by Scott Colby
Like its predecessors, the next door opened without a sound. The glittering foyer awaited, as bright and white and empty as the rest of the underutilized mansion. Kevin kept a close eye on the wide open front door as he tiptoed across the marble floor. He couldn’t see Mr. Pemberton, but he could hear the reaper keeper chatting up a storm with Buddy Gregson.
“Summer o’ ’68. Remember that shit storm?”
“I doubt I’ll ever forget it. Never has there been a place and time more ill-suited to fighting a proper war.”
“Swear there were mushrooms growin’ in my fuckin’ socks.”
“Probably not far from the truth. The heat and humidity spawned all manner of nasty little beasties.”
Bearing right into the short hallway that led to Billy’s room, Kevin’s throat tightened with every step he took. He pulled the chloroformed rag out of his back pocket. If it proved ineffective, his next best bet would be a solid blow to the head. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Such physical violence could easily go too far, and Kevin really had no clue how hard he’d have to hit Billy to knock him out. If only Sweatpants Bob had been available for a consultation.
At the double doors to Billy’s room, Kevin gritted his teeth and threw caution to the wind. He flung the door open and charged inside, plowing straight through the wave of garbage stench that slapped him in the face. The lights were off and the only illumination came from the flat-panel monitors on Billy’s desk, each displaying a different computer game. The Chicago Blackhawks travel mug containing the souls of Abelia, Ren, and Driff stood ominously upon the front right corner of the desk. A ten-gallon fish tank filled with crystal-clear water sat on the floor to the left of Billy’s big leather chair, crushing a few empty boxes of Chinese takeout.
Everything happened in slow motion. As Kevin stampeded through the morass of trash and discarded clothing on the floor, Billy turned in his big leather chair to face his attacker. Smiling like a saint in a Renaissance painting, the reaper spread his arms wide, inviting the killing blow. Kevin had never seen him so relaxed. Then his eyes settled on the chloroformed rag and the room itself seemed to darken as he recognized Kevin’s intentions. Billy’s lip twisted into a primal snarl as he stood and raised his fists to defend himself.
Thinking quickly, Kevin adjusted his priorities. He threw the chloroformed rag as hard as he could. It spiraled through the air and struck Billy in the face like a whip, staggering the reaper and knocking him back down into his big leather chair. Kevin zigged to the right as his enemy recovered, snatching the Chicago Blackhawks travel mug from the desk. The plastic cap fell away with a quick twist of his wrist. Three ghostly streaks burst forth from within and rocketed out the door on their way back to where they belonged.
Kevin didn’t have time to celebrate. Billy’s hand grabbed for his face, finding purchase on his nose before he could fight it off. An all-too-familiar pain wracked his body as the reaper once again ripped his soul free. Billy let go just as suddenly and Kevin’s soul snapped back into his face like a rubber band, knocking him onto his ass and into a greasy pizza box. The room around Kevin spun violently as his consciousness settled back into his skull. He could hear Billy moving things nearby but couldn’t focus enough to figure out what he was up to. One thing was for sure: his plan was fucked and it was time to get the hell out of there. He’d succeeded in freeing Abelia, Ren, and Driff, which meant he could come back for Nella with more help. She didn’t seem to be in any imminent danger in that fish tank.
It took a concerted exertion of will, but Kevin managed to wobble back to his feet. The scene before him immediately vaporized his thoughts of retreat.
“Kill me,” Billy snarled. He dangled a fully powered flat-screen monitor, taken from his desk, above the now wide-open fish tank. There was more than enough slack in the cord to keep it plugged in if he dropped it. “Kill me!”
Kevin’s heart hammered against the inside of his chest. This was not how things were supposed to go. “Billy, let’s talk about this—”
“Kill me!” the reaper screamed. Tears streamed from his wild eyes. “Kill me or I’ll drop it!”
“There’s got to be—”
“There isn’t! This ends one way!”
