Silencing The Siren

23. At Death's Door

(When the Dead Come Knocking)

"My, my... What do we have here?" said a masculine voice behind Calliope. "You're here a lot sooner than I ever expected you to be."

The man's voice caused Calliope's eyes to shoot open and her body to jerk upright. She looked around. She felt terrified as she tried to make sense of her foreign surroundings.

Calliope was sitting in the middle of a dirt road, which appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. There aren't even any signs near the road, she thought. In fact, there doesn't seem to be much of anything around here. Where the fuck am I? she wondered as her eyes scanned the horizon. She tried to look for any visual clues about where she was or why she woke up there... Or how she woke up at all.

"Alright, calm down now, gorgeous. I don't know what you're looking for around here, but you're not gonna find anything. It's pretty goddamn borin' around here," the man who was standing behind Calliope said.

Calliope jumped when she heard the man's voice again. She turned around to look at the man, who was still standing behind her. The person that she saw surprised her, but she was relieved to know that it was him rather than Menoetius or Raiden. "Baron Samedi?" she questioned. She had an incredulous look on her face as if seeing him then—standing in front of her—had to be some kind of dream. "Where... Are... We?" she asked him.

"Where the hell do you think we are? This, my dear, is the crossroads, which lies between the world of the living and the land of the dead. This is where I meet all the newly-departed souls and send their asses on to the land of the dead..." Baron Samedi replied. "Although... Sometimes... If I feel like someone really needs to go back... If I feel like they aren't done with their life... Like they have more they need to do... Well... Then, I'll just send their ass back to the world of the living."

"So then, this is where you... Um, work? Or... Preside?" Calliope asked, stuttering and wringing her hands together. She was staring at the ground and lightly kicking at the dirt in the middle of the crossroads.

"That's right, darlin'. It's fucking boring 'round here sometimes, but all of this... Is my domain," the Baron replied, stretching his arms out wide with a sly smile. "So... Would you like me to show you around? Give you the whole... Fancy-ass grand tour?" he asked, holding one of his arms out for Calliope. She smiled and looped one of her arms in his as he lit a cigar with his free hand. Then, he led her along the road in front of them, telling her, "Now... Over here is how the new souls come in... If I've got an empty grave, of course. A new soul can only come if I've got an open one. But hey–if I'm being honest with you, honey... No one ever really fuckin' uses one—not for long, anyway—so I've almost always got the whole damn graveyard empty."

Calliope looked up at the loa as he inhaled a long drag from his cigar. She admired the painting skills that it had to have taken to decorate the upper part of his mature, handsome face so intricately. "So, how many souls DO you deal with every day?" she questioned.

"Ah, hell, doll, I don't fuckin' know. Too many to keep track of, that's for damn sure," Baron Samedi replied with a slight laugh before taking another drag from his cigar.

As they got closer to the graveyard, Calliope noticed all of the empty graves that were around them. There were a handful of graves that were occupied, but most sat open and appeared to be undisturbed. "Do the souls just... Appear in the graves?" she asked. "Is that why you need the empty ones?"

"That's right," Baron Samedi answered, amused. "Though, the moment a soul wakes up, they get transported to the middle of the crossroads... Just like you did."