Eternity's Echo

by H. C. Southwark

  Then it dive-bombed onto Niles’s face.

  Ellie had only seen the movie “Alien” once, but that was the impression she had, as the little insectoid legs scrabbled around Niles’s ears. Niles let out a yell of surprise—

  Let go—

  Jude stumbled back, chest heaving with effort, and his arms snapped back into straightness, twanging like a rubber band. Niles tore the demon off and squeezed it in his fist—it screamed like a human and burst into a puff of smoke—gone—

  “You’re kidding!” John screeched behind Ellie, and she turned just long enough to see that the demon had not come alone. The dive-bomb must have been a signal, because they were everywhere—running among tires and scrabbling overtop car hoods, a giant wave of implausible and disgusting creatures—

  Most of them were the configuration Ellie was used to: rodents with spider-limbs. But others were larger, perhaps the size of rabbits, and mixes Ellie had not seen before: snakes and centipedes, snails with bird-feet, toads with crab legs—Ellie lost track.

  All she saw was one giant wave of mange and warts and open wet sores running toward her, regardless of shape and size, and felt nausea rise against her breastbone.

  John stumbled back and yelled out: “Don’t you little monsters dare—”

  Too late. Backs burst open, flesh rending, tearing, un-zippering, and puppets were everywhere. Clattering like wood, squeaking like doors that needed oil, they were as varied as the demons: gargoyles, dragons, ooze-coated bats, even something that Ellie thought looked like Slender Man. Joints articulated and smoke billowed over the parking lot, clouding her view. She coughed and hacked—smelled like burning plastic.

  Confusion. Jude yelled something. Niles called out, “John, it’s just a distraction!”—and she realized, despite appearances, that numbers did not make the demons’ cause any better. Through the smoke, John was already thwacking away puppets like they were newspaper, making short work of their owners with nothing but his shoes.

  Like a child tramping on worms. They screeched and screamed, made a lot of noise, and the smoke from their ends was especially foul. But while they hurled themselves at John, they accomplished nothing but slowing him down with their own bodies.

  Ellie knew that Niles was even more adept at ending them. Perhaps the whole pack would be gone in only a few minutes—this was busywork, but not hard.

  “You!” One of the demons called by Ellie’s feet, speech impeded with a pair of long yellow rodent teeth. “Impudent soul-stealer with red coat! Run from this place!”

  Good advice, Ellie thought, and she turned and fled, running in a direction away from the library—she could only hope that Jude was thinking the same.

  “Ellie!” she heard Niles cough, and did not turn to see whether he had caught sight of her or not. All she could do was peer through the smoke, which lessened the further she ran from the center—and there was Jude, grimacing as he ran beside her. He flinched in pain when she grabbed his hand.

  She lifted her pocket-watch, heard Niles call—“Ellie, think about what you’re siding with, here—” and she clicked the knob. The smoke vanished mid-stride.

  Jude tripped, dragging them both to their knees on the pavement. They gulped deep breaths. The air tasted sweet after the cloying sulfur and smoke.

  Ellie lifted her head and gazed about. Surprise descended when she found the street in front of Stella’s Café and Bakery was still intact—but the building was missing.

  Most of the buildings on the street were gone. They had been four, five stories each, but now there was barely a wall for most of them, only coming up to Ellie’s waist. As though some giant with a scythe had come along and cut the main part of each building off, like a farmer gathering wheat. The scene reminded her of old Puebloan buildings, where the walls of stone and mortar were worn down to mere hedges easily hopped over.

  The café walls were disappeared, but when Ellie staggered to her feet, she found that the first-floor materials were still present. Tables and chairs in rows, the coffee machines—all of it pristine and untouched. But no people anywhere. Although their implements remained: there were cups on counters, coats hanging on the backs of chairs, phones and pairs of gloves on tables, waiting for their owners to return.

