The Death Catchers

by Jennifer Anne Kogler

  At the storm drain entrance I hopped the barrier fence, landing in an area about eight feet below ground level, surrounded by concrete on three sides. I was in the open-air part of the storm drain, standing in front of the tunnel where the giant pipes descended completely underground. I couldn’t see very far into the drain, but it was similar to an enormous concrete tube. The bottom was mossy and water slicked.

  I stood there, on the fringe of total darkness, shaking with fear. I wasn’t sure if I had any adrenaline left. Turning on my headlamp, I took a deep breath. I started with an all-out sprint. The beam of light from the headlamp bounced off the walls in front of me. A scurrying rat ran off into the darkness, soon joined by two more. I could’ve sworn they were crawling up my spine with their little clawed feet. Still I kept running. The spray-painted letters of legend appeared on some walls, though I didn’t stop in one place long enough to see what they depicted. Instead, I kept running.

  I ran and ran and ran, farther and farther into the black hole ahead of my small beam of light. I looked down at the compass. I was still headed north. Then I checked my left hand. Drake’s name was getting brighter. It was dark. It was cold and damp. And it smelled like dead animals.

  Suddenly up ahead, a concrete wall loomed in front of me, turning the passage hard to the right. I skidded to a stop in front of it.

  Just then, I heard a bone-chilling screech. I turned around. A bat was flying straight toward me, flapping like a demon. I screamed. My yelp echoed off one concrete wall and then the other, over and over again. I waved my arms and fell over, back into a puddle of rank, reeking water. The bat passed and I got up and bolted in another direction. I didn’t think about which way I should go. I lost track of my location in the darkness. For a moment, I thought I would die right there in the storm drain. Were the walls closing in? With only my small ray of light to guide me, I couldn’t really tell. I was damp with sweat and puddle water, but I didn’t stop running. I headed deeper into the storm drain network.

  After a few more minutes, I slowed down. There was another concrete wall ahead, which meant another turn. The compass indicated I was headed west. I stood in front of the wall and turned left. I felt Drake’s name tingle on my hand and knew I was headed in the right direction.

  I made the critical mistake of looking back into the darkness. I’d come a long way by now, which meant it would be a long way back if I ever wanted to see daylight again. I wasn’t sure I even remembered the way back. I forced myself to keep going. I swallowed my nausea and pounded ahead, splashing more scummy water on my jeans with each step.

  Finally, I reached another bend. I felt as if I’d traveled several miles. I took a deep breath, scanning the walls with the light of my headlamp. There it was—a rusty ladder hinged to the concrete wall. Drake’s name glowed in the darkness as brightly as if he were in the next room.

  I looked up.

  The ladder led directly up to a grate. It was partially pushed aside, revealing an opening big enough to crawl through. I listened, hoping to hear sounds of Bizzy yelling at Drake to get out of the cannery. I smelled the faint odor of natural gas.

  Without hesitating, I climbed the ladder, one rung at a time. It was corroded and felt gritty on my hands. I reached the top. The grate was directly above me.

  I pulled myself up through the small opening. When the top of my body was halfway into the cannery, I realized my hips weren’t going to fit through the opening. Damon and Randy must have slid the grate back when they left. The odor of gas was sharper now that I was partially inside.

  I grunted, trying to move the grate so I could squeeze through.

  “Hello?”

  It was Drake’s voice, coming from the far side of the room. “Drake, don’t move!” I screamed. I was stuck. My legs dangled below, still in the storm drain.

  “Drake, you can’t move!” I wiggled and struggled but I couldn’t free myself. “Don’t move! There’s a gas leak!” I screamed, suddenly realizing that Drake, with his chlorine-impaired sense of smell, had no clue what danger he was in. I heaved the entire weight of my body against the grate. I felt a sharp poke as the metal edge of the grate shoved into my ribs. But ever so slightly, the grate had slid to the side.

  “Lizzy?” Drake sounded very confused. “Lizzy? Is that you?”

  “Please don’t move, Drake,” I cried.

  I heaved again against the iron. I felt another piercing jab and cried out in pain. But I could feel it move again. Just an inch. But it was enough. I began to struggle through.

