The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL)

by Amber Benson

  “He’s got the Scroll of Names out,” Daniel said. “It means he and the soul are in disagreement about where the soul should be going.”

  Callie nodded, shading her eyes with her hand.

  “I think he’s trying to get your attention,” she said, pointing to Judas Iscariot, who was waving for them to join him, his reading glasses held aloft from his face so he could see them better.

  “We should go,” Cerberus said.

  No one disagreed.

  They moved toward the Scarlet Sea as a group, but this time Callie held Daniel’s hand as they walked.

  Judas Iscariot didn’t wait for them to reach him. He took off, holding his caftan up to his knees so he wouldn’t trip over it as he ran. The soul in contention, an older woman with a massive bosom housed inside a flowery top, came with him, too. She had thick gray hair and a doughy, grandmotherly face, but like an old battleship, she was more than formidable.

  “How did you know?” Judas Iscariot said, his eyes full of awe.

  “The Scroll of Names,” Cerberus said, as if this explained everything.

  Judas Iscariot was floored. He looked at Cerberus reverently.

  “Of course, the Scroll of Names.”

  It was the grandmotherly soul who stepped in and cleared things up. Otherwise the inscrutable Judas Iscariot/Cerberus back-and-forth might have gone on forever.

  “I got railroaded into coming to Hell by a pair of twins dressed up as Victorian dollies. They strong-armed me here against my will, but they never said a word about ‘here’ being Hell.”

  She gave one big definitive nod, letting them know she was done, then she turned to look at Judas Iscariot for confirmation.

  “It’s true,” he said, smiling shyly at the older woman. “Bernadette isn’t on the Scroll of Names. Someone brought her here by mistake. And there are other names missing.”

  He pointed back to the Scarlet Sea, where the scroll waited.

  “So many in the past weeks. I knew their names, so I never once thought to double-check any of them against the scroll.”

  “I hardly ever checked the scroll when I was at the North Gate,” Cerberus said. “It wasn’t necessary.”

  Judas Iscariot looked uneasy now, his eyes flicking back to the grandmother.

  “Go on, Judas,” she said. “Tell them what you told me.”

  He swallowed, wrapping his arms around himself, protectively.

  “Sometimes, I get lonely—” He stopped, his cheeks turning bright red, as he realized how what he’d said could be misconstrued. “Oh, no, no, no…nothing like that! Not sexual, but just…friendly. I get lonely for someone to talk to.”

  Callie released Daniel’s fingers and walked over to Judas Iscariot. She placed her hand on his shoulder and smiled warmly up at him.

  “And then, one day, someone to talk to just magically showed up at the Gate,” she said, her voice soft and gentle.

  Judas Iscariot nodded.

  “He said he was working on something secret, something for God.”

  Callie nodded.

  “And he asked for your help?”

  Judas Iscariot shook his head violently.

  “No, nothing like that. He only said he was lonely, too, working on this secret project for God, and that he’d seen me here and thought we might talk.”

  He looked over at the grandmother, who gave him a thumbs-up.

  “So we would talk every now and then when his work brought him near the East Gate,” Judas finished.

  Callie patted his arm, her dark eyes catching his own, letting him know he was doing well.

  “I think the man, your friend, put a spell on you,” she said. “He implanted names into your head so he could run souls into Hell, souls that didn’t belong there, for his own not-so-nice purposes.”

  With those words, Judas Iscariot broke down, his entire body wracked with sobs. The grandmother was instantly at his side, holding him. Callie continued to pat his shoulder.

  “I…I am…I wanted to be…forgiven…and now…I’ve ruined myself…again.”

  He fell to his knees, hands clasped together reverently, eyes heavenward.

  “Please God…smite me…here,” he sobbed. “Take away…this…terrible suffering.”

  But there was no answer from above.

  Callie knelt down in front of him, took his hands in hers and said:

  “It’s not your fault. I promise you when this is all over we will find a way to end your suffering, but right now, I need you to tell me about the man who tricked you. Because he’s trying to destroy our world and you are the only one who can help us stop him.”

  * * *

  from his perch on a faraway dune, the Man in Gray watched the drama unfold. He saw the tortured Judas Iscariot fall to his knees, begging for mercy. Saw the little Death go to him, take his hands in hers, ask him for his help…he watched it all.

  And he felt nothing.

  Not that this surprised him. He’d long ago ceased experiencing emotions like regret, guilt, and sorrow. He knew little of those—but hate and anger and bitterness…he was cut from their cloth. They swelled in his chest, filling the place where a human heart should be. He fed on their whispers, lived for how they vilified humanity and all the creatures that existed alongside of the humans. No one had ever had sympathy for him, and so he had sympathy for no one.

  He knew Judas Iscariot would spill his guts. It was a given. That was why the Man in Gray had chosen his words carefully, made sure the traitor of Jesus only knew a few limited things about him and his work. He could’ve shared more, would’ve shared more, had he been able to permanently secure the other man’s silence.

  But this wasn’t available to him.

