Eerie Silence

He awoke to a loud ring in his ears, a cold wind sweeping over him and tugging at his battered clothes. Somewhere, a sixty-eight year old man was dying from a heart attack, and it was Damian’s job to go collect his soul. There were some days when he had no job but to blend in with the humans, but on other days he worked all day, traveling to and fro.
Sliding onto his feet, Damian allowed power to wash over him, a cloak throwing him into the darkness and his staff like scythe glistening in his hand. Beneath his Death attire, beaten white sneakers moved forward, and he was carried over the cement, down the streets and into a retirement community.
The body was slumped in a chair, one hand gripping the arm of the chair and his glossy eyes half open. A pale shimmer hung around him, shifting forms as the angel of Death approached.
“Come with me,” he spoke to the form, reaching out his hand.
The smoke stopped moving, a white shimmer taking form as a healthy man in his late twenties. It looked down on the old body and then flexed its hands and curled its toes, testing a new strength. With the mind of an old man and a body of a young one, the spirit had a wild glint in his eyes.
Damian had a moment of fear, worried that the spirit would run of, trying to regain life as a twenty year old, reliving at time of youth, but then the man nodded. He clasped his hand onto his shoulder.
The job was done, and Damian wove out of the neighborhood, tossing away his work clothes. His mind was in a haze, his body on autopilot as he walked back to his apartment. It was two in the morning according to the clock inside. The rest of the area was quiet, sleeping soundly, all worries erased from their minds. As he meandered up the stairs to his room, it crossed his mind that it was going to get out that Amy was dead. Tears fell down his cheeks at just the thought of it, but he recognized that he might have to transfer. He had been too close to her, and they would know that he had been with her the night that she had been hit. There was a slim chance that a supernatural believer could put it together that he was tied into her death; however unlikely it was, there was always a possibility.
He thought that he might drop out of school, fade into the background and let them forget all about him, but for now he had to move through the following days like the rest of them.
Slumping onto his bed, Damian removed his clothes, stripping into his boxers. Before burying himself under the sheets, the boy rinsed off in the shower, cold water pelting his skin, brushing layers of graveyard dirt from his pale skin. Then he folded himself on the bed, waiting for the sound of his alarm or the brush of death that would call him.
It was neither that woke him at six thirty AM. There was a whisper on the wind that pushed around his room, call his name. “Damian,” the lips were against his cheek, the breath hot against his dead skin. “Damian,” further away this time, the bodiless voice fading. “Damian.” With inhuman, enhanced, supernatural hearing, the angel of death tried to chase after it. “Damian,” it was a choke. It sounded like a girl, and he wanted to believe with all his hear that it was Amy, his Amy, trying to reach out to him, but everything was her, so he couldn’t be sure what really was and wasn’t. “Damian.”
Slowly, the boy removed himself from the bed, pulling on a pair of jeans and a fading black shirt. He pushed his dark hair back, tying it at the base of his neck. The whisper was gone, the cold prick of needles over his skin was the only reminder that it had ever been in his room. He tied a pair of new black sneakers onto his feet and took a pair of sunglasses from the top of his dresser. Stopping in the bathroom, he carefully smeared a line of black eyeliner under his eyes. A bag of school things hung over a chair by the front door.
He stared at it for a moment, but decided that there was no point in leaving so early and slumped down on the couch. Using his power, he turned on the TV, automatically flipping to the news channel.
“The girl died almost instantly after the accident,” a blonde reported was saying. “According to our sources, the girl was Amy Night, a seventeen year old who attended the local high school. She died late Sunday night after being hit by a drunk driver. We’ll have more on this story and many others later tonight.” She smiled then, two bright red lips parting. “Back to you Jim.”
It was out now, there could be no more hiding from it, and they had only given him a day to build up a wall and a system of defense. He knew that the school would know which meant that her friends would soon find out and so would the rest of the school.
Swinging his bag over his shoulder, Damian left the apartment and jogged into the cool morning air. Sunglasses where pushed over his eyes, shielding him not from the sun but from showing the world his emotions. His feet tracked slowly over the pavement, his shoes kicking pebbles as he went.
The school came into view with in twenty minutes, and he circled it twice. There was no one there but himself, and as the color crawled into the sky, Damian sat on the school steps.
