Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper

by Nancy Kilpatrick

  But she had come here for prayer. The words of the Hail Mary prayer surfaced in her memory, and she spoke them aloud, the proper phrasing hesitant at first then more confident as she remembered. Then she reached the last words, and was suddenly angry. “Sinners?” she exclaimed. “Do we not suffer enough? Is there not enough death? Enough sickness? Enough pain?”

  The statue gazed down dispassionately at her. Ana grimaced and threw one of the candles into the water. It was unfair. Unfair that her Ricardo had died so soon after surviving the war. Unfair that the young and strong were being struck down in their prime. Unfair that she was powerless to help any of them. Unfair that she’d been left behind.

  The dulcet notes of a guitar cut through the silence. Ana froze. Who would be playing a guitar at this time of night? The music was soft and mournful, a Fado song she recognized about a woman waiting for her fisherman husband lost at sea. Perplexed, she turned to look behind her.

  A tall, slender man perched on the back of a stone bench, a guitar on his knee. He was dressed entirely in black from head to toe in a long-sleeved shirt and narrow trousers that only accentuated his thinness. A round wide-brimmed black hat hid his face from her view as he bent over his guitar. His feet were bare. But it was the entire image of him that drew her attention, as if the barefooted guitarist was a façade. She could not shake the impression that she could see something else beneath the man’s skin, like the bones of a skeleton inside the flesh of his bare feet and hands.

  He noticed her staring at him, and lifted his head to stare right back at her. His face was so gaunt that she could make out, even from relatively far away, the shape of his cheekbones and jaw. His eyes were dark, almost black, and they pierced her chest like daggers to the soul. He smiled and it was a ghastly smile, like the grin of a skull.

  “Come closer, Ana,” he said, his voice a whisper yet she heard it as clearly as if he had shouted.

  Ana approached the strange figure, her feet seeming to move of their own accord. “How do you know my name?”

  “I know everyone’s names.” He strummed absently on the guitar’s strings as she tried to puzzle out his answer. Who was this man?

  “I have a proposition for you, little Ana, little Angel of Death.”

  Ana frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  His thin digits tickled the guitar’s strings, not really playing, just pretending. “I heard you. All of it. You think death is unfair, yes? You feel powerless?”

  Her flash of anger dissolved into confusion.

  “What if I gave you a choice, then? I can be very fair when I wish. Would you make a choice?”

  “Who are you?” Ana breathed.

  His grin grew wider. “You know who I am.”

  A chill ran up her spine. That face. It was not just thin, it was fleshless. It was a skull. Those eyes, they were not just dark, they were pitch black holes, bright red pinpricks of light in their centers.

  She turned to flee, but his hand shot out and grasped her wrist. “Do not prove yourself a coward, Ana. We both know you are not one. Look at me.”

  Ana turned, his words stinging her. “What choice?”

  “Good.” He released her. “I give you a choice, pretty Angel of Death. I will give you the lives of these people if you will sacrifice your own.”

  It took her a moment to find her voice. “And the town? The patients?”

  The guitarist shrugged.”They will succumb as they would naturally.”

  “What is the choice? I am already sick.”

  “Yes, but the time of your death is in my power. Choose now, and I will spare your patients. They will live to a ripe old age. Choose life for yourself, and you will live to see grandchildren.”

  Ana crushed the blood-stained mask in her fist. What kind of choice was that? Herself or others? She knew what her Ricardo would have said.

  She looked up, her jaw set. “If you know me, you know my answer.”

  He pressed one bony finger to his chin. “Yes?”

  “Take me. Spare the others.”

  He regarded her a moment more, then nodded. “Very well. A bargain is struck.”

  He vanished. Ana looked all around her, but she could not see any trace of him. Then his voice reached her ears on the breeze.

  “Prepare yourself. In one month’s time, I will return for your life.”

  The next morning, Ana woke feeling no different than before. She spent the day at the hospital as usual, ministering to the sick and dying. She was a little dismayed at first when no change seemed evident in the patients’ symptoms.

