DUST

by Catlyn Ladd

Ashley drew her heel through the dust accumulated on the floor, leaving a streak of clean on the boards. The particles stirred by her passing sparkled in the late afternoon light. She blew out a breath and the motes swirled in the air, agitated. Outside, the wind pushed against the walls, frustrated wailing around the eves. The grit rained against the old wooden siding in a relentless roar.

The album she’d been streaming had come to an end and the phone lay out of reach at the other end of the counter. The sunlight against her eyelids like sand, weighing her down, blending with the dust that coated everything in a fine, matte film. Against her lids lay the patterns of the familiar things: cans with faded labels, the old cash register, the retro ice cream dispenser. A drop of sweat ran slowly down her side and focusing on its tickle kept her fully from sleep. Dimly, underneath the constant wind, she became aware of another sound. Her almost dreaming mind first imagined a car pulling up outside. That image startled her back to wakefulness. She felt the aridity in her pores, on her tongue, in the damp corners of her eyes. Stifling a yawn, she looked through the large front windows of the country store.

The highway stretched out of sight across the desert, the sunlight muted in the gathering gloom. Ashley couldn’t see very far; the blowing dust cut her sightline to a couple hundred feet. The dashed yellow line disappeared into a golden haze.

She got to her feet and walked to the big windows overlooking a forlorn gas pump, charging station, and air compressor. Something slammed into the wall and she jumped. A piece of corrugated tin spun past the window and took flight, rising into the blowing dust until its shape was lost.

Ashley peered west down the road but could only see a rising blot a darker brown than the windblown sand to the east. Visibility in that direction was less than fifty feet. No way a car could drive out of that murk. She hadn’t seen a customer in hours and she realized that the dust storm was almost upon her, bearing down on the little building isolated at the crossroads of highway 208 and county line road 5. She wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.

Then she heard it again: a low murmuring drone. More awake now, she identified it as coming from the floor; the boards beneath her sandals fairly hummed. Ashley walked slowly to the door leading into the basement storeroom. Tentatively, she placed her ear against the flaking paint.

For a moment all she could hear were the gusts against the building, the spitting sand, the faint groan of the boards. Then the hum rose beneath the wind. She opened the door and looked down the short set of stairs into the dark. The sound grew louder for a moment and then faded. The single naked bulb did little to dispel the shadows.

Nothing moved below. She could see the corner of the familiar metal shelves that held overflow stock. She walked down the stairs, keeping next to the wall to minimize creaks in the old treads. Underneath the stairs lay lost in shadow. She resisted the feeling that something was about to reach through the steps and grab her ankles.

As she reached the bottom and looked down the single isle of shelving, the hum came again, louder. She froze, peering into the small space at the opposite end of the shelves. Even here it seemed as though dust blew in the air.

Something moved, a shadow against the shadows. She stepped back quickly, up on the bottom step.

Out of the dim it shambled, dry, milky eyes seeming to search though Ashley thought it blind. The resonant humming came from its gaping mouth. She stepped up one more step, glancing around quickly to note what was at hand.

The desert dust fell in a cloud about its feet as it took another step forward. She could not immediately discern if it had been male or female. No matter: now it was only a duster. But still dangerous. It cast one arm out, knocking two cans off the shelf with a clatter. It spun sightlessly to follow the sound.

Twenty years ago, two years after Ashley’s birth, people had ceased to die. Now, instead of expiring they simply… continued. The brain descended down its inevitable spiral and the body withered but the heart continued to beat and the lungs continued to draw breath. At first, no one really noticed. Ancient loved ones hung onto life as their minds and bodies deteriorated. The cost of hospice and elder care spiked as people persisted past all expectations. In retrospect, no one could pinpoint the exact moment when death ceased or remember the last person to die.