“Damian,” someone shook his shoulder. “Damian!” He slid his eyes up from the ground and realized that he had lost himself in thinking, forgetting all about the concept of time. “You were with her!” Marcy yelled, her small hand gripping his shoulder as her cat eyes stabbed at him. “You were probably the last person to see Amy! Why didn’t you tell us! Damian, you had to have known,” he voice was quavering, shrinking into a whisper.
The dark haired boy behind her pulled at her arm, twisting her into a hug, leaving his eyes to yell at the angel of Death as he whispered softly into the girl’s hair. Beside him Tracy folded her arms across her chest, her face void of emotions, but Damian could read her. She was mad at his as well and lost, unable to grasp the fact that someone so young and good could have died.
“Let’s just get to class,” Tracy finally said, speaking through gritted teeth as she balled her hands into fists.
The first bell hadn’t even rung as Marcy latched onto Damian’s arm and pulled him through the hallway, waving goodbye to Tracy and the dark haired boy. Down empty hallways she tugged him, until they reached their first period class. She yanked the door open, dropping his arm and storming inside. The blonde girl slid into a seat without looking at him and began to dig through her bag. She sniffled and rubbed her eyes, black makeup smearing across her face.
Damian took the seat next to her, tossing his things on the floor and resting his arms across the desktop.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” she sniffled and rubbed her eyes, tears running down her cheeks as she smeared around her makeup. “You did know, right?” Very slowly, Marcy slid her eyes across the room, avoiding looking at the boy as she cried.
“Marcy,” Damian rested a heavy hand on the girls shoulder. “She’s moved on. We just have to accept that.” Behind the black wall of his glasses, his dark eyes filled with water.
“So you did know?” she whispered, whipping her nose along the sleeve of her purple jacket.
“Yes.”
Her eyes finally looked at him, and Damian wished that he was capable of showing that much raw emotion. With makeup smeared around her pale skin, her eyes were red and her nose sniveling as she cried, not holding a thing back. He looked at her, and really took everything in. It wasn’t just that she was crying, and her hair wasn’t brushed, pushed back so it fell in knots over her shoulders. Her clothes were crumpled, chosen because they had been the first things she saw. The purple jacket she kept wiping her nose on was old and battered, holes poked through here and there. Her shoes were the only thing on her that looked the same as always.
“You should have told us!” she snapped, anger replacing the sadness in her teary eyes. “We’re her friends. Just because you…”
“Loved her?” he said, raising an eyebrow behind the edge of his sunglasses. “I think that means you won’t understand.”
“You’re seventeen, Damian; you don’t know what love is.” She spun around in her seat, flying from the room with a giant sob.
The boy sunk down in his seat, allowing black hair to slide over his face. The class filled up shortly after, gloomy faces filling the air. The atmosphere crushed down on Damian as he felt the eyes turn on him. Hidden behind glasses, the boy tried to hide. Go away. Leave.
He grumbled, catching the glimpse of a forced frown on a pretty face.
“Damian!” the bubbly redhead rattled his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” fake tears built up in her eyes and then vanished. “I know you and…” she had forgotten the girl’s name, “Amy were close. If you need someone to comfort you, a shoulder to cry on, anything really, I’m here for you Damian.”
Through gritted teeth he managed a response, “I’m fine. Thank you.”
Ready to cry true tears of disappointment, the girl fled from his side, rejoining a group of girls. Then the principle entered the classroom, his short strides pushing him to the front of the room where his eyes searched out the boy.
“Damian,” he said. “Damian. We have a councilor waiting to talk to you,” he spoke in a shaking voice and was forced to reach into his pocket to remove a handkerchief and dab his forehead.
Slowly, stiffly, Damian lifted himself from the seat, gathering his things and exiting the room. The principle followed, scurrying behind him to keep up. The man directed him to an already open door where a thin blonde woman was poised behind a desk.
“Damian,” she said softly, waving to a seat in front of her desk. “I know I am just a school councilor, but I hope you can be comfortable speaking to me. Amy and you were very close. This must be very difficult for you.”
Damian remained standing, bag clutched in hand and his sunglasses hiding his dark eyes. “No,” he said.
“No?” she asked, her voice a squeak.
A sharp nod was all that he would use to respond.
“I thought that you were dating,” she said, pushing aside her hair and fidgeting behind her desk. “They would like your help putting a memorial together, a little something to put at the front of the school.”
The hand around the bag tightened and he closed his eyes for a brief moment, allowing her image to dance before him. “Her friends will be more than willing to help.”
“I suppose,” she said, rising from behind the desk, “that you can go then. They are holding an assembly later. It will be open to the entire school.”
Damian turned away from her, pushing the door open and leaving the office. The empty hall echoed as the boy ran through it.

