CHAPTER 1

HELL GATE

I had never felt so frightened, so strange, so lost, so otherworldly. I thought that I was rising from an infinitely deep pool. My lungs burned and nearly burst. Finally, I broke surface and took a deep breath. Soft, sweet music filled the air. Serenity replaced terror. Yes, serenity is the only way to describe how I felt. Then came distant calls of my name. I drifted toward them, upward towards the sky.

“Yes, this way,” said one voice. Then a second, deeper voice added “Keep coming. You’re almost here.”

Hazy outlines appeared. The calls became louder, and I recognized who beckoned me: my mother, then my father. Then came the voice of my older brother. Their images became clear. I could see their smiling faces. They waved me towards them.

I felt such bliss and happiness but then drew back.

“But you’re all dead,” I muttered. Still, I never felt so peaceful.

My mother crooned, “Yes, yes, and you’ll soon be with us. We’ve been waiting for you. We’ll be a family again.”

“Son,” said my father. “You’re almost here.”

My brother only laughed and waved at me.

I strained to reach my mother’s outstretched hand. I felt the light touch of her fingertips, so soft and cool.

Then, quickly, I fell, sucked back into the vortex which I had just escaped. I kept sinking and sinking.

*          *          *

I coughed up water and blew more from my nose. Except for trying to breathe, I could not move. I spit and tried to suck air into my lungs. My clothes were soaking wet. I opened my eyes and saw sunlight through some kind of gauze.

I pulled away a light sheet that covered my upper body. I lifted my head slightly and looked to my left, then to my right. On both sides lie rows of people. All were covered with sheets. I sensed that they were all dead. I was in the center of a long row of bodies. Was I dead as well?

Two men, both wearing derby hats, came into my view. They carried another body past me.

My cough startled the larger man.

“Wait a minute! This one’s alive! Stan, quick, get the stretcher over here! Quick!”

Stan yelled to a distant someone whom I could not see. “Get that stretcher over here. Get this man up to the hospital!”

He knelt over me. “Don’t worry. We’ll have you inside in no time.”

I struggled to sit up and focus my eyes clearly. About twenty feet up the steep sandy beach sat a heavy-set man, dressed as a sea captain. I knew that he was not one of my officers or one of the harbor pilots. He was not dripping wet like the other men milling around. He nodded to me and winked mischievously.

I had no idea where I was. My rescuers carried me to a large building. I saw “Riverside Hospital” over its door. Smoke hung in the air. I could smell burning oil and wood. My stretcher was set beside two young boys. The hands of one were burned. He whimpered but bore the ordeal bravely. The other had a gash across his face. He only stared at me and never blinked. He looked like my brother had as a child, with a dark complexion and dark hair.

The heavy-set captain stood over me. He looked down on me and smiled.

My mind had cleared, and I knew that I had seen the bemused captain through that morning. Then memories of the past hour rushed forward.

*          *          *

I had always dreamed of going to sea. I earned a degree in philosophy to satisfy my father’s dying wish and taught for a few years. Then I left academia behind to sign on as an apprentice to sail on the S. S. Redemption. It would be in drydock for a month. Until then, I continued my job as a deck hand on the General Slocum. It was only a paddle steamer working the waters around New York City, but I was learning a lot that would come in handy later.

That morning, the Slocum had a charter to ferry a church group from Manhattan to a park on Long Island for an annual picnic. I remembered the people coming onboard, all dressed in their Sunday best. Mostly families boarded; rows and rows of children filled the decks. Many spoke German. My German was pretty good, and I could understand most of the chatter. A beautiful day, and everyone was in high spirits.

I worked the lines on the dock as the Slocum eased into the East River. An instant before we left the dock, eight people—a man, a woman, and six children—raced off the ship. I helped them and then jumped aboard. Flanagan, the first mate, stood next to me.

“Happens sometimes. Some people just can’t stand being on the water.” He spit over the rail.

“Is that all it is?”

What else, indeed? I had an odd feeling as I saw their faces onshore. The children were disappointed, but the adults looked relieved.

I had little more to do until we reached the park. I coiled lines and prepared for our arrival. We would be docking in about two hours.

