On a Dark Wing

by Jordan Dane

  An element of the truth.

  A hard truth that involved the death of my mother—the role I had played in it—and the terrible memories that wouldn’t leave me.

  “I’d like some time alone so I’m going for a walk,” I told him. “I’ve been thinking about Mom. Guess I have things to sort out.”

  I never even saw that coming. I’d chosen to trust my father with a gem of the truth and waited to see what he’d do. He stared at me for a long moment. Behind his dark eyes, I could tell this trust thing wasn’t easy for him, either. There were times—like now—that I connected with him best, when we didn’t use words at all. Don’t get me wrong. I still didn’t have a clue what was in his head or what he might say.

  But in that moment, I sensed his love for me and felt a different connection to him. With everything that had happened, I felt closer to him than I ever had before, and not just our father-daughter thing. We were two people dealing with grief and finding our way through it. Maybe that was enough to know for now.

  “I’ll be here when you get back,” he finally said. “If you feel like it, maybe we can talk.”

  What he said felt as good as a hug. My throat wedged tight and I felt the burn of tears behind my eyes.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  I stepped outside and closed the door to the cabin behind me, taking a deep breath of the cool mountain air. When I started up the narrow trail to the upper ridge, for the first time I didn’t want to go. I knew there was a reason that Nate had talked about my mother and maybe I wasn’t ready to hear it. For all the guilt I had over her death, was I really ready to face what had happened? Is that what this was all about…something inside me that had to come out so I could move on? Or had my mom’s death become a crutch that I needed more than the truth?

  Every step up that mountain had consequences.

  When I got to the lower ridge, ready to make the turn toward the clearing above, I heard the caw of a raven. It grated on my nerves like the truth I didn’t feel ready to hear. In the fading sun, I caught a glimpse of the bird’s shadow—a dark streak that crossed my path. If I had any doubts about Nate being there this time, they vanished like the raven’s elusive shadow.

  With the sun low in the sky, the clearing took on a chill that didn’t have much to do with the weather. The fire pit that held memories of my mother looked colorless. Its dead ashes swirled in the faint breeze. I wanted to remember her laughter, but I heard the haunting flutter of wings instead.

  I never saw the raven.

  Although the clearing looked empty, I felt him as if he stood in the deepening shade of the evergreens, beyond my sight. He didn’t speak inside my head, but I felt him—watching me.

  “I know you’re here.” My breaths puffed icy vapors. “You p-promised you’d be.”

  Even after I heard the crunch of snow behind me, I didn’t turn around. It took every fragment of courage I had to stand my ground and act as if I had every right to be there with him. My skin rippled with wave after wave of goose bumps and the swelling thud of my heart came from inside my ears, the enduring echo from a lifetime of nightmares.

  Forcing myself to move, I turned to see Nate. This time he took my breath away for very different reasons. He moved as effortlessly as the wind and emerged from the trees, at first no more than a murky shadow that took shape into the boy I had come to see. Yet for the first time I saw him as a stranger. He came in a familiar package, one I’d obsessed over for years, but now I felt certain everything had been…a lie.

  I had to face that.

  “Who are…y-you?” My voice trembled.

  I swear, my whole body shook and my legs felt as if they could betray me. I stood firm and acted tough, but inside I looked for any excuse to cut and run. Even if I faked it and pretended this Nate was real, the very fact that I asked—who are you?—that question said it all about what I knew in my heart.

  This thing that stood before me had Nate’s beautiful blue eyes and his perfect lips, but Nate wasn’t with me now.

  He stared as if he studied me. I resented his intrusion into my most intimate thoughts about a boy I’d become infatuated with. He’d made me believe that Nate shared those feelings. He’d tapped into my fears and invaded the unending pain I had over my mother’s death, using the love I had for her to entice me to be with him.

  Why?

  All these feelings swelled inside me—my darkest suspicions, my countless questions, and my bruised pride—and threatened to suffocate me as I stood in front of him. Yet one consistent reason kept me from totally losing it.

  He had Nate’s face, a frightening reminder that the real Nate was in trouble.

  Like a reflection in a mirror that told a morbid dark future, this Nate looked as if he could barely stand. Still wearing mountaineering gear, he had ghostly dark circles under his pained eyes, a telling sign that the pretense was over. To see him sad and sick tugged at my heart, but when he stood there and didn’t say anything, I had too many questions to let him get away with that. I had to know what happened to the real Nate and figure out how this thing had connections to my mother.

  “Answer me,” I insisted. “You owe me that much.”

  When he took a step toward me, I jumped back. With a sideways glance, I looked for the trail down the mountain, the one that would lead me back to the cabin—and Dad—even though I wasn’t sure this Nate would let me go.

  “Surely you know who I am…” He cocked his head and blinked with Nate’s eyes. “Don’t you?”

  His voice sounded different. It was softer than before, but it had a gripping undertone that kept me on edge. The other times we’d met at the fire pit, he’d sounded like Nate, but now his voice hooked me on a deeper level. I heard it echo in my head and it resonated under my skin like a disturbing yet tantalizing shiver.

