by Anela Deen
“Yep,” I said through stuffed cheeks. “I have a call tonight too.”
Nana was the anti-thesis to my mother. The woman threw a parade every time I sneezed. Not that I objected to it, you know, since it made her happy. She was also the only other person who knew about my odd…talent. She’d seen me do it once as a kid, pulling open a padlock on bike rack as easily as a snap button. She’d wept and said I was touched by Jesus. I made sure never to be so careless again.
“You’re such a hard worker, m’hijo,” she said and brushed at the dark hair over my brow. “Where is this job you go to?”
The plate empty, I took it to the sink and fished out two glasses from one of the open cupboards.
“Not sure really,” I said as I filled them with water from the tap. “I have to look it up. Someplace called Sunny Oak Hills.”
“The old cemetery?”
I returned to my seat with a frown. “Nah, it must be a different one.”
“That the only Sunny Oak Hills I know.” Her forehead crinkled with worry. “You are sure this safe?”
“Of course, Nana. If it’s a cemetery then there must be some gate that’s acting up. Anyway, most people there are dead so what’s the danger?”
Her face took on one of those nervous looks Catholics get when someone walks over a grave or says they don’t believe in the devil.
“You must be careful, mi amor. You are special,” she said and crossed herself as if to convey added protection. “You remember tu padre.”
I sighed. “Dad died in a car accident, Nana.”
She gave my cheek a sharp pinch. “Carajo. That is how he die, not why.”
There was no point arguing it with her. She had long ago decided that something more otherworldly occurred to deprive her of her only son than a pick-up truck blowing a red light at an intersection. But that was the way it went in life. That was why I’d grown up without a father. No God. No mystical Plan for us all. Just vehicular negligence and common-as-dirt tragedy.
“I’ll be careful,” I promised and nudged the bottle of medication toward her. “Come on, Nana. For me?”
She gave me another of her smiles and tapped out a pill.
“Okay m’hijo. For you.”
Chapter 3
Sunny Oak Hills didn’t look like a cemetery.
Cemeteries have trimmed lawns and paved driveways and resin-based plot markers with tin bud vases at one corner.
This place looked more like a graveyard.
Located outside of the city limits, the parking was more of a tumble weed and dirt situation than an actual lot. I pulled in front of the entrance and stared at it through the windshield of my truck. Bordered by a wall of stonework that had seen better days, a pair of frail gates stood at the entrance, their intricate metal scrollwork covered in dead vines and rust. One side hung off its hinge. It creaked and banged against its bearings with each puff of wind.
Beneath a halo of moonlight, darkness lingered in pockets around crumbling gravestones and tombs. Even the shadows had shadows. Sunny Oak Hills, huh? A blind man must’ve named this place. All it lacked was some rolling mist and a few teenagers with a faulty flashlight climbing the wall on a dare.
I still had my hand on the key in the ignition, debating whether I should leave. Not because I believed in ghosts or nonsense about lingering spirits. I wasn’t afraid of spooky locales. After all, I’d been forced to dig through my mother’s underwear drawer to retrieve her hidden stash of mad money during one of her epic card games with the neighborhood ladies. I was no stranger to horrifying places. I just wasn’t in the mood to be the butt-end of a prank. Clearly there was nothing here that needed to be unlocked. Two minutes in the presence of a captivating woman and here I sat by myself on a Friday night in the middle of nowhere. Time to reevaluate your life, Sam.
I glanced about once more.
No one.
I started to turn the key. The dashboard lit up.
Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned.
A face stared back at me through the driver’s side window.
I jolted in my seat with a yelp and banged my head on the roof. It was the girl from the mall. Her face registered no reaction to my startled acrobatics. How did I miss her standing there?
Heart thudding, I rolled down my window. “I thought you’d stood me up.”
And cue the date innuendos. Great.
Her eyes flicked up to the sky and back, unblinking.
“You’re early,” she said. “I could not arrive sooner. I had another appointment before this one.”
She stepped back from the door expectantly.
“Listen,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anything in there that needs a locksmith. If it’s the gate, I’m sure a good push is all it needs.”
“It’s not the gate.”
As if that were explanation enough, she turned and started toward the entrance. She crossed into the beams of my headlights.
Her long, dark hair swished over the back of a black raincoat cinched about her trim waist. It hung down to her knees. No hint of fabric peeked beneath its hem. I briefly imagined her naked under there like a pathetic towney.
Then I noticed her bare feet. That took care of the happy thoughts.
She looked young, but not young enough to be a runaway and too clean to be homeless. That left me with door number three: a mentally unsound girl leading me into an old graveyard at night.
Time to hit the road.
My hand went back to the key in the ignition. And let go again.
If she really was disabled, I couldn’t just leave her on her own at night. There were no other cars, which meant she walked here. We were outside of town. Who could say where she’d wander if I left? She might run into the wrong kind of person and then…Well, I wouldn’t want to live with that over my head forever.
