by Steve Alten
More than half the European population that existed a mere two years earlier were dead, entire villages wiped out by the plague. Religion was brought to its knees by its own corruption. Papal rule was forced from its partnership with the Royals, who gradually lost their own coercive hold on the masses when food and land proved plentiful in the sudden absence of more than 45 million people.
I, too, have changed. Titles no longer have any meaning to me. I wish now only to serve mankind, sharing my acquired knowledge of the human condition with others.
Then this!
No sooner had I begun penning a manuscript that would become The Inventory of Medicine than I was visited by a peculiar fellow of Asian descent. That he knew of my encounter with death was outweighed by his most unusual gift — a journal accumulating the greatest medical wisdom of the ages, authored by Aristotle and Plato and Pythagoras, as well as some of the most renowned sages in history.
The bounty of knowledge this strange-looking Tibetan monk offered was as mind-boggling as his opaque eyes and the asking price: “Accept our Society’s invitation, and the knowledge is yours to preside over as caretaker.”
From darkness the Light, from sickness and death… a level of joy and accomplishment I could never have imagined. I no longer fear death, knowing that the promise of immortality awaits.
And so, I live out my days to help others, each act of kindness seeding an everlasting fulfillment…
Let the Reaper come indeed!
— Guigo
LAMERICA
Clothed in sunlight
Restled in waiting
Dying of fever
Changed shapes of an empire
Starling invaders
Vast promissory notes of joy
Wanton, willful & passive
Married to doubt
Clothed in great warring monuments
of glory
How it has changed you
How slowly estranged you
Solely arranged you
Beg you for mercy.
— Jim Morrison
Epilogue
August 6
Chartres, France
12:03 A.M.
The medieval town rose above undulating fields of golden wheat like an ancient Gothic island. Thousand-year-old walls, the mortar worn smooth, dated its baronial fortification. Narrow cobblestone streets weaved through rows of half-timbered houses. Ancient bridges traversed the Eure River, the inky waters of its three tributaries winding beneath archways of stone.
Chartres. Located sixty miles southwest of Paris, the French commune was a magnet of history, bearing witness to some of humanity’s darkest days.
Black Death: The Great Mortality.
Crowning the hill upon which the village had been erected was Our Lady of Chartres, one of the most magnificent cathedrals in all of Europe. Two towering spires, their unique designs representative of the architecture of the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, soared more than 350 feet into the heavens, rendering them visible for miles in every direction. Flying buttresses high-lighted a Romanesque basilica and massive crypt, its foundation encompassing 117,000 square feet. Gothic carvings adorned its facade, stained glass its portals.
It was just after midnight, and the streets surrounding the cathedral were deserted. The word had been passed — not a soul ventured outside, lest one tempt the wrath of God.
* * *
They approached the church on foot, each member having been sequestered in the village earlier in the day. Entries were purposely staggered, made through an earthen passage concealed within a dense patch of foliage adjacent to the church grounds.
Nine men: Each cloaked in a heavy hooded monk’s robe that concealed his face.
Nine men: Their names never spoken, their identities kept hidden lest one of their comrades be apprehended or tortured.
Nine Unknown Men.
* * *
The subterranean war room lay three stories beneath the church, its walls seven feet thick. The chamber contained its own power generator, and was equipped with sixteen-channel night-vision surveillance monitors and three wraparound computer security stations. One member of the Nine occupied a console, the other seven were situated in comfortable high-backed cushioned chairs that surrounded a circular oak table. Eight men, transformed by recent events. Awaiting the arrival of their leader.
Pankaj Patel was seated in the seventh chair. The psychology professor appeared to be speed-reading from an ancient Aramaic text.
Yielding to his curiosity, Number Five, a thirty-seven-year-old Austrian technowizard sharing the same bloodlines as Nikola Tesla, left his security post to speak with the sect’s newest member. “You are reading the Zohar?”
“Actually, I’m scanning.”
“What happened, Seven? Did you lose a bet with the Elder?”
“I’ve seen things, Five. I walked on water.”
