Chapter 18

Anthony Does Obedience School

We stood in the shadows of Valencia Boulevard, looking up at gold letters etched in black marble: DOA RECORDING STUDIOS.

Underneath, stenciled on the glass doors: NO SOLICITORS, NO LOITERING, NO LIVING.

It was almost midnight, but the lobby was brightly lit and full of people. Behind the security desk sat a tough-looking guard with sunglasses and an earpiece.

I turned to my friends. "Okay. You remember the plan."

"The plan," Gretel gulped. "Yeah. I love the plan."

Anthony said, "What happens if the plan doesn't work?"

"Don't think negative."

"Right," he said. "We're entering the Land of the Dead, and I shouldn't think negative."

I took the pearls out of my pocket, the three milky spheres the Nereid had given me in Santa Monica. They didn't seem like much of a backup in case something went wrong.

Anthony put his hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry, Perci. You're right, we'll make it. It'll be fine."

He gave Gretel a nudge.

"Oh, right!" She chimed in. "We got this far. We'll find the master bolt and save your mom. No problem."

I looked at them both, and felt really grateful. Only a few minutes before, I'd almost gotten them stretched to death on deluxe waterbeds, and now they were trying to be brave for my sake, trying to make me feel better.

I slipped the pearls back in my pocket. "Let's whip some Underworld butt."

We walked inside the DOA lobby.

Muzak played softly on hidden speakers. The carpet and walls were steel gray Pencil cactuses grew in the corners like skeleton hands. The furniture was black leather, and every seat was taken. There were people sitting on couches, people standing up, people staring out the windows or waiting for the elevator. Nobody moved, or talked, or did much of anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them all just fine, but if I focused on any one of them in particular, they started looking...transparent. I could see right through their bodies.

The security guard's desk was a raised podium, so we had to look up at him.

He was tall and elegant, with chocolate-colored skin and bleached-blond hair shaved military style. He wore tortoiseshell shades and a silk Italian suit that matched his hair. A black rose was pinned to his lapel under a silver name tag.

I read the name tag, then looked at him in bewilderment. "Your name is Chiron?"

He leaned across the desk. I couldn't see anything in his glasses except my own reflection, but his smile was sweet and cold, like a python's, right before it eats you.

"What a precious young lady." He had a strange accent—British, maybe, but also as if he had learned English as a second language. "Tell me, mate, do I look like a centaur?"

"N-no."

"Sir," he added smoothly.

"Sir," I said.

He pinched the name tag and ran his finger under the letters. "Can you read this, mate? It says C-H-A-R-O-N. Say it with me: CARE-ON."

"Charon."

"Amazing! Now: Mr. Charon."

"Mr. Charon."

"Well done." He sat back. "I hate being confused with that old horse-man. And now, how many I help you little dead ones?"

His question caught in my stomach like a fastball. I looked at Anthony for support.

"We want to go to the Underworld," he said.

Charon's mouth twitched. "Well, that's refreshing."

"It is?" He asked.

"Straightforward and honest. No screaming. No 'There must be a mistake, Mr. Charon.'" He looked us over. "How did you die, then?"

I nudged Gretel.

"Oh," she said. "Um...drowned...in the bathtub."

I wanted to make my "Seriously?" face at her, because that was not part of my plan, but I tried not to blow it.

"All three of you?" Charon asked.

We nodded.

"Big bathtub." Charon looked mildly impressed. "I don't suppose you have coins for passage. Normally, with adults, you see, I could charge your American Express, or add the ferry price to your last cable bill. But with children...alas, you never die prepared. Suppose you'll have to take a seat for a few centuries."

"Oh, but we have coins." I set three golden drachmas on the counter, part of the stash I'd found in Crusty's office desk.

"Well, now…" Charon moistened his lips. "Real drachmas, Real golden drachmas. I haven't seen these in…"

His fingers hovered greedily over the coins.

We were so close.

Then Charon looked at me. That cold stare behind his glasses seemed to bore a hole through my chest. "Here now," he said. "You couldn't read my name correctly. Are you dyslexic, lassie?"

"No," I said. "I'm dead."

Charon leaned forward and took a sniff. "You're not dead. I should've known. You're a godling."

"We have to get to the Underworld," I insisted.

Charon made a growling sound deep in his throat.

Immediately, all the people in the waiting room got up and started pacing, agitated, lighting cigarettes, running hands through their hair, or checking their wristwatches.

"Leave while you can," Charon told us. "I'll just take these and forgot I saw you."

He started to go for the coins, but I snatched them back.

"No service, no tip." I tried to sound braver than I felt.

Charon growled again—a deep, blood-chilling sound. The spirits of the dead started pounding on the elevator doors.

