Headda and the Ferryman

Headda Gobbler sat at her table in the center of Lonnie’s Chicken Ranch as she did every Samhain, dealing the cards and telling fortunes. In honor of the festivities, she wore a long gown of orange lace with sequined jack o’ lanterns from hem to neckline and a split up the side that would make a dead deacon sit up and pay attention. Her wig was piled high on her head in an homage to the Bride of Frankenstein with the addition of tiny sparkling gemstones for that special touch.

She had a feeling she couldn’t quite shake that this particular Sabbat was special. Whether that was good special or bad special, the Goddess alone knew. That didn’t stop her from trying to find out, though. There wasn’t a drag queen alive that took no for an answer if she could help it. Make that drag queen a witch, and she was twice as tenacious.

Come on, now, she though as she shuffled the cards again, tell me something.

The first card was Death, as it had been every time she dealt for herself that evening. The second was the Tower. She was just about to pull a third card when a chill ran down her spine, stiffening her back. Headda pushed up from her chair and looked around. An uninvited guest had walked into the bar, but where were they.

He materialized out of the shadows just next to the restrooms. Tall and slending with long blonde hair that fell down his back in waves. Porcelain skin that reflected the lights on the dancefloor. His crop top was black and tight, hugging his chest and giving way to a smooth, flat, hairless stomach. Black skinny jeans sat low on his hips showing off the deep dip of the v that pointed the way to a bulging package. Heavy boots with the slightest heel rounded out the look save for a silver chain that hung around his neck with a scythe pendant that she could only just make out when he drew near.

“Hello,” he purred at her, grinning like he wasn’t the god damned Grim Reaper.

“Hello, yourself,” she said. “That’s a hell of a costume you got there.”

“Do you like it? I wore it especially for you.”

“It’s…all right. What you doing here? Ain’t my time to go.”

“No, it isn’t, but it’s my night off, and after all these years, I decided it was time to pay the famous Headda Gobbler and her coven a visit.”

“You leave the rest of my girls alone, too.”

He held up his hands in a truce and smiled again.

“I’ve not come for your girls.”

Headda sized him up and finally sat back down in her chair, motioning for him to join her. She held up two fingers to Lonnie at the bar. The man looked confused for a moment, but he shrugged and immediately started mixing drinks.

“So,” she said. “Since when does Death take a night off?”

“I’m not Death,” he corrected her. “I’m just the Ferryman. Infinite, yes. Omnipresent, yes. But I am not Death.”

“Okay. Since when does the Ferryman take a night off?”

“Once a year,” he answered. “Samhain. Halloween as these children call it, now. When the veil is so thin between the next world and yours, there’s very little need for me to do anything. The souls who are meant to go find their way over just fine.”

She considered the response and after a moment nodded. It made sense, she supposed. If spirits could get back here so easily on Samhain night, why couldn’t they go the other way? As she thought, Lonnie appeared with two drinks, sliding them onto the table. The liquid was deep purple, a special concotion of spiced liquors and spicier herbs. Her own Samhain Brew served to her friends on her favorite night of the year.

“Drinking heavy tonight,” the bar owner said with a frown. “You all right?”

“They ain’t both for me, Lonnie.”

The man looked at her and then at the chair across from her. For a moment, he didn’t seem to see a thing. Then he leapt back, shouting.

“You and your damned creeps,” he said, waving his hands in the air as he walked away.

Headda looked back at the man and shook her head.

“That wasn’t nice.”

He shrugged and smiled, picking up the drink and holding it under his nose.

“It’s a good night for a scare or two.”

She chuckled at that and sipped her own drink, watching to see if he would drink his. She was curious to see if he even could. After a moment, he tipped his glass back and swallowed the entire contents of the martini glass in one gulp. He closed his eyes and smiled, a flush instantly creeping up his neck toward his face.

“A man who drinks that like wants to die,” Headda said, setting her own glass aside. “I’ll ask again. What brings you here? If you came for the show, it’s already over. My girls have gone out for the night with their men, and I’m just doing readings.”

“Oh, but you see, that’s why I’m here. I want you to read my cards for me, Headda. I feel like you’re the only one who can.”

Headda frowned at that. She’d read for a lot of people, but she couldn’t fathom what this Ferryman could want to know. She supposed there was only one way to find out. She picked up the cards and shuffled them before setting them in front of the stranger.

“Cut the deck.”

He held out his hand and closed his eyes, taking in a deeper breath than any she’d ever seen and exhaling slowly. Without looking, he placed his hand on the deck and lifted, a near even split. Only then did he open his eyes. He smiled at her as he set the half-deck next to its mate. Headda shook her head and finished her ritual of shuffling before picking the tarot deck up and saying a little prayer to the Goddess to guide her hand and intuition.

The deck was decorated with crows and ravens, a gift from her first teacher. The man saw her performing in a club one evening in southern Louisiana and approached her after the show. He told her she had a gift and the next day he began teaching her to use it. She hadn’t seen Isaiah in years, but she often thought of him when she set about clearing her space for a ritual, when she felt her magic rise up inside her.

“All right,” she said, and turned the first card.

THE FOOL stared up at her, stepping off a cliff as ravens flew around his head.

“Looks like you’re starting out on a new journey, got a new purpose.”

The edges of her vision became fuzzy when the Ferryman leaned forward, like static on an old television. It didn’t hurt, but it was…uncomfortable like a pressure inside her head. She flipped the next card.

THE TEN OF PENTACLES.

“You’ve got a long line. Makes sense. Hell of a legacy being the Ferryman of the Dead, I suppose. Feels like you’ve been real nostalgic, looking back, and thinking on all the work you’ve done.”

