Eternity's Echo

by H. C. Southwark

  “The heck?” Jude said, throwing out a hand to Shawn, to Cookie, in clear frustration. “Is this you in the past? I thought we couldn’t observe the observer.”

  “He’s still alive,” said Ellie, “so he isn’t an observer.”

  Yet.

  For she was beginning to suspect what they were about to witness, from the way Shawn-the-Reaper’s eyes had gone tight in the corners.

  Shawn the Living walked around the side of the car to the end, popped the hatchback, and began rummaging. Jude moved closer to see, just as Shawn the Living pulled out a black snake as long as the car. It was a hose, Ellie deduced. A big round hose that you could almost stick your arm into, like it belonged to a shop-vac or fire truck.

  Kneeling down on the dirt, Shawn the Living began layering the end of the hose onto the exhaust pipe of the car, then revealed a roll of duct tape to fix it in place.

  “Hell,” said Cookie, who had also caught on. Ellie noticed her glancing wildly at Shawn, and for a moment Cookie looked lost on what to do. And Ellie realized:

  Cookie was trapped between extremes, confused at her own reactions. Not hard to figure out, knowing how Cookie took the rules so seriously, and yet also how much she hated Shawn’s guts for tormenting the people she was sent to save...

  On one end, Cookie was curious. She had heard rumors on how each member of the squads had died. But ‘how’ and ‘what’ was not as specific as ‘why’—like food without flavor. There was a morbid curiosity to discover the secrets of another’s death.

  But watching another reaper die was against the rules, unless you were the mentor sent to retrieve the new reaper and hand down the Commission. So Cookie should intervene, which meant saving Shawn from viewing his own death a second time.

  The rule about visiting your death was stricter than the one against visiting your family.

  Absolutely no viewing your own death.

  Not ever.

  Reapers were even authorized to fight, if they saw someone breaking this rule. They were obligated to call a mentor, and in the meantime they had to physically remove Shawn from the premises. Which is what Cookie knew she should be doing...

  Ellie watched as Cookie’s hand strayed to her pocket holding her compass. Would be easy to call for help. The call code worked even in the past, and Carson, Cookie’s mentor, was a no-nonsense quick show when Cookie was the one to dial. Besides, stopping Shawn from seeing this might give her an opportunity to kick his teeth in.

  Cookie’s hand closed around and withdrew her compass, but slowly. Ellie was about to stop her, for the simple sake that they could not risk calling a mentor here, but then Cookie’s movement came to a halt. Her face carved into determination.

  She’s not going to do it, Ellie realized. Cookie had let the two sides of herself fight, her curiosity on seeing a new reaper die and her obedience to the Commission, evenly matched, and the deciding factor must have been her dislike for Shawn.

  If he wanted to go crazy, to be confined to solitary for eternity—or however long one took to recover from this—then she was not going to stop him.

  Flashes of stories came to Ellie: tales of reapers throwing themselves from high buildings and splattering on pavement, but still existing, healing up only to try something even more extreme like tossing themselves into woodchippers. Nothing that worked.

  These rumors always seemed to her like the stories from a campfire, exaggerated and outlandish. But as Ellie stood there and watched Shawn the Living work the duct tape, she knew that there was some element of truth to them.

  I’d go mad too, she thought, if I saw myself... —And her mind broke the line of that thought in the middle, stuttering like a car engine that refused to continue pistoning. She could see Cookie’s face as she also ran through the same process of thought.

  You sure? Cookie seemed to ask Shawn, without words. Because I’m not going to stop you. And so Cookie just stood there and looked at Shawn, looked at Shawn the Living, looked at the sunset and the car. She crossed her arms and said a single warning:

  “One of my old friends did this, and she’s still in solitary.”

  Jude looked confused, mystified. But as Shawn the Living threaded the other end of the hose through a window, and taped over the rest of the open space—then Jude began to comprehend what they were seeing, and a dawning horror seeped into his face.

  Shawn’s reply was to shrug. “I’ll never get another chance.”

