Grim Reaper: End of Days

by Steve Alten

  “God wiped out evil, I get it.”

  “No, Patrick. The Creator never wipes out anyone. The Light of the Creator can only do good. What determines the outcome is the receiver. Think of God’s Light as electricity. Plug in your appliances, and one renders power to the tools of fulfillment. Stick your wet fingers in the socket, and you can be electrocuted. Either way, the nature of the Light never changes. When Noah entered the ark, the Light of the upper realms destroyed the negativity and greed that had stained the Earth. Those who cared and shared and tried to change themselves into something better were protected. Those who didn’t were destroyed.”

  “Whatever happened to Noah?”

  “He died, impure.”

  “Wait… you just said—”

  “The ark was built so that Noah and his family could hide inside a protective vessel when the Angel of Death arrived to smite humanity. The flood lasted twelve months, allowing time for Noah and his family to complete the purification process while the souls of the wicked were sent to Gehenom. But Noah made one last mistake, the same mistake Adam made. The fruit that tempted Adam was not an apple, but a grape, or the wine that comes from them. Wine can be abused, placing man in touch with levels of consciousness that cannot sustain a connection with the Light. When the floodwaters receded, Noah succumbed to temptation, consuming the fruit of the vine in an attempt to access the upper dimensions. Noah was born circumcised. When his son, Ham, the future father of the land of Canaan found Noah lying drunk and naked, he castrated him. That’s why Noah cursed the land of Canaan.”

  “That was a bit severe, don’t you think?”

  “Again, the story requires a translation. Noah went from being a righteous man to a victim, at least in his own state of mind. He had borne witness to the deaths of every living soul in the world, save his own family, but he never truly understood the root cause of suffering. Noah’s failure was that he built the ark, then, like all victims, assumed his own pain would purify his soul. Because he never felt the pain of those who had suffered, he couldn’t grow in a spiritual sense.”

  They continued walking west on Riverside Drive, Shep deep in thought. “I’ve caused great pain, Virgil. How do I seek salvation for my sins? I mean, if a guy like Noah screwed up, what chance in Hell does a schmuck like me rate?”

  “When a man seeks to cleanse his soul from difficult circumstances, he must first create an opening in his heart.”

  “You’re saying I’ve grown cold. Unfeeling.”

  “Have you?”

  Shep contemplated his response. “Sometimes cold is the only way to survive. There’s a lot of evil in this world, Virgil. When fighting terrorists, one can’t always be Gandhi.”

  “Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’ Violence only creates more violence.”

  “Fine words, but not very practical when you’re dealing with enemy insurgents intent on killing innocent people.”

  “The difference between an insurgent and a freedom fighter is defined by whose side one happens to be on at the moment. Either way, it means nothing to the dead. Life is a test, Patrick. Noah failed his test, his soul denied access into the endless Light of the Creator. Like all souls who fail to complete their tikkun, his soul was redeployed on another mission.”

  “Redeployed? You mean reincarnation?”

  “The process is known as Gilgul Neshamot—translated as Wheel of the Soul. A soul descends upon the physical world because it needs to make a correction, oftentimes from a sin committed in a past life. If a soul lives one lifetime without fulfilling its correction, it may return only three more times to complete its tikkun, its spiritual repair. Of course, for each lifetime a soul is recycled, it risks exposure to the negative forces that lie in wait.”

  “Let me get this straight: You’re telling me that everything I’m going through now is punishment for sins committed in a prior life?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “No, it’s crazy. I have zero recollection of living a past life.”

  “Do you recall every moment of your life, from birth throughout your childhood?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Yet you obviously lived them. When it comes to past lives, your conscious memory is as limited as your five senses, which lie to you with every passing moment. Accept it or not, every soul that lives in the physical world today has lived before. Who you were is not as important as the tikkun you must complete for your spiritual transformation.”

  “Okay, fine. For the sake of argument let’s say I accept what you’re saying. What do you think my tikkun is?”