“I thought it was ice?”
“It was a miracle, plain and simple. Now I am a changed man. I pray. I scan. I am even writing a spiritual book, with the proceeds going to the new Children’s Hospital in Manhattan.”
“Admirable. Tell me, Seven, when you pray, do you pray for the soul of Bertrand DeBorn?”
“Blow me, Five.”
“Seven!” The Elder entered the chamber, his opaque eyes scolding Patel. “Remember, my friend — restriction.”
“My apologies, Elder.”
The Nine men took their assigned places around the oval table. The Elder began. “Number Three, so good of you to be here, especially in light of your new responsibilities within the Politburo. Will our Russian friends agree to President Kogelo’s new disarmament plan?”
“If you had asked me two days ago, I would have emphatically said no. Since then, four of the communist hardliners have suffered fatal heart attacks.”
“Must be something in the water,” quipped Number Eight, a Chinese physicist in his sixties. “Two of our more radical communist leaders also died last week. No foul play is suspected, but, as the Elder likes to say, there are no coincidences.”
“You wish to comment, Number Seven?”
“It’s got to be Shepherd,” Pankaj stated. “Look at what happened to those neocons in Israel… the hardliners in Hamas. And don’t forget the two radical clerics in Iran who died before the election.”
“Every action has a reaction,” responded Number Six, a Mexican environmentalist bearing a Zapotec heritage. “While Shepherd attempts to micromanage the physical world, Santa Muerte grows stronger in the darkness below.”
“How do you know this, Number Six?”
“Somehow, the female Reaper managed to open a fissure that allows her access from Hell into the physical world. Two weeks ago, she exhumed the remains of a priest who had died in Guadalajara of swine flu and danced his contaminated remains at a local wedding.”
The Elder laid his head back against his chair. “Mr. Shepherd must learn to restrict himself as Emperor Asoka and Monsignor de Chauliac before him. We must find a way to communicate with our new Angel of Darkness. Number Seven, has your wife had any supernal communications since you and your family moved back to Manhattan?”
The professor looked uncomfortable. “None, Elder.”
“What about… your daughter?”
Trinity Cemetery
Washington Heights, Manhattan
12:03 P.M.
August roasted New York’s five boroughs in a midday broil, the heat rising off the sidewalks transforming the cement into a baking stone. The Hudson River, its surface stagnant to the naked eye, cascaded a subatomic tsunami of water molecules upward into the atmosphere, contributing humidity to the parade of cumulus clouds already forming to the west.
In the city below, a lunchtime crowd sweltered. Businessmen hustled between air-conditioned enclosures, red-faced vendors sought relief from umbrella-drawn shade and portable fans.
After forty days of inspection and 153 days of construction, debris removal, and public Masses,
the Big Apple once more had a pulse. Manhattan’s population now approached six hundred thousand, with lower rent ceilings promising even more transplants.
* * *
The cemetery’s caretaker was sleeping off a hangover in his office. Venetian blinds were pinched closed above a window-unit air conditioner that had outlived its warranty. There were no graveside ceremonies on the schedule, and the summer heat had kept the visitors away—
— save two.
On a lonely summit beneath a relentless sun, a mother and daughter stood amid a metropolis of mausoleums and ancient graves, staring at a polished headstone. After ten minutes, the child asked, “Is this really where Patrick’s buried, Mommy?”
Leigh Nelson played mental dodgeball with the answer, debating which threads of truth would satisfy her child’s curiosity without leading to nightmares. “Patrick’s with God now. The headstone’s just a place where we can tell him how much we love him and miss him”—she tears up—“and how much we appreciate what he did.”
The Range Rover parked by the gated western entrance blared its horn.
Leigh smiled at Autumn. “Daddy misses us, we’d better go.”
“I want to stay.”
“I know, but it’s Tuesday and daddy needs to get back to work. We’ll come back another time, maybe on the weekend. Okay, baby doll?”
“Okay.”
