Obadiah Charon had wandered off to the side of a ditch, a long stretch that was as deep as his waist, cut across parallel to the mountains. He said, “What is this?”
Jude joined him. “A road, I think? They dig down deep for the foundations.” He glanced up and down the ditch, said, “Ellie, where are we, exactly?”
“Colorado Springs,” Ellie said, but even as she spoke she saw the figures appearing in the distance, and in a rush dove to tackle both men into the ditch.
“What the—” Jude yelped, but seemed to realize something was up, because he fell quiet and only cautiously rose to a sitting position. To her left, sprawled out beside the both of them, Charon looked bemused instead of confused or angry.
The motion of falling here, though, made Ellie dizzy. It was as though she was tackling Cookie, trying to stop her from pounding Shawn’s brains into the pavement.
Pavement that is now missing, her mind reminded her: everything human is reaped.
Settling up into a crouch, she peered over the edge of the road-ditch and counted shadows: three, four, five reapers. Two of them peeled away and approached close enough to be overheard. From their casual movements Ellie concluded that she, Jude, and Charon had not been spotted. The pair carried a long oblong box.
“Why are these things so heavy?” one of them complained, words faint but completely audible because there was no noise to interfere in the still air.
“Ain’t nothing for it,” sighed the other. “I sure am glad we’re mostly done.”
Who are these bozos? Ellie wondered, watching as the two reapers set the box down and began opening the top. She only vaguely recognized them—one was probably from the squads up at Castle Rock, a middle-aged man with a green scarf and bedhead, while the other was a rotund woman with a ponytail pulling her hair tight.
The man with the scarf pulled out a stick from the box, and the woman began fastening a string to it. Then, with a heave, they flipped the box over so the open top was facing the soil and grass, and propped the stick under one end, so that knocking the stick would cause the box to descend flat onto the ground. The other end of the string was a loop, the kind that would pull tight if someone stuck their leg into it.
Improbably, the whole thing looked like a crude hunting trap. Like from a cartoon.
“Think that will hold?” said the woman, adjusting her hair band.
“I don’t see why not,” the man with the scarf responded. “The last one caught like five in a row. I wonder why they don’t need bait to go in them.”
“Well, I wonder why we haven’t been using these things all along,” said the woman. “Maybe that would have saved some folks.”
“I guess there were more important things,” the man said.
They both heaved themselves up from their crouch, which seemed difficult because they were arthritic and overweight, respectively. The woman went off-balance, knocking against the man’s body harshly. His head popped off his shoulders—as if the scarf alone was what kept it in place—and rolled within an easy toss’s distance to the ditch.
Beside her, Ellie felt Jude inhale sharply, but at least he knew not to make any noise. Ellie could not blame him—most reapers had some kind of lasting result from their deaths, a reminder, but she had never seen something as extreme as this.
The man’s body stopped moving, just standing in place like a statue.
The head’s eyes blinked, shocked. Then it yelled, “What the hell, Leah!”
“Sorry,” the woman said, sheepishly. “Sorry, sorry,” and she hurried over to scoop the head up, bending over to do so. Ellie realized too late that this put her in a perfect position to spot the row of three pairs of eyes peering over the ditch to watch.
Cradling the head in the nook of her arm’s elbow like a football, the woman paused and stared at them. She said, “Hey, what are you guys up to?”
On either side of her, Ellie felt tension strike both men. She reached and squeezed them at the shoulders, holding them down before they could rise. Maybe they were hidden enough to avoid being seen as souls. Knowing she would register as a reaper, and hoping she was as little known to this pair as they were to her, she stood.
“Reaping,” she said. “Actually, we were taking a break, to be honest.”
The head asked, with humor, “Did you get mobbed?”
Not certain what he was referring to, Ellie said, “I... no. No, we haven’t.”
“Well, look out anyway,” said the head, helpfully. “There were a bunch of demons hanging out here. Kept flash mobbing anyone who came to reap. But we trapped them now, I think.” Still cradling the head, Leah nodded in agreement.
