“Please,” she begged, wiggling her fingers at me.
With a roll of my eyes, I walked over. “No one else has been brave enough to visit me.”
“They’re concerned with being implicated,” she whispered.
“You’ve all betrayed me.” My voice was low, guttural. I wanted to shout the words. The only reason I didn’t was because I didn’t want four more nooses strung up next to me a week later.
Lucretia winced all the same. “It must happen this way. In fact, this is the only way.”
“For your precious lord to come into the world?” I seethed.
“No, for you to gain your full power!” She grabbed my shirt and pulled me closer. “You are our lord, the one we serve. This death is only temporary, don’t you see? And once you cross over, all of the knowledge from the other worlds…oh, William, it will be so beautiful. Then you’ll be back. When your one true love comes to this earth, you can return to life. There will be victory over the other gods who are trying to control the worlds. You understand?” Her voice lowered into a whisper. “The prophecy. It was all there.”
I closed my eyes, trying to hold back my tears. It was overwhelming being in my last hours of life.
Somehow, I croaked out, “But what if you’re her? What if you’re the one? What if…”
She touched my cheek. Her hands felt like ice. “The one who is your love, she will indeed remind you of me. She might even come from my bloodline.” Lucretia swallowed. “And she will be so much better than I ever will be.”
In the moment, it all felt like a huge lie. The biggest excuse ever for why she hurt me and ruined my very existence.
“Everyone in this town is going to pay for what they’ve done to me,” I snarled, “including the four of you.”
Lucretia nodded, a sour smile on her lips. “I suppose we deserve that. Perhaps once you understand, you will have mercy on us.”
“Don’t count on it,” I snapped. “I hope you got everything you wanted from this conversation, because I am done speaking.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
And We’ve Come Full Circle
“William Hough Hermanson, you have been convicted of ten counts of murder in the first. The state has hereby sentenced you to death by hanging.”
That arrogant gaze. So sure of himself. So full of himself. “Do you have any final words?”
If you, my reader friend, have made it this far, you already know I said my peace.
Did it hurt when I died? For a moment. Sharp pain, a moment of blackness, and then I was back. Not over my body, or even floating above the earth. More like, I stood off to the side, watching. My gaze wasn’t on my corpse. Gross. Seriously, my death wasn’t pretty.
Lucretia. she was pretty, and I watched as tears fell down her face. All of that anger I felt earlier didn’t feel worth it anymore. That understanding she claimed I’d have? Oh, it came, and it was a force to be reckoned with. All at once, I knew why they had betrayed me, though the details would take years to fully come into focus. Being dead gave me plenty of time for revelations. I’ve had one right after another for decades. Yes, the anger remained, but a new feeling joined it. Forgiveness.
Walter moved in behind Lucretia and put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. She shrugged him away. It took a few months, but they eventually courted and were married within a year. Big wedding, everyone who was everyone came. They popped out four kids, those four kids went on to pop out their own, and on and on, until Delia was born.
That brings everything up to speed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Closing Arguments
“And that, as they say, is that.” Trevor Schuler paused for effect. Guy stole my line. Figures.
Before anyone cries a whole lot of tears over my unfortunate demise, please know that this was always part of the plan. All of the murders committed were done in my name, but not by me. Remember, they were also volunteers who knew what came next. They had faith even though I had none. I didn’t start killing anyone until after I crossed over to the great beyond. There have been plenty more than ten victims, though, and most of them have not been found. Not to brag, but I’m pretty excellent at murder.
Here are just a few of the revelations that came to me in death. They caught me because I needed to be caught. I needed to be killed. No mortal being can conquer the world . My choices were simple—wait a few generations and try to stave off death by drinking a bunch of special elixirs. They’d keep me alive, but I’d be old and wrinkled and gross. Not to mention unable to do anything because I’d be too decrepit to function.
Or!
I could die young, preserve my spirit, and return to the land of the living when the time was right. Small picture people would try to live forever. Big picture people, like myself, see death as a means to an end instead of “the end.”
Everyone is going to have to choose a side when the time comes. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—I want you, dear reader, to choose mine.
Delia is the girl who completes me. When we are finally together, everything in the prophecy will come to pass. Some say that will ignite the end, but are endings so bad? Or are they merely a chance to create something beautiful from ashes?
Trevor might think