Hand in hand, they made their way back down the steep hillside along the broken-slated path. Halfway down, Leigh saw the eleven-year-old Hindu girl seated in the shade of a concrete tomb. Waiting patiently for a private audience. Leigh waved.
Dawn Patel waved back. Then she hurriedly ascended the steep hill, her route through the grave sites guided by the headstone adorned with the sculpture of an angelic child.
She laid the first of two white roses on the older grave as she read the inscription silently to herself:
patricia ann segal
august 20, 1977–September 11, 2001
beloved mother and soul mate
donna michele shepherd
october 21, 1998–september 11, 2001
beloved daughter
The adjoining headstone was new, erected by the thirty-six survivors discovered plague-free in the Statue of Liberty Museum two days after the horrors of the December Mortality.
The two adult inscriptions were eerily similar:
patrick ryan shepherd
august 20, 1977–december 21, 2012
beloved soul mate — blessed friend
The girl placed the second rose on the tomb, the buried casket of which contained the prosthetic left arm of its deceased owner. Backing away, she sat on the edge of a nearby stone, its heated surface barely tolerable through her denim shorts.
After a few moments, she felt the female presence of her guardian angel on her left, the chill of the darker male force on her right. “The two of you were born on the same day. I think that’s so romantic.”
Dawn’s scalp tingled as the supernal female being played with the girl’s hair.
The Grim Reaper remained partially obscured in the shade of an oak tree.
“School starts soon. They say we’ll be combining grade levels until more people move back to the city.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The western sky took on a bizarre appearance — the cloud’s low-hanging ceiling undulating like a forty-foot sea, the distant horizon appearing lime green.
“Oh yeah, remember the miracle baby… the newborn girl they found alive in a neonatal enclosure at the VA hospital? She’s finally been adopted, only no one’s saying who the parents are. They think her mother was the one who released Scythe. God, can you imagine having to grow up with that hanging over your head?”
The upper leaves on the oak trees blew skyward. Telltale sign of an impending afternoon thunderstorm.
“Anyway, I wanted to come by and wish you guys an early happy birthday. I probably should go. My mother thinks I stopped by Minos for a slice of pizza. You know they named the baby after you. Patrick Lennon Minos. I thought that was pretty cool.”
The atmospheric change was sudden and electric, the static charge coming from behind the girl. Before she could turn to the source of the disturbance, the female spirit launched her sideways from her grave-site perch—
— a split second before the blade of the materializing scythe struck the vacant slab of concrete!
Regaining her senses, Dawn turned in horror to see the witch flying out at her from the iron-gated mausoleum, the female Grim Reaper wearing a wavy black wig and matching satin dress. The force from Hell reached for her with its ten fleshless fingers—
— only to be intercepted by her male counterpart.
The midair collision between the two guardians of death unleashed a bolt of violet lightning that shot skyward from the ground, splitting the century-old oak tree in half—
— the otherworldly charge inhaling the two figures into another dimension!
Dawn’s spiritual companion pushed and prodded the girl down the east side of the summit, her supernal mother refusing to allow her to rest until she reached Broadway.
Then she, too, disappeared.
The girl gathered herself, sweating heavily in the August heat. Overhead, the undulating olive green cloud formation has dispersed.
For the first time in this life, Dawn Patel felt alone.
The consciousness that was Patrick Shepherd awakens.
He is kneeling on a flat, rocky summit, enshrouded by darkness. Purple lightning illuminates the valley below, offering brief glimpses of Gehenna. A spark ignites a bush into an orange incandescent flame, the fire expelling sulfurous smoke but not burning.
The woman steps out of the shadows and into the light… revealing her nude form.
Her skin is composed of keratin, the fingernail-like substance as pale as reflected moonlight, her long, wavy hair as ebony as the abyss. Her naked body is the definition of sensuality, the raw musky scent of her pheromones releasing an involuntary paroxysm within her male counterpart’s being.
Her voice is deep and soothing. “Today is the ninth of Av, a time of reckoning. Reveal yourself to me.”