  “I don’t know. Often, the things that cause us to react in the most negative ways are the things that require the greatest correction. The pain you’re experiencing, the pain that is blocking the Light from reaching you… I believe it has something to do with your separation from your wife. Resolve the cause, and you resolve the effect.”

  Rounding Riverside Drive, they came to the western gate of an ancient graveyard.

  Trinity Cemetery: Twenty-four acres of historic hillside overlooking the Hudson River. In 1776, its earth had been bathed in the blood of British and Rebel forces during the Battle of Washington Heights. In 1842, an outbreak of cholera, typhoid, and smallpox had converted the land into grave plots. Today, more than thirty-two thousand deceased were buried in tight rows or held in mausoleums on the property.

  Shep hesitated, unsure about entering the graveyard.

  “It’s all right. The Angel of Death has no interest in a cemetery.”

  Virgil entered first, leading him past hundred-year-old oaks, the trees’ thick branches creaking in the wind, their knotty roots bursting through the broken cement walkway that ascended to its snow-covered summit. Shep helped Virgil up a narrow path bordered by ancient headstones aged with America’s history. John James Audubon. John Jacob Astor. John Peter Zenger.

  The slope steepened. The old man breathed heavily. “I need to rest.”

  “Over here.” They sat together on a dry landing, the moon peeking between clouds.

  “Virgil… the Grim Reaper, is he evil?”

  “No. The Angel of Death is a neutral force that tailors his pitch to his audience. There have been cycles of darkness in the history of mankind where Satan has grown very strong, blocking the Creator’s Light. When evil becomes widespread, when lust and avarice lead to a depravity that runs amok, then the wickedness of the world summons the Angel of Darkness to stalk the earth. These are trying times, but the darkest hours can yield the greatest Light.”

  “You lived during those times. Tell me about the Holocaust. How did you manage to survive?”

  “Why is this suddenly so important?”

  “I don’t know. Something inside of me needs to hear it.”

  Virgil closed his eyes. For a long moment he said nothing, his expression appearing pained in the moonlight. “Like the Iraqi child you believed you had to kill, I, too, was only nine the night the Nazi soldiers dragged my loved ones from our beds and marched my family and the other Jews through our Polish hamlet to the train station. They squeezed us into cattle cars… it was so difficult to breathe. People were climbing on top of one another to reach a solitary air vent. I must have passed out; the train’s whistle summoned me from my dreams when we arrived at our destination — Oswiecim — Auschwitz.

  “I can still see the bright searchlights and the soldiers in black uniforms armed with machine guns. Like it is tonight, the air was frigid, the heat from the train’s engines expelling whirling gusts of steam. Moving through this fog was a well-dressed man, an embodiment of evil. We later learned his name: Dr. Josef Mengele.

  “That was the first time I saw the Angel of Death. He was dressed in a white robe and hood, hovering over Mengele’s left shoulder. He looked at me, then he looked at my mother and my three sisters, each eye socket clamoring with dozens of fluttering eyes — witness eyes — eyes that had looked upon evil. As I watched, the green-tinged blade of his scythe be
gan dripping fresh blood.

  “Mengele motioned to me and my father, and we were separated from the women and led away to the right. The rest of the women, the mothers with young children, the sisters and daughters, the aunts and the elderly… all were sent to the left. I remember people screaming as families were separated. I remember one mother refusing to pick up her wailing infant, knowing the bond would seal her fate. I saw the SS shoot her on the spot.

  “That was the last night I saw my mother and sisters alive. We would learn that they were taken to the gas chambers. Later, when the crematoriums were built, the children were tossed directly into the ovens or thrown into open burning pits.”

  Shep felt ill, his body trembling.

  “The men and boys deemed strong enough to work were marched down a road bordered by fencing and barbed wire that led to the main gate. There was a sign posted in German, Arbeit Macht Frei—Work Brings Freedom. There was no freedom at Auschwitz-Birkenau. There was no Light, only darkness.

