Whispers of Death (18 page)

    I felt his little body right next to me. "Okay,” he said, “open them."

    A bright red Cardinal looked back at me as I opened my eyes.  Its wings stretched out, as if taking flight.  It was a perfect drawing, even down to the black feather that surrounded the reddish orange beak.

    "Hunter this is beautiful!" I gasped. "You did this?"

    His grin spread the length of his face. "Yes!" he said excitedly.

    "This is the most beautiful drawing I have ever seen!" I told him truthfully.  I was completely amazed at how well he had drawn that bird at such a young age. "How did you know how to do this?"

    He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know." He grabbed his drawing and smiled as he ran down the hall.

    The cold fingers were losing their grip on my neck, and I felt my feet touch the ground. The darkness was retreating from my mind.  I reached up and grabbed hold of his hand.  As my hands wrapped around his fingers, he screamed and released his grip.  The darkness retreated quickly out of my body, and I collapsed on the ground, smiling.

    Fear stared at me, and his smile widened. "What a beautiful family," he said wickedly.

    The way he looked at me sent a different kind of fear throughout my body.

    "If only you could help them when I go kill them." His wicked grin was the last thing I saw before he disappeared.

    "No!" I screamed.  I ran forward, and my foot caught on something, and I sprawled to the ground. I crawled forward, hoping that there would be a way I could follow him.  He was going after my family!  As I searched around me, frantically looking for a way to escape the prison of my nightmare, I saw the tombstone that had been there every time I found myself here.  Lying right beside it was a heap of black material.

    I ran towards Death. "Death, please wake up, please he is going after my family.  I need you to take me to my family!" I grabbed hold of him and spun him around.  His face was twisted in agony; his eyes were black as coal.

    "Death please, you have to help me. I can't do this without you! Please!" I shook him, hoping that would snap him out of whatever Fear had done to him.  A dark black puddle was starting to pool under his side.  I pulled back his cloak and found a large gash running up his side.  The cut had turned black, and I could see the black lines pushing their way up inside his body.  Fear had left behind a part of himself to control Death.  Fear was killing him, but he’d made sure that Death would suffer an agonizing and painful end.

    I looked around, hoping to find a way to stop the bleeding, hoping to find help from someone, anyone.  The scene around me was exactly like I had remembered in my nightmare the first time.  A lonely tree stood in the distance; thunder rumbled overhead as the dark clouds churned and lightning filled the sky, releasing the rain down on me.  The tombstone stood alone in the center of it all, like a beacon of what was to come.  Another flash of lightning, more thunder.  I stared at the tombstone.  What had been blank in every other nightmare now had writing there.  I quickly wiped the dirt away from the tombstone, and the letters stood out like light in the darkness.

APOLLYN

SON OF NO ONE

    I traced the letters.  My heart ached for this man I had never met. A cold icy hand grabbed hold of my wrist. I gasped in surprise.

    "Me..." Death tried to say.

    "What?" I asked, leaning closer so I could hear him over the rain and thunder.

    "Apollyn," he breathed.

    Understanding washed over me. "You are Apollyn! This is your grave!"

    He nodded.  I reached for him, pulling his hand into mine and smiled.

    He struggled to find the words as he spoke. "Take my memories," he whispered, "keep them close."

    My body lurched forward, and the scene around me changed.  I stood on top of a cliff side that overlooked the ocean.  The sky was a beautiful blue, tinted with a hint of pink, indicating that the sun was about to set.  A small boy sat on the cliffs, his little legs dangling over the steep edge.

    I knelt beside him, careful not to touch him. "What's the matter?" I asked.

    The boy didn't look up at me; he continued to stare at the pounding waves below.

    The scene flickered. "This is me. I was just a boy," Death said, his voice weak.

    Death stood next to me, his face full of pain.  He looked like Vanessa now.

    "How are we here?" I asked. "I thought Fear controlled you."

