Touch (A Reaper Novella)

by Jennifer Snyder

  Fern took a few sliding steps toward us before stopping about four feet away and hunkering down to whimper again. Her sad brown eyes met mine and they instantly melted my heart, making me switch back to my most sugary tone yet.

  “Here, girl! Come on!” Isabel and I called out in unison while we both slapped our knees as hard as we could.

  “Isabel… where are you?” Mr. Dover called from the back deck to their house.

  “Down here, Daddy!” Isabel shouted. “Fern’s stuck on the pond!”

  “Who’s that with you down there?” Mr. Dover asked.

  “Rowan; she’s been helping me get Fern,” Isabel answered.

  “Hey, Rowan! How ya been?”

  “Fine, Mr. Dover,” I replied. “We’ve almost got Fern, now.”

  At the sound of her name, Fern took a few more slipping steps forward. I extended my arm out, reaching for her.

  “Almost,” I muttered, wiggling my fingers. “If she’d only take a few more steps I’d be able to reach her.”

  I inched closer, until I could feel the cold wetness of the frozen water soaking into my jeans, but I still couldn’t reach her. I dropped my arm and let out a loud sigh. I hung my head as annoyance at Fern buzzed through me.

  “Fine,” I mumbled. I stood and put one foot out onto the frozen water, tapping it to test its thickness.

  “No, Rowan, don’t!” Isabel panicked.

  I shifted all of my weight onto the foot resting on the ice and held my breath. “It’s okay. This water is shallow, which means it’s thicker than the rest.”

  I put both feet on the frozen pond and stopped, praying I was right. It had been so long since I’d been to Dover Pond, I couldn’t remember how deep the edges were—two feet, three feet, four?

  “Rowan, I don’t think that’s a good idea! Let me come down and get that stubborn-ass dog myself!” Mr. Dover yelled.

  I put a hand up and shook my head. “I think it’s okay; I’ll get her.”

  I slid my feet across the slick ice like I was skating, slowly inching my way toward Fern. I was nearly two feet away from Isabel when I heard the ice beneath me begin to crack.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Rowan!” Isabel gasped from behind me.

  I couldn’t find my voice to answer her. With my heart hammering against my ribcage, I dropped my gaze to my shoes and stared at the thin line now etched into the ice beneath me. I held my breath and slowly slid my right foot backward an inch before doing the same with my left. I stopped when a new crack formed and then slithered away from me rapidly.

  “Daddy! Daddy, hurry! The ice is cracking!” I heard Isabel scream hysterically over her retreating footsteps.

  As she darted away, Fern skittered past me after her, and the swift movement across the ice was all it took to send me plummeting through and into the dark water below.

  The icy water slipped over me, soaking my clothes and forcing panic to become my worst enemy. My arms and legs thrashed about rapidly, slicing through the frigid water surrounding me. Involuntary gasps escaped from my parted lips as I struggled to find the surface.

  This is it, I thought with an eerie sense of calm. This is how I die.

  Time seemed to tick away at an incredibly slow pace. My limbs began to tire and confusion threatened to overtake my mind. I caught sight of a hand reaching into the black, chunky water for me. A tiny shiver of warmth swam through me as I thought of who it might be—Jet. That small shiver of warmth died out quickly as the water began to freeze me from the inside out, burning my lungs while they struggled for air but were only given icy water instead.

  My muscles tightened and burned with exhaustion. Rough hands, hands which were obviously not Jet’s, gripped me tightly, pulling me from the slushy water and sliding me across a solid patch of ice.

  “She’s blue—she’s blue, Martha! Tell ‘em to hurry!” Mr. Dover’s voice shouted.

  I wanted to tell him to leave me be, that any attempt to save my life was foolish because my death had been inevitable, but I couldn’t speak through my chattering teeth.

  My eyes rolled back into my head as my body continued to tremble violently. Each faint intake my frozen lungs could manage felt like fire inside my chest. Jet’s face came into my view and thin tendrils of relief floated their way through my mind. Everything would all be over with soon.

