The Big Reap (2 page)

Foolish as it sounded, it was as if she appeared from thin air.

I propped myself up on one arm and sat agape as, upright, her full beauty became evident. She was, it shames me to say so soon after selling my soul to save the love of my life, the most stunning woman I'd ever seen. And apparently, I wasn't the only one to find her so – even the radio in the other room had fallen silent upon her arrival. Her eyes glinted emerald and onyx, somehow suggesting throaty laughs and whispered secrets and traded glances from across a crowded room that led wordlessly to clothes discarded and limbs tangled in passion. Her cheeks and shoulders were dusted with freckles, and the sultry scent of sun-warmed skin clung to her, as if she'd wandered through a summer orchard on her way to these bleak environs. Her hair tumbled lustrous red across her shoulders in undulating waves and curls, the last of which on either side curved to frame her perfect breasts, which seemed to ever-so-slightly strain the mere molecules of silk that attempted to contain them. And her lips, painted the color of fresh blood, were so sensuous – so transfixing – I couldn't help but wonder what foolhardy acts men had perpetrated with the hopes of kissing them, of tasting her breath, of simply seeing them smile.

They weren't smiling now.

Her gaze traveled from my prostrate form to the vomit-specked tub and her face crinkled with distaste. Then she strode past me so close the silken hem of her dress dragged cool across my cheek – clean-shaven, I was surprised to discover, as last I recalled I wore the ratty, unkempt beard of an indigent – and righted the upturned kitchen chair. She dropped into it with an easy grace and crossed her legs. Her toenails, I saw, were painted blood red to match her lips. No footprints marked her trip across the room.

“Who–” I said, but then I stopped. The word felt foreign and awkward on my tongue – my lips contorting as if unsure how to wrap themselves around it – and sounded so, as well. I wondered then if I'd suffered a stroke. Perhaps the stress and scavenged food and rotgut booze had finally caught up with me, and my memory of dying was nothing more than a hallucination brought on by a blood clot lodging itself somewhere in my brain and starving it of oxygen.

Hell, maybe the clot had been building for a while, and was responsible for ginning up the whole Dumas-is-a-demon-to-whom-I-sold-my-soul madness I'd been clinging two these past few months. I had to admit, it seemed the likelier option. And if it were true, maybe it was modern medicine and not God who'd granted me my second chance. Either way, I swore then and there, to myself and to Elizabeth, I wouldn't squander it.

If I only knew then how hard a promise that would be to keep.

“Don't worry,” said the woman, noting my puzzled reaction to my own halting utterance, “speech is tricky at first, particularly in a foreign vessel such as yours, it requires close marriage of thought and fine motor skills, and his are calibrated to another tongue, but I've no doubt you'll get the hang of it.”

I swallowed hard and tried again to speak, this time with exaggerated care. “W-who
are
you?” It came out with a few more syllables than I intended, and my voice sounded unfamiliar to my own ears, but I think it got the point across. Herr Grumpypants on the radio in the other room seemed to disagree. His nattering started up again, far louder now, with a barked
Nein, nein, nein!
It was an ice pick to the temples. I could barely hear myself think.

“
Who
I am is not as important at this moment as
what
I am. Just as
who
you are is no longer as important as
what
you are. My name is Lilith. I'm to be your handler. And you, Collector, are to be my little undead pet.”

“M-my h-h-handler?”

“That's right,” she said.

“I d-d-don't understand.”

She heaved an exaggerated sigh, as if she were a schoolmarm and I a particularly obstinate student. “You wouldn't, would you? Your kind never seem to. It's been forever since my last babysitting assignment – I would have thought you lot would be savvier by now. Too much for me to hope for, I suppose. So allow me to explain to you how your afterlife's to work. It's quite simple, really. Your job, for all eternity, is to collect the souls of the damned. My job is to communicate to you your assignments, and to ensure you do not step out of line. Do as I say, and you and I shall get along just fine. Disobey me, and I'll be forced to take action to ensure you won't again. Are we clear?”

