermit claimed that ancient gods were the original basis for much of modern folklore, even if the folklore had been bastardized over the eons. Erika didn’t need to be an expert in anthropology to guess what myths this Final Judge had inspired. She wasn’t quite sure how the theme of preservation tied into its ideas, but her eyes drifted to that book; if this judge recorded every little thing about those who crossed his bench, maybe that would fit.

Erika raised her bat, about to smash in this rendition of the reaper, only to catch the reflection of the ghost in the glass.

The ghost hovered above the ground, head craned to one side like she had been hung from the neck. The pose left her pale face superimposed directly over the skull of the reaper.

Erika hesitated, a sudden uncertainty gripping her. What, exactly, did she know about the ghost? She pointed out things related to The Mummy. She looked vaguely like The Stalker. She had started appearing after a visit to a graveyard. And… that was it.

Staring at the illusion now, like some Pepper’s ghost except real, Erika couldn’t help her sudden jolt of unease.

She was alone in the realm of some god of death, accompanied only by a ghost whose motivations were a mystery.

The illusion of the superimposed ghostly reaper broke as the ghost lifted her hand. She pointed off, down the hall, just like she normally did when Erika caught her in the corner of her eye. Following the thin arm, Erika spotted a door at the end of the corridor that she was mostly sure hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“Would you look at that?” Erika said, breaking the silence as she forced a smile. “See, never let anyone tell you that complaining doesn’t work.”

The ghost looked to her, face flickering to surprise as if she hadn’t expected Erika to still be looking in her direction. Slowly, she tilted her head to the other side, raising a questioning eyebrow.

“Well, it was either the complaining or the threatening to break the window. Either way, let’s go see what our host has to say for themselves.”

Erika made sure to keep the ghost at her side as they approached the door. Seeing the ghost so obviously superimposed over an aspect of The Mummy made her heart jolt. She wasn’t sure what she would do if the ghost attacked—she had already tried touching the ghost to no effect—but better to be prepared, just in case.

The door heaved open just before Erika could reach for it, moving on its own to reveal a man standing on the other side. Dressed to the nines with dark hair, dark eyes, and a thin yet pointed nose, he might have been The Butler’s fraternal twin. Although Erika jumped to a fighting stance, bat at the ready, he looked utterly unperturbed. With a smile, hand placed across his chest, he faintly bowed.

“Miss,” he said, addressing only Erika. “Dinner is served.”

People milled about behind the butler, all dressed like this was some gala for wealthy nobles. Women were adorned in long, flowing dresses, each somehow more extravagant than the last. Men were suited in fine fits with tails and cravats, sporting a variety of pastel colors and matching spats over their shined shoes. Every one of them wore a mask. Not just a mask, but a masque—Erika wasn’t exactly sure what the difference was, but felt the fancier word fit the atmosphere better.

More stained glass adorned the hall’s walls, but the feature point was the table that stretched for the entire length. The ebony wood probably cost a fortune, but the meal on top was excessive to the extreme. Hocks of beef, bushels of fruit, corn on the cob, roasted turkeys dressed up with enough butter that they shined, even full pigs complete with apples shoved into their mouths.

Nobody sat and ate. Everyone stood about, talking, laughing, and even dancing off toward one end of the room. Not one person had a chicken drumstick in their hand. Nobody held an apple or even a fork. Erika didn’t spot a single person so much as holding a glass of wine.

“Miss?” the servant said, leaning toward her a little too close. “Your pallor has turned. Is there something not to your liking?”

Erika shared a glance with her ghost, who at least looked as concerned as Erika felt, before glaring at the butler. “I… don’t even know where to start with you.”

“Might I suggest the hors d’oeuvre?” The servant brought around a silver platter of gougères topped with something that smelled a little fishy. “The chef told me how proud they were of the caviar especially.”

“Uh huh. I’m sure it’s lovely,” Erika said, stepping past the butler and into the room. She sure as hell wasn’t going to touch a single speck of the food. Even if it wasn’t poisoned, it was probably made from ethically sourced human orphans or something equally disturbing.

While she knew what she wasn’t going to do, she was at something of a loss for what to do. From previous experiences, she expected monsters prowling the hallways of a dank castle, strange laboratory experiments, implacable handymen stalking the halls for intruders, or just a bunch of salt statues of dead people. Instead, she got a party?

“—spent the night painting? Molly will be sad to find him gone today.”

“Mark said his muse struck and just couldn’t part with the brush—”

Erika moved along the edge of the crowd, watching for anyone who looked shifty.

