The angel shook his head. “She sacrificed herself when she forgave you, death-dealer. She could have influenced you to make the wrong choice and instead she gave her life to save all humankind. Her faith in you to make the right choice, even if it meant her own death, is a lesson for us all. Her soul is safe.”
“Faith in me didn’t save her.” I spat.
Ezekiel smiled, and said, “Faith in you saved everyone. It is always a matter of faith when it comes to the Almighty. I believe you have changed despite what your brethren feel about you. If you wish to rejoin them and take your place among the elementals, you are welcome with open arms.”
“Are you trying to tempt me again, Ezekiel?” I snapped. “Does He even know that you tried to tempt me?”
The angel avoided my gaze. “He knew that I would put you to the test and He knew that you would reject me. Even I sometimes misjudge His will. Do come back, death-dealer. You can start again.”
I fished a cigarette out of my trench coat. The offer was tempting — I’d be able to exist once more as a function of life and death. The stabbing pain in my heart would disappear forever. But, Amy’s life ended at my hands, regardless of whether I was some kind of cosmic vessel for God’s will. I killed her and for me to take comfort in the blissful unemotional existence of a death-dealer would dishonor the great sacrifice Amy made. She deserved someone to mourn her, because I was the closest she’d ever come to love in her brief tortured life. And it hurt knowing I couldn’t save her.
I took a deep haul on my cigarette and blew a mouthful of smoke in my former boss’s face. “No, Ezekiel. Tell my former brethren to go fuck themselves. While you’re at it, you can go fuck yourself, too.”
The angel heaved a disappointed sigh as his wings appeared from behind his shoulders. “Then take care to protect yourself, death-dealer. Jael had at least one minion in Sariel. It’s possible there are further conspiracies yet to be discovered. Fare well.”
“Thanks for sharing,” I said, watching him beat his wings, lift into the air, and fly away.
***
Carol Sparks and I sat on the edge of the beach as the tide came in. The waves crept forward, lapping against Amy’s body until she started to float, and so we watched as the current carried her remains out into the bay.
She deserved a funeral, so we buried her at sea.
I’d have said something poetic or spiritual if I had it in me, but I couldn’t. I’d been to enough funerals over the years to recite something deep and meaningful, but there was nothing I could say to express my anger and utter failure. Instead, I quietly said goodbye as her body slipped beneath the waves.
The reflection of the morning sun glittered on the water and it was clear that Sparks was growing weary of my silence, so, she punched me in the arm.
For like, the fifth time.
“You just had to tell him off, didn’t you?” she griped “He could have easily given us a ride back to town, but no, you had to tell him to go fuck himself.”
“We’re done, him and me,” I said. “Ezekiel has had that coming for nearly a century.”
Sparks exhaled as she stood and looked out on the bay. “I don’t know what else there is to say about what happened here on this beach. I didn’t know Amy, but I know that we did everything we could to save her. You cared for her and while you weren’t born into this world, the fact that you loved Amy and risked everything to save her life makes you the very best kind of human in my book. I’m so very sorry for your loss, Reaper, I truly am.”
That stabbing pain in my chest hadn’t subsided. If anything, it morphed into a hollow ache, causing my throat to tighten. My eyes watered as I choked back a mouthful of clean ocean air. A tear dribbled down my right cheek. Sparks took my hand and gave it a squeeze as we turned our backs to the sea and began our long walk toward the highway.
Epilogue
Good and evil aren’t as black and white as you might think. Becoming a human is hard work and nothing can ever prepare you for the body blow that comes with having lost someone you love. I don’t entirely understand love but I know what it does to people. I know that it’s a five alarm fire and it’s a gentle touch on the hand during those times when you feel so very alone.