  By midday, she was convinced that the entire encounter had been a dream.

  Time passed quickly. Ana became absorbed in her work. It seemed that the stream of patients was never-ending. The government could not keep up with the people’s needs. The President was murdered, news that seemed to come like a distant cry, removed as they were from the capital. To Ana, this was important only in how it affected her daily life. There were never enough clean bandages, never enough medicine, never enough pure water and nutritious food.

  The moon waxed and waned and one night, not long before the end of the month, Ana chose to walk home from the hospital. It was not completely dark yet, the sky awash in the purples and oranges of twilight. She had been getting steadily sicker over the past week, but she felt a sudden refreshment that evening, like that burst of wellness one sometimes feels before dying. She refused to stay at the hospital, and no one tried very hard to stop her. There was no room. The patients seemed to live in a sort of limbo, neither improving nor worsening, merely waiting.

  She had not gone far before a familiar figure stopped her short. He stood in the light of a gas-lamp, the wide brim of his hat casting a shadow over his face. A guitar hung lazily from his thin fingers as he leaned his black-clad frame against the lamp post.

  He lifted his head and those glinting eyes bore into her. “Are you ready?” he asked quite softly.

  All Ana had comfortably forgotten rushed back to her. Then her body took over where her mind was paralyzed and she turned and ran.

  She did not even know where she was going. Her body and mind screamed only to be away, and so she ran. She could feel and hear her blood pumping in her ears and the steady rhythm of her feet on the cobblestones. The rest was a blur.

  She suddenly found herself in the town square. Ana stumbled across the cobbles to the fountain, the adrenaline draining away and pain like a knife exploding in her chest. She coughed and wheezed, the weakness in her lungs catching up to her.

  “You know you cannot run from me, Ana,” said that same awful voice.

  Her eyes opened wide as she saw him perched on the back of a stone bench like a vulture surveying a fresh kill. She coughed again, her throat burning too much to speak.

  “Please…” was all she could manage.

  “No, my dear little Angel, no. We made a deal, you and I.” He hopped off the bench and walked up to her. His shoulders hunched for an instant under the gaze of the fountain’s statue, but as quickly as the discomfort manifested, it was gone, and he gazed down at Ana, a slight smirk twisting his bloodless lips. “But I can be merciful.”

  He lifted her chin with one bony cold fingertip. “I give you this. In three days’ time, I will come for you at nightfall. Do not hide. Do not run. Be ready.”

  And then he was gone.

  Ana knew when Sister Maria Graciete looked up at her that the nun did not believe her story. Her expression was one of concerned disbelief, the corners of her mouth down-turned in worry and one eyebrow crooked in skepticism. Ana felt foolish when the Sister looked at her like that. Foolish for having come to the convent in disarray, for insisting to the doorkeeper that she be allowed to see the Sister, for blurting out the tale of bargaining with Death — for that was who she believed the skeletal singer
must be — and for thinking that anyone could help her.

  Sister Maria Graciete put down her tea cup and folded her hands in her lap. “Ana,” she began, and Ana could see she was choosing her words carefully as if speaking to a frightened child, “you must not give in to superstition. Death does not visit us in the form of a man. Death is a state of being, not a person.”

  Ana wrung her hands, the chill of the man’s presence still in the stiffness of her shoulders. “I saw him, Sister.”

  The nun laid a hand on her shoulder that was probably meant to be comforting. “I fear that the stress of your work at the hospital and…” she faltered at the mention of Ana’s illness and it hung unspoken between them for a heavy moment. “You must rest, Ana. That is what you need. These are just the fancies of an overwrought mind.”

  “I am not mad!”

  “I never said that.”

  “But you think it. I tell you, it happened!”

  “Of course it happened, child,” said a gravelly voice from the doorway. They looked up to see an ancient nun standing in the entrance to Sister Maria Graciete’s room, her hands folded in front of her black gown.

