Nightwalker

by Ime Atakpa

  As for the rest of the world, there’s work to be done. Rinaldo’s mantle comes with purpose. As the successor of the Death Eater, I must take on my forebear’s responsibilities. Wavering souls are now mine to reap, and mine alone. But I won’t allow for the suffering that Rinaldo encouraged. People deserve better. The world deserves better. I’ll give them peace through easy deaths, and easy deaths through assured closure. Yes, I’ll create a world where children like me will have no reason to exist. Souls won’t live trapped between life and death. I sure as hell won’t allow for parents to be tortured by the undying souls of their dead children. There will be change and with it, happiness will follow.

  “Change indeed.”

  My body moves instinctively toward the window from which I vault and land effortlessly below. A patch of rotted wood, grass, and branches absorb the impact of my fall.

  “You can’t escape.”

  Something flashes in the window. Then, it all comes crashing down. Support beams snap and furniture slides across the tilting second floor, breaking through the rotten walls. What doesn’t bend inwards and come crashing down simply crumbles onto itself. Billows of dust rise from the structure, the roof of which is now the first floor ceiling. But that doesn’t last either. A few seconds after the remainder of the top floor crumbles, the supports on the first floor give way and everything turns to dust.

  I watch in bittersweet ecstasy as Rinaldo’s lodge meets its end. Different circumstances brought me here each time, none of which were particularly pleasant. Not at all. It’s ironic, then, that I had only happy memories here. And now it is the place where I was reborn.

  “Pitiful end, wouldn’t you say?”

  A figure stands in the clearing dust. I squint to see him, and though I recognize the voice now, it makes too little sense for me to blindly believe.

  “So let the smoke clear,” it says.

  I stumble backward, reaching for something to fight it off with, because I know it can’t be him, not after what just happened.

  “Oh, but can’t it?”

  My vision is clearer now, and standing in a partial shroud is the very image of Rinaldo in perfect health, unscathed. Not dead.

  But then he’s no longer there. He dissolves with the dispersing dust. Nothing remains but the rubble of his old home.

  “Build anew,” says his voice, sharp and distinct in my skull. I focus again at the ground where he once stood, then up to the window, and finally behind me before accepting with certainty that he is no longer here. There’s no doubt: I heard his voice. A hallucination? A side effect of receiving the mantle? He never explained any side effects from assuming his mantle. He wouldn’t have, though. Rinaldo kept me in the dark all my life. I took the role of Death Eater knowing he’d likely kept even more important secrets hidden from me.

  “Not quite.”

  “What’s happening?” I blink, hard.

  “I am what remains.”

  What the hell is that supposed to mean? He stole the mantle of time but never had me under the impression that something else existed within him.

  “Incomplete.”

  And now I’m trapped with this remnant.

  “Go,” it urges. After meeting his own death, Rinaldo presumes to give me orders.

  “Knowledge.” My head pounds. Incredibly sharp pain sears my skull. Not just pain. There are whispers, instructions on how to save my dad from the gale. If I can do nothing more for him, I owe him that.

  As for this echo of Rinaldo, as long as it teaches me to utilize my new power, I’ll bear with it. Maybe other answers await me. Rinaldo died and left me with a good many questions. Getting answers hadn’t been a priority at the time, but time had also been in short supply. Now, being what I am, I have all the time in the world.

  Another throbbing pain hits my skull. With it comes another bit of knowledge. This voice that has possessed me is not exactly Rinaldo, but something born from his personality, an extrasensory sentience of some kind. It’s difficult to understand exactly what the echo wants me to know about itself. Barriers keep me from fully absorbing the bulk of its intelligence. Even so, I learn enough. Rinaldo’s false eye had been the mantle of time. The mantle of death, however, was Rinaldo himself, and so his presence comes alive within me. It’s a minor price to pay. With my power, there is now knowledge; and with them both, I can put an end to suffering.

