— save two.
On a lonely summit beneath a relentless sun, a mother and daughter stood amid a metropolis of mausoleums and ancient graves, staring at a polished headstone. After ten minutes, the child asked, “Is this really where Patrick’s buried, Mommy?”
Leigh Nelson played mental dodgeball with the answer, debating which threads of truth would satisfy her child’s curiosity without leading to nightmares. “Patrick’s with God now. The headstone’s just a place where we can tell him how much we love him and miss him”—she tears up—“and how much we appreciate what he did.”
The Range Rover parked by the gated western entrance blared its horn.
Leigh smiled at Autumn. “Daddy misses us, we’d better go.”
“I want to stay.”
“I know, but it’s Tuesday and daddy needs to get back to work. We’ll come back another time, maybe on the weekend. Okay, baby doll?”
“Okay.”
Hand in hand, they made their way back down the steep hillside along the broken-slated path. Halfway down, Leigh saw the eleven-year-old Hindu girl seated in the shade of a concrete tomb. Waiting patiently for a private audience. Leigh waved.
Dawn Patel waved back. Then she hurriedly ascended the steep hill, her route through the grave sites guided by the headstone adorned with the sculpture of an angelic child.
She laid the first of two white roses on the older grave as she read the inscription silently to herself:
patricia ann segal
august 20, 1977–September 11, 2001
beloved mother and soul mate
donna michele shepherd
october 21, 1998–september 11, 2001
beloved daughter
The adjoining headstone was new, erected by the thirty-six survivors discovered plague-free in the Statue of Liberty Museum two days after the horrors of the December Mortality.
The two adult inscriptions were eerily similar:
patrick ryan shepherd
august 20, 1977–december 21, 2012
beloved soul mate — blessed friend
The girl placed the second rose on the tomb, the buried casket of which contained the prosthetic left arm of its deceased owner. Backing away, she sat on the edge of a nearby stone, its heated surface barely tolerable through her denim shorts.
After a few moments, she felt the female presence of her guardian angel on her left, the chill of the darker male force on her right. “The two of you were born on the same day. I think that’s so romantic.”
Dawn’s scalp tingled as the supernal female being played with the girl’s hair.
The Grim Reaper remained partially obscured in the shade of an oak tree.
“School starts soon. They say we’ll be combining grade levels until more people move back to the city.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The western sky took on a bizarre appearance — the cloud’s low-hanging ceiling undulating like a forty-foot sea, the distant horizon appearing lime green.
“Oh yeah, remember the miracle baby… the newborn girl they found alive in a neonatal enclosure at the VA hospital? She’s finally been adopted, only no one’s saying who the parents are. They think her mother was the one who released Scythe. God, can you imagine having to grow up with that hanging over your head?”
The upper leaves on the oak trees blew skyward. Telltale sign of an impending afternoon thunderstorm.
“Anyway, I wanted to come by and wish you guys an early happy birthday. I probably should go. My mother thinks I stopped by Minos for a slice of pizza. You know they named the baby after you. Patrick Lennon Minos. I thought that was pretty cool.”
The atmospheric change was sudden and electric, the static charge coming from behind the girl. Before she could turn to the source of the disturbance, the female spirit launched her sideways from her grave-site perch—
— a split second before the blade of the materializing scythe struck the vacant slab of concrete!
Regaining her senses, Dawn turned in horror to see the witch flying out at her from the iron-gated mausoleum, the female Grim Reaper wearing a wavy black wig and matching satin dress. The force from Hell reached for her with its ten fleshless fingers—
— only to be intercepted by her male counterpart.
The midair collision between the two guardians of death unleashed a bolt of violet lightning that shot skyward from the ground, splitting the century-old oak tree in half—
— the otherworldly charge inhaling the two figures into another dimension!
Dawn’s spiritual companion pushed and prodded the girl down the east side of the summit, her supernal mother refusing to allow her to rest until she reached Broadway.
Then she, too, disappeared.
The girl gathered herself, sweating heavily in the August heat. Overhead, the undulating olive green cloud formation has dispersed.
For the first time in this life, Dawn Patel felt alone.
The consciousness that was Patrick Shepherd awakens.
He is kneeling on a flat, rocky summit, enshrouded by darkness. Purple lightning illuminates the valley below, offering brief glimpses of Gehenna. A spark ignites a bush into an orange incandescent flame, the fire expelling sulfurous smoke but not burning.
The woman steps out of the shadows and into the light… revealing her nude form.
Her skin is composed of keratin, the fingernail-like substance as pale as reflected moonlight, her long, wavy hair as ebony as the abyss. Her naked body is the definition of sensuality, the raw musky scent of her pheromones releasing an involuntary paroxysm within her male counterpart’s being.
Her voice is deep and soothing. “Today is the ninth of Av, a time of reckoning. Reveal yourself to me.”
Within seconds, the male Reaper’s skeletal frame entwines in blood vessels, nerves, muscles and tendons, wrapped in the flesh-covered epidermis of Patrick Shepherd. “Who are you? Why have you summoned me to this place?”
She approaches slowly, each measured stride causing his pulse to quicken. “I am the tempest that awakened Adam, the spirit embodied in the Tree of Knowledge. I am a newborn’s giggle that haunts its sleep… the desire that causes adolescent males to pleasure themselves. And when the semen is spilt, it finds its way into my loins to father my demons. I am darkness personified, a black hole of existence where the Upper Light can never dwell—
“—I am Lilith, and you, Noah, are my soul mate.”
Final Thoughts
By Nick Nunziata
Grim Reaper wasn't as much a book as it was a pilgrimage. Like most pilgrimages, it has had its ups and downs, trials and tribulations, and became less about the destination than the journey. The process certainly has left an indelible mark on how Steve and I now approach our material. I think we carried this thing with us like a malicious hitchhiker; it left a film on each of us both in its subject matter and its seeming desire to reach the world at any cost. Dante's Inferno is so deep and dark and timeless on its own but when coupled with real world dangers that have a distinctly modern hue, it takes on a far deeper meaning. Many of the things happening in our own lives and in the real world around us affected the story’s evolution, taking us on unexpected turns and avenues on its way to the book in your hands. It’s as if certain plot points waited for us in the shadows, seeping into Steve and me on the sly. In the night. Scythe at the ready. It just wouldn't die.