Chapter 12 Death’s Embrace
Death’s Embrace
The whispers began just as soon as Finley crossed over the mosaic of a human skull. At first, he thought he was imagining them. Maybe some kind of effect of the wind in the interior. He could pick out no words, but there were emotions. Anguish. Fear. Hope. Regret. Love. Rage.
Like a person’s last words before they die.
Nowhere else would such a mix of emotions make sense. People on their deathbeds though would experience any one of these or multiples of them.
Finley had experienced the death of someone he loved before the Leviathan invaded.
He had an elderly neighbor, Dr. Johnson, who he had adored as a child.
Dr. Johnson had been a professor of history at the local, but world-renowned university, but had long retired before Finley met him.
Yet he still would talk to Finley for hours about the past, making it come alive as he acted out the parts of kings and courtiers, peasants and warriors, and poets and philosophers.
It was from Dr. Johnson that he had learned how to make his D&D games shine when incorporating the histories of high fantasy beings.
Every Saturday morning, when most kids were watching Saturday morning cartoons, playing video games or being shuttled to one sport or another, Finley would slip out of his house to Dr. Johnson’s.
One summer Saturday morning when he was twelve, Dr. Johnson had promised to begin a tale of Genghis Khan.
Finley had eagerly run out into the morning heat, noting how moist it was, and headed between the gap in the hedges that would lead into Dr. Johnson’s backyard.
His friend’s back door was always open. Most people in Lightwell didn’t bother with locks.
It was safe. Or it had the illusion of safety.
Besides not having to open the back door for him meant that Dr. Johnson could finish making them his famous egg bagel sandwiches with the crispy hash browns without the risk of them burning.
But when Finley made it up the cracked three steps to the door that day he didn’t smell frying bacon or the buttery scent of cooking eggs.
Instead, there was an unpleasant, sweetish odor.
It reminded him of some roadkill that he and Declan had stumbled upon by one of the forest preserve roads the week before.
His nose wrinkled in disgust. Had Dr. Johnson forgotten to take the garbage out?
He was getting a little wobbly in his older age.
Maybe he needed Finley’s help with that.
He would have to remember to take it out for him today.
Maybe he should stop over more than once a week too just in case the professor needed some more help.
That’s what he would do! Besides, he would rather spend time with Dr. Johnson than his parents any day.
Sometimes, he thought that his parents might prefer that too.
“Professor?” Finley called as he pulled open the screen door.
There was a screech as the unoiled hinges protested being moved. The door’s spring though was tight despite its age so Finley only had the chance to slip inside before it banged shut behind him. He winced at the loud thump.
“Sorry!” he called preemptively, anticipating the professor’s gentle chastisement that had come often enough.
“That door is as old as me, Finley,” he imagined the professor saying as he often did. “You can’t let it slam and not expect some damage.”
But silence was his only response.
“Professor? Are you here?” Finley called again as he stood on the linoleum floor with the faded flower design.
The back door led directly into the kitchen.
While there were pans on the stove, they were nested one in another with paper towels in between them.
They weren’t being actively used to fry bacon and eggs or filled with melted butter just waiting for the hand-shredded potatoes to be dumped in.
They were in their storage position. Nor was there butter softening on the counter for the bagels that were normally toasted in the ancient toaster.
That was empty as well. The room felt abandoned.
The whole house did. Finley’s shoulders twitched.
The sweetish odor of rot had intensified.
Finley glanced towards the kitchen garbage can. The odor wasn’t coming from there. Besides, this didn’t smell like garbage. It really was like the raccoon who had been crushed and sent flying by a car or truck that he’d nearly stepped in, but Declan had rescued him from.
“Professor?” he whispered the call this time as he took a few steps deeper into the kitchen.
He didn’t expect a response any longer.
Had Dr. Johnson gone away unexpectedly and not had a chance to tell Finley he’d be away?
That seemed unlikely. The professor had no children.
He wasn’t close with his nieces and nephews that were located all over the globe.
He’d been a confirmed happy bachelor or so it had seemed to Finley.
Content with his books, his memories and their weekly meetups.