  He’d very much wanted to share his thoughts with someone—and maybe he had shared more than he should’ve with Judas Iscariot. Just because of that need, of that wanting to be heard and understood. If anyone could understand his feelings, it was Judas. They were both sinful criminals, both forced to do God’s bidding. It was God who’d created them to be what they were; God who’d instilled in them the needs and wants of a human being—and the brains to think all these dark and terrible thoughts with. The Man in Gray didn’t believe in free will. He knew humans were programmed to do as they were told, even though sometimes the things asked of them got them eternal punishment at God’s own hand.

  The Man in Gray hated God for this, and what better way to punish the Creator than to destroy his master creation: humanity.

  He would erase the human race and no one, not even little Death, was going to get in his way. It did worry him slightly he was relying on Drood’s minions to stop Death and her friends—she should never have been allowed to meet Judas Iscariot, or get this far into Hell in the first place. He realized, once again, he may have misjudged things. It looked as though he was going to have to look after this loose end himself.

  And then he had an epiphany.

  A grand idea filled his body and made him shudder with excitement. It was so simple and amazing he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. He would let Death and her friends plunder Judas Iscariot’s mind and find whatever information the Man in Gray had left in there. If Death was as formidable as she should be, she would figure out the Man in Gray’s little ruse and come to The Pit to try and stop him.

  And that was where he would be waiting.

  The thought of Death inside The Pit made him gleeful. If he could harness the power of Death’s soul, then there was nothing he might not accomplish. He imagined Death’s face as the power from The Pit spun out of control and the two universes did more than just collide…they cancelled each other out.

  Boom!

  The end of Earth, and its Afterlife, forever!

  It didn’t bother him one iota he would be incinerated along with the rest of Earth. He was looking forward to oblivion, something that’d been denied him for what felt like an eternity. He just wished he could be there to see God’s face when it happened. This would be
the ultimate fuck you: God, turning to see who had done this horrible deed, and finding it was none other than he, the Man in Gray, who’d destroyed the world.

  And then the Man in Gray—who was once Enoch, writer of the Angelic book that bespoke the End of Days—would see everything he had wrought, and behold, it would be very good.

  twenty-two

  Jarvis had never been to the New Newbridge Academy. He knew of it, of course, because Calliope had been invited to attend when she was a child—the only one of Death’s children to be offered a place at the school, but anything he had heard about the school came from Calliope’s own mouth or from the school’s reputation, which had preceded it.

  As he’d walked across the lawn toward the burnt-out building on the far side of the property, he’d had to admit the place was beautiful. The Gothic architecture, the brick facades, the greenery as far as one’s eye could see—he understood now why Noh and Calliope felt so connected to the school. It was magical.

  Night had finally descended on them like a heavy blanket as they’d trooped, single file, across the lawn. Jennice had quickened her pace in time with the dissipating twilight until she was almost on top of Jarvis. He’d sensed her fear and offered her his hand, which she’d greedily accepted. Thankfully, her fingers were warm, and not at all clammy.

  “Henry wants us to go this way,” Noh was saying, as she led them through the darkness toward the side entrance of the burnt-out building.

  “This place is creepy,” Jennice whispered in Jarvis’s ear as they came to the undamaged side door and watched as Noh eased it open, eliciting a loud creeeak from the rusty hinges.

  “It’s not really scary,” Noh promised, patting the doorframe like an old friend. “This is just where all the ghosts live, so they want us where they can keep an eye on us, in case any bad guys do the old ‘showing up unannounced’ trick.”

  She stepped through the doorway and disappeared inside. Jennice looked at Jarvis, who shrugged.

  “It can’t hurt to go in,” he said, uncertainly.

  “But it’s haunted.”

  That was an understatement. If what Noh said was true, then the place was crawling with ghosts.

  Noh had tried to explain this to them earlier, as they’d entered the school grounds and begun the walk toward the main buildings.

  “The New Newbridge Academy is special. The ghosts of kids who’ve died while attending the school…well, they tend to stick around—and there are a lot of them because the school has been around for a long time.”

  She’d said all of this without interruption, though every now and then she’d paused, head cocked as though she were listening to someone. The someone in question was her ghostly friend, Henry, who was the one guiding them through the main buildings toward the burnt-out one in the back.

  “The building we’re going to may look like it should be condemned, but I promise you, it’s safe,” Noh had said, trudging ahead like a schoolmarm, leading a bunch of errant children.

  “Where is everyone?” Jennice asked quietly, her eyes scanning the buildings for “living” occupants.

  “The school closed down last year, so right now there’s no one here,” Jarvis replied.

  Calliope had been most upset when she’d gotten the news, but her hands had been so full between her day job—she’d been the Assistant to the Vice-President of Sales at a company called House and Yard—and learning to take over the family business, that there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  “My aunt taught at New Newbridge for years,” Noh said, “but things change, ya know. Nothing you can do about that. Still, it’s a good old place. Lots of magic here.”

  This was the very reason he’d suggested they come to the New Newbridge Academy. It was magically secure and there were no living creatures to get caught in the middle of all the craziness. As they crossed the threshold of the decrepit building, Jarvis could only hope whatever magic still remained at New Newbridge would keep them safe.

  “Follow me,” Jarvis said, taking Jennice’s hand and guiding her through the doorway.