Within seconds, the male Reaper’s skeletal frame entwines in blood vessels, nerves, muscles and tendons, wrapped in the flesh-covered epidermis of Patrick Shepherd. “Who are you? Why have you summoned me to this place?”
She approaches slowly, each measured stride causing his pulse to quicken. “I am the tempest that awakened Adam, the spirit embodied in the Tree of Knowledge. I am a newborn’s giggle that haunts its sleep… the desire that causes adolescent males to pleasure themselves. And when the semen is spilt, it finds its way into my loins to father my demons. I am darkness personified, a black hole of existence where the Upper Light can never dwell—
“—I am Lilith, and you, Noah, are my soul mate.”
Final Thoughts
By Nick Nunziata
Grim Reaper wasn't as much a book as it was a pilgrimage. Like most pilgrimages, it has had its ups and downs, trials and tribulations, and became less about the destination than the journey. The process certainly has left an indelible mark on how Steve and I now approach our material. I think we carried this thing with us like a malicious hitchhiker; it left a film on each of us both in its subject matter and its seeming desire to reach the world at any cost. Dante's Inferno is so deep and dark and timeless on its own but when coupled with real world dangers that have a distinctly modern hue, it takes on a far deeper meaning. Many of the things happening in our own lives and in the real world around us affected the story’s evolution, taking us on unexpected turns and avenues on its way to the book in your hands. It’s as if certain plot points waited for us in the shadows, seeping into Steve and me on the sly. In the night. Scythe at the ready. It just wouldn't die.
The seed for the series was planted back in 2005 at a time when the MEG movie (currently unmade) had just been optioned for the second time, and Steve and I were aching to collaborate on something new an
d different. During long conversations into the night, we shared a lot of great ideas that seemed to have merit for a script or book. Suggestions flew fast and furious, a few of which eventually made their way onto paper. The idea for Grim Reaper started quite innocuously but quickly evolved from a generic horror script into something much more dense and disturbing. In pursuit of the story, we met in New York. We walked Manhattan like Shep. We paid attention to the nooks and crannies. We went deep beneath the surface of the city and saw places that seemed out of… well, a book. As time went on it, became apparent that Grim Reaper was far too deep a story to make its debut as a screenplay.
Like a man possessed, Steve dove into the novel. He reached into places you haven't seen in his other books, though in many ways this is a soul mate to some of his best work. The book grew and evolved, on the way seemingly ripping at us to decipher it and solve its riddles. Eventually, after a very long time, many discussions, many edits, it was finally considered done. That said, part of me wonders if there's not some parasite in Steve's head screaming different little things he can tweak and add to this day. And if you thought this book was epic and filled with harrowing and visceral moments, just you wait. So many of the big ideas and deep mythology we have fueling this story have to wait until books two and three. How fortunate for us that the Divine Comedy wasn’t just a singular story.
With End of Days complete, I think we're now in a position to dig deeper into Dante’s world and the stuff nightmares are made of while still carrying that golden light through it. I hope you agree, because as far as Steve Alten books go, this is a step in a new and more epic direction, and if you know the guy, once his sights are set on something, there's no turning back. Part of that is his tenacity, and part of that is his loyal and truly special readership. Hopefully I can carry my weight in this and do my part in keeping you awake late at night when you shouldn't be tempting the fates.
Grim Reaper was not an easy tale to tell, nor was it is the easiest book to sell at a time when publishers prefer simpler easier-to-market fiction. Still, as an avid book reader, I’ll always consider End of Days as a mainstream page turner. It certainly speaks to me in the same way Dan Simmons's amazing Carrion Comfort did and, of course, King's The Stand. Those great books of the seventies and eighties managed to avoid being caught up in a business model. They were stories that ripped your heart out, asked difficult questions, and took their readers through places both familiar and alien, their plots and characters sinister yet filled with the darkest thoughts we could muster. They were also frighteningly relevant, with a relevance that has taken on a different meaning as time has progressed. In their own way, these books were a living thing with horrors most people could relate to, both real and supernal. I’d like to think Grim Reaper fits into this same mold.
