June didn’t want to talk to Mom. Not really. But she wanted to see what she was up to. Maybe get her to stop trying to make June do what she wanted her daughter to do.

Mom was never like that, before… Or at least June didn’t think she had been like that. Maybe there was something about Mom June hadn’t seen. Had there been an edge to her voice when Dad had come up with some lame excuse to stay home on Sunday?

June didn’t remember any. Just affectionate exasperation.

Or maybe dying did it. Mom would have been home alone, Dad off at work, me at school… June didn’t know what would have been worse, realizing everyone else was dying, or dying alone and not understanding why nobody answered 911. Could that have done it? She—

“There she goes,” Hank said.

June looked up and Mom was leaving the stadium, nearly lost among the crowd of spirits heading off to whatever one did with an eternal unlife. June pushed forward, dodging between a group of ragged teens and a man being born on a litter, dark skin and hawkish face matched with the Egyptian symbols on his throne.

Wonder if he was a pharaoh? June didn’t ask. One thing you quickly learned was that the sudden influx of spirits had led to first, many conmen running around and secondly, any spirits who had been important figures in the living world were heartily sick of being asked to talk about what they’d really done.

Besides, she had to keep up with Mom. Now Mom was almost lost among a group of rapturists, hurrying away from the stadium.

“Can you tell who she is?” Sally asked. “I just see a bunch of people dressed in terrible fashion.”

“As long as they don’t separate, we can track them,” June told Sally.

The streets were crowded, the various shops open, vendors manning their little stalls on the sidewalk. Sally broke away and came back with some shish kabobs and drinks for June and Hank.

“The nice thing about being dead is that you never worry about getting fat!” she said.

June ate the food as she kept following Mom.

You didn’t have to eat in the Memory Lands. But you would get hungry, a gnawing desire that would get all the worse because you would never physically die. June heard that there were some mystics who hadn’t eaten for hundreds of years, arguing that by fasting, they would be able to Move On.

Since they’re still here, I don’t think they’re right. June shuddered. She hoped Mom wouldn’t latch on to any of them. Before they’d died, Mom got woozy if she missed breakfast and Mom’s low blood-sugar temper…

“They’re turning off the road—where the hell are they going?” Hank said.

“Darktown?” Sally stopped. She glanced over at Hank. “They’re going to Darktown?”

June kept moving, or tried, until Hank threw out his arm, blocking her.

“Guys, we’re going to lose them!” June said.

“Then we lose them,” Hank said. His face was grim. “That’s Darktown, June, and I know your teacher told you about it.”

“Yes, bad memories, where…”

“Where you may not make it out,” Hank said. “It’s not just bad memories, June, but that part of the City is forged by them. It’s a bad place and spirits there are…”

“Twisted,” Sally said. Her face was gaunt in the lights of the city. “It either doesn’t want to let you out, or does other things. It’s not a safe place, June.”

“So I should let Mom go in there?” June glared at Hank. “Yes, she’s being a jerk, but she’s still Mom!”

“June,” Sally said. “You can’t… force someone to leave Darktown. It’s still the City and the City draws people to where they belong, until they change their minds.”

“And if she really doesn’t belong there?” June asked. Teacher hadn’t been very detailed on Darktown, beyond ‘don’t go in there,’ but given that Mom had fallen for the Rapturists…

Yeah. She needed someone to follow her. June had expected an argument, but she hadn’t thought about Mom actually being in danger.

“I can’t go with you,” Sally said. “I’m sorry, June, but I can’t go into Darktown. It wouldn’t—It wouldn't be safe.”

June blinked. “I—“

“It’s fine, Sally,” Hank said. “I’ll go with June.”

“Are you sure?” Sally looked nervous.

“Yeah,” Hank said. “I’m sure. I’m full of vim and vigor from the race, and if I don’t go with her, June will go walking in there. Remember she managed to die in a classroom.”

“Along with everyone else!” June said.

“My point still stands,” Hank replied with an unrepentant smile. Then his smile faded. “But are you sure, June?”

“If it’s that dangerous, then I need to track Mom down.”

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“Okay. Sally, I’ll get in touch with you when we get out.”

“Right,” Sally said, her face looking older. “June… don’t listen too closely to any whispers.”

“Right,” June said. Teacher hadn’t told her much about Darktown, beyond their warnings, but she remember one thing he’d said.

“Bad memories, and those who bear them, must have a home as well.” Maybe like the neighborhood his place is in? But he never warned me about that…

Besides if guys like the conman who had tried to trick June earlier lived there, It couldn’t be that bad.

Could it?

“Ready?” Hank asked.

“Yeah.” June said. Mom and her gang were almost out of sight down the cross street. June turned and followed them, Hank by her, leaving Sally behind.

And then, as she stepped over the threshold to the side street, the noise from the City faded, and June found herself in a different world.

