We claim one of you at a time. No more and no less. It’s always been like that.
The little boy who died of the flu was to be my last. After he disappeared, I too disappeared.
But only for a short time.
Look, the arbitrary nature of what I do is the cosmic cement that binds all living things to their fate; it’s not ever to be fucked with. There I was drifting through the organic constructs of the living, en-route to the drunken man.
The war had ended more than nine months earlier and all over the world; the dying continued on a biblical scale. I was alone for the very first time, yet I knew the lure of living energy would be too much to bear. I decided to sample people’s lives. To drink in their life force. To experience fleeting glimpses into those seemingly unimportant gifts to the living, which are too quickly forgotten: the feel of the wind blowing gently through your hair or the warmth of the midmorning sun against your skin. I decided to sample their lives like a judge at a wine-tasting competition. I’d feel the constant thump-thump-thump of a beating heart, and then onto the next for another small moment. I’d look upon all there was to see through their living eyes, then onto another and another still, hopping from one person to the next, each body a mere stepping stone until I spotted him – the drunken man.
I knew his end was near because we all see everyone’s end – it’s what we do. A thought occurred to me: what if I use him? What might happen? Anything would be better than an eternity’s existence as an intangible cloud of energy stealing glimpses into people’s lives.
He staggered hard up a steep incline, blind to the approach of the streetcar about to clip him as it rumbled toward the stop not more than a half a block away.
I hopped into the body of a homeless man squatting in a gully and taking a shit. I heard a thud and watched the drunken man’s feet leave the ground after the streetcar struck him. Another of my kind appeared beside the body as it lay bleeding on a patch of grass. It greeted the now dead man’s luminous form and escorted him away. As soon as the two were gone, I made my move.
I drove my essence straight into his central nervous system. He’d been dead for less than a minute, and I wasted no time getting him to draw a breath. An electric jolt shot through his heart, and it began to beat.
I blinked three times and drew in a cleansing breath of air. The body spasmed for a few seconds, just long enough for me to acquaint myself with my new host’s functions. When the twitching stopped, I pushed myself up off the grass. My head spun like a turbine, and I felt a splash of nausea roll about in the pit of my stomach. A cloud of choking dust swirled around my face as another streetcar zipped by. I turned around and looked at the spot where I’d just resurrected a dead man.
I saw the pool of blood along with a crisp grayish-brown human shaped impression in the grass where my host had been only a few seconds ago.
Every living thing within a few feet of where I stood was dead. I glanced down at my hands and saw blood mixed with tiny flecks of dirt and a pair of long grass stains that stretched from the heel of my hands up to my wrists.
The drunken man was gone. I was alive for the very first time.
And my lips curled up into a smile.
His name was Amos Regan, and he’d been in America for twenty-five years. He’d worked with his hands back in the old country, but it was in the new land that he discovered the lure of the drink. Dirt cheap American whiskey warmed his insides on those cold mornings working the docks, loading, and unloading Great Lakes ships with names like Ojibwa and Algonquin. Liquor drove away his wife and family – she’d taken the kids and run off after he slapped her around one time too many.
He poured his worth into yet more drink night after night, picking fights for spare change and pummeling the faces of those who gave him any lip in one of the many saloons he frequented near dockside. He made quick cash doing side jobs for any gang in need of an enforcer. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, so it was a surprise to me his life ended by accident instead of by design.
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 reveled 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.
For a moment, I thought 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 were 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 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 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 feces 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 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 piss and shit had been 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 sink, 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.”
About Sean Cummings
Sean Cummings is a fantasy author with published works ranging from traditional urban fantasy (Shade Fright, Funeral Pallor) to a blend of dark fantasy and superheroes. (Marshall Conrad: A Superhero Tale)
2012 saw the publication of Sean’s first young adult novel. POLTERGEEKS is a rollicking story about teen witch Julie Richardson, her dorky boyfriend and a race against time to save her mother’s life. The second in the series is called STUDENT BODIES. Both were published by Angry Robot Books now-defunct Young Adult imprint, Strange Chemistry Books.
In 2015, Sean published his first book for children – TO CATCH A CAT THIEF – courtesy of Rebel Light Books.
In May 2016 Severed Press published THE NORTH, a gripping post-apocalyptic zombie thriller for young adults, now a bestseller. In July 2016, Sean’s released the first in a brand new urban/dark fantasy series: IMMORTAL REMAINS – A Tim Reaper Novel, also a bestseller. In December 2016, Sean released the first in a new dark fantasy series best described as Kill Bill’s THE BRIDE meets THE SIXTH SENSE meets SONS OF ANARCHY. #GRUDGEGIRL tells the story of Jia Song, the living manifestation of retribution for murdered women and children whose deaths remains unsolved. In 2017, Sean published the second book in the Tim Reaper series, THE GIRL ON VICTORIA ROAD.
Sean is a veteran, and he lives in Saskatoon Canada with his wife and two one lazy cats cat (RIP GARY THE CAT) who doesn’t earn his keep a large spotted dog named Stormageddon and a retired racing greyhound named Elvis.
Hell House: A Tim Reaper Story Page 4
