Grim

by Thea Atkinson

  "Just needed a few stitches. Apparently the thing bit me just as I jabbed my fingers in its eyes."

  Impressive. Not something I would've thought of doing.

  "About that..." I started to say, knowing that what should follow was a thank you, but I was having a tough time getting it past my tongue. Had he not acted fast, that thing would have razored through me, and I doubted I would have been as lucky as he was. The expression 'dead as a door nail' took a little jaunt through my mind.

  Something shivered down my spine as I remembered Azrael telling me that this life would be my last if I didn't earn my wings. As a regular human being, at least I would've had the hope of heaven or some afterlife. But if I was what Azrael said I was, I'd end up in the top of his cane for ever more.

  That meant I really owed Callum.

  He must've been watching me struggling because while I was zoned out with my thoughts, he had somehow crept closer. He towered over me and looked down at me with those glassy green eyes and his gaze didn't look angry or accusatory. It just looked contemplative.

  "Say it," he said with half a grin that was just big enough to make my belly flip-flop.

  I let go a long sigh. "Thank you," I said. "No one has done anything like that for me before. At least no one except Gramp."

  One step closer and he would be near enough that I would smell the soap on him again, maybe even feel his breath on my hair. I leaned in. Chewed at the bottom of my lip. He seemed to be waiting for something and I couldn't imagine what it was now that I had given him his thank you. What else could he want?

  I fidgeted and finally broke away. The least he could've done was accept the thanks. What was with this horrible tension? It could make a girl crazy.

  I spun to face away from him, fully intending to make my way back to Sarah's room. Maybe she would be awake by now. Maybe I could put this whole entire thing into perspective once I got a chance to talk to her.

  I got three steps away when I felt his fingers tangle in mine. I half expected to be tugged backwards, but instead I was spun around and in one broad step, he was right there again, standing over me, looking down at me with a strange look on his face. Those black brows of his were furrowed and his eyes seemed to be looking straight through me.

  "That's not what I wanted you to say," he whispered.

  Before I could reply, his mouth was on mine, parting my lips softly, inhaling my breath. A jolt went straight down through my spine and something in my chest lurched like it was flipping over. I had two seconds or so to respond, but before I could, his mouth left mine and he drew away.

  For one long moment, both of us stood there looking at each other.

  "Your first kiss?" he said.

  "Of course not," I said, feeling foolish. I might have told him that I'd kissed plenty of boys in my day, initiated plenty. But how could I say that moment was the first time I had kissed a man. His touch had been soft, but it had been commanding. There had been no hesitation in it. It wanted more, that kiss, no matter how gentle it had been. My lips were still tingling from it.

  "Maybe it shocked you then," he said, and it was a playful tone that I wasn't used to. I felt awkward and silly. And I hated that I felt inexperienced and clumsy.

  "Maybe you just weren't good at it." I said, before I could stop myself.

  He immediately went all rigid. Of course he would. I might as well have shoved a knife in his belly. I wished I could take it back. I tried to reach for his hand, to make some physical contact because my mouth and my mind didn't seem to work in concert at all, and I hoped touching him might say the things I couldn't.

  He brushed my hand away.

  "It's time to go home anyway," he said. "Visiting hours are over and there's no way they're going to let us back in."

  I stood there like an idiot watching him storm down the hallway toward the lobby. My fingers found my lips and I ran my thumb across them, trying to remember what his mouth felt like. Trying to work out how I felt about it because no matter what I had said, he was most definitely good at it.

  I watched him until he disappeared through the front doors. I thought he might turn around, but he didn't. The glass sliding doors whispered shut and I stood there blinking like a dumbfounded fool, telling myself that no matter how many times I insisted I was an adult, I was very much a child in that moment.

  Instead of enjoying the kiss, of savouring it the way I knew I would have wanted to had I been prepared for it , I had let my insecurities ruin it for me. And now he thought I wasn't interested in him. Worse than that, he thought I was repulsed by his kiss. I felt desolate in that moment because I didn't know how to fix it.