I got out of the truck and jogged after her. She reached the gates before I caught up. As she stepped in front of them, they swung open, smoothly and silently, as if they recognized her and welcomed her in. My stride stuttered to a halt. Then I mentally called myself an idiot. Gates didn’t move of their own will. It must’ve been a well-timed gust of wind that did it. I had to stop listening to the ghost stories Nana brought home from church. Obviously, they were messing with my head.
The girl paused at the threshold and turned her winter-blue stare on me. “Come,” she said. “It’s this way.”
I looked beyond her to the quiet that lay amid the tall grasses and grave markers.
She noticed my hesitation. “You have no need to fear. The dead that rest here have no one who remembers them anymore.”
Was that supposed to make this less creepy? She didn’t give me a chance to object and headed in without backward glance. I swallowed hard and followed.
The farther in we went, the more I noticed the way she walked with the directional certainty of someone strolling across their own yard. Exactly how often did she come here? More curiously, while I bumbled through thickets of knee-high weeds and uneven stones, her steps remained fluid, as if the terrain itself bent out of her way.
I tried to remember the lefts and rights as we took them, but quickly lost track. Thanks very much for the brain atrophy, GPS.
Several sticker patches later, she stopped in front of a stone mausoleum. Its entrance was marked by an archway. Time and weather had buffed away the name that was once carved into the high part of the curve. Three steps led up to a sealed wall. Illegible graffiti had been scribbled across it in bright yellow and green spray paint.
Kids these days. There were no swears or unevenly drawn boobs, but still.
She pointed at the wall. “Here.”
I stared at it. Then at her. “There’s nothing to open here. It’s sealed up.”
Impatience drifted into her cool gaze. “This is the door.”
I looked at the wall again. Maybe if I humored her, I could convince her to come with me. St. Joseph’s still had a shelter, last I k
new. I’d swing by a drive-through to get her a meal and then see if the shelter had an open bed, at least until I figured out where she came from.
I hopped up the few steps and examined the wall. It was made of cement. Odd.
I poked my head around the side of the structure. In stark contrast, the white cement wall pressed up against the dark, aged stonework that comprised the main building. This had been added recently.
Still no door though. No hint of a knob or bore hole marred its scratchy surface.
I turned back. “There isn’t a lock here to open. I’m sorry, I don’t see what I can do.”
“Put your hand on the wall,” she said, “as you can do with any door, and use your will to open it.”
A cold trickle went down my spine. Impossible. She couldn’t know. I made sure no one ever saw that all I needed to disengage a lock was a wish and the touch of my hand.
I tried at a confused smile. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do. You open doors. You always have.”
“With my tools, sure. Not my will.”
Her pale eyes met mine with lethal warning. “Do not lie to me. I know who you are, Samuel Ruiz Alvarez de Molina, and what you are. Now,” she nodded at the mausoleum. “Open the door.”
“How do you know my full name?” I whispered. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?” The question seemed to amuse her. “I thought by now you would’ve guessed. Not one of His brighter works, but if I must spell it out…”
Almost imperceptibly, her face changed, an invisible mask slipping down. I glimpsed something else looking out at me from behind the eyes of the girl, something dark and deep and ageless before the chasm of time.
Then, just as suddenly, it was gone.
As were Nana’s empanadas.
I managed to get down the steps before I hurled the contents of my stomach into the weeds.
Me and dinner just weren’t meant to be today.
Chapter 4
She gave a distasteful sigh. “A tender belly as well. I simply don’t have time for this.”
I wiped at my mouth and took several shaky steps away from her. Now that I knew what she was, I wondered how I didn’t see it before.
The bloodless skin. The spectral blue eyes. The unnatural stillness.
“Am I going to die?” I rasped.
She eyed my terrified expression with a smirk. “If I had come for you, do you think I would’ve brought you here to do it?”
“How should I know how it works?”
“A graveyard? A bit predictable, don’t you think?”
“Do you worry about those kinds of things?”
She shrugged. “I abhor cliché. Be at ease, Sam. It’s not your time. When it is, I will take you where you are. Awake or asleep. Clothed or naked as the day you were born. In sin or in absolution. When I come for you, you will not wonder if you’re the reason I’m there. One moment you’ll see me. The next you’ll draw your last breath.”
It was just as well I’d already emptied my stomach. The world wobbled. I leaned over, grabbed my knees and took several deep breaths.
“Are you quite through? I’m on a schedule and I need that door opened.”
She sounded just enough like my mother to enable me to stave off the dizziness.
“Well, I beg your pardon, but it’s not every day that a mere mortal encounters…well, you know.” I gestured to fill in the gap. I couldn’t bring myself to actually say it.
“What?” she said with a gleam in her eye. “Death? The Grim Reaper? I haven’t gone by the old titles for a long time. I chose a name a while back.”
“A name.”
“Yes, these days most of your kind calls me Alice.”
“Alice.”
She arched a brow at me. “Enjoy repeating things, do you? Yes. Alice. When I took it originally it was Adalhaidis but I allow the use of the modern version.”
I looked at her like a bent twig. “I’m pretty sure humanity never calls you by Alice.”
