Wallace had never been a fan of tea. If pressed, he would say he never really saw what the fuss was about. It was dry leaves in hot water.
And it probably didn’t help that he was still staring at the man known as Hugo Freeman. He moved with grace, every action deliberate, almost as if he were dancing. He didn’t reach out to help Wallace to his feet, but instead motioned for him to pick himself up off the floor. Wallace did, though he kept his distance. If there ever were a god, it would be this man, no matter what Mei had told him. For all he knew, it was another trick, a test to see how he would act. He needed to be careful here, especially if he was going to insist this man give him back his life. It didn’t help that the cable seemed to connect the two of them, stretching and shrinking depending upon how close they were to each other.
Apollo sat at Hugo’s feet near the counter, staring up adoringly at him, tail thumping silently against the floor. Mei helped Nelson toward the counter, though he was grumbling that he could do it himself.
Wallace watched as Hugo picked up the steaming pewter teapot from the tray. He raised the pot toward his face, inhaling deeply. He nodded and said, “It’s had time to steep. Should be ready now.” He looked up at Wallace almost apologetically. “It’s organic loose leaf, which didn’t seem to fit what I know of you, but I have a pretty good track record for such things. For all I know, everything you like is organic. And peppermint.”
“I don’t like organic anything,” Wallace muttered.
“That’s okay,” Hugo said as he began to pour the tea. “I think you’ll like this.” There were four cups, each with a different floral design. He motioned for Wallace to take the cup with the flowers that rose along the sides and into the interior of the cup.
“I’m dead,” Wallace said.
Hugo beamed at him. “Yes. Yes, you are.”
Wallace ground his teeth together. “That’s not what—forget it. How the hell can I pick up the cup?”
Hugo laughed. It was a low and rumbly thing that started in his chest and poured out from his mouth. “Ah. I see. And anywhere else, you might have a point. But not here. Not with these. Try it. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
No one could promise that with any certainty. The only thing he’d been able to touch was Mei and the ground beneath his feet. And Apollo, but the less said about that the better. This felt like a test, and he didn’t trust this man as far as he could throw him. Wallace had never thrown a man before, and he didn’t want to start now.
He sighed and reached for the cup, expecting his hand to pass through it, ready to glare at Hugo as if to say See?
But then he felt the warmth of the tea, and he gasped when his fingers touched the surface of the cup. It was solid.
It was solid.
He hissed when he jerked his hand up, sloshing tea over the side of the cup and onto his fingers. There was a brief flare of heat, but then it was gone. He looked at his fingers. They were pale as always, the skin unblemished.
“These teacups are special,” Hugo said. “For people like you.”
“People like me,” Wallace echoed dully, still staring at his fingers.
“Yes,” Hugo said. He finished pouring the tea into the remaining cups and set the teapot back onto the tray. “Those who have left one life in preparation for another. They were a gift when I became what I am now.”
“A ferryman,” Wallace said.
Hugo nodded. “Yes.” He tapped the stitched lettering on his chest. He didn’t seem to notice the cable, his fingers disappearing through it. “Do you know Charon?”
“No.”
“He was the Greek ferryman who carried souls to Hades over the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world between the living and the dead.” Hugo chuckled. “It lacks subtlety, I know, but I was younger when I named this place.”
“Younger,” Wallace repeated. “You’re already young.” Then, unsure if he was insulting a sort of deity who was apparently in charge of … something, he quickly added, “At least you look like you are. I mean, I don’t know how this works, and—”
“Thank you,” Hugo said, lips quirking as if he found Wallace’s discomfort amusing.
“Oh boy,” Nelson grumbled, picking up his teacup and slurping along the edges. “He’s an old man now. Maybe not as old as me, but he’s getting there.”
“I’m thirty,” Hugo said dryly. He gestured toward the cup on the table in front of Wallace. “Drink up. It’s best when it’s hot.”
Wallace eyed the tea. There were bits of something floating at the top. He wasn’t sure he wanted to drink it, but Hugo was watching him closely. It didn’t seem to be hurting Mei or Nelson, so Wallace gingerly picked up the cup, bringing it close to his face. The scent of peppermint was strong, and Wallace’s eyes fluttered shut of their own accord. He could hear Apollo yawning in the way dogs do, and the bones of the house as it settled, but the floor and walls fell away, the roof rocketing up toward the sky, and he was, he was, he was—
He opened his eyes.
He was home.
Not his current home, the high-rise apartment with the imported furniture and the red accent wall he thought about painting over and the picture windows that opened up to a city of metal and glass.
No, it was his childhood home, the one with the stairs that creaked and the water heater that never had enough hot water. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, Bing Crosby singing on the old radio, telling everyone who could hear to have yourself a merry little Christmas.
