Something Always Remains

by M. L. S. Weech

  Something

  Always Remains

  Part Three of The Journals of Bob Drifter

  M.L.S. Weech

  Copyright © 2018 M.L.S. Weech

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  DEDICATION

  1 | Never Enough

  2 | Better Than Nothing

  3 | Chasing Shadows

  4 | Long Overdue

  5 | The Clockmaker

  6 | Time to Kill

  7 | Questions, More Than Answers

  8 | The Raven

  9 | Worth Holding on to

  10 | A Search

  11 | A True Murder

  12 | Old Friends

  13 | What Comes to Everyone

  14 | A Wealth of Power

  15 | Introductions

  16 | Cleansed

  17 | A Lesson Finally Learned

  18 | Shadows Through the Light

  19 | Remember

  20 | A Familiar Face

  21 | Something Always Remains

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MORE FROM BOB DRIFTER

  A REQUEST

  ALSO BY M.L.S. WEECH

  DEDICATION

  For Ralph and Drew, who showed me that some friendships are truly special.

  I hope this helps you see that some friendships never die.

  A Note from the Author

  I was very proud when The Journals of Bob Drifter was first published in 2015. I love this story and the characters in it. However, I was a brand new indie author who simply didn’t have any idea what he was doing on the publishing side of things.

  This second edition was necessary for a few reasons. First, I was aware of some grammar and punctuation issues. I was also aware of some typos that I just got tired of seeing as I looked at the edition I had. A lot of those were addressed in the audio version of this book, but I wanted the print and digital versions of the book to get a polish. The second reason was that I wanted a bit more say on pricing. I wanted to reduce the cover cost and make each individual segment of the book to be available for those who just wanted to try it before committing to a story that’s more than 130,000 words.

  It’s been more than two years since Bob first landed in the hands of readers, and I felt he deserved a second edition that had a bit more editorial love than the first edition had. I didn’t change the story at all, and won’t. Good or bad, this is the story I imagined as I imagined it.

  I’m happy to have been at this for two years, and I sure mean to keep at it until my own Journeyman comes to call on me. It was working on this second edition that I realized their importance. It allows us to make small tweaks and polish our work so it has new life.

  I hope you’ve all enjoyed this journey as much as I have.

  — M.L.S. Weech

  See how the journey began.

  Read Part One of The Journals of Bob Drifter.

  Continue the journey.

  Read Part Two of The Journals of Bob Drifter.

  1

  Never Enough

  Grimm cursed the dying man. Oh, sure, he was dying, but from a damn heart attack. Grimm tried stabbing him, cutting him, even punching the old fart, but all it did was terrify his victim. Imagine, Grimm thought, here’s the one they call Death, frightening the shit out of a man who’s in his pajamas in a bedroom with pink walls.

  It was enough to drive Grimm mad. Finally, the old man died, and Grimm’s Blacksoul knife pierced the mortal’s flesh. It was the same with that woman three months ago when those fools had tried to keep her from him. He’d let them believe he killed her, though they probably knew by now he didn’t. She was dead an instant before Grimm could strike his blow. He could cut and maim all he wished once a mortal was dead, but he was still a pretender, a fake. When it came to real killing, he was worthless.

  In a rage, Grimm made sure to cut every inch of the mortal’s flesh as the soul inside him screamed and soured. Dark-red drops of blood splattered onto the pink walls until Grimm wasn’t sure which color covered the room more.

  Some of the blood found its way onto the lampshade by the mortal’s bed. The blood cast falling shadows that Grimm’s Blacksouls seemed to find amusing. They laughed as blood formed shadows that merged with the splatter pattern on the walls and crawled down onto the floor—drip, drip, drip.

  Finally, the black shell made of what used to be a living soul formed, and his newest pet emerged, screaming. Grimm picked it up and fed it some of the blood from its host. Blacksouls didn’t need sustenance, but Grimm liked to think it gave them the same lust for blood he had.