Society began to take notice when those grievously injured in accidents got up and walked away from their hospital beds, sometimes trailing body parts behind them in a bloody train. A man in Cleveland pulled himself off the steering column that had impaled him and walked to the nearest bar for a glass of whiskey. A teenager in Denver surfaced after diving into a rock submerged in a shallow lake and wandered off down the road with half their skull missing, water dripping from the cavity opened by the impact.

As the bodies of those who should be dead began to accumulate, the world adjusted. The initial hysteria led by religious fanatics and the deeply paranoid petered out when the world failed to end, Jesus did not appear, aliens did not land, governments persisted in being as puzzled as everyone else. Some countries adapted their euthanasia policies and discovered that piercing both the heart and the brain brought about, at the very least, stillness. The body could be disposed of. Most opted for cremation, just to be sure.

Other countries, with more puritanical attitudes toward life and death, viewed cessation, as it came to be called, in a similar light as forms of homicide. Bodies began to pile up, packed into nursing homes, jail cells, and penitentiaries. Old asylums were reopened to accommodate those who should have passed but did not.

Here in the desert, they were called dusters because of the way the body dried out and began to mummify. In other parts of the world they were called bloaters, walkers, roamers. Zombies.

Ashley had no idea how this one had managed to get into the basement. There wasn’t an exterior door; the only way in was the stairs behind her. But her more immediate thought was how to get rid of it. Because dusters could be deadly.

They seemed drawn to sound and movement and they pursued relentlessly. Whatever they caught went to their mouths in a horrible, relentless hunger. Though many lacked teeth they pulled prey apart with their fingernails and could be difficult to escape. Ashley spotted a rake leaning in the corner to her right. Heavy duty and designed for farming, the metal tines curved strong and sharp. She stepped off the stairs and reached for it.

The duster immediately turned toward her movement, though she went quietly. It homed in on her with some sense other than sight. She’d encountered dusters before. Everyone had. No matter how carefully containment functioned, people were everywhere and some of them drifted into this afterlife unobserved and unrecorded. The only way to get away was to run, hide, or destroy the brain. In the confined quarters of the basement Ashley only had one option. She spaced her hands on the rake handle, raised it over her shoulder like the world’s most unwieldy baseball bat, and waited for it to come. Though shambling and dumb, it moved quickly. The deep hum continued from between its lips, and when Ashley swung the rake she aimed for that mindless sound. The metal tines whickered through the air and embedded in the thing’s face with a wet whump Ashley could have done without. Her gorge heaved. She’d never struck one before. Before, she’d been able to run.

She hauled back on the wooden handle but some of the tines had stuck in the orbital cavity and the duster took two more steps, pulled by the rake. Ashley made an unconscious sound of disgust and twisted the handle sharply. The tines freed, pulling off bits of ropey flesh. There was no blood, only a raw ooze.

“Gross,” she said and swung again.

This time she aimed for the chest and caught the thing across the shoulders, knocking it over. Quickly, she reversed the rake and brought the handle down on its forehead as hard as she could. The tip dug into the brain with a solid crunch and the hum ceased abruptly. Its limbs sank slowly to the ground in an oddly graceful gesture. Leaving the rake jutting at a jaunty angle from the duster’s face, Ashley barely made it to the sink across the small room before her late lunch expelled in a warm rush. Her stomach empty, she dry heaved a couple of times and then turned on the tap to wash out her mouth. The sound the water made against the metal sink reminded her of stealthy movement and she spun, suddenly sure the thing had crept up behind her. But it lay where she’d left it. As she watched, the rake tipped and fell over, coming out of the skull with a dry whisper. Her stomach turned over and she leaned against the sink, feeling a deep tremble in her legs as the adrenaline began to wear off.

But she wasn’t done. Brain and heart: you had to be sure.

She ran her hands, refreshingly cool from the water, across her cheeks and walked slowly back to the corpse. It didn’t look alive. Its eyes were blessedly closed and she didn’t see any movement. She picked up the rake, keeping her eyes on the body. She pressed the handle down over the breastbone, took a deep breath, and applied all her weight to the implement. It sank into the body with a crunch of breaking bone. The duster made no sound or movement.