  Well, Ellie thought, I guess even Cookie has her limits. She probably views this as a sort of cosmic payback for his games, and even better that Shawn is doing it to himself.

  But they did not have time for this detour.

  “Hey,” she said, stepping between Shawn the Reaper and the scene, blocking his view. “Did you forget that we are on a mission, here? You can torture yourself later.”

  Shawn looked unmoved. She was going to continue, but was interrupted.

  “What the—?” came Jude’s voice, and only then did Ellie notice that he had wandered over to the front of the car. His voice was high and tight. Furious.

  He turned and stormed over to Shawn the Reaper, one hand seizing him by the collar and the other clenched to a fist, raised by Jude’s own cheek, cocked like the hammer of a pistol. Teeth gritted so hard together that Ellie could hear them grind.

  And Ellie recalled what she and Cookie already knew, but Jude did not, until now:

  Shawn’s death was a murder-suicide.

  She stepped back and looked, and there in the passenger seat was a young woman, eyes wide, tracks of mascara run down over the bandana knotted through her mouth. The cloth was soaked with saliva and snot, clearly having been inserted for a while.

  Beside her, Cookie had seen the woman too, because she gave Jude a glance that read, Give it to him, he deserves it. Jude did not look away from Shawn’s face.

  Ellie wondered, as she sometimes did while seeing this sort of thing in film, why the bound girl did not just spit the gag out. Then again, perhaps the bandana was tied tighter than she thought. The light was a little dim to see through, though the one side of the woman’s face was cast a brilliant red from the fading sun.

  “Tell me you didn’t do what I think I’m seeing you do,” said Jude, words low and dangerous. “This isn’t your death, is it? Or hers?”

  Shawn the Reaper gazed back into Jude’s glare. His own expression was remarkably placid—Ellie had never seen him so calm. His eyes flicked over to Jude’s drawn fist, and then he seemed to accept that he was going to be hit, because he gazed past Jude’s shape, focusing back to the scene, and gave no further reaction.

  Jude shook him, breaking Shawn’s concentration. “Tell me!”

  Shawn the Reaper just shrugged. As if to announce, Nothing I can say.

  Jude struck.

  Ellie recalled that Jude was some kind of superhuman monster—but who knew what that meant. If she had been asked, she would have known the fact of the matter, that he could break free of a reaper’s grip, which was as good proof as any that he could damage a reaper. But breaking free and dealing damage were two different things.

  The first impact snapped Shawn’s head back so quickly that, had he been alive, Ellie was fairly certain the motion would have killed him. Jude kept striking, and Shawn’s nose burst into a squirt of blood, the next impact splitting his lip down to the cleft of his chin, the next opening his cheek, bone showing like it had cut up the inside of his face—

  But then—

  Shawn’s face began to warp, bubbling and bending like the surface of a balloon, but concave, inwards, as though they were inside the balloon looking out as the walls around them expanded. Ellie recalled the way the bookshelves had bent in the library, when Jude had asked about his mother, his confession about anger management...

  Not good, she thought. Don’t know what this could do to him, but we still need—

  “Stop,” Ellie said, and when Jude did not immediately comply,
she stepped back and grabbed at his free, striking hand, yelled, “We do not have time for this!”

  “You sick piece of shit!” Jude replied, and Ellie had the feeling some of that sentiment was reserved for her, since she was trying to stop Jude’s justice. But she kept pulling and struggling until Jude was forced to pay attention to her.

  “Do any of you morons not understand there are more important things right now!” she said, trying not to let the words come out as a wail. Her mind asked the cosmos, asked God, How come I am the only sane person in the entire universe?

  Perhaps she had said that last part out loud, because Jude flung Shawn down onto the dirt like tossing garbage into a dumpster. Taking advantage, Ellie shoved him, managed to tip Jude to the side enough to stop his kick from landing on Shawn’s shoulder. She yelled, “I can’t believe you morons are making me defend him—him!”

  Jude’s sides were heaving, but Ellie moving between him and his prey had seemed to do the trick. His fury still seemed to be warping the air, but Shawn’s face was back to being round—albeit bloody. Jude turned and sucked deep noisy breaths.