  “Rowan, it’s time,” he whispered, his eyebrows drawn together in concern.

  My eyes closed, either of their own accord or out of fear, I couldn’t be sure which. In the distance, beyond the panicked cries of those struggling to save my ill-fated life, the crows had gathered to sing their own haunting melody… the soundtrack of my death.

  Droplets of warmth slid from the corners of my eyes as I forced my ice-clogged lungs to take in their final breath. Pain radiated from my chest to my toes—had I been able to find my voice, I would have screamed. I met Jet’s eyes, begging him without words to end my pain. He crouched down beside me and extended a hand, his eyes glimmering with sadness. Darkness dotted the edges of my vision while I watched his fingertip grow closer and closer. Just before touching me, Jet closed his eyes and I did the same.

  At the moment of contact, a completely different energy coursed through my body than what I had felt before when we touched. This one was not electrifying or intimate. It was relaxing and peaceful… warming even. Images flashed behind my eyelids, but this time they were my own. Snuggling up with Mom for a bedtime story, getting piggyback rides from Dad, being tickled until I laughed so hard I cried, my very first sleepover at Kami’s house, my first kiss. All the seemingly small things from my life that had made it worth living danced through my mind. In the end, they had been all that had mattered.

  When the images ceased, I found myself standing beside Jet, with my body lying at my feet. Jet reached for my hand and our fingers intertwined. For the first time I could actually feel him. I glanced from my body to our connected hands and couldn’t decide which stunned me more.

  “I know how overwhelmed you’re feeling at the moment, but they’re already waiting for you,” Jet said, pointing across the pond where four figures draped in black, hooded cloaks stood. I took one last, fleeting glance at the uninhabited body at my feet before shifting my eyes back to the hooded figures which implored me for my attention.

  “You don’t want to keep them waiting, trust me,” Jet insisted.

  With that, we began walking in their direction, out across the frozen pond which had been the death of me moments before.

  “Damaris, Evelyn, Cassandra, William,” Jet said, greeting each of the hooded figures with a formal bow.

  “Jet,” they replied in perfect unison.

  I shifted my gaze from them to Jet; he’d dropped my hand before we’d reached them and now he stood with both hands clasped behind his back like a solider standing before a line of generals. The sight was rather intimidating.

  “Rowan Jade Harper.” A loud voice boomed from the first cloaked figure. Damaris, Jet had called him.

  My eyes drifted to him, unsure of how I was supposed to answer; all I knew was that he was waiting for something.

  “Yes,” I finally said.

  “Daughter of Salene Meredith Harper,” Damaris stated.

  “Yes.”

  “I gather you have been told of what is ahead of you and why you have been chosen.”

  I nodded. “As a Replacement Reaper for my mother.”

  Damaris lowered his hood and the others followed suit. I was shocked to see such normal faces returning my stare, instead of the skeletons I’d envisioned. Damaris had smooth, dark skin, caramel-colored eyes, and long, dark hair. Evelyn, who stood to the left of him, had short, cropped blond hair, sky-blue eyes, and creamy, flawless skin. Cassandra, who oddly appeared to be young and old all at the same time, had long, wavy black hair with streaks of gray, striking green eyes, and olive skin. And William, who couldn’t have been much older than me, had chestnut-colored hair and grayish eyes.

  “Correc
t. Today, December 30, is the day your mother was supposed to die, had she not taken her own life,” Damaris said.

  His words bounced around in my mind before their meaning truly sank in: even if my mother hadn’t committed suicide, I still would have only had six more months with her. I felt the emotions I should feel after being given such knowledge, but none of the physical things. No tears, no tightness in my chest, no churning of my stomach. I felt strangely detached.

  “Instead, yours was taken in her place,” he added, his caramel eyes fixed on me, as though I hadn’t understood the entire concept already.

  “We’ve been contemplating where you should be placed, since you have such limited experience with souls,” Evelyn said, her soft voice surprising me.