She would not rest until it had been moved outside but she did not immediately feel up to the task of hauling it up the stairs and out into the dust. She thought longingly of her phone left on the counter. But who would she call to help her? Killing the dusters was technically illegal here, though people did it all the time. She couldn’t think of anyone she’d want to involve in her crime even if they had been able to brave the storm and come to her aid.

How had it gotten in? She swiped the big flashlight, the one they used to take the garbage out at closing, off the nearest shelf and turned around, shining it into the corners. Nothing: only the cans knocked to the floor were out of place. She walked back to the end with the sink and peered between the shelf and the wall.

Dirt mounded and scattered along the floor and over the bottom shelf, burying cans of tomato sauce. It had dug a hole. Kneeling before the shelf, Ashley pulled dirt and cans away from the wall, feeling the soil embed beneath her fingernails. The loosened earth came away easily. She quickly opened up a rude tunnel into the earth. Shining the flashlight in she saw a good ten feet before the tunnel curved down. She had an impression of space, openness. She froze and listened with her whole being.

The wind pounding and roaring was all she could hear. She pulled away from the hole and looked back toward the stairs. The body lay as she’d left it and she noticed that it wore red Keds, caked with grime.

She looked back at the hole into the earth and swayed with indecision. One part of her wanted to shovel the earth back into the hole and be done with this whole business.

But the other part of her fixated on that sense of space beyond the reach of the flashlight. She remembered a story she’d heard in an archeology class; her professor had become an anthropologist because, at the age of ten, he’d decided to excavate his root cellar while pretending to be Indiana Jones. He’d dug up a conquistador. It had made the news worldwide back before Ashley had been born. She’d looked it up online to be sure that her teacher hadn’t just been telling tall tales.

She took one more glance at the body and then tucked her shirt firmly into her shorts. Head first or feet first? She lay down on her belly and poked the flashlight into the tunnel. Working her shoulders through the opening caused a small shower of dirt to run under her collar. But she hardly noticed: deeper into the hole she felt certain that it widened into some sort of considerable space. She squirmed forward, pushing with her legs and toes, worming her way into the earth. Dust caught in her hair and she pulled the collar of her shirt up over her nose.

Ten feet in the tunnel turned down. She wiggled forward until she could aim the flashlight into the new angle and pull her chin over the lip. The hole descended almost straight down another ten feet, rocks jutting out of the earth in a crude ladder. Then only blackness.

Ashley no longer felt any fear. The corpse in the basement behind her had faded from her mind and now only a sense of deep curiosity drove her. She grabbed one of the protruding rocks and leveraged her chest over the opening until she had enough space to free a leg and place a foot on a rock farther down. Moving carefully from one rock outcropping to the next, testing her weight before each step, she maneuvered down onto a level stone floor. She shone the light into the darkness.

She could barely make out the far wall, putting it at a good fifty or even sixty feet away. The tunnel came out of the wall at one end of the room. The floor stretched out almost completely smooth, a solid shelf of rock. The room rose into gloom in a rough rectangle, the ceiling about twelve feet above. Ashley realized that the cave was behind the little store, buried beneath the desert.

“How the hell did you get in here?” She didn’t realize that she spoke aloud until her voice traveled back in a weird echo. The beam of the flashlight jittered as her hand shook. Why hadn’t she brought a weapon? Even the rake would help. She reached down and picked up a fist-sized stone. Better than nothing.

She took a deep breath, realizing that, for the first time in weeks, the air did not smell of dust. She started across the floor. On the far side of the room a large boulder obscured part of the wall and she headed in that direction, wanting to ensure that no one lurked out of sight. The shadows danced and capered in the shifting beam of the flashlight. Her sandals made almost no sound on the stone.

Rounding the boulder she stopped short. Another tunnel led into darkness. At least this one seemed level and easily large enough to walk through. With a cursory glance over her shoulder, Ashley entered the new tunnel.