When the announcement went off after lunch that the rest of the day was going to be spent with a dedication ceremony to Amy, a former student of the school who had tragically died over the weekend, Damian was curled between two rows of lockers, waiting for someone else to die so he could leave.

Some students rushed out the front doors, others lingered in the hallway, but few made their way to the auditorium. He kept his place between the metal rows until the school was clear, and then Damian made a mad dash down the hall, his sneakers skidding over the tile until he threw open the door. The ground flew out from under him and the boy toppled down the stairs, but he was up and running, disappearing as he built power around himself. A dark cloak curled around his slender body, a hood draping over his long ink colored hair and masked the abyss of his eyes. Had anyone been able to see him, Damian would have been a very dark sight, the terrifying image of a grim reaper embodied by a teenage Goth boy.

Once more he found himself before the girl’s former house, wild cries coming from inside. The neighborhood had a dark gloom hanging over it, and even in the middle of the day it was as if a cap had been placed over the sun.

Shielded, Damian entered the house and weaved up the stairs in search of the sobbing. “My baby is gone, forever,” Amy’s mother wailed. “I’ve lost my little girl,” she managed to speak between the rivers of tears that poured from her eyes and choked the screams in her throat. “Why?” The sheets twisted in her whitewashed face and she looked around the room as if she expected an answer. “Why did she have to die,” she sniffled and slumped back in the bed as a wail slipped over her parted lips.

Damian had seen this before. Hysterics were not a rare encounter in his line of work since most people refused to accept death. How far this specific case would go, not even he could predict.

Moving to the woman’s side, he ran a cold hand across her forehead, a deep sleep settling over her mad mind and a silence falling over the room. Then, with out so much as another glance back, Damian removed himself from the house with no plans of ever coming back. He was ready to drop of the planet, fall from the face of the earth, and he knew that he could at least remove himself from the lives of the humans in this town. The living style he had acquired could easily vanish, and the people he had met would forget he had ever existed.

He returned to the apartment and emptied the rooms with a simple wave of his hand; the only things that remained were the gifts from Amy and a few drawing that decorated his wall. A photo of the two of them rested bedsides the now bare bed, it was a black and white clip of the two of them in a park, pressed together on the swings and taken by Marcy. Beside that was a stack of notes she had slipped into his locker over the period of time they had begun dating. These things he emptied into a small box and placed by the front door.

Sometimes soon, he thought, he would get a small place of the outskirts of the town. He would just stop showing up to school, and he would put all his efforts into helping those who could pass though, enter the other side and those he couldn’t help Damian would also forget because in this job you couldn’t attach yourself to anything, nothing, he told himself.

Sliding down onto the bed, Damian waited for someone to pass, someone to need him, and when he did hear the faint call for him, the boy vanished and put on his work attire, a dark cloak framing his body and a hood hiding his dark locks of hair.

His plan failed, and quickly. The boy could not find the will power to remove himself completely from this life. He kept the apartment and continued to roam the city, mindlessly walking the streets, invisible as he passed the humans, former friends.

He spoke at the funeral, a dry mask on his face and a monotone voice as he told them all what a wonderful person Amy had been and how dearly he had loved her, even if they were in high school.

When his speech was over he sat beside a ground of her friends and her weeping mother. She was frail now, a few weeks after her daughter’s death, with her hair twisted and knotted around her long face. Skin barely held onto her weak bones, and every sob shook her body into fits that he thought might break her in two. On the other side of her was Amy’s father, dry eyed and gripping his wife with a strong arm. Inside, Damian knew he was in a worse state, but he was being strong for his wife.

School held nothing for him any longer, and the boy did stop showing up. When his friends came looking for him he explained that too much reminded him of her, and he could stand the girls who tried to cling all over him now that Amy had moved on.

“We’ll kick any girl’s ass who thinks they can touch you,” Tracy told him, her wide eyes filling with tears as she gripped his arm tightly.

Pushing her hand away gently, Damian tried a small smile. “It’s not that simple,” he said, closing the door on the two girls that had come to see him.

Tracy and Marcy had come by his apartment every day since he stopped showing up for school, a week after her death. They had found him in a beaten gray shirt and a pair of boxers, his dark hair frizzed and his eyes clouded. Talking to him had made a little progress, his hair was brushed, tied back at the base of his neck, and his clothes were washed, but he moved about sluggish and answered their questions in short choppy sentences and never invited them inside to see how he had redone his apartment.

