by Jada Fisher
Because right in front of me was the specter of her.
And she was drinking…coffee?
I blinked at her several times, but she just sipped at her drink idly. When my mind finally caught up with what was happening, I had the wherewithal to look around and see where the heck I was.
Which was apparently the coffee shop I used to work at.
“What is going on?” I asked, everything starting to get that hazy, confused feeling when my nightmares took on a particularly weird turn.
“Nothing. I just thought we might have a chat. Especially since your friend made it so I can’t get close to you for a little while longer.”
“But only a little while?”
She grinned, her nonexistent lips pulling up to reveal rows and rows of small teeth. Her voice was just as chilling, somewhere between a familiar voice and one covered in both dust and oil. It was ancient and wise at the same time as it was threatening, giving me a sense of foreboding right in my middle.
“Nature abhors a vacuum and will do whatever it can to fix it.”
“And I’m a vacuum?” I muttered.
“Yes. You are supposed to be dead, and yet here you are, alive and well. It’s against the order of things, and order will always win out.”
“Yeah, tell that to the anti-humanists who are planning a war so they can enslave all humans.”
“The politics of mortals matter little to me. I have come to ask you to give yourself up willingly.”
A cup of hot chocolate appeared in front of me, just the way I used to make it, and I sipped it for a moment while I gathered my thoughts. “And why would I do that?”
She leaned forward, all smoke and fading edges. “I already told you. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you keep things as they are, it will find a way to fill it one way or another.”
“Well, if I’m going to die either way, shouldn’t I draw this out as long as possible?”
“I never said that you would die either way.”
“But—”
“You’re a magical being, Davie. You know as well as I that rules can be a little…flexible around us. But flexible doesn’t mean breakable. You and all that magic within you, all that potential, belong to one of the many realms of the dead. If you don’t go back, well, it’ll find whatever it can to replace you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
She shrugged. “Think of everything as an exchange of energy. Your energy, all of that seer goodness going through you, is missing from the afterlife realm you were supposed to go to. How much energy is that? It’s hard to say. Maybe equal to a dozen human souls? Maybe a handful of dwarves? Or, as one of the last of your species, as the oracle that awakened all the others, are you worth more?”
Her hands shot forward suddenly, bone and ephemeral flesh gripping my wrists and yanking me to her. I dropped my hot chocolate, and it splattered against my legs. I hardly paid it any attention, though, because suddenly my gaze was full of the apparition.
She smelled of damp and death, with the tiniest undercurrent of rot. While a beautiful, hazy face sat behind her many veils, I could only see the skull underneath. Ancient and yellowed with time, cracked in several places.
“Perhaps it will take a whole city? A whole world. Is there a way to find out? No. So I think it would be better for the both of us if you just let me take you where you’re supposed to go.”
“Who are you?” I snapped, jerking my hands from her grasp.
“Just a shepherd. I want to take you home. To where you’re supposed to be.”
“I am home!”
“No!” She slammed both her hands into the table and the entire coffee shop shattered around us, leaving us in the same rubble that I was used to seeing in the rotted dragon’s prison realm. “You died, Davie. You are supposed to pass on. To be united with your family and do whatever it is you lot do when you die.”
“My…my family?”
Her face and voice grew sweeter as she leaned in, and then suddenly we were sitting on the massive sectional couch in my childhood home. “Of course. They’re waiting for you, you know. They were so excited to see you again.”
“So… They’re all in Heaven? Is there a Heaven?”
The woman waved her hand. “How should I know? I’m just a guide. A guardian. Maybe even a bounty hunter, if you will. I never get to see what’s behind the veil. Part of my curse, I suppose.”
“Curse?”
She narrowed her empty sockets, as if she was accusing me of delaying the inevitable. “Yeah. My curse. Destined to roam all of the lands of the living for all eternity, but never being a part of them. I collect the dead and escort them to peace or torment, but I never get that myself. I am my own, in limbo, and my task is all I have.
“And right now, you are my task, Davie. I will never stop coming after you. That boy may stop me for a while, and you were annoyingly clever enough to figure out a few delays at least. But if it takes ten years, twenty years, I’ll always be there. Hanging in your peripheral. You will never know peace. You will never know rest. Unless, like I said, your realm finds a sufficient substitute for your soul.
“So, tell me. What kind of life is that?”
She was threatening me, and it was working. My heart was in my throat, and it felt like my brain was squeezing out of my ears. I couldn’t imagine a whole life running from the specter in front of me. Especially since I got the feeling that she had been going easy on me. And her comments about a whole city being claimed in my place didn’t make me feel any better.
But my mind couldn’t wrap around all of it, so I went with my go-to tactic.
Stalling.
“Who would curse you? And why?”
She grinned again, and it was so full of bitterness and bile that I almost choked. “Of all the evils in the world, all the miscreants and ne’er do wells, it’s always the traitors that are punished the worst.”
“Traitors? What?”
