“We were made to feel like them, but we weren’t given the same luxuries as them. Where is our redemption? Where is our forgiveness? Were we not just fulfilling our destinies? Did we not serve well?”
Jacob stroked his gray beard. The more he touched it, the whiter it became. His knuckles took a new, misshapen form. His fingernails were long and a kind of green. He scratched at his face, pondering what she had said, but when he did, a long thread of old skin peeled from his cheek and floated slowly to the table. “You cannot make it stop. All of your might could not reverse it. It could not put one more light in the heavens or save one soul.”
“We were powerful beings, Jacob. We can be again.”
He shook his head. “No more, Esther.”
“You are so weak,” she said, her eyes spilling tears. “Blind, decrepit fool you are, Jacob. Why can’t you see it as I do? Why can’t you partake in my sorrows with me as if I am not already in the grave? Why must any of it end? I do not wish to die. What rhyme, what reason is there to accept this?”
“It was our choice, love.”
“Don’t call me that, Jacob. Love, as if you even know what it means anymore. You have forgotten. What love is there in death? What love is there in watching the world we loved burn to ashes?”
“This day was always coming. We knew it from the beginning. Our assignment is fulfilled.”
“My heavens, you are like a broken record, aren’t you? A puppet fit for the theater is what you are.”
Jacob’s eyes were blinking rapidly. Each breath grew shorter.
“Oh, what’s the matter now?” she asked, but she wondered if she was ready to care just yet.
“Esther, my eyes.”
“What about them?”
“My eyes, Esther,” he said in a panic. “I can’t see. There is a blur where I know your face should be. What color is your lipstick?”
“Rose red, as always,” she said, stepping toward him in shock. Her hand touched his shoulder. Then she held his head in her palms. “Can you really not see me?”
“It will be all right as long as I have you to hold.” He pulled her closely and wrapped his hands around her body. Then he kissed her neck, her cheeks, her eyes. “We don’t have much left. He will come soon. I feel him drawing closer to us.”
Jacob reached for his bowl and tried to serve himself a cup of stew. His appetite was diminishing, but she could tell he was still hungry for flesh.
“Their fingers, eyes, and tongues will give you strength, my love. These children, who were they?” She served him the bowl and helped him sit down.
Jacob took a spoon and brought the stew to his lips. “They were the daughters of priests and the sons of witches.” After swallowing, he stirred the stew with his spoon and gave some to her.
“There once was a difference, wasn’t there?” she said, chewing the stew’s meat before letting its warm juices roll down the back of her throat. “But I can no longer taste a difference in them.”
“Their hearts have changed, love. It is a different world. She has grown fatigued with the inquiries of men. She now cracks and bleeds.”
“But will you reap her as well? Will the earth surely die?”
He blinked, as if hoping that he might regain his sight. “Everything dies. If I am given new strength, yes.”
“I have seen it, Jacob. In my dreams and in my fears, I have seen it already. I don’t know why I asked. I suppose it was to see if you would give me a different answer, a happier one. The truth is, I have seen her age, like us. She has wept. We have trembled and endured and feared this night forever. I am not ready, Jacob. I know I am not. It cannot end like this. There must be something we can do.”
“Your hope and your brilliance have kept my heart beating these many millennia. But we cannot save it. We cannot change it. You have already seen what is to come, then. And you know how it ends.”
Esther paused, the taste of the cooked children still on her tongue. She could feel her skin splitting as she moved her jaw. Catching a slight reflection from Jacob’s wine glass, she shuddered, for most of her cheek had disintegrated. Some strips of flesh remained, attached loosely to a brittle jaw bone. “Kiss me, Jacob, as you did when we were young. Once upon a time.”
His beard tickled her mouth. She was young again, laughing, embracing Jacob with all of her frail might. She could taste something different on his tongue. It was life. She’d never tasted it so vividly before. What Jacob was, she had come to terms with before their love had intertwined. His first lover could not handle it, but she could. Still, it was strange how different he tasted, tonight of all nights, when the world was caving in around them, when their dreams were spinning toward oblivion, hearts stopped and souls left behind. But she was still in love with all of it—with life, with hope, with the dreams of her days gone by. They kissed and her body quivered as his lips moved up and down her face and her neck.