The Ferryman nodded and smiled, motioning for her to go on. She heard the whispers in the back of her mind, the voices that always spoke when she gave a reading, but they were suddenly jumbled, speaking different things at different times instead of the Greek Chorus effect she usually got.

Headda took a drink and set the glass down again.

“Gonna need something stronger than this,” she muttered.

“If there’s a stronger drink in this bar, your clientele is in trouble,” he answered with a wicked grin.

“Shut up.”

JUDGEMENT

“Damn,” Headda said. “Don’t tell me you pick and choose who goes where after they croak.”

“No, of course not. Judgement is a human concept. Sure, there are souls who are separated from the whole when they pass because of the evil they’ve done, but it’s only for a time. It’s a renewal, a rekindling of the spark of life.”

Headda nodded. That lined up with what she understood.

“I’m sorry, but the cards aren’t making sense.”

“I think they are. Keep going.”

THREE OF PENTACLES

“Collaboration, creating something from nothing, but it only really comes together if you work with someone else. It takes an architect and a builder to bring a new building into being. Sperm and egg make a vessel for new life. And—”

“Yes?”

“Oh my Goddess,” she said, and flipped over the next card.

DEATH

It stood shrouded in grey. Crows and ravens flew from beneath its cowl. In her mind, she heard the flap of wings, the cawing. She heard a whisper in a voice and language she couldn’t comprehend, but she understood, deep down in her gut.

“You’re looking for a replacement,” she whispered, looking up into his dark eyes. “You want someone else to take your job.”

The Ferryman sighed.

“I was the first human of our species to die. The first to see the veil. Death was waiting for me, and something else. Something I’ve never fully understood. They told me I was special. Told me that I was called to this work. In the millennia that have passed since then, I have often wondered if it was a calling or merely convenience. And so I asked.”

“What? You just called up Death and said, ‘What’s the deal?’”

“Something like that,” he answered. “Something very similar to that actually.”

“And?”

“And they admitted nothing. I didn’t really expect them to. I’ve known them a long time. They’re not big on the why of things. More the how and when. But, they did say if I found a suitable replacement, they would relieve me of my duties and allow me finally to cross the veil myself to rest.”

“Is that person…here?”

“That’s what I came to ask. I feel they are. I feel they’re so close, but I don’t know who. I can’t place them. I can’t see them. I need your witch eyes to help me, Headda.”

There was something so sad, so pleading in his voice. She wanted to help, but if she did…didn’t that mean she was signing someone’s death warrant?

“Not immediately,” he said, reading her mind.

“Huh?”

“Not immediately. The span of a human life means little to me. Your years are days to me. Your hours pass by in the blink of an eye. I only need to know who, Headda. They’re here. I know it. Death sent them here so I could watch them, reach for them, show them myself and help them prepare. It’s the next card, Headda. Please, help me.”

Headda looked away from those dark, pleading eyes, and observed a room filled with people she knew and loved, people she saw at least once a week and sometimes more. She’d laughed with them, mourned with them, and seen them through the hard times, helping where she could. They were all her babies in one way or another. Did she really want to condemn them to an afterlife of serving Death and ferrying souls?

A cold hand gripped hers. She didn’t pull away. She wasn’t afraid. The voices in her head quieted. The silence that followed was terrifying. Then, something new began. A single voice at first. A single line of song. Music never heard by a living human. Music that could only be sung by the soul once it was freed from its mortal coil. The voice was joined by another and another until she felt she might burst open and spill the song into the room. Their harmonies wrapped her in a cocoon, cutting her off from the pounding music of the DJ, the cacophony of Halloween revelers’ voices.

It overwhelmed her senses but she felt free. Free of the burden of responsibilities. Freedom to rest.

Headda looked at the Ferryman.

“It’s what I hear when I deliver them home. It’s life and death and all points in between. But I’ve never been allowed to add my voice to the chorus. I want to sing that song. I need to. Please, Headda.”

She looked down at her cards, reached for the deck. Silence fell once more as she flipped the card.

THE KNIGHT OF CUPS

She closed her eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. The Ferryman didn’t speak.

When Headda opened her eyes, they fell on Noah Dothan, and she smiled. Noah was about the sweetest young man she’d ever met. He was all of thirty-three years old, and one of those young men who just seemed to be comfortable no matter who he was talking to.

He never quite fit into a niche.

A little too round to be a twink, a little too thin to be a cub. Too old to look for a sugar daddy and too young to be one himself, even if he did have the money, which he didn’t.

In a community that sometimes loved their labels a little too much, he defied them all. He was just Noah, with an open round face and blue eyes that saw everything, even the things he didn’t want to see.

“There’s your man,” she said, surprised at the peace she felt when she pointed Noah out to the Ferryman.

He stared at him for a moment then turned back to smile at her.

“They were right about you,” he said.

“They usually are,” Headda answered.

“Don’t worry. I’ll watch out for him. Make sure he’s okay.”

“You better. Otherwise, I’ll find a way to conjure your ass and take payment out of your hide.”

The Ferryman grinned and pulled her hand up to his lips. He kissed her palm softly before releasing her with a nod. She watched him walk across the bar to sit next to Noah. Watched him strike up a conversation. In minutes, they were laughing and talking as if they were old friends.

That was Noah’s way.

Headda pulled her cards toward her, stacking them neatly, and shuffling them to dispel any energy left over by the Ferryman. He was her last read for the night. She needed to rest. Lonnie waved as she walked toward the back of the bar. She bypassed her dressing room and stepped out into the night, removing her shoes and staring up at a moon full of possibilities.

Headda held her hands up to that moon and hummed a tune not meant for mortal ears. When the song was finished, she picked up her shoes and walked into the night.