by Amy Barrett
One by one, the silver people touched Ivan’s shoulder. The sickening rushing feeling of their souls passing through him made him dizzy. His tears vanished in the air. They could not touch Zerachiel.
Police officers and ambulance gathered around the scene. They took Zerachiel’s wingless body into their care. He was tied to the stretcher and put in the ambulance, covered in a black bag. Detective Kershaw arrived, looking around with her hands in her pockets. Ivan looked into her eyes and waved. She looked at him, but she didn’t see.
“Is he here detective?” another officer asked.
Kershaw shook her head. “Guess I was wrong.” She turned her back on Ivan. As each spirit hit him, he felt further from the real world.
“Wait, I’m here. Look at me.” Ivan’s words echoed around him. His heart started to race. He wouldn’t go back to being invisible, this couldn’t be it.
A man at the edge of the street reported to the detectives that he had seen a man who was with the dead one. Kershaw said she thought she knew the man who was described, and they would keep an eye out.
The more people who walked through Ivan, the more he knew that Kershaw would never find him. He knew where he needed to go if he ever wanted anyone to know he existed again. Ivan started to run. Some of the silver spirits got left behind and they trailed after him like the smoke from a moving steam train. Ivan passed through the people. The familiar numbness started spreading over his skin. He knew that soon he wouldn’t feel the throbbing pain in his arm. He would lose the burning in his eyes and the thudding of his feet on the ground. Yet if he could reach Ciara, if she knew that he was there, then he wouldn’t disappear entirerly. All he needed was for someone to sense him when he was standing right next to them. Without that he was afraid that he would fall into an abyss of nothingness. His life would become an old story with no one to tell it to.
The café came into sight. The blinds were open, and Ciara sat inside. She was chewing on her thumb nail and surveying the street outside of the window. Her hair was greasy and tied tightly back. Her skin shimmered in the lights of the café and she had her hand against her stomach where her wound was.
The café wasn’t crowded and every time the door opened Ciara would snap her gaze up then sigh.
Ivan passed through the window. The spirits had been left far in his wake, so he stood alone looking at his friend. If he could get close enough she would feel him. She would know that he was here. He was five strides from where she sat.
He took the first step. The tears still wet his cheeks.
Another step and she turned directly towards him. His breath caught.
The third step brought him near enough to hear her humming softly.
The fourth step meant Ivan could see the ragged edge of her chewed nail. He saw the broken piece hanging off the rest of it.
He tried to take the final step. He would be touching her. He would sit with her and she would know he had made it. He found he couldn’t get closer. An invisible wall kept him away. Ivan banged his hands against it. There was no feeling of contact with the wall and no sound, but he didn’t get through. Ivan pressed his palm against the surface.
“You can do this Ivan,” he said. Ciara checked her phone then looked out the window again.
Ivan banged relentlessly on the unseen guard that kept him away from her.
Everything within the café continued unfazed. As if mocking him, another man moved through the wall without any effort.
“I can do this. I can do it,” Ivan chanted to himself while attacking the wall. It made no difference.
“I warned you this would happen.” Ivan started at the voice. He spun to its source. Even while drowning in this new misery he felt, a stab of joy came with the woman’s voice. For a moment his mind fooled him into thinking that it was Ciara and she had noticed him. When he didn’t see the expected face, the new pain dug deeper.
It was the other reaper who stood before him. She was as unmoving as the wall. Her voice was devoid of emotion. “You were told that the spirits were angry. You were told that the divine authorities would bring you back. This is how things are meant to be.” She walked to stand beside Ivan. Ivan grasped for her but his hand slipped through.
“You cannot hurt me.” She scowled at him.
Ivan rested his head on the wall. He sat against it and watched Ciara waiting for him.
The reaper was silent for a second.
“You are where you belong. We are reapers.” She tilted her head at Ciara. “She will forget about this and some day you will reap her. That is the way of things.”
Ivan let out shaky breaths and his fingertips went cold. A pit opened in his stomach.