“B—”
Billy opened his fingers. White-hot fear boiled up through Kevin’s chest like lava about to burst forth from an erupting volcano. He sprang forward, driving his shoulder into Billy’s torso as he groped uselessly for the falling monitor. Sparks flew as it hit the water. Billy, knocked off balance by Kevin’s mad grab, crashed down through the fish tank and into the roiling storm of electricity, crunching the glass beneath his weight. Kevin stumbled backwards from the water spreading through the layer of crap on the floor as the reaper spasmed and sizzled. Billy finally fell still a few agonizing seconds later. In death, he looked almost happy.
Realizing what he’d done, Kevin fell to his knees in shock. He’d finally fucked up in a way he couldn’t try to worm his way out of. Nella was dead. Kevin Felton would become Harksburg’s new reaper.
— CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR —
Something deep in Kevin’s skull popped, not unlike a ligament separating from bone. He knew immediately what it was. That was no muscle bursting; it was his own mortality. Whatever process would transform him into the new reaper to take Billy’s place wasn’t wasting any time.
Reality began to ripple. Every surface around Kevin undulated in regular waves like water in a windy harbor—except in every direction at once. The effect was most profound on and around Billy’s corpse. The dead man’s flesh rose and fell in rhythmic pulses, contorting his serene features into a series of ever more ghastly caricatures that reminded Kevin of a plastic action figure he and Doorknob microwaved back in middle school. Static electricity flared to life in Kevin’s fingers and toes. His muscles refused to respond to his attempts to move. The sharp tingle spiraled up through his arms and legs and engulfed his torso, his neck, and finally his head. Helpless and scared out of his wits, he nonetheless laughed inwardly at his situation. What was good enough to kill Billy, it seemed, was good enough to enlist his replacement, albeit on a much less painful scale.
One by one, tiny sparks lit up in a deep, dark region of Kevin’s consciousness. Each burned differently, labeling themselves as unique individuals in a way Kevin couldn’t immediately describe. He could feel their relative health—or, in several cases, their lack thereof—as acutely as his own.
Souls, he realized. Everybody in Billy’s territory—in my territory. His new awareness was as awe-inspiring as it was pants-pis-singly frightening. Try as he might, he couldn’t turn it off. It was as much a part of his body now as his other senses. He chose one of the sparks at random and focused on it with all his will, testing the limits of his new power. No additional information manifested. Although he had a general feel for the spark’s physical condition, he couldn’t gather its location or its owner’s identity. With those limitations, how useful could it really be? What good was knowing someone’s health if he couldn’t match that knowledge to an actual person? Was it a safeguard of sorts designed to keep him from abusing his abilities? He wished his new reaper powers had come with an owner’s manual.
The rapidly vibrating world around him suddenly bounced, tossing him into the air a short distance before rising again to meet the soles of his feet. Reality settled back into its usual still form and Kevin found himself standing outside. Gone were the garbage and darkness of Billy’s room, replaced by green grass and warm sunshine. A few feet away, the grass shortened around a slender flag sprouting up from a tiny round hole. Somehow, he’d wound up in the middle of a golf course. He counted four other holes between himself and the clubhouse looming in the distance, a massive postmodern log cabin sort of thing ringed in a wide deck covered with picnic tables. Dense stands of deciduous trees protected the course from the riffraff in the rest of the world.
“Motherfucker,” he groaned.
“Yes, that’s what they all say,” a s
cratchy voice interjected from somewhere behind him. The man’s accent was unmistakably Russian.
Turning, Kevin found three golfers getting ready to tee off at the next hole. The nearest, a tall, strikingly handsome man in designer slacks and a pink polo shirt, looked like he’d sprung to life straight off the cover of some magazine that routinely profiled important businessmen no one had ever heard of. Tucking his club in between his armpit and his round bicep, he pulled a white glove off his right hand as he confidently closed the gap between himself and Kevin.
“Ramsey St. Croix,” he said through blinding white teeth, his voice friendly but firm. Crow’s feet pinched his eyes and his jet-black hair turned gray at his temples. “Welcome aboard, son.”
Stunned, Kevin limply returned Ramsey’s well-practiced handshake. “Thanks. I guess. I’m Kevin Felton.”
