Don't Fear the Reaper (4 page)

I listened for telltale signs of movement in the house and, thinking that I heard someone on the first floor, I crept down the stairs, looking for Banning or Daniel along the way. I had no idea where they were, but they weren’t upstairs or down in the living room. Instead, I found my aunt in the kitchen making a pot of coffee and quietly finishing the necessary phone calls to distant relatives and family friends. Any other time—in other words, if I weren’t
dead—
I would have savored the rich, earthy aroma of my only remaining addiction—caffeine. This morning, I had no appetite, no interest in food or drink of any kind.

I wondered if my aunt’s near-whispering was because my parents might still be asleep, or so that neither Mom nor Dad would have to keep hearing the details. Not that my aunt went into details exactly, only enough to let family know what had happened—that I’d committed suicide.

I stared out the window. The more I thought about it, the more I understood Aunt Jen’s consideration was for both reasons.

“Never got over Jordan’s murder, according to her letter,” my aunt said. “No. No indication. We never saw this coming. Well, yes... Keely has always internalized things. But she seemed so strong. Tough as they came, or so we thought.” She switched the phone from her right ear to her left as she took three coffee mugs out of the cabinet. “No, they’re sleeping. I don’t know yet, I’m making arrangements this morning. Friday morning, I think.” She paused, then said, “Next to Jordan. Keely would’ve liked that. I will. See you then.” Aunt Jen hung up the phone and extracted a tissue from the sea-green housecoat she wore.

Tears stung my eyes and I pressed my forehead against the breakfast-nook window. The early autumn sun was already shining brightly. Too brightly, really. Birds chirped and flitted from the birdbath and the feeders, singing as they had yesterday. As they would again tomorrow. And the next. Someone stood next to me. It was Banning. Daniel wasn’t exactly the sympathetic type and no one else could see me. No one.

“It looks different now, doesn’t it?” Banning asked. When I glanced at him, he clarified, “Life. It always looks different afterward.”

I didn’t answer. If I’d had enough strength to speak, I’d ask what a reaper knew of life.

Banning smiled as though he got the silent treatment a lot. “I didn’t always deal in death.” He scratched the back of his neck and stared out the window, pretending, as I did, to watch the birds gathering on the bird feeder. “There was a time when I was like you. I had a life, a family.”

I resumed my gaze out the window again. I had a haunting view of nowhere.

The bluebirds and finches ceased to exist. Even though I’d just met him, I found it hard to envision Banning as anything other than a reaper. A guy dressed in black with iridescent eyes who snatched the souls from the dying. I couldn’t imagine him with a family. My eyes flickered in his direction.

My reaction must have amused him, and yet I saw no humor in his smile, no sunbeams gracing the corners of his winter-blue eyes. “I became a reaper moments after my death, and after all these years I still miss my own family.”

Footsteps, upbeat and purposeful sounded behind us. Daniel. The demon. Who else? He inhaled deeply as he passed the coffee maker, then skirted around my aunt who wiped her eyes and dialed another phone number.

“Who’d want to be a reaper?” I muttered softly. I was sorry the moment the words slipped from my tongue. I hadn’t meant to be offensive. Despite crossing my soul over into the afterlife, Banning had been kind. He only seemed to be trying to engage me in conversation. A reaper with a heart? Go figure.

“Sorry,” I quickly added. “I’m sure you’re not some psychopath.”

Daniel appeared from around the corner. “Close,” he said with a smile.

Banning sighed. “Those are psycho
pomps
, which don’t exist, and still not exactly—”

“—accurate,” Daniel finished. “It’s like this, Sunshine. Some cultures think reapers are mere escorts. Others? Well, there’s the rub.”

Daniel grew quiet, apparently waiting for me to comment, to ask what the rub was. Why should I care? I didn’t want to hear any more about the afterlife. Like listening to Aunt Jen, their explanations only made my death more real.

I glanced between them, feeling lost—an outsider. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be included. Part of me wanted to be left alone. The other part was terrified Banning and Daniel
would
leave me—that I’d blink and find them gone. I listened to Aunt Jen on the phone, crying and retelling last night’s events to the next person in her address book.

