Grave Intentions

by Sjoberg, Lori

  David shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Really? In all these years?”

  “Never. I think Fate has this thing down to a science.” He took another bite of pizza and washed it down with a swig of milk. “Remember, only a small percentage of souls need our assistance. The vast majority die through natural causes and they pass to the next realm on their own. For them, location is irrelevant.”

  He enjoyed the challenges she presented: to explain, to justify, to redefine the parameters of structure and order. She never gave in easily; questioning subjects he took for granted and forcing him to view things at every possible angle.

  Sarah finished her slice, slipping the last bit of crust to an eager Buford. “How many souls have you collected altogether?”

  “I don’t know,” David replied immediately. He caught her look of disbelief and said, “I stopped counting before I left Korea. Honestly, I really don’t want to know.”

  If he had to give a rough estimate, he’d put the number somewhere around fifty thousand, give or take. How many more did he have to harvest before his salvation was secured? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? Reapers weren’t privy to such information, so what was the point in keeping score?

  “Fair enough.” She finished her milk and set the empty glass on the table. “Then tell me this: which ones are the hardest?”

  “They’re all hard.”

  “Yes, but aren’t some harder to deal with than others?”

  Talk about a loaded question. Harvesting a soul was never a simple task. Each carried its own unique baggage, be it wasted potential, traumatic pain, fear of the unknown, or sorrow for those left behind. Images of the dead flashed through his mind, a greatest hits of the grotesque and unfortunate. Over the years, he’d seen carnage of the most brutal fashion, inflicted on young and old, good and evil, healthy and diseased. After a while, they all blended together into one tragic collage.

  “I’d rather not think about it,” he said after a long pause. “Too many bad memories.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. “Oh David, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be so insensitive.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “Of course it is. I can’t imagine what it’s like, doing what you do every day. It must be terrible.”

  David hitched a shoulder, feeling increasingly uneasy with tonight’s conversation. He preferred it when she asked him about the mechanics of the job. Questions about his own thoughts and feelings required him to actually think about his own thoughts and feelings, and he generally preferred to leave those locked away in a dark corner. “It’s all part of the job.”

  “Part of a crappy job,” Sarah shot back, a mild trace of sympathy in her voice. “I still don’t understand the need for what you do in the first place.”

  “Consider it a design flaw.” David caught her gaze and felt a hot rush of awareness, one that was becoming all too familiar and not entirely unwelcome. “My guess is whoever created all this failed to take the dark side of humanity into consideration.”

  She sat quiet for a moment, mulling over his answer. “I guess that would explain things,” she finally said, although she sounded unconvinced. Knowing Sarah, she’d be chewing on that one all night, picking at it from every angle until she’d exhausted herself with the possibilities.

  Finished with his meal, David loaded their plates and glasses into the dishwasher. He felt edgy, off balance, uncomfortable in his own skin. The apartment suddenly felt too small, too warm, too charged with restless energy in search of an outlet.

  Needing space, he crossed the room, standing by the front window. Nightfall had descended, blanketing the city under a cover of darkness. The streetlight on the corner was burned out again, leaving the parking lot pitch black, the only light coming from the occasional pair of passing headlights.

  He caught her reflection in the glass then, approaching from behind, her expression carefully guarded. As she drew closer she reached out, resting a hand on his shoulder. Her touch was light, tentative, a simple gesture of compassion that left him yearning for far more than he ever dreamed possible.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice sounded so soft it was almost a whisper. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “I’m not—” He stopped, remembering his promise to be honest. “Okay, so I’m a little uncomfortable.” Determined to keep his emotions in check, he kept his focus on the darkness outside.

  “Nothing wrong with that.” Her hand moved slowly across his back, comforting circles that managed to put his mind at ease while setting every nerve on fire. “If I wasn’t here, how would you deal with it?”

  If she weren’t here, he wouldn’t be uneasy. If she weren’t here, his heart wouldn’t feel like it was about to burst out of his chest like the thing in Alien. And yet he wanted her there, needed her there, his own personal beacon of light.

  “I never told you how I ended up like this,” David said, staring straight ahead because if he looked at her now he’d end up doing something they’d both regret.

  “I figured you’d tell me when you were ready. Do you think you trust me enough to share?”

  Trust wasn’t the issue. No, it was more a deep-seated aversion to reliving a lifetime he’d rather forget. He’d operated under mental lockdown for so long he wasn’t sure what it felt like to open up and share.

  David caught her gaze in the glass again; felt another heady burst of desire flash through his veins. He knew then that he had to tell her—it was only right—to give her fair warning about the man he really was.

  “I served in Korea,” he began, coughing into his fist to clear his throat. “But you already knew that part.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “War’s nothing like you see in the movies. It’s chaotic and ruthless. You’re scared shitless most of the time, shooting at ghosts and shadows. It’s an awful feeling, never knowing if you’re going to wake up the next morning or see your family again. After a while, it makes you capable of things you never would’ve imagined.”

  David swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. He spared a quick glance in Sarah’s direction. She watched him with rapt attention, anxiously waiting for him to continue.

