Chapter 3: Deals: The Reaper Saga

And we're back for chapter 3! I'll keep the introduction short this time around, I just want to say one quick thing. After reading, or before if you want, please leave a like or a comment if you enjoyed it. I want to know that I'm writing for an audience and not just thin air, and knowing that at least one person out there is enjoying the story I'm crafting motivates me to continue. Or at least to pump out chapters a bit quicker. In any case, I hate to pander for likes or be one of those guys, but please like, comment, and share with everyone. Show your coworkers, friends, family, and if you hate it, show your enemies for all I care! I'm writing this story because I love to create and craft, and I've fallen in love with the story and characters. I'm doing this because I love it and want to share it with you. And I hope that you love it too.

Or at this point, finish it.

Here are links to the previous chapters in case you missed them.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

            The five o’clock news was still playing, but I didn’t notice. I was frantic, trying to make sense of the impossible memories that had just come back to me. The small group of people at the display had grown thinner, but a few still watched the news report. I could almost feel suspicious glances in my direction from them.

            I’ve got to get out of here. I thought. I stood up from my place against the wall of the electronics store and took one shaky step, stumbling onto the sidewalk. I don’t believe it. I have to see it myself. The wreck. The house. Sharon.

            Sharon! Suddenly, the image of the small girl cowering in a locked closet flashed through my mind. Her frightened green eyes, her fragile little figure, her hands shaking nervously as she sat defenseless while a raging fire spread throughout her house.

            In an instant I forgot about my weak body and took off running, my numb legs tripping over themselves. Confused looks followed me from the TV display, but I didn’t care. All I could think about was Sharon. I had to save her. I had to get to her. I ran across the street toward my apartment, panic strangling me and halting my breath.

            Three blocks later, I arrived at the parking lot of the apartment complex where my beat-up Ford Taurus sat waiting. I ran to the car, and without a second thought I snatched a spare key from below the rear bumper, got in, and sped onto the main road. She’s dead. I thought. The phrase repeated itself over and over in my mind. She’s dead she’s dead she’s dead… I pressed a little harder on the gas pedal and tore toward the house.

            The road quickly changed from small, quiet neighborhood streets, to an even quieter wooded road. The road weaved through the trees and around several tight corners before straightening out into a thin highway. As I maneuvered my small car around a sharp corner a strange realization hit me – I was driving the same route as the Hummer that had smashed into Cole and me the night before. A gory image flashed through my head of Cole’s limp body caught in the tangled metal, the driver of the Hummer crushed and slumped lifeless over the steering wheel, the blood and smoke. I tried to imagine my own broken, mangled body.

            “There it is.” I said to myself as I passed the wreckage site. Half of the road was still blocked off where the clean-up crews were sweeping up glass and spraying the blood off of the street. “Blood…” I muttered. “My blood.” I glanced down at my own body, as if to check if I was still alive and in one piece, and accelerated past them, forcing the image of my twisted corpse out of my head.

            Only fifteen minutes after leaving the crowd at the electronics store, I arrived at the burnt house. The house was still standing, but it was obviously damaged beyond repair. The patio and deck were now blackened, charred and broken. All of the new windows were burned, and most of them were shattered. The conservative gray siding had melted down the sides of the house, and for the most part had completely fallen off. There were places where the walls were bent out of shape, corroded by the flames. In other parts the walls had been burned away. There were gaping, charred holes in the roof, and the once perfect lawn surrounding the house was now dead and blackened.

I parked my car behind the house, where it couldn’t be seen from the main road, and got out. There was nobody else there. I ducked under the yellow “caution,” and “police line – do not cross” tape, the dry grass crunching beneath my feet, and ran toward the ruined house.

Sharon’s bedroom window – my bedroom window – was still open with the blinds pulled up from the night before, although now the glass looked warped, and the blinds and window pane was covered in ash and burn marks. I felt a knot grow in my throat. I did this, I thought. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to calm myself, but choked on the air. I opened my eyes immediately and looked around, my jaw clenched in fear. Burnt rubber. The scent was strong, just like the night before.

I tried to keep from panicking as I attempted to justify the smell. I was just outside a burnt house after all. I had every imaginable reason to be smelling burnt rubber. But not like this, I thought, This smells like tires on asphalt. I clenched my fists and strained to gather myself, but it was useless. Floods of images and memories from the night before poured over me. My body started to tremble and I leaned against the house for support, only to feel a burned chunk of siding crumble to ash under my weight. My eyes began going in and out of focus and all I could hear was what sounded like distorted voices shrieking in my mind. I fell to my knees, desperately trying to focus, but the feeling only got worse. I wanted to scream, but every sound I attempted to make was caught in my throat. It felt like I was being crushed, like I was dying again. My vision began darkening until all I could see was a blurry sliver of light that seemed to be getting closer. Headlights?

Suddenly I gasped in a ragged breath. In an instant my vision cleared up and the world around me was back to normal. I stayed on the ground my breathing heavy, confused and terrified. “What the...” I whispered out loud to myself. Was that some sort of hallucination? A post-traumatic stress attack?

I stood up shakily and looked through the window, then back at my car. I wanted to leave. I wanted to forget about the house, about the wreck, about my horrific episode, and about Sharon, and just disappear. I wanted to follow my gut and get out of there, but I couldn’t. Instead I hoisted myself up through the window and into my old bedroom.

The room was a disaster. The fire had burned through most of the walls, the bed was little more than a blackened mass of springs and ashes, and everything that was left on the floor, including the carpet, was ruined. My eyes settled on the closet doors. They were burned completely black and the ribbon I had tied to the knobs was gone, burned maybe.