  Oddly, though, it was all darkened. Muted in color. And Ellie realized: the sunlight. When time had stopped, the insides of the building had been in low light. Now the roof had been taken, but the sun was affected by the time freeze as well, so there was no sunlight inside the building, roof or no roof. The effect was rather dizzying.

  Thinking about the sun, however, gave Ellie a chill: Niles’s voice confirming, The stars have begun to fall... She glanced up into the sky—

  The sun was brighter, somehow. More like an LED than the sun, tinted a greenish color. It looked like the sky had warped, similar to Jude’s effect, around the glow of the afternoon sun. Within the first layer of the ripples, the sun was brighter. But successive layers looked quite normal: the over-average brilliant Colorado blue skies.

  If the sun was currently racing toward the earth—or perhaps the earth toward the sun—

  “Does it look bigger to you?” she asked Jude, indicating the star overhead.

  Jude frowned, still gasping, and winced at he lifted one of his arms, which Ellie saw was looking straight enough, but she wondered if there might be damage. He put his thumb at arm’s length and held it against the sun like a rifle scope. Paused.

  Then he said, “Maybe I’m tripping. But it is definitely bigger.”

  He let his arm fall back to his side, and his face showed relief. Ellie wondered if they should get something to tie up his arms, brace them, like one could for a strain or broken limb. She made sure to grab him near the shoulder to help him up.

  “How can you tell?” she asked. “I mean... just for the sake of being sure.”

  “Well,” Jude sighed, “I was told that for most people, the size of your thumb at arm’s length is the correct size to block out the middle of the sun. At least, it has been that way for me ever since I was a kid. And now I’d say the sun is maybe twice as big.”

  “I think I heard something similar,” said Ellie. “Except it was a quarter, not your thumb.”

  She guided him to the café, where they sank down onto the empty wire chairs on the patio. The sign for Stella’s Café and Bakery was unreaped, gave a bit of shade.

  “Your reaper friends have been busy,” Jude said, observing the street. Ellie doubted that he knew the area, being from up north, but there was enough evidence to tell him that this had once been a street lined with human construction.

  “I don’t understand it,” Ellie said. She scooted her chair into the table more. “We were just told that the stars started to fall. And they had only taken the roof off Kramer Library—so they were probably taking the big important buildings first. It didn’t look like they had gotten to any of the others. But now—the whole street is gone.”

  Wincing, Jude held out his hand. “Let me see them.”

  “What?” said Ellie, but then she understood what he meant, and fished out a shard to place it in his fingers. Jude observed the fragment, its glow limited, and turned it over.

  “Like Cookie said,” Jude surmised. “It’s these things. They must have some kind of time distortion—if you can call it that, with time frozen and all. I’d estimate that each jump with that watch of yours, time moves faster.” He frowned. “Or maybe it’s the number of shards we have. We started with one, and we’ve got three on us.”

  “Five,” said Ellie. “Cookie gave me hers before she left with Shawn. Although technically four, because the first two combined, remember?” Jude nodded.

  “That means we’re on a serious time limit,” Jude said. “I’m hesitant to say it, but is this even possible? We’ve lost two reapers, so it’s just you lugging me around to get the pieces. But if each piece means more time is lost between jumps, then cumulatively we are fighting a los
ing battle here. I mean, look. They got most of the buildings already.”

  Ellie was about to say something—anything—to get their spirits up. Perhaps something like, Then we shouldn’t waste too long resting, let’s get going—but she was interrupted.

  “You are correct, dead human,” said an oily voice. “We are near the point of no return, when we must either be ahead of schedule or else fail our quest.”

  Withholding a groan, Ellie and Jude turned to see a rat-thing scamper out from under a chair. They all look alike, Ellie thought. This could be the one who was about to take a bite out of Keith Smithson, and I’d never even know it. Strange bedfellows...

  “Fortunately,” said the demon, grinning with broken glass for teeth. “Most of the Spindle has been restored already. We merely need the remaining pieces.”

  It fixed Ellie with a stare. “And for that, you must uphold your end of the bargain.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Fulfilling the Deal.