  His hypnotic voice held me where I stood.

  I couldn’t move. And worse, I didn’t want to.

  “I thought you were the answer man,” I challenged. “You promised to be here and you are, but why hold back? Answer me, straight up. No more riddles.”

  “Come on, Abbey. If you think real hard, you’ll know we’ve met before.” He blinked and ran his tongue over those flawless lips. “I met your mother that day, too.”

  “Quit talking about her. Leave my mother out of this.”

  “I can’t do that, Abbey. It’s not an accident that I chose this spot to meet you. This ridge and that stone fire pit meant something to both you and your mother.”

  The way he looked, with his voice barely a whisper, grabbed hold of my sympathy. Without warning, I felt bathed in a profound sadness that radiated off him. When he cast his eyes down, to look at the cold stones in the fire pit, he never even raised a finger.

  In a sudden rush, a raging fire erupted in the stone pit. Flames leapt from nowhere. I screamed and jumped, cowering in the shadows for a place to hide. I wanted to run, but something made me stay. He stood still as a stone, watching me. Not blinking. When I heard the soft, warm laughter of my mother, and smelled the burning sweetness of marshmallows on the wind, tears welled in my eyes and I couldn’t stop crying.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Your mother is why I’m here, Abbey.”

  His shadow flickered onto the trees behind him. And the raven that I had heard, but hadn’t yet seen until now, flew out from the deepening shadows and fluttered onto a branch to land near him. Its slick black wings reflected the fire and glimmered iridescent color.

  “She did this to me. Your mother,” he said. “I think it’s time you know what really happened the day she died.”

  Chapter 13

  With hisses and pops off the crackling fire making me edgy, I stood in front of the boy who looked like Nate. Dead Nate. He wore out-of-place mountaineering gear w
ith pale gray skin and deepening bruises under his eyes that made him look more like a ghost than real flesh and blood. Perched on a crooked pine branch, his raven cocked its tufted head and stared down at me with onyx eyes, flaunting its secrets.

  Your mother is why I’m here, Abbey.

  His words stung me as if I’d stuck my hand in the fire. With the sun about to drop below the horizon, I could already feel everything closing in on me with a suffocating darkness. Whatever torment I felt would only get worse. But even in broad daylight, seeing him in this place would never be the same again. Any memories I had of him would be tainted. From the first moment I saw him on my mountain, he mesmerized and controlled me even from a distance. Now the danger of being with him oozed from every pore of my body, yet I had to come.

  Nothing could have stopped me from seeing him one last time.

  “You asked who I am,” he said. “Look into my eyes, Abbey. You tell me.”

  This time when he stepped closer, I let him come nearer without jumping out of my skin. I wanted to see Nate beyond those eyes, but I didn’t sense him…or his fear. The real Nate was gone or too weak to fight back anymore. That made me feel even more alone.

  “Abbey, please look at me. Don’t be afraid.”

  He reached out his hand and touched a finger to my chin, forcing me to look him in the eye. When I did, something strange happened.

  Flashes of the accident that I must have blocked from my mind emerged from the gloom of my memory to punish me. I heard my mother scream, felt the bones crunch in my chest, and tasted the coppery venom of too much blood in my mouth. Those new memories choked me. When those harsh visions stopped, once again I experienced the eerie stillness after the crash as if I’d really been there. And a familiar heat gave me comfort when an ethereal boy, made of clouds and sky, gave me his hand—the boy who had taken away my pain and freed me from my damaged body.

  “No. You can’t be him.” My breaths came too shallow. When I couldn’t get enough air, I felt light-headed. “That b-boy. You were there, the d-day of the accident.”

  “Yes.” When he smiled, the gesture looked sad and distant, and it didn’t last. “I reached out my hand and you took it. Do you remember?”

  I shut my eyes and let memories of encountering that strange boy wash over me. If it was even possible, the memory became more vivid. I felt it and wanted that feeling to stay. Yes, I remember, I thought. When I opened my eyes, he nodded as if he’d heard me say those words aloud.

  “Is that how you look?” I asked. “When you’re not…human?”

  “I am different for every soul. Part of my duty is to ease the burden for a human being to make the transition into Death. When I take a soul, I separate it from its human body and try to bring comfort by whatever means. With you, I reflected a beautiful summer sky with cloud animals. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I know now that being with you and easing your pain made me happy. You stirred something in me that I didn’t understand until I became…human.”

  “If you were there, the day of the accident, that means you must be…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it, but inside I knew.

  Death.

  “Death,” he said it the same time as I thought it. “In different cultures and faiths, I am called by many names. Azrael, the Angel of Death, Sariel, the Grim Reaper, Thanatos, Morana.”

  Slowly, he walked around the fire, keeping his eyes on me. In the spiraling smoke between us, his face blurred and made it easier to see the ancient being he was.

  When he stopped next to me, he smiled and said, “And to you, I am…Nate.”

  Hearing his many names and finally knowing who and what he was, I had a hard time seeing only Nate. I knew enough not to doubt him—I felt it—but with his skin the color of a gloomy storm cloud and the shadows under his eyes getting darker, a chill radiated off his body that made me shiver even in front of a blazing fire.