    "Fear does control my body, but my mind is still my own.  I am only here as a memory; my body is still at my tombstone."

    "Why did you bring me here?" I asked.  Death was getting weaker, as was his image.  I knew I had to ask him quickly.

    "This is the day I found out I was Death.  This is the day my life ended," he told me through labored breath.

    "How did you find out?"

    "Watch," he said.

    The scene changed, and we now stood in an empty rundown building.  The structure seemed to be falling down and was made of a material I didn't know.  The grass beneath our feet was black from what seemed like mold or maybe something else, I really wasn't sure.  Apollyn sat crouched in the corner of the room.  He had placed several wooden planks against the walls of the building and had piled up all sorts of weeds and garbage around himself.  I realized that this is where Apollyn lived.

   
"Apollyn come out of there this minute!"

    "No!" the boy yelled back. "You can't make me go."

   
The woman came to the door of the building; her hair was in a tight bun, and her face was dark.  Her eyes sat too far apart, and she only had one ear.  She looked into the dark hut, her eyes black as night.

    “
Apollyn, you come out here this instant.  You have to go into the box!" she said angrily.

    "No. I didn't do it!" Apollyn answered.

   
The woman seemed to lose all control at this point; she ran into the building and grabbed Apollyn by the collar of his shirt and dragged him out of the house.  Apollyn kicked and screamed at her to let him go, but she just tightened her grip and handed the boy to a thin, scary-looking man.

    "I don't want to go with him.  Why are you sending me away?" Apollyn cried.

    "Because no one wants you, and you are murderer!"
the tall man said angrily.

    They threw Apollyn into a large metal box.

   
"There,"
the man said,
"he can't do anything from inside there."

   
"Do you really think keeping him locked in a magical box will stop him from killing?"

   
The scene changed again.  My eyes had to adjust to the dim light that now surrounded me.  Apollyn lay curled in a ball in the corner of the metal box.  His small body shivered from the cold.  My heart broke.

    "Why are you in here?" I asked.

    At first I wasn't sure Death was going to answer. "People in my village were dying.  A plague of some kind.  It killed my entire family except me.  People took me in, and they got sick and died.  The house I was in just now was my childhood home.  They burned it after my mom died.  They hoped it would stop the disease from spreading to everyone else.  As others began to die around me, they decided that I was cursed and had been the one to kill all those people.  They locked me in this box hoping that I would die."  Death struggled with each word.  I could tell the part of Fear that was left behind was making its way further into his body.

    "After ten days, they opened the box.  I hadn't had any food or water, not so much as a breadcrumb, but I still lived.  They believed me to be possessed by some demon and sent me to the middle of nowhere and left me there to die.  It wasn't until a day or so later that I found out my true fate."

    The scene changed again, and we were now standing in a place I had come to know.  The grass blew with no wind, the hills rolled for as far as the eye could see, and in the distance I saw the Judgment Stone.  Standing among the grass was Apollyn; he shivered, though I knew he couldn't have been cold.  A figure approached from behind, a man dressed in a black cloak; he was holding a long staff with a long silver blade.

    I gasped. "I thought you were Death?" I asked, confused.

    "Watch," was the only reply I received.

    The boy faced the man in black, his little face afraid and scared.

   
"Why do you doubt? Do you not understand who you are?"
The cloaked man asked Apollyn.

   
"I don't want to die,"
Apollyn told him, his voice shaky.

   
"Death isn't the end, it is only another journey on your path. This is the path chosen for you.  As Death, you can free people from pain, help them when they are suffering.  Isn't that what you want?"

   
Apollyn seemed to ponder that for a moment.
"Do I really die if I become you?"

    "Eventually.  For now you will be an eternal being, neither living nor dead.  You will be the Angel of Mercy, the Grim Reaper, Death, among other names.  You will have those that fear you, worship you, and those that want to be you.  Being Death is not an easy job, especially with what lies ahead for the worlds you will be charged with."