“You’re not the only one falling apart!” Marcy had scolded him, banging on the door. “She wouldn’t want us to just drift apart, Damian. Open the door!”

He had shimmered out instead of facing her harsh words because the reality of it was that Amy would want them to celebrate the lives they had, but she had been the only hope in his life for many years. There was no replacing her in his heart, and nothing at school was going to help him.

That day, an old couple had died in their sleep, together, holding hands and with smiles on their faces. He had found them moments after their spirits had slipped from their shells, and they had been eager to move to the other side, both strong Christians who were excited to see heaven and find their eternal peace. Damian told them he didn’t know what waited for them on the other side of the veil and the woman had responded that he should have a little faith and they were ready to see for themselves. With a sad smile that pulled at his skin, the boy clasped their hands and pulled them to the entrance. The last he saw of them, the old pair was shifting back to their young age, smiling and laughing.

Sometimes he could go days without seeing a death, working or feeling the tug of the other side.

A month after what they all referred to as the tragic accident, Damian found himself drifting down to the graveyard, pass the exact spot she had been hit. He had tried to stay away from this site, worried he might see her all around him the same way he did when he snuck back into the high school. A wave of light washed over the skid marks on the ground, and specks of blood had lasted through the spray of a hose. He stood there, watching at the accident replayed in his mind, the image projecting on to the street. When Amy was a spirit drifting away from him once more, he moved into the graveyard. Damian wasn’t interested in any of the new headstones. They blurred by him as he moved swiftly, heading to the back.

“Why her?” he asked the statue as he came to a sudden halt. It was as if he was looking into a copy of himself, the grim reaper staring out into the distance and watching over the dead. It was silent and still made of stone. Damian didn’t know what he had expected, but when a pang went off in the back of him mind, he ignored it. “Why’d she have to die? Amy was a good person.” The pull was greater this time, a death approaching in a manner of seconds. “Death can wait a moment! I want answers,” his voice was drifting over the tombstones, his eyes gliding from the copy of himself to the stars above. A pain shot through him, his mind splitting in two and his body crumpling to the leafy ground.

“Damian!” her voice echoed in his head.

He rocked back and forth, fighting back the tears that wanted to slip over his cheeks. “No,” he said, “she’s gone.”

“Damian, babe, what’s wrong?” A cold hand rested on his back, shivers running down his spine and the blood rushing through him. “Damian look at me, talk to me.” Her breath was hot against his cheek, words ringing in his ear.

“Not real,” he mumbled. He had seen her somewhere everyday since she died. He had felt her in the walls around him and smelt her on his clothes and in the places she liked to go, like the park. Every time some one had passed, he had seen her standing on the other side, just a blurred image that appeared to be looking at him, but never before had he felt her so real.

“What is wrong with you!” she yelled, her hand stopping on his shoulder and a hand cupping his chin. “Damian look at me, you’re scaring me.”

Slowly, his teary eyes drifted up, black strands of hair falling around his face and blocking out parts of her vision. She hovered over him, her slender body clad in a tight black dress, a lace jacket clad on her shoulders and arms. Her locks of brown hair were pulled into a high pony-tail, revealing her pale face. The image was so vivid, so real. Her hand was cold against his cheek and smooth when he ran his fingers across her chin and over her small lips.

“Amy?” He asked, his fingers rolling over her cheek and down her neck until his hand rested on her shoulder, warmth filling him in a rush, like beams of sun light striking him.

“I’m back, babe. I’m back.”

There was another ripple of pain, the call in the back of his mind, but this time, the pain showed on her face as well. A spirit was waiting, ready to move on and calling out to the local angel of death.

“I have a job to do,” they said in unison, a smug look appearing on the girl’s face and one of horror on the boys.

“Amy,” he took her hand in his and climbed to his feet, “what have you done?”

She pulled his hand and began walking through the graveyard. “This was the only way we could be together, Damian, and I don’t mind, really. You helped me adjust to all of this already.”

“Amore, you don’t understand the pain they will put you through,” he whispered, pulling her into his chest and catching her in a tight hug. Pain rippled through them both, causing him to let go, catching her arm as his cloak dropped around him. She had her own sickle clutched in her hand.

“We can do this together now, no more being alone,” she whispered, her lips brushing softly over his.