“And you have no other family?” he asked.
She shut the book again with a clap and put it down, giving up on the pretense of reading.
“No family. My mother died right after I was born. My uncle Joel raised me.” A patch of sun drifted onto her legs and made a warm rectangle, and she held her hand over it, to feel the heat of the refracted light. “We moved around a lot when I was a kid, but then he retired from active duty to be a consultant. We moved here, I finished school, went to college for a couple of years, and after that I came back and stayed.”
Not that she’d stayed because she liked it here so much. She’d stayed because Joel was here. Hannah owed him so much and couldn’t bring herself to pack her things and leave him by himself, even if it would have meant a better job and not being buried in snow for half of the year. He didn’t have to raise her; he had only been married to her mother’s sister for a little while when both women were killed in an accident. Hannah didn’t have any other family, and there was no one to take her, so he’d brought her up. It couldn’t have been easy for a single man bringing up a girl by himself through every awkward, infuriating stage from the terrible twos to the even more terrible teens.
Joel had never married, never even went on a single date as far as she knew, just took care of Hannah. Every time they moved he made sure they had a place to live that was a home, where she felt safe and normal. Then finally, after the hard part was done, he’d gone and gotten himself killed.
Hannah thought of the ashes in the canister in the kitchen window at home. They might be his, but that didn’t keep her from expecting him to walk back through the door. Even here if felt like she could turn her head and he might be sitting there next to her.
“What about you?” she said.
“What about me?” Asher didn’t turn to look at Hannah when she spoke.
“Will anyone wonder where you are? I mean, except your sister?”
He shook his head. “No. She is the only one. The only person who will seek me out is the last person I would wish to find me. The last person I would wish to find either of us.”
18
“Really?” Hannah gave him a suspicious look, eyes narrowed. She refilled his bowl but didn’t hand it to him, holding it back in exchange for an answer. He reached up and pulled it easily from her hands, righting it before the contents slopped over the side.
“Really.” Asher stuck his spoon in the food, but looked up with a grin on his face before he took a bite.
“Did you ever do it?”
He shook his head. “No, but I know several who have, some more than once. It has become a bit of a long-running joke amongst my kind. Also useful if one should need to disappear conveniently. If your plane goes missing in the Bermuda Triangle, no one is really surprised when the body is never found.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Asher raised an eyebrow. “Probably just as well. It will save me a great deal of talking if you are not interested in history as I am aware of it. I was going to tell you about Amelia Earhart, but now, I will not waste my breath.”
Hannah shook her head in amusement while he went to work on the stew, wondering how many other unexplainable disappearances might actually be a little less mysterious than they appeared.
This had been part of their strangely comfortable routine over the past few days. In between questions Hannah basked in the sun streaming through the windows or threw together meals from the contents of the giant refrigerator and pantry. Asher prowled the woods or sat bent over the laptop on the desk in the library.
It was mostly comfortable. Asher abruptly went silent sometimes, eyes growing cloudy, his expression becoming distant and stony. She steered a little clearer of him then. Not because she was afraid or him, or because he was at all threatening toward her—he was unfailingly polite actually, in an old-fashioned, courtly sort of way—but because there was something so alien just under the surface of silent Asher that it made her shy away. Hannah didn’t hold it against him, though. She had been known to go dark herself sometimes.
And they weren’t on vacation, anyway. It was more a surprise they weren’t both wrapped in doom and gloom more often.
For the most part, Asher was plenty talkative. He had lifetimes upon lifetimes of stories, and she had a million and a half questions. If she asked he answered, though not always completely, Hannah suspected. If her questions became too personal he would politely but firmly steer the subject in another direction.
“So you always come back, but how long can you go in between?” He raised an eyebrow, and she thought for a second, then tried to rephrase it so he knew what she meant. “Not like how fast do you come back; I know that part. I mean, what’s the longest someone like you has gone before dying, do you think?” Even if you were decently sure you’d come back, dying was still dying, as he’d said, and she wondered how long it was avoidable. “Do you just keep living forever, or would you die of old age first if nothing happened to you?”
He shook his head. “At most I live the same number of years I lived the very first time. I have never made it longer than that. None of us do, I believe. That is how I originally came to be in this area. It was my time. I was sitting on my porch waiting for it, and after, I ended up here.”
“Do you age in the time between when you die?”
He shook his head. “Not a bit. Only in the instant between one death and the next, and very slowly.”
Asher was looking at her strangely as he answered. He’d begun to do that, she’d noticed, but probably because she asked crazy questions. Maybe he was beginning to wonder what he’d gotten himself into, being stuck here with her, but it didn’t slow Hannah down. The more she found out about his strange life, the more she wanted to know.
“So your friend who lived to be in his sixties before he died the first time, he gets to live longer than you do then?”
“Yes. I have no idea why, but that is how it is. I suppose there are rules over everything under the sun, no matter how inexplicable.”
He shrugged, then his brow furrowed as a thought crossed his mind. He didn’t share it, just froze for a moment, deep in thought. Asher had a small dimple on one cheek when he was pensive that she’d just noticed. She felt herself blushing.