“Kimberly wants to hold a little luncheon tomorrow. I heard she invited Josh.”

“Josh Davies? Really? I heard he was involved with Janet.”

“That’s the thing, Janet is invited too—scandalous, isn’t it?”

They all seemed enraptured in their own little worlds, gossiping like school girls.

“Did you see the sheen on the duck? Gorgeous. How does the chef manage?”

“Practice and patience, Bob. Practice and patience.”

Erika paused, looking to that last pair. “Bob?” she repeated aloud.

The two men stopped talking, looking at her. The shorter of the two stood a little straighter. He dressed in a hot pink suit—jacket, shirt, and tie all in the same hue. Erika grimaced just looking at it. “Yes? Did you need something, dear?”

“I… no. Sorry.” The name was so… average. In fact, all the names were. She was fairly certain someone in her school had each of the names she overheard. The other cultists she had met, at least those whose names she had learned, weren’t quite so… normal. One of those cultists from the museum had been named Ea-Nasir, or something kind of like that—Erika couldn’t remember exactly.

And yet, now Bob stood in front of her. If she pretended he were wearing a flannel and jeans, maybe with a baseball cap on, his beard and sun-weathered face would have looked more at home with the name. In fact, now that she was really looking at him—at all of them—they were so… painfully average. They had rugged features like they worked all day, calloused hands, age-lined faces, and postures like not a one of them lifted with their knees instead of their backs.

Erika blinked again, feeling a sudden jolt of realization. “Did you live in Safe Harbor?”

“I certainly did,” Bob said with a loud laugh. “You don’t recognize me? Hall three, seat twenty one.”

“Right… from the Hall of Memories,” Erika said, sinking feeling weighing in her chest. “Right. I…”

“But I don’t recognize you,” Bob said with a glance to his partner—a taller man with thick sideburns. He got a shrug in return. “New arrival?”

“I… I need to go.”

“Go? Where is there—”

Erika didn’t stick around to chat more. She didn’t know how to leave this place, but that didn’t stop her. Heart hammering in her chest, she turned and stalked back through the dining hall. She did not rush. Sprinting would drag attention to her, and there were enough people to bog her down.

A vivid, visceral image popped into her mind; her own body, withered and mummified, set up on display in the Hall of Memories.

Erika wasn’t even sure if she was in this weird place. For all she knew, it was a situation like with The Mind and her body was back in reality, slumped into that vat of salt.

The crowd of people felt like they encroached upon her during her short talk with Bob. They still milled about, sharing gossip, only paying attention to her when she bumped into someone as she pushed her way through. There seemed to be so many more of them than before. Erika couldn’t see the door she had come through with how many people were suddenly standing around.

An alien fear hit Erika; she didn’t normally feel claustrophobic. She spent hours upon hours of her life in sweaty mosh pits, body-to-body with concert goers. But people weren’t here to have fun. People were here to carry on some pale masquerade of life after they died in the creepiest way possible.

Squeezing between two people, Erika stopped in her tracks. She had been heading toward the wall, but now found herself staring at a platter of pies, apple cobbler, and pumpkin cheesecake. She was back at the long table in the center of the room. Erika snapped her gaze back and forth.

She didn’t think she had gotten turned around.

Erika was about to turn around, about to start swinging her bat. With her heart thumping away, hammering in her chest with a need to escape, she spotted something on the table that made her pause—a platter of jellied cranberry sauce. It was cylindrical with a few slices cut from one end, but it had ridges along the middle like someone had just dumped it out of a tin can.

Something about that cranberry sauce made Erika stop. It was just… ridiculous. There was this extravagant feast, a smorgasbord the likes of which Erika had never seen. Nestled in the middle of it all was a simple plate of canned cranberry sauce.

Erika laughed.

She couldn’t help it. It was just such a facsimile of a party, like someone had heard about feasts and decided this must be what they looked like. Or someone here just really liked canned cranberry sauce and would have felt the meal was incomplete without it. However it happened, Erika felt a sudden wave of release as she laughed, gripping her stomach.

Breaking down her claustrophobia and paranoia, Erika realized two things. She had a heartbeat; a rush of adrenaline, endorphins, and dopamine ran through her, making her laugh or run in paranoid fear. In The Mind’s realm, she had none of that. Erika distinctly remembered feeling no elevated heart rate or even a real ability to panic while only a mental projection of herself.

She was real. Erika probably would have realized that if she took a second to think, but that confirmed it: she was not going to wake up and find herself a salt-dried corpse.