  I pulled out my cell phone, thinking to text him. But what would I say? And would he even care? If it were me on the other end of that message, I would press delete. No doubt he would do the same. I stared down at the screen, running my thumb along the edge of the phone. There was nothing I could do and yet I didn't know how to stop staring at the message icon. I ended up flipping through the messages, and since there weren't many, I landed on Sarah's within seconds. Maybe that would help. I had no idea if it would work, but I had to do something to stop thinking about him. If it meant sneaking back into see her to distract my mind, so be it.

  I made it as far as the nurse's station before I was shooed back out. I threw a look over my shoulder, but didn't see the doppelgänger at all. I hoped it was a good sign. I hoped that whatever my grandfather had given me was working. More than that, I didn't know what it was capable of.

  It occurred to me that whatever that bag had been filled with, I had the original creator living with me.

  I hopped onto my scooter feeling strangely buoyant and invigorated.

  The fall air felt divine against my face, and focusing on the ride in the traffic rewired my thoughts. I found myself thinking about Callum again. No matter how fast I went on the scooter, I couldn't get rid of the feel of his tongue pressed against mine, of the taste of his breath.

  I pulled into my grandfather's driveway less than twenty minutes later. The sky was already darkening but it hung on to the last bit of light the way a dying man might the end of the rope. The shadows of trees along the driveway looked like gnarled fingers stretching forward to wrap around his little bungalow.

  I kicked the motor off and propped it against the garage. I knew better than to try and stuff it inside, because although it was a garage, my grandfather had every derelict piece of furniture and abandoned piece of paper his fingers had ever touched in there. It had become a sanctuary for mice and raccoons and I'd learned long ago not to even bother opening the door.

  Instead, I crossed my arms over my chest, taking in the house and feeling for the first time in a long time that I was grateful. I'd never had a true home, not with my mother or father since they moved from apartment to apartment all over the country, chasing gigs in seedy bars as my father tried to make it big as a guitar god. My mother followed him without question, and dragged me along. When they died in a car accident coming home from one of those gigs, we were so far across the country and so far removed from family that I didn't even know if I had any relatives left.

  Foster care had been a nightmare that I barely woke from to find a little bit of light now and again. At the time, Sarah had been one of the only bits of illumination in a very dark midnight.

  Now, looking at the house I called home, I knew I would never again do anything to jeopardize what I had here. I felt a smile playing across my lips. It felt good to be here in Dyre with Gramp. It felt right.

  With a contented sigh, I strolled across the lawn and pushed the front door open. I called out for Gramp, even though I imagined he was sitting in front of the television with a cup of cocoa in his hand and his dogeared copy of Moby Dick in the other.

  And although I imagined both of those things, I knew he wouldn't be paying attention to either of them. He'd be waiting for me, making sure everything was alright and that things were good between us before he went to bed. Like he
had every night since I'd arrived four years ago.

  I was closing the door behind me when I saw him in the hallway. He looked fresh and bright and terribly well rested for a man who probably hadn't caught ten minutes of sleep in the last 24 hours.

  "I guess your bag worked," I said, peeling the jacket off my shoulders and hanging it on the coat rack. "What was in that thing anyway?"

  He leaned against the wall next to the pass-through counter and crossed one ankle over the other. I noticed his feet were bare. A strange thing for him because he always had those Birkenstocks shoved onto his feet from morning till night. I always sort of suspected he slept in them.

  I looked sideways at the pass-through counter, half expecting to see two mugs of cocoa sitting on the table in the kitchen, and as I did so, a strange little quiver ran down my spine. Something was off. I couldn't put my finger on it, but as I walked toward the kitchen, tilting my head so I could see, I knew things weren't quite right.

  "Gramp?" I said, testing.

  He didn't move, rather he just stood there, watching me.

  It wasn't the empty table that caught my attention--not at first--although it certainly registered somewhere in the back of my consciousness. It was the pot that sat lopsided off the burner on the stove. I sniffed. I couldn't detect any gas. The burner wasn't fired. But there was something strange about the way that pot sat, lopsided, between the two gas racks.

