The Reaper Within

by Stephanie Jackson

  He grasped her wrist, jerked her against him, and kissed her. She didn’t know how long the kiss lasted. She only knew that she wished she could breathe him into her and take him out of here. She wanted to save what was impossible to save. She was falling in love with him, and it had to stop.

  When his hand ran up the side of her breast, she pushed him away. “Jack, please stop.”

  “Because I’m still dead.”

  “No, because at the end of all of this I’ll have to reap you. I don’t want to miss you more that I already do.”

  “I don’t get it; you won’t make love to me now because I’m dead. But you wouldn’t date me if I were alive because you don’t want a relationship. Does that sound about right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re hard to understand, Mel. Just tell me this, would I have a better chance of making love to you if I was alive or while I’m dead?”

  “While you were dead,” she admitted. “To tell you the truth, live people kinda freak me out a little. Even the two men I do have sex with make me a little uncomfortable.”

  “Well you’re in luck, then. I happen to be dead right now,” he said and pulled her close to him.

  “Jack,” she said but didn’t pull away again.

  “Tell me you don’t like me; tell me you don’t love me just a little, and I’ll stop. Tell me you’re not just as drawn to me as I am to you, and I’ll back off.

  “You know I can’t say any of that, Jack, but…”

  Jack was done listening. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her up the two flights of stairs to her bedroom. He kicked the door open, carried her inside, and laid her across the bed.

  “Would you like me to remove your clothes, or would you be more comfortable doing it yourself?” he asked not giving her a chance to change her mind about what they were doing.

  “You undress me, Jack. See if what you see is what you like. My body’s suffered its share of damage over the years. You may change you mind about this when you see all the scars.”

  “I’ve seen them already, and I don’t care about your scars. I care about you, Mel.”

  He pulled her clothes from her body and tossed them into the floor. Michelle Brighton may not have been able to remove her shoes, but Jack had no problem taking off his clothes. It was just one more difference among many.

  She pulled him down to her and let him have her body. It was the first time she’d ever been made love to, and she had to admit that it was the best sex she had ever had. He was gentle with her. He made sure all of her needs were taken care of. It meant absolutely everything to him that she got more out of this than he did. It was wonderful.

  The loving making was so intense, and left her so off balance, that when it was over and she stood up on the bed, her feet got tangled in the sheets, and she tripped and fell straight off the side of bed, landing on her head in the floor. The last thing she heard was a distinct cracking noise. The next thing she knew she back was in the tunnel.

  ***

  The light didn’t float to her this time, it flew.

  “Melissa Chaser, you must get Jack Roday out of that contraption so that he may live again.”

  “You said the next time I found myself here that I could stay.”

  “I did say that, and you can stay if that is your wish. That is if you don’t mind leaving Jack Roday back there to die. So what will it be, Melissa Chaser, stay here, or go back and save Jack? I cannot force you either way.”

  “Are you telling me that Jack can live again?”

  “Yes,” the light said. “It may be possible.”

  “Send me back then. Let me save him if I can, though I have no idea how to do that. I’ll probably end up getting myself killed as well.”

  “I don’t think so, and even if you do die, you have nothing to fear in coming back to the light. You have earned your way into Heaven many times over. But I’m asking you to do this. Will you?

  “Of course I will. I’ll do what I can, even though I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “When the time comes, we will tell you what to do. Trust us, Melissa Chaser.”

  “No, I don’t know who ‘us’ is, but I trust you. Do you have a name, by the way? I didn’t think to ask the last time I was here.”

  “You may call me Ramiel.”

  “What about the other people that have been killed there, Ramiel? Can they be saved, too?”

  “No, they cannot. They have already crossed into the light. There is no coming back for them. Their bodies had suffered too much damage for their souls to return to them anyway.”

  “Will Jack be okay if he lives?”

  “I cannot say, Melissa Chaser, because I do not know. I only know that it is possible that he may yet return to his body. It is important that no soul be taken before its time.”

  “So, he may come back to life only to live that life as a vegetable?”

  “Yes, but that does not matter. It only matters that he lives.”

  “It’s not right to bring him back if all he is going to do is suffer.”

  “It is not up to you to decide what is right and what is not. You need only concern yourself with doing the job you agreed to do.”

  “I agreed to that when I was nine. I didn’t know what I was agreeing to at the time. I didn’t know the job would be this hard.”

  “I never said that it would be easy,” Ramiel said. “Return now, and be careful, Melissa Chaser. Jack Roday’s life may be important, but not as important as yours. Until we meet again.”

  The light enveloped her, and then she was back in the bedroom. Jack was rocking her in the floor in a dead panic.

  “Mel, oh God, Mel! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I’m the one that’s supposed to crossover, not you.”

  She reached up and patted him on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Jack. I’m alright.”

  He drew back and looked at her incredulously. “How is this possible? Your neck was broken. I heard it break.”

  “Yeah, I heard it too. I guess the light wasn’t ready for me yet,” she said.