  Noh was waiting for them, a small brass candleholder with a lit candle resting in her hand.

  “Come this way,” she said in a low, spooky voice then she giggled. “Seriously, stop looking like you ate a bug, Jennice. It’s a-okay here. I swear. I spent half my childhood running around this place. It’s the place I love the most in all the world.”

  The side door they’d entered the building through had brought them into a large, and long disused, laundry room. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and dirt and debris littered the floor; the industrial washers and dryers were caked with crud. The only living creatures that had spent any time here in recent years were of the rodent persuasion. Jarvis could see rat droppings mixed in with the dirt.

  Very unsanitary.

  “Henry says no one’s seen anything,” Noh told them. “So I think we’re okay for now.”

  Jarvis tended to agree with her. The New Newbridge Academy had a long tradition of protecting the supernatural children of the East Coast of the United States. It was why Calliope and Clio’s dad had finally relented and let Calliope attend the school. He’d wanted to keep his middle child under his thumb in Newport; hire tutors and personally make sure she was protected at all times—but it’d been Calliope’s (adopted) mother who’d encouraged him to send her to the boarding school.

  He knew Calliope believed she’d been sent away because she was unwanted, but this was hardly the case. The decision to send her to the New Newbridge Academy had been a very difficult one—and probably the smartest, too, because even back then there were people who wanted to do away with the special little girl.

  In fact, as if to prove Calliope’s (adopted) mother right in insisting they send the girl to New Newbridge, the only major attempt on her life had come when she was home from boarding school. She’d been involved in a terrible car accident. The perpetrators had been under the (misguided) impression her immortal weakness was steel and they had engineered a car crash in order to get rid of her—instead that’d taken the lives of Calliope’s two best friends from Newport. The choice had been made not to tell her she was the cause of her friends’ deaths; her parents thought the guilt would be too much for Calliope to bear.

  Jarvis had believed they were making a huge mistake and had fought to tell the girl the truth. He’d seen her change dramatically after the accident—and not for the better. She’d turned inward, an angry, sullen teenager replacing the gregarious, giggling girl who’d skipped around Sea Verge, bringing light and happiness wherever she went.

  The powers that be had been wrong to keep her in the dark. This only allowed her pain and anger to fester. The girl’s fate was going to include guilt no matter how they tried to protect her. Better to help her embrace what she was instead of letting her grow up to loathe all the things that made her unique. Jarvis had watched as Calliope had turned away from her immortality and her family, trying to mold herself into a “normal” girl. It was a horrible transformation to behold—and it had torn Calliope’s father apart to watch it.

  Neither Death nor his middle daughter had ever been the same after that.

  “Let’s go to the back stairs and then up to Henry’s room,” Noh said, urging them forward with the candle. “It’s lovely there.”

  How anything could be lovely in the upstairs of a burned-out building, Jarvis didn’t know, but he followed Noh out of the laundry room and into a smaller, dustier hallway. Here there was a dilapidated stairwell leading to the upper levels of the building, and as Jarvis and Jennice watched, Noh traversed it like a mountain goat, nimbly maneuvering her way around the broken steps.

  “You think it’ll hold us?” Jennice asked.

  “We shall know soon enough,” Jarvis said, putting his foot on the first step, then letting his weight settle.

  Luckily, the step appeared to hold him.

  “It’s all right,” Jarvis continued. “Just step where I step and you should be
fine.”

  “She went up these things pretty fast,” Jennice said. “You sure she’s not a ghost, too?”

  This made Jarvis laugh.

  “If she’s a ghost, then I want to be exactly like her when I die.”

  The funny thing was he wasn’t joking. Noh was growing on him. Ghostly or not, she, like Calliope, was definitely a force to be reckoned with—and Jarvis had a soft spot for strong-willed women. In fact, the woman Jarvis was currently smitten with put Calliope and Noh both to shame. His special lady friend, Minnie, was like Mother Nature to their gale force winds.

  He wondered how Minnie was doing and if she knew what was happening down here on Earth. He doubted she, or God, her boss, missed anything—they always seemed to have a finger on the pulse of humanity.

  To his surprise, thinking about Minnie made him feel better. He found he didn’t really mind being in a dirty building with cobwebs and mouse droppings, chaperoning two will-o’-the-wisp girls. Just knowing Minnie was out there, waiting for him made him feel as though everything would be all right in the end.

  These thoughts were interrupted when Jarvis’s sensitive nose decided it’d had enough of dusty, dirty environs and let out a massive sneeze that rattled his body. This was followed by a second, and even more explosive sneeze, which forced Jarvis to reach into his suit coat pocket for his handkerchief.

  His hand found the handkerchief easily enough, but as he reached around inside the pocket, it was with dawning horror Jarvis discovered something else was not where it was supposed to be: The original, Angelic copy of How to Be Death was gone.

  * * *

  they’d been able to dodge their pursuers by following the secret passageway. Until it dead-ended at a blank brick wall. The lighting inside the passage was so low Clio had to use her hands to search the walls, hoping to find a secret button or latch that would allow them to continue onward, but she came back empty-handed.

  “Now whadda we do?” Frank asked, but it was less a question and more a whine of defeat.