  “The Battle of Chosin lasted a little over two weeks. It was winter, and the weather had turned so damn cold I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes most of the time.” His mouth twitched into a solemn line. Lost in his memories, he rhythmically clenched and unclenched his hands, something he used to do to keep the blood circulating in his fingers. “It made loading a rifle a major pain in the ass.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Thirty thousand United Nations troops were surrounded by over a hundred thousand Chinese. Our unit got separated while covering the right flank of the 1st Marines Division. When the reinforcements got cut off at Hagaru-ri, we knew we were up the creek. Our only chance of making it out alive was to break through the south and rendezvous with the Marines. We were running low on food and ammo, so we only took the bare essentials and burned the rest so the Chinese couldn’t use it.” His eyes were still fixed on the darkness outside, but he wasn’t seeing anything in the present. Instead, he saw rocky terrain and a frozen reservoir half a world away.

  “They came at us, day and night, wearing us down physically and mentally. As the days went by our numbers got lower and the Chinese got braver, moving closer to our convoy with each attack.”

  More memories surfaced, playing in his mind like an ancient newsreel. Bullet-ridden corpses facedown in the snow, their bodies frozen solid. Soldiers burned beyond recognition by napalm or white phosphorous. Whimpers of the wounded and dying echoing across the reservoir, their pleas for help unanswered. Men huddled together in the night, frantically searching the dark for signs of movement. The relentless onslaught of enemy forces annihilating his band of brothers with ruthless efficiency. Those lucky enough to survive faced frostbite and hypothermia as Siberian winds sent temperatures plunging way below zero.

  “I w
as assigned to cover one of the rear trucks. A couple of my buddies were in the back; they’d been hit by sniper fire the night before. The cold kept freezing the gears, but somehow we managed to keep it running. I didn’t see the Willie Pete grenade until after it hit the truck.” His upper lip curled as the memory emerged from a place he’d locked up years ago.

  White phosphorous was a weapon of frightening voracity. It sticks to the skin and burns deep into the flesh, inflicting horrific second-and third-degree burns. No wonder most civilized nations now banned its use against civilian and military targets.

  “We were able to drag a few of them out, but … Jesus, the burns were so bad.” He’d never forget the sound of their screams, the sickening stench of burnt flesh. An involuntary shudder ran through him and he felt Sarah’s hand wrap around his, anchoring him to the present and giving him the strength to continue.

  “That evening, I sat watch over my buddy Jimmy. The poor son of a bitch was burned so bad his clothes were fused to his skin. He couldn’t stop shaking from the cold and the shock, and the pain was so bad he couldn’t see straight. The medic said he’d be lucky to make it through the night.”

  David blew out a ragged breath while his free hand continued flexing. He really didn’t want to tell her the next part, but she deserved full disclosure from the company she kept. “It’s a hard thing, watching a man suffer. I couldn’t let him go through all that pain, knowing he didn’t stand a chance of making it out alive.”

  “You ended his suffering,” Sarah said, a statement rather than a question.

  David nodded, unable to bring himself to look in her direction. “Yeah. Him and two others who were just as bad.” One quick snap and their pain had ended. “I died the next morning. Took three bullets and a bayonet to the chest while covering the rear. Next thing I knew, I was back on the field, harvesting souls.”

  There were days he could still feel the bayonet slicing into his chest, could see the look of determination on the face of the young Chinese soldier. The wounds may have healed, but the scars remained.

  Sarah’s face had lost most of its color. Her hold on his hand loosened, their connection now tenuous at best. “David, I had no idea.”

  “How could you?” He shrugged, trying to act nonchalant, like the memories no longer haunted him. His hand slipped free from her grip, preparing for the reaction he was sure to follow.

  She stood quiet for a long time, probably trying to figure out a graceful way of leaving without things getting awkward. He couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t every day a woman found out her next-door neighbor was a killer.

  Finally, she looked up at him and said something totally unexpected.

  “That’s it?” Sarah’s brow knitted with confusion. “That’s what damned you? I don’t understand. You helped them die with dignity.”

  “I committed murder, plain and simple.”

  “But it’s not simple,” Sarah insisted, a hint of exasperation in her voice. “It was an act of compassion. You spared them hours of agonizing pain. How can mercy be bad?”

  “Rules are rules.” Even if he personally considered them bullshit. David turned to meet her gaze. “It’s not our place to override the natural order.”

  “So let me get this straight,” she said, a hand cocked on her hip. “It’s perfectly acceptable to murder another man in the name of war, but to end a man’s suffering is an offense punishable by damnation?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Her mouth dropped open at his answer. “That makes absolutely no sense. God must be a man.”

  It was kind of sweet, the way she was getting all riled up over some perceived injustice on his behalf. Flooded with unanticipated relief, he cracked a thin smile. “I thought you’d be repulsed by what I’d done.”

  “Well, I can’t say I’m overjoyed to learn you killed three people. But I think your reasons were …” She paused, as if searching for the right word. “Noble, I guess. I’ve always believed in quality of life over quantity.”

