Eternity's Echo

by H. C. Southwark

  “What’s a sep-ul-chree?” she asked, sounding the word out.

  “Seh-pull-kra. A tomb,” answered Cookie, automatically. She was peering at the sign.

  “Oh, snap,” blurted Jude, who obviously knew something. He jogged through the arch and down the street behind, literally down, because the street was descending.

  “Did he just say ‘oh, snap,’ like a little old lady?” muttered Shawn, following with Ellie and Cookie. “Why can’t college boy just curse like a normal person?”

  There were people walking up the street as they descended, frozen in time like everything else. And yet Ellie, with her reaper’s sense, did not need to see their eyes to know these bodies were empty. Some reaper had already been here. Ellie wondered what the local reapers would say if they found them.

  She imagined herself explaining: Oh, hi! We’re from the Colorado Springs Squads. Just sightseeing! I mean, seeing as everything is going to be destroyed.

  Somehow she thought that would not work well. But what could the local reapers do? Ellie did not know if traveling was banned. Maybe it was. Perhaps the rulebook had the answer. She had never thought about leaving Colorado Springs before.

  She was too busy working. And complaining about work.

  And yet here I am, she thought, snorting in self-amusement. Trying to stop the end of the world, so I can work my crappy job for longer. What self-sacrifice!

  The corridor behind the arch opened up into a courtyard. The three reapers found Jude staring at a pair of doors under double-arches and framed by columns. Above was a set of windows and more arches. The building was at least six or seven floors tall.

  Ellie peered around the courtyard, taking in the human bodies scattered about. A woman holding a lit candle, her hands shielding the ember as she walked. The tiny light cast a sharp, still glow over her face, like the flash from a camera lens.

  “It’s all Saints’ Day,” said Jude, noticing where Ellie was looking. “Must be the stragglers from the celebration. I think this place is about half a day ahead of us.”

  Lifting her pocket-watch, Ellie was not surprised that she could still read the face in the dark, because it was always legible. She found that the time dial had self-adjusted.

  “It’s a couple seconds from midnight, here,” she said, stuffing the pocket-watch back into her breast pocket. “Nine hour difference.”

  “Okay, quit being cryptic,” Shawn demanded. “Where the hell are we?”

  “Jerusalem,” said Jude. “The Holy Sepulchre. Only the holiest site in all Christendom.”

  “Oh,” said Cookie, as though understanding had dawned on her.

  “What?” Shawn said. “What? What?”

  “A holy tomb,” said Cookie, “which is now empty. Think hard, you’ll get it eventually.”

  Ellie had already strung the pieces together. Some memory in the back of her mind, a class on Medieval times, and maps: the way that Jerusalem was always placed in the center of every map. The people back then had called Jerusalem the ‘navel of the world’—like it was the site of the umbilical cord between humanity and God.

  “How do we get in?” said Jude. “The doors have been shut...”

  Ellie strode up and rapped the wood. The click was loud enough to fill the courtyard, although the sound was odd, abortive, leaving her feeling that there should have been an echo. The door was heavy but with her reaper muscles it swung open.

  When she turned back, Jude was staring with an open mouth. Then he grinned. “Time travel, soul reaping, locksmithing... you guys are basically super-villains.”

  Ellie shrugged. “Well, a locked door can’t stop death.”

  Then she turned to peer inside.

  The innards of the church were still lit up, leaving Ellie wondering if this was because the keepers had yet to put away the decorations for the last ceremonies or if the church was kept ready and waiting at all times, whether closed to the public or not.

  Makes sense, she thought. I mean, I don’t suppose God has a bedtime.

  In front of them was a raised stone slab, over which was a construction rather like one of those freestanding coat hangers, metal bars forming a box. Hanging from the topmost bar, in a line like the desk toys that had stone balls which would bang end to end, was a series of glass urns lit from within. Their frozen light glittered, unearthly.