“I’ve outlived all my friends,” Dr. Johnson had said one time. But he’d not appeared sad about it. Not even wistful. His expression had been distant, but he had been half smiling as if thinking of something pleasant. “You know, Finley, that death may be the ultimate adventure.”
“Or it’s simply the end,” Finley had pointed out.
He didn’t believe in Heaven or Hell. On the one hand it seemed too simplistic for the universe as he saw it and, on the other, too complex.
The cycle of life to him was that they were made of stardust and to stardust they would return in time.
Some people might find that grim. If he were honest, he did too.
But he was also a big believer in being truthful about the world to himself.
After the war with the Leviathan and the introduction of beings that lived forever, Finley’s worldview had changed considerably.
But back then, he hadn’t believed in any kind of existence after death.
“Maybe you’re right. But,” and here the professor gave him a soft smile, “maybe not. Death has motivated people to do great and terrible things. The fear of it. The desire for it. It rules us like nothing else, Finley. I hope it is not an end, but a beginning.”
“I don’t want you to cease existing either,” Finley answered.
The professor chuckled and ruffled his hair. “Neither do I, young man. Oh, to be twelve again! But old age has its rewards, too. I don’t know if I would like to be in the tempest of hormones and emotions once more. Now, let me tell you about Henry VIII.”
Finley truly did not want Dr. Johnson to die. And if he were honest with himself, he hadn’t really thought that the elderly professor was going to leave him anytime soon. But the smell…
He walked across the kitchen floor. The linoleum cracked and popped underneath his sneakers.
The smell grew ever stronger, coming in great wafts from the front room.
That was where the professor would read at night before heading to bed.
Finley went to that front room now. His footsteps were nearly silent on the faded green runner.
He paused just before the threshold and closed his eyes for a moment.
Please don’t be dead.
He felt the unexpected burn of tears behind his eyes.
The professor cared about him. So few people did.
His parents didn’t understand him. The kids at school thought him odd.
Only Declan and Dr. Johnson seemed to really see him as someone worthwhile.
But it was more than that. The world without the gentle, intelligent teacher would be a world bereft of some of its goodness.
He opened his eyes and stepped into the doorway.
His heart caught in his throat. He’d found the source of the smell.
The professor was seated in his favorite easy chair.
He was slumped forward. A book he likely had been reading had slipped from his lap and fallen on the floor.
It was a history of Genghis Khan. Finley couldn’t breathe and he gripped the front of his t-shirt.
Dr. Johnson had died. Sometime between when Finley had seen him last Saturday and now. And just before he’d died, he’d been refreshing his knowledge of Genghis Khan for their Saturday morning meeting.
Finley heard a low moaning and it took him a moment to realize it was coming from him. Grief was like an anvil on his feet, keeping him in place. Tears flowed down his cheeks.
“No…” he whispered. “No, no, don’t be gone. Don’t.”
Finley?
The warm tones of the professor’s voice saying his name filled his ears. Finley nearly jumped. Was the professor alive? But no. He could see the dark patches on his skin. He could smell the decay.
Finley, I was right, the voice rasped directly in the cusp of his left ear. There’s something more. Something… more…
Finley jumped around to look for the source of the voice, but he saw no one.
There was no one there. Later on, before the war, he told himself he had imagined the professor’s beloved voice, trying to soothe himself.
But now? Now he was certain that Dr. Johnson had spoken to him that day.
Had tried to assure him that death was not the end. But the beginning of something.
Don’t fear death, Finley, the professor’s voice was in his ears again in the Temple of the Necrilem, forming out of the whispers for a moment. Embrace it.
“Dr. Johnson?” he asked out loud and slowly spun in a circle.
But there was no one there. No one that he could see.
“Dr. Johnson, if you can hear me, I want to thank you. For everything you did for me. You made me the person I am today in a lot of ways. I truly… I love you and wish you all the best,” Finley said words out loud that he hadn’t ever gotten a chance to tell the old man.
The whispers continued, but he heard nothing in response from the old professor. He hoped the man had heard him.
Now to go forward and embrace death.