----------------------------------------

The City was a creation of memory. Every stall, every shop June had walked through was imprinted in memory, be it the more or less generic memories of department stores, or some little hole-in-the-wall diner, its air rich with the memories of the family who had built it over the generations.

Here, there was memory, the happy sounds of the City barely audible, even though they’d just taken a few steps. The air…

June sniffed, then wrinkled her nose. The air had a sweetish odor about it.

Rot and decay.

June looked around. The walls were cracked and full of graffiti. Broken windows opened into darkness, only a few windows having faded, flickering lights behind them. Some were candlelit, and some had buzzing electric lights. At the street level, June saw stores and homes.

GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE! One sign read, plastered across a storefront, decayed mannequins wearing rotted finery in the windows.

“Let’s go. Don’t talk to anyone here,” Hank said.

“I don’t think anyone here can hurt us. Not permanently.”

“Hurt your form?” Hank shook his head. “No. Mind? Yah.” With that, he hurried her along the street.

June looked around. By one flickering streetlight, she saw a woman wearing a tattered fur coat, concealing a rail-thin, sickly form. Her throat had been messily slashed.

“Want some fun? I can give you some fun! Just give me some booze or a warm place to stay…” As June and Hank passed her, her voice grew desperate. “Maybe something warm to eat? I’ll go down on you for something warm!”

June shuddered.

“What happened to her?” June softly said. They dodged a man walking down the center of the street, his old-fashioned tuxedo moth-eaten.

“The market will recover. I haven’t lost everything. The market will recover. I haven’t lost everything.”

“Not everyone comes to the Memory Lands with good memories,” Hank quietly said. “This is the place where they can live, because a lot of them are terrified to see people who had good memories. It reminds them of… what they didn’t have.” He glanced away from June. “And if you’re not careful, you can be locked into your bad memories until you can’t dream of anything else. That’s who lives in Darktown.”

“I—“

“Where is she!” June started as a big, beefy man came out of an alley. He had a belt in one hand, and…

A small hole in the bridge of his nose, likely the entry point for the bullet that had messily blown the back of his head out.

June swallowed. It wasn’t the look. You saw stuff like this all the time. Some spirits took pride in their death wounds.

But it was the scent of decay, of despair.

“Not here,” Hank said. “Go somewhere else.”

“You’re lying!” he said. “The little bitch didn’t die! I didn’t hit her that hard! She’s around here somewhere and I’m going to learn her a lesson about back talking her pa!” He shoved past the two and went running down the street.

“He’ll never find her,” Hank said. “Even if she didn’t Move On. People like him can’t endure the rest of the City.”

“They don’t have any good memories?”

“Now? Probably not.” Hank shrugged. “They didn’t have many to start with. Some were victimized, some were victimizers.” He chuckled. “A lot were just too damned prideful for their own good.” He stared at her. “But this is the fringe of Darktown. Things get worse as you get further in because these people at least have memories of what it was to be a human…”

June didn’t ask about that, but… “Doesn’t anyone help them?”

“Sure. But these are the ones who didn’t want help. Nobody can make you change.”

“Right,” June said. She shivered, looking at the buildings. How many people are here? How many people I knew? Suddenly, Nancy just doing what she wanted didn’t seem like a bad thing.

But as fast as they had been walking, the group Mom was a part of was moving faster.

“Let’s hurry,” June said. Find Mom, yell at her, hit her over her head, and then get out of here. June didn’t want to spend any more time in this place. It was—She looked over to see a high wall with barbed wire surmounting it. A rusted sign read “Stannis Home for Abandoned Youth.” Behind the wall, June heard something like a badly tuned piano playing, and under it, the soft sobbing of a child.

“Wanna go home. Wanna go home.”

June shuddered. It was terrible. Once she got Mom out and pounded some sense into her, she’d never come back here.

But now she saw that the group with Mom had stopped, joining a larger crowd. They were standing in front of some kind of theater. The tragedy mask was intact, rust running down its formerly gleaming brass, giving it the look as if its eyes were bleeding.

The comedy mask had been shattered, the lower half entirely gone. The flickering marquee seemed to be loaded with films June mostly didn’t recognize, but the ones she did had all been box office bombs.

People were filing in, ushers staring at them.

Are those spirits, or just memories? June wondered, staring at the ushers and other attendants. Maybe the entire building was a stage, a memory of loss, and the ushers were created to add to the ambiance.

Because she couldn’t imagine a lot of people would end up here because of bad experiences working in a theater.

“No way are we getting in the front,” Hank said.

“So where do we go?” June asked.

“The rear. It’s a memory of a theater, and I don’t care where it is, every theater has a way for non-paying guests to get in.” Hank grinned. Then he turned serious. “If you want to. This feels…really bad.”

“I want to see what Mom got herself involved with,” June said. Because this doesn’t look like where you’d think people who want to go to heaven hold their services.

“Fine. Let’s go.” And with that, the two forms turned and went down a narrow alleyway, shadows following them.