  “Hold up, Lizzy!” I heard Drake say. “Let me make some more light so that you’re not stumbling through the dark.”

  “Don’t do that!” My fleece caught on one of the grate’s sharp edges. But I didn’t care if it ripped apart entirely. I took a deep breath and pushed off the top rung of the ladder. Exploding like a rocket out of the storm drain, I clanged into the giant metal machine above the opening. Then I ran. Straight for Drake’s voice coming from the distant corner. Blind with fear.

  The light from my headlamp was growing dimmer now, but as I got closer I could make out Drake’s form hunched in the corner, right next to the makeshift tent. I didn’t take my eyes off him. I felt as if I were running in slow motion, little by little getting closer. I could hear each one of my footsteps pound in my head.

  When I was near him, I jumped up. I flew through the air, spreading out my arms.

  I crashed into the tent, tearing through the old ratty blankets, causing the wood beams to collapse. I plowed through it and onto Drake. My chest collided with his back, my head bumped into his head, my legs slammed into his legs. He groaned under me. I was squarely on top of him. I squeezed him with my arms, as hard as I could. We were a tangle of clothing, wooden beams, and tent fabric.

  I looked down at his hands, spread out in front of him. He was holding his grandfather’s Zippo lighter with the black crackle finish. I grabbed it.

  “What is wrong with you?” Drake asked from beneath me, his voice a mixture of pain and confusion.

  Every bone in my body ached. Wearing half a torn fleece, with blood soaking through my shirt from the grate, I held Drake tightly in my arms. I didn’t let go. For a few moments, he let me hold him. He was absolutely still. I closed my eyes, and for the briefest second, I imagined that he wanted to be like this with me, that I hadn’t just run like a maniac and tackled him like I was a defensive end and he was a running back trying to reach the end zone from the five-yard line. The strong smell of gas made me feel dizzy.

  My left hand throbbed from the impact. I flipped it over. There was nothing there. Drake’s name was nowhere to be found.

  I wondered if I’d ever be able to explain to him how I’d known he was in mortal danger. At that moment, I didn’t care.

  Vivienne le Mort had failed. I hadn’t.

  Drake was safe.

  According to Bizzy, Agatha the Enchantress battled Vivienne le Mort just long enough to distract her so I could save Drake. Bizzy said a thick gray cloud filled the park and then the two sisters were gone. Agatha’s white light had attracted spectators to the area.

  After I disentangled myself from Drake, I tried to explain what I was doing at the cannery.

  The one thing I’ve learned about gathering information about someone is that it makes it a whole lot easier to lie to that person. I told Drake I woke up and realized he might be using the cannery as his place to paint. Bizzy had told me over and over again about the danger of gas leaks after earthquakes, so it wasn’t difficult to convince her that we should check and make sure no one was at the cannery. I said it was a “premonition.” Fortunately, the light had been so dim, he hadn’t seen me explode out of the storm drain. He thought I jumped in through a window.

  Once Drake and I climbed out through the back window of the cannery, my adrenaline was used up and I realized I was having trouble breathing. Bizzy called the gas company to report the leak. She informed us that Damon and Randy had been taken into custody. Though
Bizzy thought Drake should go to the hospital to make sure the blow he’d been dealt hadn’t done serious damage, Drake insisted he was fine. Bizzy informed Drake that head trauma was a lot more threatening than most people realized, quoted some scary fatality statistics, and made Drake promise that if he had any symptoms, like blurred vision, he would go to the doctor. We rode silently in the Roadmaster to Drake’s house, dropped him off, and then Bizzy took me to the hospital. Bizzy told the emergency room nurses that I’d hurt myself prying open the cannery window after becoming convinced that there might be a gas leak there which put the citizens of Crabapple at risk. Of course, I knew my struggle getting through the grate from the sewer was to blame for most of my injuries.

  The nurses bought the story, hook, line, and sinker. So did Dad. But Mom was a tough sell. Especially after the doctor told her that it was “quite unusual for a young person to break two ribs from a fall like that.” I didn’t even get a brace or a splint. The doctor said I just had to rest and take Advil for the pain. Dad and Mom didn’t argue when I told them I didn’t want to go back to school that afternoon. I skipped the rest of the day.