  She decided not to tell him about what the Ramiel had said. If she didn’t figure out what to do, or it just didn’t work out, she’d only be giving him false hope. She didn’t want to do that.

  She crawled away from him and started picking her clothes up from the floor and putting them on. She needed to think, and she couldn’t do that if she stayed naked in this room with him.

  “Where are you going?” Jack asked throwing his own clothes back on.

  “To get another cup of coffee. I need to think, and I can’t do that up here.”

  He followed her down the stairs, through the entry hall, and back into the kitchen. She poured herself another cup of coffee and sat down at the island.

  “Mel?”

  “I just died…for the second time. Can you just give me a minute, please?”

  He watched her while she sipped her coffee. “Do you regret what we did?”

  “Well, the ending left something to be desired, but no, Jack. I don’t regret it.”

  And she didn’t. It may not have been a good idea, but she’d enjoyed being with Jack and didn’t regret a thing about it.

  “Then what’s wrong? Is it just the breaking your neck part, or did I do something wrong?”

  “You didn’t do anything…”

  The lights dimmed again, and she could hear that humming noise louder that ever. Jack vanished again, and she got up to look for the source of the noise. She found that it was coming from the hidden room under the library.

  ***

  She walked down the stone stairs and stepped into Abbott’s lab of death again. The humming noise was coming from the box that had Jack in it. She put her hand on top of the box and was surprised to find it was warm.

  She heard the humming every time the lights dimmed, and every time the lights dimmed Jack disappeared again. She wondered what was happening inside the bed to make that happen.

  She wanted to open t
he lid and have a look inside, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she pulled out her phone and called Betty.

  “Oh, come on, Mel,” Betty said groggily. “This had better be important, or…”

  “I just had sex with a ghost. Is that important enough for you?”

  She hadn’t wanted to tell Betty about the kiss that she’d shared with Jack, but things had gone a lot further than that now. She needed someone to talk to, and Betty was all that she had.

  “Come again?” Betty said now wide awake.

  “I said I just had sex with a ghost,” she repeated. “Oh, and I died and came back to life again.”

  “You had sex with a ghost?” Betty asked not seeming to care about the part where Mel had died. “Is that even possible?”

  “I didn’t know until a little while ago, but yeah, it’s very possible.”

  “Jack?” Betty asked.

  “No, it was some other random ghost that I found in the house,” she snapped. “Of course it was Jack, Betty.”

  “Don’t bite my head off, I was just asking. So how was it?”

  “It was great right up until the second that I fell off the bed and broke my neck.”

  “You fell off the bed during sex?”

  “No, it was right after we’d finished. I stood up on the mattress to walk to the end of the bed to get my clothes instead of scooting down there, and I got tangled in the sheet and fell on my head, but I did break my neck.”

  “You mean you literally broke your neck?” Betty asked in fear. “Tell me you’re not a ghost now and calling me from beyond the grave.”

  “Yes, I mean I literally broke my neck, and no I’m not calling you from beyond the grave. I’m calling you from the room with the bodies in it?”

  “Oh, Mel, tell me you didn’t have sex in there.”

  “Yes, Betty, yes I did. It’s just me, the bodies, and a bed in here,” Mel said dryly.

  “Really?” Betty asked in disgust.

  “No, Betty, not really. We went upstairs to a bedroom. I don’t want to talk about the sex.”

  “If you don’t want to talk about the sex, then you shouldn’t have told me about the sex.”

  “Yeah, I’m starting to see that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Fine, tell me about you breaking your neck then.”

  She told Betty everything that had happened in the tunnel and what the light had said to her.

  “Where’s Jack now?” Betty asked.

  “Gone again. He’ll be back in a few hours if he sticks to the schedule he’s been on.”

  “What does he think about what the light said?”

  “He hasn’t said anything, because I haven’t told him. I don’t want to tell him it’s possible that he may be able to live again, and then not be able to pull it off. That would just be cruel. Plus, how would I tell him that even if he does live he’ll probably spend his life as an invalid?”

  “Yeah, I see your problem. Is his body in that room too?”

  “Oh yeah, I found it; and when I told Jack about it, he demanded to see it too. He checked the body for obvious signs of injury and found a large knot on his head.”

  “He checked his own body for signs of injury?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s gross, right?”

  Betty laughed. “You just fucked a ghost, Mel. You have lost all rights to an opinion on what is and is not gross.”

  “Betty,” Mel growled through the phone.

  “Right, sorry,” Betty said quickly. “So you have Jack’s body, but you have no idea what to do with it?”

  “That pretty much sums it up. And all I have is the light’s assurance that it might be possible for Jack to come back to life. I can’t give him false hope on a maybe.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know. I guess go online and find out how to go about defrosting a cryo patient. Surely the cryogenicist had a plan for that.”

  “Alright, I’ll get back to you when I know something.”

  This time it was Betty that disconnected the call leaving Mel alone with just her thoughts and a room full of frozen bodies.