  “Wait,” said Cookie, and there was such confusion in her voice that Ellie had to look. And she saw Shawn the Living had finished his preparations, had hopped into the driver’s seat and not shut the door yet, was pulling the gag out of the girl’s mouth.

  The girl’s face was strange, Ellie thought. That expression... she looked rapturous.

  Shawn the Living asked, “You doing all right?”

  The question was ridiculous, the kind of thing only a crazy person would ask. Of course the girl is not all right, Ellie would have said, she has been kidnapped and is thinking—correctly—that she is about to die. But as Ellie and Cookie and Jude watched, the girl worked her jaw, grinned. Her voice was high and excited: “Yeah. You ready?”

  “Totally, babe,” said Shawn, and he sounded rather like he had in the library, when he had argued with Cookie over doing their job, all false bravado. Little tells—the sweat on his hands gleaming in the sunset, the extra toss of his boy-band hair—showed the underlying nervousness. But he still smiled at the girl, kissed her—which was enthusiastically returned—and then shut the door.

  The car engine revved. Inside, Shawn the Living gazed at the girl, who could be overheard saying, “Don’t back out. We promised, remember?” On the ground, watching through bruised eyesockets, Shawn the Reaper’s face looked strangely wistful.

  And suddenly Ellie did not want to know. She glanced at Cookie, saw the same conclusion on her friend’s face: I don’t want to know this, because this will change how I view Shawn. Shawn, the reaper who treats his assignments so poorly that he was moved from squad to squad, was given a handler, returned to his mentor’s care, and yo-yo’d between his assignment to the sudden deaths squad and stints in solitary.

  Easy to see someone like that as a villain, Ellie thought. Because he is a villain. No amount of sad sob story changes the fact that he gets kicks from tormenting people. Just because you’ve had a hard time doesn’t entitle you to give others hell.

  An echo of Cookie’s voice, from hours ago, drifted to her. An explanation why Cookie did not want Ellie to reap her assignments: Cause you take out your personal hangups on them, like psycho-boy here... Difference is your hangups aren’t crazy as his.

  Shaking her head, trying to clear her doubt, Ellie steeled herself: Return to the matter at hand. She knelt by Shawn the Reaper, said, “Hey. I get it. Everyone eventually gets tempted to see it happen again. But not now. We don’t have time for this.”

  Shawn hocked, spat blood. “As I said, bitch: There won’t be another chance.”

  “Not with that attitude, there won’t,” said Ellie. She pulled one of the shards out of her pocket, demonstrated it, returned it. “These things are screwing with time, so we have even less time to save the world than we think. We have to keep going.”

  “You heard them,” Shawn replied. His teeth were broken. Behind Ellie, the car engine kept on humming. “They’ve already reaped everyone. What’s the point of a universe without people? Game over. Time to pack everything up.”

  “You absolute idiot,” Ellie said, feeling her temper rise. Not only because of Shawn’s inane arguments—because the humming of the car behind her was becoming irritating, because Shawn himself was an irritant, lying there bloody and beaten when he should have been scoffing and sneering. “That’s exactly it. If the apocalypse is stopped, then they will have to return all the souls to their bodies—because we can’t have a universe without people. But first, we have to stop the world from actually ending.”

  “What bodies?” Shawn said. “They were reaping all the bodies and sending them to nothingness. There's no bodies for people's souls to return to. You saw, same as me.”

  From the car came an odd sound, like the dramatized stutter of an actor who was caught on the hard “t” or “d” sounds of a line. Ellie realized: coughing. But little aborted coughs, like the lungs involved were taking quick breaths verging on hyperventilation.

  Glancing behind her, Ellie saw that Shawn the Living was bent over the steering wheel, the girl leaning back against the passenger door. Both of them were vibrating. There was a blur of motion on the other side of the car—and Ellie realized that Jude was trying to open the girl’s door, and failing despite his strength. Because she and Shawn had died here, like this—and one could not change the past.

