Double Vision by Colby Marshall

he was submitting to an urge, not missing a loved one who’d passed. The returning-the-dead angle didn’t feel right. Still, it was worth a question or two. “Did Orpheus succeed?”
    â€œGood heavens, no. He made it in, all right, though different versions of the tale have him employing different means. But when Hades allowed him to take his wife back to the living world, it was under the condition she walk behind him and he not look back. Before he got past the gates, he disobeyed Hades’s order, and Eurydice was ripped from him and back into Hades.”
    Jenna nodded, forcing away the powder pink of parallels that flashed in. The story had prompted her to think of the parallel biblical story of Lot’s wife looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah. The thought was of the sort she always had to sift through in situations like these, to isolate the important associations her mind naturally made from the myriad of insignificant ones. The pink had cropped up because of her own purely anecdotal thought, not due to an impression she had that connected the story with the case. A subtle distinction, but it was a skill she’d honed over time.
    â€œSo, Persephone and Orpheus. Anyone else?” Jenna said.
    â€œOdysseus also entered the Underworld alive. Blood offerings were required for the dead to interact, though. A life force offered in exchange for contact. Cerberus was charged with keeping all who entered Hades from leaving, but Odysseus escaped by sailing through an exit of Hades guarded by two monsters. Instead of trying to navigate the water between them, the mistake of most sailors, he stuck close to the tentacled monster, Scylla. He lost men—six—but otherwise he and the rest of his crew escaped. As far as I know, he was the only person who led a ship that sailed into Hades and also sailed out. Now the dead are another story entirely. The Greeks thought that at the moment of death, the soul and corpse separated. The soul assumed the form of a body itself, and that was the part which was taken to Hades.”
    â€œBy the boatman,” Jenna filled in.
    â€œYou are correct. Charon, the ferryman, was charged with sailing the shades of the dead to Hades, by some accounts across the river Styx. By others, Acheron, the river of pain.”
    Jenna cleared her throat. “So there are a lot of discrepancies?”
    Etkin nodded. “Depends on whose portrayal you’re reading which river was the entrance to the Underworld. Homer said one thing, Euripides another. Everyone else usually something in between. But those are the more popular versions.”
    â€œMm-hm. And Charon was paid two coins over the eyes, correct?” Jenna asked, not mentioning the relevance to the case.
    Dr. Etkin nodded. “Sometimes, but not as a rule. Another source of disagreement. Some tales say coins over the eyes, but most if not all instances in literature depict a single coin under the tongue. The eye coins usually appear as the myths are orally passed down as folktales and lose some authenticity.”
    Jenna let the idea simmer. Apparently, if their killer
did
intend the pieces of evidence to appear as coins, he didn’t know his mythology well. An interesting detail, considering their current theory said he was obsessed with it.
    â€œWere coins over the eyes perhaps symbolic of . . . well, anything?” Jenna reached.
    Dr. Etkin shook his head. “Not that I know of, young lady. But either way, Charon was a coin taker, and if the dead did not pay, they were condemned to wander the earth as ghosts.”
    â€œA bad thing?” Jenna asked, unsure.
    â€œYes, in that culture. Many thought that reaching the Elysian Fields after death might provide a chance for rebirth. Reincarnation, as it is thought of in traditional society, wasn’t on the table back then. There was a very specific set of circumstances the Greeks aspired to in order to have the prospect. And yet, I