Eerie Silence

Cloaked in darkness, Damian sat beside her on the car’s dented hood, the drives thick sobs a distant resonance, his hand clasping Amy’s stiff hand and with his other hand, stroking her hair until she was no longer there in her pale body. Instead of smooth pale skin and shimmering blue eyes hidden behind thick dark hair, she was a shimmer, hovering over the ground and swaying in an unseen and now unfelt wind. That hovering creature was the essence of his beloved, her solid form only a shell that held her on the plane. With empty eyes, Amy blinked at him, and then she turned on her bare heels, her ghostly hair flying over her shoulders. Light steps drew her over the ground. Once she was gone from the body, he fallowed her, chasing her spirit down the road and back into the cemetery, their feet gliding over the cement with out even a soft thud, an Angel of Death chasing a soul. Her body was just a pail out line floating over the ground, like smoke, and they both knew she was fading, feeling the pull. He held out his hand for her, nodding.

“Everyone dies Amy,” he said, his voice cracking. They were such familiar words, one’s he had repeated to himself and others many times. Everything dies.

She nodded, completely straight faced. “But you could have told me.”

“It would not have changed a thing,” Damian said as he studied his shoes, ashamed to look at her now as he tried to preserve what had been instead of think about what was.

Slowly she floated forward taking his hand and curling her fingers with his. There was a sharp pain that ran through her body, and then she was looking down on him, her surroundings dark and gloomy without an airy-fairy feeling with in a hundred miles.

His marble face was filled with sadness; his black eyes brimmed with tears and his plush, rosy lips turned down in a frown. Black hair tussled from the revived wind stuck to his dominate cheeks and neck. Once again he reminded Amy of the statue, cold and motionless, a course of power whipping through his very being to control his actions and composure.

In his hand he clasped her gift to him, the small blue velvet box, still unopened and warm in his hand. Carefully, moving his long elegant fingers as if for the first time, Damian snapped open the box, glass tears spilling down his checks. For the moment his perfect night vision was blurred, his eyes stinging from the flood of water. This didn’t hinder him from seeing the most precious of gifts he had ever received. The milky glow of moon light appeared around him, shimmering in watery beams to illuminate it. A silver band with intricate lines etched and weaving around it was snuggled between the folds of velvet. Pure night seemed to hover on it, clinging tightly like a heavy frost.

It was the last thing he had of her. Slipping it on, he turned his pale face to the sky, giving her a better view of the tears running over his face.

Every fiber in Damian’s body told him that Amy had made it to the other side of the veil; she wouldn’t be a ghost haunting him in anything beyond memory, but her presence was sealed to him, sticking to his clothes and locked in his hair, burning in his skin and tied to his fibers.

Looking back at the new shinny silver ring, wet drops dripping from his clenched jaw and sliding down his hand, over his extended fingers, Damian did something he dared not to since the early years of his making. Questions floated over the cold air, and Damian questioned what “the other side” was.

Schooling not only skipped that concept, the teachers did their best to avoid all mention of it. One day a year was spent on poking and prodding the students to understand that there was something beyond them- death- but they themselves would never see it. Was it a haze, a white fog they lived on in forever? Could it be that it was an earth real community where the people were at peace and there was only happiness? Was there any darkness? Could bad souls get to the other side? Was it like the bible said, heaven and hell? The thoughts made him dizzy, blurring the small graveyard even more.

He hoped Amy wouldn’t watch over him or anything and that she would find something more to do with her time, that she would create a new life no matter how much he would suffer without her.
Slowly, the boy walked out of the grave yard, a black cloak covering his shoulders and a smooth blade finding its way into his empty hand. Death moved on; Damian, the boy who appeared to only be seventeen, who had inky black hair and pale white skin, with almond eyes so dark they beat the night in darkness, was stuck in the cemetery, replaying their last night together, but the angel of death was already half way down the road to another stop for another job.