  -IX-

  The Silent Gale

  It hovers out on the body of the water, waiting for me. For the first time, I see it for what it is: a configuration of faces, wide-eyed and screaming. But not just faces, I see their bodies and the span of their lives. And I see the moment of each of their deaths laid over their faces like the image from a projector.

  Their anguish has been endless. This is the accumulation of all of Rinaldo’s efforts to prolong Alceste’s life. These were all people once. They were brothers and cousins and mothers, thieves and lovers. All regular people, afraid to die. This was their reward for uncertainty. He used them like he used me. And now they’ve nowhere to go. He trapped them in the same purgatory I lived in.

  I don’t pity the gale. It hopes to coerce my dad into joining its company. Right under my nose, it tempted him toward self-destruction. I won’t allow it that satisfaction so long as I wield the power to stop it.

  The gale turns (not so much a turn, I guess, as a refocusing of its attention; all the faces shift around the central shape) to face me.

  “Hunger,” it cries out in the anguished voices of thousands. I hear old men, young women, and infant voices all together, grieving for the pain of their existence. “Feed!”

  The clattering gale moves closer. Ripples lap at the shoreline. I smell the windblown grass behind me, and the rustle of leaves disturbs the silence of this warm night. Wind crashes through everything, shakes the branches down to the nude. In spite of the scene unfolding around me, I’m unwavering and steady. The gale no longer holds dominion over me. I’d once been its prey. Today, I’m the hunter.

  “Feed!” it demands of me again. It smells Rinaldo on me and knows that I carry the mantle. For years, it learned the presence of the Death Eater and treated his company as a divine gift. It believes I’m the same master. I have no intention of following through with that obligation. I’ve come to deliver a different kind of gift.

  It screams for food and approaches, stopping just in front of me at the edge of the pier. “Hunger,” it whines, and I tell it no.

  “I came to set you free. Look, it’s time for you to be at peace.” Myriad eyes search my own. “All of you.” I can feel each soul trapped in the gale, intimately at that. I know their names and every day of their lives, and I know their memories and how they died. I feel their anguish for dying and the gradual degradation of their minds as the collective storm overrode their individuality. Now, all these souls know is hunger. It screams at me.

  “It’s time to move on. Please.”

  “Feed!”

  “It’s been a long night for you, hasn’t it? Don’t make it any longer. Please. Go gentle.”

  I extend a hand and touch the surface of its many faces. The gale winces. The winds calm slightly. Then it pulls away from me and flourishes once more. But now it understands, I think. Its faces cease their scowling and frown instead. They’re melancholy and content and a little fearful. And they have every right to be afraid, having been this thing for so long. I feel that some of these souls have existed for nearly a thousand years, long before Rinaldo ever descended. Long before my ancestor met him, he’d been bartering with souls. The truth angers me. I plunge my hand deeper into the gale’s body.

  There’s a quiet in the roar of its winds that I can’t quite explain, but it feels as though the good sense these souls lost during their transition into the gale briefly returns. And in that moment, it begs not to be fed but to be destroyed.

  “I know,” I tell it. Deep beneath the hunger, each of them wants nothing short of release. I know I can’t give them true peace. The time
for that passed a long time ago. What I can give them is the nothingness they deserve: total erasure.

  “Feed,” the gale continues to moan, albeit less enthusiastically. I reach deeper into its body. It screeches and lashes out at me with wild winds.

  “You can’t intimidate me anymore.” I remind it who I am, what I’ve become.

  “Dismiss it,” the echo whispers in my head. As it speaks to me, I feel myself transformed by hidden knowledge. It’s loud as all hell: words, phrases, and ideas rush into me. “The Akasha,” Rinaldo’s voice whispers again. I understand. This is their arte, and now it is mine.

  “Sleep well.” I pull my hand from the mass. Faces that once belonged to people dissolve into a thick mist, one at a time. Each face, as it feels itself being torn apart, looks at me coldly, menacingly. Haunting cries rattle the leaves with renewed energy.

