The Deathtaker's Daughter

by S. L. Baum

  “No problem.”

  “I suppose I’m the first person you know of who has attempted to chart the path of recovery after you have passed into your transitional state.” Doctor Baker stroked his beard, deep in thought.

  “Doc, you are definitely the first and only one to stay with me to observe, in a medical sense, and chart my vitals.”

  “You’ve told me that your great-grandfather was a family doctor. I wondered if you ever saw any of the notes he must have kept on this subject.” Doc hoped there were notes; notes might answer many of his questions.

  “I know my great-grandfather watched over his wife, and his daughter, my grandmother, when he could. But I am not aware of any data that was kept. If there were any records, my grandmother probably would have destroyed them after her father died. She was extremely cautious about our family gift. I don’t think you should be charting anything either. What are you observing in Chai that’s causing you to worry?”

  Doc’s flash of disappointment was short lived. “That’s just it, I’m not sure if I should be worried.”

  “Doc, you are aware that I don’t actually see myself when I am out. I don’t feel or know what is going on inside my body. Other than the fact that it is processing the death and then expelling it, I really couldn’t tell you what my body goes through.”

  “I understand that,” Doc stated with exasperation. “But you have observed your grandmother in her transitional state, on several occasions.”

  “I have.”

  As they walked into the bedroom, Krista had a sense that Doctor Baker was right. Something about the way Chai was lying there didn’t seem quite right. Krista went to her mother’s side.

  Doc saw the look on Krista’s face change from curiosity to concern.

  Krista laid her hand on her mother’s forehead. “She’s cool, but she’s not cold. Grandmother was always cold by now.”

  “That’s exactly what I am concerned about.”

  “And her eyes,” Krista added. “There is slight movement behind her lids.”

  Doc moved in for a closer look. “I didn’t notice that.”

  “Her body should be completely suspended. She should have zero physical signs of involuntary movement until the death is ready to be expelled. There’s just no way that two separate deaths could have even been processed yet.”

  “Guess what, Daddy.” Eva sat on the bed next to Opal, stroking the new baby’s hand. She had her mother’s phone up to her ear and she was excited to share the news with her father.

  “What?” he laughed into the phone, he could hear the glee in her voice.

  “Opal and Pete have a baby boy! He’s all scrunchy and wrinkly, but he’s super soft. Opal said I can hold him later, but I have to be gentle.” She had immediately decided that new babies had the softest skin. “We should get a baby boy of our own!”

  “You just can’t go out and get a baby boy. It’s not like a puppy, silly girl,” Sam teased.

  “Oh, I know he’s not a puppy,” Eva giggled. “You’re the silly one.”

  Pete came up behind his son and yipped, like a small dog, which sent Eva into a peal of giggles. “Watch out he might lick you!”

  “Pete, stoppit!” Eva scolded him. “Daddy, you should come see the baby. You can help us name him.”

  “I don’t think that’s up to us. I think Pete and Opal are going to figure that out on their own,” Sam told her.

  “Still, you should come see him.”

  Sam sighed. “I can’t, right now.”

  “It’s something to do with Grandma Chai, isn’t it?”

  “It is. And Momma said we’ll all talk about it later tonight. But you guys are going to have to come out here, to me. Uncle Abe is on his way back. You can show him the baby. And you should probably give your uncle a cookie or something.”

  “Was he getting grumpy again?”

  “You know it.”

  Eva laughed and shook her head. “Grumpy Grumple.”

  “You should have Pete take a picture of you and the baby on Momma’s phone and then you can send that to me. I’d like to see you with him.”

  “Good idea, Daddy. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Love you!”

  “Love ya, too!”

  Doctor Baker and Krista stood side by side, staring at Chai. They were both trying to figure out what was going on inside the woman’s body.

  “I really don’t think my eyes have ever done that thing.”

  “Not until toward the end,” Doc confirmed.

  “Grandma’s eyes sure as heck never did.”

  Chai looked like she was in a REM sleep, like some crazy dream was rocking her body. Her eyes were the only thing that moved though, nothing else twitched. Doc had tried to wake her up, by giving her shoulders a good shake, but he was unsuccessful. It definitely wasn’t REM sleep, but her eyes would not stop moving underneath her closed lids.

  “I can’t even say that it’s a trait uniquely hers, because I checked in on her several times at the motel that first time she came to town. I never saw anything like this.”

  “It doesn’t feel right. It’s like she’s distressed.”

  “Are you guessing?” Doc asked. He knew that Krista had the ability to see all sorts of health issues way before they could be medically diagnosed.

  “It’s not exactly a guess. I mean, I don’t know what is wrong. I don’t sense anything in particular that is medically wrong with her. I just sense that something is wrong. When she showed up earlier, I could tell her body was suffering from exhaustion. She looked like she needed to sleep for as long as a body could. She definitely needed to take it easy and give herself several days to rest.”

  “But she didn’t rest. She saved them instead.”

  “Maybe the whole thing will just take her longer. I’ll have to send Sam to stay at Adeline’s, or we could move her to the motel, but that would raise a few eyebrows. The two of us, carrying a lifeless body. No good. All the squawkers in town would be squawking. Actually, Sam can just camp out with Eva as long as he wants, and we’ll give Chai’s body all the time it needs to come back.”