She guided him into the bedroom. They moved slowly. Esther didn’t remember how long they had, or when The Rider would come for certain. And for the first time in her whole life, she was at peace. She didn’t care that she had no control over the outside world, because she controlled this moment, and she would use the rest of her strength to make their passion rival the wars of Troy or the sweet romances of wise Solomon.
His lips were gentle on her skin, as he undressed her. “Forever, Jacob,” Esther said, touching his face from forehead to chin. “Remember us after the world is gone. Remember.”
***
Esther was asleep when the knock came at the door. Jacob hoped she was dreaming of Eden or building sand castles on the beaches of Saint-Jean de Luz in France. “Sleep softly, my beautiful bride,” he whispered to her and kissed her lower back.
The knock came again, this time more loudly. He stumbled naked out of bed, searched blindly for his robe and put it on. Then he spread his fingers and his hands out, touching the walls and the doors. He’d hit his shin on the coffee table, stumbling blindly. But he’d refrained from idle curses. Moments later, he’d found the entrance to their home. All of his sight had been stripped away, but still he could see a bright light glowing from the other side. Its brilliance was undeniable. Jacob lowered his head, and at the floor, the light was crawling inside in thin, blonde streaks. The light touched his bare foot, and his sight returned.
“My God!” he cried in shock. “My God, I can see!” The knock resounded like a drum. Jacob wiped the sweat off his palms and slowly, nervously turned the handle and stepped back.
The light walked inside. “You don’t have to tremble, Jacob.” The man wore a purple cloak, but beneath his garment, Jacob could see a tattoo, lit like a white fire, inked into his leg.
“You are The Rider?”
“I am.”
“I remember you,” Jacob muttered softly, the trembling in his voice still very much alive. “But it has been so long since we have shared words face to face.”
“You know why I have come.”
Jacob slowly nodded and said, “Will it hurt?”
“It will be over in a blink.”
“Like life,” Jacob added.
“Like life,” The Rider said. “Death is also a blink. Where is she?”
Jacob was afraid to answer. His heart was shaking inside his tattered and worn body.
“Tell me, Jacob. Where is she?”
With a sigh, Jacob pointed to the bedroom chamber. He blinked and exiled a myriad of hungry voices from his mind.
“You can hear them, can’t you?” The Rider said.
“Yes.”
“They have no rest. Their bodies have died, but their spirits have emptied upon the earth.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you will bring them to rest, Jacob. When Time is no more, you will bring them to their final home.”
“But they are already dead, and my strength is wilting like a tired flower. I am an old man.”
“Your rest will come,” The Rider said, walking towa
rd the window. He touched the sweating glass, but the blistering heat did not scar his hands. He gazed out across the city, at the burning skyscrapers and gray clouds looming within the night sky. A red moon appeared to bleed far off. There were no more screams to fill the darkness now, only fire falling from the sky. “I wanted a better way, Jacob. Things began so differently. It was beautiful once.”
“Life is beautiful.”
“So is death, isn’t it, Jacob?”
“I suppose I should know, Rider. I have seen the souls when they are dead. But many fear what follows.”
“They fear because they do not know and they did not wish to know the truth.”
“The truth that they would surely die?”
The Rider put both hands on his waist. His body was still shining as he spoke. “The truth that they could choose. The children of men had a choice, Jacob, as you and Esther did. But Time cannot live forever. She could only exist in this world. Don’t you understand?”
“Like me?”
“Like you,” The Rider confirmed.
“Will we live again…as something else?”
The Rider did not answer. He closed the curtains and stepped away from the melting window. “Take me to her now, Jacob.”
“But she is so peaceful. She is sleeping now.”
“It’s better that way,” The Rider said. “She’ll die quickly.”
Jacob guided his guest into the bedroom. Their footsteps did not wake her. Esther slept soundly, at peace in her dreams. Jacob could not hold back his tears any longer. “Isn’t there another way, Rider?”
