Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper

by Nancy Kilpatrick

  The voice reminded her of her grandfather, ancient and soothing. Chelsea slowly moved towards it, through a maze of budding Cherokee rose bushes and planter-bushels of bitterroot. She parted two thick sunflower stalks like a curtain and stepped beyond. An old man sat on an overturned watering bucket. The suit he wore matched his faded and wrinkled face but his blue eyes were bright and clear.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” she said with a skeptical little swagger in her words. She put her free hand on her hip. “Who are you?”

  He chuckled and ran a calloused hand over his unshaven cheek. “Y’know, I have a lot of acquaintances all over these lands and they all call me different names.”

  “Play names?” She asked.

  “I suppose y’could say.” He tilted his head playfully and pointed at her with his small finger. “I guess it’s really up to you. Under what name would you like to know me?”

  Chelsea shook her head. “I don’t know you. How would I know what to call you?”

  “Fair enough.” She watched his forearms flex as he leaned forward, elbows on knees, and rested his chin on his knuckles. Though aged, his body was still muscular. “Why don’t you just call me Pops?”

  Pops extended a hand. Rather than shake it, Chelsea stepped back and crossed her legs. “What are you doing in our garden?”

  “Just passing through.” He dropped his hand and straightened out his cocked head. “Your next question, I guess, is where am I heading? It seems like I used to have some kind of plan, some kind of destination. But that was a long time ago. Things change, you know?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Things do change. This is my stepmother’s flower garden now but there used to be apple trees here. This was my mother’s orchard.”

  His eyes squinted. “And which do you like better, all these pretty flowers or your Momma’s apple trees?”

  “The apple trees,” she answered immediately.

  “I would imagine so.” Pops grinned. Then the jar in Chelsea’s hand caught his attention. “And what are you doing out here today?”

  Chelsea glanced down at the jar and her two prisoners. She blushed. “I guess I pretended to be sick today so I wouldn’t have to go to school. It’s easy, you know, ‘cause I’m always sick. Got what my Mom had. But I had to come out here today and catch the rest of the angels.”

  “The angels, huh?” He pointed to the jar. “Can’t barely see them so far off. Any chance you can bring them closer so I can see?”

  She handed him the jar but did not step forward.

  Pops studied them for a long moment before exhaling with a practiced whistle. “Just wanted to make sure they weren’t anyone I know. This one guy here, he kind of reminds me of a fellow I knew a lifetime ago.”

  He handed back the jar and stared at her for a moment. Then he sucked his lips into his mouth and released them with a smacking sound. “There’s a little stone house at the back of the garden.”

  Chelsea’s eyes dropped to the ground. “I know.”

  “What is that little house?” he asked.

  She took a moment to respond. “It’s where Momma’s buried.”

  “I knew that.” He pushed off the bucket and stood up. His knees cracked as he stretched out. “Just wanted to see if you’d tell me. You go visit her much?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t like to look at it.”

  “I think you should come and see.” He motioned to her as he began to walk towards the southern edge of the garden.

  She reluctantly followed. As much as she hated her mother’s grave site and the memories it would unleash, there was something obscene about a stranger trespassing there alone. They passed a row of hollyhock stalks, their proud pink flowers so reminiscent of trumpets, watching over a few shaggy Pepperidge bushes. Half buried in a shelf of Ivy Leaf Toadflax, her mother’s tomb jutted out of the earth at an awkward angle, the sharp peak of its roof pointing towards the tree line.

  “Look here.” He pulled aside a patch of tall reeds beyond the garden’s edge and moved aside. She cautiously peered inside. A frail sapling grew out of the rich brown soil.

  “I think,” he said from behind her, “that there will be apple trees here again. Soon.”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon hunting angels, Pops pointing them out and Chelsea catching them in her net. With the jar filled, she counted nineteen captives, enough to bookmark Song of Solomon through The Gospel According To St. Matthew, the first book of the New Testament.

