Immortal Remains: A Tim Reaper Novel

by Sean Cummings

  I simply carried on where Amos left off: drinking because drunkenness was a new sensation, brawling because the lure of bashing a man into submission excited the basest parts of my being, and doing odd jobs with a knife or a gun or a lead pipe.

  His nature became my second nature. I revelled in sexual escapades with the whores near dockside because it was cheap and new. I fashioned knuckle dusters which I wore underneath my woolen gloves during Detroit’s bitterly cold winters because there was always someone in need of a beating whenever I was in need of cold hard cash. I could find anyone, anytime for easy money but things changed on the day when I first encountered a human being with no soul.

  I cast my gaze on him as he stood in a lineup at the bank; he was dressed in a tweed cap and blue denim coveralls. He carried an aluminum lunch box and his hands were black from fitting pipes or shoveling coal in one of the new skyscrapers under construction in Detroit at the time. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at because all around me the living energy of dozens of souls thrummed with percussive intensity.

  Everyone except him.

  I thought for a moment he might be one of my kind — another defrocked reaper who’d figured out how to live in the body of a dead man.

  I followed him as he left the bank. I stayed a good twenty paces back, lighting up a cigarette and bumping into the occasional pedestrian that hot August afternoon. We both hopped a streetcar and rode for twenty minutes until we reached a series of dilapidated row houses near the docks. I stopped dead in my tracks when I caught a glimpse of three reapers waiting patiently in front of his house. They spotted me and raged; the ancient Words spilling out of their mouths like a foul torrent in some polluted spillway. I was the forsaken one. I wasn’t fit to be in their presence. I was the usurper who openly challenged the will of the Almighty. I shut out their anger because what I was looking at just didn’t add up. Unless the house was about to burst into flames, killing everyone inside, it was a rare occurrence to see three death dealers waiting outside of a home.

  I needed information. I waited until nightfall, the entire time keeping my eye on the front door and the reapers whose vaporous forms resembled clouds of ink floating and bobbing in still water. I needed information about the man with no soul, but I couldn’t barge into his place without knowing whether or not he was some elemental being or someone from the pits of you-know-where.

  After sucking back yet another cigarette, I squatted against the wall of a small brick apartment building and shut my eyes. I reached out, willing the tiniest fragment of my essence forward, so tiny that with a little luck, I wouldn’t rouse the suspicions of the creatures holding a vigil outside the skid row house.

  And naturally, it didn’t work one bit. The three reapers immediately detected my presence and went for me; twisting my essence, pulling it in three different directions. I cupped my hands over my ears to blot out the sounds of their recriminations and cursing. They spat out words so foul that each syllable threatened to poison the very air I breathed

  I grated my teeth together and stood. I pointed at the death dealers and barked a curse at them in the ancient tongue of our kind. I spoke the words no human was ever to speak and it so horrified the creatures they recoiled at my power. And so I latched onto their essence until I could see through their eyes. My mind filled with the image of three women locked in a dark room. I saw a rope hanging from the ceiling and I could smell shit and piss. I could taste the coppery tang of blood in my mouth and I could feel the burn as his knife cut into their backs just enough to draw blood. His task was clear – he cared little for the women and cared a lot for the skin on their backs because each presented a blank canvas for a new work of art. Each cut was like the stroke of an artist’s brush. He needed them alive long enough for their skin to heal. There would be bright red scars standing out against their ivory skin with intensity so pure he would drop to his knees and weep in thanksgiving for his artistic gifts. He no longer needed the women at this point – their bodies were mere easels for his human canvas and underneath the floorboards lay seven other completed works. These three made ten and his task would be complete. He could then assemble each panel on the wall of his home before spilling his own blood as an offering to the art he’d created. He would be dead but his art would live on in a portrait gallery or a museum.

