The boat could hold a number of passengers; perhaps as many as seven or eight. Ten with crowding and the risk of capsizing.
The figure at the tiller now grew to superhuman proportions, not so much in size as in fearful aspect. The gray-bearded face grew discernible. There was not much humanity in that face. It looked like a mask. Yet it was somehow lifelike. An animated mask. The eyes seemed to glow. In them was the gleam of intelligence but not much else. No pity; surely no compassion. However, neither was there malevolence.
This was a businessman.
The boat approached the shore at a sharp angle, heading in toward the left edge of the strand.
He got up and walked to the edge of the strand and there discovered that a stone jetty extended a short distance out from the riverbank. It could be a natural formation, he decided, though he was not at all sure. The boatman swung the tiller around and the long craft aligned its length with the edge of the jetty.
He walked out from shore over water-smoothed boulders.
“Greetings,” he said when he reached the boat.
The boatman nodded his great head. His hair was an unruly mass of gray.
“What’s across the river?”
The boatman heaved his huge shoulders. “I know not, nor care.” The voice was resonantly deep.
“Is it your job to take people across?”
A nod. “That it is.”
“Then, I suppose …”
The boatman’s left arm made a sweeping invitation.
“Come aboard my boat. But first —”
“Yes?”
“You must pay.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.”
For the first time he realized that he was naked.
“I’m afraid I have no money.”
The boatman’s dark brow lowered. “Then you may not cross.”
“Pity. May I ask how payment is usually made?”
“They take from their eyes coins, like golden tears.”
“I see.” He reached and touched his eyes. “I have none.”
“Then you may not cross.”
“This appears hopeless. What can one offer in lieu of coins?”
The boatman’s voice was flat. “Nothing.”
“You’re quite sure? Is there no service I can perform? No favor that I might bestow?”
“None.”
“Have you no needs?”
“Not many. Those which I have are met with money.”
“Why was I brought here?”
The boatman shook his head in response. “I know not.”
“It seems as though I should cross, that I was meant to cross.”
“So it would seem,” the boatman agreed.
“Yet I am barred from this possibility.”
“Again, so it would seem.”
“And you have no explanation?”
“None.”
He regarded the boatman for a moment. The boatman’s cold gaze met his. At length the huge man turned and grasped the tiller. Angling it toward the rocks, he began to push the boat out into the river.
“Wait.”
The boatman turned from his task. “Why?”
“There must be something I can do for you. You say your needs are met with money. Have you no other requirements, no yearnings, such that cannot be satisfied with material gain?”
“Such as?”
“Companionship?”
The boatman grunted.
He persisted: “You are never lonely?”
“Never.”
“Is this all you do? Plying the river, taking souls to and fro?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“You never grow weary?”
“Never.”
“You are never bored?”
The boatman was silent, his cold gaze deflecting.
“What say you to that?”
The boatman looked up. “The task does at times grow tedious.”
“Ah. Then I can help.”
The boatman looked dubious. “How so?”
“I can entertain you.”
The boatman again gave a skeptical grunt.
“I can tell you stories.”
“Stories?”
“Yes. I know many.”
“Stories of what, and of what interest would they be to me?”
“You won’t know until I tell you. Stories of other realms, other regions. Other worlds than this. You, who know only those dark, despairing waters, would naturally be interested.”[8]
“This I doubt,” the boatman said.
“I guarantee that you would find it diverting.”
The boatman considered the matter. Then he said, “Tell me of these things.”
“Take me across.”
“First tell me some of these stories of other worlds.”
“I will not. I will begin only if you let me onto the boat.”
The boatman thought long on it. At last he said, “Get in.”
He ambled down from the rocks and boarded. Choosing a seat amidships, he sat and watched as the boatman pushed the craft out into the slow, shadowy waters of the river.
When the riverbank had receded into the darkness, the boatman said, “Now. I crave a bit of diversion. Tell me a story.”
He drew a breath and began.
“A guy walks into a bar with a duck under his arm …”
Eleven
Crypt
Something split the darkness. A vertical line of light, widening.
The door of the dark chamber creaked open and a figure stood in the door frame, outlined against the light in the corridor outside. It was a man in a plumed hat, who then entered, stopping midway between the door and a half-illuminated table.
A flame appeared, limning a face, an upraised arm sleeved in green silk, and a hand holding a butane cigarette lighter.
The man in green approached the table, on which stood a candelabra holding five half-burnt tapers. He lit one taper, then another. A third. The room brightened.
He clicked the butane light off and slipped it into a pocket, then turned about to take in the surroundings. Shelves of books abounded in the chamber. Other shelving held a gallimaufry of knickknacks and oddments, games and gadgets, curios and other quaint conversation pieces. Maps, charts, drawings, and paintings, interspersed with a few photographs of scantily clad women, covered the stone walls.
It was a pleasantly cluttered room, but there was about it a feeling of disuse. The air was still, musty and cryptlike.
He crossed and closed the door. Taking off his cape, he hung it on a clothes tree to the right of the door. The hat he parked on a large mirrored hat rack tacked to the wall, where it found several colleagues to keep it company.
Narrowing his eyes, he scanned the room, as if trying to sense something invisible. He angled his head slightly, listening not so much to outside sounds as to his own inner voices.
“No,” he said finally. “Not even Inky.”
Satisfied, he crossed the room slowly, noting familiar objects not seen in quite a while. Lingering to look at a framed photograph of an attractive young woman, he smiled faintly, fondly.
“Long ago and far away.”
He paused in the middle of the room and made a sweeping motion with his right hand.
“Rise and shine, everyone.”
Oddly enough, the room suddenly took on a more comfortable aspect. Perhaps it had brightened a bit. Perhaps not.
He touched a framed astronomical chart on the far wall and swung it open like a door. Recessed in the wall behind it was a conventional-looking circular safe door, complete with handle and combination lock.
He rubbed his fingers against his lapels, blew on them. Gingerly, he reached to lay sensitized fingertips on the combination spinner. But stopped just short.
8
Despite all his references to exotic locales, the author has never been outside the continental United States (except for Canada, which counts as a foreign country, but not by much; unless you’re talking about Quebec, which