None of this was making sense. I said as much. Lilith rolled her eyes like
I
was the crazy one.

“Look,” I said, my words coming easier now, requiring less concentration, though the din of the radio made it hard for me to hear them as I spoke. “I don't know who you are, or what you're playing at. But you're going to have to play at it by yourself. I need to go find my Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth?” she asked, the faintest hint of a smile dancing across her perfect lips. “Ah, yes, your star-crossed wife. I assure you, she's quite well. After all, those were the terms of your bargain as I understand them. But I'm afraid seeing her is out of the question.”

“Like hell it is.”

“Finally, Collector, you're catching on.”

“Why do you keep calling me that? My name is Sam.”

“
Was
,” she replied.

“I don't follow.”

“Your name in life was Sam. In death, I may call you anything I wish. And I prefer Collector. It suggests an air of professionalism, don't you think?”

“I think this whole conversation suggests an air of flat-out crazy,” I replied, “and I've had about all of it I can take. Now you're either going to help me up or not, but either way, I'm getting out of here – even if it means I have to crawl. I've got a wife to apologize to.”

“No, you don't,” she said, not unkindly. “You have a widow. One you're forbidden from seeing – unless, of course, you wish to nullify your deal and send the poor girl into an unfortunate state of relapse.” At that, I blanched, and swallowed hard. Lilith took note, nodding once to indicate her satisfaction that her message had been received, and then continued. “And I suspect by now your legs will work just fine. It always takes a while for a Collector's vessel to acquiesce to its commands. Of course, unless this vessel's a world-class swimmer, those legs won't get you where you wish to go, working or no.”

“You're telling me this ain't Manhattan? So where, then? Brooklyn? Queens?”

“I think you misunderstand the nature of our relationship,” Lilith replied. “I am to be your master, not your tour guide. And this is your first lesson as a Collector, not some meet-and-greet. Now how about you do as I've suggested and test those legs of yours?”

Two-thirds of everything this chick said made no goddamn sense, but she was right about my legs at least. I flexed each of them in turn, wincing reflexively in anticipation of the broken-glass crunch of bone on bone in my bum knee, only to be surprised when it extended smoothly and pain-free. “But how could I… what did you
do
to me?”

“Tell me, Collector, what's the last thing you remember?”

“I was outside Elizabeth's new apartment, waiting to catch a glimpse of her. She and I… we'd parted ways, but I hoped maybe I had a shot to change her mind. I saw her through the crowd, and called to her. Someone bumped into me, and the world went gray. At the time, I thought he reached into my chest and ripped out my goddamn soul. But that's nuts, right? I mean, it was probably a stroke or something. A blood clot traveling from my heart to my brain, and making me think all kinds of crazy shit. Whatever it was, it hurt like hell. And then I woke up here. Next thing I know, I'm in that bathtub,” I say, nodding, “and now you're here, talking some world-class crazy. You're what – some kind of nurse? And all this nonsense is, like, one of them newfangled psychological treatments, meant to poke and prod me to see if my brain's wired right?” After all I'd seen and done, it was a stretch – a fantasy – I knew. But I wanted desperately to believe it. It sounded better than
I'd never see Elizabeth again
.

“Would that it were, Collector. I'm afraid the truth's somewhat harder to explain, and harder still to swallow. Perhaps it would be better if I showed you?”

Lilith extended a hand, delicate as a flower. I took it, and she lifted me off the floor as a parent would a child, damn near wrenching my shoulder from its socket in the process. She looked around a moment, and then – spotting what she was looking for – walked to the far end of the room and righted the toppled bookshelf. She kicked aside its former contents – a single dented pot, some bent utensils, a man's shaving kit, the broken remains of several dinner plates – unearthing a small, face-down, paper-backed picture frame. A braided metal wire ran the width of it, frayed to splitting at the center. Above the sink was a square of darker plaster that matched the frame's dimensions. At the center of it was a nail.