The oven dinged—perfect timing—and she hopped up gratefully. Pulling the apple turnovers she’d been keeping warm out of the oven, Hannah poked at the buttons to turn it off, growing frustrated as she accidentally set the clock blinking, turned on the vent and every light, and fired up all the burners. Asher got up and leaned over her, turning everything off and resetting the clock while she stood there feeling inept. It wasn’t her fault; she was just used to a stove closer to his age than hers, not this shiny metal spaceship.
“Do you ever get tired of keeping up with technology? Because I damn well do.” Hannah set the pan down on the counter with a clunk. Right now she was ready to kick the stove back to the stone age.
Burning her fingertips, Hannah pushed the turnovers onto a plate and set it in front of him. He nodded in thanks and picked one up and took a bit, oblivious to the lava-hot contents.
“Do I grow tired of keeping up with the world? Very, and more so now than ever. Things change so quickly. But it is better to embrace it, because it is even more difficult if you fight it,” he said. “Though it is tempting, to withdraw from the world and let it pass by. Then one does not have to watch everyone and everything fade away again and again.” He paused to take another bite, and the only sound was the clink of the bottle against her wineglass as she refilled it. “I have tried, but it is impossible to escape from the world forever. One finds it too different to fall back into seamlessly, when everything has changed while you were gone. And people are not meant to be alone.”
His glass was empty and he nodded when she reached to refill it.
“I try to keep up now, no matter what happens,” he went on, “in case I let too much time pass me by and return to the world a fish ou
t of water.”
Hannah sipped her wine, saddened by the thought. It hadn’t occurred to her before that living forever meant losing everything and everyone over and over again.
“Well, I’m glad you found your way back to the present,” she said. “You’re better at it than I am anyway, and I have no excuse. Your knowledge of kitchen appliances is way better than mine, and you have a solid grasp on the lingo. Except for the whole never using a contraction thing, you seem to be doing a bang-up job.” She leaned back, pleasantly warm from the wine and the fire going in the giant fireplace.
He chuckled.
“So quick to criticize my grammar. Do you have any idea how many languages are bouncing around in my head? And the English I grew up speaking has changed so much it is practically a dead language now. Besides, it pains me to butcher it on purpose.”
“You have my sincere apology.” She smirked. “You do an altogether perfect job of passing for a functional modern human. Above average by age.”
Apparently he didn’t find her that amusing. In fact, he stopped smiling, though she wasn’t sure what exactly she’d said wrong. Maybe she was going a bit far in flippantly teasing the giant sitting across the table. If her mouth had gotten her in trouble it wouldn’t be the first time.
“I’m sorry. What did I say?“
He waved her off. “It was nothing you said, but it made me think of a sad story. Not everyone like me manages to assimilate as well.” Asher pushed his empty plate aside and leaned away from the table. “Until fairly recently, infant mortality was abysmally high. When I was young it was not unusual for parents to lose several children. It was more unusual if they did not. Reaching adulthood was more of an achievement than a given, though whether by accident or design, all of those like me managed to survive that far. All save one that I am aware of.”
Asher was looking past her while he spoke, staring at the fire but not seeing it.
“This particular individual,” he said, “Roman, he is called, was born at least six hundred years ago. He died the first time when he was only a few years old.” Asher blinked back to reality and looked soberly at Hannah. “Imagine what it must have been like, dying so young, then waking up in an unknown place. He was far too young to care for himself, and we sometimes come back in dreadful, inhospitable places, so I can only imagine he must have passed again frequently and often painfully.” He shook his head sadly. “At best he might have been found and cared for, but even then, it would never be for longer than those few short years.”
“But he didn’t stay a child, did he? You aged some. So he grew up?”
Asher didn’t reply for a moment, and they listened to the crackle of the fire.
“He grew up, but changing slowly, as we do. For a very long time he would have been too young to work out what was happening or why. By the time he did, it was too late.”
“Too late?”
Asher nodded. “Too late for him, on the inside at least. He was alive and eventually matured, but living the way he had, thrown across the world so many times, had broken his mind. Losing everything and everyone, never forming any meaningful relationships, never being loved for long, his humanity was stunted, any morality twisted. And life meant nothing, because all he ever experienced was death.”
“But there’s more of you out there. Didn’t someone find him and explain it to him?” Hannah said.
“Eventually he did find others like himself,” Asher said, “at least like him in their ability to return after death. Maybe they explained the rudiments, their own experiences, or tried to express to him he was not alone in his condition, but the damage was long done.”
“So what happened to him?”
“He continued on. He still does, acting only as his own desire dictates. Roman is an unbridled being who has killed a horrifying number of people for no reason other than that he wished to. He hss never stopped. He never will. How can man be safe from him when no cell will ever hold him for very long? Even death cannot contain him.” Asher paused, looking up at Hannah. “I still catch glimpses of him from time to time. I can trace him out when I read about senseless killings and heinous crimes with no rhyme nor reason. Or when there are strings of brutal murders only an unimaginable evil could have perpetrated. He is out there, shortening the already short lives of people who do not have the chance to return as he does.”