  Cookie had turned away and was looking at the sunset. Her hands in her pockets, her wrists glistened, mirrored the red of the fading starlight.

  Ellie felt something inside of her extend beyond endurance and then pull tight, like an overtaxed muscle. She almost shouted at Shawn, at all three of them: “There is still time! There is still time, you absolute morons, there is still enough time! Nobody had to die today, not even the world! We still can stop this!”

  The choking and coughing in the car was softer. Fumes must work fast. Ellie watched as Shawn the Reaper’s eyes drooped, muscles in his face slacken, somehow like sleep even though he was dead, as if he was dying along with his other self in the Jeep. Words rose within her and gushed out like the fumes currently killing the couple behind:

  “You—you coward. You’re doing the same now as you were doing then!” Ellie threw a hand to the car. “You’re taking the easy way out rather than fighting! Whatever your problems were, you should just deal with them, face them head on!”

  Shawn the Reaper’s bloodied face looked entirely red in the sunset. His eyes caught Ellie’s face as he said, “I'm not the one who wears a scarf. You hypocrite.”

  Ellie’s mouth opened but no sound emerged. The bruises on her neck felt like slashes, open wounds gushing life and soul even as her voice refused let out a scream.

  She was aware that the sound in her ears was her own heartbeat, shuddering along in tune with the coughing from the car, the ticking of the pocket-watch against her chest. She had no doubt in that moment that if she put her hand in her pocket, the shards would be pulsing, too. As if the whole universe was in sync with the metronome in her chest, pounding away at her temples, her breastbone, at Ellie herself.

  Perhaps, if this feeling had continued, Ellie also would have been rendered insane—for the focus of the universe upon her was too much. She could recall only one other time in her life when this pressure had descended upon her: the first time she had seriously considered, but not chosen, to end herself. In that moment she had felt something like the hand of God descend upon her, an enormous weight that declared death was not acceptable, and the terror of that hand against her skull and shoulders had drawn her back and away from the decision. She took months after that to consider the idea again, afraid the pressure would return and she would pop under the weight. In that moment under judgment, she had known: there are worse things than death.

  Just like she was about to explode, now.

  But she was saved by distraction—for the driver’s door burst open. Shawn the
Living rolled out to the ground, impacting in tune with Ellie’s heartbeat, coughing along. He managed one full breath, then another, another. He coughing evened, did not stop.

  He choked out, barely loud enough to be heard, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  His eyes were bloodshot, doubtless from the air irritation and the coughing. His vision ran wild, pupils scattershot, and settled on Ellie. In that moment he looked to her as if he was speaking directly to her, and Ellie recalled that he was near death.

  Unthinking, Ellie scrambled backwards, out of his line of sight. Her desire to escape being seen here, now, by the dying boy was stronger than logic, which would have told her that moving was impossible, because she was the only thing blocking what should have been even more impossible—and yet she could move, did move, and then:

  Shawn the Living stared out at Shawn the Dead.

  Did they see each other? Ellie could not say for sure. Was this observing the observer? Could this even happen? Shawn the Reaper’s mouth bubbled forth bloody froth—he reached a hand forward, inches from his own face—

  And he seemed to shift. Or perhaps the universe shifted, distorted so that Shawn’s reaper self tipped forward, like an omelette being slipped out of a hot pan. He slid, the world tilted, and there was a blur of faces and limbs as the two Shawns combined, two objects sharing the same space at the same time. Physics was forgotten.

  Cookie shrieked. Ellie could not blame her, for the juxtaposition was nightmarish, human form distorted almost past recognition. Then reality seemed to snap back together and the doubled image resolved: there was only one Shawn lying below the car door facing toward his disappeared future self, staring blankly away from the sunset.

  In that moment, Ellie knew: the reaper Shawn was in there. He was reliving death not from the outside, but from the inside. This is why, her benumbed mind told her, this is why seeing your own death is banned. Why you shouldn’t visit your family. Even risking this is too dangerous. Because to see is to experience—like calls to like, the same soul in the same body, this close to death. No wonder everyone goes mad.