  A wave of anger hit me with enough force that I staggered for a moment or two. Inside this shit hole house were three women and the man with no soul was some kind of sick fuck with dreams of artistic glory. He had already killed seven women; these three would be his last. I removed my gloves and adjusted my knuckle dusters as I marched up to the front door. I pounded on it four times with enough force the entire doorframe shook. He opened the door and I didn’t give him enough time to formulate his next move. I drove my right fist into his face with a loud crunch. He dropped to his knees and I sent a size twelve right into his chest. He toppled over as I kicked the door closed and then drove my left fist into his throat. It crushed his windpipe and he immediately started making choking sounds. I grabbed his left arm and dragged him down a hall filled with rodent droppings. I followed my nose; the stench of urine and faeces was so strong it burned my lungs with each breath. I found the room with the three women and I kicked the door open, still pulling the soulless man behind me. I wanted him to see what I was going to do to his masterpiece.

  In front of me were three shirtless women; their hands bound with rope. Each hung by their own metal hook that had been drilled into a supporting wall. Their backs were a mass of scab-covered lines and circles and their skirts were covered with dried blood. They’d been hanging there for a long time since there was piss and shit smeared all over the floor and their bare feet. They each twisted around to see me standing there with the soulless man choking at my feet. Their battered and bruised faces lit up as they gazed down at the mad man who was dying by inches on the filth-covered floor. I spotted a butcher’s roll on a small table. I dashed across the room and pulled out a filleting knife and proceeded to cut the women’s bonds.

  “You’re free, ladies,” I said as I handed each of them a knife from the butcher’s roll. “Why don’t you three make some art out of this asshole, seeing as how that was his plan for you?”

  One of them glanced at the knife and then looked me in the eyes. “You … how did you find us?” she croaked.

  I shrugged as I backed up to the doorway. “Call it divine intervention. You won’t see me again. Goodbye.”

  I drove my boot into the soulless man’s face as the three women descended on him like vultures to carrion. The last thing I heard as I headed out the door was the snikt, snikt, snikt of razor sharp blades stabbing into flesh over and over and over again.

  I nodded to the three reapers as I walked out onto the street.

  “I bet you pricks didn’t see that coming,” I said, lighting up a cigarette. “Tell Ezekiel to go fuck himself.”

  2

  Halifax, Present Day

  I like cats.

  They have a calming effect on me even though I know full well that every feline out there has an agenda and they pull stupid crap like knocking a half-full glass of water off the coffee table and onto your hardwood floor at three in the morning. I’ve tried to keep a cat or two over the years, but because of what I am or possibly what I’ve done, whenever I get within ten feet of a cat, it’ll go into a violent display of hissing and spitting and stress shedding.

  A few even shit themselves.

  I’m serious.

  There are reasons why this happens and I’m not going to get into that right now because despite the fact that cats generally dislike me, I still retain a measure of admiration for them due to their uncomplicated nature.

  Human beings, on the other hand? Well, that’s another story entirely.

  I’m going to throw out a word that you might consider to be archaic. But I can’t really find a better term to describe the true nature of those who slink about in the shadows, brandishing a shinin
g steel blade or a garroting wire. Those twisted individuals that like to prey on women with the same predatory qualities as the best killing machines in the animal kingdom. Let’s just call them, soulless evildoers. I make it my business to hunt those without a soul because the evil they carry with them is a cosmic abomination and all those assholes in heaven above and hell below know it. It’s open season on serial killers and really, it should be for everyone when you think about it. No manner of psychiatric treatment or chemical castration is going to stop them from doing what they do, so why not hit them before they hit you? Don’t get me wrong either; I enjoy removing their stain from this earth not because of any personal sense of duty to protect women or to mete out justice – far from it.

  Most of the time women piss me off; freak me out, or both.

  That’s why in addition to cats, I also retain a certain fondness for hookers. I get what I want, they get paid and everyone’s happy, right? It’s a simple business transaction.

