Harlow’s face remained blank, her eyebrows barely constricting in thought. It was her eyes that gave her spinning thoughts away. “My locket! For my sixth birthday, mama gave me a locket with hers and daddy’s pictures inside! Mama wore it the day that they moved out. Do you think she still has it, Rowan?”
I smiled at her excitement. “There’s a good chance that she may,” I said, choosing my words carefully, not wanting to get her hopes too high in case she was disappointed once she saw who was in possession of her necklace if it wasn’t her mother.
Harlow closed her eyes and was gone before I could say another word. Fuzzy warmth spread throughout my soul, reminding me of what intense, heartfelt happiness when I was alive had felt like. I sighed, enjoying the sensation. I almost felt alive again. My eyes locked on the smiling picture of Kami and myself, and I was reminded instantly how far from being alive I actually was.
The feeling faded far too quickly with my dark thoughts slowly killing its beauty. How to make it last? That was the question. If I could figure that out, then being a Reaper Council member wouldn’t be so bad. At least I’d feel like I was alive, part of the time.
I waited for Harlow to come back for nearly twenty minutes before deciding to leave and see my father once more. The need to see how far he’d come along in packing up my things was almost unbearable. I closed my eyes and thought only of the familiar hallway to my bedroom I’d walked down a thousand times. I opened them as soon as I felt the cold, recognizable feel of the hardwood floors beneath my bare feet. I padded down the eerily soundless stretch to my bedroom until I reached the threshold. Relief pounded through me like a heartbeat; he’d only managed to pack two boxes since the last time I’d been here.
I stared around the room, wondering how I could possibly keep him here because I was selfish and entirely not ready for him to go yet. For him to move on. I wasn’t ready to let go of this part of myself so soon, ready to leave this room or my home with all the knickknacks and material possessions as nothing but a memory.
“I just can’t do it right now, Karen. I need more time,” Dad said, his voice echoing down the hall to my room. “Please, just tell the movers there’s been a delay. Give me just one more week.”
One more week? Excitement filled me for the briefest of moments, before it twisted into distress. There was only one more week of this house being my home…one more week of seeing my family’s things here within these walls…of seeing my father within these walls.
You can follow him, I told myself. He’ll be taking everything that is yours with him, making it easy. You won’t lose him. I repeated this conversation with myself in my mind as I rested on the edge of my old bed.
It didn’t help. I needed to stop all of this. I needed to find a way to make everything go back to the way it had been before I died.
“Damn it! I know you don’t think it’s healthy for me to be here alone right now, but it’s what I want. It’s what I still need,” he said, his voice stuck somewhere between a sob and a plea. “Thank you,” he whispered after a long moment of silence.
I clamped my mouth shut and waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. The conversation was over. He’d hung up and I didn’t even know what Aunt Karen’s reply had been to his request, but I was hopeful. I moved to sit in the middle of the room that used to be mine, but would soon belong to someone else, and drew my knees up to my chest. I wept internally and for the first time wished that my soul were able to cry actual tears.
The emptiness that seemed to eat away at me—like an unrelenting form of cancer that didn’t disappear in death—burst through me like an uncontrollable wildfire.
Dad shuffled his feet into my room and stopped in front of the picture of my mother and me that still rested on my dresser. He no longer held a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand, but his eyes were bloodshot. He’d already smothered his pain and heartache with alcohol at some point. I watched as he gripped the picture and held it to his chest before he crumbled into a sobbing heap on my bedroom floor directly beside me. I reached out a hand and gently smoothed it along his arm, but he couldn’t feel me. My touch meant nothing.
I stared at him as he continued to sob beside me and realized then how unfair this entire situation was for him, too. How unfair it had been for all three of us. If my mother had known what she was and what waited for her after death, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would not have committed suicide. She would have stayed to save us all from this outcome. Maybe if she had known, then her life would have also been a little bit easier. I wouldn’t have had to take her place, and my father wouldn’t be as broken as he was right now.
It was in that moment, seeing my father so vulnerable and shattered, that thoughts of my mother and her ill-fated decision filled me. An overpowering will to turn back time, to change my fate, made my soul tingle. I had to live again; my father’s sanity depended on it. My sanity depended on it, but I wasn’t sure it was even possible. I tilted my head toward my father and began plotting ways to gain my life back. There had to be a way to reverse what had been done. All I had to do was find it.
Before I could think too long about the idea and possible answers, blackness slid around my bare ankles once again, signaling my presence was needed at yet another Reaper Ruling. I bit my bottom lip to keep in the frustrated scream that built inside of me, ignoring the tugging at my soul as best I could. When the hum began to reverberate through my core, I gave in and closed my eyes.
I was dead and in a position of power, and yet, I was still the one being controlled. How was that even possible?
CHAPTER FOUR
I stood in the ER at a hospital someplace. Daylight streamed through the blinds on the windows and tinted automatic doors. A teenage boy had been in a car accident and died, but it hadn’t been his time to go. I knew this without anyone having to tell me so. It was another one of those strange Reaper Council member powers I didn’t want. The boy had already made the decision to become a Reaper, and I knew without a doubt that one lucky Reaper in this area would be given the chance to finally Fade Out and become reborn. This was the first time that I had stumbled upon a situation like this. Was this how things always worked, or only in the specific cases where the recently departed were given a choice?