  I wait. In seconds, the trees stop rustling. The water stills and the grass holds its ground. A final cry of “feed me” rushes from the pier and travels as far as it can into the forest where it is lost forever.

  All this power. Mine.

  -X-

  The Science of Death

  I’ve barely had time to process that I’ve destroyed the clattering gale before I’m bothered by a duty of mine. A heaviness drapes over me. It’s calling me toward something far away. I have no clue where it is I’m expected to travel, or why I have to go there. What is clear is that there’s no way around this duty. When I assumed the mantle of death, I assumed responsibility for maintaining Balance.

  I see Rinaldo’s face in my head, smiling crookedly at me. I shouldn’t be upset at him for not detailing every one of his duties as Death Eater beforehand. That doesn’t stop me from cursing him.

  One exhale later, my mind clears of those thoughts, and a new face comes into view. It’s the face of a small girl, curled up somewhere far from here. I see a brightly painted house sitting on a block of similar houses. That must be what the world away from here looks like. Houses side by side, happy families to live in them. My thoughts turn to my own family, isolated and alone. We never were normal, and being homeschooled, I never saw what life in the city was like.

  It’s not my emergent wanderlust that convinces me to find this girl. Dozens of insects crawl on my skin—that’s what duty feels like—running up and down endlessly. I have no choice except to answer the summons and fulfill the duty. That’s what the echo tells me. It demands that I fulfill my responsibility as the new Death Eater. But Rinaldo fled from his own responsibility—

  My head stings.

  Didn’t he? Can’t I do the same? An answer comes to me. It’s a sharp jolt in my leg that pushes me forward.

  “Extend yourself,” the echo tells me, and without thinking, I do just that. Something similar to the tendrils emerges from me and trails a short distance outward. This tendril is clear and slightly luminescent, and a dull sphere expands at its end. Through that sphere, I see another reality, other people, clear as day. There’s the little girl excusing herself from dinner with her parents. The mother, who wears a messy bun, shakes her head and goes on eating. The father ignores his daughter completely. Shitty parents by my estimation. Mine would never see me off so apathetically. Every family can’t be mine, I suppose. I don’t know their circumstances, anyway. My judgment is premature. I turn the scene over a few more times in my head. Even if it weren’t premature, the judgment wouldn’t be mine to make. That’s not the authority I’ve inherited. There’s another judgment I’ve been called there to make.

  Reaping souls for his collective must have come so easily to him, having this insight into impending death. No doubts here: what I’ve been called to witness is the first soul I’m to take as the Death Eater.

  I approach the sphere and step through into the scene. It feels peculiar, like my whole body is torn apart and rearranged, but I come through unharmed on the other side. The girl’s parents sit just ahead of me, still eating together, but neither of them speaks to the other. More importantly, neither of them notices me. Perfect. I’ve traded one invisibility for another. The yearlong joke. But it’s different now. I have a body with arms and legs that can touch and feel—I feel the ground beneath me, feel the air conditioning turned too low, and smell baked bread wafting in from the kitchen. Even if others don’t know I’m here, I know. What does it matter, anyway? To do what I need to do, this form serves me best. With it, I pass through the house undetected, up the stairs, and slip into the girl’s room just before she slams the door.

  A peeling layer of thick green paint covers the walls; and beneath the green sits a layer of black. The place could use some maintenance. There’s also a fan overhead that’s missing a blade and a fist-sized hole in the headboard of the girl’s bed. A lava lamp sits on the bedside table. Band posters and experimental art decorate the walls. A small TV on the dresser. Lingerie and worn shirts litter the floor.

  The girl in question sits on her low-to-the-ground bed with her knees pulled to her chest and her head buried between them. I don’t hear her crying, not exactly, but she’s sniffling.

  Damn it. This is it. This is the moment that changes everything.

  For whatever reason, a wave of sympathy comes over me. I surprise myself because the sympathy isn’t for her. It’s for her parents. Despite whatever crap they’re going through with her, this can’t be how they intended everything to end.