“Humanity?” She grunted. “Oh, that’s right. You don’t know anything yet. I’m amazed they haven’t sent a mentor to reign you in considering how you toss the miracles about like flea-market fish. How do you think I found you so easily? You shine like a beacon in the night.”
It was as if she spoke a language I didn’t understand.
“What miracles? I just open doors.”
She huffed in exasperation. “Fine. It’s not my problem. Let them deal with you as they wish.” She pointed at the wall. “Open it, if you please. I’m falling behind.”
I looked at her askance. “What’s in there?”
“A dead man.”
“Well, I figured that much, but aren’t you a little late considering the age of the place?”
She threw me a sardonic glance. “A recently dead man.”
It came together for me then. The old graveyard that no one visits. The new cement wall over an old mausoleum.
“Are you saying there’s a murdered guy in there?” I glanced about nervously which was idiotic. The murderer had to have been long gone by now. Still, I couldn’t help but stare at the surrounding shadows, as if to find a silhouette lurking nearby with a bloodied knife clutched in a gloved hand. “Should we call the police or something?”
“You can if you wish. I’m not here for the body.”
“A cement wall is enough to block Death, huh?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He was gutted and then sealed behind those incantations before he died. That’s what is blocking me.”
“Incantations? You mean the graffiti?”
Again, the condescending smirk. “Right, the graffiti. So, if you wouldn’t mind doing what you do so I can collect the soul and continue with my roster, I’d be most appreciative.”
It sounded straight forward enough, at least, as straightforward as this night had gone so far. And if there really was a soul trapped in there…
I went up the steps and faced the wall again. Lifted my hand. I looked back at her. She stood with absolute stillness, staring like an oil painting with eyes that tracked my every move.
“How do I know I can believe you? This isn’t going to open a hell mouth or something, is it?”
“Damnation is not in my purview. Only death.”
Eerie, and yet I sensed it was the truth in the same way I could sense the sunlight just before dawn, or the sadness of others, like raindrops on my face.
I just knew.
I pressed my hand to the wall. There isn’t any special song or dance to my skill, but there is a feeling I summon to it. Not like an order or a power that I issue from my mind—just the opposite in fact. There is no force behind it at all. When I want a door to open, I touch it, and I ask of it to open. My heart fills with a humility drawn from someplace deep down.
Then the words come. Soft, like a prayer.
I said them now.
“Please. Open.”
Usually what follows was a release, like the turn of a key in a lock.
That didn’t happen this time.
Instead a raucous vibration responded to my request, like the twang of a guitar chord through an amplifier turned up to the max. It sent my words echoing throughout an endless expanse so vast my mind could not comprehend the scope of it. All at once, I felt every door in the universe swing open.
A shockwave pulsed down my fingertips and up my arm. It repelled me away from the wall like a round house kick to the chest. I flew backward, feet sailing over the steps, and landed in a heap on the hard ground.
Groggily, I opened my eyes to find Alice standing over me.
“Excellent work,” she sneered down at me like I’d served her cold soup. “Can’t you conduct a simple miracle without allowing it to reverberate throughout eternity?”
Chapter 5
I sat up and rubbed the back of my throbbing head. “That—that’s never happened before.”
“Have you any idea of the mess you just made?” She scowled at the wall.
“And you didn’t even manage to open the door I wanted.”
My legs felt like they had the consistency of one of Nana’s gelatin salads. I tried to stand but flopped back down with a thud.
Alice paid no attention to me. Her eyes scanned the empty skies as she mumbled to herself, “Maybe there’s still some time before anything notices what happened.”
That sounded ominous, but at the moment other problems held my attention. I socked my legs a couple of times with a fist. The feeling registered only distantly.
Fantastic.
“Hey, is this going to be permanent?”
She barely looked at me. “There are greater concerns at the moment.”
I held up my hands. “Oh hey, pardon me for bothering with trifles like non-functioning limbs.”
Her eyes narrowed and it occurred to me that I might not want to be as cavalier with the sarcasm when addressing Death.
I moderated my tone. “Listen, whatever just happened, it wasn’t me. It was like something reflected my request outward.”
Recognition registered on her face, followed by wrath. “There’s only one person powerful enough to counteract an appeal from your kind. I warned that old conjurer not to interfere in my domain.” She turned around. “Let’s go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“We must pay him a visit.”
“Who?”
“The witch doctor responsible for those incantations and this entire calamity.”
I waited for her to say the rest of the joke.
Nope, she was serious.
“Right, that sounds like a hoot and all, but,” I thwacked my thigh. “I can’t move my legs, remember?”
“That’s just as well. I don’t have time for your mortal method of travel.”
I didn’t have the chance to recoil before she reached down and grasped my arm. Her touch was like being impaled by an icicle.
One moment I sat in the brown grass…
…the next I was in the city standing on the sidewalk.
Dizziness and nausea closed over me like a rockslide. I tumbled backward into a glass wall and sank to the ground. My lungs were a pin cushion filled with icy needles. I couldn’t breathe. My whole body hurt.