The ferryman stares at me with horror. “But they can’t!” he protests. “I need my beauty rest. Eight hours a night, the reconstructive surgeons said, or I could end up back with my old skeleton face. I paid too much money for this skin to have it flake away from exhaustion.”
I feel Jareth rise to my side. “Sorry,” he says, looking the distraught ferryman right in the eyes. “But you know how musicians are. I doubt you’ll be able to do anything to stop them.” He pauses, then adds, “I mean, as long as they’re here, on this side of the river, that is.” He gives him a meaningful look and it’s all I can do not to grin widely.
Charon crosses his arms over his chest, glaring at us. “Okay, okay,” he says at last. “I’ll take you troublemakers across to the other side. Let Hades himself deal with you. But I’m telling you now, Prim is in big trouble the next time he dares show his face down here. Bringing the living to Hades,” he grumbles. “What’s next? Honeymoons? Bachelorette parties?”
“So you’ll take us?” I ask, trying not to reveal my total excitement. “Even though we don’t have any coins?”
“Yes, yes,” he agrees impatiently. “Just don’t tell anyone, okay? If Hades finds out, he’ll dock my pay again. And I’m trying to save up to have my chin done.” He involuntarily reaches to his chin, which I notice, does indeed look a tad too pointy. “I’ll ready the boat. You get them to stop that noise.” And with that, he storms over to the dock, leaving Jareth and me alone.
I turn to my ex-boyfriend, practically jumping up and down with excitement. “We did it!” I cry. “We actually did it!”
Jareth nods, unable to hide a small smile at the corner of his lips. “I guess we did,” he admits, looking pleased, despite himself. “Now, let’s go tell Race the good news before we both lose our hearing permanently.”
21
If someone had asked me, before this whole adventure, what I thought the Underworld would look like, I’d probably have spouted off some nonsense about fire-and-brimstone, red rocks, bubbling lava, narrow, crumbling bridges. Suffering people, horned demons cracking whips, lakes of fire—you get the idea.
But, turns out, I would have been wrong. By a long shot. You see, the real Hades looks a lot more like middle America. (Which, I imagine, to some, might be a hell in and of itself.) And not the nice, homey middle America with farmhouses and town squares and quaint little soda shops left over from the 1950s. I’m talking the kind right off the interstate—packed with strip malls and chain motels and crappy restaurants. Nothing unique or interesting or artsy as far as the eye can see.
To make matters worse, there’s no sun or blue sky down here deep underground, and so the colors all seem super muted—almost like we’ve stepped into a living, breathing sixties sitcom. (Without the breathing, obviously. Or the living, for that matter.) Everything is black and white, with the exception, of course, of the glowy purple people floating from shop to restaurant with bored looks on their faces.
“Ugh,” I remark as I step off the ferry, glancing over at Race and Jareth. “I’d almost rather go for the lake of fire at this point. At least it would be colorful and interesting.”
Race nods. “Prim told me about this place. They call it the Way Station. Souls hang out here until their lives have been judged and their punishment decided. Then they’re shuffled off to other areas of Hell. Pits of brimstone, cells of sulfur, or maybe, if they’re lucky, an address in the elite Elysian Fields subdivison.”
“It used to be a lot worse, too,” adds Charon as he readies the ferry to go back across the river. “A few years back, Hades got some stimulus money from the gods and decided to spruce up the place. Added a few office buildings, warehouses. He figured if people were going to be sitting around for months on end, they might as pull their own weight.”
I do a double take as a soul floats by, carrying a briefcase. “So wait, you’re saying when you die you still have to work?”
“Afraid so,” Charon says, restarting the boat’s motor. “The real estate investments the boss made down in Florida went underwater big time during the recession. So he needed some quick cash. And what better way to get it than put all these lazy souls on the payroll?” He snorts. “In fact, China’s outsourced about thirty-three percent of their labor to Hades in the last couple years. Course, they still put ‘Made in China’ on the label. Otherwise people might start asking questions.”
I make a face. “Sweatshops from Hell? Remind me never to die.” In fact, the whole waiting around on the riverbank for a hundred years is seeming more and more an attractive option.
“So where does Hades live?” Jareth interjects. “We need to seek an audience with him.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Charon replies. “Your best bet is to head over to the Pearly Gates.”
I raise an eyebrow. Charon shrugs. “Hades thought it’d be amusing to call it that,” he explains. “You’ll find he has a weird sense of humor.” He hands me a map. “Take one of the free buses down to Demonia Lane and then take a right onto Spirit Avenue. You can’t miss it—looks exactly like Graceland.”
I look down at the map. “Okay, sounds easy enough.”
Charon steps into his ferry and pushes it away from the dock. “Good luck,” he says as he floats down the river and into the night. “And watch out for the Demon Patrols.”