  “The dark man,” said the demon. “We need him now.”

  “Hold your horses,” Ellie said, leaning back in her chair and feeling exhaustion sweep down to her toes. “Going upstairs and smuggling out a soul... It’s not that simple.”

  “But it is,” said the demon. “We have retrieved every shard possible. He is necessary to locate the rest, or the Spindle will not be completed. And—” it gestured one scabby, mangy stick-leg to the sky— “when the stars reach earth, time is irrelevant.”

  Jude nodded, heaving a breath. “Because everything will be burned to a crisp.”

  “Correct, dead human,” said the demon. “Soul-stealer. You must act now.”

  “I am a fugitive,” Ellie spat out, then realized how absurd that sounded. She corrected, “They know what I’m up to. They’ll be prepared for me to do something stupid. And they’ve had time—who knows how long it’s been since we jumped—they’ve taken up most of Colorado Springs, looks like. Could have been months for all I know.”

  “If time was working, it would have been two weeks since you were with the other soul stealers,” recited the demon, as if this information was old news. “Many of us died to save you then, and many more have died looking for you after.”

  “Oh no!” Jude pantomimed horror. “You’re demons, right?” He glanced at Ellie, who jerked her heard in confirmation, then he continued, “So you go to Hell. What a shame.”

  The demon seemed solemn, and replied. “No. We go nowhere.”

  “What?” Jude started. Ellie could not blame him, for this was news to her, too. Although some part of her had always suspected as much; demons had seemed more like animals than humans, despite their intelligence. She recalled her debate with Cookie over her theory of the parallel reapers: cat reapers, dog reapers, elephant reapers...

  Seemed more likely that Ellie was correct, and animals had no afterlife.

  “We go nowhere,” repeated the demon. “We are not humans. We have no soul.”

  Jude was frowning. He seemed ready to say something, then stopped. Ellie said, “Well, that sucks. Why do you chew on humans, then? Since you know we reapers will kill you over them. It’s not like you guys need to eat, right?”

  “Humans are ours,” the demon said. “This world is ours and humans are to eat. We do only what we are entitled. If someone comes into your home and insists on breaking and stealing your possessions, would you give in and let him have them, or fight him? Does the farmer give up eating his cattle because the bulls protest?”

  “Not to waste time arguing,” said Jude, “but I doubt the world is yours. God made the world, after all. Not you. And then it says in Genesis that He gave it to humans.”

  The demon smiled so wide its skull nearly split. “And humans gave the world to us.”

  Jude looked ready to argue, but settled back into his chair. Ellie realized he had conceded this point. She broke in, “All right, enough fighting. If I give you this—” and she pulled out the shards from her pockets— “will the time distortion stop?”

  Regarding the shards, the demon said, “I believe so, soul-stealer. But I do not know.”

  “Hey—” said Jude, about to object, but Ellie quieted him with a look, and handed over the shards. The demon proceeded to slurp them up, one after the other.

  “I’ll bring him here,” said Ellie. She watched the demon suck up the third shard, saw Jude’s eyes widen slightly, smirked to herself that Jude had kept count. In her pocket, the last big piece, made from fusing the first two, felt warm under her fingers. “But be ready, because there might be reaper mentors coming after me.”

  “Of course,” said the demon, calmly. “Soul-stealers like yourself always bring trouble.”

  “Wait,” said Jude, as Ellie began inputing the code for upstairs in her pocket-watch. “What are you going to do to this guy, when we bring him?” He glared. “Eating souls? Is that part of what you need to do—for him to show you the shards?”

  “Souls cannot be destroyed,” said the demon, gnashing its teeth, eyes rolling in their sockets. “But they can be made uncomfortable.”

  “Ellie,” said Jude, “Maybe there’s another way—your friend, Niles. He seemed kind of reasonable. Maybe if you told him what we’ve done, and how close we are, he might—"

  “What are you intending?” laughed the demon. “Is this really a dilemma for you?”

  “Someone will be in trouble because of us, so yeah, it kind of is,” Jude said.