My eyes turned back toward the window. What did it matter? Psychopomp or reaper? Demons, angels—whatever. Everything I cared about was gone.

“I didn’t lie, Keely. I didn’t cause your death.” Banning said, trying, no doubt, to comfort me. I shrugged. It was all I could do to not bolt from the kitchen. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be dead.

Banning nudged Daniel and they moved away from me, heading out of the kitchen. I didn’t want them to leave. I didn’t want them to go upstairs and check on my parents, but moving seemed to require more energy than I could manage.

“Why not have angels or demons do it?” I asked Banning in a shaky voice. “How come they don’t do your job?”

They paused at the doorway and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Because one would want to save every life, and the other take it before the right time,” Banning said. “It’s the nature of things in the afterlife. Reapers can’t do either. It’s just the way we are.”

Aunt Jen slowly paced the kitchen, the phone in one hand and a tissue in the other. “Last night. They found her in their tub.”

A landslide of emotions overwhelmed me, crushing me to the point that I could barely breathe. “I... I saw light when I died.”

“That’s your soul,” Banning answered. “Dying people see their soul as it is taken from their bodies.”

The explanations flowed from him so easily, the how and why of things. But I didn’t want to accept any of this. I couldn’t stop thinking of my life, much less understand the complexities of an
after
life. I shouldn’t be here exchanging pleasantries with the one person who personified the thing I hated most—death.
My
death.

All I wanted was to find some way to go back in time. I shook my head. Hope was for the living. Not the dead.

Banning simply smiled. It reminded me of long ago when my grandmother smiled at Jordan and me as she tried to explain something far too adult for our little girl brains.

My aunt ended the call and sobbed softly over the sink, her face puffy and her eyes red-rimmed and wet. With a swipe of the now tattered tissue, she picked up the phone again. I didn’t want to keep hearing her explain my death to family and friends, yet until Banning and Daniel left, I couldn’t go either. No way would I leave them here with my parents.

And where would I go?

A half-dozen ravens had collected on the fence outside, cawing and flapping their wings. Banning watched them as though listening to the birds’ argument.

“Becky? It’s Jen. I have some horrible news,” my aunt said into the phone.

I shut my eyes, wishing this hateful nightmare away. I hadn’t closed them for a second, but when I opened them again, Banning was gone. Only Daniel remained.

“Business,” Daniel explained, motioning to the collection of ravens. “Messengers. He’ll have another job to do soon. That means we’re going on a field trip.”

I stared at him, the fear of such an act choking me. I backed up a step. “I’m not leaving. I can’t! I’m not leaving my parents!”

“Well,” he said, looking outside. “I guess if you’re not leaving, then
I’m
not leaving.”

No. He couldn’t be allowed to stay. He didn’t look like a demon, but that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Trickery.

“Leave us alone!” I shrieked. Confused and overwhelmed, I finally bolted past my aunt and out of the kitchen. I ran into the laundry room and slid down the wall on the far side of the dryer.

After a moment, I stole a glance at the laundry room door, expecting Daniel to be standing there. Hoping Jordan or Gram would be there instead.

They weren’t.

I wanted time to think, to be alone. Yet, the thought of being alone also terrified me.

You’re losing it. Keep it together, Keely.

I listened to my aunt in the kitchen, listened for sounds of Banning, Daniel or my parents. I might not be alone, but my existence had a certain weary emptiness.

Something brushed me and I yelped. Daniel’s head poked through the wall as though it were made of water. Wisps of fire-red smoke momentarily curled around his head before dissipating like chilled breath.

“Part two of the denial stage: the freakout,” Daniel said as though this explained everything.

I pushed away from him, scooting across the floor and cringing against the opposite wall.

“Go away!”

“Wow. Self-loathing, brooding, and no sense of humor. I bet you were popular with
all
the guys. I was just trying to cheer you up. Look, let me tell you how it’s going to go. Maybe we can save some time here. You’re going to freak out for a few days, have a hard time coming to grips with your death. You’ll yell and scream and stomp your pretty little feet. We’ll feel bad for you and say nice things.”