  ***

  She was sitting at the desk in the hidden room when Jack came down the stairs. She was looking through the file of equations trying to make sense of any of it, but she wasn’t having any luck.

  “What are you doing back down here again?” he asked.

  She heard thunder boom overhead and knew another round of storms was coming through, and it was daybreak. That was never a good thing to happen in the summer. When the sun came up during bad weather, it superheated the storms causing anything from hail to tornadoes.

  But this old house had stood against the storms for over a hundred years; so she figured it would weather this system too. Plus, if a tornado did break out, she’d be okay. She’d found the basement.

  “I was bored, so I thought I’d read through the files down here.”

  “What’s the point?” he asked. “The police will go through all of this after they secure the crime scene.

  Speaking of which, if you’re serious about not wanting to be involved, you need to go around this room and the rest of the house and wipe your fingerprints off of anything you touched.”

  “Good plan,” she said and stood up. “Let’s do that now.”

  She tried to dart around him, but he caught her by the arm. “Mel?”

  “I’m fine, Jack,” she said. “I have some paper towels in the kitchen. We can use those to wipe everything down with.”

  He looked at her for a second but finally released her arm. They went back upstairs and got to work wiping everything she’d touched down. She didn’t know if the cops would dust the whole house for evidence when everything they needed was downstairs, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

  What would she say? Oh, I was just there reaping the spirits of the murder victims when I stumbled upon all these bodies. No, she didn’t see that working out. As a matter of fact, she’d likely wind back up in the loony bin if she said something like that.

  It was best if she just didn’t get involved. And the best way to do that was not to leave a trace that she’d ever been here at all. She didn’t think she’d have a problem getting Angie to go along with that either.

  After all the problems Angie had had with the property, Mel didn’t think she’d want the town to know that she’d had someone like her in the house.

  “I think that’s it,” she said once they were done wiping down the hidden room. “I don’t think they’ll find my fingerprints anywhere unless they check the paperwork in those files.

  “And I don’t think they’ll bother with that once they see everything down here. It’s pretty clear that Abbott Harlowe did this.”

  “Well, it would be if Abbott Harlowe wasn’t missing. It still wouldn’t be a problem if everyone down here had gone missing before Abbott did, but they’re going to have some questions once they find Michelle Brighton.”

  “But Abbott did this. We know he did.”

  Jack frowned at her. “Yes, we do, but one of we is dead, and the other is unwilling to assist in the investigation; so the cops are going to be at a dead end. You could tell them.”

  “No, I can’t. As soon as they found out what I do for a living, they’d just assume I was a crackpot psychic looking for some media attention. It ain’t happening.”

  Jack shrugged. “There’s not much we can do about it then.”

  “I guess not,” she agreed.

  “That seems like justice. Abbott Harlowe receives no punishment in this life, and when he dies he gets to crossover into the tunnel you keep talking about and go into the light.”

  “Not necessarily. I said that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. But there are two ends to a tunnel, Jack, and I never turned around to see what was at the other end. I’m not sure what’s there, but I’m guessing it’s nothing good. I doubt Abbott is going to a peaceful, loving place when he leaves
this world.”

  “Well, I personally hope he goes straight to Hell,” Jack said, and then looked over at where his body was being kept. “I wonder if I’ll have a police funeral, or if I’ve been gone too long for anybody in the MPD to give a damn.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have a big funeral with honors,” she said hoping she was lying. “You died while on the job, and that means something to people now. Since Sept. 11th the country is big on its law enforcement and firefighters.”

  “What happened on Sept. 11th?”

  “Oh…uh, well,” she said and told him about the terrorist attacks.

  “Damn,” he said whistling through his teeth. “Nearly three thousand people?”

  “Yeah; as it turns out, America isn’t nearly as indestructible as we thought we were. But we recovered, as much as you can recover from something like that and pulled together as a county.”

  “I guess I’ve missed a lot.”

  “A lot happens in twenty years, Jack. But a lot stays the same too. Like we still have Burger King. We don’t have flying cars. But trust me; you don’t want to know what a gallon of gas costs these days.”

  Jack looked around the room. “So, do you think this is where Curtis kept his gold?”

  She nodded. “I do. I think it sat down here until Abbott discovered this room. That may be what he used to bankroll his little experiment here with. He’s probably using it to help himself hide out, too. A couple hundred million dollars would buy you one hell of a getaway.”

  Thunder rocked the house again, and the lights went out.

  “Jack!” Mel nearly yelled in panic.

  “I’m still here,” Jack said reaching out from the darkness and wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “Don’t tell me that you of all people are afraid of the dark.”

  “I’m not overly fond of it, no.”

  He laughed softly, and she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. “Don’t laugh at me.”

  “I’m not laughing. I think it’s kind of cute that you’re afraid of the dark.”

  She pulled out her phone, turned the flashlight on, and laid it on top of the file cabinet. It didn’t light up the whole room like she would have liked, but at least they weren’t standing in the pitch black anymore.