  “You must understand, this date was chosen at the time of your mother’s birth. She was intended to become a high-ranking Reaper, which was why she was born a Link, a position you are clearly not ready to fill.” Cassandra chimed in.

  “Because of this, other roles have been shifted.” There was a glint in William’s gray eyes as he spoke, something about his sentence gave him pleasure and looking at me seemed to intensify it, almost like he knew something about me that I didn’t, and he wasn’t very good at hiding it. “We have decided on Jet as your Overseer, and the two of you will be relocated.”

  I felt a smile tug at the corners of my lips at his last words.

  “This decision is effective immediately.” Damaris’s voice boomed like thunder, reverberating through my mind.

  The frozen pond and bare-branched trees swirled before my eyes at a dizzying pace; I blinked and the entire scenery before me had changed.

  Chapter Twelve

  We stood in a street, smack in the middle of a suburban cul-de-sac. I glanced at each of the houses surrounding us, wondering where on earth we were. Each house seemed identical, with the only exception being each had a different shade of vinyl siding.

  It was still winter. Bare trees stretched high into the gray sky above, dirty snow clumps lined the sidewalks, and brown, dead grass covered each yard.

  “You’re still in the East Physical Realm, just a tad bit north,” Damaris said.

  “Why are we here?” I asked.

  “There’s a larger populace, so your training will be more demanding and you’ll have less free time.” Cassandra explained the relocation, her eyes flickering toward Jet as she emphasized her last words.

  I noticed Jet stiffen beside me and I wondered what hidden meaning lined her words; were Reapers not supposed to have relationships?

  “We will be in touch,” Damaris said.

  Jet gave them a low bow, like before, and I dropped my gaze to mimic his motion. When I glanced up, the council was gone. I stared into the emptiness where the four figures who controlled my fate, even after my death, had been.

  My mind raced to process everything that had happened to me in the last thirty minutes. There was one thing which stood out most in my mind: the simple fact that I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to my father the way I would have liked. Even though I was positive most didn’t get the chance to say their goodbyes to loved ones, it still bothered me. I worried about how my father would handle my death, especially after he’d already lost so much.

  “Well, that was something,” Jet said. “Nothing like being uprooted and dropped someplace else in the blink of an eye.”

  “Sorry.” I apologized, my thoughts shifting to him.

  “Don’t be, I didn’t mean it like that.” He smiled. “You must be something special; I was sure they were going to make you become a Soul Seeker for a while with the way they were talking.”

  There was something odd about the way he looked at me, like questions were burning in his eyes but he didn’t know how to voice them.

  “I’m glad they didn’t,” I said, smiling to hide my sudden unease. “Soul Seeker? Am I even supposed to know what that is?”

  Jet’s eyes softened and he let out a chuckle. Interlacing his fingers with mine, he caressed the top of my hand, moving his thumb in slow circles. A sigh escaped my lips as I savored the sensation it stirred within me. I closed my eyes when he pulled me against him and nuzzled my head underneath his chin.

  “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this,” he whispered into my hair.

  “Oh, I can imagine,” I said with a smile.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Two weeks’ time passed before the moment of my first Reaping came. Jet and I had grown closer and I studied his every move, learning how to become a Reaper. He never went into detail, but told me repeatedly that when the time came I’d understand what he felt and know why he’d never been able to describe it.

  An urgency so strong there was no possible way to ignore it pulsated through my limbs and I found myself relishing the sensation of actually feeling something.

  “Do you feel that?” Jet asked. “That force willing you to come to it?”

  I opened my eyes, instantly drowning in his gaze. “Yes, I can feel it,” I whispered.

  “It’s the soul screaming to you to be released.”

  The after-burn of his words hung in my mind. I felt cruel and sick to be standing in the hallway of a hospital, enjoying the sensation of someone’s soul screaming.

  “What are we waiting for, then?” I demanded.

  Jet’s brow furrowed and his gaze shifted to the closed door before us. “For it to cease.”

  “What?” I snapped. “Isn’t that considered cruel and unusual punishment?”

  How was I supposed to do that? It was impossible to resist this urgency calling me. I was here now and I needed to help; anything else was unacceptable.

