by S. L. Baum
Krista shrugged. “She was going to die, I took Death from her.”
“That’s so wonderful,” Opal told Krista, giving her another squeeze. “And your momma is going to save Sam.”
Wilson Cooper arrived on the scene and Sheriff Tucker walked over to where the three women stood. “I assume the helicopter is on its way. It should be here soon, we’ll have to clear the parking lot.”
Adeline opened her mouth to disagree, but Krista spoke first. “Doc’s getting him stabilized. He said it’s probably not as bad as it looked. The leg’s broken, and he has a concussion from hitting his head.”
“That’s a lot of blood,” the sheriff pointed out.
“Yeah.” Krista bobbed her head in agreement. “Head wounds always bleed a ton. There’s a lot of blood flow up there, to keep the brain working so well. But Doc’s got it under control now.”
“Yup,” Opal piped in. “He sure does.”
Albert Tucker looked at his twin. Adeline was squirming, shifting her weight from one foot to the other while twisting her hair around her finger. “Don’t look at me,” Adeline told her brother. “I’m no medical person. It just looks really bad, that’s all. Makes me nervous.”
“Maybe I should go in and see how things are going,” the sheriff suggested.
“No!” Krista and Opal chorused.
“Doc told us to wait outside,” Krista explained.
“Then why isn’t Abe here with you?” he asked.
“Next of kin,” Opal told him.
The sheriff took his hat off and blankly stared inside of it for a moment, trying to decide what to do next, before he put it back on his head. “I guess I’ll give him a few minutes, then. Did I see someone else go in there?”
Opal shook her head. “Nope.”
Adeline turned around. “I’ll go call Mortimer, so he can come get the body.” Every time she said that man’s name she wondered if all the teasing the kids in her class had done had decided his fate. Morty the mortician had been chanted on the elementary playground and whispered behind his back in junior high school. But by the time high school came around, Morty had made it known that being a mortician was exactly what he wanted to do. He got a part time job working at the mortuary when he was fifteen, and he’d been there ever since, taking over when the town’s previous one had retired.
“I already called him, he’s on his way,” Sheriff Tucker told her as he stared at the lump on the ground.
A small crowd had begun to gather and Albert wanted to clear the site as quickly as possible. “Sadly, this irresponsible driver came into town and made some terrible choices. He was more than likely as drunk as they come. He had one of those big plastic bottles of whiskey in the car with him, no cap to be found. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, had veered into the other lane, and was ejected upon his impact with Sam Webber’s vehicle. We are going to try to notify this guy’s family, if he has any. And we are waiting to hear from Doc; he took Sam into the motel to work on him away from the cold.”
Mumbles and nods of understanding traveled through the onlookers.
Sheriff Tucker turned to Deputy Cooper. “Could you call the garage and have them send the tow truck to clear these vehicles? Try Clarence at home first, he usually doesn’t have the garage open on Christmas Eve.”
“Sure thing, Sheriff.”
“Thanks, Coop.”
Krista’s phone buzzed in her pocket; a text from Doc. Am I going to need to cast or splint this leg when he wakes up?
Doctor Baker looked at his phone and silently read Krista’s response. Brace it before he wakes up. The bone will go back together, but it will be weak. I’ll go get one of the good full leg and knee braces from the center.
Chai watched as the doctor checked his phone, and thought that she had landed in a strange little slice of America. When she came to this town she was hoping to find that her daughter had adopted her philosophy of what it meant to be a Deathtaker, but apparently that wasn’t the case. What good was having a coveted power if you couldn’t make a buck from it? Her own mother had shunned her when she’d learned that she charged for her services. She was the one who stated Kristanta would be better off without Chai for a mother, and that’s when Chai left.
“What’s up, Doc?”
“Original,” he mumbled as he slipped his phone into his back pocket. “How much pain are you in?”
“A shit load. This last minute stuff is not fun. Nor is the fact that this kid was pretty beat up,” Chai grimaced. “Fuckin’ leg is excruciating.”