  Still, someone has to put serial killing assholes down because they truly are monsters. So when it comes to dealing with monsters, I like to think of myself as the guy at the grocery store produce department who sifts through hundreds of wax covered crates of red peppers, separating the cosmetically perfect ones from those that look like some kind of weird-ass genetic mutation. (The vast majority of humanity is far from perfect, incidentally, but whack-job serial killers like to think they’re perfect in every conceivable way, and nobody likes a narcissist, especially if he or she is armed.)

  No, I’m not like that blood spatter guy who used to be on cable TV. If he were, in fact, a real human being, I’d pay him a visit, too. I’d probably show up when he’s about to kill one of his own kind because there are few things better in this world than a two-for-one deal, am I right?

  My name is Tim Reaper by the way, so, by now you’ve figured out what I am. I’ve been carrying out my little hobby for nearly a century and I’m good at it. I’m good at a lot of things you might frown on so I’ll make it easy for you: try to think of me as a guy who does odd jobs for money. You may be in need of my services one day, so don’t get all judgmental by what I do because a guy has to make a living.

  The murderous prick I’d been alerted to had an interesting modus operandi. While serial killers like Ted Bundy would lure a potential victim to their vehicle and bash the person on the head to facilitate an abduction, this monster liked to use cats to lure his prey, and more precisely, kittens.

  I cannot abide anyone hurting a frigging kitten. If I see cat abuse, I’ll open a can of elemental whoop-ass all over the abuser. My concern for the overall welfare of local felines had intensified after I read in the paper about some maimed kittens that had been found alongside the dismembered remains of a pair of women. The cops weren’t yet ready to say that a serial killer was on the loose, but the press sure as hell was. Normally I let these kinds of things find resolution without my involvement when I know there are cops already on the case. While I knew I would have little difficulty in finding the bastard who committed these heinous acts, there’s this old saying you might be familiar with that governs my actions for better or worse. While it sucks in the human scheme of things, it’s a necessary element in the cosmic grand design. In a nutshell: everyone has their time.

  I’ll throw another one out for you to chew on: fate determines your ultimate destiny. Cue creepy organ music.

  So, why do I target serial killing pricks? Because I have to do something productive with my spare time, that and it’s also probable on some residual level, I’m trying to make amends for the biggest cock-up in the history of the death dealers. Still not sure what it was?

  Google Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918.

  Yeah, that was me. I caused it – long story.

  The cosmic powers that be moved swiftly after that one, and I got the old heave-ho from my order. De vita exir – my ability to claim souls was stripped from me. I still possess my innate ability to find most human beings if the need arises, but that’s it. I was blacklisted.

  So I make my own order of things. To hell with what the rest of the elementals have to say about it. I’m here for a long time, not a good one.

  I kicked at the still blood-stained soil beneath a massive chestnut tree with the heel of my boot. There was a faint hint of autumn in the air and a damp breeze carried the scent of rain falling somewhere in the city a few miles away.

  This was where he did it.

  The bastard.

  Mountain bikers fifteen year-old Bonnie Teller’s disemboweled corpse was here less than two days ago. She’d been cut wide open from between her legs right up to her sternum and a three-month old Tabby was tied to Bonnie’s left wrist by a two-foot length of braided cotton. The kitten’s hind legs were broken and it was still alive (barely) and the coroner said the girl had been dead for about a day. Amazingly, coyotes and other scavengers had steered clear of her remains.

  Alright, listen.

  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this was the work of a twisted bastard because the body was deliberately laid out on a well-used bike trail. The killer wanted someone to find the body about a thousand kinds of fast because gruesome crime scenes are always the lead story on the nightly news. These psychos revel in their own news coverage – another reason I hate them.

  Two weeks before Bonnie, a family of three found twenty year-old Elaine Lahey’s internal organs in a blue bag hanging from a spruce tree. Her hollowed-out torso was discovered about thirty feet away, lying against a twelve-foot length of driftwood out at Cow Bay. She too had been cut from stem to stern and there was a three-month old dead Calico, again with two broken rear legs, lashed to Elaine’s left wrist.

