Reaping Havoc

by AJ Rose

  Wes waved a hand at her as if to say, “See? I wasn’t lying.”

  “Does everybody know this?” Nate asked.

  “All the locals do, hon. You want one more beer before I bring your bill, or are you good?”

  They waved her off with their thanks and she disappeared, returning quickly so they could pay. Outside, the rain had slowed to a fine drizzle. With hunched shoulders, they walked to their vehicles, parked side by side at the far end of the bar’s lot. As Nate unlocked his Jeep, Wes spoke to him over the hood of his truck.

  “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”

  Nate turned. “I don’t believe in all that hocus pocus crap. They’re just a family, and Mitch seemed nice. He talked to me more than anyone else here did, besides you.”

  Wes grinned. “Yeah, that’s kind of how we keep the tourist population down. Polite but no conversation.”

  “Well, how am I supposed to fit in if no one will talk to me?” Nate asked.

  “Get a job. Stay for more than a few weeks. We’re not a bunch of exclusionary assholes in Caperville, Nate. We wait out the vacationers and the ones left over are the ones still worth talking to.”

  Would the Seeker family say the same?

  “You are a sad, lonely man, Wes,” Nate chided, trying to keep his teasing tone from wavering, then got in his Jeep. They followed each other through the rain-slicked streets to their apartment building, where they bid each other good night when Wes stopped at the second floor and Nate continued up the stairs to the fourth.

  His apartment was pretty bare, containing only a couch he’d gotten off Craigslist in the last couple weeks, a coffee table, and some milk crates to hold his books. He’d mounted one shelf for his trophies, and in the corner was his quiver of skis and other equipment.

  It wasn’t a fancy place, but he didn’t need all that. One bedroom down a hallway off the living room, a bathroom, closet, and the kitchen with the curved breakfast bar separating it from the living room. The doorways were arched, except for the bedroom and bathroom to accommodate doors, and the walls held little inset nooks for knickknacks. Otherwise, it was white walls, beige carpet, and not a lot else but for the big picture window. That was the majesty of the place, overlooking Caper Mountain, after which the town had been named. The view was stunning, comforting in a way Nate needed now more than ever. The brief sadness from earlier at the bar welled up like blood from a freshly opened wound.

  Staring out the window into the rain, darkness obscuring the beauty of the landscape, Nate let the pain come, well aware if he suppressed it, it would later swallow him whole.

  “You’d have loved it here, Tate,” he murmured, seeing his reflection in the glass more than the outdoors. “It’s beautiful. The slopes have a lot of promise, and the season’s not open yet, but I’m betting the snow is first class. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be such a popular resort. We could have shredded it.”

  If there was an answer, he didn’t catch it, not that he expected one. It didn’t stop the ache the silence brought to his chest.

  His cell phone trilled on the counter beside his keys, a ringtone he knew all too well and ignored in a bubble of anger. He turned, staring at the phone as the screen went dark and the ringtone cut off. When he looked out the window again, he thought he caught a glimpse of movement behind him in the reflection, but he knew it was wishful thinking; no one was there.

  The quiet was broken seconds later with a chime for yet another voicemail he’d delete without listening to. His parents could fuck right off a cliff as far as Nate was concerned.

  Recognizing the signs for a night of wallowing, with only a slight buzz left from the couple beers at dinner, Nate decided he wasn’t going to indulge in any more self-pity. He pulled his MacBook from the bag resting beside the couch, sat, and kicked his feet up on the battered coffee table he’d rescued from the apartment dumpster, stripped and sanded, then painted a deep red. He was kind of proud of the piece, and when he had a little more money, he’d get furniture to complement it. Maybe a dark gray sofa and a fluffy, white throw rug. He’d always wanted a rocking chair, too. It would fit nicely by the window. He remembered the one in his grandparents’ house; he and Tate used to rock really hard to see if they could get it to tip backward. They never succeeded, but the swing and dip of the chair had felt like a ride. The first time he’d strapped on skis, it had felt like that euphoria of almost tipping over, only bigger.

