The Deathtaker's Daughter

by S. L. Baum

  Recording No.35

  Christmas is next week. Momma promised me that after Christmas she’d work really hard with Doctor Baker to finally find a death for her to take… and then it will be time for me to watch it happen. They have a couple people in mind already. She’s actually going to save someone’s life! It’s really hard to believe. It seems like it was forever ago that Grandma Chai died and I found out the big family secret. When Mom told me all about it, she promised to let me see her do her thing, but obviously that didn’t happen right away. In March it will be two whole years since Chai died. Mom keeps saying that I’m so young, and that’s why she’s put it off for so long, but I really think it might happen this time.

  You know… I don’t know why I keep recording these messages. Uncle Abe reminds me every once in a while, so I guess that’s why I keep making them. I keep this little pad of paper in the box with the tapes and I write down every single date that I sit down to make a recording. Believe it or not, I’m still on my first tape. I guess I talk fast.

  But sometimes I just don’t feel like talking for very long, like today, so that’s all for now.

  Until next time,

  This is Eva Webber Vita – over and out!

  Chapter Nine

  It turned out that Krista didn’t have to find someone to help, because someone came looking for help instead.

  Sam and Krista were hanging out at Downtown Diner, talking with Opal and Pete. The annual White Christmas party at the diner had just ended and they’d stayed so long that Jim, along with all the other party guests, had taken off for the night. Egon, Lavinia, and even Eva had fallen asleep in the playroom at the back of the diner. Pete was checking to make sure the kids were comfortable on the mats back there; the room wasn’t exactly equipped for comfortable sleeping, they’d created it out of a storage space after Lavinia had been born. When he came back into the dining room, the door bells clanged. All four of them turned toward the door.

  The woman who walked into the diner was a life-sized version of a plastic doll. She was tall, and had very long, very blonde, wavy hair. Her full lips were painted a bright glossy shade of pink that perfectly matched her well-tailored jacket. Her smile was wide but her eyes held a puzzled look.

  “Can I help you with something, Miss?” Opal asked.

  “I think this is where I should be,” she whispered. “What pretty decorations, I feel like I’m walking into a winter wonderland.”

  “We were just about to lock up the doors for the night,” Opal told her. “We had a private party tonight, so the kitchen’s closed. Bill’s Bar is right across the way, and it’s usually open much later than our diner. You might be able to get some food there.”

  “Oh, I’m not hungry. Look how lovely and pure you all look dressed in white. I love that dress, and your style; retro chic at its finest. And you share my love of pink. Nice hair.”

  Opal looked at the woman with confusion. “Thank you. I guess. If you are not hungry, is there something else I can help you with?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” the blond doll-woman said, as her eyes scanned the four occupants left in the diner. “But I don’t think she’s here. She should be here. My senses pointed me in this direction. I just assumed it was in this very room. Maybe she’s at the inn next door, or some other place in this little town. But she’s definitely here… I mean, near here. She’s got to be. Oh, look at the snowflakes! Did you cut those by hand? You couldn’t have.” She spun around as she looked at all the decorations.

  Opal shook her head, trying to figure out what the woman was rambling about. “Who are you looking for?”

  The woman closed her eyes as she twirled around. “Ooh, Great-grandpa said this could happen, right before he died.” She stopped spinning and opened her eyes. “Maybe… maybe just maybe I got here ahead of her. Wouldn’t that be lovely? Then that means she should be soon, I think. No more than a day or two, if what he told me was right. But, that’s just a guess. I wish I knew with certainty. But this would be a nice little place to sit and wait for this Chai woman to turn up. Such a cute little town. And I do mean little.”

  “Wait. What? Chai?” Krista jumped up from the stool. “Why are you looking for her? Who are you?”

  “I’m Barbie!” she said before she rushed over to Krista and sucked in a deep breath through her slightly puckered pink lips. “Oh, you are seriously confusing my senses.” Barbie circled Krista and breathed in and then out through her nose. “You are most definitely messing with the Locator.”