  I clenched my jaw and drew in a breath of air as I collected a handful of soil from where Bonnie met another one of my kind. It was her time, unfortunately. The whirring, spinning clockwork mechanism that runs our universe had already chosen to end her before her first cries in the delivery room. Her death had already been determined before she was even a thought in her horny father’s brain as he slammed the nuts to his girlfriend in the back of a minivan on their third date.

  How fair is that, right? Conceived on a bench seat in the back of a Dodge Caravan only to be gutted by a knife-wielding cat abuser a mere fifteen years and nine months later. I can’t explain the workings of the universe, the meaning of life, or even the meaning in Bonnie’s murder. I can’t question why out of six billion people inhabiting the planet, she was selected to meet her gruesome and terrifying end at the hands of a sick bastard who breaks the legs of kittens and kills young girls for sport.

  I knew how to find the guy who did it, though, and I was going to make damned sure he’d pay for killing those two girls. Soon.

  I came to him in the darkness, my black trench coat billowing back over my heels as a gust of supernatural force blew a scattering of litter against a garbage bin outside the old warehouse on Bayer’s Road. Yeah, I wear a trench coat. Lots of people in my business wear trench coats. They look cool; they’re good for hiding everything from a sawed-off shotgun to shoulder holsters and hand grenades. I even know of one guy in England who keeps a pocket dimension in his trench coat.

  I heard the mewling of a kitten in the back of the cargo van parked adjacent to the bin. I knew the soulless prick was probably just moments away from breaking its legs and before turning his attention to the girl he’d taken.

  I ran a leather-clad sleeve across my brow as I reached into my trench coat and clasped my hand across the pistol grip of my nine millimeter Beretta. I slid it out, silencer and all, as I gripped the door handle and pulled up. The door swung open with a loud creak and there he was, hunched over a pretty blonde whose legs were bound together with silver duct tape. Her outstretched arms were taped over her head, and her eyes were a pair of enormous white O’s. She would have screamed save for the fact there was a sock in her mouth. And her would-be killer?

  If I could have packaged the look on h
is face and posted it online, I’d be the proud author of the greatest Internet meme in human history. They could put it on a t-shirt, sell it and send me a royalty cheque each month. Oh to dream a little.

  He stared at me, his mouth hanging open as if it were on a hinge. In his left hand was a tiny Siamese kitten, and in his right hand he brandished a pair of blood stained vice-grip pliers.

  Pliers! The prick was hurting kitties with fucking pliers! That just pissed me off even more.

  “Daniel Mackie Hooper,” I rumbled, as I aimed my weapon. “How fucked are you?”

  Both the vice grip pliers and the kitten slipped out of his hands simultaneously. The kitten, of course, took one look at me, hissed, and then promptly shit all over the floor of the van. It arched its back and puffed out its white and black fur until the tiny creature appeared twice its size.

  “W-Who are you?” Hooper croaked, as a large wet spot slowly appeared on his jeans. “How did you find me?”

  I cocked an eyebrow as my eyes bore right through his.

  “Two things led me to you. The first is that you’re a soulless anomaly in the world of the living and people without souls don’t get to live – that’s my rule. The second is that I heard the kitty.” I said, as I began squeezing the trigger. “Have fun in hell, prick.”

  My Beretta emitted a muffled pop as the back of his skull along with a bright red mixture of blood and brain matter splattered against the back of the passenger seat and he fell back, the rest of his head thumping against the side wall of the van. The kitten tore past me at something close to Mach One as I climbed inside.

  Perfect. I was rejected yet again by a cat – the story of my life. I pulled the sock out of the girl’s mouth and cut the tape that he’d used to bind her hands and legs.

  “Kelly Jameson, you get to live another day,” I said calmly, as I slid my Beretta back into its holster. “You’re three months’ shy of your nineteenth birthday so, you know, maybe in the future you might want to avoid climbing into vehicles with psychopathic kitten-maiming assholes.”