  Jet’s hand gripped my arm. “Rowan, all you’re hearing is the soul panicking. It’s the body’s natural mechanism to make sure we’re near.”

  Confusion clouded my mind. “What do you mean natural mechanism?”

  Jet cupped my chin in his hand. “Did you really think I could be so cruel as to stand back and listen to someone in utter pain?”

  I looked down the hall to the faces of those who couldn’t see me, avoiding the one that could. “No.”

  “Listen to me,” Jet said, placing both his hands on either side of my face, forcing my eyes to his. “When a person is on the verge of death, their soul sends out a distress signal to us, in order to ensure we’re near them at the exact moment their soul needs released.” He removed his hands from my face in favor of my waist. “When the soul stops screaming its urgency call, then you will know it’s time to proceed.”

  “Why do I have to wait?” I wondered. “Why can’t I just do it now, since I’m already here?”

  “Because the soul must become dormant first, or else you run the risk of damaging it,” he answered simply, then wrapped his arms more tightly around my middle.

  I nestled my head against his chest and closed my eyes in an attempt to shield myself from the horrible urgency that tugged at me, splitting me in two. The second the urgency ceased, my eyes snapped open.

  “Are you ready?” Jet asked.

  I untangled myself from him and faced the door. “Yes.”

  With a proud little half-smile, he nodded. “I’ll be waiting for you here when you’re finished with everything.”

  Even though I knew this was something I had to do alone, part of me still wished Jet could be in the room for moral support. Without hesitating any longer, I blinked through the door, on a mission to release the soul behind it from the torturing pain its body’s death was about to inflict upon it.

  A woman with no hair lay in the bed among the folds of white, wrinkled sheets. She was so frail looking, making it obvious how much of a fight she had put up against death. In her final moments, chaos surrounded her while doctors and nurses struggled to save her life, not knowing every attempt they made would fail because it had been decided.

  I stepped to her side and extended my hand. A split second before I touched her forehead, I closed my eyes just as Jet always did, but als
o because it somehow felt right.

  No matter what Jet had said to me before, I was still utterly unprepared for what happened the moment my fingertip touched a Dying: the sudden jolt of electricity that sparked from her and into me, the intensity of all her final memories flooding my mind at the same time as they did hers, the strength of her emotions intertwined and attached to each memory, the vividness and clarity of the entire experience. It was as though I were given a small taste of what it was like to be living again.

  I kept my eyes closed and smiled for a moment as the sensations lingered in every fiber of me, even after our contact was broken. When I opened my eyes, the soul of the woman stood beside me, only now she appeared to be much healthier and with long, red hair.

  “Thank you.” She beamed. “I knew my time was coming months ago, and now I’m just happy it’s all finally over.”

  “You’re welcome,” I whispered, taking her hand in mine.

  I was more than glad she was so content with her situation, because I had worried my first Reaping would be with someone who couldn’t accept what had happened to them and I’d have to skip the entire Crossover process, which I already knew would have left me feeling incomplete and like a failure.

  I held her hand tightly in mine and closed my eyes once more, focusing on crossing through the Veil like Jet had taught me. When my eyes opened again, we were standing in a lush meadow known as the Spiritual Realm.

  Thick green grass grew beneath us, dotted with various flowers, and a cloudless, blue sky hung above. Souls walked around freely talking with one another, while others congregated in front of a tiny building with double doors and a glittering gold sign that read Crossover Portal.

  “Thank you again, Angel,” the woman said, hugging me before rushing away like a child.

  Angel—I was no Angel, but I could clearly see where the misconception came from. I closed my eyes and thought solely of Jet and the white-walled hospital hallway.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I found my way back to Jet, he was no longer alone. The Reapers’ Council members stood with him. My eyes traveled to each of their faces, but I paused longer on Cassandra’s. In the two weeks that had passed since the last time I’d seen her, Cassandra had aged nearly thirty years or more. Her long, black waves had turned solid gray and her face had begun to sag and wrinkle.