The flashlight beam, mercifully strong and bright, picked up texture from a drill: this tunnel had been bored out of the desert earth. Why, and when, had someone dug out a cave beneath this remote landscape? It had to have been before the store or she would have heard of it. And the store had existed longer than she’d been alive. The silence comforted her. Whoever had made the place was long gone, dead or a duster, and any movement sent pebbles skittering across the floor. She’d hear anyone who tried to sneak up. Shining the light ahead she saw where the tunnel opened up into another room. This one was smaller. But unlike the previous room, it was not empty. Metal bars had been drilled into ceiling and floor forming a cage. And inside the cage…

It took Ashley a minute to understand what it was she saw. A desk, chair, bed with rumpled covers, a shelf of books: someone had lived here.

The toe of her sandal bumped something on the floor, an object larger than a pebble. Looking down, she saw a skull grin up at her, the jaw knocked askew. The light of the flashlight jumped as she recoiled. And then it spoke to her.

“And who might you be?”

Ashley almost dropped the flashlight. Then she almost tripped over the rest of the skeleton stumbling back. Some part of her mind knew it wasn’t the skull speaking but another part of her mind insisted that it was. But then a shadow in the cage moved. She jerked the light up.

A creature sat up in the bed, dislodging covers and dust. Ashley could not immediately identify it as human but then the features reconciled into a face: dark, slanted eyes, thin lips, high cheekbones, smooth forehead. Hands emerged from beneath the jumble of cloth, moving the coverlet aside. She saw white fingers, long nails. It stood up, tall and thin in a dark garment that covered from neck to ankle. She saw thin toes as the thing stepped toward the bars. She took another step back, a femur crunching beneath her foot.

It cocked its head, canine inquisitiveness. “Do you speak English?” She watched the lips move but it took a moment for her shocked mind to formulate a reply. She felt very cold.

“Y-yes?” The word emerged as a question and she thought she saw a hint of a smile on those bloodless lips.

“It’s clear that you are surprised to find me here. Tell me: what is the year?”

Her frantic mind settled on an explanation: someone was keeping a woman here, someone sick. Someone who might return at any moment using another entrance, one secreted in the desert. The beam of the flashlight quivered.

“The year!” The woman raised her voice enough to echo off the stone walls.

“2102,” Ashley replied, her voice little more than a whisper. The woman seemed to deflate, her shoulders sinking. “Forty years, “ she said, her tone no longer elevated.

“Who…who trapped you here?” Ashley’s mind caught up. If the woman had been here forty years then she must have been taken when no more than a child. But the face looking at her between the bars showed no lines, the dark hair not a hint of gray.

“An evil person searching for power.”

It took Ashley a moment to realize that her question had been answered. Her thoughts felt trapped in glue. Sluggishly she realized that someone must come here, to feed the woman, to care for her, to…her mind stalled, refusing to follow the thoughts further. “Who are you?” she asked.

The elfin head cocked and the fog in Ashley’s brain lifted enough for her to look, to really see, the creature before her. She’d thought “woman” because it fit a reasonable narrative and she couldn’t see facial hair but “androgynous” fit better. The being had a high forehead, slanted eyes, high cheekbones, a narrow nose, and a thin-lipped narrow mouth over a pointed chin. The skin glowed in the gloom, almost too white, alabaster, frost. The dusty black garment that fell from neck to ankle obscured the physical form and all potentially identifying characteristics. The hair, coarse and dark, looked to have been cut with a knife, sticking up in unruly clumps and knots.

“Who am I?” the creature repeated Ashley’s words in a voice melodious and low, impossible to ascribe a sex. “I am timeless and forgotten. Tell me, has the world changed much in the last forty years?”

“I mean…” Ashley’s mind landed on the one notable thing, the one major change. “People have stopped dying.”