Boys, eight to twelve years old, crowded around me, asking all sorts of questions. The boys spoke perfect English, and I did my best to answer them. I gazed up and saw Captain Van Schaick—“Captain Van” to the crew—looking down at me with a rare smile. I guessed that he was glad that I, not him, had to manage the children. All were having a grand time.

About half an hour into the trip—we had just passed Hell Gate—I smelled smoke. A boy ran to me, screaming about a fire. I called to Captain Van, but he could not hear me. That is when I first saw the strange captain. He looked at me but paid no heed to my calls. I remember his expression and wondered what it meant. I told the boy to run up to the bridge, and I went forward.

Smoke almost blinded me. Flames burst through a hatch, and a small boy came toward me screaming. I grabbed him and ran aft. A woman—his mother I presume—tore him from my arms. I went forward again. Another child, this time a girl, raced to me. I brought her aft until her father took her from me. He hugged her, quickly thanked me, and ran aft to join the rest of his family. I went toward the bow again.

The fire spread quickly and engulfed the vessel in seconds. The churchgoers screamed. Some jumped into the water. Others hung onto the rails and would not budge. The fine dresses of some women caught fire, and their men tried to kill the flames. Parents hurriedly put life jackets on their children and threw them overboard. *

I tried to help with the life jackets. My last memory is holding a very young child in my arms and seeing a woman—tall, well-dressed, attractive but a bit scary—laughing wildly.  She did not attempt to escape or help but only roared with glee. Then a crack on my head. Nothing after that until I awoke on the shore. I was just one in a long row of bodies.

The Slocum had beached, I would later learn, on North Brother Island. New York City used a number of small islands in the East River and the Sound for hospitals and asylums, for places that needed to be apart from the general populace. I later read that the Riverside Hospital treated contagious diseases.

I tried to stand, but a nearby doctor insisted that I remain lying down. “Be patient. I don’t want you leaving until I’m sure that you are well.”

Forcing me back to my stretcher was not difficult. I felt very weak, and my lungs still burned. I had remained awake on the bumpy climb to the hospital but dozed off as soon as I was transferred to a cot.

*          *          *

I awoke and saw the strange, smiling captain sitting at my side.

“Are you still here?”

“I’ve never been gone. I’ve been here for some time. Cadwallader’s my name. At least the name I’m using this month. Has a nice feeling on the tongue. Cadwallader.” He drew out the name with obvious pleasure.

“Captain Cadwallader?”

“Heavens no. At least not the captain of a ship.”

He ran his left palm over his peacoat. “Forgive my dress, but I must fit in. Never good to stick out too much. I like to blend in so that I can move about unnoticed.”

Cadwallader shifted his considerable bulk easily in the creaking wooden chair.

“I’ll make it brief. You look like a man with a nose for a bargain. I’d like to make you a proposition. We each have something the other wants. And that seems a relatively solid basis for a bargain.”

I was wide awake. “What are you talking about? What do you want to bargain?”

“A great many things. Oh, ho, ho. You’d be surprised. Many things, varied and delightful.”

“Why don’t you leave and let me rest?”

“Oh, such ingratitude,” laughed Cadwallader. “You’re only here because of me.”

“You started the fire!?”

_______________________________________________________________   * The Slocum’s cork life preservers were 13 years old and had not been used or tested since the steamer was commissioned in 1891. By 1904, the cork had turned to dust which was not buoyant and absorbed water.  Few who wore preservers as they jumped or were thrown into the water survived. _______________________________________________________________

“Heavens no! I brought you back from the great beyond.” Cadwallader spoke with enthusiasm. His eyes almost glowed. “You were well on your way until I stepped in.  A few moments more and, well, neither of us would be here. Once you passed the gate, I would see you no more.”

“Hell Gate?”

“Heavens no! Quite the opposite!”

I gazed around the room and saw people on stretchers and in cots with attendants passing among them. A doctor knelt beside a crying child. No one paid any attention to the strange captain and me.

“All those dead children. Why save me?” Cadwallader ignored the question.

“I have a bargain to offer. You’re not ready to die. In fact, you don’t ever want to die. People your age think they’ll live forever. In your case, that may be so. I can help with that.”

“Oh, can you? Why? How?”

“How is my business. Why you? You’re a good fellow. All that schooling, and you have no taste for a so-called normal life. You have no interest in climbing any ladder to success. You want as much adventure as you can get. You want to learn everything. You want to master everything. A rare breed. I am always on the lookout for people like you. Always looking to help them if they let me.”