The trio’s other male member oozed up beside St. Croix like a tentacle slipping into an anime character’s nether regions. Kevin tried not to stare at the man’s knee-length white socks, then his inappropriately short and tight sweatshorts, then the black leather fanny pack at his hip, then the bristly brown beard threatening to devour his neon green tank top. Everything about him screamed inappropriate, especially his wild eyes. Kevin couldn’t meet his gaze, choosing instead to stare at his own feet as he shook the taller man’s hand.
“Grigori Rasputin,” he croaked in his Russian accent. “You can call me Griggy.”
“Um…what?”
“Yes, I am that Grigori Rasputin.”
“But weren’t you…”
“Poisoned? Shot? Clubbed? Thrown into icy river? All of above, my friend! None of it matters when you’ve cut a deal with local reaper!”
That explained all the stories Kevin had heard about Rasputin’s gruesome demise. “What did you give the reaper in return?”
Smiling like he’d convinced a small child to climb into his van, Griggy dragged his thumb across his throat.
“Ah. Right.” Kevin leaned to his left, peering around Ramsey St. Croix to both examine the trio’s third member and to put some distance between himself and the unsettling Russian. By the next set of tees, a young girl in a sky blue dress, matching ribbons in her curly blond hair, squatted down to poke at something in the grass. Ten years old at the most, she could’ve easily crawled into either of the two golf bags propped up behind her and left plenty of room for the clubs.
“That’s Olga,” St. Croix explained. “The oldest of us.”
Kevin frowned as he parsed that sentence. “You’re all reapers.”
Ramsey nodded. “We’re the Three, the oldest reapers in existence. We provide leadership, counsel, and—when necessary—discipline to avatars of death the world over.” St. Croix spoke in a tone that implied Kevin should be awed or impressed. In truth, he was just confused.
And angry. And depressed. If the Three had done their jobs, shit wouldn’t have gotten as twisted and out of control as it had—and Nella would still be alive. “Great work with Billy.”
Shrugging, Ramsey slipped into that innocent middle manager mode Kevin had seen so many times working in Chicago finance. “You can’t win ’em all, especially in this business. Our consultants did their best.”
“Consultants?”
“Evitankari, via Tallisker. We’re busy people. Got to induct two or three new hires every day. We’ve had to adjust our retention goals accordingly. Oldest trick in the ol’ management playbook, eh?”
“I thought that was assigning blame elsewhere,” Kevin snapped.
Ramsey St. Croix’s face flushed an interesting shade of purple. Rasputin slithered around the businessman like a pick-up artist positioning himself to steal some poor sap’s girlfriend. “Billy was boned at start. Had been ready to die for months before recruitment. Mistake, that one. Is hard to find good help these days, no?”
Kevin snorted. “That bar must be pretty fucking high if they let you in.”
Griggy ogled him like a sketchy man in a van watching a playground. “Ah, this one gets it! Job requires few loose screws in just the right places. Is terrible thing we do, no? We end that which never end otherwise. Old, young, sick, healthy—it not matter. In most cases, dead man just unlucky. Is chance. Probability. Great big cosmic joke.”
Nella’s death flashed before Kevin’s eyes. Could there have been a dumber way for her to go? Stuck inside a fish tank, electrocuted by her former fiancé’s computer monitor. And yet she’d gone on her own, without any help from a reaper.
“But is not joke without punchline,” Griggy continued. “Us.”
Kevin couldn’t help being reminded of Buddy Gregson’s explanation for how he’d remained sane under Rex’s control all those years. The absurdity of it all formed a sort of insulating shield against the gravity of the situation. Taking things completely seriously, after all, gives those things a sort of power, an influence that can’t be denied, deflected, or ignored. Rasputin radiated that fuck-it-all mentality like a man without a shower gave off body odor.
Shaking his head, Kevin willed his outrage to return. “Tell that to the water nymph Billy killed trying to get at me,” he snarled.
“Magic people? Magic people get it. No need reaper. Content with order of things, even with all screws in place.”
“Not sure I believe that. No way Nella wanted to die.”
“Want? Want have nothing to do with it. Is acceptance. Is recognition of greater force that not give a shit what people want. Trust me; she go peacefully.”