  His login screen came to life and he pulled up the website for Caper Mountain Resort, reading once again the listing for jobs. Even if he didn’t make the cut for the ski instructor positions they had open, there were a couple other things he could apply for when the time was right. There was one for a lift operator, two snowmakers, a concierge catering to people staying in the Caper Lodge, and at worst, a server position in the fancy restaurant situated on the top floor of the lodge overlooking the mountain.

  Nate wasn’t above getting his hands dirty, especially if it meant he could stay here and live by his own rules. He opened his resume and looked it over for the thousandth time, hoping it’d be enough to get someone’s attention at the resort. Frankly, any job that had to do with skiing was something he could happily do, and he needed that connection to the slopes now more than ever.

  Then, with great reluctance, he plugged Tate’s name into a google search to see if any new articles had been written. There were all the old ones, announcing the once-Olympic-alternate’s tragic death and past accomplishments, and those previous, which had kept up with Tate’s accolades. But nothing new. People were moving on. Well, it had been six months, and people were easily distracted.

  A noise from the hall made him look up. He listened attentively, and it came again, like something scraping against wood. Padding down the hall in his bare feet, he saw nothing out of place when he checked the bathroom. In his bedroom, the light was off and only a sliver came in from the streetlamps outside, splashing a sharp line of light between the curtains and across the ceiling. Nate flipped on the overhead light and looked around. Immediately, he saw the picture of him and Tate lying centered on the bed. Frowning, he picked it up and stared at the happy faces in the photo.

  God, I miss you, Tate. He fought the sting in his sinuses that portended tears. He’d cried enough in the last six months to last a lifetime. Returning the photo frame to the nightstand where it had been, he pondered how it had come to be on the bed. He didn’t let himself dwell on it and returned to his computer in the living room, unsettled. Not really sure what he was doing, he backtracked to Google’s search page again and typed in Mitch Seeker.

  There was an author who’d written a series of books about seeking Christianity, and a bunch of links to the Seeker Transformers collection, but it took until page two for him to find anything relevant to the man he’d run into at the grocery store, and it was only a small article in the Caperville Gazette about a fatal car accident on Hwy 550 a couple months prior. The line, “The passenger in the car, Mitchell Seeker, was not injured in the crash,” was the only mention. He skimmed the article and learned the driver of the vehicle, Serena Clancy, had suffered a seizure at the wheel and flipped her car over a guardrail and down a small embankment, where it came to rest on its side against a tree. Mitch had needed the Jaws of Life to cut him out, but he’d been uninjured. The article quoted an anonymous emergency worker saying it was a miracle Seeker had walked away unscathed.

  Nate frowned, looking at the accompanying pictures of the mangled car and the smiling photo of the woman who’d been killed, an aspiring photographer who’d recently moved to the area. There was virtually no information about Seeker, his age, or what his relationship had been to the deceased. Simply that he was in Clancy’s car when she died. Nate poked around a bit, trying to find out if Serena and Mitch had been friends. When he found himself on the funeral home’s website, hoping to see Mitch’s name on the virtual guestbook or among condolences from friends and relatives, he realized how creepy it was and closed the br
owser.

  It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to stalk the guy or waste his money at a more expensive grocery store in the hopes of another chance encounter, even if Wes’s warning had intrigued him more than it scared him off. But maybe Wes was right.

  It wasn’t as if Nate didn’t have enough death in his life already.

  Chapter 3

  Connections of Many Kinds

  Mitch wouldn’t admit to himself why he was scanning the streets so intently as he drove to the bookstore. Even if he caught a glimpse of Mr. Perfect’s Jeep Wrangler hardtop with the ski rack on the roof, he wouldn’t have known what to do about it.

  Nothing. You’re not looking for anything. You’re being a defensive and conscientious driver.

  The self-delusion continued through the day every time the bell chimed over the door to Seraph Books, the bookstore his parents owned and where he worked. By closing time, he had to acknowledge the disappointment in the pit of his stomach, and he blew out a breath, fanning his bangs out of his eyes.