  “What are you talking about?” Krista asked. “What Locator?”

  Barbie took Krista’s hand and drew her forward a few steps away from the counter. The blonde stranger removed a stretchy beaded bracelet from her wrist and then slid it onto Krista’s. “You’ve worn this, as an infant. K.J.V.,” she said as she neatly adjusted the beads. Then she took a square of pink fabric from her shirt pocket. “And this! I thought this was a strange fabric for a pocket square. It felt more like it was cut from a baby blanket to me.” Barbie blinked her eyes, shook her head, and then jumped up and down while clapping her hands. “You’re Chai’s daughter. Aren’t you?!”

  “Why are you looking for her?” Krista asked. “And why are you wearing that hair pin? My grandmother had one just like it. She said it was one of a pair, but she’d misplaced the other.”

  “Chai left these items with a friend of mine. And I’m here because I’m doing a favor for that friend. Even though you’ve touched some of the items, I’m still fairly confident that Chai will be here.” Barbie circled Krista again, and this time Krista turned around with her. “Oooh, you’re something special aren’t you? I don’t have any special sensors that tell me exactly what you are, but I know that you are something extraordinary.” Barbie leaned in to whisper in Krista’s ear. “But you’re not a Witch, like me, you’re something else.”

  Krista gasped and stepped back from the blonde woman just as Sam came up behind her. “Barbie Doll, it seems you’re upsetting my wife. Maybe you should leave.”

  Barbie smiled at him and gave a soft laugh. “Oh, it’s not Barbie Doll, it’s just Barbie. And I don’t think I’m upsetting her at all. I’ve piqued her curiosity. I’m not here to make anyone angry. I’m here to find Chai Vita and ask her to fulfill a promise she made to my friends.”

  “And what exactly did she promise to do?” Krista asked.

  “I’m not sure I should say. The other people here are not like you and me,” Barbie remarked. “But Chai is.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. She’s not here,” Krista told the blonde woman. “In the past, she would normally have come here on Christmas Eve.”

  “Which is the day after tomorrow!” Barbie exclaimed. “But–”

  Sam shook his head. “But she won’t be coming this year.”

  Barbie closed her eyes and took a slow breath. “Oh? That doesn’t seem right at all. Why not?” she asked.

  Krista and Sam looked at each other, but neither of them spoke.

  “She passed away, last year, in March,” Pete supplied the answer to her question.

  Barbie opened her eyes. She looked disappointed and almost defeated. “I’m sorry to hear that. So long ago. I can’t believe my signals were still drawing me to this place when she’d already passed on. Did she die here in Cedar Creek?”

  “She did. I went into labor quite early, and Chai saved my baby. She saved my life as well,” Opal told her.

  “Then you know what she could do. There are no secrets to keep hidden. Her spirit must still be attached to this place, and to you in particular,” she said as she circled around Krista. “You are very much like her.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. I just know.” She shrugged. “Sometimes I just know things. And my senses didn’t bring me here for nothing. I was on a quest to locate someone who could do something quite special, and I believe I have found that special someone.”

  Krista put a hand out and paused the woma
n’s circling steps. “I’ll ask you again, what did my mother promise to do?”

  Barbie placed her hands on Krista’s shoulders and stared into her eyes. “She promised to save the life of a child,” she told her in a soft whispery voice. “She promised to use her powers as a Deathtaker to make sure that ugly disease didn’t claim an innocent little girl.”

  “She had to have made this promise nearly two years ago.”

  Barbie nodded in agreement. “The girl’s cancer ended up going into remission during her treatment, fairly soon after the family met your mother. Chai stayed in their house for a month, to make sure it was truly dormant, because she could only take a death if someone was currently dying. But she promised if the disease ever came back she would make sure it stayed away for good. When she left, she instructed them to call her if they needed her, but that she’d come back to visit and would check in with the family. Chai didn’t return, but the cancer did.”

