Limbo's Child (66 page)

“Nothing?” Lucy asked, confused.

“Nothing. Nothing what-so-ever.”

“I…I don’t understand.”

“Ask him.” Amanda walked back to Moríro. “Ask him yourself. Ask him what he would do if he were to come across a gunshot victim breathing out his last.”

“What?” Lucy said weakly, unnerved by the horrifying suggestion.

“Ask him what he would do if he came upon a train wreck with all the victims splayed out and broken on the ground.”

“AMARANTHA! STOP IT!” Moríro demanded, but she went on all the same.

“Or a person dying of cancer. Or a child in the street, struck down by a car while riding her bike, her life slipping away before your eyes. Ask him. Ask him now.”

“ENOUGH!” Moríro bellowed.

“ASK HIM!” Amanda retorted angrily, and then after calming herself quickly said quietly, “Ask him what he would have done had he come across your mother’s broken body just moments after your accident.”

A deafening silence fell over the already tense gathering. Even Sky seemed somewhat shocked and taken back.

Lucy took a step closer to Moríro but didn’t come down the porch steps. “Is what she’s saying true?”

“I will not entertain the ravings of a mad woman…” Moríro began, but Lucy cut him off.

“Is it true?!”

He became imperious and evasive. “I do not have the time to explain the mysteries of the afterlife to an inexperienced little girl while in a state of duress!! I am the NECROMANCER and I do not have answer to novices and…”

“IS IT TRUE?!!!” Lucy screamed at him.

He didn’t answer, but only looked away.

Lucy was numb, and all she could see was the floorboards of the porch in front of her. She wasn’t even aware of when she had fallen to her knees. She looked around at the others. The three boys were standing there, numb.

“Whoa. Dude. That was heavy.” That was Tim. He meant to whisper that only to Sky but in the silence it carried all the way to Lucy. Miles thumped him hard on the arm and took a few steps forward, as if he wanted to say something, but couldn’t think of what. Instead, he just stood there and looked at Lucy helplessly.

“Smooth,
real
smooth,” Sky said dismissively looking around as if he was embarrassed to be seen with either of them.

Lucy looked at them all, but none of them had anything to say. Finally, her gaze landed on Amanda’s face. It was calm, sad and strangely motherly.

Amanda lowered herself into a crouching position so she could look at Lucy face to face.

“You see, Lucy, the Necromancer isn’t Death’s champion. He’s his
lackey
.” Her eyes shot sideward to Moríro when she said this. Lucy thought she saw a flash of grey light in them for a second, but when they turned back to Lucy they were warm brown again.

“He has all this power, but he can never use it when it truly matters. He can delay death at times, but he can never stop it. Death has forbidden him to. When it really matters, when it is the most important, Death will not let him stop the hands of time and spare one soul, not
one
soul has been saved, Lucy…
ever
. Whomever Death marks, he will take, and the Necromancer is the person who makes sure that no matter what, the condemned is pushed, dragged or shoved over the threshold into the land of the dead. And no matter how much death the Great Master decrees, it is never, EVER enough.” She stood up and looked down on Lucy full of pity.

“Death is playing a heartless game, Lucy, and he never loses. He always makes sure the flow goes one direction and one direction only. Like a soulless referee, the Necromancer never takes sides, he only tallies the score, and Death is always running up the score.”

Lucy tried to look away, but Amanda reached out and lifted her chin so she could look her right in the eye.         

“That’s what the life of the Necromancer means, Lucy. You’ll be forced to spend the rest of your life with
dead things
. Tending over them like morbid little pets, making sure they do what they were intended to do, don’t get into trouble, play their little part in this sordid little drama we call life, that we call
death
. They are your minions. They are there to help you force the living down into that sunless land where we all must go, to make sure none of the prisoners ever escape, except as broken corpses or undead things like themselves who must join up like workmen shoveling coal into a never-ending furnace that can never be filled.”