When I first crossed over, I wanted to experience life as a human being. I had been thrilled by tiny sensations like the wind blowing through my hair on a cloudy October afternoon and was dazzled by sexual escapades and the sheer madness that comes with living a guilt-free hedonistic existence. You can do anything when you’ve got nobody there to hold yourself accountable to. I have learned, unfortunately, that to experience life you have to experience pain as well as pleasure. Amy Curtis was my first encounter with the pain of being human and let me tell you that if love and friendship can hurt this much then I want no part of it.
I have to find a new place to live. Sparks won’t let me crash at her place and frankly, I can’t blame her one tiny bit because my life is an F-5 shit tornado and she’s got too nice a house to wind up having it blown to pieces by a ticked off angel bent on seeking revenge for bringing down Jael. I’ve got a target on my back, but then again, I’ve always worn one. It’s just now that I realize there can be collateral damage when people get too close to me. I’ve lost one person I cared about, I won’t lose another and that starts with Carol Sparks.
I said she was a force of nature and my encounter with the divine pretty much confirmed it. We couldn’t save Amy but I guess we saved the world from and end-of-days nightmare and that has to account for something. I’ve called out to Him asking for some kind of reward for Sparks and me. I’m still waiting for it.
I’d head back to my bunker until I’m on my feet again, but I can’t go back there because it’s the scene of the crime – the place where Amy’s life ended and my guilt began. I’ve got the balance of what the Church owed me and it will get me an even shittier flat in the worst part of town but at least it will be a roof over my head. Maybe the sound of the neighbors fighting with each other will drown out the voice in my head that says I have no business living among them.
I want to lash out at Him but that would likely just piss the guy off. Assuming the Supreme Being is a male. I want to summon Ezekiel and punch his lights out. I want to drink myself into oblivion because I’m really very good at that. I have consumed gallons of bathtub gin during prohibition and five hundred dollar bottles of Scotch on Madison Avenue in the 1990’s – drunk is drunk. Alcohol numbs the things that pick away at your conscience like a nun teaching etiquette in a boarding school.
I’m going to head over to the liquor store. I owe Sparks a bottle and I’m going to get shit faced. With a little luck, I’ll stay that way.
TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PEAK AT THE
SECOND BOOK IN THE TIM REAPER SERIES
After saving the world from a psychopathic angel bent on hastening the End of Days, Tim Reaper can be forgiven for hitting the bottle hard. It’s not every day that a former grim reaper gets to fall in love for the very first time only to have to kill the girl he’s fallen for or let the world burn. It’s five months since Amy Curtis died and Reaper is wracked by guilt after having to make an impossible choice.
Meanwhile in North End Dartmouth a mother has been stabbed to death in her bed and the only witness is an eight-year-old girl with a peculiar gift. She knows the truth of all things and has taken to writing the base code of the universe on her bedroom wall. She possesses knowledge no human being was ever meant to have and that means she’s got a target on her back. Angels, demons and everything in-between has the girl in their sights and her only hope of survival lays with Tim Reaper who must keep her alive long enough to meet with someone Reaper calls, The Man with the Big White Beard.
Detective Sergeant Carol Sparks wasn’t yelling at me, which is always a good thing, though it’s a rare occurrence.
Of course I hadn’t opened my mouth yet.
I rubbed at my eyes with the heel of my left hand as I sat up in my bed. The clock on my smar
t phone said it was 1:40 AM, on the floor next to my night stand were an empty whisky bottle and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
So I reached for my package of Player’s shit ends and lit another.
I groaned as I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. The used mattress I’d bought at the Sally-Ann for twenty bucks felt like it had been stuffed with rocks and a current of pain shot up my lower back as I put Sparks on speakerphone.
“Yeah, Sparks … what is it?” I said through a phlegm-filled cough. My head felt like it was filled with lead.
“Oh … did I wake you, Reaper?” she replied with a flicker of sarcasm in her voice. Or a twinge of anger – it’s hard to tell with her sometimes. “I’m so sorry to disturb you what with your having exposed me to psychopathic angels, passive-aggressive demons and a front row seat to my own birth and death. I’d let you sleep but you know … you owe me.”