And then, with the most brilliant eyes Jacob had ever seen, The Rider answered, “This is the only way.”
“What will the new city be like?”
“I showed Esther before tonight. Perhaps you deserve to see it too, Jacob.” The Rider pressed his index finger to Jacob’s head softly and a flood of images swarmed his brain. When he blinked again, the vision was ended. He stood speechless as The Rider slowly approached the bed, sat beside Esther’s unmoving body. He brushed back a strand of her hair.
“Please,” Jacob finally said. “I have never asked for mercy, on any one. I have never questioned you. Let me do it.”
“I will be gentle with her,” The Rider returned.
“Please, sir. My one request. Have mercy on an old man. You birthed her into this world. Let me walk her into the end.”
“So be it. Reap Time.”
“Her name is Esther.”
“You’re quite like the humans after all, Jacob. You must reap her quickly.”
Jacob nodded with sad eyes. The sorrow was eating the flesh off of his weathered face. His weak hands drew closer to his love. He sat down beside her and stroked her hair and her wrinkled body. In his mind, all that existed was the memory. All that existed was her beauty. “When it’s over, can I keep them?”
“What?” The Rider asked.
“My memories. I want to remember her.”
“Perhaps,” came the reply.
Jacob leaned over Esther’s still frame. Then he touched her. One of his eyelashes had fallen during her journey from her body into his. It lay quietly inside the ash-stained bed sheets, where her bones and her skin had dried.
With a deep breath, Jacob stood up. “I will remember you always, my love,” he cried.
The Rider wiped away his tears. “Do not cry, Jacob. Do not cry. Follow me. I know you are tired, but your rest will come soon.”
The voices returned to war inside Jacob’s mind. The room was painfully loud suddenly. His eardrums began to bleed. “You must take the souls home, to the places where they belong.”
As The Rider led Jacob out of his home, Jacob looked back one final time. Everything seemed frozen. The clocks did not move. The dust did not stir above their furniture. The cherry floors of the lounge began to buckle and then swell. The heat from the window was powerful. He felt it singe the hairs on his face. With a heavy heart, Jacob absorbed this moment, removed from the world of men, of time, of crimes and redemption. He welcomed a deep sadness. Yet that real, unquiet sadness was coupled now with a glimpse of hope. “Ashes to ashes.”
“Dust to dust,” The Rider concluded.
Jacob would remember this dwelling as brilliantly as he would remember Esther. Not hell, nor fire, nor death, nor fear would steal her away. Not ever.
“How much longer?” Jacob gasped. “I am so very tired.”
“Soon there will be no death. There will be no tears. There will be no sadness. Close your eyes, Jacob.”
The Rider held Jacob’s shaking hand as the fire engulfed the home he once knew. “I am ready,” he said.
In a blink, they were gone.
Also by Estevan Vega:
Arson
When Colors Bleed
The Sacred Sin
Servant of the Realm
Visit www.estevanvega.com or his official Facebook page, We are Arson for more details. And if you’re a really cool fan, follow him on Twitter.
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J.R. Chartrand
J.R. Chartrand is a fiction writer living in Boise, Idaho. While he leads an alternate life as a boring non-fiction writer by day, full moons bring out J.R. and his thriller side. He thinks it would be cool to be Jack Reacher (but that’s not what J.R. stands for) and find a way to save the day in a John Grisham legal thriller. He thinks it would be even cooler if everyone starts wishing they were Cal Howell, the protagonist in his upcoming series that releases in Fall 2011 with Under Your Skin.
The Retrieval
Sometimes you find more than you're looking for
NORM COULDN’T MOVE HIS scrawny legs any faster – or so he presumed. Then he heard two more cries fill the bone-chilling Chicago air. They were pleas for someone to stop a man. Norm’s pace quickened. They sounded like they were coming from someone official, but most people hardly noticed. Except Norm. What am I doing? he wondered while continuing to ignore all common sensibility.