If it were this easy to find a replacement for those who had been a Reaper for years, then why couldn’t one be found to replace me on the Council and I be given my life back? This was the newly formed idea I thought solely on while I waited for the others to say what needed to be said so we could begin the transformation.
Once the boy—Aiden Oliver Sharp—had completed the process, the Reaper who stood beside him the entire time was ordered to be his Overseer, and they were both dismissed.
Questions tumbled through my mind, and I pondered on whom to ask for answers to them all. Damaris was the eldest Reaper Council member, but he always seemed so stern and unapproachable. William was more stuck up and snobbish, which made me rule him out also. That left Evelyn. She was just as cold as the others, but I wondered if I came off as exactly the same way. Maybe it was a Reaper Council member thing. No matter the reason, Evelyn was the one I chose to speak with.
Anxiety bit at my mind as I stepped to her side, questions and ideas for if and how I could get my life back churned through me. “Before I accepted this position, I asked you what would happen if I didn’t choose to accept, and you said ‘that is not an option.’” I paused, being sure Evelyn was paying attention and knew that I was directing my question to her specifically.
“I remember,” she said with a slight nod as she turned to face me.
“Is there another option?” I wondered for the first time out loud and noticed her blue eyes widen. “How does a Reaper get a replacement? Can one be found for me?”
“For us, it doesn’t work like that. As Reaper Council members, our position is passed down through our bloodline solely.”
“And so are most Reapers,” I pointed out. “In the month that I’
ve been on the Council, there has only been a handful who have been given a choice to either become a Reaper or Crossover because their lives were not meant to end yet. The rest have all been Links born from a Reaper bloodline. What happens to each of those new Reapers? Don’t the new take the place of one in their bloodline that is old?” I wasn’t entirely sure that was the way that it worked, but I was pretty sure I’d figured it out.
“This is true, and the same happens to us, although we skip a generation,” Evelyn said as she started walking out of the ER. I followed.
Panic filled me as her words spurred more questions through my mind. “Then what about me? I have no one to take my place.”
We stepped off the asphalt and walked across the freshly mowed grass a few feet away. I couldn’t be stuck as what I am forever, for all of eternity, right? Eventually, I had to Fade Out. I had to.
“I know.” Evelyn turned to look at me as we continued to walk, her short cropped blond hair blowing across her face from the breeze that I couldn’t feel. “Rowan, you will remain a Council member until you Fade Out, and then an alternate bloodline will be chosen to take your place.”
“Until I Fade Out?” I stopped walking and stared at her. “How long will that be? And who chooses when this will happen?”
“God, the Universe, the Goddess and God…whomever you believe in, they are all equal and all the same. No name you give is wrong, and no name you choose will offend. As long as you believe in something, that is all that matters,” Evelyn answered softly as she continued walking to nowhere in particular. I moved my feet again and followed. “You will Fade Out when your original lifespan would have ended. As for how long that may be…I have no clue. It is up to God, the Goddess, the Universe, whichever name you prefer to use.”
I thought about how long the average person lived nowadays and began to panic all over again. A statistic from a past school project flashed through my mind: The average lifespan for a female was 81.3 years. I nearly laughed in hysteria at the thought of remembering something I never in a million years would ever have thought I’d need to know.
There was no way I could keep my sanity in tack for another sixty-four years or so. No way.
My feet faltered and I shook my head. “I can’t believe this. I wish there was a way to reverse it all… I wish there was a way for my mom to take the place she was supposed to and give me back my life.”
I folded in half where I stood and crumbled to the ground. My dad, broken and shattered, flashed through my mind as the hope I’d gathered against the idea to fix him by gaining my life back burst into flames inside me without the questions ever having passed my lips.
“If we cannot accept what has been done, then we must find a way to change it…even in death,” Evelyn said, her voice sounding strange, but firm.
I shifted my gaze to her and stared as her words echoed through my mind. I wondered about their meaning. “I don’t understand.”
“Nothing is ever final. Life and death are intertwined always, each woven by a blanket of transitions, of changes. For something to be final, it would have to be stagnant, never changing, never transitioning, never moving—ended. This is something you are not. Don’t accept what has happened to you as an end, because it’s not. You have shifted to a new lesson for your soul. Your soul is young; it is ever learning. Its full cycle has not yet been completed. As to when it will, no one can say, and until that time, nothing is final.”
Each word Evelyn spoke added another spark of life to a dead thought in the recesses of my mind. It pulsed with hope and promise until it grew to fill my mind completely. There was a way to trade places with my mother and reverse all that had been done. There had to be.
“Some commit suicide out of hate for what they have done, some out of loss and sorrow, and some out of pain. A suicide’s sentence depends on whether there were tears shed for that soul when they died and the emotions that were captured within them. This can lighten their sentence in Purgatory or add to it.”