Yeah … she was pissed at me. I rule.
I reached across the nightstand and grabbed a half-empty bottle of Golden Wedding Rye Whiskey. I gave it a little shake and then grimaced as I gulped back a mouthful. “Yes, Sparks, I owe you. I’d have thought that forty-ouncer I bought you made us square but apparently not.”
“Not even close.” she snapped. “Are you drunk again? I told you to lay off the booze. If I have to come over there, I’m going stick my boot so far up your ass the heel will come out of your mouth.”
I might have been drunk – or maybe I’d forgotten what sober felt like over the past few weeks. I’d stopped drinking when I passed out watching a hockey game on TV – that was more than five hours ago. No worries, a few good slugs of rye would take the edge off the guilt I’d been experiencing – a new feeling for me, I might add. It didn’t matter that I’d recently prevented an all-out war in the heavens thanks to a delusional angel named Jael who’d been killing some of the Supreme Being’s senior management. More than five months had passed since the day I ended the life of an innocent girl named Amy Curtis whose only crime was hooking up with yours truly.
Me.
She died because of me.
And there was little comfort in the fact that Amy was possessed by the aforementioned angelic sociopath when I unleashed Holy power, killing every living thing on the land and in the sea within a square mile of that wind-swept beach. It didn’t make me feel any less guilty about the choice I was forced to make. A choice the Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, had decided was all about my becoming human.
And I’m not human. In truth, I don’t know what the hell I am and there are times when I wish that I’d rejoined my death-dealing brethren in the blissful, guilt-free existence of claiming souls. Except they’re all assholes and they tried to kill me so that wouldn’t work.
I sloshed back another mouthful of rye and said, “No, Sparks, I’m not drunk … yet. It’s nearly two in the morning and I’m not being carted away in handcuffs, so I’m going to assume you’re deeply concerned about my welfare. You know, you could have just sent a card … or a pizza.”
I could hear her teeth grinding together.
“Alright, you know what? I’m the only friend you’ve got so just shut the hell up and listen,” she snarled into the phone. “I’m across the bridge from you in North-End Dartmouth.”
“Good for you,” I replied. “If you’re going to Bedford, don’t bother cutting through Halifax – that’s the long route. Also, you know, wear a stab vest or something. You’re in a shitty part of town.”
She exhaled heavily and said, “Damn it, Reaper … I need your help. I’m at a murder scene so get your ass in gear and head over here. There’s something you need to see because I don’t have a clue what the hell it means.”
I arched my eyebrows. “What kind of something?”
“It’s the kind of something that’s beyond anyone’s pay grade at the Halifax Police Department. Look, what I’m seeing it’s … just bizarre. I’ve got the body of a woman – stabbed to death in her bed while she slept, it looks like.”
“That sounds messy … it also sounds like a pretty straightforward murder to me. It’s probably the ex-husband or boyfriend. Find the guy and bring him in.”
“And under normal circumstances we’d be knocking on his door but according to the neighbours there has never been a man in the picture. We found a little girl hiding in the broom closet. She’s eight and I think she’s the victim’s daughter but- “
“A little girl killed her mother?” I interrupted. “That’s pretty messed up, Sparks.”
“She’d be covered in blood if she’d done it and she’s not. If anything, she’s catatonic and we can’t get her to utter a peep,” Sparks answered. “I don’t think the killer knew the little girl was home otherwise we’d be dealing with two murders instead of one.”
I took a deep haul on my cigarette and coughed heavily into both hands. “So get a social worker or something, maybe they could get her lips flapping. Then ask her if she can ID the perp. After that, get her a shrink to deal with the trauma,” I said, a little too impatiently for Spark’s liking. “You don’t need my help for this.”
I could have sworn I heard a low rumble in Spark’s voice. “She can’t talk, damn it. She can barely even move.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“She can’t even move, Reaper. We had to carry her out of the broom closet. It’s like her mind has snapped.”