As unpleasant as the woman seemed, he hated that she was in pain. He hated that anyone had to be in pain. “Is there anything I can do to help you with that?”
Chai squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head. “Nah. Thems the rules, Doc. That’s why I charge for what I do.”
“Wouldn’t want to do it out of the kindness in your heart?”
“I’ve done that once or twice. The pay’s not as good. Hey, has anyone ever told you that you look like Santa Claus?”
“I’ve heard it before. I think the resemblance kicks in even more this time of year.”
“Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, Kris Kringle, good ol’ Saint Nick. You don’t look much like a Saint. I bet you’ve done some damage in your day.”
Doc scratched at his beard. “You like to talk a lot.”
“Keeps my mind off the pain,” Chai told him. “I assume you know to keep my body safe? Kristanta told you all about the whole forty-eight hour thing.”
“Actually, Krista told me about the twenty-four hour thing.”
“Yeah. Another reason I get paid the big bucks. No prior connection, longer time for the body to process the death. Until that happens, I’ll be as good as dead, rotting on this bed. I’m losing two days of my life for this boy.” She gestured toward Sam.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Abe commented. He’d been sitting in silence, staring at his great-nephew’s damaged body, the bloody smears on his swollen face, and watched helplessly as the boy’s breaths became more and more shallow.
“You can thank me with a check,” Chai told him. “Or better yet, cash.”
“Not sure if the bank can give me that much today,” Abe admitted with worry. “I’ll need to transfer some funds.”
“How about half cash and half check? I’m sure a resourceful guy like you could pull that off.”
“You’ll have it waiting for you. I’ll get it done and bring it back to this room, or your other room. You tell me.”
“This room, this bed, right next to me while I’m asleep.”
Abe stroked Sam’s arm. Was it going to work? Was his boy going to live? What kind of strange powers did Krista come from? “You’ll have it.”
As far as Abe was concerned, she could have anything she wanted if it saved Samuel from the cruel twist of fate.
“Ten really is a bargain,” Chai told them. “Fifty is usually my minimum, and I’ve charged as much as a million. Stupid old, rich guy that one was. Eighty-six years old and was hoping for another twenty. He had his people find me again after seven. He’d ruined his perfectly healthy liver by drinking nonstop after I’d fixed it for him the first time. But I can only take one death per person. He was SOL.”
“So this is Sam’s one and only do over,” Abe noted.
“From me? Yes. Another Deathtaker could fix him up again, if he should ever need it.”
She was a hard woman, with no hint of compassion. Doc listened to her talk and took it all in, soaking up every detail he could about her power as a Deathtaker. “Interesting…”
“It is, isn’t it? Pretty fascinating lineage I come from.” Chai sucked in a sharp breath. “It’s coming on harder now. He’ll wake up soon.”
There was a knock at the door. After he saw Adeline through the peephole, Doctor Baker turned the handle and cracked the door open. Adeline was holding a leg brace. “Krista said you needed this.”
“Thanks, Addy.”
“Are you sure you’re ma
king the right decision?” she asked Doctor Baker. Adeline tried to look over his shoulder, but he blocked her vision.
“I’m making the only decision,” he told her before closing the door.
When Adeline turned back around, she saw Mortimer loading the deceased drunk driver into the back of his hearse. “Hi, Morty.” She waved.
“Hello, Adeline. Great start to the holiday.” He shook his head. “This guy goes in cold storage until Sheriff Tucker contacts his family. Merry Christmas, poor guy.”
Clarence had arrived and was hooking his truck up to the guy’s car; it would stay in his yard until Tucker told him what to do with it. “What should I do with Sam’s vehicle?” Clarence asked the sheriff.
“Keep it in your yard until we figure it out, Clarence. You’re going to have to make two trips.”
Clarence grumbled as he got into his truck to take the first car away. “I hate working on my day off.”
“Don’t we all,” Sheriff Tucker grumbled back. “This is not the way any of us wanted to start the holiday.”