Amanda paused to look over the odd assembly of dead and living persons there until her eyes fell on Lucy.

“But when it comes to the living, the breathing, the mortal, you’ll have to watch them die.
All of them
, Lucy. You will spend the rest of your life watching people die, people you could help – strangers, family, friends, everyone! But you won’t be allowed to help even one of them, not even your loved ones,
especially
the ones you love. You’ll have to shuffle them all off to oblivion, do what the
GREAT MASTER
says, and you won’t be allowed to do a
thing
about it. And you will do that for the rest of your life, which may last…
centuries
.”

Lucy was breathing slowly. Everything seemed to be falling in on her in slow motion.

Amanda stood up and walked closer to Moríro.

“I don’t blame Death really. Death is what it is, a desiccated monster that hardly ever leaves his temple in the afterlife anymore. He was born heartless. It’s a thing, Lucy, a monster. It knows only hunger. All he has to do is step from Limbo into the world of the living to cause endless death. It’s random, arbitrary, meaningless really. Getting mad at it is like getting mad at the weather or gravity. What’s to get angry about?” she shrugged, but something about the performance told Lucy that Amanda was
very
angry about it.

Lucy looked up at Amanda. The soft, tender Amanda was melting away and was being replaced by the stern Amanda, or Amarantha she guessed. Lucy didn’t much like the stern Amanda, or whatever she was, but the more she looked at her, the more she realized how much she
understood
her.

“No, I don’t blame Death, Lucy” Amanda said calmly, “I blame,
him
.” She pointed the gun directly at Moríro’s head again. “The one who has the power to stop it and yet does nothing.”

“Get away from me, you monster,” Moríro spat back at her.

“
He’s
the problem, Lucy. He’s the pitiless monster that won’t raise a finger to save a dying person. Not even for the godmother who saved his life!” She put the gun close to his head once more.

“YOU’RE MAD!” Moríro screamed at her.

“Who raised him! Taught him everything she knows!!”

“Go back to where you came from. Vete al infierno!” he said simply.

“Oh, we are all going to hell,
godson
, the only question is who arrives first.” Her finger tensed on the trigger and for a moment Lucy was certain she was going to shoot him.

“Don’t kill him!” Lucy yelled, finding her strength from somewhere. She stood up, staggered, but didn’t fall. “Don’t hurt him,” she said again, quieter this time but more forcefully.

Amanda smiled an odd smile.

“I didn’t come here to kill anyone, Lucy. Quite the opposite.”

“AMARANTHA!” Moríro yelled trying to interrupt her.

“Shut up, Lazlo. I’m talking to Lucy.” She dispassionately pistol-whipped him one more time.

“AAARRGH!” Moríro fell to the ground and held his right eye where she had struck him. Amanda looked at him like someone would look at a dying bug. Then satisfied he had been put in his place for the moment she looked back at Lucy. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Lucy. I’m giving you a choice.”

“Don’t listen to her!” Moríro tried to warn her. She kicked him hard in his ribs.

“Listen to me, Lucy. It doesn’t have to be like this. You don’t have to stay with him. You can come with me.” She held out her free hand.

Lucy looked at the proffered hand and honestly didn’t know what to say or do. She wanted to be away from this place, this mess, so much so it made her ache, but then she didn’t really trust Amanda either. Yet…the thought of a life with Moríro and vampires and zombies, surrounded by dead things?! She just shuddered. Amanda must have seen her eyes flit over to Miles and Sky because of what she said next.

“You can come and have a normal life with me, Lucy, away from all of
them
.” She shot a contemptible look at Miles, Sky and Tim. “You don’t have to spend the rest of your life tending
dead things
. You can have a normal life.”

“Normal,” Lucy thought, “What did that mean anymore?” Even if she went with Amanda it wouldn’t be “
normal
” to hang out with a guardian who was a demonically possessed psycho! Normal was her mom and her old life, but she was beginning to understand that she would never have that life ever again.