  Being close to him now, I felt the unbroken stillness of eternity. It was far too easy to imagine Nate already dead.

  “The day you died and I took your hand, you looked into my eyes,” he said.

  When he touched my cheek, I felt him reach me beyond his touch. I knew there would be something more Death wanted me to see.

  “Clear your mind and remember, Abbey.”

  This time when I met his gaze, memories flooded me. The blue of his eyes once again triggered that familiar image of the icy depths of the ocean, a color that I’d conjured in my mind at the accident. But experiencing that vision a second time made me realize that I’d seen something more that day—and it came back to me in a sudden rush after he’d touched my cheek with his cold fingertips.

  That vision flashed through my mind, only this time I saw what lay beyond the serene beauty of his eyes—what had always and would forever be there. Every soul he had ever taken resided within him in a vast undulating ocean. Together yet alone, each soul drifted in peace, waiting for whatever came next.

  The pieces to my faulty memory came together with what he wanted me to understand.

  When people survive an encounter with Death, they often talk about an out-of-body experience where they see a glimmer shining through a tunnel. The soothing light comforts them and at the end of that tunnel they describe seeing the shadows of people who have come before them. That’s what I saw that day, but the light and the passageway filled with shadow people, I knew now that wasn’t heaven or any concept of an afterlife. With Death’s touch, he let me see beyond the vision that most people experienced when they died.

  What I had actually seen had been a glimpse into Death’s eyes—his ocean of souls—and I knew what he tried to make me understand.

  I gasped, feeling the sting of tears as I called out to him from the shadows of that painful memory, “Why are you showing me this?”

  Death made that image vanish in one blink of his beautiful blue eyes. In an instant, I shot back to the clearing, feeling the heat of the fire and looking up at his raven perched on a branch.

  I wasn’t ready for the truth, but it was coming.

  “Did I…die?”

  “Yes.”

  The part of him that wasn’t human answered without hesitation and without an inkling of remorse.

  “When I took your hand, that’s when it happened, didn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yes, I came to collect a soul.”

  When he brushed a strand of hair from my eyes, his touch felt like nothing more than the wind’s embrace.

  “I had come for you, Abbey.”

  On Denali

  Bob Holden watched as the Park Service mountain rescue team anchored their harnesses. Everything had to be secure and safe enough for them to dig through the avalanche over an area where Nate’s tracking beacon gave the strongest signal. Ranger Lewis and his men had marked the edge of the crevasse where the snow looked deep-set and sunken.

  Now it would only be a matter of time.

  “They’ve located a tracking beacon. They’re digging now.” Using his radio transceiver, Bob raised his voice to be heard above the wind and the static. His transmission to the ranger station had been patched through to the landline at his home where his wife and Josh’s mother, Sarah Poole, were waiting for news.

  Bob told them only what was happening. The dark speculations that plagued him, about what they might find in the crevasse, he kept to himself.

  “One beacon?” Jackie asked.

  “Yeah, one.” Bob took a deep breath before he went on. “I wouldn’t say anything to Sarah until we know something for sure, but Nate brought his tracking beacon with him. For some reason, Josh left his behind. If we don’t find them together, we’ll keep looking for Josh.”

  The sound of static swelled on the other end of the line, but Bob knew his wife well enough. There wasn’t muc
h for her to say, not with Sarah within earshot.

  “I know that sounds bad, but I’d put money on those boys being together. They’re connected at the hip, you know that.” For Jackie’s sake, Bob forced a smile and let his wife hear it in his voice. “From what the rangers have found, I think the boys have a fighting chance.”

  He wanted to believe what he’d said. Jackie and Sarah and his daughter, Zoey, and little Kevin, needed hope. If bad news was coming, it would happen soon enough. If there would be an outside chance the boys had a pocket of air to breathe, no sense torturing two mothers with the worst-case scenario.

  “I’ll call you when…” Bob stopped when a loud rumble echoed across the mountain. Under his boots, he felt Denali shake.

  “Falling!” one of the rangers yelled. One minute the man was there, the next he wasn’t.

  When the mountain rescue team scrambled along the slope, Bob gripped his radio transceiver and said, “Look, Jackie. I gotta go. I’ll call soon.”

  “But, Bob…”

  Even with his wife still talking, Bob Holden ended the transmission. He didn’t have the heart to tell her what happened.

  There’d been a cave-in and one of the rescuers had fallen into the crevasse.

  Abbey

  Near Healy, Alaska

  With Death’s fingers still in my hair, I fought the urge to see him as Nate, a boy I’d grown to love even more because of Death’s interference. If that cruel manipulation wasn’t enough, now he talked about my mother and the day she died—and used Nate’s face to do it. That felt beyond brutal.

  “But if my mother and I both died, why am I still here?”

  “A mother’s love for her child can be a powerful thing,” he said, something he had talked about before I’d been ready to listen. “Her love for you and her protective instincts are the only explanation for how she saw me that day. Somehow she knew that I had come for you.”