“Until then,” his mother sang as she spun through the kitchen, “we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”
It was snowing outside, and garlands stretched along the top of the cabinets and on the windowsills. His mother laughed to herself as the oven dinged. She grabbed an oven mitt with a snowman printed on it from the counter. She opened the oven door, the hinges squealing, and pulled out a sheet of homemade candy canes. Her holiday specialty, a recipe she’d learned from her mother, a heavyset Polish woman who called Wallace pociecha. The scent of peppermint filled the room.
His mother looked up at him standing in the doorway, and he was ten and forty all at the same time, in his sweats and flip-flops, but also in flannel pajamas, his hair a mess, his toes bare on the cold floor. “Look,” she said, showing him the candy canes. “I think it’s the best batch yet. Mamusia would be proud, I think.”
Wallace doubted that. His grandmother had been a frightening woman with a sharp tongue and blunt insults. She died in a home for the elderly. Wallace had been sad and relieved all at once, though he’d kept that thought to himself.
He took a step toward his mother, and at the same time felt the warm bloom of the tea as it slid down his throat and settled in his belly. It tasted like the candy canes smelled, and it was too much, too jarring, because it couldn’t be real. Yet he could taste her candy canes as if she were really there, and he said, “Mom?” but she didn’t respond, instead humming along as Bing Crosby gave way to Ol’ Blue Eyes.
He blinked slowly.
He was in a tea shop.
He blinked again.
He was in the kitchen of his childhood home.
He said, “Mom, I—” and there was a sting in his heart, a sharp jab that caused him to grunt. His mother had died. One minute she was there, and the next she was gone, his father speaking gruffly into the phone, telling him it’d been quick, that by the time they’d caught it, it’d already been too late. Metastasized, one of his cousins had told him later, in her lungs. She hadn’t wanted Wallace to know, especially since they hadn’t spoken in close to a year. He’d been so angry at her for this. For everything.
This is what the tea tasted like. Memory. Home. Youth. Betrayal. Bittersweet and warm.
Wallace blinked and found himself still in the tea shop, the cup shaking in his hands. He set it back down on the counter before it spilled more.
Hugo said, “You have questions.”
In a shaky voice, Wallace replied, “That is quite possibly the biggest understatement ever spoken by the human tongue.”
“He tends to be hyperbolic,” Mei said to Hugo, as if that explained everything.
Hugo lifted his own teacup, taking a sip. His brow furrowed for a moment before smoothing out. “I’ll answer them as best I can, but I don’t know everything.”
“You don’t?”
Hugo shook his head. “Of course not. How could I?”
Frustrated, Wallace snapped, “Then I’ll make this as simple as possible. Why am I here? What’s the point of all of this?”
Mei laughed. “That’s what you call simple? Rock on, man. I’m impressed.”
“You’re here because you died,” Hugo said. “As for your other question, I don’t know if I can answer it for you, at least not on the scale you mean. I don’t think anyone can, not fully.”
“Then what’s the point of you?” he demanded.
Hugo nodded. “That I can answer. I’m a ferryman.”
“I told him that,” Mei whispered to Nelson.
“It’s hard to retain information right after,” Nelson whispered back. “We’ll give him a little longer.”
“And what does a ferryman do?” Wallace asked. “Are you the only one?”
Hugo shook his head. “There are many of us. People who … well. People who have been given a job. To help others like yourself. To make sense of what you’re feeling at the moment.”
“I already have a therapist,” Wallace snapped. “He does what I pay him for, and I have no complaints.”
“Really?” Mei said. “No complaints. None whatsoever.”
“Mei,” Hugo warned again.
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. She drank from her own tea. Her eyes widened slightly before she drank the rest in three huge gulps. “Holy crap, this is good.” She looked up at Wallace. “Huh. I didn’t expect that from you. Congrats.”
Wallace didn’t know what she was on about and didn’t care to ask. That hook in his chest felt heavier, and though it tugged pleasantly, he was growing annoyed at the sensation. “I’m in the mountains.”
“You are,” Hugo agreed.
“There are no mountains near the city.”
“There aren’t.”
“Which means we’ve come a long way.”
“You have.”
“Even if you’re not the ferryman for everyone,” Wallace said, “how does that work? People die all the time. Hundreds. Thousands. There should be more here. Why isn’t there a line out the door?”
“Most of the people in the city go to the ferrywoman in the city,” Hugo said, and Wallace was unnerved by how carefully he seemed to be choosing his words. “Sometimes, they get sent on to me.”
“Overflow.”
“Something like that,” Hugo said. “To be honest, I don’t always know why people such as yourself are brought to me. But it’s not my job to question the why. You’re here, and that’s all that matters.”
Wallace gaped at him. “You don’t question the why? Why the hell not?” The why of things was Wallace’s specialty. It led to truths that some tried to keep hidden. He looked at Mei, who grinned at him. No help there. Nelson, though. Nelson was in the same boat as he was. Maybe he could be of some use. “Nelson, you’re—”
“Oh no,” Nelson said, glancing at his bare wrist. “Would you look at the time. I do believe I’m supposed to be sitting in my chair in front of the fire.” He shuffled away toward the fireplace, leaning on his cane. Apollo trailed after him, though he glanced back at Hugo as if to make sure he was staying right where he was.