  “How long have you been looking for her?” Krista asked.

  “I’ve been following what I thought was her signal for about two weeks. You mother had left a box of her belongings behind, which is how I was able to use my power to lead me here to her. Well not her, I guess, so I think my Locator signaled in on you instead. I think you can fulfill your mother’s promise.”

  “I can.”

  “Will you?”

  “I will.”

  The next day, a mom, a dad, and their daughter flew to Greenville, where they rented a car, and then drove to Cedar Creek; specifically, to the Webber Estate, to stay in the guesthouse on the property. Barbie decided to stay in town as well. She wanted to witness the process, to make sure the promise was kept. It didn’t matter that the person who would fulfill the promise wasn’t the original person who’d made it. It only mattered that a little girl would get a second chance to live her life.

  “But you said you and Doctor Baker were going to find someone to help.” Eva looked at her mother in total confusion, as the family of three drove down the gravel path toward the guesthouse. “You said sometime after Christmas, not before.”

  “That was the plan. Doc had made some inquiries, and we intended to follow up on a few different people he’d selected. We were going to start next week, but this family just kind of fell from the sky, into my lap. Grandma Chai made a promised to help the girl. Since that’s become an impossibility, I’ll be helping them instead.”

  “But, Mom,” Eva whispered as the car came to a stop. “You told me that it’s always better to do the deathtaking thing far away from your home.”

  “It usually is, but I’ve decided this is an exception.”

  Sam put a hand on Eva’s shoulder as they watched the family get out of their rented vehicle. “It’ll be okay. This family apparently knows about people like your mother, and they’ll leave town as soon as it’s over.”

  Abe gave an approving grunt. “They look like good enough people. Those are sincere faces. I know. I’m good at readin’ faces!”

  The Barbie woman her parents had brought home the night before, the one who’d slept in the downstairs guestroom, the one who looked exactly like you’d expect a woman with the name of Barbie to look, rushed toward the newcomers.

  “I’m so glad you were able to catch a flight today.” She smiled at them and hugged each one. “Come, meet your hosts,” she said as the entire group came together. “This is Krista Vita, Chai’s daughter, her husband, Samuel Webber, their daughter, Eva, and Samuel’s great-uncle, Abraham Webber. They are the nicest little family! Actually, you both are.”

  “Hello, thank you for allowing us to come here and to stay on your property. We are the Fischers. My name is Willa, short for Wilhelmina. My husband, Klaus,” Willa gestured to the man beside her, “and our daughter, Anna,” she finished, while placing her arm around the frail girl’s shoulders.

  Eva surveyed the family and decided that Willa and Klaus were slightly older parents. Klaus had sprinklings of grey threaded throughout the darker hair on his head, and crinkly lines around his eyes, but he looked fit and strong. Willa looked a little bit younger than her husband, but Eva still thought she looked around the same age as Mrs. Bricks, the P.E. teacher at her school, and Mrs. Bricks had a one-year-old grandbaby. Their daughter Anna looked like she was about the same age as Eva, but she was thin and seemed fragile, so it was hard to guess. She had a cap on, which covered the entire top of her head; no hair was visible. Krista had informed her daughter that the girl had cancer, and Eva wondered if she’d lost all her hair. She knew many patients did during chemotherapy.

  Anna smiled at Eva and waved a greeting. Eva waved back. She was glad her mother was going to help this girl and make her strong again. It didn’t seem fair that someone her age would have to worry about dying.

  “Let’s get you settled in the guesthouse,” Krista told them. “I used to live in it, before we were married. The house is quite comfortable; it has a full kitchen and everything you’ll need for an extended stay.”

  “How long do you think we’ll need to stay?” Willa asked as they entered the house.

  “I can’t tell you that. The process takes its own time, and…” Krista trailed off. She glanced at Anna, not sure how open she should be with her words in front of the young girl.