  “Lourdes—”

  “Quiet!” the nun dismissed Sister Maria with a wave. “You young nuns, you think you know everything.”

  She bent down and eyed Ana. “Death will get what he wants, child. You must never bargain with him.”

  “What do I do?” asked Ana.

  Sister Lourdes straightened. “Seek guidance from God.”

  “How?”

  Sister Lourdes nodded as if she understood Ana’s frustration. “There are three children in Fatima who have been visited by Our Lady. You can go speak to them; perhaps they can ask the Virgin to intercede.”

  Sister Maria Graciete frowned at Sister Lourdes. It seemed to Ana that the woman’s expression throughout had been a perpetual frown, but every new word out of Sister Lourdes’ mouth produced a nuance to her turned down lips. This time, it was exasperation that Ana saw. “Sister…”

  The look that Sister Lourdes gave her fellow nun silenced anything she would have said. “I went with the bishop’s delegation last year to see the miraculous children. Their vision was real.”

  Sister Maria Graciete nodded, chastened. Ana did not know what to think of Sister Lourdes’ suggestion. Children in Fatima seeing the Virgin Mary? She recalled something about it. The news had caused a sensation throughout the country, even in the middle of the war. Ana had paid little attention to it at the time, preoccupied as she was by her husband’s welfare at the front.

  Sister Lourdes wrapped one thick arm around Ana’s shoulders and drew her up and out of Sister Maria’s cell. “Come. Let me write you a letter of introduction to the parish priest.”

  The ride by cart to Fatima took a good portion of the morning. Ana was not sure what she had expected to see when she arrived at the village. It was no more than a collection of cottages in hill country. Flocks of sheep and goats roamed the fields. But, as she approached the small stone chapel, she saw that the dirt roads were crowded by pilgrims kneeling in the dust.

  The parish priest, a short, balding and pleasant Jesuit, received Ana warmly and read over the letter from Sister Lourdes. He sighed as he refolded the letter. While they walked, he said, “Sister Lourdes speaks for you, so I will take you to see the children. But I must warn you, the gripe has hit us hard of late.”

  Ana nodded. “I understand.”

  “Yes.” He folded and refolded the letter until it was a quarter of its original size. “I am afraid little Jacinta and Francisco have fallen ill. Please do not take too much of their time.”

  “I … Of course.”

  He showed her into a simple cottage. There were only two rooms that she could see — the kitchen with its wood stove, and a bedroom near the back. In the bedroom lay a boy and a girl no more than ten years old, and an older girl sat on a chair next to them crocheting. It was the older girl who spoke as they entered.

  “Can I help you, Father?”

  “Yes, Lucia. This is Ana. She has come to speak with you,” replied the priest.

  Before the girl could respond, the other girl opened her eyes and spoke. “Thank you, Father.”

  The priest nodded and left, a final warning look in his eyes as he passed Ana. She stared at the bedridden child, who must be Jacinta, and marveled at the maturity in her expression. Her brother lay dozing beside her.

  Lucia gestured to another wooden chair next to the bed and Ana sat down. She struggled, now that she was here, to find a way to express her predicament that did not sound crazy. Sitting here, before these children, she felt foolish for even coming. And yet, there was a peace that surrounded the girls that seemed to contradict their youth.

  In the end, it was Jacinta who spoke first. “You have come for help?”

  Ana nodded.

  “Help only our Lady can provide,” chimed in Lucia.

  Ana nodded again.

  Then Jacinta coughed. It was a rough wet cough. Ana noted the redness of her eyes, the sallow look to her cheeks. The sleeping boy, Francisco, winced in pain in his sleep. These children, these little saints, looked like many of her patients. They had the gripe pneumónica.

  Ana stood up. She could not stay. “I’m sorry. You cannot help me. No one can help me,” she said as she stumbled out of the room. They were dying, she could see. If even these children, favored of the Virgin, were doomed, what was there for her?

  No one followed Ana as she ran from the cottage all the way down to the village crossroads.