A madman, I thought, perhaps injured in the fire and having delusions. How to handle him? He was energetic but fat and much older than me. Even feeling weak and tired, I thought that I could handle him if I had to.

“What do you want from me?’

“Actually, a minor item. In fact, something less than minor—insignificant, infinitesimal, microscopic.” Cadwallader laughed loudly as he held up his left hand and pressed his thumb and index finger together. “Teensy weensy,” he said with a big smile. Still, no one in the ward noticed us.

“What do you want?”

“What’s in a name, really? It’s a mere question of semantics, just language, a mere stretch of words.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Exactly!”

“What? What do you want?”

“What could we call it? We could call that a little piece of your makeup, a crumb off the crust of your structure, a fragment of an atom of your being.”

Cadwallader leaned forward, still smiling, but now terrifying. A soft red glow came from his eyes. He whispered, “For want of a better word, a soul.”

Now I laughed. “My soul! You want my soul? So, you think you’re The Devil.”

He rose from the chair faster than I thought he could and made a slight bow. “At your service.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds.

“Oh, I see,” he said, “that you will need some convincing. Tell me if this is correct. After the rail broke and smacked you on the head, you fell into the water with that cute little tot in your arms. By the way, don’t worry about him. He’s gone to—what do they like to call it?—‘a better place.’ Well, that depends on your perspective, but I won’t be seeing him again.”

Cadwallader breathed in deeply and looked above. “I won’t be seeing any of those young ones again. In time, I certainly would have had many of them. They are beyond me now. I may have lost a few others today, too. Those heroic chaps who saved some lives are no longer on my side of the ledger. But I gained a few as well—those cowards who pushed children aside to save themselves. Especially the crew. Oh, a lot of your shipmates will be coming to me soon.  I may come out ahead on the day.”

He looked genuinely sad but soon returned to his jolly self. “I digress.”

His eyes again glowed slightly.

“Once in the East River, with that tot in your arms and your clothes getting soaked, you sank. Hell Gate—I rather like that name—is not a bad place to drown, if you must drown at all. But again, I digress. You might have surfaced on your own if you had released the child, but you didn’t. Then you felt yourself rising, emerged from the water, heard the sweetest music, and smelled the sweetest fragrances. Then you heard your family calling. And you felt oh so peaceful, so at rest. That’s when I pulled you back. And here you are, ready for another forty or fifty years of life. Much more if we can reach an understanding. And I’m afraid much less if we don’t. I’ll have to let you go back.”

I was dumbfounded. “You heard me muttering while I was unconscious. I must have talked in my sleep.”

“To remove any lingering doubts, I have another trick or two up my sleeve.”

With some flair, he lifted his arms, pulled back the sleeves of his jacket, and snapped the fingers of his left hand. He then leaned far forward and whispered in my ear.

I pulled away quickly. Cadwallader not only repeated to me the last words that my brother had said to me but did so in his voice. I must have muttered about my brother in my sleep.

Cadwallader leaned back, very pleased with himself. No mistaking the glow in his eyes now. We stared at each other until he spoke.

“Well, you’ve been to the other side. All that contentment and serenity. Is that really for you? It doesn’t change. Believe me, I know. All that contentment and serenity for eternity. Is that what you want? You want to see the world. You want to visit far-off lands and meet their people. You want to read all those great books that you just scratched the surface of in your education. Learn all those languages. And what you really want is to do something big and constructive in the world, to leave your mark, to make some history. To leave some trace of your having been in this world—something more than just a name on the list of the victims of the General Slocum fire. And if we don’t come to some arrangement, I’m afraid that’s all you’ll be.”

Cadwallader’s smile never left him, but now it had become something of a sarcastic sneer.

“None of that will happen with all that contentment and serenity. History is made by unhappy people. But why are they unhappy? Usually, because Death is following them, breathing down their necks, making them think that they must act soon. You wouldn’t have to worry about that. You could have your cake and eat it, too. The cake of life! No matter how many bites you take, you never have to finish it.”

I lie back on my stretcher. Cadwallader leaned far forward.