  The newspaper headline the next morning was very different from the one I’d seen as my death-specter. It read:

  MORTIMERS SMELL GAS LEAK, PREVENT CATASTROPHE

  The article went on to talk about how Bizzy and I, out for an early morning walk after the earthquake, had noticed a smell coming from the cannery and called the gas company.

  “Those folks sure did their part as good citizens today,” the gas company man said in the article. “If someone had so much as lit a match near that place, I think half of Crabapple might have gone up in flames.” The article also mentioned that Beatrice Mildred Mortimer was no stranger to heroics. In addition to saving a friend from drowning a few years back, she’d also prevented a house from burning down two years ago by wandering in with an extinguisher because she had smelled smoke from a block away. It went on to recount her recent rescue of Jodi Sanchez from the path of a speeding car.

  The reporter had asked Bizzy if she felt that she had heroic qualities. “Nah,” Bizzy was quoted at the end of the article. “Plain and simple, some folks just got more luck than sense. And that’s one of Bizzy’s pearls, free a’ charge.”

  Mom read the whole article out loud at the breakfast table. She eyed Bizzy and me suspiciously, especially in light of my bizarre trip to the hospital. Another article reported on a thwarted burglary of Miss Mora’s Market by Sheriff Schmidt. In the paper, he said that he’d received an “anonymous tip.”

  “Your first battle wounds,” Bizzy said, looking years younger, after we were finally alone. “I’m proud a’ you, Lizzy. You’re a full-blown hedgehog!” If anyone else in the world had called me a hedgehog, I would’ve been very insulted. Coming from Bizzy, though, I knew it was her greatest compliment.

  Just then, tinted fog seeped in from the open window of Bizzy’s room. In a matter of moments, the room filled with yellow-and-red haze. The colored fog began to clear and, sure enough, Fial and Morgan le Faye appeared in Bizzy’s room.

  Fial wasted no time. She wrapped me up in her cold arms and yellow robes. “You are the most precious girl! So brave for someone so young!”

  I thought she might break another of my ribs. As I looked over her shoulder, I saw Bizzy smiling at the two of us. After Fial released me, she sat in a chair by the window. The four of us stared at one another. The silence lasted more than a minute.

  “So Drake is safe now? Does this mean the world will … go on?” I asked.

  “Yes. When the time comes, he will be called to free Merlin and lead the Round Table. No doubt, you will also be right by his side as—”

  “That is quite enough, Fial,” Morgan said with a renewed sternness. “The one thing all of this should have taught us is that we cannot be certain about what the future holds. Elizabeth already knows too much of her destiny as it is.”

  From where I sat, I felt as if I knew nothing of what was in store for me. Other than that Drake was going to help find Merlin and free the cursed sorcerer to defeat Vivienne le Mort before she made the world crumble, I didn’t know anything.

  “You’ll have to excuse Fial,” Morgan le Faye said, addressing me, “she gets quite carried away.” Fial and Morgan le Faye kept gazing at me. Finally, Bizzy spoke.

  “We’re honored by the visit ’n’ all,” she said, “but what brings you ladies back to Crabapple?”

  “Oh yes, of course,” Morgan said, growing embarrassed. “We, you see, procured Agatha’s permission, to come here to …”

  “What Morgie’s trying to say,” Fial said, rolling her eyes at her sister, “is that we wanted to properly thank you two. The boy is alive and though the world does not know it, every mortal owes a large debt to you.”

  “Such is the way of fate,” Morgan le Faye added matter-of-factly. “Sometimes the bravest acts are the least recognized. We are sorry your courage cannot be more widely celebrated.”

  “Where is Vivienne le Mort?” I asked. Now that things had settled down, I kept thinking she’d appear behind me at any moment.

  “She has been taken care of,” Morgan announced.

  “But what about her army and the threads and all that?” I asked.

  “Do not torment yourselves with thoughts of her reappearance,” Fial said in a reassuring tone.