“But enough about that. This has been a good conversation, but it’s becoming a bit drawn out. Are you coming, Davie? Or are you going to risk everyone around you so that you can steal a little more time that doesn’t belong to you?”
Oh boy.
That was a question, wasn’t it?
Of course, I wanted to be alive. I had fought for it. Earned it. Gone through elaborate schemes and traveled through multiple dimensions’ worth of memories to find the ancient knowledge. I had given up certain parts of myself that I was never going to get back. It would be a waste to just chuck all that in the bin and let myself croak. Especially since it seemed like my friends needed me more than ever.
But the thought that even a single person might be taken to replace me, that there was some ledger somewhere with red dripping from my name, spilling onto other innocent people, made my skin crawl. I didn’t come back to hurt people. I came to save people.
“I don’t believe you,” I said finally.
“I’m sorry, what? Did you just say you don’t believe Death? Davie, you’ve died, literally died. I would think that you would be a little more…sensitive to these sorts of things.”
“No, I believe that you’re telling the truth about your job, and even your curse. But you’re talking about everything as if it’s an inevitability, and I just don’t think it is.
“We have free choice, yeah? And despite my visions, I don’t believe in destiny. There are paths, probabilities, but they’re just that. Possible options. Going with you is not the end all, be all.”
“Yeah, the other ‘option,’ as you call it, has possibly thousands dying in your stead. Is that what you really want, Davie? I got the impression that you were a good person. That you would do anything for the people around you. I was looking forward to meeting the brave girl who gave up everything to make sure her companions got home. How disappointing to find out you’re just a coward.”
I knocked her new cup of coffee from her hands, hardly even paying attention to how it shattered against the ground. “I came ba
ck to protect my friends! You and I both know that terrible things are coming, and if you expect me to sit back and let those anti-humanists kill or enslave everyone, then you’ve got another thing coming!”
“One moment.” She waved her hand and the cup reassembled itself, forming in her grip and steaming once more. “You’re only here to save them?”
“Well, I mean, I like enjoying life too.”
“Interesting. There could be something I can work out, if your realm is willing to be a bit flexible. Looks like you have another reprieve, Davie.” She stood, floating across the floor to the door.
“What do you mean? Who are you going to talk to?”
“You don’t need to worry about any of that right now. Just know that while I’m running this errand for you, nature might try to right things on its own. Terribly impatient.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ll see. You have other things to worry about. Why don’t you stick around for a bit? There’s going to be a bit of a show.”
And with that, she floated right through the door, leaving me alone in the coffee shop. I started after her, but then I heard the clatter of silverware against plates coming from the kitchen. Was… Was my family there?
Eyes wide, I turned and headed toward the opening that I knew would lead me to where my parents used to cook and eat. We had a dining room table, but it seemed we all preferred to take our meals at the kitchen island, all crammed together and happy.
And happy was exactly what I was hearing. Laughs. Jokes. Teasing.
My footsteps picked up speed as I rounded the corner, a cry of joy bubbling from my mouth. I could see the backs of their heads. Dark black and sandy blond. Mom was so much taller than Dad. I wanted to call out to them, but my mind couldn’t make the words. So instead, I just ran, arms wide and ready to embrace them.
But just as they turned to me, just when I was going to see their perfect, loving faces for the first time in over a decade, they vanished.
“What the heck?” I asked, skidding to a stop, feeling like I could throw up right then and there. “No! Give them back! That’s not fair!”
But their disappearance wasn’t the only change. It was night outside of the large bay window and all the lights were off, leaving me cloaked in darkness.
What was going on? What had that spirit said? A bit of a show? Dangling my parents in front of me then ripping them away seemed especially cruel, even for her.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, a dark, small shape that barely made it over the windowsill. I crossed to the end of the kitchen and looked outside, seeing several people hunched over by the bushes in the back.
Huh.
That was odd.
I blinked, then suddenly I was outside, standing in the middle of the six or so figures. If they could see me, they didn’t react, and I noticed that there were gas cans in each of their hands.
“I don’t know, Estelle. This seems like crossing a line.”
“Look, I don’t like it either, but do you want to be in the middle of a war again? You remember the last time the dragons got their hands on an oracle? Thousands of humans died, and we were nearly wiped out. You see the giants anymore? Or the halflings? No. Because that’s how few of us survived.”
“But what if we’re wrong? What if she’s not…”
“She is. I promise.”
One of the voices sounded familiar, the nervous one, but I couldn’t place it. I could only stare dumbly as these people discussed what they couldn’t be discussing.
“But…but this is murder, Estelle. And really, really violent murder at that. I… I don’t think I can do this.”
“You have to. Do you want your little girl ending up dead in your arms?”
“Estelle,” a different voice warned. A male one.
“What? It happened to my twin. You two are young and were both born in this world. You don’t understand what it was like. But I’ve seen entire nations rise and fall on the words of a seer. We have to do this.”
“There has to be another way!”