  What caught Ellie’s attention was the imagery on the wall behind—a number of people crowded around a haloed corpse, embracing, kissing the body. From there she could look up—as though her eyes were directed—and see a great empty circle, as the walls did not go all the way to the ceiling. The effect was enough to make her feel like flying.

  “Amazing,” Jude breathed, nearly startling Ellie when she realized he was beside her.

  He stepped forward to move into the depths of the church. Cookie followed, and so did Ellie and Shawn, who had a sullen look on his face—must not have figured out where they were yet, Ellie surmised—but as they traveled deeper, their surroundings seemed to weigh on him, until he looked fascinated.

  The church was empty. Not much of a surprise, considering that the doors had been locked, but strange and chilling all the same. There was something off about wide open empty spaces, buildings without people, as though the world had been evacuated.

  Ellie sensed some kind of energy was here, trapped and pulsing, but without something to release it, all the energy could do was build and build and build.

  “Do you feel that?” Cookie whispered, and Ellie realized the sensation was not her imagination—there really was a hum, like machinery or electricity, emanating from the stones—the walls around her, the masonry underfoot, in the scattered lit candles.

  They turned a corner, and the space opened, encircled by columns.

  The inside of a rotunda. Ellie’s eyes went up, and up, and up—the center was a circular window, streaks of color inside of the dome like the sun looking down. In the middle of the room was what looked like a miniature building inside of the building.

  The keepers were obviously doing some kind of work on this smaller building, because there were scaffolds and bars for workers to climb.

  “The tomb,” whispered Cookie, and Ellie almost could not hear her.

  The humming, the energy, the power. Almost unbearable. Ellie felt as if her feet were being massaged, the floor vibrating, and her insides bubbling like soda in a can. If someone pricked her, then she would explode, the energy storing up inside her.

  “Ugh,” said Shawn, raising his hands to press against the sides of his head.

  Cookie looked just as uncomfortable. Jude glanced back, curious, but walked on. Lucky bastard probably did not feel anything because he wasn’t a reaper, Ellie thought.

  Ellie followed him, trying to ignore the pounding in her temples.

  At first, there was nothing unusual in the look of things, just the feeling. Her gaze was directed upward, away from the small building in the center, the lit candles surrounding like a throng of worshippers. The ceiling of the rotunda kept beckoning. Only when Ellie made it around the corner of the smaller building, to the front entrance, did she see it—

  The Spindle of Necessity.

  One step and she saw shimmering like heat above concrete on a sunny day. Another step, and the shimmering was like smoke rising from a dying fire. Another, and now a glow like the afterimage of a firework. One last step, and there: a long beam of light, stabbed through the top of the small building, reaching up into the eye of the rotunda.

  Like the beam of a key, Ellie’s mind pictured—this was what a key looked like, if one was standing inside the lock and the key was inserted. The dome was the eyehole of the world, and the small building—the tomb within—was the lock mechanism. The three reapers and Jude were ants witnessing the turning of the lock to the universe.

  But it’s only visible from here, Ellie realized. Like the Spindle is there, but also not there. It’s not fully three-dimensional. O
r perhaps super-dimensional. She doubted that the living could see the Spindle, but perhaps they could feel it. The hum now was so strong she felt almost like her bones were spare change inside of a dryer, clacking around.

  Jude looked horrified. And when Ellie peered closer, she could see why—

  For the Spindle was broken. It still stood, but the smooth surface was spiderwebbed with cracks, missing bits and chunks, hundreds, if not thousands of slivers....

  As though the Spindle was made of glass. Shattered glass.

  Humpty Dumpty, Ellie’s mind supplied, and she suppressed a giggle of hysteria.

  “Oh no,” said Cookie, beside her, startling Ellie. “It’s broken... where are all the pieces?”

  “If it were easy to fix....” Ellie said back, “they would have fixed it already.”

  She did not know if Cookie could hear her—she could almost not hear herself talk. But Cookie sidled closer and spoke in what, to Ellie, was barely above a whisper—“Ellie.

  Have you ever tried to glue together a glass vase? They don’t hold water afterwards.”