In the house to his left was a teenage boy who was more then a little odd by all of society’s standards. Gliding up to the front porch, Damian discarded his weapon. There was no need to frighten this kid, he was asking for Damian, or some one like him, to come. After counting to ten, Damian walked through the door and turned to the stairs on the right; he was upstairs in less the five seconds, and quickly found the boy’s bedroom.

The child was in his early teens and had scruffy brown hair that stuck up here and there all over his head. Poised like a butterfly in his left hand was a slender silver blade, probably one he had taken from the kitchen after pushing around his food. From the look of the kid, he was probably anorexic and the deep bags under his eyes suggested he was also depressed, and lacking in sleep. Over the years Damian had become especially fascinated by studying the victims before they were only souls he had to carry over. He learned to pick up signs from them: their skin color, their general appearance, and their build. Where they anemic? What did their rooms look like? What kind of
death was it?

Slowly the tip of the knife dug into the pulsing vein, a deep burgundy stream trickling over his icy skin, his thin fingers twitching as his lips pursed together in pain. Pressing harder still, the boy drew the blade up to his elbow before his fingers gave out and the weapon fell to the carpet, settling into the ever growing pool of blood.

The hooded figure sat beside the boy, calling his long sickle back into his hand, the end of his staff like weapon dipping into the blood soaked carpet. A white ring hung around the pair like a thick fog, dipping up and down as each breath slowed, the life dipping out of the human boy. Then the air was still and the ghostly ring snapped into a single figure, a copy of the slumped over boy. The same scruffy hair poked up on his head, and he wore the same jeans and shirt.

“Come,” Damian said, holding out his hand as he jumped to his feet and once again banished his work clothes and weapon.

Already the boy had grasped what was going on, his bland face breaking out into a smile and his hallow eyes glistening, and he eagerly took hold of the Angel of Death, pressing his fingers tightly into his arm where he grasped on.

Together they left the house, Damian carrying another one to the other side as a slow numbness pressed down on him, instinct controlling his mind. The same control that summoned the traveler’s portal pulled him over the rough sidewalks, through the dark allies and up the rickety stairs of a rundown apartment building he had to call home.

Once he was sprawled over his couch, feet thrown over the arm rest, hands behind his head, hair matting his face, Damian allowed the silent drops to roll down his checks; he let all of the memories slid into a projector. In his mind, he was sitting on an old theater seat, a wide gray screen tucked behind thick velvet curtains.

An old dull clip rolled to life, dull colors lightening up the screen as the lights turned down. It pictured a small town, filled with crocked houses and people scurrying back and forth in their day to day lives. Their outfits fit those of the typical 17th century workers, and then the camera zoomed in on a large oak tree, and up in the branches dangled to long pair of legs. Damian, with the same long hair, hawk like features and pale skin, leaned against the tree. His toned chest showed through the thin white material of his loose shirt, and he wore simple brown pants; his feet were bare.
“Damian!” a harsh feminine voice barked for him.

Landing gracefully on his feet, the young boy jogged back to the small cottage where a robust woman in a filthy apron waited. Two thick hands rested on her hips, and as he approached her, she shook lose strands of hair in to her face.

“Come in you damn boy,” she mumbled and turned into the small door frame. Damian fallowed at her heels, eyes down cast as they wove into the very center of the house. Fallowed was a long dull speech he was very familiar with, and then they kicked him out the door and he was shipped off to another family, one just down the road. It was the last new home he had been pushed into.

That night he dropped from his second floor window and ran gracefully back to the old tree. As the form became thicker in the darkness, he spotted another thing, a body. It hung from a branch, dipping in the wind and dancing as if still living, but beside the lifeless body Damian could see him. He could see the robed figure with the gleaming silver blade and the white outline that matched the one on the tree.

“I didn’t mean to!” the man pleaded.

Silence ensued, and Damian crept forward, keeping his eyes on the new- to him- creature in the black entire. Years ago, after his parents’ death, he had seen the dead, the glowing spirits that hovered just above the earth, but never before had he seen such a thing as the being with the out stretched arm and scythe.

