Reap & Repent (4 page)

A frizzy, wild Chewbacca mess, I’m sure.

He knelt beside her, putting an arm around her, and pulled her toward him.

“Hey,” he said softly.

She peeked up. He lifted her chin with his hand and looked into her tear-blurred eyes. “It
will
be okay, I promise.”

She prayed he was right.

He leaned in and pressed his soft, warm lips against her forehead. She closed her eyes, soaking it in. It was a tremendous relief that she couldn’t see his aura and know his true feelings—whether he liked her or just pitied her. As he brushed his lips down to the corner of her eye, he lingered on the salty bits there, his hot breath breezing against her skin. All of her bones were melting. She didn’t feel the push of his calming mojo, only his breath, his lips and his hand on the back of her neck, pulling her to him.

Parting her lips, she sucked in a shuddering gasp as his mouth found hers. She thought she might ignite into a puddle of fire. His kiss was firm and earnest.
Torn between wanting to consume him and wanting to run away—
stranger, delicious, dangerous
—she settled somewhere in the middle, and kissed him back.

Reluctantly, he pulled away, rested his forehead against hers and sighed. She felt like Jell-O.
My first kiss,
she thought. Of course, it wasn’t her
very
first kiss. She was twenty-seven after all. But it was the first one she’d experienced without an ounce of dread.

Flitting thoughts of Rob Carmichael’s eighth-grade advances in an empty classroom at the Methodist church dance—soggy wet lips, roaming hands and a hot red aura—filled her mind. This kiss was nothing like that one had been.

This kiss was wonderful. She hoped it wasn’t a pity kiss because, she realized with surprise, she would like a few more of his kisses.

He stood, leaving her dazed. His face was a puzzle she couldn’t solve.

“I shouldn’t have done that …” He backed away.

Great,
she thought.

“But I’m glad I did.” He smiled. “Now eat your breakfast so that we can go Free Willy,” he said, ruffling her hair.

Ruth’s father’s name was not Willy. But she ate her bacon with a smile on her face.

* * *

Panther Valley Cemetery was an old rural cemetery in York County, Arkansas, that was a couple of hours from Ruth’s home. They’d been delayed because Ruth had needed to follow up on the inquiries regarding her mother’s
passing. It was probably a good thing they were heading to the cemetery now, so that she could check on things before her mother’s interment.

The Scott family had been buried here for centuries. No matter how far from home they roamed during their lives, this was where they were buried. It was a tradition repeated throughout the rural cemeteries. Even if they fought like cats and dogs during their days above ground, all the chicks finally came home to roost in the end. A few surnames dominated the headstones: Bailey, Monroe and Scott. Hundreds of similar cemeteries dotted the state. Since it was a week before Memorial Day, the grounds were neat and clipped, and even in the growing darkness she could tell the headstones had been trimmed to perfection by the caretaker. The grounds were empty as they pulled up and through the gate.

The entire area was rural and unpopulated, and on the long drive in, they’d been surrounded by rolling green hills, waist deep with the first growth of fescue of the year. A lush green line of trees demarked the borders of Panther Creek.

The good thing about cemeteries was that only the visitors had auras. Ruth couldn’t see auras around animals or other living things, which she considered a small but welcome blessing. She couldn’t even imagine how distracting
that
would be.

Deacon followed her into the cemetery to search for her father’s headstone. She shone her key chain light left then right, trying to remember the layout of the family plots. The cemetery was small, and once she got a feel for things, the stone was easy to find. The earth on top was packed down, grass and weeds covering the grave in spotty patches.

“This is it,” she said, brushing grass clippings from the front of the stone. She wished she had brought some flowers. She wasn’t exactly a frequent visitor. Including her father’s burial, this was her second visit to the site. Ever.

She would likely never have visited again except to bury her mother if not for this latest development. She didn’t see the point of visiting graves. It wasn’t like the dead kept a register of visitors, and she didn’t need to see his headstone to think about him. But being here without flowers, particularly the week before Memorial Day, felt disrespectful.

Deacon knelt and studied the ground in front of the headstone.

“Can you step back from the grave?” he asked. “If his soul hasn’t been reaped, I don’t want your energy to interfere with the process.” Ruth stepped back.

