Chapter 4

He could feel the ferryman’s gaze upon him, the skeletal sockets veiled in shadow seemed to bore through his bandages. His small vessel bobbed in the creature's wake, a rare disturbance on the Styx’s mirror surface. Charon seemed confused, he did not know Hades was soon to open, and someone needed to see it.

“The internet is on fire today,” Anna slapped her phone onto the counter and leaned, bored, into her hand. There had been a lot of extra noise not far from the ball drop; the police had found a body, and the hunt was on for the “New Year Killer.” Conspiracies abounded. The internet's usual contingent of crazies were already screaming about their favorite suspects—politicians, celebrities, ex-lovers, you name it. None of it seemed even remotely feasible. Anna spun her phone under her finger as she contemplated which hobby she could pick up to finally get her offline. Just before she started playing “Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe” between crochet and gardening, her oven timer dragged her back to reality. Lasagna out, rolls in, and before she could get back to picking a hobby, she heard wheels and an engine in her driveway. Anna was out the front door in a flash, just in time to see a child running at her at full speed. Her son, Timothy, wrapped himself around her legs; his untamed blonde mane shifted back as he stared up at her, his eyes, blue like ocean water wrapped around his unique, vertically slit pupils—it was a view she’d always found deeply comforting. “Well,” another voice rang out from in front of her, “I’m glad someone is getting a warm welcome.” Anna looked up at her husband. “You’ll get your turn; V.I.P.s first.”

“Okay then, I guess I might as well get started on whatever that smell is while I wait.”

Anna’s arms shot out to block his path. “Oh no you—“ but she was cut off as Will tossed her onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Tim laughed hysterically as they walked into the house. “Mommy! I drove Grandpa’s tractor!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Rode,” Will corrected as he gently returned her to her feet.

“And Grandpa showed me how to use his chainsaw!”

“Really?”

“He observed from a distance,” Will closed the door behind him.

“And Grandma let me cut up some chicken!”

Anna turned to Will for the correction, but he only dropped his keys in his basket by the door and shrugged with an uncomfortable giggle. “Your mom gave our five-year-old a knife?”

“I mean, I think I turned out fine.”

Before she could retort, their doorbell rang. Will swiftly turned and opened the door. “Hello!” he boomed, “How can I help you?”

“Is this the Pallas residence?” Anna could barely hear the meek voice from behind her husband.

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“It is.”

“William Pallas?”

“’Tis I.”

The stranger's voice suddenly got much louder. “District Attorney?” Will moved; from Anna’s perspective, it looked like he lunged at the man, and a piercing sound shook the air. Will stumbled back into the house a few steps, and the sound rang out a second time, then a third. Gunshots.

Anna watched in horror as Will fell onto his back in front of her, revealing a short, skinny man standing in her doorway with a small pistol in his hand. The man looked at Anna and grinned as he stepped into the house, then over Will’s body. Anna couldn’t move, scream, or cry. She was frozen in place, watching Tim shake Will as he pleaded with him to get back up.

The stranger grabbed her by the wrist and snatched her towards him, causing her to release a short yelp of pain and surprise. He stuck the gun in her face, and Tim screamed at him, “Stop it! You hurt my daddy!” The man let Anna go and turned back to Tim. “Yeah? And I’m gonna hurt you too, kid.”

The man tried to swing a kick at Tim, but Anna jumped on him from behind. The sudden shift in weight caused him to lose balance, and they tumbled to the floor. He rolled over on top of her and cracked his pistol over her head; the pain was intense, and she fought for consciousness as he raised the gun again, higher this time due to her loosened grip.

Tim suddenly began to scream, sorrowfully, angrily, and stunningly loudly. The noise drowned out everything; Anna felt that her ears would burst under the strain. She looked up at him and watched in awe as the floor of their home seemed to recede below Tim’s feet; the ceiling retreated in a similar manner, as if pushed away by a ball with Tim at the center.

The room grew dark, almost like it had been engulfed in fog, and Anna began to shiver as her breath became visible. The man, cupping one of his now bleeding ears, fired his gun at Tim, but the bullet stopped inches from the child’s face; the attacker fired twice more, but those bullets stopped as soon as they left the barrel and disintegrated immediately afterward.

Tim stopped screaming, and Anna saw him staring at the intruder, but his eyes were different, discolored; his normally comforting eyes now had an otherworldly look to them, white pupils stared through their attacker. Tim began to take a step toward the man but stopped. His hair raised on his head as if pulled by static, and in a blinding flash of light, a tall man was standing in their living room. The force of his arrival threw the first intruder to the ground.

Anna locked eyes with the newcomer; his eyes were discolored much like Tim’s were. The man turned to look at Tim, then to the attacker on the floor. The new man glared at the first man, then drew a large revolver from his belt and shot him in the knee. Their attacker fainted.

Within moments, the strange darkness had evaporated, the room began to return to temperature, and Tim began to sob over his father. Anna began to crawl toward him, but the remaining stranger stopped her. She started to plead with him, but he helped her to her feet, looked at her with perfectly normal eyes, and whispered, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but…”

He put his finger to his lips and looked at Tim. Anna couldn’t hear anything at first; she didn’t care to; she wanted to be next to her son. Then she heard it. Tim was talking, arguing with himself. But she could only hear one side of the conversation as Tim became increasingly animated.

“You have to help him!” the boy sobbed, “Because he’s my Daddy!” “No!” “But I…”

Then Tim just began to repeat himself, quietly at first, then loudly, then deafeningly as he demanded over and over, “Please save my daddy!” As he yelled, Anna felt the temperature drop again, the fog returned, but this time it seemed to gather around Will. The holes in his chest began to bubble with black liquid; the bullets were slowly pushed out, and as they rolled silently away onto the carpet, Will’s wounds closed. He groaned, and his eyes opened.