  My gaze snapped back to my grandfather.

  "What was in the bag, Gramp?" I asked him again, this time firm and commanding. I cocked my head, listening for a buzzing in my ear. Nothing.

  "Gramp?"

  I heard a moan coming from somewhere beyond the counter. I looked again at Gramp as he stood there watching me. One eyebrow cocked, and for a second he looked as though he was waiting for me to comprehend what was going on. It was almost as if he wanted to ask me why in the hell I hadn't made the connection yet.

  Doppelgänger.

  I froze, trying to work out the timeliness in my mind. Trying to decide whether or not Gramp was here in the house, why the thing would have left Sarah to come all the way here when it couldn't possibly know Gramp had been the one who had made whatever was in that bag. It was somewhere between the thing's shuffling movement as it hopped up onto the counter and me dropping my helmet onto the floor that I realized it wasn't the same doppelgänger. This one didn't look threatening. He looked almost like the better and deeper thing that Gramp was. Playful. Brooding. It wasn't Sarah's doppelgänger. Not by a long shot.

  But I knew that underneath that facade, there was something horrible.

  I almost backed away and ran for the stairs, thinking I could run to warn Gramp, but I heard a moan again coming from the kitchen. That was when I realized he was on the other side of it, probably lying on the floor. He must have fallen. No doubt in the middle of making his cocoa. And now that thing was sitting there watching me. It could only mean one thing.

  The realization of why it was there was enough to propel me through the hallway. The doppelgänger jumped down from the counter and without thinking I barreled through, heading for Gramp, busting through its facade as though it was nothing but smoke. An icy wind blew through me as I ran right through it. And the buzzing came then, screeching through my ears loud enough that if I hadn't been in such a panic, I would've stopped them up with my palms.

  I skidded to a stop next to my grandfather on the floor.

  He was lying face down.

  I thought I saw blood coming out of his ears. I felt my breath suck in, and horrified, I searched for a pulse. I couldn't think. My mind just sort of froze and when it did it slipped into a groove that did not help.

  Stroke. Aneurysm. His brain had exploded.

  Any and all of those things were possible in the moment. I yanked my cell phone out of my pocket and jabbed at the numbers that would send an ambulance screaming to my house. I gave them the details. Somehow, I was rational enough to explain what he looked like. That he was breathing. Just barely.

  The doppelgänger appeared again on the other side of the kitchen. I threw my cell phone at it and it wavered for a second, warping into its original shape and then back into the facade of my grandfather. It opened its mouth and for a horrible second I thought it would talk through my unconscious Gramp like the other one had with Sarah. I wasn't about to give it a chance.

  I yelled at it. "Shut up. Shut up. Don't you dare say a word."

  I realized in that second that I really understood what the presence of the doppelgänger meant. Harbinger of death. Warning of impending doom. I could sit there and howl over my grandfather's body and do nothing, or I could do something. Anything. I wasn't going to just sit there and let him die. I was going to fight for him. And I was going to win.

  I rolled him over onto his back as gently as I could and I tilted his head back, propping it the way I had learned in one of those insufferable first aid classes they made us take in school. I listened for his breath. Felt for his pulse. Thready, both of them. But there. From over his chest I could see the doppelgänger shiver closer. It crouched on the other side of him and watched me. I should've been terrified with that thing giving me such intent study; I should have been so soaked with adrenaline and fear that I was all but useless, but all I could think of was losing Gramp. And that was not going to happen today.

  "You're not taking him," I said to it. "I don't know what kind of payload you get from sitting around watching people die, but you can't have this one."

  I clenched my fists together and came down hard on Gramp's chest, and then I planted my palms beneath his sternum. Pumped once twice three times.

  I glanced sideways at my grandfather's face, trying to assess whether or not he was coming to. The doppelgänger had shifted and was now squatting at the top of his head. It caught my eye and then looked down at my grandfather's face. For a second, I thought it was going to touch him.