The final two spirits entered the room. One of them ran to catch Ivan. It grabbed him and passed on. Ivan jerked but otherwise didn’t move.
The female reaper grinned. “The feeling is electric.” She shivered.
Ivan shook his head. “I don’t feel electric.”
“This is our duty.” She turned and walked away from him. Ivan jumped to his feet and followed her.
He reached out, but he could not touch her. “Don’t leave me. Just talk to me a bit longer.”
She flattened down the fronts of her trousers with her palms.
“Reaper.” She nodded and vanished.
Ivan called after her and ran around the room. The final spirit stood facing Ivan. Watching him, it remained totally still.
“Do it then! Its your fault I’m here so do what you came for!” Ivan yelled past the final tears his eyes could muster.
The spirit strolled to him and lifted its hand. It made as if to touch his face. Ivan leaned closer, trying to remember what the touch should feel like. All he felt was the soul pass on, and his hope wilt away.
***
Ciara had been waiting for the boys for ages. She had lost track of how long. The door opened again but it was a strange man. Ciara lifted her phone and stared at the minutes ticking past. A coffee machine hissed, and the door wailed open. When Ciara looked up from her phone again, Abyzou had sat in front of her.
The demon looked wrecked. Her hair was matted with blood and dirt. Her face was stained. A strike ran through her eyebrow, where a scratch had been and healed. Her expression was closed, and she had her lip between her teeth. Her clothes were torn and muddy. She didn’t look at Ciara at first. She focused on the table and her hands.
“What happened?” Ciara asked gently. She started to move to touch Abyzou’s hands. The demon shot her daggers from under damp eyelashes. Ciara took her hand back.
Abyzou took an audible breath. “Nick is dead.” Ciara gasped and widened her eyes.
Abyzou swallowed and went on. “Mephistopheles and his thugs got to him before he turned. He didn’t have the tough skin to protect him from the demon blade. I tried to destroy them, but I failed.”
Ciara was silent. There was nothing she could think to say.
“I can’t go back to hell,” Abyzou said wiping the bridge of her nose. “They won’t let me return after all that I have done.” She dropped her hands onto her lap. There were strips of skin ripped from beside her nails and she played with the loose parts of skin. One of her fingers began to bleed.
Ciara sat back and unfocused her eyes. “The boys haven’t comeback either.”
Abyzou shrugged.
“They said they would meet me here, but I haven’t seen them.” Ciara scaned outside the window again. Nothing out there gave a clue as to where her friends had gone. “What if something awful happened?”
Abyzou sighed and sank into the seat. “So what?”
Ciara narrowed her eyes at the demon. “You don’t care?”
“Why should I?”
Ciara leaned over the table into Abyzou’s face before she knew what she was doing. Her fingers bent into the tabletop. They hurt with the pressure she applied but she couldn’t stop herself. “They are our friends. They might need our help.”
At the angry tone of Ciara’s voice, t
he demon changed. She no longer hunched her shoulders into a slump but sprung up straight. She didn’t lean in like Ciara did but the look on her face made Ciara wish she was looking at someone else.
“And if they have had some problems how will you help? Even you must know that Ivan can’t stay here. He belongs as a reaper and Zerachiel belongs in heaven.”
Ciara cringed. “You don’t belong in hell.”
“What?” Abyzou lost the steel from her gaze.
“You are a demon and you don’t belong in hell. So maybe they don’t belong where they were born either.” Ciara looked out the window again.
Abyzou followed her example. “Trust me if I could be home right now I would.”
Ciara still held onto the dream of seeing the boys. They would round the corner and then Ivan would burst into the café with all the flare of a magician on his final trick. Zerachiel would roll his eyes and fondly touch the reapers arm and the two of them would settle at Ciara’s empty table and ask, “What next?”.
However, no matter how much will power Ciara threw at the corner of the street, it didn’t summon them.