  Noble. Of all the things he’d been called, noble had never made the list. But coming from her, with a look of such sincerity, it made his heart melt, just a little.

  “Knowing what you know now, if you had the chance to do it again, would you do anything differently?”

  Over the years, he’d asked himself the same question a million times. A month ago, he might have given a different answer. Part of him wished he’d let nature take its course, to allow his brothers-in-arms to endure those final excruciating hours before meeting their fate. After all, a token act of mercy had earned him sixty years of bullshit.

  Still, he couldn’t see himself standing by and watching them suffer. Deep down he was a coward; too weak to stomach a soldier’s final moments, just as he was too weak to open his heart to a willing woman.

  It dawned on him then, how everything in his life had led to this very moment. If he hadn’t ended Jimmy’s suffering he wouldn’t have become a reaper, and if he hadn’t become a reaper he never would have met Sarah. And that would have been most unfortunate.

  “Not a damn thing.”

  chapter 15

  Needing the connection, Sarah twined her fingers with David’s, the warm strength of his grip a welcome comfort. He kept his focus locked on the darkness outside but gave her hand a light squeeze.

  She glanced up and noticed the tightness of his jaw, the strain around his eyes, and wondered how much it had cost him to share the horrors of his past. Obviously, it was something he preferred to keep to himself, a wound still raw after sixty years.

  “Why did you tell me?” she asked. “Why now?”

  “I don’t know,” David said after a long pause, his tone as neutral as his expression. “I guess it was in the interest of full disclosure.”

  “Thought you’d run me off, eh?”

  A faint smile crossed his lips, but he didn’t answer one way or the other.

  “Nice try, David. But you’re going to have to come up with something a lot worse than that to scare me away.”

  “I’ll make a note of it.”

  Hand in hand they stood in silence, each lost in their thoughts.

  How could he stand it, this self-imposed emotional solitude? No man was an island, especially when so much stress was involved. Sooner or later, something had to give. He had to have some sort of outlet, but what?

  As her mind wandered so did her eyes. Her gaze eventually landed on his desk, making note of the meticulous organization of rows and piles. In the center of it all was a small stack of hand-drawn pictures. Slipping free from his grip, she walked over to the desk and picked up the drawings.

  “Wow,” she said, admiring the top portrait. It was a picture of Buford, lying on the tiles by the front door. Every feature had been captured, from sagging jowls to stubby tail. Her fingers traveled lightly over the paper, admiring the detailed nature of the drawing. “I never knew you were so talented.”

  “Aw shit.” Judging by the frown, David wasn’t thrilled to find her appreciating his handiwork. “You weren’t supposed to see those.”

  “Why not? You did a wonderful job with Buford.”

  “It’s no big deal,” he said with a shrug. “It’s just something I do to pass the time. I got a box full of them in the closet.”

  What a load of bull. Drawing in such detail took a great deal of concentration and effort. It was more than a time waster and they both knew it.

  Sarah set the picture of Buford on the desk and made her way through the rest of the pile, taking time to examine each image. Most of them were landscapes, like the fountain at Lake Eola and the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center. Others were more general; a heron at the bank of a river, the bloom of a hibiscus, a cypress tree in winter.

  “These are all so wonderful,” she said, amazed by the depth and clarity of each image. She never would have guessed he possessed such an artistic flair. “You really should …”

  Her voice trailed off when she reached a picture of herself. He’d drawn
her with a mournful expression, as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. Every feature was represented, right down to the annoying cowlick on the side of her forehead. “Whoa.”

  “Oh Christ,” David muttered under his breath, a look of complete and utter mortification on his face. He grabbed the portrait and stuffed it under another pile on his desk.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, perplexed by his reaction. “It’s incredible. You captured every detail, even those ugly moles on the side of my face.”

  “They aren’t ugly. They’re part of what makes you unique.” His voice sounded rough, strained. “You have no idea how beautiful you are.”

  His gaze caught hers, and this time she saw so much more than the usual aloofness. She saw warmth, and passion, and a yearning so strong it made her a little lightheaded.

  “When … when did you draw that?”

  David was quiet for so long she didn’t think he was going to answer. “Couple weeks ago, but I don’t remember the exact date. It was around the time you normally come home from work. You got out of the car and had such a sad look on your face. I couldn’t help but wonder what made you so blue.”

  “Probably work,” she said, since it depressed her pretty much every day lately. If it weren’t for her research she would have quit back when Angelo demoted her. But she was determined to finish what she started, to complete the trials and find out once and for all if her hypothesis proved correct.

  “Yeah, I had a feeling.” Brows drawn low, he met her gaze again, holding it for what seemed like forever. Then he shook his head and looked away.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t think I want to tell you.”

  Oh, this had to be something good. She nudged him with her elbow. “Oh come on, you can’t say something like that and then not tell me. Spill it.”

  David dragged a hand through his hair, looking like a man on his way to the gallows. “Reapers have the ability to influence the human mind. It comes in handy when you find yourself on dangerous assignments.”

  Funny, he’d never mentioned this particular skill before. Why, when he’d been so open about everything else? Unless …