  The creature gave a final, high-pitched scream and melted into Grimm’s cloak. Grimm looked at his work. He’d gotten carried away. It was his fault for not dying when I wanted. The cutting and tearing used to at least calm him down, but the truth of it was there was no suffering in it, nor any discovery. He wanted to break a soul down to its smallest part, and he couldn’t even break a person down. At least if he used his Blacksouls to maim his victims, their cries would soothe him. But there was no solace for a would-be Death. For Grimm, being everything but Death just wasn’t enough anymore.

  2

  Better Than Nothing

  April 5, 2008

  I’m glad I haven’t been asked to teach lately. Truth be told, I’m bitter enough about my real job. Something is ... different now when I Transport souls. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel wrong. In fact, it feels as if it were wrong the way it used to be. But it’s not what I want anymore. I want what mortals—well, I guess that includes me now, so I guess what I mean to say is I want what others have. Envy is possibly the most pathetic feeling to have. It ranks only a close second to self-pity. Here I am, dwelling in both emotions, and I can’t find it in me to care.

  Luckily, I also feel a purpose. I won’t let what happened to Patience happen to anyone else I can protect. Grimm is out there, happy. It took Drisc and me a while to learn he couldn’t have actually dealt the death-blow to Patience. Our friend at the hospital in Syracuse confirmed she died of ...

  What the fuck does it matter how she died? She fell. He stabbed her. I can feel her inside of me. I can swear it’s as if her soul whispers to me at times, and I just can’t hear it. I think I’m afraid to. I’m afraid because I don’t know what she might say.

  A few months of research in Syracuse hadn’t done anything to help Bob understand anything else about Grimm. It didn’t tell him how he became mortal. All it seemed to do was waste time.

  Bob meant to help Drisc follow Grimm, only Drisc insisted that Bob go to San Diego. They argued about it for an hour before Drisc confessed that Grimm would certainly show up there sooner or later.

  “I’ll follow him down to ye, and ye’ll be there to help me smash him,” Drisc had said when Bob boarded the plane bound for the San Diego International Airport. “Hopefully, by then you’ll have figured out what ye did that hurt the bastard.”

  Each time Bob replayed that night in his mind, he remembered how much he’d hurt Grimm. It wasn’t just the man that howled; his monsters had screamed as well. The only problem was that whatever Bob did, it had left him tired, weak, and in at least as much pain as he imagined Grimm to be in.

  Bob thought about the exchange during the entire flight; a one-leg journey that left his back in agony, his legs rubbery, and his mind exhausted. He had read the same line of a book six times before he caught himself, and he gave up an effort to be productive. The plane landed, and Bob walked numbly through the airport to the baggage claim.

  For some reason, there was a ridiculously long wait for the baggage to get unloaded. He waited so long that he finally asked what the problem was. Appare
ntly, the door was inexplicably jammed, and then a tire on the baggage cart blew, which was when the baggage crew realized they didn’t have a spare tire for that particular cart. So they had to wait for another cart, only the person with that cart had fallen asleep. Someone had to walk back to the cart area to wake the employee up and tell him he was fired.

  That would have ended the troubles, but the employee wanted to cause a scene with the manager. He grew so angry that the airport called security. Once they escorted the angry sleeper, they were able to bring the cart out and load the luggage from Bob’s plane. It took more than an hour, but eventually, the bags started to pop out of whatever series of twists and turns they took behind the strips of black rubber that separated them from the luggage belt and the carousel.

  As Bob waited and watched the machine spit bags out to roll in circles as the spinning platform dragged them along, Bob noticed an imminent Death Sense. Are you serious? he wondered and looked to the sky as if some being were above, snickering at a practical joke. It was the faintest edge of a Death Trail that seemed to give a young woman at the baggage carousel a soft, red glow. She wasn’t going to die, but she was heading to someone who would.