“Look they probably just went back to where they started. They will figure a way back if they want to.” Abyzou rubbed her face.
Ciara hoped she was right, but she couldn’t imagine Ivan just deciding to go back to work. Yet Abyzou was right. She didn’t know what she would do even if she found out that something bad had happened.
“So,” Abyzou said after a long silence, “what next?”
Ciara was startled by hearing the words from inside her head being said outloud. She studied the demon’s face and smiled. “Well I am going to move into a house my grandmother owns. She is letting me live there while she stays with my mum.” There was another silence. “Wanna come with me?” Ciara asked.
Abyzou shrugged. Her eyes looked caged. “Sure. If you have a shower then I’m in.”
Ciara took a final look at the street. When she saw no sign of the boys she got up from her seat. “Come on then. We better get going if we are going to get home before dark.”
Abyzou rolled her eyes. “My home was always dark.” Despite her complaining, she stood and followed Ciara out.
***
The door of the café drifted shut and Ivan felt the pull of a dying soul and was yanked to another place.
Epilogue
Three weeks later…
The stepfather strode from the room. His hands were sweaty, and he had a lemon bitter smile on his face. He fixed his hair. He whistled a jolly tune that sank into the grey walls of the house.
His stepdaughter lay on the floor. She bit her tongue and a bruise was starting to form on her thigh the size of the heel of his hand. Her underwear lay discarded a few steps away. Her hair was like barbed wire and some strands had come loose and fell when she moved.
She crawled on her bruised knees to the door and flung it shut. The frame wobbled like jelly on impact. Shakily getting to her feet, she moved to the chair in front of the computer desk. She fell before she could reach it. She moaned then stifled her cries. Trying again, she reached the chair and moved it under the silver door handle. She folded onto the floor and covered her mouth to smother the sound as the tears fell freely.
The room was purple and held the smell of sweat and too much perfume. The curtains were pulled and hung submissively still. The light was a yellow hue. The room seemed sick under the glow. The bed was made to perfection. The lamp had fallen from the bedside table and the shade was dented.
“I can see why you are crying.” Ivan lounged in the corner, pretending to lean against a wall that in reality he would fall through. “I would cry too.”
The girl swallowed her tears. She moved to sit on the bed. She fell onto the mattress like into the arms of a white knight. With trembling hands, she pulled open the sticky drawer of the bedside table.
Ivan lingered and stared at a spot on the carpet. A stain held all his focus. The whistling of the man could still be heard.
The girl lifted out a bottle of pills. They jingled like jewels.
Ivan stood up from the wall. “Wait, I am here for you?”
The girl opened the bottle and spilled the contents onto the bed. Some tried to escape so she used her hands as barriers and pushed them all together. She cringed each time the whistling outside the door hit a high pitch.
Ivan came and sat on the bed facing her. She rose to go into the bathroom and came back with a glass of water. The glass was foggy from the freezing substance.
Ivan waved his hands around her face. “You are going to do this? Why?” As if in answer the whistler piped up again.
“Sure, there’s him but you can leave.” Ivan stood and paced. He threw his hands about. “I mean if you had any idea how many options you have. This is just one part of you. You can do something else.” He looked at his own hands. “You can be something else.” He ran across the room and looked into the girl’s eyes. She could not see him, She only saw the white villains lined up on the sheet before her.
“You don’t have to be another sad story.” He dropped his eyes. “I had a chance at a happy ending. Not many people have heard this. I don’t know why. There was really only one person I could tell I suppose, but I can’t talk to him anymore. I don’t believe in prayer or a nice place for souls like mine. I don’t think I will see him again.”
The girl swallowed the first pill. Her throat bulged then took it.
Ivan was lost in his own mind. “He won’t see me either. I won’t tell him how things are not great when I pretend they are. I won’t tell him that I hate where I am and what I am. I won’t tell him how I can’t find the way out cause there is none.” Ivan lifted his eyes again. The girl held one of the pills between two of her fingers.