  "Get away from him," I yelled.

  Pumped again. One two three..Thirty. Breathe into his mouth. Breathe again.

  The doppelgänger got to his feet and strolled around the perimeter of Gramp's body. It brushed through me, making my ears buzz and sending a wash of frigid air across my skin. Then it broke on the other side and I felt nauseous. Sweat broke out across my brow. But I couldn't stop. I pumped. Breathed. Pumped again.

  An eternity died before I heard the sirens in the distance. A shudder racked through me and I couldn't tell if it was fear, relief, or terror. Even as the siren grew louder and wailed with an even keener note, I knew I was losing him. The pulse was less strong. The breaths were nothing but a sigh when they came at all.

  "Please, Gramp," I sobbed. My shoulders ached. Each thrust seemed to have less and less energy. I thought I would collapse over his body and that would be the last of it. We'd both be found there, nothing left of us but shells.

  I looked up over his chest to see the doppelgänger again. It was squatting with its arms crossed over its knees. Leaning over. Inspecting my work. I got the feeling he was thinking that its time was almost done. That it saw what it needed to in Gramp's face and would soon be finished its little job and would move on to the next.

  "Bastard," I said to it. It occurred to me I might try to attack it like I had the one in the crypt, but I didn't dare stop. You never stopped. That was the only thing I really remembered from the classes. Don't stop until the paramedics get there. Not until someone else takes over.

  "You knew I wouldn't be able to attack you," I yelled at it.

  Even as I said the words, I realized how ridiculous they sounded. This thing had no power to kill. It wasn't a reaper. It was a simple doppelgänger. Even Sarah had said hers had been empowered by her coven in order to gain the sort of power it had. There would be no reason for her coven to give that sort of power to this one. They didn't even know about us. They couldn't, and so I knew they couldn't have sent this thing.

  This thing had simply come because my grandfather was dying. I sobbed out loud. It
was hopeless. I swore that if I managed to get him through, I would find out whatever I had to so this wouldn't happen again. I wouldn't be powerless while someone I loved died in front of me.

  It occurred to me that this thing had tried to warn me. That's what it had been doing when it showed itself to me. I realized it didn't want him to die. It was simply doing its job. Warning of doom.

  "Well, you got it wrong, buddy," I said to it. And I pumped again. One to three. Breathe. Felt for a pulse.

  I stole a glance at it as I breathed into my grandfather's mouth. The thing shivered for second. Then solidified. It lost Gramp's facade and it leered at me in its true form. I thought I saw it bare its teeth like a cornered cat might. Angry. Threatened.

  "I've got your number now," I said to it. "You better believe I've got your number."

  With great deliberation, I pulled my gaze from the doppelgänger and paid attention to my grandfather. I pumped in earnest now. Worked at his chest and breathed for him. The sirens drew ever closer and the wail of it was so loud I knew they were pulling into the driveway. It didn't matter. I wouldn't stop now.

  They were breaking into the door when I heard my grandfather gasp in a draft of air. I leaned back on my haunches as the paramedics bustled around me. I heard them talking about just in time. They got to him just in time. Good thing I was here.

  I nodded, mutely, stupidly. I didn't need to be told. I knew things had shifted the moment I felt the doppelgänger rise to its feet. As they pulled my grandfather onto a stretcher and wheeled him down the hallway, I watched the doppelgänger shrivel into a desiccated looking creature. Its mouth gaped open and closed.

  Gasping for air, I thought.

  My grandfather's life was this thing's death. I almost laughed at the ease of it. It had been nothing like what the maniac had done to me in the cathedral. There were no incantations. No holy oil. I simply had to keep my grandfather from giving into the doom that the creature was foretelling.

  It didn't turn into glittery dust like the maniac in the church had. Instead, it collapsed to its knees, clutching its throat. It was a bit anticlimactic to see it fall onto its side and lie there, twitching. Even so, I waited. If the episode in the church had taught me anything, it was what would come next.