The Bone Bridge: Chapter 30

Chapter 30

65,000,000,000 had come and gone before us and roughly 10,000,000 of them loitered between our world and the other side. And he was on his way to communicate with them.

He was using the rarest and least known map in all of human history. It was also the most invaluable. It wasn’t a map drawn on papyrus or paper by professional cartographers. It wasn’t one that mapped out capes, panhandles, islands, peninsulas and the like. You couldn’t get to any place on this invaluable piece of cartography by plane, ship or car. What was charted on it was not defensible by land, sea or air. There were no national boundaries or even countries.

Nonetheless it was a map that would lead any navigator brave or foolhardy enough to be led by it to the vastest, most potent yet least controllable force in all the humanly recognized dimensions, a realm far more powerful than even the greatest terrestrial empires. Essentially, it was a map of the entire underworld, one that led those who could follow it to the temporary yet eternal realm of the displaced dead, those who went neither to what was really heaven, hell or purgatory. Theologians had called it limbo.

It was first charted by a 14th century Transylvanian mystic and monk, the Rasputin of his time. The Venerable Balascu’s map, roughly translated as “Charon’s Way” by those extremely select few who’d known about it, detailed the vast, virtually limitless No Man’s Land that served as the place of endless transition between the living and the dead. Culled through decades of meditation and so-called out-of-body experiences, Brother Balascu was revered by those extremely select few who’d studied his work for being the only living man to freely roam between the realms of the living and the dead.

Milo Dragović knew that he didn’t have much time. Dietrich somehow had managed to keep a tether on him linking him to the Hole. Time essentially was meaningless here but back on earth it was still something that could be measured in nanoseconds and he knew he didn’t have much time to waste.

The map was actually a series of incantations penned by Belascu that opened seemingly endless portals. The forever-displaced dead were able to navigate their way without the spells as if guided by some preternatural instinct or guidance from a higher power but Dragović, for undefined reasons, needed the map. In lieu of landmarks, each opened portal let know whoever was being guided by Charon’s Way that they were indeed still on the right path. It was actually surprisingly reminiscent of Dante’s depiction of the netherworld in his Divine Comedy. Only instead of nine circles, there were dozens of realms alternately filled with light or darkness, forests or wastelands, unearthly necropolises, and some resembling classical renditions of both heaven and hell.

The map was implanted into Dragović’s ruined head by none other than Belascu himself, one of Dietrich’s earliest acquisitions. What Belascu had seen 700 years ago Dragović was now seeing and in exactly the right sequence. When word spread throughout Transylvania and beyond about his supernatural sojourns, he was burned at the stake as a heretic.

The dead dictator was now in a realm that was the strangest one, yet, a bleak and dark world or dimension in which the denizens were petrified and rooted to the ground, some of them resembling small trees. Dragović could feel the eyes following him as he looked around and muttered the last incantation that would lead him to the largest realm of all, the only one that served as a common area for all of the ten million trapped souls.

The dead dictator knew that not all of them would be converted. Yet out of ten million, he knew he could summon for Dietrich an army of the undead that could easily accomplish his goals. He briefly wondered if he would see Irina here or if she would be able to seek him out and find him. He hoped against hope as he passed through the final portal.

The brightest light he’d ever seen overtook him as he finished the last syllable of the spell. Even though he no longer had eyes in the biological sense, it overwhelmed him and he wondered if this was the bright white light he’d heard others speaking of after near death experiences. After his sight had adjusted he was greeted with a scene that was astounding.

It was astounding to him because he stood atop a mountain looking down at a valley that was very terrestrial, familiar, even. On either side of the valley, mountains in the distance higher than any in the Urals dissolved in gauzy light. He began walking down even though his ruined ankle that was shattered by a bullet in 1991 made any ambulation difficult. He could see streaks of light far below him flitting back and forth like fireflies in a manner very similar to the manifestations of his cellmates back in the dreaded Hole.

There was no sun or discernible source of light yet everything was brightly illuminated as if Dragović was seeing in all light spectrums. While the mountain was a muted gold color, the landscape below him was bone white. That’s why he didn’t see the Bridge of Bone mentioned by Belascu until he got down to the foothills. It was a bridge that spanned no river and made no apparent sense. Dragović then saw a luminescent figure coalesce into a vaguely humanoid shape that quickly moved across the bridge. Since time didn’t exist here, they met in the middle sooner than he expected.

It was a wizened man, kindly in aspect, and he wore a hood over his head. While he was ancient, his face bore no wrinkles or bags under the eyes. Dragović looked at his feet and the skulls that made up various parts of the bridge smiled up at him.

“This place looks oddly familiar. It reminds me of some parts of my native country.”

“What you see is not what I see, save for this symbolic bridge. As with everything when we were alive on earth, it is subject to interpretation. This common realm looks differently to everyone else.”

“What does it look like to you and what is this bridge supposed to symbolize?”

“It is a bridge for the dead that reaches back from whence we all came. Those who live here in what some have called limbo are free to go back using this bridge. Yet it is a bridge without a shore. They find when they go back that there is nothing awaiting them. Hardly anyone can see or hear them. The world of substance passes through their flesh. And very few of the living are gifted enough to communicate with us. Yet despite constant failure, some never come back. They refuse to move on.” Move on to what? Dragović asked himself as he looked around at the bleakness. The hooded figure inclined his head in curiosity, which was in itself a curiously durable human trait.

“Who are you? And how did you get here?” They spoke no earthly dialect. While conversing in neither Milo’s native Slavic tongue, Russian or any manmade language, they nonetheless understood each other perfectly.

“Milo Dragović,” he proudly said and expected the man to expect him. He did.

“Ah. It took you long enough to get here. It takes most of us much sooner. Did you need Belascu’s map?”

Dragović touched his ruined head at the temple.

“I see you have not come alone.”

Dragović wondered what he was talking about then assumed that he could see the tether of energy that kept him connected to that damned chamber of Dietrich’s.

“Which side will you inhabit?” the wizened man asked, gesturing to one end of the bone bridge then the other. Dragović looked at both sides of the bleached, bone-white landscape and they looked identical.

“Neither. I haven’t much time. I have to speak with everyone here.”

“To what end?”

“Freedom and vindication.”

The ancient figure smiled, pulled back his hood and finally revealed some laugh lines around his toothless mouth and elsewhere on his eyeless face, another curious relic of his former humanity.