The second thing Erika realized was that her ghost was following overhead. She had lost track of her after the conversation with Bob, but now that Erika was calmer, she spotted the ghost hovering above the long table, pointing down toward one end.

Still grinning with the aftereffects of her outburst of laughter, Erika hopped up onto the table. Some nearby people had been staring at her, but her combat boots stomping down into the middle of a rhubarb pie made the din of conversation die out as more and more of the party’s guests turned to watch.

Erika paid them no mind. Until they swarmed her, she didn’t care much about a bunch of people trying to distract themselves from their demise. Her eyes honed in on the end of the table.

The throne sat at the head of the table, back high enough that it would have reached over Erika’s head even had she stood on its seat. Maintaining the black and white marble of the castle with a padded violet velvet cushioning, it looked far too dominating for a room like this. Yet, it had a little bubble around it, like none of the gathered people wanted to venture near.

A skeletal figure, robed in a black cloak, sat slouched over one armrest. A heavy tome sat on its lap while the sands of an hourglass trickled away in its arms. The skull had no eyes and no face, but the way its head lolled off to the side gave the impression that it was looking at the tome, if anything.

Erika started toward it, stomping along the table of food, kicking larger meals out of the way. Figuring a whole hog would weigh more than she cared to kick, she hopped over it, almost slipping in a bowl of green Jell-O. She kicked it off to the side, splattering sliced carrots over some woman’s dress. The woman’s aghast huff was the first noise anyone made since Erika climbed on the table. For a moment, Erika thought someone was finally going to yell at her, but nobody said a word before she reached the throne.

She stopped just inside the bubble’s radius, just a step ahead of where the closest party-goer gaped at her. The skeleton had no scythe, but she still didn’t want to get within touching distance of some Grim Reaper.

“Hey,” Erika said, knocking her bat against a glass of wine when the skeleton didn’t acknowledge her. “You’re some aspect of The Mummy, aren’t you?”

The skeleton remained still. Not even a twitch of its finger or odd tilt of its head served as a sign it heard her.

She flicked her eyes around. “No sphincters, huh? That almost puts me in a good mood. Tell you what, you get me out of here and I won’t shatter your little preservation reserve into fine dust. What do you say?”

“Don’t—” someone started. Erika kicked a relish tray in their general direction. She didn’t think she hit anyone, but didn’t turn to look. She squatted down, bat resting on her shoulder, to look the reaper in the eye while awaiting a response.

“You’re smaller than other aspects I met,” Erika said when no response came. “I could probably break you without a black bullet.”

Nothing but silence answered her.

Slowly standing, Erika cast one glance around at the stunned and perhaps frightened people staring at her. Frustrated at a lack of response, she curled her lip. “Fine. I was hoping to learn something—I don’t know what—but if this is how it’s going to be…”

Her fingers closed around the grip of her bat, eyeing the hourglass. For a bare instant, she thought about smashing that to bits, just to see if it would garner a reaction. Mythological connotations stayed her hand. An hourglass in the hands of Death didn’t seem like a good thing to touch, let alone break.

Moreover, if this was the Final Judge, then she should break something related to judgement. The skeleton didn’t have any balancing scales, nor any sword of truth, or a blindfold. The only other thing it had was that book. A ledger, perhaps? Records of its judgement?

Erika reached, not through physical space, but like she did when retrieving items from her armory. She felt her fingers touch the cool leather of the book’s cover, the metal braces along its spine resting against her palm.

The skeleton moved, hand coming to a rest on top of the book in a movement so glacial that a sloth could have avoided it, yet fast enough that Erika couldn’t react in time. Erika yanked her hand back, feeling an icy touch graze the backs of her fingers.

I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ɴᴏ ᴍᴜᴍᴍʏ.

Erika stumbled back, feeling like someone took a granite hammer to her chest.

The skeleton’s head lifted from its lolled position. Bone ground against bone like someone dragging that same granite hammer across a quarry. Its empty sockets leveled on Erika, ripping her breath from her throat. The muscles in Erika’s chest seized, keeping her from drawing in fresh air. It lasted a mere moment before its head tilted back down, slowly lifting the cover of its tome. Erika used the brief opportunity to suck in one gasp of air, letting it read a page.

Fʟᴏʀᴇɴᴄᴇ Eʀɪᴋᴀ Wᴀʟᴋᴇʀ. Yᴏᴜ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ʙᴇʟᴏɴɢ ʜᴇʀᴇ.