  “That’s about the sixth heavy sigh you’ve heaved in the last ten minutes, son,” Charles Seeker, Mitch’s father, said.

  Mitch shrugged and scooted a box of new books closer to the computer on the side of the counter opposite the register so he could put them in inventory before shelving them.

  “Something you wanna talk about?”

  “I’m just torturing myself over here, Dad. Nothing to worry about. I’m sure it’ll happen a lot in the next couple hundred years.”

  Charles approached the counter and leaned his forearms on it, getting comfortable. Mitch tried to ignore him even as the waft of aftershave he’d smelled since he was a kid offered comfort. Charles looked to be an average man in every sense of the word, unless you accounted for his lineage. He had dark hair, brown eyes, and medium build. Mitch, who’d gotten his features from his mother, knew there was nothing average about his father. First, the guy was 279 years old and only a smidgen of gray touched the hair at his temples. The ruggedness of his face was becoming less rakish and more weathered. The signs of age were accelerating again after the pause responsible for a reaper’s long lifespan. Second, he’d never been sick a day in his life. Third, there was a kindness in Charles one didn’t see often, even among those with typical lives.

  “I can’t have anyone beating up my youngest son, even himself. Lemme go lock up and we’ll talk.” Charles turned away.

  “Dad,” Mitch protested. “It’s nothing new, okay? No need to rehash it again. All I want to do is check these books in and go get some Chinese food. My bed and my dog are calling my name.”

  Charles ignored him, resuming his position in front of Mitch, who tried to keep entering inventory. His dad staring at the side of his face became unnerving after a few minutes, though, and Mitch rolled his eyes and finally met that penetrating gaze.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “Same old, same old,” Mitch grumbled.

  “You know, you don’t have to commit to a life of celibacy. I didn’t.”

  “I know. You had several girlfriends, all of whom got fed up with the secrecy about your strange or inconveniently timed absences and left you. They all thought you cheated. Until you met Mom and decided she was the one.”

  Charles straightened, tapping his wedding ring on the counter. “It worked for me. I didn’t have to watch any of those women die. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t love them while I was dating them.”

  “I know, Dad. I’m not calling you a whore. I’m just saying it was still heartbreak, wasn’t it? They left you.”

  Charles ran a hand through his hair. “Well, it wasn’t fun, but it was a lesser price to pay.”

  “You ever think of not having kids? Letting the pact die?”

  “Nope,” Charles answered, sorting the books Mitch had already entered. “I don’t know what the consequences would have been, and frankly, I was too afraid to find out.”

  “I’m not a fan of that part,” Mitch complained. “I don’t know if I want kids and I don’t want to be roped into them.”

  “Then it’s a good thing your brother’s getting married next year.”

  Mitch leveled him with a look. “I’m not so selfish that I’m okay with putting the whole burden on Morgan. He’s going to have to watch Samantha grow old while he crawls along looking thirty and dealing with people talking about them. Eventually, he’ll have to live without her and any daughters they might have. That’s not something I’d wish on anyone just so I can get out of having a son, Dad.”

  “Morgan knows the drill and thinks Samantha’s worth it. Besides, even if you have kids, who’s to say you’ll have boys? Don’t worry about it unless you have to. But you’re getting me off track. You’ve known for years what the deal is, so why is it bothering you today in particular?”

  Astute as ever, his father.

  “Dad, what part of ‘I really don’t want to talk about it’ isn’t getting in? Do you have wax buildup in your ears?” He grinned to soften the words.

  “I just hate to see you troubled. If I can help, I want to. Plus I’m your father, so I’m allowed to be nosy. You know your mother won’t get all the gossip, so if I don’t dig, no one will.”

  “Good. I like it that way.”

  “Did you meet someone? Is that what happened? It’s not so abstract anymore and suddenly your lifetime of self-imposed loneliness looks a lot more painful to stick to?” Charles guessed. As guesses went, it wasn’t far off the mark.