  “Then we’ll get something better than glue to put it back together,” Ellie said. The words felt vicious, snarled, but they were sharp with despair as much as anger.

  And then Shawn’s voice: “Uh, guys? Who’s this dude?”

  Ellie turned and saw who Shawn was staring at, and stared too.

  There was a man standing in the back of the room. Or, rather—his body.

  The end of the world meant some people were caught in embarrassing situations—Ellie had seen a lot of nose picking, sneezing, screwball expressions in Kramer Library—this man had lucked out. His pose was dramatic, arm uplifted and hand outreached toward the Spindle, the tomb, palm cupped like he was metaphorically holding fire.

  His face was like an actor’s in a still-shot, mouth open, mid-word, but not in a gross or overstated way. The look reminded Ellie of a movie poster, how a designer would have to go shot by shot in a film to find the one fraction of a second when a yelling face was also attractive. Something artificial, intentional, as though more than luck.

  And he was dressed all in black. A long leather coat flared behind him.

  Clearly, he had been hurrying forward, yelling, hand up—as time had stopped.

  The vacant eyes told her nobody was home. But as Ellie stepped forward, past Shawn, to examine the dark man closely, she realized those eyes were still peering forward, even without a soul to command them. She turned, followed the line of sight...

  “He’s looking at it,” she said, surprised at her own words. “The Spindle. He could see it.”

  Cookie made a sound of disbelief, Shawn backed up several steps like the scaredy cat that Ellie now knew he was, and Ellie faintly heard Jude say through all the vibrations,

  “Could it be him, then? Could he have something to do with the end of the world?”

  “Maybe,” she replied. “His soul is gone, so it’s not like we can ask. But maybe we could go back and see—if we knew how the Spindle broke, maybe we could fix it...”

  She was going to continue, to begin outlining a plan on how to go back while still preserving the ability to return a second time, just in case they needed to.

  But then behind the man, on a crevasse in the floor, there was a pair of glowing coals. They peeked out when she spoke, and from the crack a little rat-shape emerged.

  Chapter Seventeen: The Dark Man.

  Jude noticed first. His voice was incredulous, “What the H-ee-double-hockey-sticks is that?”

  Ha, Ellie thought. Hell. Literally Hell.

  Cookie stormed forward, face dark and determined. She hates those things, Ellie reflected, and then reminded herself: I hate those things, too. Squish em, Cookie.

  The demon must have realized Cookie’s objective, because it scurried sideways like a crab, wearing a human expression on its pointed face—exhilaration. The teeth were like bits of bone. Scuttling up the wall, the demon clung above reach, peering down.

  “Uh,” said Jude, barely audible, “is anyone going to tell me that that thing is?”

  “Stay back,” Ellie advised. She did not know whether super-humans could be snatched by demons, but considering he was not a reaper she did not want to take chances.

  Would be a sucky super-human, though, she thought, if he could face off against a mentor reaper, but not a little ol’ demon. That’s like an elephant being afraid of a rat.

  Literally a rat.

  Cookie, undeterred by the demon’s evasion, told it, “You can’t stay up there forever.”

  Ellie knew that demons were not really mobile, vertically. They could not linger off the ground for long, whether climbing trees or even going to the second story of a house. Fits, she considered, they are bottom-feeders after all.

  The demon’s teeth clacked, similar to the chewing sound guinea pigs made when they were scared. Then it said, voice sibilant, cutting through the rumble of the Spindle, the power vibrating the room and Ellie’s bones, “You’ve got me wrong, soul-stealer.”

  Soul-stealer? Ellie mouthed the words to herself. An odd way to think of a reaper.

  Jude made a startled exclamation. Apparently he had not thought that the human-smiling rat could talk. Ellie was also perturbed, mostly because the things usually did not speak. They did scream in human voices when being squished, though.

  Cookie’s glare went deeper into her face. She said, “We don’t steal souls, we save them—from the likes of you. Like I’m gonna do right now by ending you.”