  As the sun began to sink under the tree line, Chelsea guessed that her stepmother would return home soon. She thanked Pops for his help and ran back to the house, proud of her bountiful harvest.

  The next morning Chelsea didn’t have to fake coughing fits, they came naturally, some powerful enough to send bouts of dizziness through her head, some speckling her saliva with blood. She felt light-headed and a bitter taste lingered in her mouth. Removing a thermometer from under her tongue, her father tried to hide his worry behind a queasy smile and kissed her forehead. Then he wandered into the hall and started to argue with her stepmother.

  “But what if this time is the time?”

  “I promise to send for Dr. Wainsworth if anything—”

  “—I could never forgive myself if I wasn’t—”

  In the end, her father relented and left for work. Chelsea pretended to sleep and listened to her stepmother move around downstairs. She heard her prepare a cup of tea, give orders to the house staff, and then answer the door at noon. Chelsea tumbled out of bed and rushed to the window. She watched her stepmother and a tall, handsome man step into the same coach as the day before. As the door closed, they embraced. The horses began to trot.

  Chelsea dressed, fetched her net and a fresh jar, and headed out to the garden. She stopped at the gate to catch her breath. Normally the run from the house would have been easy but today her lungs felt heavy and it was difficult to breathe. She bent over, put her hands on her knees, and let out a string of crackling coughs. Wiping her nose, she called out, “Pops? You here, Pops?”

  The garden seemed empty. There were no buzzing bees circling the tulips or birds chirping from the low limbs of the Ashe juniper trees. The ground was dry, but the garden looked as if it had been battered by a ferocious downpour. The flower heads were bowed. The bushes had shucked off much of their foliage.

  Chelsea wandered to the back but found her stepmother’s watering bucket empty. Disappointed, she scanned the garden for angels but didn’t spot any. Perhaps they saw the garden dying and fled, just as they had avoided her mother in her final hours. Or maybe they had even caused the flowers to wither. She dropped the jar and net and plopped down on the bucket.

  “You look like a overripe plum three days into a drought.”

  She twisted and watched Pops push through the crisp bur-reeds that stood guard on the perimeter of her mother’s tomb. She felt a smile tickle its way onto her face. “Were you hiding back there?”

  “No.” Pops steered himself over the marshy ground with a knotty wooden stick. His face looked older than it had yesterday, more weathered and tired, like the garden. “I’m never very far away. I don’t ever hide, though some people pretend they don’t see me coming.”

  “Well, I was looking for you!” Chelsea said.

  His lips curled back as he smiled, opening a window where she could see two rows of flat, rotten teeth. “And now that you’ve found me, am I what you expected?”

  Chelsea looked away. “I don’t see any angels.”

  He nodded. “You’ve got to call them is all.”

  “How do you call an angel?” She stood up slowly. She eyed him suspiciously again, like when they first met. Her mother had tried to call the angels, had desperately pleaded for them, but they never came.

  Pops extended two fingers on both of
his hands and stretched them high into the air, forming the outline of a wide cone around his head. Then he clapped them together quickly. Chelsea watched in amazement as a large yellow angel fluttered out of hiding inside a tent of drooping eucalyptus leaves. It glided over to Pops and landed on the tip of his crossed fingers.

  She giggled.

  Pop’s hand quickly darted out and seized the angel. It struggled between his fingers as he brought it over to Chelsea. She opened the jar. He dropped it inside. “How many more do you need?”

  She frowned. “Twenty-six.”

  “Then you had better get started.” He grinned, the corners of his mouth stretched wider, waves of bulging wrinkles filling his cheeks. He motioned for her to follow his lead.

  She raised both arms over her head as he had, but then sneezed violently and wobbled in place. Putting a hand to her nose, she dragged a red splotch across her face. She lowered her arms and began to cry. The she felt his hands snake around her wrists from behind and pull them over her head. Tears streaked through the blood on her face. She extended her fingers and clapped them together in time with her sobs.