Lilith handed the frame to me. I turned it over, and found not a picture staring back at me, but a strange man's visage, a starburst crack distorting his fresh-faced Aryan features.

I blinked in confusion. The stranger blinked as well. As one, our eyes widened in sudden realization. The constant patter of radio-German rose to a fever pitch, drowning out all rational thought.

The mirror fell from my hand, and shattered into a million pieces on the floor.

“How?” I asked her.

“Possession,” she replied. “Samuel Thornton's corpse is, by now, no more than hair and bone – one of a thousand John Does interred last year in New York's Potter's Field. And it's a good thing, too – we can't very well have you slinking about for all eternity in a decaying sack of meat and bone, frightening the villagers. So, freed by death from the confines of your human body, you now require a living vessel. Well, that or newly dead, though I'd recommend against the latter. They
are
quieter, I understand, but after a time, they do begin to stink. And think of what would happen if you were to bump into any of their relatives? Believe me, it's happened occasionally throughout the whole of human history, and it's never been pretty. Half the time, your kind declares it a miracle, and the other half, they burn the poor undead bastard at the stake. Either way, it's more attention than we care to attract.”

“Wait– Did you say that I was buried
last year
?”

“That's right,” she said. “You died this October past. It's now April 1945.”

“But only moments passed for me.”

“Consider yourself lucky, then. Your time was spent in the vast, formless Nothing of the In-Between, while your fate was being debated. If you remembered it, you'd wish you didn't.”

“Debated?”

“Yes. It seems someone on high – or perhaps on low – has taken quite a shine to you. There was much discussion as to your ultimate fate. Perhaps that's why you were assigned to me, rather than simply to a demon, as are most Collectors. I confess I was surprised. My last foray into supervising your kind was not the smoothest of endeavors. Truth be told, I'm not sure if our pairing is intended to punish you or me or both.”

“A demon,” I echoed, disbelieving. “Like Dumas?”

“That's right. Though understand, his human appearance was a projection, nothing more. He chose it to better pass among your kind. Most like him make no attempt to mask their true natures – and though they often walk unseen among the living, the dead such as yourself do not have the luxury of such blindness. The monsters at the edge of the map are, in fact, quite real. The sooner you come to grips with that, the better.”

“You're not a demon, though,” I said. “You're human, like me?”

“I fear my ontological status is somewhat more complicated than that, but I was once human, yes. Though it was so long ago, I remember little of my life.”

“How did you wind up here? Did you make a deal, like me?”

“Would that I were given such a choice. No, I was cast out of Paradise for sins that, until I committed them, were as yet undefined, by a Maker as petty and mercurial as a poorly socialized toddler.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Not nearly so sorry as you will be when you reach my age,” she replied.

Her age. Funny, she didn't look a day over thirty. And that body hardly conjured images of shuffleboard and bingo. Stunning as she was, I found it hard not to ogle her.

She caught the meaning behind my lusty stare and raised an eyebrow. I blushed and looked away. “So,” I said, “this is what I'm going to look like from now on?”

She laughed then. Sweet Lord in heaven, did Lilith have a laugh. It curled toes, straightened other things, prickled my new flesh with goose pimples. I felt the color rising in my cheeks. “Don't be ridiculous, Collector. You'll be here long after this vessel's dead and gone. His grandchildren, too, should he survive long enough to have them. No, you're just borrowing his body for as long as it suits your purposes. By assignment's end, you'll learn to take another at will, and to tamp down the thoughts of the individual inside.”

Realization dawned. “This goddamn radio I'm hearing – it's no radio at all.”

“No,” she said. “The city's been without power for at least a week. There's not a radio to be heard for miles. Those are your vessel's thoughts.”

“You're telling me I hijacked a Kraut?”

“
Jawohl
,” she said. “A rising member of the Hitler Youth, in fact.”