  Bob tried to ignore the woman; he hoped another Journeyman would appear to take care of the situation. He collected his bag and walked toward a long line of cabs that were waiting just outside the airport. He stood on a patch of sidewalk that split the road from the parking lot and kept watch on the woman as she collected her bags and got into a cab.

  Just as Bob began to feel frustrated, he felt his soul surge. He had trouble thinking of it as his soul sometimes, especially when it surged that way, as if to complain at him for being in a bad mood. Lately, the soul surged quite a lot.

  “I don’t see why I have to handle it,” Bob said to himself. He said it to himself because it wasn’t as if the soul could hear him, could it? It surged again. “Fine!” he groaned. He got inside a cab, where a round woman dressed in a red shirt and blue jeans asked him where he wanted to go.

  “Just follow that cab,” Bob said politely.

  “Your girlfriend mad at you?” the woman asked with a smile that showed a missing front tooth.

  “You could say that,” Bob admitted.

  “What’d ya do?” the driver asked. She pulled her vehicle away from the curb and fell behind the cab Bob pointed at.

  I let her die, Bob thought. “I’m not sure,” Bob said aloud to answer the cabbie’s question. “But she’s not even talking to me.”

  “You must have forgotten something important,” the driver suggested.

  “That’s probably true,” Bob admitted.

  “When my old man forgets our anniversary, I don’t talk to him for days.” She spoke as she turned the cab left, then right, then left again. She drove like some people brush their teeth: Active in what she did, but not actually thinking about it.

  The driver got quiet when she noticed where the cab in front of her had stopped. The hospital stood out beside its parking lot and grass field. Bob groaned. He’d spent more than a week in a hospital, only to fly for more than four hours to arrive at another hospital. Whoever was in charge of his destiny, or life, or job status, had a pretty fucked-up sense of humor.

  Scripps Mercy Hospital was a tall building; its white-plaster walls were dotted with windows split by a tower that climbed from the entrance. Bob’s driver pulled the cab into a circular path designed for pick-ups and drop-offs. Bob handed her more than enough for the ride and a tip. She looked at him oddly and asked, “You didn’t forget you were coming here, did you?”

  Bob smiled a grim smile, but it wasn’t as if the driver would recognize it. “No,” he answered. “Could you just wait here?” he asked. The driver looked confused. “I have to get some things ready, and she’ll probably want to stay here.”

  Bob had learned a long time ago how bad a liar he was, so he stuck to half-truths that he didn’t feel the need to explain. The cab driver gave him what he assumed to be an understanding smile.

  It wasn’t surprising to Bob that there only happened to be one Death Trail in the building. Sometimes hospitals had a handful of dying patients, but every now and again, lives were saved. Not when it mattered to Bob, but other times.

  The trail took Bob up the elevator and down a hall before it turned through a set of security doors. They opened as a doctor stepped out on his way to the elevator, and that’s when Bob noticed that the Death Trail led into a nearby room. He gave the situation some thought. He hadn’t intended to be involved in too many Transports. Not that he had any say in the matter, but since he was the only one who seemed to even bother Grimm, Bob thought that might earn him a bit of extra time to hunt the bastard down. That still left him standing in the middle of a hospital, with no plan on how to get to the Transport.

  The waiting area for this section of the hospital was empty at the moment; even the chairs behind a white counter where Bob imagined some nurses or candy stripers might work were empty. Bob saw an empty lab coat draped over one of the chairs. He’d been keeping his head down by instinct. Even among other Journeymen, he had a very forgettable face, but that didn’t mean he needed to show it to every camera he came across.

  That didn’t mean the cameras wouldn’t notice some guy pick up a lab coat, and the last year or so had taught Bob some hard lessons about drawing attention. Bob had barely made the decision to leave the jacket alone before the security door opened, and a nurse came out and sat in the chair with the lab coat.