  A trace of silver flashes briefly as the girl adjusts her arms around her legs.

  I want to imagine a reality where they love her as much as my own parents love me. I want to know that when she goes, they’ll be affected by their loss. I need them to feel something.

  Her breathing steadies. The sniffling comes to a stop. Another flash of silver between her knees. In that moment, I know it’s coming. I picture it in my head. The scream, the blood, her frightened parents running up the stairs. All of the misery unfolds in my imagination, except I know reality will be worse because I’ll have witnessed it firsthand. I look away just in time to spare myself from seeing the blade slice down her left wrist.

  She winces.

  When I turn back to her, her head is raised. She’s clenching down on a ball of fabric, a shirt maybe, and failing to hold back the silent tears. Her head dips back into her knees.

  The girl just sits there, completely still. Like she doesn’t understand what she’s done or how things will be when she’s no longer…her beddings slowly drink the blood. Dark gray becomes deep mahogany, then black. Still, she’s motionless, this…nameless girl.

  I search the room, looking for something to point me toward her identity, trying not to give her body the attention I feel guilty for stripping away from it (someone should care for her in her last moments). I can’t find anything. Nothing with her name. I can’t settle for that. This place, this is her identity. My eyes skim each of the four walls. Nothing but green and black.

  She gasps and sways, her head still held between her legs and chest. You wouldn’t know that she was dying except that—shit—with each subtle sway, the grip in her arms weakens or her legs loosen up a bit. Seeing her like that, I have to remind myself of the promise I made not to become like Rinaldo, not to extend people’s suffering, but the longer I bear witness to this slow death, the more sense it makes that I should rethink my philosophy.

  “I’m going to sleep now,” the girl whispers. It wouldn’t be so wrong, would it, to give this girl a second chance?

  No, it’s too late now. A wisp of white forms in the space just above her head. She’s dead. She’s gone.

  The wisp accumulates into a small cloud. I hold my hand out to it, and it follows my command. It’s warm in my palm. I watch the girl in bed, finally slumping over. My power is over death, but seeing her gone so young convinces me that I somehow screwed this up. I’m supposed to be preventing things like this from happening. That’s what Rinaldo promised me.

  He lied.

  I let her soul run cold in my palm, then clench it tight. The cloud thins and
dissipates. It’s gone forever.

  Now that her deed is done, I can’t suppress Rinaldo’s echoes in my head. Impulses come one after another, telling me to preserve what’s left of her. They tell me not to let her story be forgotten, to keep it alive through my memory. They tell me that even though the clattering gale has been released, it cannot be fully destroyed because souls unwilling to part will always exist. “You didn’t want her to go, did you?” His voice is hard yet calm.

  “Shut up.” Mine is weak by contrast. Maybe even without the contrast, it’d still be that way. I know it myself, that he’s at least partially right. Part of what I’m meant to do now is guide those unwilling souls peacefully to the other side. Not like Rinaldo, though. I won’t let them wander for so long that they lose themselves. It’s only a matter of how I’ll manage to keep track of them all.

  The echo murmurs something in my head. There is a way. Even if it’s difficult and time-consuming, there is a way.

  “Goddammit,” I mutter. The echo whispers more secrets into my head, further compounding the difficulty of the task I’ve set myself to. My dreams are hopeless optimism. I can’t make everything perfect.

  The girl on the bed is a dark red mess now. All that fresh blood keeps her corpse warm and colorful, even as the color drains from her face. The knife slides off the bed and onto the floor. A smudge of blood dries on its tip.

  Soon enough, her parents or the police or a coroner will wash even that away from her. Her hope, her soul, the warmth she brought to the world, and everything else about her, will be lost. I’ll be responsible for it.

  “Now you’ve felt death.” Rinaldo’s there in front of me, looking and speaking at me. The likeness of death, reborn to torment me. “You’ve touched a soul in your palm. Can you consider it now? Me, a villain? I, too, struggled with watching them die.” The echo of Rinaldo points at me. “When you know you have power to—”