“You can have the life you once had and
more
.”

“More?” Lucy asked puzzled.

“We are necromancers, Lucy. We have powers. We don’t have to do what the Great Master says. We
can
right the wrongs. We can stop the random, senseless deaths and give death a purpose. We can give life meaning and use our powers to save lives, not just watch them pass, and make sure they die. We can save them, Lucy. We can save them all. We can even save…”

“AMARANTHA! STOP!!” Moríro yelled impotently shouting over Amanda. Amanda just smiled coyly at him.

“W-What do you mean?” Lucy stammered.

“I can’t say more here,” Amanda went on, “But if you come with me, I can promise you that I can give you the life that you want, the life that you had.”

“NO!” Moríro bravely struggled to his feet and stood defiantly. “It is not for you or any man to force the hand of DEATH!” he yelled. Lucy stared at him. What did he mean by that? What were they talking about?

Amanda raised the gun for another blow, but did not strike. Instead, she let if fall loosely to her side. She turned back to face Lucy, it seemed as if all her anger was gone.

“C’mon, Lucy. Let’s go home.”

Amanda held out her hand. It was the kind Amanda.

Lucy bit her lip and pulled her hair behind her ears. She looked at Moríro who had a look of scorn and contempt on his face, but that seemed to be his default expression. Tim was standing there gape-jawed. Schuyler was twirling the lollipop stick in his mouth, eyeing up both Moríro and Amanda, as if he was gaming which side to jump in on. Only Miles looked directly at Lucy. He looked sad and deeply troubled. She met his eyes for a long time. He stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged, as if totally resigned to the situation and he had no idea what to do. None of them were any help at all. Only Amanda looked encouraging and hopeful, but then she was still the demonically possessed witch.

What
did
Lucy want? She didn’t know. She didn’t trust Amanda, but she didn’t want to stay with Moríro or the rest of those
dead things
either. She took a step forward and put one foot down the porch steps. Amanda smiled. Moríro just looked away. As she went, her fingers glided around one of the porch columns and its rough, weathered surface. She stopped and turned. She looked back at the front door and the old house, its peeling paint and mismatched aluminum and asbestos siding. She thought of the room upstairs that still had purple paint on the floor from the accident just yesterday. The fight with her mom. It had all happened here. The small windows and rooms that had never been very bright or comfortable. She had never much liked it here, but it had been a home. She looked out over the drive, past Amanda, the pick-up and the Impala, past Miles and Tim and Sky and looked out at her mother’s garden. Her mother had made it a home for her. It was all she had left of her, and she just couldn’t leave it now.

Lucy stopped, and then stepped back up onto the porch.

“I’m sorry. I
am
home,” she said defiantly.

Amanda looked both angry and disappointed. “You’re making a mistake, Lucy,” she said in the stern, cold voice.

“You said it was my choice, Amanda.” Lucy tried to keep her voice steady and gripped the porch column even tighter. “Back in the hospital you said it was my choice and that you would never force me.”

Amanda’s open hand dropped slowly. “Yes, I did. But this is the wrong decision. You are not safe here, Lucy. You are in grave danger as long as you are with them.” She gestured spitefully to the boys and to Moríro. “You will see that someday, Lucy. Someday soon I hope. And when you do, I will be waiting.” Amanda began to turn to go, but was stopped before getting half a step.

“You will wait in hell before I let you have her!” Moríro spat at her.

Amanda turned to look at Moríro. For the first time, Amanda looked almost frightened.

“SHE MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO ESCAPE!” he bellowed. The three boys tightened and stood up instead of slouching around the car. By their demeanor, Lucy could tell they weren’t certain if that was an order or not. Slowly, Moríro stood and began advancing on Amanda. The three others began awkwardly positioning themselves around her, surrounding her, cutting off her retreat.

“What are you doing?!” Lucy called out.