"It's a shame, too," I sighed. "We had more to offer."

I held up the entire bag from Crusty's stash. I took out a fistful of drachmas and let the coins spill through my fingers.

Charon's growl changed into something more like a lion's purr. "Do you think I can be brought, godling? Eh...just out of curiosity, how much have you got there?"

"A lot," I said. "I bet Hades doesn't pay you well enough for such hard work."

"Oh, you don't know the half of it. How would you like to babysit these spirits all day? Always 'Please don't let me be dead' or 'Please let me across for free.' I haven't had a pay raise in three thousand years. Do you imagine suits like this come cheap?"

"You deserve better," I agreed. "A little appreciation. Respect. Good pay."

With each word, I stacked another gold coin on the counter.

Charon glanced down at his silk Italian jacket, as if imagining himself in something even better. "I must say, lassie, you're making some sense now. Just a little."

I stacked another few coins. "I could mention a pay raise while I'm talking to Hades."

He sighed. "The boat's almost full, anyway. I might as well add you three and be off."

He stood, scooped up our money, and said, "Come along."

We pushed through the crowd of waiting spirits, who started grabbing at our clothes like the wind, their voices whispering things I couldn't make out. Charon shoved them out of the way, grumbling, "Freeloaders."

He escorted us into the elevator, which was already crowded with souls of the dead, each one holding a green boarding pass. Charon grabbed two spirits who were trying to get on with us and pushed them back into the lobby.

"Right. Now, no one get any ideas while I'm gone," he announced to the waiting room. "And if anyone moves the dial off my easy-listening station again, I'll make sure you're here for another thousand years. Understand?"

He shut the doors. He put a key card into a slot in the elevator panel and we started to descend.

"What happens to the spirits waiting in the lobby?" Anthony asked.

"Nothing," Charon said.

"For how long?"

"Forever, or until I'm feeling generous."

"Oh," he said. "That's...fair."

Charon raised an eyebrow. "Whoever said death was fair, young mister? Wait until it's your turn. You'll die soon enough, where you're going."

"We'll get out alive," I said.

"Ha."

I got a sudden dizzy feeling. We weren't going down anymore, but forward. The air turned misty. Spirits around me started changing shape. Their modern clothes flickered, turning into gray hooded robes. The floor of the elevator began swaying.

I blinked hard. When I opened my eyes, Charon's creamy Italian suit had been replaced by a long black robe. His tortoiseshell glasses were gone. Where his eyes should've been were empty sockets—like Ares's eyes, except Charon's were totally dark, full of night and death and despair.

He saw me looking, and said, "Well?"

"Nothing," I managed.

I thought he was grinning, but that wasn't it. The flesh of his face was becoming transparent, letting me see straight through to his skull.

The floor kept swaying.

Gretel said, "I think I'm getting seasick."

When I blinked again, the elevator wasn't an elevator anymore. We were standing in a wooden barge. Charon was poling us across a dark, oily river, swirling with bones, dead fish, and other, stranger things—plastic dolls, crushed carnations, soggy diplomas with gilt edges.

"The River Styx," Anthony murmured. "It's so…"

"Polluted," Charon said. "For thousands of years, you humans have been throwing in everything as you come across—hopes, dreams, wishes that never came true. Irresponsible waste management, if you ask me."

Mist curled off the filthy water. Above us, almost lost in the gloom, was a ceiling of stalactites. Ahead, the far shore glimmered with greenish light, the color of poison.

Panic closed up my throat. What was I doing here? These people around me...they were dead.

On any circumstance, I wouldn't want to embarrass myself, but I grabbed Anthony's hand, and he held it firmly like mine. I was sure he wanted reassurance that somebody else was alive on this boat.

I found myself muttering a prayer, though I wasn't quite sure who I was praying to. Down here, only one god mattered, and he was the one I had come to confront.

The shoreline of the Underworld came into view. Craggy rocks and black volcanic sand stretched inland about a hundred yards to the base of a high stone wall, which marched off in either direction as far as we could see. A sound came from somewhere nearby in the green gloom, echoing off the stones—the howl of a large animal.

"Old Three-Face is hungry," Charon said. His smile turned skeletal in the greenish light. "Bad luck for you, godlings."

The bottom of our boat slid onto the black sand. The dead began to disembark. A woman holding a little girl's hand. An old man and an old woman hobbling along arm in arm. A boy no older than I was, shuffling silently along in his gray robe.

Charon said, "I'd wish you luck, miss, but there isn't any down here. Mind you, don't forget to mention my pay raise."

He counted our golden coins into his pouch, then took up his pole. He warbled something that sounded like a Barry Manilow song as he ferried the empty barge back across the river.

We followed the spirits up a well-worn path.