That certainly didn’t make Wallace feel better. “Somebody had better give me some answers before I…” He didn’t know how to finish that.
Hugo reached up and scratched the back of his neck. “Look, Wallace—may I call you Wallace?” Then, without waiting for an answer, “Wallace, death is … complicated. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going through your head right now. It’s different for everyone. No two people are the same, in life or in death. You want to rant and rave and threaten. I get that. You want to bargain, make a deal. I get that too. And if it makes you feel better, you can say whatever you want here. No one will judge you.”
“At least not out loud,” Nelson said from his chair.
“You had a heart attack,” Hugo said quietly. “It was sudden. There was nothing you could have done to stop it. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that,” Wallace snapped. “I didn’t do anything.” He paused. “Wait, how did you know how I…” He couldn’t finish.
“I know things,” Hugo said. “Or, rather, I’m shown things. Sometimes it’s … vague. An outline. Other times, it’s crystal clear, though those are rare. You were clear to me.”
“I expect I would be,” Wallace said stiffly. “Which makes this easier, because I don’t know how much clearer I can be. Send me back.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then find me someone who can.”
“I can’t do that either. That’s not how it works, Wallace. A river only moves in one direction.”
Wallace nodded, mind racing. He obviously wasn’t being heard. He wouldn’t find any help here. “Then I bid you good day, and request I be returned to the city. If you can’t help me, I’ll figure it out on my own.” He didn’t know how, exactly, but anything would be better than being here and hearing nothing but these three idiots talking in circles.
Hugo shook his head. “You can’t leave.”
Wallace narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying I’m trapped here? Keeping me against my will? That’s kidnapping. I’ll see you all brought up on charges for this, don’t think I won’t.”
Hugo said, “You’re standing.”
“What?”
Hugo nodded toward the floor. “Can you feel the floor beneath your feet?”
Wallace flexed his toes. Through the thin, cheap flip-flops, he could feel the pressure of the wood floor against the bottoms of his feet. “Yes.”
Hugo lifted a spoon off the tray and set it on the counter. “Pick that spoon up.”
“Why?”
“Because I asked you to. Please.”
Wallace didn’t want to. He couldn’t see the point. But instead of arguing, he stepped back up to the counter. He stared down at the spoon. It was such a little thing. Flowers had been carved into the handle. He reached down to pick it up. His hands shook as his finger curled around the handle, and he lifted it.
“Good,” Hugo said. “Now put it back down.”
Grumbling under his breath, he did as he was told. “Now what?”
Hugo looked at him. “You’re a ghost, Wallace. You’re dead. Pick it up again.”
Rolling his eyes, he made to do just that. Only this time, his hand passed right through it. Not only that, his hand went into the countertop. There was a strange buzzing sensation prickling along his skin, and he gasped as he pulled his hand back as if it were burned. All his fingers were still attached, and the buzzing was already fading. He tried it again. And again. And again. Each time, his hand passed through the spoon and into the counter.
Hugo reached out for Wallace’s hand, but stopped above it, hovering and coming no closer. “You were able to do it the first time because you’ve always been able to. You expected it because that’s the way it’s always worked for you. But then I reminded you that you’ve passed, and you could no longer touch it. Your expectations changed. You should have unexpected it.” He tapped the side of his head. “It’s all about your mind and how you focus it.”
Wallace started to panic, throat closing, hands shaking. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
“That’s because you’ve been conditioned your entire life to think one way. Things are different now.”
“Says you.” He reached for the spoon again but jerked his arm up when it passed through it once more. His hand caught the teacup, knocking it over. Tea spilled onto the counter. He stumbled back, eyes wide, teeth grinding together. “I … I can’t be here. I want to go home. Take me home.”
Hugo frowned as he came around the counter. “Wallace, you need to calm down, okay? Take a breath.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Wallace cried. “And if I’m dead, why are you telling me to breathe? That is impossible.”
“He’s got a point,” Mei said as she finished her second cup of tea.
For every step Hugo took toward him, Wallace took an answering step back. Nelson peered around the edge of the chair, a hand resting on the top of Apollo’s head. The dog’s tail thumped, keeping time like a silent metronome.
“Stay back,” he snarled at Hugo.
Hugo raised his hands placatingly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I don’t believe you. Don’t come near me. I’m leaving, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“Oh no,” Mei breathed. She set down her teacup and stared at Wallace. “That’s definitely not a good idea. Wallace, you can’t—”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” he shouted at her, and the light bulb in one of the sconces sizzled and snapped before the glass shattered. Wallace jerked his head toward it.
“Uh-oh,” Nelson whispered.
Wallace turned and ran.