“We’ll be careful anyway,” said Ellie. “Thanks for the tip.”
She was hoping that the two would get back to work, but they apparently felt chit-chatty. The woman asked, “What are you three reaping, anyway?”
Ellie glanced over at the three other reapers in the distance, who seemed oblivious to the exchange. They were moving in rows, touching trees as they walked, which vanished as they passed. Vegetation was on the menu, then, Ellie decided.
“Uh... grass,” she said. “We’re reaping the grass. Or, we will. When we start.”
“That’s fast,” said the head. “I thought you guys were still on trees and bushes. But I heard Anna Woodsworth talk about topsoil, so I guess it makes sense.”
“Pauline said something about water,” added the woman, shifting the head to her other arm. “I’m glad we’re not near the ocean, that’s a nightmare. I’m terrified of water.”
“You’re phobic about everything,” complained the head, as if he had said this before.
“Anyway,” said Ellie, a bit pointedly. “Don’t mean to keep you.”
They seemed to realize that they had overstayed their welcome, then, and backed away with a few “Now keep a lookout” and “Stay safe and busy” comments. The woman handed the head back to its waiting body. The pair vanished, holding the top of the box, the man adjusting his scarf before pulling out his reaper’s tool, a drawing compass.
When they were gone, Ellie sank back into a crouch in the ditch. She said, “Well, there goes our drop-off,” glanced at Charon, “We can’t turn you over to the demons if the demons have been...” and she searched for a proper word.
“Mousetrapped?” Jude supplied.
Ellie shrugged. As good a word as any.
“Maybe this is better,” she said. “They were going to do something bad, after all.”
“But what about the rest of the shards?” said Jude. “We should probably check the Spindle, see how complete it is—but I’m worried we’ll lose time if we do that...”
“Yeah,” said Ellie, biting her lip, and turning to look closely at Obadiah Charon. Half-praying that what she suspected was true, she lifted her reaper’s tool and held it before him, same as if he was one of her assignments. A maneuver she had done before, hundreds if not thousands of times, three years of weighing hearts...
Yet the pocket-watch was still. Ellie felt her breath catch—and then not release. Slowly, as though it had finished deliberating, the gears and dials within the golden birdcage of her pocket-watch began to turn. Dials swirled in their sockets, gears switched positions and threaded their teeth together; and she was looking at a location and date.
The location was somewhere nearby—probably Pueblo.
And the date was the present. When time was frozen.
This isn’t the weighing of the heart, Ellie thought. How could a man in Jerusalem, from eastern Europe, have a most-important life event in southern Colorado at the same time when he was in Jerusalem wrecking time? He can’t be in two places at once.
This must be leading us to the closest shard.
“We don’t need them,” Ellie whispered. And a quiet joy came over her, that this was possible, that they could collect the remainder themselves. Just in time. “We don’t need the demons—we can find all the shards on our o
wn, all we need is you.”
Charon looked at Ellie, seeming puzzled. “What do you mean, girl?”
“My reaper’s tool,” said Ellie, indicating her pocket-watch. “I can hold it up to you, and it tells us the location of the shards. We don’t need to turn you over to the demons.”
“Ah,” said Obadiah Charon. “So that is how you found the pieces of the Spindle.”
He moved so fast Ellie could only see, not react. His hand took hold of her pocket-watch and pulled it from her fingers like he was plucking a grape from a vine.
The strength in this action left Ellie’s fingertips feeling bruised. One of her nails split, lifted from the nailbed. She registered there would be pain, but beforehand, like she had stubbed her toe when alive. Reapers did not really feel pain, but somehow she knew it was coming—and when it did, she pulled her trembling hand into her pocket.
“Hey,” she said, feeling absurd, a court jester pointing out the obvious, “That’s mine.”