“No! I can’t; I have a family,” the man backed unsteadily into the tree, trapping himself.

Slowly, the great being reached out, his thick hand inching closer to the man’s throat. Before he could latch on though, something sparked inside of Damian, and before he knew it, he had thrown his body forward. “Take me. Take me in his place,” surprisingly his deep voice was commanding and strong. Just as slowly as it had risen, the arm fell, resting in the waves of darkness.

“Thank you,” the weak spirit mumbled, stumbling backwards and fading into the tree. The body jerked and danced before falling to the ground with a loud snap. Before he could even turn back to look at the hooded figure, a searing ice shot through his stomach and sliced into his veins.

Damian rolled over on the couch, pressing his icy fingers into his temples and sighing into the coarse cushion material. He didn’t want to think about the many years that came after that, so, he let his mind roll through time until just a short time before he had found her.

He had found this cheap apartment and used a simple trick to get in past the owner. Once inside he had put it together, never expecting to have guests. At the time her had only a small bag of things shoved into a suitcase, and when he was not in his work robe, Damian still wore his lose white shirts and old fashioned pants. Reaching into his bag, he pulled out a thin magazine, ready to create more clothes to help him through his new assignment. From the pictures he drew up clean black shirts, some polo shirts, and some button down shirts. Then he chose sets of dark jeans and finally he made his way into the accessories where he gazed at a gleaming pair of black shades that soon lifted from the page and rested in his hand.

The next day he drove into the school parking lot, wishing for the darkness as each gaze fallowed his easy movements. He swung the office door open, running his hand through his newly styled hair.

“Hello!” a chipper woman said, looking up from her computer screen. “How can I help you?”

He cleared his throat and folded his hands behind his back, “I’m new.” He’d missed humanity. It had been many years since he last roamed so freely among them, and he wanted to see what this new age had to offer him. So he had forged papers with his magic and he was going back to school.

“Oh, well what’s you’re name, and here,” she said handing him a clipboard, “fill these out.”

With a meager grin, he took the papers and said “Damian Blackmoth.”

There was the quick clicking of her keys, and then the printer sprung to life and she was handing him a fresh schedule. At the same time a door swung open and a tall blonde woman glided out, smiling at him.

“Who’s this?” she asked the woman behind the desk.

“Damian Blackmoth, a new student.”

“Why don’t we find some one to show him around,” the blonde said.

In no more then ten minuets the office door had swung back open and Damian saw her for the first time. Amy had been dressed in skinny jeans, a dark shirt and had her dark hair loose around her shoulders. From behind his façade, the boy examined her carefully, hoping to seal her image into his mind. Her pale skin was just a shade darker then his own, and her eyes shone like individual stars in the blackest of skies. In silence he fallowed her to each class, hoping to remain cold and detached but knowing he had given away his heart to this glowing angel. For him, it had been love at first sight, but he didn’t think he was capable of being with a human. His life had long been one made for solitude. Joining the school had been a decision to learn about the new age and to be around humans for a time because his work caused him to be alone, deprived of contact.

Damian feared his emotions, and Amy was bringing it all out in him.

He fell from the couch, smashing his head against the cold surface of his coffee table. A slow crystal tear trickled down his cheek, and he closed his eyes with a deep sigh. There was a little sting where he had collided with the thick wood, but he felt even less then normal while in his stated of morbid depression. Death had always been hard for him to accept. For his own death he had lost nothing, and no one would miss him, but most of the souls he pushed to the other side would leave behind families and friends.

Rolling onto his back and folding his hands together on his chest. Damian let himself be swept away in numbness. No dreams swept his mind and his memories stayed drowned in the background of his mind. Some place in between reality and dream state, Damian drifted, listening to the soft hum of noises just outside the apartment.

The next thing he heard was a shimmering beep ringing from his alarm clock some place inside his tidy room.