  “I wouldn’t say I met him exactly,” Mitch corrected, and then realized he’d let his armor crack and groaned, hurriedly picking up the next box.

  “Okay, so you’re interested in a guy you haven’t met yet. You don’t want to meet him so the temptation to date him goes away, but in the meantime, you’re looking for him around every corner. Every time someone comes in who’s not your dream guy, you sigh in disappointment. Am I close?”

  Mitch stared at him. “How do you do that?”

  Charles grinned. “You’re forgetting I went through the same gamut of emotions you’re fighting. I watched my dad lose four wives, my mother included, before finally hitting his aging period and following the fifth one into the great beyond. I saw his pain firsthand. I felt pain of my own, because I loved those women as mothers. If anyone understands the urge to turn your back on it all, it’s me. But I can tell you, son, a life alone, especially doing what we do, is no life at all. Companionship makes the long years more bearable.”

  Mitch gritted his teeth. “We see death all the time. We’re surrounded by grief. Why would I want to wish more on myself?”

  Charles’s eyes glittered in the mood lighting he insisted having in the shop to make it feel like a cozy reading nook instead of a big, impersonal chain store. “Why would you want to wish loneliness on yourself? I hate the idea of my child living such a sad existence.”

  Mitch swallowed, his throat aching. This was why he hated talking about it. It always came down to a shitty choice versus a shittier choice. Be alone or become a widower who knew how many times. Instead of answering the question, he asked one of his own.

  “How did you know you’d get lucky and meet your soulmate for your last relationship and not your first?”

  Charles cleared his throat, blinking a time or two to get himself under control. “I didn’t. I took a risk. Two or three of the ladies I dated before your mother, I could have been very happy with for decades.”

  “But you held out.”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  “So what was different about Mom?”

  Charles’s eye twinkled, though he held Mitch’s gaze long enough it was clear he was dead serious. “I couldn’t stay away. The thought of her leaving me, thinking I was cheating, was too painful. The idea of her meeting and marrying someone else gave me cold sweats. I wasn’t equipped to watch her walk away. Our timing at the beginning of my aging period happened to be good luck. If I’d met her first, I still would have married her.”


  “Oh,” was all Mitch said.

  “Sometimes there’s just someone you’re supposed to be with. But if you don’t try, you won’t know. Life shouldn’t be about avoiding pain. It should be about finding happiness despite the pain.”

  “My dad, the philosopher,” Mitch said with a wry smile.

  “Well, I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen a lot of things. It’d be stupid not to use what I’ve learned to help you, wouldn’t it?”

  Mitch understood the implication that he’d be stupid not taking his father’s advice. “I’m not sure I’ll be setting up a profile on a dating site just yet, but I’ll think about what you said. That’s all I can promise.”

  “Good. That’s all I can ask. Now what do you say we get Chinese and take some back to your mother? We haven’t had dinner together in a couple months.”

  Mitch pointed to the box of books. “This will only take me a few more minutes, and then we can go. If you want to help me out by reshelving those two returns over there, I’m sure we can put a dent in China King’s menu.”

  “Atta boy,” Charles crowed, taking both the returns and the stack of new inventory to the racks.

  All that ‘life is about the journey’ crap has a place, right? Maybe Jeep Guy really could be perfect for me.

  The blossom of hope, tiny as he kept it, still glowed brightly in his chest. But it didn’t ease the fear gnawing in his brain like a rodent. He saw so often the pain people went through when they lost a loved one, it was hard to justify such grief being a price worth paying because he was lonely.

  The next couple days passed uneventfully, and Mitch spent time between the bookstore and home, playing with Sadie in the park before it got too cold and snowy to be outside for hours at a time. He’d finally talked himself out of looking for Jeep Guy and begun to relax for the first time in days.

  “One more throw, Sadie, and then we’re going.” The golden retriever sat obediently, her tail wagging and dragging her long hair across the grass. Her fur ruffled in the chilly breeze, though she panted from exertion. He threw the tennis ball behind her and she took off after it, a light brown streak of energy and exuberance that never failed to lighten his spirits.