I'm not sure what I was expecting—Pearly Gates, or a big black portcullis, or something. But the entrance to the Underworld looked like a cross between airport security and the Jersey Turnpike.

There were three separate entrances under one huge black archway that said YOU ARE NOW ENTERING EREBUS. Each entrance had a pass-through metal detector with security cameras mounted on top. Beyond this were toll-booths manned by black-robed ghouls like Charon.

The howling of the hungry animal was really loud now, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. The three-headed dog, Cerberus, who was supposed to guard Hades's door, was nowhere to be seen.

The dead queued up in the three lines, two marked ATTENDANT ON DUTY, and one marked EZ DEATH. The EZ DEATH line was moving right along. The other two were crawling.

"What do you figure?" I asked Anthony.

"The fast line must go straight to the Asphodel Fields," he said. "No contest. They don't want to risk judgment from the court, because it might go against them."

"There's a court for dead people?"

"Yeah. Three judges. They switch around who sits on the bench. King Minos, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare—people like that. Sometimes they look at a life and decide that person needs a special reward—the Fields of Elysium. Sometimes they decide on punishment. But most people, well, they just lived. Nothing special, good or bad. So they go to the Asphodel Fields."

"And do what?"

Gretel said, "Imagine standing in a wheat field in Kansas. Forever."

"Harsh," I said.

"Not as harsh as that," Gretel muttered. "Look."

A couple of black-robbed ghouls had pulled aside one spirit and were frisking him at the security desk. The face of the dead man looked vaguely familiar.

"He's that preacher who made the news, remember?" Gretel asked.

"Oh, yeah." I did remember now. We'd seen him on TV a couple of times at the Yancy Academy dorm. He was this annoying televangelist from upstate New York who'd raised millions of dollars for orphanages and then got caught spending the money on the stuff for his mansion, like gold-plated toilet seats, and an indoor putt-putt golf course. He'd died in a police chase when his "Lamborghini of the Lord" went off a cliff.

Honestly, to me, I can understand that the sometimes the most honest people can have dark intentions.

I said, "What're they doing to him?"

"Special punishment from Hades," Gretel guessed. "The really bad people get his personal attention as soon as they arrive. The Fur—the Kindly Ones will set up an eternal torture for him."

The thought of the Furies made me shudder. I realized I was in their home territory now. Old Mrs. Dodds would be licking her lips with anticipation.

"But if he's a preacher," I said. "And he believes in a different hell…"

Gretel shrugged. "Who says he's seeing this place the way we're seeing it? Human's see what they want to see. You're very stubborn—er, persistent, that way."

We got closer to the gates. The howling was so loud now it shook the ground at my feet, but I still couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

Them, about fifty feet in front of us, the green mist shimmered. Standing just where the path split into three lanes was an enormous shadowy monster.

I hadn't seen it before because it was half transparent, like the dead. Until it moved, it blended with whatever was behind it. Only its eyes and teeth looked solid. And it was staring straight at me.

My jaw hung open. All I could think to say was, "He's a Rottweiler."

I'd always imagined Cerberus as a big black mastiff. But he was obviously a purebred Rottweiler, except of course that he was twice the size of a woolly mammoth, mostly invisible, and had three heads.

The dead walked right up to him-no fear at all. The ATTENDANT ON DUTY lines parted on either side of him. The EZ DEATH spirits walked right between his front paws and under his belly, which they could do without even crouching.

"I'm starting to see him better," I muttered. "Why is that?"

"I think…" Anthony moistened his lips. "I'm afraid it's because we're getting closer to being dead."

The dog's middle head craned toward us. It sniffed the air and growled.

"It can smell the living," I said.

"But that's okay," Gretel said, trembling next to me. "Because we have a plan."

"Right," Anthony said. I'd never heard his voice sound quite so small. "A plan."

We moved toward the monster.

The middle head snarled at us, then barked so loud my eyeballs rattled.

"Can you understand it?" I asked Gretel.

"Oh yeah," she said. "I can understand it."

"What's it saying?"

"I don't think humans have a four-letter word that translates, exactly."

I took the big stick out of my backpack—a bedpost I'd broken off Crusty's Safari Deluxe floor model. I held it up, and tried to channel happy dog thoughts toward Cerberus—Aplo commercials, cute little puppies, fire hydrants. I tried to smile, like I wasn't about to die.

"Hey, Big Fella," I called up. "I bet they don't play with you much."

"GROWWWLLLL!"

"Good boy," I said weakly.

I waved the stick. The dog's middle head followed the movement. The other two heads trained their eyes on me, completely ignoring the spirits. I had Cerberus's undivided attention. I wasn't sure that was a good thing.