“Oh, I know it’s a lot to take in, but what is it I can give you? An extended life span, a few hundred years to play around with. Some people call that immortality. But why make it sound so imposing? Let’s call it—just the two of us—let’s call it some additional free time. See all those exotic lands, read all those great books.”

Cadwallader winked at me. “Make love to all those beautiful girls. Or boys, if you prefer. Or both? Why not?”

He sat back, still very happy with himself.

“After all what are a few hundred years or a few thousand. Five thousand, ten thousand—what is it in the scheme of things? The world will go on ad infinitum, so what are a few thousand years more or less, give or take, add or subtract? What do you say?”

“I say you’re crazy.”

“Then what have you got to lose? How about it? A partnership of sorts. You deed to me your so-called soul, and in exchange, I give you immortality. And then indestructibility, complete indestructibility. Nothing can hurt you. You could live forever. Why not forever? Governments and institutions may disintegrate, people die, but you go on and on!”

I breathed deeply. My lungs still ached. “What about pain?”

“Oh, that’s part of the deal. You’ll feel as much sensation as you need to, to get through your day—your many, many days if we come to an agreement. But not enough so to make you more than tolerably uncomfortable.”

“I am rather partial to my soul.”

“Believe me—you’ll never know it’s gone.”

I decided to play his game. “What about my appearance?”

“I’ll afraid I can’t do much about that.” Cadwallader laughed. He enjoyed his own wit.

“After a few hundred years, I would look pretty bad.”

Cadwallader shook his head. “You drive a mean bargain, a most difficult bargain. But I’ll show you that I’m a cooperative chap. I’ll throw this into the deal. Whatever aging takes place on your features will be more-or-less imperceptible. I wouldn’t get too much sun though.” He chuckled again.

He removed his cap and pulled from it a folded document and handed it to me.

“So, our agreement is on this paper?”

“Not paper! Heavens, no. Parchment. I only use parchment. Has a nice feel when you touch it, doesn’t it?”

I ran my fingers over it before taking it from his hands and perusing it. The terms were pretty simple. Everything we discussed in exchange for my soul. A clause made the deal confidential. The contract even included a brief section on my lack of aging. How did he get that into the text? An old magician’s trick—he probably had a number of versions in his pockets and up his sleeves and produced the one closest to our final agreement.

“What does this paragraph mean?” I pointed to it.

“Oh, that. Purely for your protection, I assure you. I’ll give it to you thumbnail. It’s simply that if you ever get tired of living, you can exercise this escape clause by calling on me to furnish your demise. If we agree, at that point I’ll see to it that you are given a rapid and uncomplicated departure.  Now, make your mark at the bottom.”

“Have you got a pen?” I reached out my hand. Cadwallader unpinned the metal insignia from his captain’s cap and deftly stabbed at my thumb.

“I don’t need ink. I don’t need a name. Your thumbprint in your blood will do nicely.”

I smeared the drops of blood between my thumb and index finger. I was about to press on the parchment but pulled away. Cadwallader gave his heartiest laugh. Still, no one paid us any attention.

“So, you believe that I’m The Devil and not a crazy old fool. Imagine that. Now, just leave your thumbprint and you’ll be rid of this bothersome old coot.”

I still hesitated.

“Well, if you’re the Devil, you know how all this ends. You know how long I will be around, don’t you?”

“Heavens, no. My, my—all that education and studying. Reading Faust and Paradise Lost. Dante put all fortunetellers in Hell—in the eighth circle, no less.” *

“So, you have plenty of help there?”

He shook his head. “If you believe Dante, give me your thumbprint, you’ll see the future without any help.” Cadwallader winked. “If you believe Dante…” **

He reached into his jacket, pulled out an old book, and handed it to me.

“You’ve never read the only book that gets at all close to the real story. You’ve never read the Book of Job. Here—have a look. I always carry a Bible with me. Never know when you’ll need one.”

“And I guess that you like reading about yourself.”

He laughed loudly, but no one took notice of him.

_______________________________________________________________________   * Canto XX of The Inferno tells of Dante’s and Virgil’s encounters those who used forbidden arts to look into the future, to know God’s plan: Amphiareaus, Tiresias, Aruns, Manto, Eurypylus, Michael Scott, Guide Bonatti, and Asdente. ** In Canto XX of The Inferno, in the Sixth Circle of Hell, the heretic Farinata tells Dante that damned souls can foresee the future.