I stepped toward the doors and grabbed the doorknob. I froze as the feeling of horror magnified inside of me. For the first time I could remember in my life, I was genuinely terrified. What would I find on the other side of the door? Did the girl live? Or would I find nothing but a burnt corpse lying in a heap?

I pulled on the knob and jumped back as the entire door fell off its hinges and to the ground, ashes floating up around it as it landed with a thud. Inside the closet looked just as bad as the room outside of it. The walls were blackened, the clothes burned beyond recognition and anything else in there was either melted or reduced to ashes.

Sharon wasn’t there.

My breath caught in my throat. Did she escape? Or had the firemen carried her out? Or did she just burn to ash? I sunk to my knees in confusion and despair. When my knees hit the floor I felt moisture soak through my black suit pants. I ran my hand through the stiff, burnt carpet. The ground was still wet from the fire fight that morning. It was a nightmarish reminder of how real everything was.

A cold chill ran through the house, sending a shiver up my spine. The feeling of terror that was haunting me reached a new height as I stared at the supposed death site of a girl I might have killed.

“Eleven.” The hollow voice came from behind me. The tone was awful – deep, haunting, and coarse. It echoed in my brain, the very sound of it making me want to shrink and run away.

I leapt to my feet and whipped around, my heart in my throat. “Who are…”  I shouted, but froze when I saw the figure in front of me. “… You?” I finished nervously.

Standing in the ashes in front of me was an incredibly tall, and incredibly slender man. His skin was pale and languid, and his sparse black hair was neatly combed back. His face was sickly thin, with his cheek and jawbones protruding to form a skeletal silhouette. A long, bony nose jutted out from between two eyes that were sunken back deep into the man’s head. He was dressed in a straight black business suit that was made to fit his almost seven foot frame, with an equally black tie cinched around his long neck. He stood poised and lightly, as if he didn’t weigh a thing at all, with his arms at his sides. Hanging out the cuffs in either sleeve were two equally pale and skeletal hands. His fingers were long and thin with thick, arthritic looking joints. He stood there looking blankly at me with his hollow, piercing black eyes, his lips turned down in an emotionless frown.

“The fire reached the girl eleven minutes before the firemen.” The man stated, his voice jarring me with every word. “They were eleven minutes too late.”

I could feel the blood draining from my face. “Wh-what are you talking about?” My voice grew shriller with each word.

“Sharon.” He responded, his lips hardly moving.

“She’s… Dead?” I could barely whisper the word.

“Yes.” The man mused. His indifference made my stomach turn.

I was beginning to feel weak again. “I…” I choked, “I killed her.” I felt like I was going to vomit. And who was this stranger? How could he know that?

The corners of the man’s lips curled up into a hideous smile. “Yes, you killed her.” He repeated, his empty black eyes staring through me. “You’ve done well, Alexander.”

I tensed up. “Who are you?!” I hissed, trying to sound angry, but I only sounded more frightened, “And how do you know my name?”

The man took one smooth step around me. “It’s me, Alexander. Virgil.” He said.

Virgil. The name sounded oddly familiar. I tried to think back, but I couldn’t remember anyone by that name at all, not to mention my terrified brain wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders. The name nagged at me though, almost like a warning.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” Virgil droned, and reached one long arm outward toward my head. I flinched at the advance, but couldn’t react. I froze, whether from fear, or something else, I couldn’t move. Virgil grinned as his cold index finger landed right between my eyebrows.

Suddenly the whole world seemed to melt away. The walls, ceiling, and floor in front of me sagged downward and faded to black. Virgil’s tall, thin figure stretched and blurred in front of me into an unrecognizable black stain. In seconds I was standing in pure darkness. I couldn’t see or hear a thing. I was alone.

I was shaking as I took a step forward, the sound of my own footstep making me cringe. “Hey!” I yelled, my breathing fast and loud, “Where am I?”

“Where am I?” My voice echoed back, although it sounded different somehow. “What just happened?” I froze. I didn’t say that, yet it was my voice that I had heard.

“You have died, Alexander Jensen.” The voice that responded was a deep, emotionless one.

“Dead?” My voice said. “No… I… I can’t be dead…” I whipped around, trying to find the source of the voice – my voice. “But Sharon!”

“Sharon will die.”

Then I saw it. Far in front of me, stood… me. I could see myself, barely visible in the darkness, talking to the other voice. “What is going on?” I whispered, my heart racing.

“No!” The other me shouted. “She can’t die! It’s not my fault! Cole lit the fire, she can’t die!”

“She will die.” The voice stated firmly. “And her blood will be on your hands.”

Suddenly I knew what was happening. This was a memory. A memory from the other side, I thought, This was when I was... I paused. It was impossible, but what else could it be? This was when I was dead.

“There has to be something I can do!” My memory screamed. “Anything! I’ll do anything.” He – I – was turning in circles in the darkness, yelling into the nothingness that surrounded him. “Anything...” He repeated hopelessly.

There was a long pause. “There is one thing.” The low voice said.

I looked up, obliviously mimicking the actions of the other me. “What?” My memory asked. “What can I do?”

Silence followed for what seemed to be an eternity. The air seemed thin as my vision jumped between the other me and the blackness around him. The darkness was growing grayer, washing out the scene before me. I squinted my eyes to try to see the memory as long as I could. I saw the other me clench his fists just as my vision went white. Then, “You can make a deal.”

My eyes shot open. I was lying in a pile of ashes in the burnt house. Outside the sun had gone down, leaving the house almost pitch dark. I looked around, confused.

Virgil was gone.