"Fetch!" I threw the stick into the gloom, a good solid throw. I heard it go ker-sploosh in the River Styx.

Cerberus glared at me, unimpressed. His eyes were baleful and cold.

So much for the plan.

Cerberus was now making a new kind of growl, deeper down in his three throats.

"Um," Gretel said. "Perci?"

"Yeah?"

"I just thought you'd want to know."

"Yeah?"

"Cerberus? He's saying we've got ten seconds to pray to the gods of our choices. After that...well...he's hungry."

"Wait!" Anthony said. He started rifling through his pack.

Uh-oh, I thought.

"Five seconds," Gretel said. "Do we run now?"

Anthony produced a red rubber ball the size of a grapefruit. It was labeled WATERLAND, DENVER, CO. Before I could stop him, he raised the ball and marched straight up to Cerberus.

He shouted, "See the ball? You want the ball, Cerberus? Sit!"

Cerberus. Looked as stunned as we were.

All three heads cocked sideways. Six nostrils dilated.

"Sit!" Anthony called again.

I was sure that any moment he would become the world's largest Milkbone dog biscuit.

But instead, Cerberus licked his three sets of lips, shifted on his haunches, and sat, immediately crushing a dozen spirits who'd been passing underneath him in the EZ DEATH line. The spirits made muffled hisses as they dissipated, like the air let out of tires.

Anthony said, "Good boy!"

He threw Cerberus the ball.

He caught it in the middle mouth. It was barely big enough for him to chew, and the other heads started snapping at the middle, trying to get the new toy.

"Drop it!" Anthony ordered.

Cerberus's heads stopped fighting and looked at him. The ball was wedged between two of his teeth like a tiny piece of gum. He made a loud, scary whimper, then dropped the ball, now slimy and bitten nearly in half, at Anthony's feet.

"Good boy." He picked up the ball, ignoring the monster spit all over it.

He turned toward us. "Go now. EZ DEATH line—it's faster."

I said, "But—"

"Now!" He ordered, in the same tone he was using on the dog.

Gretel and I inched forward warily.

Cerberus started to growl.

"Stay!" Anthony ordered the monster. "If you want the ball, stay!"

Cerberus whimpered, but he stayed where he was.

"What about you?" I asked Anthony as we passed him.

"I know what I'm doing, Perci," he muttered. "At least, I'm pretty sure…."

Gretel and I walked between the monster's legs.

Please, Anthony, I prayed. Don't tell him to sit again.

We made it through. Cerberus wasn't any less scary-looking from the back.

Anthony said, "Good dog!"

He held up the tattered red ball, and probably came to the same conclusion I did—if he rewarded Cerberus, there's be nothing left for another trick.

He threw the ball anyway. The monster's left mouth immediately snatched it up, only to be attacked by the middle head, while the right head moaned in protest.

While the monster was distracted, Anthony walked briskly under its belly and joined us at the metal detector.

"How did you do that?" I asked him, amazed.

"Obedience school," he said breathlessly, and I was surprised to see there were tears in his eyes. "When I was little, at my dad's house, we had a Doberman…."

"Never mind that," Gretel said, tugging at my shirt. "Come on!"

We were about to bolt through the EZ DEATH line when Cerberus moaned pitifully from all three mouths. Anthony stopped.

He turned to face the dog, which had done a one-eighty to look at us.

Cerberus panted expectantly, the tiny red ball in pieces in a puddle of drool at its feet.

"Good boy," Anthony said, but his voice sounded melancholy and uncertain.

The monster's heads turned sideways, as if worried about him.

"I'll bring you another ball soon," Anthony promised faintly. "Would you like that?"

The monster whimpered. I didn't need to speak dog to know Cerberus was still waiting for the ball.

"Good dog. I'll come visit you soon. I—I promise." Anthony turned to us. "Let's go."

Gretel and I pushed through the metal detector, which immediately screamed and set off flashing red lights. "Unauthorized possessions! Magic detected!"

Cerberus started to bark.

We burst through the EZ DEATH gate, which started even more alarms blaring, and raced into the Underworld.

A few minutes later, we were hiding, out of breath, in the rotten trunk on an immense black tree as security ghouls scuttled past, yelling for backup from the Furies.

Gretel murmured, "Well, Perci, what have we learned today?"

"That three-headed dogs prefer red rubber balls over sticks?"

"No," Gretel told me. "We've learned that your plans really, really bite!"

I wasn't sure about that. I thought maybe Anthony and I both had the right idea. Even here in the Underworld, everybody—even monsters—needed a little attention once in awhile.

I thought about that as we waited for the ghouls to pass. I pretended not to see Anthony wipe a tear from his cheek as he listened to the mournful keening of Cerberus in the distance, longing for his new friend.