  "If I'm neither living nor dead, how am I here?  Isn't this the place of judgment?  The place where all who die come to find their path?"
Apollyn spoke clearly, no longer afraid.

    "Death, how did you know who you were?" I asked, afraid that I had somehow missed the explanation.

    "I had been having nightmares for as long as I could remember.  Nightmares that led me to answers," he answered inside my mind.

   "How did you get to Limbo?" I was afraid of his answer; I felt I already knew it.

    "When they left me to die, someone would always come back to see if I had died yet.  One day I decided when the man showed up that I would jump off the cliff.  The man rejoiced rather than worried. The placed my tomb on that hillside next to the only tree that grew there.  That tombstone was the only thing that connected me to this world," he explained, now breathless.

    "So you killed yourself?  You just told Death you didn't want to die." I was more confused now then ever, not to mention I was beginning to really worry I wouldn't get back to my family in time.  It had been too long, and I knew that by now Fear was surely torturing them.

    "Don't worry about your family," Death said, reading my mind.  "Fear had to go get more energy before he took on a healthy living person.  He can't harm your family yet; he isn't strong enough."

    I sighed in relief, but my feeling was short lived as I realized he’d said, "Can’t harm them yet."

    "I didn't die when I fell from the cliff. I landed on a ledge just out of sight of the man," Death continued. "That is when Death came for me and brought me to Limbo.  I had already known then that there was something more to me, something that seemed off.  When he told me who I was, it only took me a few minutes to know that I would do it.  I already was anyway."

    "What do you mean you already were?" I asked, completely enthralled with his story.

    "When my family got sick with the plague, they begged for mercy.  The plague was eating them from the inside out.  My dad told me to come to him, and when I put my hand on his, the plague left his body, entered my own, and he died peacefully.  When my mother saw what I had done, she pleaded for me to save my brother and sister.  I didn't want to do anything at first: I was afraid.  I was only three at the time." He paused; his breathing had become even more labored, and I could tell it was taking everything he had just to tell me his story.

    "After a couple of days, I could no longer watch them suffer in pain.  No one would come to help us.  No doctor or anyone else would come anywhere near our home. I built up as much courage as a three-year-old could, and I touched my brother, then my sister.  Each of them let out a grateful thank you before they passed away.  My mother refused my touch.  She wouldn't leave me alone.  She suffered a long time.  Finally one day when she had fallen asleep, I decided I could no longer watch her suffer.  I kissed her cheek as she slept.  I watched as her soul left her body, and her life was over." His voice shook as he told of his mother's death.

    I knew that if I had my body I would be in full tears.  That young boy that stood in front of me talking to Death had already been through so much.  My motherly instincts wanted to grab the little boy and hold him tightly in my arms, but I knew that it wasn't possible.

    "Death, I am so sorry you had to go through that.  What a horrible thing to happen." My heart ached.

    "I did the same for others in the village that had contracted the plague.  I knew that I would be considered a bad omen, but I had to save them."

    "When did you become Death?" I asked, checking to make sure that the boy was still there.

    "I stayed with Death from that moment on. After a few years, Death took his own path, and I took his place as Death," he said. "That was many millennia ago."

    My curiosity was peaked; why did he want me to know this information about him? Why was this more important than getting to my family to protect them?

    "Haven't you figured it out yet?" he asked, annoyance clear by his tone.  "Haven't you realized why you are so special?  Why you can see and hear the dead?  Why you can take away Vanessa's pain?"

    Shock emanated through every ounce of my being. "I am Death." It came out as a whisper. How could this be?  How could I be Death?

    "Yes, you are here to take my place," he answered.  At first I thought you were just the key to the Whispers of Death, but after what happened in New York and after talking with the Seer, I realized you were not only the key to the Whispers of Death, but also the Death Whisperer.  You are here to take my place. You are now Death…The Grim Reaper…the Angel of Mercy."