“It is, and I thank you,” Charon said, calmly. He stood up from his crouch, towering. Did he look younger? Ellie wondered. And then with ease that belied the act, heaved himself out of the ditch and began walking toward the three reapers in the distance.
“Ellie?” Jude said, behind her, and she realized that her body had blocked his view of what had just happened. He nudged her arm. “Are you okay? You’re shaking.”
“I don’t know,” said Ellie, trying to decipher what she was feeling, what was happening. The pain was a terrible distraction. She had broken her finger, once, when she was six; slammed in a car door. But her three years as a reaper had been pain-free. Yet now her fingernail, nearly torn off, was trying to be the center of her comprehension. She curled into a ball, like a bright red peach, and her hand was the pit in the middle.
This is nothing, compared to being alive, Ellie thought, and then without her permission came the tail end of that thought: Nothing, compared to what dying was like.
But death had not hurt. The painful part had been the actual dying.
Heaving in a breath, without quite knowing why, Ellie said, “We have to stop him.”
Jude glanced from her over to where the three reapers were moving, and said, “Oh, no—”
Trying to think, knowing nothing good was happening, Ellie lifted her head and saw:
Obadiah Charon, across the field, had one of the reapers by the throat. He twisted, and the young man’s body began to blur—a distortion, Ellie thought, of time and space—as though the spine was a twisty-tie closing a bag. Charon dropped the reaper, and Ellie noticed that the other two were already lying on the ground.
All three were unmoving.
Did he kill them? Ellie thought, but the idea was so insane she nearly laughed. Of course not, she told herself, of course not, they are reapers, they are already dead.
But maybe there was a second death. One that you did not walk away from.
Rage curled through her. She could not say who was to blame—Charon, for doing this, herself, for being tricked, God, for the whole rotten universe—but she flung out her good hand for a hold and scrabbled up the side of the ditch, marching over.
Jude followed, but already he was saying—“Ellie, Ellie, don’t—”
“You bastard!” she shouted out—ignoring Jude—jabbing the pointer of her good hand like a spear—“What did you do to them—you tricked us—”
“I am sorry for not feeling truly apologetic,” said Charon, turning to face her, but casually, or rather an air affecting casualness. He was carrying something in both hands, cradled like the woman had with the other reaper’s severed head. “But there were plenty of signs. You are the one who chose to be deceived.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit!” Ellie responded, but despite her anger she had the sense to halt several paces away—or perhaps that was Jude, grabbing her elbow to stop her. “You’re the one who did it! The person who does wrong is the one at fault!”
“Yes,” said Charon, glancing up at the sky, the emblazoned sun. “That is true.”
He turned and walked a few paces. As he did, Ellie caught the glint of gold in his arms—and she realized that he had taken the reaper’s tools of the three on the ground, as well as her own. Charon crouched and began pawing at the dirt with a pair of fingers, then he laid overtop the mark one of the reaper’s tools, a golden egg beater. The strangeness of the reaper’s tool’s shape hardly registered to Ellie, too caught in anger.
“Stay,” said Jude. Ellie realized that he was talking to her. She glanced at him, saw he was kneeling down and touching the nearby corpses of the reapers.
They were still breathing. The fact registered only when the eye of one of them twirled in its socket and sought out Ellie’s own. This was the wisp of a girl, Ellie realized, the one whose name she had not known upstairs, but who had also reacted badly to the announcement about the end of the world. Her toes, which looked like dice, twitched in her sandals—but those and her eye were apparently all she could move.
Her head was at an obtuse angle. Almost backwards. She looked oddly calm.
Bile rose in Ellie’s mouth. She turned, and would have flung herself forward like Cookie leaping toward Shawn, but Jude had the edge of her coat again.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “If he can do this to them, he could do worse to you.”
Charon’s voice came, “I’m hoping that will be unnecessary. I would like both of you to remain free, for now, as a token of appreciation. I would not have been able to complete my mission without your help.”