“No, Jacoby, there isn’t. We either end this now, or we watch everything we’ve built fall apart. Besides, it’s not like you’re doing this completely for altruistic reasons, are you? Hmm, Mavis?”
Wait. Mavis. Jacoby. I knew those names.
“Your little girl, she’s got some health issues, right? Heart not quite in her chest? But Brenton offered to pay for all of her care and everything else she might need to become the healthy child you dream of. You back out now, and well, I shudder to think of all those bills. And goodness, if your insurance were to suddenly cut out? Why, I don’t know what you’d do.”
“You wouldn’t,” came the hushed tone.
“I’m not doing anything but making sure that our people stay safe. There are less than a couple thousand of us in the entire world. If you want to go extinct, then be my guest. But I’m going to protect my family.”
“But there has to be a better way to do this.”
“You know the legends as well as I do. The only way to scrub them from existence is to make sure they burn. Otherwise, another one will just be born in a couple years. Death begets life and all that.”
“I…”
“Buck up, Mavis. Just think of little Mallory.”
No.
No, no, no, no.
That wasn’t right. That couldn’t be right.
But I did know those names. Mallory’s parents. I rarely called them by their names, but that didn’t mean they didn’t linger in the back of my mind. Jacoby, Mavis, and Mallory. My second family.
Then why were they outside of my house with gas cans in their hands?
“Now, I want you and Jacoby to handle the garage. Think you can do that?”
There was muffled agreement and the group of people split up. I could smell the gasoline already as they began to slosh it all over the sides of our house.
Suddenly, the knowledge of exactly what was going on flashed through my mind. What Mallory had confessed to me. That her parents had played a passive role in my family’s death, that now the three of them were dedicated to watching out for me and Mickey.
But hearing that explained and seeing it happen firsthand were two entirely different experiences.
Running on autopilot, my mind rocked from what I was seeing. I followed the two smaller shapes to the garage. Jacoby started to tip his can right away, but Mavis caught his hand.
“Are we murderers?”
He paused, and I could hear the guilt in his voice. “We have to do this, Mavis. You heard what happens when there’s oracles running around. And if this one is presenting so early, then she must be truly powerful.”
“But do we have to? We could turn around right now. We don’t have to participate in this…in this cruelty!”
“Is that any better?”
“Better than being an active participant. Yes.”
He stood and set the can down. “Mavis, we know that four people are going to die tonight. Even if we walk away now, we’re complicit.”
There was a cracking sound and then the night sky bloomed orange.
“Crap. They’ve already started! Jacoby, let’s just go. We’ll find a way to take care of Mallory on our own.”
“I…” He shook his head and strode forward, punching a code into the garage door opener. To my surprise, it started to roll open, its hinges squeaking loudly. In the dark of night, it sounded so much like screaming.
…screaming.
That was what woke me up. I could remember it exactly. I’d been upset all night and went to bed fitfully, just like Mickey had said. I’d been dreaming of things that made me anxious, nauseous with worry and fear, when screaming had woken me up from my slumber.
“They’re not going to like that if they find out,” Mavis said as he returned to her.
“Then let’s hope they don’t. Let’s go home.”
“I… I don’t know how I’m going to live with myself aft
er this. We never should have said yes. We should have reported them to the police.”
“Mallory is sick. This way she’ll get the surgery she needs, and we won’t be homeless.”
“But there’s going to be more after this, you realize. She’s gonna need therapy. Care. What if she gets an infection?”
“Then we’ll deal with that when we get to it. Come on, we need to leave.”
There was a crackling sound and the fire really kicked into gear. I stumbled backward, my feet going out from under me as I remembered exactly what happened. I woke up my sister, we both tried to go to our parents, but a part of the house had fallen right in front of the door. It had been so hot, so incredibly hot. After spending far too long trying to get into their room, listening to Mom and Dad scream at us, yelling at us to go, Mickey started to drag me out.
The house had been filled with so much smoke, and it was so hot. Everything was hot. The floor. The walls. The air. It was acidic and cloying, filled with the scent of destruction and terror.
But then we’d felt a bit of a cold draft. It made the fire lick up that much higher, but it also gave us a way to go. Mickey had pulled me along, stumbling and crying, until we made it to the garage.
That was where the firemen found us, huddled together, passed out from smoke inhalation just before our freedom.
…this couldn’t be real.
But it certainly seemed real as the fire consumed everything. I watched, unable to even blink, until the entire scene faded away and into something else entirely.
It was another home. No, not a home, one of those small apartment buildings with only five or so places in it. I was standing in the middle of a parking lot, and it was the dead of night, the sounds of the city faintly echoing in the background of my little horror.
“We shouldn’t be doing this.”
No, I recognized that voice. How could I not considering that I had just listened to it discussing the murder of my family. Mavis and Jacoby seemed to walk out of the mist right in front of me, hunched down and dressed in dark cloths.
“What are we going to do? They won’t let us take out another mortgage on the house and our insurance says we’re maxed. We don’t have anything left to sell.”