  “I guess that’s as good a plan as any.” Doc shrugged. “Opal and the baby look perfect. As always, I am amazed at what a Deathtaker can do. For being close to two months early, that little guy is in the best shape I’ve ever seen in a preemie. And if Opal had severe bleeding in her brain, I don’t see any physical signs of it.”

  “She hemorrhaged?”

  “I assume so. That’s what Chai said would happen before she insisted that you get locked out of the house.”

  “Then she probably still would have died if they’d delivered in a hospital.”

  “I think that is a correct assumption. I was more worried about the babe, but it seems Opal was the one in a more dire circumstance.”

  Krista took her mother’s hand in her own. “I still don’t know why she did it. I could have easily connected with one of them.”

  “I think she wanted to do something for you,” Doc told her. “This was her way of telling you she loves you.”

  “It’s almost too hard to believe.”

  Krista and Sam sat on either side of Eva. Each of them occupied one stool at the campfire.

  “Are you going to tell me everything now?” Eva asked.

  Krista nodded. “Yes.”

  “The whole truth?”

  “We promise,” Sam assured his daughter.

  “You’ll answer every single question I have?”

  “Every single one,” Krista said with a smile. “Ask me anything.

  Recording No.12

  So, I’m a Deathtaker. Whatever that is. Grandma Chai is one, my mom is one, and I am going to turn into one, someday. I think it’s when I’m a teenager, like, an older teenager, not when I turn thirteen or anything. Momma said it is not a light switch moment, which means it’s not the same for every Deathtaker. I guess that means that every one is a different age when they turn into one. Sounds confusing. And ap
parently, when I am old enough to have babies, my kid will be one too.

  Momma says that being a Deathtaker is special because we are able take someone’s death for them, and then they won’t die. That’s what Grandma Chai did for Opal and the new baby yesterday. They were going to die, so she took their death and now her body is trying to recover. That’s why she is not waking up. Momma said it will take a few days.

  I guess my mom goes through the same thing when she goes out of town. She helps someone out, and then falls into some deep sleep, and then she wakes up and comes home. She did a better job of explaining it all that last night when her and Daddy told me everything, but I don’t remember her exact words. I just know that a Deathtaker’s body has to kinda work the death out of it, and it does that while looking like you’re dead. I saw Grandma Chai, she sort of looks dead, but they told me she’s not. And she’s really not. I knew it right away, even before Momma said so.

  They also told me that Grandma Chai took Daddy’s death once, before I was born, and that’s why he can’t be near her anymore; because his death would come right back. That means Opal and the baby… Oh, they named him Egon Spengler Jones. My parents laughed and said something about carrying on a family tradition with his name. I don’t see what’s so funny about it, other than the name Egon is pretty strange, but it is also kinda cool. Anyway, Pete took Opal and Egon home the same night he was born. I guess they can’t be near Chai anymore, just like my dad, because Chai has saved all three of them.

  Mom and Dad told me being a Deathtaker is pretty special.

  I think it’s also pretty scary.

  Chapter Seven

  Chai had been unconscious in the guesthouse for four nights, and during that time her temperature never moved lower than sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit. Doc wasn’t quite sure what to make of that fact, and neither was Krista. During all four of those nights, Krista slept on the couch in the guesthouse, to be near her mother. As uncomfortable as it was, and as knotted up as her muscles became, she still wanted to be there when the woman finally woke up. For the first two of those nights, Eva stayed out in the tent with Sam. But after that, she slept with her mother, on the opposite side of the couch.

  It was sometime in the afternoon, after the fourth night of Chai’s body trying to process Opal and baby Egon’s deaths, when Eva cried out to her mother that the air in the bedroom was getting fuzzy. Krista was in the kitchen, just a few feet away. She abandoned the two glasses of lemonade she’d just poured and ran back to where her daughter had been quietly reading a book.

  “What’s going on, Momma?”

  “She’s going to wake up now,” Krista told her daughter.

  Eva stared with awe at the waves radiating from her grandmother’s body. “Does the air get fuzzy around you too?”

  “It does, but I’ve never seen it because my eyes were still closed. Actually, Daddy saw it with me, when he first found out that I am a Deathtaker, and I have watched it happen with my own grandmother, many times.”

  “That’s really creepy.” Eva pursed her lips as her brain tried to process what was going on with the strange air around her. “It feels warmer in here.”

  “It is warmer,” Krista confirmed. “When a Deathtaker expels a death it lets off that fuzzy stuff that’s in the air right now and, in turn, it heats up the room.”

  Eva looked at her mother with fright. “It really is coming straight from her body. You know this is the weirdest thing ever. This freaks me out.”

  Krista put her arm around her daughter. “It’s a pretty freaky thing. I want you to know, she’s going to struggle to get air in her lungs at first. Don’t let that worry you. The air will come, it always does.”