This was mysterious enough to draw in Ellie’s temper, just adequate to moderate her anger for her to say, “Oh? Gonna reveal your evil plan like all villains do?”
Charon, who was drawing his leg through the dirt to make a line, glanced in Ellie’s direction again. He smiled. “Oh, why not? Maybe you will understand.”
He straightened, said: “My purpose is to spit in the face of God.”
Whatever she had been expecting him to say, this was not it. Ellie and Jude stared. Charon’s smile turned savage.
“And kill Him, if I can.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Made to Die.
Jude asked, with all seriousness, “What are you? The devil?”
Obadiah Charon barked out a laugh. His gaze was warm, like he was speaking to a child. “You were in the afterlife. Don’t you get it, boy? There is no devil.”
“No dev—” and Jude cut himself off. “That’s exactly what the devil would say.”
“Indeed,” said Charon, but with a sigh. “Think, Jude, third year student from University of Colorado at Boulder. Think. How badly has the church misinterpreted everything? Tell me, are there even creatures—” and he indicated Ellie— “like her in the Bible?”
“The Bible actually doesn’t talk about the supernatural world much,” said Jude. “It gives some hints but mostly it’s about the relationship of God and man. There actually isn’t much on what angels and demons and spirits are.”
“And yet we have this idea, this entire pantheon of angels and demons,” said Charon, “Hundreds of angels with names, pictures of men with wings, a whole story of creation where everything bad is laid at the feet of a rebelling angel. Who turns out to have never existed. It’s all later superstition—it’s all not even in the original book.”
“The devil is in the Bible,” Jude insisted. Ellie found her mind beginning to catch up with the conversation, and memory flickered through her like flipping through the pages of a book as Jude said, “There’s the beginning of Job, the snake in the garden...”
“The Book of Job talks about a number of ‘sons of God’ attending God in Heaven,” said Obadiah Charon, “one of whom is called ‘Satan.’ But that is just a word that means ‘adversary.’ It’s all metaphor. Tell me, why would an angel be named ‘adversary’?”
“His name was originally Lucifer,” said Jude.
“Lucifer is a Latinized word meaning ‘ligh
t-bearer,’ so it cannot be the name of an angel, unless of course God spoke bastardized Latin at the creation of the world. But even if that was the case, the word ‘Lucifer’ does not appear in the Bible,” Charon said. “The passage around the idea of a ‘light-bearer’ concerns a human king, not an angel.”
“New Testament,” Ellie muttered. “Peter talks about the devil roaming like a lion, looking for who to devour. Jesus says He saw the devil fall from Heaven. Is that just a metaphor, too?”
“Essentially,” said Charon. “And Jesus used the word ‘Satan,’ adversary, not devil. Anything could be considered God’s adversary, including me.”
“Then what about the snake in the garden?” Jude demanded.
“What garden?” Charon responded. “Satellites have mapped the earth—where is this garden with an angel and a flaming sword? What coordinates? I suppose next you’ll be telling me that there were dinosaurs on the ark, like you American Christians do.”
“Those are stories with deeper truths,” Jude said, and Ellie could almost feel his anger rising like a wave of heat at her back. She thought, Jude, you’d better not warp me.
But she had better control over herself, now. Glancing down, she reminded herself that the other three reapers were still breathing, showing no signs of stopping. It’s just wounds, she thought, they’re reapers, they’ll recover. If we re-start time, and they have time to recover.
Turning her gaze to Jude, she saw that she and he had switched roles; as though she had bundled up her anger, in the light of this conversation, and handed it over to him.
“Yes,” said Charon. “Now you get it. Originally, yes, that is what they were. Stories of truth. But now, they have become excuses. You don’t think of the implications.”
And Ellie heaved a breath. “All right, enough. Out with it. What’s your deal?”
Charon regarded the both of them. There were lines creasing the edges of his eyes all the way across his cheek to his ears, which were just as overlarge as his nose. He looked grim. In his hands, three reaper’s tools glittered gold.
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