  “Each morning began with roll call and the daily selections. We were forced to stand naked in the cold, sometimes for hours while the doctors examined us, determining who would live and who would die. I was instructed by my father to run in place to flush my cheeks and show them how strong I was. They fed us rations that would starve a dog — a piece of bread, a ladle of soup. A slice of potato was a good day. We became walking bags of bones — human skeletons, the muscle and fat gone, our pulses visible through the skin. My mouth became sore from abscesses, and the chronic hunger drove me insane. One day I found a patch of green grass, ate it, and became deathly sick, the diarrhea nearly ending my life. The clothes we wore were foul, the shoes were wooden clogs, impossible to move very fast in, but it was better to wear them than be naked. To be naked was to be defenseless. To be naked increased our shame.

  “Things grew worse after the crematoriums were up and running. The furnaces ran night and day, funneling fumes through a single chimney that billowed a great column of black smoke, darkening the sky like a winding river. There were days I imagined Satan’s face in the thick air, watching us, laughing. I saw the Angel of Death several times after that, only his garments by then were black.”

  “Did you fear the Angel of Death?”

  “No. I feared the Nazis. I feared Mengele. The Reaper was death, and death was salvation, but the Nazis made the journey so horrible that you did whatever you could to stay alive. We had also made a pact, deciding it was our duty to our families to survive, if only to inform the rest of the world about the atrocities we had suffered.

  “We labored on the dead. We became dentists, extracting metal fillings and bridges. We loaded possessions — luggage, women’s purses, jewelry, clothing. We disinfected the hair of the gassed victims and dried it in the attics. We emptied gas chambers and fed the ovens, the furnaces fueled by the fat of the deceased. We ground the remains of our people into compost and used it to fertilize the camp fields.

  “We were living in Hell, but as your friend, Dante, illustrated, Hell has many circles. The deepest was Block 10, the medical-experimentation block. This was Mengele’s pathology lab, his personal chamber of horrors, where he conducted experimental surgeries performed without anesthesia. Sex-change operations. Fluid transfusions. The removal of organs and limbs. Incestuous impregnations. Mengele preferred to do most of his work on children, especially twins. Young Jews and Gypsies were castrated, others placed in pressure chambers or frozen alive. They were blinded, tested with drugs, and exposed to tortures too gruesome to speak aloud. You would think these horrors would cause revulsion among the German medical institutions. Instead, their physicians flocked to Auschwitz to take part in Satan’s circus, relishing the opportunity to work on human cattle. And every day, the trains brought Mengele fresh victims.”

  “Didn’t anyone try to escape?”

  “A few tried. Most were recaptured. When someone did escape, all of us were ordered to stand at attention for hours on end in the courtyard while the escapee was tracked down, then humiliated and hanged. Remember, Patrick, we were Jews, exiled into Hell because no one else wanted us… where would we have escaped to? Even the Allies that eventually liberated the camps never entered the war to save us. We were told we were God’s Chosen and God had abandoned us, as so many of us had abandoned Him at Mount Sinai.

  “Prayer became intolerable, we were humans reduced to vermin. Still a few of us managed to find a speck of Light, one last shred of human dignity that represented our refusal to accept our fate. For me, it was cleanliness. Each night before I lay down on my bunk with four or five other living corpses, I found a way to wash my hands, to cleanse them of the grit and ash deposited from the day. This was the way I fought my oppressors. This was the small victory that kept me out of the darkness.”

  “Did you ever believe you’d be rescued? How did you manage to maintain any hope?”

  “In Auschwitz, hope was a sin. Hope kept you alive another day, and to stay alive you were forced to think and act in ways that were inhuman. I saw mothers renounce their children in order to live, I saw women allow themselves to be raped by the guards in exchange for a slice of bread. I witnessed one man suffocate his brother to steal his rations. Evil begets more evil, Patrick, as well you know. And yet, through the madness of it all, yes… we held out hope that one day the world would be a different place, that our survival would usher in the change we yearned for.”

  Virgil opened his eyes. “Now you’ve heard my story. Does it set your misery in perspective?”