They sat, the room silent except for the irregular crackle of the fire. Finally Asher continued.
“I am telling you this because I feel I have made too light of what we are, with all the amusing stories. He was given what I was given, but it only served to cripple him and create an everlasting monster. And while he may be the worst of our kind, he is not the only one who chooses to do evil. Some of us are demons hiding behind human faces, living side by side with an oblivious population.”
She thought he would tip over into dark Asher and shut down, but instead he finished his wine and looked at Hannah with a sad smile.
“It is interesting, that in all your searching you actually did find me once, and it was through Roman. I saw the clipping in your kitchen. How you turned it up from amongst all the photos scattered across the internet, I cannot imagine. He was at his evil work once again and as I was nearby, I thought to step in and put an end to it, though it only be temporarily. Someone beat me to it. At least there are some trying to lessen the burden of guilt our population carries. It grows heavy.”
When he got up Hannah stayed at the table, turned the empty wine bottle around in her hand and watched the dregs roll around the divot in the bottom. She thought about that accumulation of guilt. Not how Asher felt it was his to carry, but about the other side of the coin, where there was none at all, where conscience didn’t come into play. His sister, Roman, and how many others for whom human life carried no importance. The thought gave her a shiver. The world was filled with beautiful monsters that would live forever, without a care for how many human lives they snuffed out.
Hannah tossed and turned that night, haunted by dreams of a tall, gaunt man with a giant mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. He picked up screaming people and stuffed them one by one into his mouth, like the devil swallowing souls in The Last Judgement. She jerked awake bathed in sweat, gasping for breath.
Afraid to go back to sleep, she got up and threw the blanket around her shoulders. Walking silently in her socks out through the great room, she navigated with a care for her shins around the furniture. After turning off the alarm, she slid the glass door open then shut it behind her noiselessly.
The wide porch stepped down into a clearing that curved gently downward. A small group of deer looked up at the crackle her feet made when she walked out from under the shadow of the roof, but they didn’t move, returning one by one to nosing under the soft layer of new snow for clumps of grass. They treated her like she wasn’t there, as animals generally did, and Hannah walked forward, tipping her face toward the moon, letting the crisp breeze cool her flushed face.
She jumped when the deer scattered around her, one brushing against her blanket as they bounded down the hill, tails bobbing like beacons.
“You should not be outside alone. It might be dangerous.” Asher stood on the porch, watching the last white tail disappear into the night.
Hannah’s feet were getting damp and she shivered a bit, so she didn’t argue, just turned and walked back to the house. Asher locked the door again behind them.
“Tea?” he asked. She nodded and he turned on the light over the kitchen island, its bulb casting a green glow over him as he filled the kettle and set it on the burner. She left her damp socks by the door and padded over the cold floor to join him.
Waiting for the water to boil, Hannah sat at the bar while Asher took down the mugs and tea. When he set a mug down in front of her and looked at her for a moment in that intense way he had, she raised an eyebrow. It was too late and she was too tired for the fixed stare or blushing embarrassment.
“What?” She tucked her chilly f
eet up under her and wrapped the blanket around her knees.
“Nothing.” He smiled. “I heard you slip out and followed you to find a fairy child communing with a herd of deer. A charming sight. I was sorry to disturb it. They ran the moment I stepped out the door.”
She shrugged. “You’re big and scary.”
“I knew another woman once who could talk to the animals. She had a menagerie of every wild creature you could imagine, and they stayed close to her, without a fence or a cage. They would eat from her hand, and I rarely saw her without a bird on her shoulder. ‘They whisper their secrets into my ear,’ she would say.”
“What happened to her?” Hannah fidgeted with her empty mug.
“She died. Many years ago.”
Hannah wasn’t sure why she’d thought he was speaking about a being like himself. She wondered how many people he might have watched grow old and die in his lifetimes. The burden again of so many lives, the same stories playing out again and again.
The kettle whistled, forcing them both out of their own thoughts.
“Well, the animals weren’t whispering any secrets to me, that’s for sure. Animals don’t like me, actually,” Hannah said.
When Asher looked over, Hannah continued, glad he had accepted the bait.
“They don’t, I swear. The deer weren’t standing there because they like me. It’s because they don’t even care enough to bother moving. It’s always been that way.” She never could have been a lion tamer or dolphin trainer because they would have rolled over and taken a nap from sheer boredom. Maybe she should have been a dog catcher; the dogs wouldn’t have even bothered trying to run.
“We had animals when I was growing up,” she said. “My uncle was old school, the live-off-the-land type. We had ducks and chickens, and they’d follow him around everywhere. It made me jealous, so he used to sneak chicken feed into my coat pockets when I wasn’t looking so I’d think they noticed me. It worked until I got warm and took my coat off and they all stayed there pecking at it when I walked away. We had a cat for a while too, but I got so sad because she wouldn’t play with me that Joel finally gave her away. I’m not a freak of nature, I’m so freaky nature doesn’t even know I exist.”
Echoes (Book 1): Echoes Page 15