Krista stayed at the far end of the parking lot, at what she considered a safe distance, and watched the door to the motel room where Sam was. Opal was at her side. She’d insisted on driving her to the medical center to collect the leg brace for Sam. “You need a friend right now,” Opal had said. “I’m your extra strength until Sam comes out of that room and comes back to you.”
They waited.
After both vehicles were cleared, Wilson Cooper attempted to sweep up the broken glass from the icy street. It was then that the door finally opened. Scooting out of the room, with a sideways hopping motion, was Sam. He had one arm around his uncle’s shoulders and the other one around Doc’s. Doc pulled the door closed behind them, making sure it was secure as Krista rushed forward.
“Thank you, Lord,” Krista said, looking up to the sky. She put her hands on either side of Sam’s face and kissed him softly.
“I feel so strange,” Sam told her.
Krista smiled. Strange was good. Strange was so much better than the alternative. “It’ll pass. Your body is trying to process the quick changes it’s gone through.”
“One hundred feet,” Doc quietly reminded her. “We need to keep him moving.”
Krista nodded her head.
“What’s that?” Abe asked.
“Sam’s got to stay at least one hundred feet away from that woman in there for the rest of his life. If they get near each other, Death will reclaim its prize,” she told him.
Abe walked a little faster. “Let’s get him moving, then.”
Chapter Twenty
After Sam and Krista were settled at the main house, Abe went back out. He needed to get to the bank. He always kept two thousand dollars in the bottom drawer of his dresser, for emergencies, but he needed three more for that woman. He didn’t want to think of her as Krista’s mother. The two of them seemed as different as two people could be, but the biological ties were obvious, the resemblance unmistakable.
It was amazing what had happened so far that day. By eleven in the morning he’d watched his nephew die and then miraculously come back to life; he’d watched as a woman turned into some form of sleeping statue at the same moment his nephew’s eyes popped back open, and he learned that Krista was carrying a baby girl. He knew it was too early for her to know the sex of the child, especially since they’d admitted that hadn’t seen anyone about it yet, but after the morning he’d just had, he wasn’t going to ask how she knew. Abe was sure he’d find out soon enough.
The girl at the bank asked Abe if he was going to use the money for a last minute something special for someone. He just smiled and said, “Yes, ma’am.” It was easier than saying no and being asked additional questions. After that, he went back to the motel. Adeline was waiting for him in the office.
Abe got right to the point. “I need you to open that room up.”
“Seems wrong. I never go into the guests’ rooms when they are in there.”
“Technically, it’s not her room. She’s just using it,” Abe pointed out. “You should come with me and take a look at her. You know you want to see it.”
Adeline grabbed a key and came around the counter.
Chai Vita was lying in the bed, just where Abe had left her when he took Sam home. She was in the exact same position too, hadn’t moved an inch. The woman was perfectly still, like a statue.
“Is it wrong that I want to poke her and see if she wakes up?” Adeline asked.
Abe placed the five thousand dollars in cash, and a check for the same amount, beside Chai, on the bed. “Go ahead. Apparently she is going to stay that way for two whole days.”
“Doc told me to expect forty-eight hours or more. Said she may not want to leave for another day after that. But he said to call him immediately if she wakes up and leaves the room when he’s not here. I guess he plans on keeping some kind of watch over her.” Addy brushed the back of her hand against Chai’s forehead. “Her skin is so cool.” Then she took a small powder compact from her back pocket.
Abe gave her a funny look. “What are you going to do with that?”
“When Doc came by and told me all that stuff, and got a key for himself, he also said that this woman is dead, but not dead, that she will show no signs of life. So I figured I’d try that test with the mirror under the nose.”
“Check for breath?”
Adeline nodded her head. “Exactly.” She held the mirror up to Chai’s face and she and Abe watched the reflective surface, but it never clouded over. “You think she’s actually dead? I don’t want a corpse in my motel.”
“Doc said she’ll wake-up. Krista said so too. She said the same thing happens to her when she does this for someone.”