  Ellie focused on her dialing, turning a gear so that its teeth matched another. She tried not to let her frown cut too deeply into her face, a small bubble of anger beginning to rise in her gut. Jude was playing the hero, now, arguing the good and morally pure choice, ultimate consequences be damned.

  This is just how Cookie made me feel in the church, she thought. Don’t you make me be the bad guy here, too. Someone has to make a bad decision to save the world, and I’m tired of being the one who has to take the fall for it when everyone is benefitting.

  I wouldn’t be such a bitch if everyone didn’t always force that role on me.

  Yet even as she thought this, she knew that she was casting herself in the best possible light—for there were also things she had said and done which were entirely her own initiative. She had simply chosen to bite at others because she wanted to.

  “It comes to a simple calculation,” said the demon, as if speaking to a child. “Which is more important—the fate of one man, or the entire world? You cannot have both.”

  Jude reared back in his seat, snapped out, “What? What is that? You see the parallels here—” and he was speaking to himself, now— “Is this some kind of reverse-Jesus effect? One man has to die for the rest of them to live? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Ellie finished inputting the code through the golden birdcage. Gnawed her lip.

  “Christ,” Jude said, more oath than name. “Ellie, it’s like this is some kind of antichrist scenario. We bring a man who sold his soul to demons back to earth? That’s a kind of resurrection. How do we know this plan of ours isn’t the real end of the world?”

  “Look around,” Ellie said, quietly. The empty, half-reaped buildings were silent. “I’d say the world has already ended, and unless we stop it, then things can’t get any worse.”

  “Besides,” said the demon. “What purpose would we have in ending the world? Did I not just explain that we are not eternal beings? The world ends, so do we.”

  Jude huffed, a sound that said he clearly did not believe the demon.

  “We do not ask for more,” said the demon, “than what some of us have already given.” And Jude seemed to realize that the reference was to those demons that had perished saving him from Niles. He fell quiet. Ellie felt relief—and unease—warring within her.

  It does seem convenient, the little voice of doubt piped up within her. The demons knew where you were, they are willing to kill themselves to save you... yes, they could be trying to save the world. Makes sense
that they would. But don’t pretend they aren’t also angling for something else. They’re looking for some extra advantage from this.

  “Some must be sacrificed, so the rest may live,” the demon finished. “You humans know well this concept, yes?” Jude bowed his head, his lips twisted, mulish.

  Ellie said, “The dark man. What was his name?”

  “Obadiah Charon,” the demon answered, sounding curious. “From northern Ukraine.”

  “Be ready,” Ellie said, and grabbed Jude’s hand, clicked the knob.

  * * *

  Upstairs was a mess. People milling around, faces of strangers. Some were laughing and some were crying and some both. The golden columns echoed with noise.

  Or, Ellie soon realized, that was what she expected, but she was wrong. She and Jude stood for a moment at the doorway to Earth, where most reapers appeared with their assignments in tow, and looked out at the crowd. This was not chaos. Rows of people, moving smoothly in lines, hardly stopping. An orderly process.

  They’re fast, she thought. These are lines to weigh the hearts. Got to be.

  “Um...” said Jude, eyeing the columns, the red satin couches. “Is this... Heaven?”

  “Looks like a brothel lobby, I know,” said Ellie, and Jude started, then chuckled. “But no. It’s more like the threshold.” She gestured to the far wall, barely visible through the forest of heads. “Those doors lead to Heaven and the Hells.”

  “Right,” Jude said. He squared his shoulders. “How are we doing this? You want me to distract them? I can raise a ruckus, maybe fight some more of your buddies.”

  Ellie considered, saw the way Jude winced as he moved his hands. And a conviction came to her: Jude would not be sacrificing himself, not if she could avoid it.

  Which begged the question why she should continue bringing him along. But Ellie did not want to ask, let alone answer, that question right now.

  “No,” she said. “We’ll find someone to help us.” And an idea came: “Cookie.”