"Did you two really have to do that?" Annabeth asked as we continued down the street.
"What, it was just a small fight," Clarisse replied.
"Yeah, they started it, we finished it," I added.
"Whatever."
We soon 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 sighed as I stretched. "Let's whoop 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, 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. "Charon, I presume?"
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, right before it eats you.
"What a precious young lad," he said with a strong greek accent— "It feels so great to be recognized."
"We want to go to the Underworld," Annabeth said.
Charon's mouth twitched. "Well, that's refreshing."
"It is?" she asked.
"Straightforward and honest. No screaming. No 'There must be a mistake, Mr. Charon.'" He looked us over. "How did you die, then?"
"Oh," I said laughing.. "We were swimming at the beach during a storm, and we drowned."
"All three of you?" Charon asked. We nodded.
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.
"Well, now..." Charon moistened his lips. "Real drachmas. Real golden drachmas. I haven't seen these in..."
His fingers hovered greedily over the coins.
They 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. "Are you dyslexic, lad?"
"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. And you boy, you smell like Hades."
"Obviously, the dude is my dad." I mutter
"We have to get to the Underworld," Annabeth 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 forget I saw you."
He started to go for the coins, but I snatched them back.
"No service, no tip," I responded.
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 as I lifted a bag of drachmas so Charon could see. "We had more to offer."
Charon's growl changed into something more like a lion's purr. "Do you think I can be bought, godling? Eh... just out of curiosity, how much have you got there?"
"About 400 Drachmas," I said. "I bet dad 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 cross 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, lad, 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 my father."
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 gets 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?" Annabeth asked.
"Nothing," Charon said.
"For how long?"
"Forever, or until I'm feeling generous."
"Oh," she said. "That's... unfair."
Charon raised an eyebrow. "Whoever said death was fair, young miss? Wait until it's your turn. You'll die soon enough, where you're going."
"We'll get out alive," I responded.
"Ha."
I got a sudden dizzy feeling. We weren't going down anymore, but forward. The air turned misty. Spirits around us 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.
Charon saw me looking, and said, "Well?"
"Nothing," I responded, looking away.
At first I had 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. It was not an amazing sight
The floor kept swaying.
Clarisse said, "I think I'm getting seasick."
When I blinked again, the elevator wasn't an elevator anymore. We were standing on 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," Annabeth 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.
Annabeth grabbed hold of my hand. Under normal circumstances, this would've embarrassed her, but she understood how she felt. She wanted reassurance that somebody else was alive on this boat.
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, mate, 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 wasn't 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 ATTENDANTS 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 Annabeth.
"The fast line must go straight to the Asphodel Fields," she 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?"
Clarisse spoke up, "Imagine standing in a wheat field in Kansas. Forever."
"Harsh and boring." I replied. In my old world you either went to Heaven or Hell, I wonder if they exist in this world.