Those depthless eyes widened slightly and a ghost of a smile touched the pale lips. “That explains the zombie that dug its way in awhile back. You must release me.”

Ashley realized that she could not differentiate pupil from iris in those black eyes. They bored into her and she thought dimly about shock, about how a deeply startled mind shut down, froze, fell into paralysis. Flight, fright, and freeze: no matter what she chose it could be the wrong choice. She had to break through the fog clouding her thinking. Deliberately she pointed the flashlight down, away from the caged creature before her, onto the packed earth of the cave floor. I see earth, she thought. I see rocks, my sandals, how dirty my feet are. I see chipped blue polish on my toenails.

“What are you doing?”

She ignored that voice, thinking only, I heard a voice. It is unimportant. I will attend to it in a moment. She felt her mind unsticking, picking up speed. I smell dust, dirt, and my own sweat, she thought. I need to find out where the other entrance is. This last thought did it: the cobwebs cleared like a light flipping on in her brain. She noticed a tremble in her limbs and recognized it for adrenaline dissipating. Good. She shone the light around this smaller room and took a step forward, the better to see around the cage. The creature’s head turned to watch her but it made no more sounds. She walked to the back wall, shining the light, still bright and steady, along the wall. Only crumbling earth, a mound of dirt on the floor.

She turned back to the cage. “Where is the entrance?” she asked. “How do they get in?”

The figure had moved to the bars nearest her, that white face following her every move. “How does who get in?”

“The man, the men? Whoever keeps you here.”

A slight shake of that strange head. “No one comes here. You’re the first person I’ve seen in forty years. Well, except the dead one. And the tunnel it dug collapsed behind it.” The dark head nodded toward the mound of earth on the floor.

Ashley felt fog try to creep back into her thoughts and she shook her head to dispel it. “That’s impossible,” she said flatly. “Someone must feed you.”

That thin smile curved on the creature’s mouth. “I do not eat.” “Again, impossible. Why are you lying to me? Don’t you want out?” A thin hand lifted and brushed a clump of hair away. “You live in a world with no death and you tell me I’m impossible?”

Ashley squared her shoulders and asserted reality. “It’s impossible for a person to live in a cave for forty years with nothing to eat or drink.”

The being smiled and Ashley saw a flash of teeth.

“I am not, technically, a person.”

Ashley kept her tone level. “Then what are you?”

“I have been called Ankou and Cu Sith and Smierc. Or maybe you know me by the name Maweth? No? You do not look Indian but the Hindus call me Lord Yama.” The impossible black eyes regarded her thoughtfully. “What about Thanatos? Or Hel?”

Ashley started. “I know those last two. From the Greek. And the movies.”

Thin lips curved up in a definite smile. Ashley quailed to see a flash of teeth, small and even but also black. What had black teeth? “Are you telling me…” Her voice failed and she swallowed, running moisture over her own lips with the tip of her tongue to try again. “Are you telling me that you’re Death?”

The figure stepped close to the bars but did not touch them. “Death. Yes.” The arms gestured, emaciated fingers spreading. “But, as you can see, no death’s head. No scythe.”

“I read a book like this.” Ashley struggled to remember. “It was from long ago.”

“Humans have dreamed of capturing, or harnessing, death throughout the ages. It has been thought of many times. And attempted twice.” “But only successful once?” Ashley guessed.

The creature’s expression soured. “Indeed. With predictable results. Well, predictable to me, at least.”

Ashley took a deep, steadying, breath. “Let me make sure I understand this. You’re death. Someone captured you and stashed you here in the middle of nowhere. And people stopped dying.”

“Everything stopped dying.”

Ashley waved away this detail. “How can I believe you?”

“Do you have an alternative explanation that makes more sense?”

Ashley detected a hint of sarcasm in this last. It was comforting because it made the being before her seem more human.

“Yes.” She felt ready for this one. “Some evil person captured you as a child and put you in this cage. They keep you here for…for god knows what and now I’ve found you.”