He spread his palms out over the earth and pressed down against the packed ground. It was nearly pitch-dark now, and the heat of the late spring day radiated off the ground and stones. Ruth felt clammy thanks to the high humidity. It wouldn’t be too many more days until the summer heat conspired with that devil humidity to cook up a nice greenhouse effect that would make Al Gore weep.

The mid-South in summer. Was there anything worse?

A soft orange glow radiated from Deacon’s hands. It shimmered and rose from him in waves like the heat off an amusement park’s asphalt in August. But instead of heat, a cold, edgy blast built around them, increasing until the ground trembled and shifted. The next thing she knew, she was looking at a husk of gray
light glistening and forming into something that looked remarkably like her father. The apparition hovered over the grave before them. Deacon had somehow wrenched her father from his grave—or at least a part of him.

His soul?

Her stomach rolled, and she swallowed down the lump that formed in her throat.

This is
my
fault.

Deacon leaned back on his heels and rolled up to his feet. Both of them looked at Ruth’s ghost father, who stared back. He looked confused and unsure. She didn’t know that she could blame him. A long, silent moment passed. Ruth heard a truck rumbling in the distance, its exhaust pipes announcing its arrival long before its headlights appeared on the horizon. She looked at Deacon, wondering what was going to happen next.

“Do we need to hide him?”

“No one else can see him,” Deacon said. “Be cool. I think that truck’s about to pass us.”

The truck rounded the corner, its high beams sweeping only the farthest edge of the property as it continued down the road, its aftermarket exhaust pipes thundering into the distance.

Rednecks.

She breathed out a sigh of relief, her heart rabbiting in her chest.

“Ruth, I’m going to reap him because I don’t want your first time to be with a family member. That’s messed up. Keep a hand on me and maintain
contact. After I reap him, I’m going to bring him straight to Purgatory, and you can tag along for the ride if you’re touching me. At least I’m pretty sure you can. If you truly are a reaper, it won’t be a problem. If you aren’t…well, I guess you’ll have to wait for me to get back, or go on home without me. It’s going to be a hell of an initiation, but if not now, when?”

Ruth’s father stared at her as Deacon spoke. She thought that perhaps she could detect the smallest spark of recognition in his eyes.

“Can he hear me?”

“He can, but I don’t know how much he can understand after all this time, or if he remembers anything from being alive,” he said, waiting patiently. “He can’t speak or communicate with you… He’s an untethered soul. His sentience began to fade as soon as his soul detached. He needs to be processed.”

Tears filled her eyes as she took a tentative step toward her father. She wanted to embrace him, but that would have been useless under the circumstances. Not to mention impossible—she could see straight through him.

“Daddy, it’s me, Ruth. I’m so sorry you’ve been here all this time. I didn’t know. I still don’t understand any of this, but this man is here to help you pass over. Don’t be afraid. You’ll be with Mother soon. She just passed. I hope you can find peace and be together again.”

Her father still looked confused, but he was staring at her so intently, she figured that maybe he had at least enough awareness to know they were here to help him.

“Touch my back,” Deacon said. “Don’t break contact until I’ve reaped him, and then we’ll go immediately.”

Ruth placed her open palm against Deacon’s black scrub top. Deacon reached his glowing hands forward and made contact with her ghost father, whose shape shimmered and dissolved into a glittering gray stream. When Deacon inhaled, what was left of her father flowed forward into him through his sternum, vanishing like water down a drain. Her hand grew cold and painful against his back, but she didn’t let go. Deacon shuddered and consumed her father. When he turned to look at her, his blue-green eyes were icy gray.

“Let’s go.”

Deacon stepped off the grave and pulled Ruth into an embrace after surveying the road to make sure no one else was headed their way.

“Hold on.”

He reached out and placed his hand on top of the headstone.

The headstones and the entire cemetery shimmered, and she lost the vertical hold on her vision as everything began to swirl into a vortex around her.

I’m going to be sick.

She closed her eyes and waited for it to pass as they spun and slid down, down, down.