He was afraid to glance over his shoulder for fear of stumbling on a clump of frozen snow or slipping on a patch of ice. But he did it anyway. Behind him were two of Chicago’s finest, struggling to keep pace with Norm as they hurled east down West Jackson. Their cries for help seemed to go largely ignored by last-minute Christmas shoppers scurrying in and out of stores along the street in search of one remaining perfect gift. Maybe I am crazy, Norm surmised as he reflected on the lack of citizen participation.
Norm gasped for breath. His lungs burned while filling up with cold air. There has to be something I can do to go faster, he thought – and there was.
Weighing down Norm was his ratty old backpack. A few small rips and several sew-on patches added character to the otherwise vanilla satchel that every other college graduate had long since retired. But not Norm. His held great significance, personifying companionship. It stuck with him through a difficult college experience and was now his partner in an even more challenging chapter of his life. Only under extreme circumstances was he willing to part with it – or what was inside of it.
And on this fateful Christmas Eve, it was the contents of his backpack that made tossing it aside that much more complicated than some sentimental feeling. Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Norm thought as he began loosening his grip. He always listened to that voice in his head, the one that convinced him risks resulted in chaos – always – and that it would whittle away at the safe life he had so carefully constructed. But tonight, that voice was muzzled.
Like ripping off a three-day-old Band-Aid, Norm tossed the backpack aside and kept moving.
Suddenly free of his burden, Norm’s speed increased from a fast jog to an all-out sprint. He waited half a block before sneaking a peek at the pursuing pair of police officers in time to see them race past his backpack, giving it as much thought as a crushed pop can. They continued their pursuit, but Norm had clearly increased the gap. I hope no one takes it! Norm thought before burying the panicky thought. Such thoughts were wasted ener
gy when stacked up against the grave situation he now faced.
Norm turned his focus forward.
***
Looking ahead wasn’t something Norm did so well. He preferred to dwell on the past and mull over his mistakes. After all, he had plenty of them to think about.
On a moment’s notice, Norm could rattle off a litany of decisions that influenced his life in a negative direction. If asked what he studied in college, he would avoid the question with an anecdote about his childhood when he created a makeshift splint for his friend Ben, who fell out of their tree house and lost an unfortunate collision with the sidewalk. Norm proudly wheeled Ben to the emergency care clinic five blocks from their neighborhood in a red wagon and soaked in the adulation from the medical staff for his quick thinking. “You should be a doctor,” one of the nurses told Norm. Yes, Norm wanted to go to med school and become a famous podiatric surgeon. But his aversion to blood and severe allergic skin reaction to all things latex cut that dream short. At least that’s what he tried to convince anyone listening to his story.
While Norm was neither fond of the sight of blood nor particularly pleased with the way his hands smelled after wearing latex gloves, the ugly truth was that his grades disqualified him from med school long before he had the chance to even apply. Instead, he opted for the less esteemed creative writing emphasis at a local community college. Turning himself into a tragic hero was far more entertaining – and respectable – than simply admitting he attended a community college after he flunked out of DePaul in just one semester. The fact that it took him three and a half years to complete community college was another detail that was best omitted in such conversations.
Whenever someone asked him what he did, Norm pulled out another embellished gem to convince the inquisitive mind before him that he was an intelligent human being who was mired in a run of bad luck before delivering the naked truth. To stem further looks of disdain or prevent abrupt ends to a conversation with a beautiful lady, Norm explained how he dreamed of becoming a famous author one day after arming himself with creative writing training – but a “friend” derailed those dreams in another horrific twist of fate. A literary agent approached Norm and a friend about a book proposal they had submitted together, expressing interest in helping them get the book published. Before the agent signed the writing tandem to a contract, they began working on the manuscript and crafting a storyline that was sure to be a best seller. But despite putting in hours of hard work, Norm was bamboozled by his friend who took the completed manuscript to another agent and claimed the work was his alone. A year later the book was published and Norm didn’t get a thing – not a penny of his friend’s royalties or even a credit in the acknowledgements.
Intrigue (Stories of Suspense) Page 9