  “Are you here to see someone?” the nurse asked. Bob reached out to the woman to sense her emotions. A solid amount of boredom overwhelmed any other emotion the woman felt at the moment. Bob lightly Manipulated that emotion, pushing it, hoping the woman would be too lethargic to worry over some stranger who had no real reason to be anywhere.

  “Yeah, but I forgot my, um ... ” Bob had no clue what this hospital used to tell patient and doctor from nutcase and Journeyman. And why the hell isn’t there already a Journeyman here?

  “Your wristband?” the nurse asked. Her eyes were starting to droop.

  Bob shrugged. “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

  “I think I’ve seen you before,” the nurse said. Bob read her nametag.

  “Of course, June,” Bob said. “You let me in yesterday, too.”

  “Yeah,” June said. “Are you ever going to remember your wristband?”

  Bob smiled as he lightly Manipulated the girl’s suspicion into her boredom. “I can promise you that I won’t have this problem tomorrow.”

  The woman shook her head as she pushed a button, allowing the security door to swing open. Bob could still feel her frustration, but he thought the emotion helpful at the moment. He offered a half-hearted thanks as he released the girl’s emotions and made his way through the door.

  Bob followed the Death Trail to a room and waited outside. He could Manipulate emotions. He could tell where and when someone was going to die. He could Take pain. These all seemed like pretty stupid powers for a Journeyman to have. Invisibility, super hearing, or even the ability to Take a soul from someone he couldn’t touch all seemed to be much better powers to Bob. Only, he couldn’t. He had to work with what he had, and he had to eavesdrop.

  “ ... made the right decision,” a deep male voice said.

  “You’re sure he won’t wake up?” a woman, probably the one Bob had seen at the airport, asked.

  “Do you see this?” the deep voice said. Bob couldn’t see anything except the white hall, a few other doors, and a plastic flower plant. He hoped whoever owned the deep voice pointed at something more significant.

  “These are his ECG readings,” the deep voice explained. “They tell us his brain activity. The readings tell me he won’t wake. He won’t suddenly recover, but he’ll feel the agony he’s in. You’re doing the right thing. You’re ending his pain.”

  The man, apparently the doctor, wasn’t talking to Bob, but the comment still struck the Journeyman. His ability to Tak
e pain was one of the first things he learned and used to make death easier. When he had started helping people before they died, it seemed to be even more helpful. In Bob’s experience, people weren’t as afraid of death when the pain went away.

  The woman in the room said something too low for Bob to overhear. But the doctor told her that someone would be in to shut down the system in a few moments. The comment gave Bob an idea. He watched the doctor leave. He waited a few moments and considered his options. He knew better than to try to turn the machine off. Journeymen can’t kill. I’d flip the switch, and the damn thing would keep working through some electrical miracle. I’d be lucky not to get a shock for my trouble.

  Instead, Bob mustered up his courage, and knocked. The woman from the airport looked at him with tears glistening in her eyes. “Are you here to,” she paused to clear her throat “to help?” she asked.

  She was sitting on a light, cream-colored, plastic chair beside a bed. The man on the bed was very clearly her father. She had his strong chin and round face. Bob could sense how close the man was to death.

  “No,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, I was just over there,” listening to the worst thing a person could hear about someone they lost. “I couldn’t help but overhear. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Did you lose someone?” the woman asked.

  Bob felt something strange catch in his throat. “Yes,” he said gruffly, “she was my ...” My what? Girlfriend? Lover? She did love me, in the end, I know that much. “She was very important. I knew she was dying, but I had to let her go.”

  I didn’t have to let that asshole stab her. I didn’t have to let him scare her the whole night. But she didn’t have to give me her soul, either. She gave it to me, so it’s up to me to be the man who earned it.

  Bob slowly approached the bed and laid a hand on the man, Taking his pain. “I would have been a better man if I had made other choices,” Bob confessed. This woman couldn’t know his reasons. Bob didn’t know why he told her any of it.