He scrunched up his face. “Well,
Banning
will say nice things. Then you’ll cry some more and go into hysterics worthy of someone in a loony bin before coming full circle into the depression that landed you here to begin with. Finally, you’ll accept it. If you’re lucky, you’ll do all this before the week’s out and I escort you to hell. So, what do you say we just move this along a bit? Skip the denial, the freakout, the more denial crap. It’s overrated, anyway. Don’t you want to know how to pass through things?” His arm came through the wall and his hand briskly rubbed his shoulder. Another few wisps of smoke lingered, then vanished. “Ugh! I hate walls! Electricity!” He retreated back to the other side.

I scooted forward, away from the wall I was huddled against. I didn’t want to know how to pass through walls or anything else. I didn’t want to know about hell or reapers or anything except how to make things right again. I eyed the small laundry room window, wondering if I should climb through it or not. Then I realized I probably couldn’t. If what Daniel said was true, then I couldn’t move anything in the physical world with Aunt Jen right in the next room. If I knew how, I might be able to pass
through
the window as Daniel suggested, but that would be admitting I was dead. Irreversibly dead. Like them. Right now, admitting it felt like acceptance, and I wasn’t anywhere near ready for that.

I waited a second for Daniel to appear at the doorway, and when he didn’t, a layer of thin frost spread down my spine. My parents! He’d gone upstairs. In seconds, I was on my feet, running. I slammed into him and let out a scream.

“What’s going on?” Banning asked from behind him. “What did you do to her, Daniel?”

“
Nothing
,” Daniel protested. “She’s going through the meltdown thing.” He sighed. “Save your breath, I already explained the stages of afterlife grief. It didn’t go well. I also told her that when you got back, you’d have another job to do. I said she could either go with us, or I’d stay here with her.”

“I’m fine here by myself!” I yelled at Daniel. “I don’t want you near my parents!”

“I’m sorry, Keely,” Banning said. “I truly am. But, one of us has to be with you, and I’d prefer it be me.” He shot Daniel a suspicious glance. “Since I have to leave, you’ll have to come with me. Unless you
do
want to stay here with Daniel.”

Daniel gave his head a weary shake. “Look, you can’t stay here indefinitely anyway. The dead can wreak some serious havoc on the living if you hang out too long. Especially in your freaked-out condition.”

Banning nodded solemnly. “What Daniel is saying is that here in purgatory, negative emotions often create negative energy. Long term, that’s not always healthy for the living.”

I thought about my parents again. Here I was, holding on to the echoes of my life, hiding in shadows, watching over Mom and Dad while they slept. I was haunting my own house. I was haunting my parents.

My Dad’s voice carried into the laundry room. He and my aunt exchanged a few quiet words. Then, there was a loud crash. I shoved past Banning and Daniel in my hurry to get back to the kitchen.

“You’re bleeding, let me get this,” Aunt Jen said as she picked up pieces of a broken coffee mug.

My Dad ignored her and helped retrieve the shards from the floor, leaving small, bloodied drops behind. He stared at the blood silently at first, then he began to quiver uncontrollably and cry. Aunt Jen shoveled the bits of broken mug into the trash before grabbing a paper towel. She hurried back, taking a seat on the floor beside him and pressing the paper towel against his bleeding hand.

I couldn’t breathe. Had I done that? Had Daniel? Banning?

“I didn’t do it,” Daniel said. “You guys always blame demons.”

Once again, I positioned myself between Daniel, Banning, and my father. I wanted to lean in, to examine the cut, but I couldn’t. My eyes found Banning’s, not knowing why I sought an answer from him.

He didn’t move any closer. “It could be coincidence, Keely. Or, you might have had some influence. Hard to say. You’re upset, understandably. But, upset, confused, and angry, all the same.”

Daniel smirked. “And that’s a
lot
of negative energy.”

“I’ve got to go,” Banning said softly. “Do you want to come with me? Or do you want to stay here with Daniel?”

Dad went to the sink to rinse the blood from his hand. If I had caused him to cut himself, what else might happen? It might be safer for my parents and Aunt Jen if I went with Banning and Daniel. Daniel turned to leave. “Maybe I’ll go check on your mother—”

I whirled on him. “Keep away from her!”