The black eyes blinked slowly and then the tousled head nodded. “Okay. Sure. That explanation also mostly works. But there’s no other entrance and I take it you would have seen anyone trying to use the one you came through.”

“A duster dug it.” Ashley wasn’t aware that she’d spoke aloud until the other responded.

“So there was no entrance.”

“That’s impossible.”

The thing gestured again, more emphatically this time. “And yet: here we are.”

“Here we are,” Ashley repeated. The dazed feeling crept back.

“What is your name?”

“Ashley.”

“Ashley, she of the tree. Ash has long been though to have magical properties, you know.”

“I do know. My mother told me.”

“Good woman.” The head nodded approvingly. “So Ashley. Can you help me get out of here?”

She looked at the bars. They were thick, the size of her wrist at least. And spaced closely, only six or so inches apart. They cast deep shadows across the bed and desk.

“How do I get you out?”

“Surprisingly, it’s simply a matter of sawing a couple of the bars off and creating space.”

“Where’s the door?”

“There is no door. The one who trapped me here made sure of that.”

“You’re telling me that, if I let you out, things will die again?”

“That’s right.”

Ashley considered the being before her. If it told the truth then death could resume. If it was lying, it was still a slight woman with no strength. “Do you promise not to hurt me?” she asked anyway.

“I promise,” the other answered without hesitation. “I’ll even do you one better. One day, a long time from this day, you will die peacefully in your sleep. No lingering for you. It will be easy. Gentle.”

It seemed momentous, that she could end the dusters. She was just a store clerk who’d put off college. She was no one.

“Okay,” she said. I need to go get a saw.”

“I shall wait.”

Was that humor? Did Death tell jokes?

Ashley hesitated on this thought and then spun back the way she’d come. She knew right where the hacksaws were. They even had extra blades in stock, perks of being the store for everything within a hundred miles.

She was too preoccupied with her discovery to worry much as she retraced her steps. The light shining from the tunnel reminded her to grab more batteries for the torch as well. No good being down here in the dark.

Death had been trapped for years. She couldn’t believe it. Though it did explain zombies. And she wasn’t about to let anyone stay trapped in a cave, no matter who they claimed to be.

She located the hacksaws and grabbed a handful of extra blades, then filled a pocket with D batteries. Outside the storm still raged, the wind making a sound loud as a train horn around the edges of the building. Visibility so bad she couldn’t even make out the nearest island of pumps fifteen feet outside the door. Just to be sure, she flipped the sign on the door to closed, shot the bolt on the door, and turned off the inside lights so that only the security light over the door illuminated the gloom. Then she went back to the captive. “This will go way faster if you help,” she explained. “There are two saws and we can each take a bar.”

The prisoner accepted the saw and took an experimental swipe at one of the bars. The saw barely fit between them. Someone had taken no chances. But the blade bit deep and the creature smiled. “I think this is going to work.”

Ashley took the next bar and began working at the bottom while the captive worked at the top. “Think removing two bars will be enough?”

“I believe so. Are you worried about anyone discovering us down here?”

“Not immediately,” Ashley said. “There’s a storm.”

They worked for a moment in companionable silence. Then Ashley’s curiosity surfaced.

“How does someone trap death?” she asked.

The other paused. “A combination of luck, magic, and iron.”

“Iron?”

“It is the only thing in the universe that I cannot break. Someone figured that out, though I do not know how.”

“Iron is supposed to burn fairies,” Ashley offered, remembering fairy tales.

“Many human stories contain elements of truth.” The saw began to work again. “She built this cage, lured me here, and secured the bars before I could stop her. Before I really understood what was happening.”

“She?” Ashley didn’t know why this surprised her.

“Yes. What’s left of her is right over there.” A white finger pointed toward the skeleton Ashley had disturbed earlier.

She shuddered. “How can death be trapped?”

The shoulders shrugged. “I am a physical being. I do not need to eat or drink but I can be overcome. She shot me full of tranquilizer.”

