I fell out of the couch, hands around my throat, body convulsing as it fought for air. Bright spots danced across my vision. The pain in my head and my lungs intensified. My strength waned. The last thing I saw before I blacked out was Dinah’s bright pink slippers scampering across the carpet toward me, the hem of her long denim skirt swaying around her ankles.
◆◆◆
I was in the dark, freezing place I’d come to know as hell when my senses returned. In the distance, I heard the slow swell and retreat of water. Either someone was swimming—which I thought highly unlikely since I could see my own breath—or that steady stroke against the water was coming from an oar.
“Who’s there?” I asked around my chattering teeth.
The longer I squinted into the dark, the more my eyes adjusted. Shadowy outlines sprouted up before me. Barren trees. A distant lake shore. A light fog rolling off of the water toward me. The starless sky yawned up above, endless and intimidating. Distant thunder grumbled. My bare feet sank a little in the ground when I followed the sounds of the approaching boat. I stopped just before my toes could touch the water. Now that I was closer, the heartbreaking sound of a grown man crying reached my ears.
“Please, you’ve made a mistake. I’m not dead. You have to take me back. My daughter—I was supposed to pick up her birthday present on my way home. She’s waiting for it and me. I have to tell her—”
“Ernest Dulaney.” This from a voice I knew all too well. “Due to inexcusable crimes against your fellow man, you’ve been sentenced to an eternity of agony.” Death spoke as if reading a piece of dry literature she’d been forced to read aloud numerous times in the past.
“No! No, please—”
“Your sentence is final,” Death continued, a hint of impatience seeping into her rehearsed speech. “There is nothing you nor I can do to change it. You have the rest of eternity to contemplate how different your fate might have been if you had only made an effort to be a decent person in life.”
I still couldn’t see them but their voices carried perfectly across the clear, flat surface of the lake. The rowing sound finally stopped. My heart lurched in my chest. I knew I couldn’t help him or convince Death to delay the inevitable. Still, I strained for a glimpse of them. Whatever happened next, I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone.
The fog shifted, parting along the center of the lake, giving me a narrow view of more shadowy figures. This time they took the shapes of two people in a row boat. One sat with his head in his hands while the other stood before him, their long dress rippling in a breeze I couldn’t feel.
“Please,” the man kept crying. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Death gave a heartless sigh. “They always are.” Then, with a wave of her hand, the man was thrown out of the boat and into the water.
My shout of protest was lost among the sound of a thousand hungry souls crying out in victory. The surface of the water broke into a dizzying amount of V shaped ripples, all of which rushed toward the center of the lake. Where the dead man now struggled to keep his head above the water. I shut my eyes and slapped my hands over my ears but, somehow, I still heard everything. The horrible tearing of flesh and bone. The almost beast-like howling. The poor man’s hair-raising screams.
I fell to my knees in the mud, crying so hard my head hurt.
“Stop it,” Death snapped, her voice suddenly closer.
I looked up and scuttled back in alarm. She stood right in front of me now, glaring down her nose at me.
“He used threats to steal from honest, hard-working people. He doesn’t deserve anyone’s pity, least of all yours.”
“How can you know that?” I demanded, jumping to my feet. “What are you?”
At this, her scowl became slightly less severe. There was a hint of sadness in her voice when she said, “I can’t tell you.”
I drew my forearm across my nose. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t!” was the explosive reply. Then she twisted away from me.
That invisible hook sank into my back. It dragged me out of the darkness and into Dinah’s sitting room before I could fully register the frustration on Death’s face.
October 2nd, 1961
We have sought the dying. We have found them everywhere. I cannot believe we never thought to simply look around us. Everyone dies. Save us. We have traveled from village to village throughout Mexico and have posed as foreign doctors come to serve the underprivileged and poor. People have opened their homes to us and allowed us to wait on their terminally ill. With our meager knowledge of medicine we can safely navigate these delicate situations. But the time required to wait for people to pass is unbearable.
The worst part of the process is missing Death after weeks of visitations to an incurable patient. It has become increasingly harder to hide our frustration and behave in a compassionate way. After months of waiting by deathbeds, we have only felt Death’s presence once. It was so quick and so subtle, we hardly had time to speak to each other. We only know for certain it was Death because the patient stopped breathing and, in the briefest of moments, I felt the strongest sense that we had been here before.
Dymeka agreed with my description. It was not familiar, but something about the situation felt repeated. It was nothing like our first encounter with Death. Then again, Death chose to show herself in a complete form. We did not see anything distinctive in the tiny, bare old room. She can control her appearance. She can come to this world invisible. She can come and go in a blink of an eye. Leaving behind nothing, except