Something tugged on the hem of Kevin’s shirt. Looking down, he found Olga smiling up at him. The little girl pressed something into his hand and closed his fingers around it. She nodded once, then skipped away to look at something behind the golf bags.
Opening his hand, Kevin gasped at what she’d give him: a tiny heart, perfectly woven from blades of grass. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”
“Olga hasn’t spoken since 1913,” Ramsey said gently. “She finds symbols to be a more powerful way to communicate.”
“Less exact than words,” Griggy added. “Carries more meaning.”
Kevin wanted to move on so he could go home and sulk, so he stuck the charm into his pocket. “So what is this? Some sort of interview?”
“Some sort, yes,” Rasputin replied. “Ramsey thinks we need standardize, but I prefer seat of pants approach.”
St. Croix cleared his throat. “Tell us why you want the job.”
“I don’t fucking want the job.”
Rasputin turned to his companion. “See? Is perfect. Take your spot someday.”
Clearly exasperated, Ramsey shook his head and put his golf glove back on. “Fine. We’ve got a back nine to finish.” Turning on his heel, he stomped over to the tees and examined the fairway ahead.
Griggy chuckled under his breath. “Retention rate for third spot in Three worst of all,” he said conspiratorially. “Has only been reaper for thirteen years, with Olga and I for six months. Still thinking black and white, yes and no, love and lust. Misses dirty spaces in between.”
Kevin couldn’t help thinking of Kylie, Tallisker, and even the people he’d worked with at Noonan, Noonan, & Schmidt. People who thought there was one right way to do things. People who pretended the margins had no influence. People who, when you got right down to it, didn’t have a fucking clue.
“I know the type,” he said. “Hell, that used to be me.”
“We all make mistakes,” Rasputin replied. “Any questions about job?”
Kevin’s gaze flicked from the mad monk to the stuck-up businessman to the tiny little girl. Each reaper had seemingly found a way to make peace with what was, really, a horrible situation—but they were all kind of fucked up in their own unique ways. What did that say about Kevin’s chances of surviving the job? He wasn’t sure which would be worse: quickly breaking under the pressure, or proving he was twisted enough to make it work.
“Is this…natural?” he asked. “The whole not-dying-without-help thing? Just do
esn’t seem like the way the world works.”
Griggy stroked his beard like a serial killer running his fingers through the hair of his next victim. “Not sure. Some say it goes back to days of Axzar. Great demon lord. Covered most of planet with his hordes. He…broke us somehow. Rumors suggest he wanted death to be seen as reward and then made it so. No one knows for sure. Anything else?”
“I think I get it,” he said. “Can I go home now?” He wanted to check on his mother, Ren, and Driff, then curl up in a ball somewhere and drink until he forgot all about Nella and his role in her death.
“Is simple, yes? Person dies, reaper makes it permanent. You will know what to do when time comes.” Rasputin squeezed Kevin’s shoulder like a drunk, overly affectionate uncle. “Quarterly pancake breakfast is December 3 in Birmingham. Hope to see you there.”
Reality twisted again, melting the Russian’s features and the golf course beyond into a real life post-modern oil painting. The mad monk’s beard dripped into his neon green shirt and swirled around tendrils of his gray shorts and streams of darker green leaching into the mix from the surrounding landscape. Griggy’s steely blue eyes, however, somehow fought off the power warping Kevin’s view and maintained their size, shape, and position—implying, in a rather unsettling way, that the Three would be watching.
— CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE —
When the world turned solid once more, Kevin found himself back in Billy’s bedroom, standing in the exact spot where he’d watched the previous reaper—and Nella—die. Billy’s body, however, was long gone, as was the shattered fish tank and a good chunk of the garbage that had once covered the floor. A motley collection of stains speckled the newly exposed carpet like a camouflage pattern, its original color long lost to time and the terraforming powers of takeout grease. He blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted to the light emitted by the recessed fixtures in the ceiling.
“Welcome back, sir,” Mr. Pemberton said from Kevin’s left. The old Brit, wearing blue latex gloves, shoved a pile of pizza boxes into a big black garbage bag already half full of crap. “I’ve taken care of the corpse.”