  “It should also be mentioned that if Drake is to carry out his fate,” Morgan added, changing the subject, “it is important you do not reveal his destiny to him.”

  “I’m not planning on it, don’t worry,” I said. Drake had stared at me the entire ride home from the cannery as if I’d just landed from outer space. There was no chance I was going to tell him anything else that would only confirm his suspicions. Drake’s status as the Last Descendant was one secret I wasn’t sure would ever be flight ready.

  “There is one last question I must ask you,” Morgan said, beginning to pace with her arms folded behind her back. She stopped in front of me with her gleaming green eyes. “My reason for sending the specters—to both save people from untimely deaths and to allow my descendants the practice and experience to be ready when it came time to save the boy with the Mark of Arthur—has vanished. My sisters and I have decided, however, that as a reward for your courage, you should be permitted to decide whether or not you want to continue to have them.”

  Speechless, I hesitated.

  How could anyone possibly make that choice?

  “If you do choose to remain a Hand of Fate, you will only see the specters of preventable deaths of those you care about, as you did before.”

  “Does she have to decide now?” Bizzy asked, her voice filled with concern. “Can’t she have some time to cogitate on it?”

  “I’m afraid we must return to Avalon shortly with an answer,” Fial said.

  I thought of the extraordinary burden that came with knowing the details of another person’s impending death. Someday, I would grow tired of having death-specters. But the fact that I would have a someday—hopefully many somedays—was a pretty spectacular thing. My next death-specter could be Mom or Dad or someone else I cared about. How could I turn down the chance to give them more somedays?

  In the back of my mind, thoughts of Drake emerged. Morgan and Fial hadn’t mentioned my role as his Keeper. For some reason, I couldn’t shake the idea that my job was not done. If he was as important as everyone seemed to think he was, chances are he’d be in danger again. Was it delusional to think he still needed me, even when he was probably never going to talk to me again?

  “I want to keep having death-specters,” I declared. I doubted my decision as soon as I said it out loud.

  “Are you sure, Sweet Pea?” Bizzy said, growing emotional. She grabbed one of my hands in between hers. “You don’t have to do this!”

  “I know I don’t, Bizzy. But it’s what a hedgehog would do, right?” I asked, staring earnestly into her eyes. “And you’ll be here to help me.”

&n
bsp; “You betcha I will,” she exclaimed, lifting my hand up in the air with hers.

  “I told you, Morgie,” Fial said, elbowing her sister. “We gave her the choice this time. She really is the Keeper we’ve been waiting for.”

  “Waiting for?” I asked, nervous energy pumping through me in light of my enormous decision.

  “Never mind,” Morgan said. For the first time, she smiled at me. “Our paths may cross again, but for now, we wish you well, Beatrice and Elizabeth. May fate be with you, and if it is not, may you—”

  “Make it so … yes, yes, we get it, Morgie.” Fial said, laughing as she interrupted her sister. She stood up as a yellow cloud began to creep into the room. “Morgie’s all for the formal good-bye, but sometimes I cannot help but think a hug is in order.”

  With that, Fial put her arms around me once again and squeezed tightly. It was all I could do to keep from crying out as pain shot through my broken ribs. She moved on to Bizzy.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you,” she said earnestly to my grandmother. “You watch over our girl!”

  “Count on it,” Bizzy said with a wink. Soon the haze was so thick, I couldn’t see Bizzy a few feet away from me.

  “Good-bye, Death Catchers!” Fial said, as she disappeared within the cloud she produced.

  After a few seconds, with a whooshing sound, the fog rushed out the window, leaving behind nothing but the now-familiar smell of apple-cinnamon oatmeal.

  Bizzy and I were alone again.

  “Do you think we’ll ever see Morgan le Faye and Fial again?” I asked, breaking the silence.

  “Dunno, Sweet Pea. The one thing I’ve learned in all this is that the word ‘never’ is the most useless one in the English language.”

  Bizzy, I knew, was prone to exaggeration, but in that instance she was probably right. It had been a little over two months since I’d learned I was a Death Catcher. The sheer number of things I never thought would happen that, in the past months, had happened was astonishing.