  They waited for several minutes before Chai managed to open her eyes. She gradually blinked them open while she drew a slow ragged breath. Krista didn’t like the sound of the breath, it sounded too desperate. And she especially didn’t like how weak her mother still looked. As she took a step toward the bed, Chai raised a trembling hand toward her.

  Eva came up behind her mother just as Chai opened her mouth to speak, but no words came from her dry, parched lips.

  “Let me get some water for you,” Krista told her mother, and then she darted into the bathroom and filled a small glass. Eva was gently holding Chai’s hand when she returned.

  Chai attempted to lift her head but soon gave up. It was obvious the task was still too great for her muscles to handle. Her eyes tried to focus on the shapes in front of her. She knew that her daughter and Eva were in the room, but they were just fuzzy shapes, not clear figures. Krista lifted her mother’s head with one hand and tilted the glass to her lips with the other. Chai took a long sip of the cool liquid.

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s good. I’m good,” Chai whispered in response as her eyes finally focused. “You waited here with me?”

  “We did. I wanted to be the first one to say thank you for what you did for my friends, and for me. You didn’t have to. I could have helped you.”

  “I wanted to,” Chai told her with a thin thready voice. “That way your friends could stay close to you. I’ve never had anyone close to me. I know you would hate it if they had to move away.”

  “We are close to you, Grandma Chai,” Eva said as she stroked the back of Chai’s hand.

  “What a sweet thing you are.” Chai winced as she said the words. “Where am I?”

  “You’re in the guesthouse on the property. This is where I lived soon after I came to Cedar Creek. Pete moved you over here as soon as Opal and the baby woke up, to get you away from them, just like you told him to.”

  “Have they gone now? How long have I been out?”

  “They are safely at home. It’s been four days,” Krista answered her mother’s questions.

  Chai looked at Krista with sadness in her eyes. “Four days? That’s the longest I’ve ever been out.”

  “Eva, there are two glasses of lemonade on the kitchen counter, and I bet Chai would like one. But I think she’d be able to drink it easier if she had a straw. Could you run back to the main house, get a straw, and then bring one of those glasses here for her?”

  Eva nodded eagerly at her mother, happy to be able to do something nice for her grandmother. “Yep. I can. I’ll be right back.”

  “What’s wrong?” Krista asked Chai as soon as she heard Eva run out the front door.

  Chai closed her eyes and leaned her head back into the pillow. “I wasn’t able to fully process both deaths.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Chai opened her eyes and shot Krista a look of exasperation. “You’re supposed to be the one with amazing medical senses. What do you think it means?” She looked away from her daughter. Old habits were hard to break and she wasn’t able to keep the sarcasm out of her tone. She immediately regretted the words. “Sorry about that. The bitch in me won’t be quieted.” She gave her daughter a small smile. “Nice and patient have become foreign concepts. I guess that’s pretty sad. But can you feel it? Can you sense them lingering?”

  Krista took a step closer to the bed and concentrated on her mother’s health. The signs that weren’t apparent minutes before, because Chai had been in a transitional state, had become quite obvious. Her heart was about to give out and there was bleeding in her brain. A part of each death, Egon’s and Opal’s, had remained inside of her. “Oh, no!” she gasped and moved forward to take her mother’s hand.

  “Oh, yes.” Chai frowned. “Guess I knew it might happen. I should have taken a year off, probably over a year ago, but I just don’t know when to quit. I kept using the power, even when my body screamed for a break.”

  “But why would you do it? If you though it might turn out this way, you should have let me take one of them for myself.”

  “I wanted to do one good thing before I die. Death was coming anyway. It would have caught up to me very soon, even if I hadn’t done this. Guess that’s why I came to see y
ou now… forces beyond our control. I already had this feeling that the next scheduled job was going to do me in. It’s nice to know that my last time using this power has helped good people.”

  Krista nodded her head. “You did good.”

  “I was finally able to do something to make you happy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Kristanta Jessmina Vita, I picked a good name for you,” Chai told her daughter. “I may have screwed with the spellings a bit but Kritanta is death, Jesmina is a flower, and Vita is life. Death flowers into life.”

  “I never realized that’s what you intended. I always thought you just called me a death flower or something,” Krista admitted.

  “I had a reason. You embody that name. You make death become life, and you do it right. I’m so in awe of you.”

  Eva came running back into the house, the door banged closed behind her. “I finally found the straws. They were behind the cereal,” she huffed with exasperation. When she appeared in the bedroom, she knew something was wrong. “You’re not all better,” she stated, as she set the lemonade on the table beside her grandmother.

  “Not this time,” Chai confirmed.

  “I thought you were supposed to be all better once you woke up.”

  “I was sick before I helped out your friends,” Chai said and smiled at the girl. “Normally, I would be all better.”

  Eva fiddled with the edge of the sheets. “You shouldn’t have worked your magic when you were sick, I guess.”

  “I wanted to. I’m glad they get to live. I want you to do me a favor; listen to your mother when she tells you the rules of being a Deathtaker. She knows them well. My own momma taught them to her. I didn’t listen to mine, but I think you are going to listen to yours, and you’ll make better choices. Your momma is a good woman, and I am proud of her. I’m sorry I won’t get to see you grow up. You are so goddamn beautiful!”