  Klaus noticed. “Please, speak frankly. We have always been almost brutally honest, in some people’s opinions, with our daughter about her prognosis. I do not believe in subterfuge, or how is it said, candy-coating the truth. We wanted Anna to be in on all the medical meetings, hear her diagnoses first hand, and feel involved with decisions made during her care. She is thirteen now, a bit of a tiny sprite for her age, but a teenager nonetheless.”

  “Did my mother explain to you any of what she could do?”

  Willa put her arms around her daughter. “Chai told us she could take Anna’s cancer away, and that it would never come back.”

  “And you believe that there is a possibility for something like that to happen?”

  “Klaus has been friends with my father for years. I come from a family of Witches. The Fischers believe in the unbelievable,” Barbie answered for them. “To be honest, I have another friend who could do this task for us, but she and her husband are in Europe somewhere, and she was going to be my last resort, if I wasn’t able to find Chai, or someone who can do what Chai did. Which I ended up finding, so I don’t need to call on her.”

  “You know another Deathtaker?” Krista asked.

  “No, my friend is not a Deathtaker. She’s something more powerful than, well, pretty much anything. She would be able to make Anna healthy again with the flaming of her eyes. And they do literally flame, it’s pretty cool.”

  Eva giggled at the thought, which made Anna smile.

  “I always knew that being a Deathtaker was something extraordinary, and that if I existed then other people with other powers might exist as well. But, I’ve never sought anyone else out. It’s interesting to hear that there are other people that can do wonderful things.”

  “Good comes with bad,” Barbie frowned. “There are a lot of people that do terrible things with their powers as well. I’ve met quite a few frightening individuals that you’d never want to cross paths with. But I won’t dwell on the negative. Good always conquers, in the end. That’s what matters.”

  “So you are going to make her healthy again?” Willa interrupted. She knew she had to keep Barbie on track; the woman could derail a conversation in seconds and take it far off in another direction.

  “I can take the death that this cancer would cause, if it was allowed to run its course. After that happens, her body will be one hundred percent healthy. But I can only take this death; the future is unpredictable. For example, lets say she becomes a chain-smoker later in life. Don’t do that, Anna, by the way.” Krista smiled at the girl. “But worst case scenario, let’s say by the age of twenty, she smokes two packs a day and continues to do this for years. If that were to happen, she’d have a really good chance of de
veloping lung cancer. What I’m trying to say is, I can’t stop a different cancer from growing in her body. But, for now, I can stop this particular death from occurring.”

  “That is all we can ask for,” Willa sighed.

  “Thank you,” Anna whispered, as a tear slid down her pale cheek. “I just want the chance to grow up and make my own bad decisions. But not about my health, I will always make the best choices when it comes to my health,” she assured the woman who had promised to help her.

  “Please don’t make too many bad decisions,” Klaus told his daughter. He had a huge smile on his face; he was always pleased when Anna looked toward the future. He never wanted her to stop fighting.

  “I’ll try not to call you from a police station, asking for bail money,” Anna said with a laugh.

  “You’d better not.” His face took on a look of complete shock.

  “She’s teasing you,” Willa laughed.

  “Daddy has no sense of humor,” Anna explained.

  Klaus frowned. “Americans joke so much, it is hard to tell.”

  Anna leaned into him. “Everybody jokes! Just not you. Anyway, you became a citizen two years ago. I don’t think you can separate yourself from us, anymore. Anna and I are going to keep working on you until you tease us right back!”

  “It happens, every once in awhile,” Anna pointed out.

  “I just don’t know how you two can be so jovial at times such as these.” Klaus shook his head in exasperation.

  “These are the times when laughter, nonsense, teasing, and fun are the most important things in the world!” Willa insisted.

  “Laughter is the best medicine,” Abe agreed.

  “There are medical studies that confirm the positive health benefits of laughter,” Sam added.

  “I laugh very often,” Klaus countered. “Just not about this.” The strained look on his face was enough for everyone to let the matter go and change the subject.