  “To be honest, it only reinforces what I came to realize in Iraq — that there is no God, that this Light force you claim is part of all of us can’t possibly exist. If God is so omnipotent, why is there so much evil in the world? If God is so loving, why didn’t He stop the Holocaust? If you’re saying He chose not to, then He’s no God of mine, He’s a monster.”

  Virgil struggled to his feet, his back aching. “I understand your feelings, Patrick. I’ve heard these same thoughts a thousand times a thousand. The answer goes back to the true purpose of life, which is a test for the soul — the completion of its tikkun. Evil exists so that free will can have a choice.”

  “What choice did you have when your mother and sisters were being gassed? If God was around, why didn’t He answer your prayers?”

  “God did answer our prayers. The answer was no.”

  “No?” Patrick shook his head, incredulous. “And that’s acceptable to you? The Nazis were tossing children in ovens and God was cool with that?”

  “Of course not. But who are we to judge the Creator’s plan? You’re one man, living in your own limited microcosm of time and space, your entire perspective of existence based on a single lifetime spanning three decades, lived in a physical dimension that represents less than one percent of what’s really out there.”

  “Those people were innocent, Virgil! They were victims of rampant evil.”

  “Rampant evil, as you call it, has been around a long time. Just for argument’s sake, what response would have sufficed? Another flood? Or maybe God should have killed the firstborn son of every German household like He did in Egypt? How about a new set of plagues? Or were you expecting more of a fire-and-brimstone response… like an atomic bomb? Wait, that came later, and thank God, because the world’s a lot safer for it now, isn’t it? Free will, Patrick. God gave us His laws; it’s our choice whether to obey them or not. Or do the words, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ appear with a special clause that says it’s okay to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent people if you want to take over the Arabian oil fields?”

  “Saddam was evil. We came as liberators.”

  “And who did you liberate the Native Americans from when your ancestors stole their land and wiped out their tribes?”

  Patrick started to reply, then mulled it over. “Okay, point taken. We did this to ourselves, and I am as guilty as anyone.”

  “Yes you are, and like every soul, unless you complete your tikkun, you’ll be coming bac
k again… assuming there’s something to come back to.”

  Reaching the crest, they could see acres of headstones spread out across Trinity Cemetery. Down the sloping hill to the east was Broadway, the main thoroughfare glowing from the light of hundreds of bonfires.

  Virgil pointed. “We can follow Broadway all the way to Battery Park, but the journey will be dangerous. The plague has spread, the people are in a state of panic. Keep the vaccine concealed beneath your overcoat, or we’ll have nothing left for your wife and daughter. Patrick, are you listening?”

  Patrick was not listening, he was staring at the path ahead, the cracked concrete sidewalk bordered on the right by a row of mausoleums, on the left by gravestones.

  “What is it?”

  “I think I’m having a major déjà vu.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “I don’t know. But suddenly I’m very cold, like I just stepped into a deep freezer. Oh, no… it’s him.”

  Standing on the path, pointing a bony finger at a tombstone topped by the sculpture of an angelic child, was the Grim Reaper.

  “Virgil, he’s here.”

  “The Angel of Death? Where?”

  “Can’t you see him? He’s on the path just up ahead. He’s pointing to a grave. Virgil, what should I do?”

  “Don’t get too close, do not let him touch you. Can you see the name on the headstone?”

  “No.”

  “Are you certain you’ve never been to this cemetery before?”

  “Yes!”

  The Reaper motioned again, this time more emphatically.

  Shep could feel the Angel of Death’s icy tentacles crystallizing upon his flesh — cold, bony fingers clawing at his scalp, seeking to penetrate his brain. He had never felt terror like this before, not in Iraq, not in his worst nightmare.

  The fear was too much, unleashing waves of panic that curdled his blood.

  Patrick Shepherd ran!

  In four strides he was past the mausoleums, sprinting down the east side of the hill through a maze of graves, the route made more treacherous by the snow cover. His mangled prosthetic arm swung wildly by his side, the curved blade clipping headstones, each shearing contact generating a spark — a beacon that threatened to lead Death straight to him.