“Who was she?”

“Someone grieving. Someone who wanted her loved one back enough that she was willing to change reality to get her way.”

“Why didn’t she turn into a duster like the rest of them?”

“Because she came back after several years and begged for death. True death.”

“You granted it?”

“No.” This said in a grim tone. “She stole that, too.”

“How?”

“By offering to set me free.”

The prisoner stopped speaking and the cave filled with the whisper of saw blades. Small iron shavings rained down.

“Why didn’t you try to dig your way out?” Ashley asked.

“The bars go underneath as well.”

“She thought of everything.”

“Well, not everything.” Ashley again detected humor in the melodious voice. “I don’t think she fully understood that all death would stop.”

“Did she really mean to let you out?”

“I think so. She died too quickly. I didn’t get out. I acted rashly.”

“That sucks.”

“Indeed. That sucked beyond all imagining.”

Ashley felt certain now that she heard humor. She caught another glimpse of those worrisome teeth. Death was smiling.

The bar Ashley worked on gave way. It was too thick to move much but she laughed out loud in triumph. Death worked harder and then that bar gave as well.

“Halfway done,” Ashley said. “Let’s switch out the blades.”

Sharp again, they switched positions and got back to work. The bars moved more and more, necessitating slower work and one hand to hold the metal steady. Ashley’s shoulders began to ache.

“Of all of those names you gave me, which do you prefer?”

“I’ve always been partial to Hel. But maybe that’s because the Christians seem so keen on that concept. They’re so wrong and I find it amusing.”

“Are you saying that there’s no god?”

Hel snorted laughter. “I have no idea about such things. I am merely a door. One I can never go through myself.”

“Were you born? Did you grow up?”

“I have no memory of a beginning. I have always been.”

Ashley figured it was probably too much to hope for answers to the main questions preoccupying humankind. So she asked a different question. “Are you female?”

Those dark eyes focused on Ashley through the bars and she suppressed a shiver. Death or not, Hel had a seriously creepy vibe.

“Male and female are not concepts that apply to me. Though I tend to think of death as a feminine principle.”

“Why?”

“The transgression of liminal space seems female to me.”

Ashley blinked and took the opportunity to stretch out her aching arms. “I don’t think I understand that.”

Another snort of laughter. “No matter. I am an androgynous being. Both male and female. And neither. Beyond the concept, if you will.” “Got it.” Ashley grasped the bar again. It had developed quite a bit of wiggle. “Can you hold this steady? I’ll work through it and then we can finish the other.”

Hel pulled their sleeves over their hands and grasped the bar firmly. Ashley took slow, steady swipes with the saw, concentrating on keeping the blade straight. When the bar gave she wasn’t ready and it slipped out of Hel’s hands, crashing against the floor with a terrific clatter. Hel paid no attention, only shifted their hands to the second bar. When it gave they had just enough space to squeeze through.

Ashley took a step back. Hel seemed taller on this side of the cage, topping Ashley’s five feet five by at least four inches. They were also dusty, that black hair clotted, the robes dingy. They stretched their arms up overhead in a terrific stretch, long sleeves falling back to reveal pale arms branded with some inscrutable pattern of meanders. Ashley didn’t think it was a tattoo. She thought it might be part of Hel’s skin. Or what passed for skin on a being such as this.

“Now you are going to witness something very few mortals have seen.” “What’s that?” Ashley asked with no small amount of nervousness. “Death in action. I’ve been in that cage for forty years. How many beings have lingered on when they should have passed? Millions? Billions?”

“It is dangerous?”

Hel smiled, thin lips mercifully closed over their strange teeth. “No. I am merely a doorway. A conduit.”

Ashley thought of the body overhead in the basement. “All those dusters we’ve killed by burning, destroying brain and heart. Are they not really dead?”

“All life is energy which cannot be created or destroyed. That energy remains. My job is to transform it and allow release.” “How do you do that?”