  The rat-thing’s grin stretched wider. “No. You are a soul-stealer. This world and everything in it belongs to us. You steal souls without our permission. Thieves.”

  Cookie turned and gave Ellie a look that read, Can you believe this thing?

  Ellie shrugged back. She had never had a conversation with a demon before.

  Yet the rat was not finished. Instead, it angled its head and looked square at Ellie, and said, “But. I heard your talk, soul-stealer. You wish to fix the Spindle, yes?”

  “I don’t think that’s your business,” Ellie told it, feeling skin on her arms tightening into goosebumps. Odd, that the thing found anything she said to be relevant—and odder, she reflected, that it had revealed itself. The demon had been in a crack on the floor—

  Cracks, she now saw, that radiated around the frozen dark man, like a reverse halo—

  And Ellie or the others would never have known it was there, until it had revealed itself. Which was a risk, since it had to know that the reapers would try to squish it. Whatever the thing wanted to say, it considered that important enough to risk destruction.

  Strange, too, that a demon was here at all—because there were no souls to snatch. The local reapers had already taken them. Was the thing not bothered by the energy of this place? Jude did not seem to feel it, only the three reapers.

  “But it is my business,” said the demon, and its voice was whining, like a child bargaining. “It is the end of the world, after all. It’s everyone’s business.”

  True, Ellie conceded. She replied, “Still doesn’t mean you have anything to do with us.”

  “On the contrary,” said the demon, lifting one clawed appendage. Its voice still had no trouble being heard. “Now is the time for a truce. Why waste time fighting each other when we should be working together on our mutual problem?”

  Cookie looked disgusted. “No,” she half-yelled, “Doesn’t matter what the problem, you don’t team up with freaking Hitler. What would you do, huh? Stab us in the back.”

  “Of course I will, eventually,” said the demon. “You know what I am. But I wouldn’t do it right away. Not until the apocalypse is stopped. Why hurt you at the cost of myself? That’s crazy talk. If there’s one thing you can always rely on, it’s self-interest.”

  Ellie thought back to earlier in the day, when she had chased after Keith Smithson. The demon must have been happy to catch him—a new soul to chew
on. Yet at Ellie’s threat, it had abandoned its prey. No satisfaction was worth self-annihilation.

  Then again, Ellie thought, I am part of a group of suicidal freaks who trade in human souls. Clearly, sometimes self-destruction is on the table, for us reapers at least.

  “Funny,” she spoke up, projecting to be heard, “You don’t seem very self-interested, coming out and speaking to us. You have to know that we’d try to destroy you.”

  “Yes,” conceded the demon, “but I also know that sometimes, in order to survive, you must take risks. Either I take a risk and assist you, or the world ends.” It cocked its head, smile fading as lips covered teeth. “If I don’t at least try, I’m dead anyway.”

  They can’t read minds, Ellie reassured herself. Niles had told her as much during her reaper training. But the thing’s logic sounded so much like her own, it was unnerving.

  Or, some little part of her piped up, perhaps logic is the same for every being, whether human, demon, or reaper. And stopping the end of the world is logical. Nobody wants the world to end—that’s the end of everything, no matter whether enemies or friends.

  Mutually assured destruction. Was that what this sort of thing was called? Cookie had lived during the Cold War. She would know.

  But there were those who were fine with the world ending. Namely: every other reaper.

  Isn’t it strange? The question came from the recesses of Ellie’s mind, the part that doubted. The mentors won’t stop the end of the world, but demons will? Isn’t that a bad sign? Look at the bedfellows you could end up keeping, if you agree to a truce with this thing. But a glance at Shawn reminded her, Our bedfellows are already a problem.

  Her reply to herself was: Demons don’t want to go to the Hells, I’m sure, which is where they must end up. So they have a good reason to want the world to continue. Besides, who knows what it knows—and talking never hurt anyone.

  Ellie stepped to stand beside Cookie, addressed the demon. “So you want to stop the end of the world. Why not save the world yourself? Why contact us about it?”