  It was a long while before Ana could get to sleep that night. She could not stop turning over and over what she had seen and heard, thoughts she was ashamed to have. She should have welcomed death. Had she not pined all this time for her Ricardo? Had she not walked as if in a fog, barely alive except for when she sang for the dying?

  And yet a cold dread gripped her at the thought of fulfilling her bargain with Death. Perhaps it was because she was still amazed. Death, in the form of a man, had spoken to her, had singled her out.

  When she finally did sleep, Ana dreamed deeply. She became conscious suddenly of standing in a vast field of waving grain. The sky above was a rich orange from the splendor of the setting sun. She ran a hand through the stalks of grain and marveled at the tingle in her fingertips.

  “Ana.” A voice, a familiar voice, called her name, once, twice, three times. It was behind her, around her, but she could not see the source. She felt no fear. The voice soothed her anxiety.

  “Ana.” She knew that voice. She was sure of it. It was a feminine voice, and seemed to combine all of the comforting female voices she had ever known: her mother, her grandmothers, her elder sister who had died of typhoid when she was quite young, even Sister Maria Graciete.

  Ana was aware, even in her dream state, that if she tried to look, the apparition would disappear. She stayed as still as one could be in a dream, her fingers extended into the grain.

  “Dearest Ana.” The voice was a whisper next to her ear. “Do not despair. It is not your time.”

  Ana swallowed and hazarded a sideways glance. She could see a delicate hand and white-sleeved arm resting on her shoulder.

  “I made a bargain. What can I do?”

  “The only way you can break a bargain with Death is to move him to tears.”

  “But how?”

  “You will know when the time comes.” The hand released her. “I am always with you.”

  Ana waited nervously in the square as night fell. She had brought her own offering to the Lady’s statue, some freshly baked bread and a small lit candle. She had gone over her plan in her head. The most tragic song she could sing was a Fado song her mother had loved. She had wept every time Ana sang it.

  It was not long after the moon rose that she felt
a chill in the air. She looked up from contemplating the candle she’d laid at the fountain statue’s feet. He was there, emerging from the shadows, clad in black and still lazily pulling a guitar behind him. Ana steeled herself as he approached. She could not show her fear. Not now.

  There was a sort of expectant excitement in the way he stepped forward. “It is time,” he said as he held out a long-fingered hand.

  She shrank back as much as she could. “Wait! I have a new bargain for you. Will you hear it?”

  He seemed to consider briefly. Then he shook his head. “No. I like the one we have made.”

  Ana reached out to grab his arm then stopped short of his sleeve, suddenly realizing what she was about to do. Her hand hovered between them. “Please, hear me. If you do not like it, refuse.”

  “Very well.”

  “I…” She willed herself to not stumble on her words. “I propose this. If I can move you to tears, you release me from my promise. And you leave me and this village alone.”

  “And how will you move me to tears?”

  She straightened her back. Under his gaze, she had found herself instinctively cringing. “I will sing.”

  He laughed, a sound like cracking ice. “No.”

  “What is it? Afraid I will win?”

  Death had been about to reach out to her again but stopped. “I am never afraid. Very well. If this is how you wish to spend your last moments, so be it.”

  Ana slumped in relief.

  He went and sat on a nearby bench, crossing his arms over one bony knee. “But, if you fail, I take you and your village. Do you understand?”

  His words hit her like a blow to the chest. What had she done? What had she been thinking?

  Ana nodded hastily. She could not back down now. But for a brief moment, as he gestured for her to begin, she was not sure what to do next. She feared for a second that she would not be able to sing, but opened her mouth and breathed in.

  The notes filled her and poured out of her as they always had, and she lost herself in the song. It was a tale of a woman, young like herself, whose husband was gone to war and had not returned. In the song, the woman waited and waited at the seaside, refusing to believe her husband was dead and would never return to her embrace. Ana felt the ocean wind beating at her tear-stained cheeks, felt the pang of loss in her chest resonate with her own, and her voice grew thick and rich with it.