  Dozens of angels burst out of the dark brown hollows and shadowy nooks of the garden and danced in the air. They were black and white, red and blue, amber and gray. Her tears stopped as she watched them with hypnotized eyes. She released a gentle, uncontrolled giggle. He released her hands. She clapped faster and louder. More angels burst out from beneath drooping leaves and tangles of briar weed. The air was alive with beating wings.

  Pops laughed and the deep, rolling sound turned her giggles into rollicking laughter of her own. He knelt down beside her and ran a hand through her hair. “I think you might need more jars.”

  The next day morning Chelsea was unable to get out of bed. A fever burned inside her. When she tried to pull herself upright, dizziness forced her back down. Pain shot through her with every coughing fit and each sneeze caused her to clench her fists in agony.

  Her father stayed with her all day, hovering over her bed and bringing her cool washcloths and tall glasses of cucumber-and-lemon water. Dr. Wainsworth visited but spoke very little. She overheard him apologize to her father for not being able to do enough. “Make her comfortable.”

  Father started crying before the front door closed and didn’t stop until he finally retired to his own bed. It was a long day full of rumblings in her head, hot flashes, fitful coughs, and the horrible warmth of her fever.

  That night she strained to hear the hushed voices that crept down the hall from the master bedroom.

  “—heard him, nothing that we can do—”

  “—but a hospital, maybe, could—”

  “—think she’d be more comfortable in a hospital bed?”

  She reached across her bed and dragged the Bible off her dresser. She and Pops had caught twenty-five angels the day before. Only one empty space remained, between The General Epistle Of Jude and The Revelation Of St. John The Divine. They would have to catch one more after the fever passed.

  She pulled the Bible to her chest and curled around it. She closed her eyes and hoped she would fall asleep quickly. Her head didn’t hurt when she slept.

  The tiniest sound woke her, just a slight fluttering of wings hovering overhead. Her eyes adjusted slowly. When the haze cleared, she saw a black-winged angel dancing just above her head. She reached up for it but it flew higher. She watched it circle just out of her reach.

  Chelsea sat up and reached out but again it evaded her hands. This one is much cleverer than the others, she thought, and that thought made her realize that her head was clear. The fever had passed. She ran a hand over her forehead, expecting it to be covered in sweat like all of the times before, but her skin was dry.

  “You won’t catch this one so easy.”

  She turned and saw Pops standing in the doorway. If he had looked older on the second day of their hunt, he now looked positively ancient. He pointed to the angel with his walking stick.

  “What are you doing in my house?” she asked him.

  He waved away the question. “What are you still doing here in bed, lazybones? We have an angel to catch tonight, don’t we?”

  “Maybe,” she pouted, “we should wait ‘til morning.”

  Pops shook his head. “The first frost will be on the ground tomorrow morning. There won’t be any more days to play sick and chase angels. It has to be tonight.”

  “But—”

  Pops stepped away from the doorway and disappeared into the shadows of the hallway. “Don’t worry, you won’t be out long.”

  The angel flew to the door and hovered there. Chelsea rolled out of bed. It kept just out of her reach, leading her into the hallway. She glanced over at her clothes hamper, but when the angel started down the hall she abandoned the idea of getting dressed and followed it instead. She couldn’t see where Pops had gone.

  She tiptoed down the stairs, careful to avoid the ones that creaked. She was surprised to see a candle burning in the kitchen as she reached the first floor landing. Peeking inside, she saw her father sitting at the table, hands covering his face, and her stepmother standing over him, long fingered hands kneading his shoulders. He shrugged her off and dropped one hand to the tabletop and Chelsea got a clear view of his red face. Her father was sobbing.

  “Quickly now,” Pops called from the open back door.

  Chelsea stepped into the kitchen. She wanted to console her father, to tell him that whatever was wrong would be right soon enough, to tell him all the things he told her each time she was sick or lonely or upset.

