Chapter 50 Grim
“I’ll not let you take him,” I said, positioning myself in front of the fearsome wraith who had entered my home unannounced—uninvited.
“You should not see me,” said the dark figure wrapped in black robes, his face concealed behind a veil of solid shadow.
“Leave now,” I commanded, even though my voice shook. Not because I feared for myself, but because I knew who he was—what he was—and why he was here. “You’re not welcome.”
“I am your guest nonetheless,” said the dark figure, his tenor low and raw, rough and ragged, that of a monster with no soul.
“You said you are death,” I snarled, “but my nephew… he is not dead.”
“I said I am the hand of death,” corrected the monster. “And… he will be soon.”
“He cannot die!” I snapped, trying—and failing—to keep my volume down so as not to wake Phineas. “Devil. I order you to leave.”
“Send me away,” said the ghoul, “but know that will change nothing. I will return for him later. I do not bring death. I am simply the courier.”
“You lie.”
“To what aim?”
“You cannot take him from me,” I growled.
“I must.”
“Can I not assume his place?” I asked, pleading now, for in truth, what could I, a mortal man, do to stop this creature? “Can’t you leave him and take me instead?”
“It is not your time.”
“He is but six and I am three and thirty,” I argued. “My time should come before his.”
“That’s not how it works,” said my oppressor, his tone infuriatingly gentle—like I was the true child in this situation.
“Then how does it work? Where will you take him? What is to become of him?”
“You ask me questions I cannot answer.”
“Cannot,” I challenged, “or will not?”
“The answers are mysteries to me as well,” said the specter, spreading one skeletal hand, then the terrible figure took a step toward the bed. I darted to stand in his way, my arms out as if that could do anything to keep this nightmare at bay, or Phineas’s spirit from his cold grip.
“Leave him be,” I said. “I told you. I will take his place.”
“There is no substitution. He is Fated.”
Again, he started forward, that scythe blade gleaming, but I backpedaled, keeping myself between him and the bed, him and my poor nephew. “Fated for what?”
“You must see me,” said the ghoul, “because of the child. So often they see me. As do those close enough to the young to truly understand them. A rare quality. Perhaps you are Fated, too…”
“Please?” I said, because begging was the only tactic I had left. “There is no way? I will do anything—perform any task, traverse any realm, perish myself—if you say it will spare him.”
The specter lifted his head, peering at me through that darkness, his face hidden in the gloom but then, just for the scarcest moment, faintly visible.
“There is… one way,” said the creature. “But I hesitate to offer it. Be your answer yes or no… the price merely to consider is high—let alone the payment to accept.”
“What is it?” I insisted. “Tell me now.”
“It lies within my power to grant you a life,” said the monster. “One to spare. A single one—even a Fated—on the condition you agree… to take my place.”
“Your place?” I half asked, half huffed, the idea as terrifying as it was unthinkable. At least for the span of one fleeting moment.
“I have offered this trade a handful of times before,” said the wraith, “but no one has ever agreed. The burden of their refusal, what that refusal cost them, then became theirs to bear until their own deaths. So know that I do not offer lightly.”
“If I take your place,” I said, my heart hammering hard—too hard, catching wise, it seemed, to this sudden conspiracy being formed against it.
For, if I understood correctly, the muscle would have to cease beating for me to become as this thing was—a shade of death.
A courier, he’d said. Of souls… “If I agree, Phineas will live. Is that the trade?”
“The life would be yours to grant—or to hold—as you see fit,” said the monster.
“Should you bequeath that life to this child, it would grant him a long one but… know he will traverse that life without you. Never can he know what became of you. And then, decades from now, when the time comes, you will be the one to perform the task that you now seek to prevent me from completing.”
So long as that moment remained far, far away from this one…
“He’s clever,” I said, my voice quavering, “and resourceful. He will find his way.”
Though I forced myself to speak with conviction, I couldn’t bring myself to feel it as wholly true. Phineas was all of those things—tenfold. But he was still just a boy.
How could I leave him utterly alone in this heartless world?
Yet I could not bear to let him go with this stranger. Especially now that I knew there was something I could do to stop that from happening.
“This world is harsh,” said the monster, his words echoing my own thoughts.
“It is my opinion that you deceive yourself into thinking I am the cruel one when, really, it is you. But in abandoning your nephew, you do me a kindness by releasing me from my duties and my oath, freeing this tired soul. Knowing you trade your soul, your life, your destiny for his, and that you will serve in this capacity and this role until the day you find someone to willingly change places with you… do you still wish to take up my scythe? My oath? My burden?”
“My destiny,” I said, extending my hand for the scythe, “I face it now.”
“Uncle Renwick?” came a small voice from behind us, and I turned my head to peer back at Phineas, who stirred on the mattress, eyes still thankfully shut, shadowed underneath by dark circles. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one,” I told him. “Not a soul. You must have been dreaming. Go back to sleep.”
The boy obeyed, most likely because he could not fight against the illness that lulled him back into the arms of sleep—that close cousin of death.
I would much sooner sleep have him than this dark relative.
“You are ready to take the oath?” asked that ominous figure, drawing my gaze back to the awful blackness within that hood.
“Quickly,” I said. “Before he wakes again.”