Chapter Five

Ruth opened her eyes to complete and utter chaos. There were creatures everywhere. She would have been hard-pressed to prove most of them were now or ever had been human. It was like the cantina scene in
Star Wars
without the fun band. Ruth’s mouth gaped open. It was dark, foggy and damp in the long underground chamber where they’d landed, like some kind of subterranean cave. She’d never seen anything like it.

It was a depot of sorts, it seemed, and there were long tunnels crisscrossing every which way, disappearing into the stone walls. Her mouth still agape, Ruth followed Deacon into what appeared to be the main hall, where the floors and ceilings were also rough stone, and light from an unseen source flowed down through strategically positioned skylights along the ceiling. Reapers were everywhere: men and women but also a disturbing number of…well,
monsters
was the word that came to mind.

There was so much to take in that it was overwhelming. Chiseled placards demarked the top of each tunnel in a language she didn’t understand. And at each end of the main channel, huge platforms rose above the fray. Sitting on stone thrones upon the platforms were two very similar-looking men who looked like angels, complete with flowing purple robes and wings.

Deacon took her hand and dragged her along behind him. “Keep up.”

“Don’t worry.”

She did
not
want to be down here alone, wherever here was. They rushed through the throng of creatures, large and small, human and otherwise, toward the opposite end of the channel and the angel who was sitting there. They were almost there when someone called out behind them.

“Walker? What the hell? I thought you would have cashed in by now,” the man said. Deacon spun around, pushing Ruth behind him.

“Kylen,” Deacon said, grimacing and barely containing his obvious disgust. He clearly wasn’t happy to see the guy. “I’ve been…occupied.”

“I can see that,” he said, leaning over to give Ruth a slimy once-over look. “Who is she?”

“We’re bringing in a sleeper,” Deacon said, changing the subject.

“A sleeper? Wonder how I missed that one?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Deacon said, forging ahead.

“Put up a good fight at least?” Kylen asked with inappropriate enthusiasm.

“What are you doing down here? Have you grown tired of your ride?”

“Oh, no. I just like to keep a finger on the pulse of things. Network. Mingle.” He winked, then directed a disturbing smile Ruth’s way.

“Right.” Deacon pulled Ruth away from Kylen, leading her the last few paces to the platform.

A line of mixed creatures wound in front of them. Ruth had no idea what some of them were. Of the ten or so in front of them, two looked passably human. The rest were all variety of sizes and degrees of grotesqueness. One great slobbering gelatinous mass in front of them, who was Deacon’s height, but twice
his girth, turned to assess her. His wet reptilian skin shimmered and glistened as his Ping-Pong-sized lizard eyes looked her up and down, then locked on to hers. She looked away and snugged up closer to Deacon.

“Eyes on the prize, asshole,” Deacon said to the thing through gritted teeth.

Mr. Lovely turned back around with a grunt.

Otherwise, there was no chitchat in the line. She wondered if all these things even spoke the same language.

Deacon leaned over and whispered, “Try not to freak out—this will get easier. This is Purgatory—a way station. It’s a neutral zone. A no-man’s-land of sorts. All reapers can meet here and interact, but there can be no conflict. It’s a forced détente essentially. Pray you don’t see most of these creatures on the topside.”

She couldn’t imagine any situation where she would.

“The guy in the purple robe is the angel Rashnu. The guy on the other end of the station? Also Rashnu. He’s split himself into two because he doesn’t trust anyone else to do the job right. He’s the sorter. The gates of Hell and Heaven are locked up tight. No soul gets through Purgatory except with his blessing. He’s rarely wrong, but once in a while a soul gets kicked back and…well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen today.”

The line inched forward. She watched as the reapers approached the angel Rashnu and wished she could hear the exchange between them. From where she was standing, she was close enough to get the gist of it. The reaper approached
and spewed forth its cargo, which floated down and assumed its original shape. The deposits held their ghostly form for a few moments, and then Rashnu waved his open palm in front of them, and they were sucked away down one of the various tunnels carved into either side of the station’s stone walls. The contrasting colors of the walls clearly indicated which tunnels led to which eternal resting place. Left was lovely, and lightly colored markings and symbols adorned the wall. The right side? Not so much. It looked like street gangs had tagged the entire wall from stem to stern. The souls streamed away in a smoky mist ranging in color from black to white and everything in between.