Addy gave him a skeptical look.
“Don’t you go calling Mortimer on this one. You wait it out, like Doc and Krista said. And I want you to call me if this woman leaves this room. Doc and Krista also said that if she ever gets close to Sam he’ll die. They can’t be within a hundred feet of each other. Ever.”
“Mumbo Jumbo,” Adeline mumbled.
“I don’t care what you call it. I want my boy to live. You hear me? We aren’t taking any chances with this thing.”
“I gotcha, Abraham. Whether I believe it or not, I’ll keep you informed. Now let’s get out of here. I don’t like being around this kind of stuff.”
Abe shook his head. “You don’t even know what kind of stuff this is. This is miraculous. This is powerful. And you are right on track to not want to mess around with it. Just do what Doc says.”
“I will,” Adeline grumbled. “Can’t believe this all happened in my place of business.” She peeled the comforter off the bed Sam had been on and picked up the blanket that had been covering him earlier that day. They were ruined, covered in Sam’s blood. “I think I should burn these, destroy the evidence.”
“I think you’re probably right.”
Krista and Sam clung to each other, alone in the main house on Abe’s couch, just as he’d left them. Neither wanted to let the other one go. Sam was resting flat on his back, with his good leg hanging off the couch; Krista had positioned herself between his legs with her head on his chest, and Sam’s arms were around her.
“I almost died. I can’t believe I almost died.”
“I can’t believe I almost lost you, right after I found you.”
“So your mom’s a stalker who’s been silently tracking your whereabouts,” Sam noted. “Who would have thought that having a stalker for a mother would be a good thing?”
Krista’s head popped up from his chest. “It turned out to be the best thing. Creepy though. And I can’t believe she charges people, and demanded ten grand to save you! Poor Abe.”
“I’ll pay him back. I’ll work it off. It’s a life debt now. I literally owe my uncle my life.”
“All three of us are indebted to him,” Krista said as she looked down at her belly. “And also to that awful woman who saved you.”
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“No matter what your mother’s faults are, by doing what she did for me she has allowed us to have a life together. You, me, and that baby girl… we’re going to be a family.”
Krista sat up. “The baby has to be a Vita. I will never sign any legal documents to bind us together; I will never change my name. But as long as you’ll have me, I will never leave your side. Is that going to be enough for you?”
Sam propped himself up on his elbows. “It’s not the way I imagined starting a family with someone, but not much in my life has happened the way I’d imagined.”
“I guess my father couldn’t handle it when my mom told him and he flipped out, so she left him, pretty much erased him from her mind, and refused to talk about him. Grandma had only met him once, so she didn’t have anything she could really tell me about him either. I don’t want that to happen to us,” Krista said, placing her hand over her stomach. “I don’t want that to happen to her.”
Sam pulled himself up to a sitting position and rested his back against the couch. He reached his arms out for her and she snuggled herself against his chest. “I don’t need you to sign a document to prove your commitment to me. I want to be with you, you want to be with me; that’s enough. I didn’t have a father around, you didn’t have a father around, let’s make sure that this one grows up knowing her daddy. We’ll just make Webber her middle name. We can do that, right?”
“We can most definitely do that,” Krista said with a sigh. “I don’t want to leave Cedar Creek, Sam. But there are quite a few people that know about me, and my mother, and this whole Deathtaker thing. Are we going to be safe here?”
“I wasn’t really paying attention – being pulled from a horrible wreck and all – how many people know?”
“Let’s see,” Krista sat back up and started naming people, holding up a finger with each name. “Obviously, Abe and Doc. Then there’s Adeline, and Opal. Jim wasn’t in the motel room when it was talked about, but he saw exactly how messed up you were when he helped Doc carry you in and put you on the bed, so I’m sure Opal will tell him. I have a feeling Adeline will cave and tell her brother. That makes four people for sure, with a fifth pretty likely, and a sixth that I predict will know before the year is over. Oh, and I feel like Pete will know soon, so that makes seven… plus you and me.”