“You could tell him for me I suppose.” He stood up suddenly. “But you won’t. Do you know why? Because you’re a selfish bitch. Do you even know what you have? You are going to throw it all away to him.” He gestured to the door where the whistler had left.
“You selfish girl. I would give all I have to be you, to even go back to how things were before I tried to be like you. To talk to my friend again cause I didn’t know I would miss him so much if I had to accept that I couldn’t see him anymore.” Ivan ran out of breath. A single tear wet his lips. He took a moment to regain himself. Shaking his head, he came to sit beside the girl. The tablet was balanced at the entrance to her mouth.
Ivan sighed. “None of this matters anyway, you can’t hear me. I am not sure you would care if you could.” He stuck up his middle finger at the sky. “Gods a cruel bastard for making me do this job alone and for making you live with that monster.”
The girl dropped the pill. Ivan jumped up at the sudden motion. It was as if her hand gave up on holding it. She closed her eyes and breathed. Throwing the covers over the pills she swept her hair out of her face. She wiped her cheeks with her fingers. She breathed in through her nose and gradually out of her mouth.
Ivan narrowed his eyes at her. “If its not you…?” Outside the door there was a loud bang. It was followed by thuds and then a grunt. The girl was out the door as fast as Ivan was through the wall. The man from earlier lay at the bottom of the stairs in a heap. One of his legs was bent backwards and his head was bleeding from above his left eye. His eyes rolled around in his skull. He looked up the steps at the girl above him. He mumbled slurred words at her. She didnt move. She clenched and unclenched her fists. He groaned louder. She moved towards him.
Ivan followed her. “There is no point in trying to help, mate. He’s a goner now.”
Ivan and the girl reached the man at the same time. The long-haired carpet stuck between her toes. Her red nail polish was a stark contrast to the cream floor. There were no windows about and the rest of the house was silent. A toy car lay near the crippled man. The top of the mini vehicle was crushed down. The girl bent towards the man’s face. The white lights made her hair the colour of whirlpool fridges. His struggling breaths blew he
r fringe up and down erratically.
With one massive intake of breath, she spat into the man’s face. The blob of spittle struck into his eye and then leaked out when he squeezed the eye shut. She turned and walked away from him.
Ivan watched this exchange. The man tried to grab her ankles as she left but he wasn’t strong enough. He was hardly able to lift his own arms.
Ivan touched the necklace which Zerachiel had given him. It felt warm and every time he held it he saw the face of his friend. He saw Zerachiel standing between him and the world. He heard the words “You are not a reaper, you are Ivan.”
The man saw Ivan during while he was thinking. His lips moved without any sound. Ivan came and crouched beside him.
“Shush. You don’t need to speak. I know what you are going to say.” Ivan extended a hand and waved it, as if painting a picture for the man. “You want to know who I am.” His tone was light. “You want to know what comes next.”
The man watched with huge eyes.
Ivan smiled at the man. It was the kind of smile he hadn’t done in a while.
“Aww this is the best part of the job you know. The longer I leave you, the more you will suffer. I mean, sure it has a time limit, but you want me to wait.” Ivan’s expression became dark. “I am Ivan. I am death and, mate, where you’re headed, you are gonna miss my gorgeous face.” Ivan dug his nails into the wound on the man’s skull. There was a strangled cry before the spirit passed on. Ivan felt nothing from the touch, but he was glad that the man did. The body fell still, poisonous eyes left unseeing and gawking at the ceiling.
Ivan stood up and fixed his jacket. He pulled the fabric tight to his shoulders. He smoothed his trousers flat. He fixed his chestnut waves into an orderly fashion. His head cleared to one single point of thought.
“Oh Betty,” he said in a singsong tone, “you thought you had me”.
Ivan stepped over the body and walked to the front door. He passed through it and out into the sun saturated day. He squinted into the light. “You think I’m trapped. But I’m Ivan mate, and I’m gonna find the exit in your maze.” The gem around his neck twinkled and winked in the sun.