  But then she saw her stepmother’s face, as cold as steel in January and beaming impatience. That look froze Chelsea mid-step. She backed up and headed for the rear door instead.

  The cold night air blew against her cheeks and whispered nonsense into her ears. She followed the angel to the garden but found her feet paralyzed by what she saw. The flowers were all dead, stems and vines lining the soil like ten thousand dead snakes. In their place a half dozen fully-grown apple trees stood, fruit dangling from their branches. Pops stood under the closest, reached up, and plucked an apple. “It could only be one or the other, an orchard or a garden. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  He polished the apple with a scrap of cloth and offered it to Chelsea. She took it, inspected its bright red skin for a moment, and then took a bite. It was sweet and ripe and reminded her of her mother’s late June apple pies. “This is a strange night.”

  “They always are.” Pops pointed with his walking stick. The black angel was dancing, happily inspecting the apples, making its way to the southern edge of the orchid. Chelsea followed it until she saw where it was heading and then she slowed to a stop and dropped the fruit.

  Her mother’s tomb door was open and the angel flew inside. Standing only feet from the doorway, Chelsea felt a gust of cold wind burrow into her pores and chill the muscles and bones beneath. She stared past the marble door into the dark and felt her mother’s death again, felt the hollow dread build in her gut, felt horrible numbness shiver down her body. She began to tremble.

  Pop’s hands dropped down onto her shoulders and gripped her tightly. Her head rolled back and she saw his face beaming down at her, now not much more than a pickled and dried death mask, ashen skin pulled tight to a grinning skull. She screamed and he roared in laughter, laughter made up of a billion whispered unanswered prayers melded together and blended with the death cries of entire generations.

  He pushed her forward, up three marble steps, and into the tomb’s doorway. She reached out with both hands to resist being pushed inside, but the marble was as slick as glass and her hands slid away. Pops gave her a final shove and she tumbled inside to the floor alongside her mother’s concrete-encased casket. She pulled herself up, her mind and mouth screaming, and scrambled to her feet.

 
Pops began to close the heavy marble door. She rushed forward, but the floor was slippery and she fell. With his free hand Pops tossed her Bible into the tomb. It landed at her fingertips. As the door closed, the dim light vanished, but before it did, Chelsea saw that words were etched into the walls. She read only a single line before the darkness became absolute.

  I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last—

  She knew those words; words ascribed to the Lord and recorded by John the Divine in his Book Of Revelation. She was surrounded by the final book of the Bible. Crying the last of her tears, she prayed for the angels to save her, to release her from her mother’s tomb and the words on the walls.

  A grinding sound filled her ears and musty, unearthed air teased her nose. The walls were closing in on both sides of her. As they pressed in, she heard her mother’s whisper once again, “…my angel…”

  She raised both trembling arms over her head and clapped.

  But the only angels that heard were the dead butterflies pressed in a book at her feet.

  * * * * *

  Lorne Dixon lives and writes off an exit of I-78 in residential New Jersey. He grew up on a diet of yellow-spined paperbacks, black-and-white monster movies, and the thunder lizard backbeat of rock-n-roll. His novels include Eternal Unrest, The Lifeless, and Snarl. His short fiction has appeared in four volumes of Cutting Block Press’ Horror Library series, Darkness on the Edge (PS Press), Metahumans Vs. the Undead (Coscom), as well as many other anthologies and magazines. He says that “Pressed Butterlies” is intended as a meditation on the positive and negative magnetism of death, both in practical terms and conceptually, during childhood.

  Matryoshka

  By Sabrina Furminger

  There was no cloth for the coarse wooden table. Bronislava balanced the cup and saucer in her hands and stared down at the bare tabletop as if seeing it for the first time. She didn’t own a tablecloth, and she hadn’t thought to procure one for the occasion. A tablecloth was a luxury few in the village could afford — and an obscene frivolity when there was little food to place upon it.