My mother was in Purgatory. I remembered dimly that was where suicides went to see the effect their choice had on those they loved. The wind picked up and whisked fallen petals from a nearby flowerbed around in a circle in front of me. A familiar noise sounded—crows gathered on the Emergency Entrance sign. Jet had once told me that crows were a symbol for change, and I wondered if their symbolism still applied to me now. Was I about to change again? Or were they here for the Reaper I’d just helped create inside?
“I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand exactly what you’re telling me. Are you saying that I need to go to Purgatory to find my mother? How would that change anything?” I asked as hope blossomed within my mind. If all it took was for me to find my mother and ask her to take her rightful place in order for me to gain my life back—I’d do it.
“Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the way it sounds. Finding your mother in Purgatory will be harder than you can imagine.”
“Where is Purgatory at? How do I find it?” I wondered absentmindedly as I stared at the crows glistening black feathers—they looked wet in the bright sunlight—and ignored her warning.
“Ask Jet,” Evelyn insisted.
Hearing his name, I glanced up and held her stare, wondering what she had meant. How would Jet know? And then, I realized why. He would know because he was a Reaper, and Reapers were the ones who escorted recently departed souls where they needed to be, whether it was the Crossover Portal or the Purgatory Portal. Fortunately for me, all of the souls I had harvested during my Reaper training were destined for the Crossover Portal. The Purgatory Portal was something I had yet to see.
“But be warned, Rowan, Purgatory is where those go to be tormented due to their actions from when they were living. It’s a place of anguish, a place where those are sent to suffer for all wrong they have done until they are purged of either their evil or have reflected enough on their actions as a suicide to be allowed to Crossover,” Evelyn insisted.
I remembered Jet telling me at one point that there was no Heaven or Hell, that those were things we created for ourselves here on Earth while we were still living, but now that I knew about Purgatory and the Crossover Portal…Heaven and Hell seemed pretty real.
Blackness swirled around my ankles and a tugging pulled at the edges of my soul. I shifted my eyes to Evelyn and noticed the same was happening to her. Somewhere in the world we were about to create another Reaper.
“How am I supposed to find my mother if I can’t even control when I leave and when I stay?” I asked irritated and highly emotional sounding.
Evelyn’s lips twisted into the faintest smirk imaginable. “Easy, once you step into the portal you cannot be summoned anywhere.”
I watched as the tendrils of blackness snaked their way up my body, creating the signature cloak of a Reaper Council member, and thought of the freedom I would feel once I crossed through the Purgatory Portal. Another fear swam fast to the surface of my mind, and I struggled to voice my newest concern before we both gave in to the tugging of our souls.
“What about the others? What will happen once they figure out I’m gone?”
“I don’t know.” She smiled. “I guess this will be a lesson for our souls as well.”
Blackness slipped across my neck and over my head, forming the hood of my long, traditional Reaper cloak. “Why are you helping me?” I asked quickly, before we vanished from where we stood to be placed somewhere else side by side with the others.
“I wouldn’t say I’m helping you; I’d say I’m opening your eyes.”
“And why would you do that?” I questioned.
“Why not?”
I couldn’t respond because in the blink of an eye we were no longer standing in front of a hospital, but instead standing side by side with Damaris and William, gazing at a horrible car accident.
CHAPTER FIVE
I stood at Jet’s and my spot, watching the sun set over the edge of the ocean as I waited for him. It had been two whole days since I
’d last seen him. The emptiness I felt when he wasn’t with me echoed through my soul as if it were nothing but an empty shell.
Long after the final shades of oranges and purples had disappeared, I still stood alone. Allowing the water to slip across the tops of my bare feet without feeling it, I replayed my conversation with Evelyn from earlier. As her words churned through my mind, I felt both nervous and hopeful.
I knew nothing about Purgatory. I couldn’t even remember anything I’d learned about it while I had been alive. A sinking feeling that it was going to be difficult to find my mother smothered any thoughts of hope.
I waited for what seemed like another hour before finally giving up on the thought of meeting with Jet and left to check on my father.
Nothing seemed to have changed. Boxes were still stacked throughout the house, and my father was still a broken fragment of the man he used to be. The only difference was, now my room matched the rest of the house.
My bookshelf was empty. My dresser was bare. My bed was now nothing but a metal frame, box springs, and a mattress. The same hollowness that had echoed in every room besides my own had finally made its way inside. The sight was almost too much to bear. It tugged at the edges of my soul and threatened to rip it apart. Seeing my things packed away made everything that much more real.
I was gone to him. Gone to everyone.
I moved to sit at the edge of what used to be my bed. The mattress didn’t indent, nor did the springs squeak beneath me. It was as if I had never sat down at all. I didn’t know why this bothered me; it wasn’t like I didn’t already know I had to concentrate hard on things in order to affect them. Maybe it was more proof of my reality, proof I didn’t need at the moment.
A shuffling of feet bounced off the barren walls in the hall as my dad stumbled toward my room. He paused in the doorframe to finish off the remnants of the whiskey bottle he held in his hand, and then he chucked it at my opened closet door. It shattered on impact and fell to the floor in glittering, wet pieces.
Hereafter (A Reaper Novella) Page 3