“Again: not my purview. I know my role in the grand scheme of things but not the why. Or even the how.” Hel closed their dark eyes. “Stand back.”

Ashley backed away until she bumped up against the cave wall. The flashlight, left lying on the cave floor, spotlighted Hel but left the rest of the room in shadow. She had a sense of gathering energy and the hair on her arms and the back of her neck rose. Her skin prickled as the air filled with static. She actually saw a blue arc of electricity sparkle between Hel’s fingers. Her hair swept back in a sudden breeze and then reversed directions, pulled toward Hel even though the stone at her back should have prevented air moving from that direction. Dust eddies spun on the floor and then sped toward Hel.

A vortex opened in the middle of the cave, a tornado, a black hole. The whole world bent toward the impossible being in the middle of a room in a cave beneath the Arizona desert. It felt like the dust storm ripped inside. Ashley clutched the stone behind her, convinced that she would be swept up in the maelstrom.

She had a sense of countless things rushing past. Dust and pebbles, leaves, a candy wrapper, a paper towel – all these things streamed toward the figure in the middle of the room but they came with countless tiny lights, like the fireflies she’d seen once in a Mississippi forest. These swirled tidally around the room, obscuring the black robed figure in the center. Ashley felt as though she’d been trapped on the edge of a whirlpool. She pressed back against the stone, squeezing her eyes shut against the grit in the air. She had no sense of how long it lasted. It felt like close to an hour but it could have been minutes. Then she became aware that the gale rushing past slackened and she carefully opened her eyes. Hel stood in the middle of the room, arms still raised, face tilted up toward the ceiling. The light from the torch illuminated the lower part of their body but their face was entirely in shadow. The wind came in gusts that carried those tiny lights but became intermittent. Ashley pushed away from the wall.

Hel took a deep breath, dropped their arms and opened the black wells of their eyes. “Forty years of the dead is a lot,” they said and Ashley inexplicably felt laughter bubble in her chest. “But it’s all taken care of now.”

“You’re saying that the dusters are gone?”

“You humans will have quite a mess to clean up, but yes, the natural order is restored.” A tiny light zoomed into the room, circled Hel’s head, and disappeared up their nose.

“Why did the iron prevent you from taking the dead?”

Hel shrugged, a human gesture that made it possible to forget what they were.

“You don’t know,” Ashley said.

“You guess correct.”

“I’ll see you again?”

The lips parted over black teeth and Ashley felt faint. “Oh, yes. But not for a long time. And you’ll be ready.” Hel reached down toward the floor, grasped the hem of the black robe, and drew it upward as though they were going to shed the dirty garment. But they had no feet, no legs, no waist, no nothing. They pulled the cloth over their head and disappeared like a genie. Ashley’s ears popped.

She swayed on her feet. None of it seemed real. She’d fallen asleep and any minute she’d tip off her stool behind the counter and wake up sprawled on the floor.

Instead, she picked up the flashlight and swung the beam, still steady and bright, across the cage in the middle of the floor. The sheared edges where they had removed the bars caught the light. She never wanted to see that cage again. She turned and left the room. Light from the setting sun streamed in the dusty windows of the convenience store, making the canned food, cigarettes, and bottles of cheap beer look golden and magical. Ashley made her way to the door and unlocked it. Away to the east she saw the storm receding across the desert. A thick layer of dirt coated the macadam and gas pumps, particles floating in the air catching the sunset, sparkling, turning the world into fairy land. She remembered the way that Hel inhaled the tiny sparks and goose bumps broke on her arms.

An irregularity in the drifts of grit caught her eye and she made her way across to where it lay in the open lot, her sandals sinking into the accumulated powder. A duster grinned up at her, dirt in the eye sockets and between the gaping teeth. It did not move. After a moment she poked it with a toe. Still nothing. Bold, she gave it a kick and the head spun off, making skip marks in the dust. Ashley began to smile and then, breaking the silence, to laugh.