“Then call a shrink – you don’t need me for …”
“Listen to me, you sack of shit! Six months ago you’d have been begging for work from anyone willing to pay and now you’re some kind of pathetic shut-in. I know you’re hurting over what happened to Amy…”
“Don’t go there, Sparks,” I warned. My voice was flat and cold. I dug my fingers into my whisky bottle. “You don’t know anything about me or how I feel.”
“I know you’ve probably felt nothing in your entire … whatever the hell it is that your kind call a life,” she shot back. “That’s why you’re messed up right now. And if you needed someone to hold your hand and help you through whatever it is your dealing with, I’ve always been a phone call away and you never called me. Not freaking once. And by the way, you think you’re screwed up? Hello … I met the Archangel Gabriel idiot, there’s not enough pharmaceuticals in a Costco warehouse to deal with that kind of shit so get a grip on yourself! I’m hanging up and then I’m going to text you a picture. When you see it, I’ll be at 228 Victoria Road – bring me a coffee while you’re at it. If you’re too hung over to drive, take a cab. Goodbye.”
Well she certainly told me off.
Okay, so yeah, Sparks did wind up on the receiving end of a shit storm of supernatural weirdness in the past few months. She’d been exposed to elemental beings that Sunday morning evangelicals on the TV claim surround us every day. (I hate those guys. I can’t stand that a bunch of trailer trash preachers with hillbilly accents know the truth of things when big-brained theologians talk about religious symbolism and ancient Aramaic scripture.)
The fact is the hellfire and brimstone preachers are bang on: age old battle for the souls of men exists: A war pitting demons against angels and in some cases, angels against their own order. That’s when Sparks first learned the truth of life as we know it and worse, the truth of me because I’m not an angel and I’m not a demon. I’m death itself and I live among humans because I did a very bad thing that got me thrown out of the reaper’s club more than a century ago.
I’ve led a fairly sketchy existence since then, imparting my essence into the newly deceased and using those bodies until they became too damaged to continue, (read: shot to pieces, burned, blasted or buried, you choose) and then hopping into another one after that. My latest body is that of an investment banker named Scott Richter and up until Amy Curtis came into my life, I didn’t worry too much about human affairs. But I fell in love with the girl and she died because of me. I’d been set up by the guy with the Big White Beard. He gave me an impossible choice – kill a girl I’d fallen for or
let her live and watch all of humanity burn.
The creator of all things has a sick sense of humour, by the way.
I grunted as I stubbed my cigarette into the ashtray. Then I grabbed another cigarette from the nightstand and lit it with my Zippo. I took a deep haul and stared at my phone as I waited for the text from Sparks. After about two minutes of silence, my phone vibrated and I brushed my thumb over the text message icon. The screen flickered and then a picture of a bedroom showing a child’s bed covered with a My Little Pony bedspread appeared on my screen. A small stack of books was piled neatly on a night table but what grabbed my attention was the wall next to her bed. I was half-expecting to see a powder-pink mural filled with unicorns farting rainbows and a few posters of whatever incarnation of Barbie was currently on the kid’s hot-list. Instead the wall was plastered with what at first glance appeared to be graffiti of some kind. I blew up the picture to enhance the image and did a double take because I could have sworn I was looking at a calculus formula.
What the hell?
Symbols the likes of which I’d never encountered were mixed in with powers and indices, Greek letters and integrals. Seemingly endless strings of continued fractions and operators radiated out, each written using what appeared to be a thick black felt marker. Some formula was even partially scrawled on the stippled ceiling.
“Math?” I whispered.
My phone buzzed again and another picture from Sparks downloaded. I swiped the screen to see another wall, similar to the first one but this time there wasn’t any brain melting equation that would take the entire faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at Dalhousie University to decipher. Instead there was a single word written repeatedly in neat rows hundreds and hundreds of times. I blew up the image and what I saw told me precisely why Carol Sparks wanted me at that crime scene.
Immortal Remains: A Tim Reaper Novel Page 23