Eerie Silence

When the clock flashed eight oh one AM, Amy slid out of bed, careful not to wake Damian. His dark hair was draped around his face and a small smile played on his lips. She wanted to lean down and trace the lines of his face, to feel the rugged line of his jaw and the smooth curve around his eyes. She wanted to feel the light texture of his hair and run her lips over every inch of his body.

Amy walked into the kitchen, her feet gliding over the cool ground. From one of the near empty drawers she removed a bowl and a spoon. Then she searched for cereal. With her new power Amy could make the food herself, cause it to appear by manipulating the atoms around her, a trick she had learned after death. She didn’t fully understand what it was, but Amy had awoken with the sense that anything she wanted was within her reach. The shorts that she wore had been created by that power and she had toyed with it before experiencing the crossing over of her mother.

After a night of rest, Amy was calmer and more relaxed however disturbing the image of the body still was as it burned into the back of her mind. The tears, a voice in her mind told her, were only natural. Sadness was to be expected when someone who had played such a large role in her life was suddenly ripped away; mourn the dead and never forget them.

The cereal was old and stale, but it was food and it was something that reminded her of the part of her that had died. She didn’t want to rummage through the old fridge or to keep opening and closing drawers, so Amy ate the cereal dry, standing at the kitchen counter with her back to the door. The angle she stood at allowed her to see most of the room, including his pale body only half covered with sheets.

“How did you sleep?” His voice was gruff and deep as he stretched out on the small bed, twisting his arms above his head.

Amy brushed a strand of dark hair behind her ear, chewing thoughtfully. “It was like I was asleep but I wasn’t. I could feel everything in the area, but I was just here in bed. I’m perfectly awake though.”

“You get used to it,” he said. Damian threw his long legs over the side of the bed, sliding to the edge and slumping forward. She had never seen him so lose before. Maybe lose wasn’t the right word, but Amy always thought of Damian as proper and elegant. Now he looked like a tired boy who had just woken up.

She smiled. “I could definitely get used to this,” she purred. Then a slight blush crept into her cheeks and Amy looked away from him.

There was a soft chuckle, the best sound Amy had heard since reawakening. She loved his deep voice, the strong feel of it as though each of his words were solid things, and his laugh was just as strong, but lighter feeling.

“Will you do something for me?” he asked, rising to his feet.

There was the sound of material hitting the ground, and next she looked up, Damian was buttoning a new black shirt over his torso. He had gotten into a pair of light blue jeans. Black waves of his hair fell over his shoulders, softly framing his jaw.

“Anything,” she said.

A small smile brightened his face just a little. “Tell me everything you remember about…”

“Dying?”

He walked into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing his lips to her forehead softly.

“You experienced it too Damian, so you know…” From what he had told her, and she knew now that there had to be things he hadn’t mentioned considering he was a hundred plus years older than her and she knew only things about how he had died.

Two perfectly sad eyes looked down at her and Amy wanted nothing more than to press her lips to his.

“No,” he mumbled and his breath was hot against her face. “I made the choice to give up my life and become one. I never had a human death.” She remembered how he had talked about saving a man from death, giving himself over to a cloaked figure without knowing what would happen to him. He had told her that there was magic already within him, and that is why the creature had taken him and turned him. Then he had to have gone to the same school that she had, been trained to collect and help the souls move on to the other side. What the other side no one seemed to know. She understood now why he couldn’t talk to her about death before. He really didn’t know what was on the other side. Years of experience might have taught him something more than what the creatures had drilled into her at the school, and Amy was certain they were creatures and not humans.

“There isn’t much to say,” she mumbled. Amy didn’t want to talk about death. She had made the choice to come back to play her role in death, but she had come back for life, her life, and a life she hoped to make with him.
“Amy,” Damian sighed. “Never mind.”

She felt defeated, curling up on the bed and closing her eyes. “Why do you want to know?”

“You asked me about death, the night you died, and I didn’t have any answers. A hundred and forty years doing this job and I don’t know what happens when you die. When I thought I lost you, I was frightened. I didn’t know where you were going or what was happening to you. Since I started this job, I’ve done my best to avoid thinking about death. We are just the shepherds that bring the souls to their destination.”

She pulled a pillow beneath her head and opened eyes up to find him sitting on the edge of the bed.
Damian maneuvered them around, easily moving her, and she did not protest.

Amy breathed in his scent, enjoying the soft smell of cotton that covered his hard body. “Well,” she was comfy falling into him, their bodies a perfect fit for one another, but to talk she felt as though she should be able to look him in the eyes, those dark pools that could see through her and knew the world and centuries past that the human mind could only attempt to fathom, “I remember something crashing into me, my breath slipping from my lungs. Then I was just going numb, drifting in and out of my mind until I could see myself and I knew I was dead and I could see you and the tears that were building in your eyes. I was only there for a moment.” Her words came faster as she tilted her head up, trying to see him through the veil of black hair covering his face. “Darkness, just waves of darkness knocking into me. Then there was a voice telling me I could go back, not to my body but to Earth. I think I said ‘yes send me back’ and then I was hearing Latin and Spanish and Greek. It was just noise at first but then it grew into something else and soon I could make it out and it was chanting something to me. What was it chanting? What was it? ‘Life in death’. ‘Beauty in horror’. ‘Truth in the end’.”

“We are the takers that give,” Damian mumbled. His eyes closed for a moment and when they reopened he was lost in his own thoughts and his body had tensed. Pain coursed through him, mental pain that radiated throughout his physique. After a moment of silence, he kissed her forehead again and asked her to go on, a deep voice of agony pouring from his throat in a low whisper.

She hated to cause him pain and has seen a glimpse of suffering as his eyes searched her. “Well. So, I was in this room and there was…there was someone there with me, a man I think. He told me that I needed to learn, but I kept protesting, telling them to send me back to you. ‘Learn” he said.
Part of me knew that I needed to hear what was being said but I just kept thinking about you and being together and finally being happy. I wanted my parents to see me and to know that I had found you; they didn’t have to worry about me never finding love or being alone. It seemed like I was there for so long, telling them I wanted to go back and then I realized I had agreed to go back and be like you, an angel of death. So I sat down and let the man speak. He told me I was different, that I could conjure things and I could do anything I could think of. Of course I already knew all those things because of you and he told me that I would learn how to use them. ‘The most important thing,’ he told me ‘is to take the spirit into the light by whatever means I could use.’ There would be some that refused and I was not to waist time if I thought that they were going to remain. I wanted to ask about heaven and hell and what they did when those spirits walked into the light. Would I remember going with them or would it be just like I walked up and then left?”

Amy had backed out of his arms as the words tumbled from her mouth, and now she paced across his kitchen. “They said heaven and hell weren’t our…space…anyways, information was just thrown at me but it didn’t really mean anything until I was dropped back on the ground, in the graveyard. I told you what happened then.”

Slowly, her movements stopped.

She wanted to be wrapped in his arms again, but it wouldn’t change anything. Standing still she gazed at her bare feet. Her thoughts were rolling around her mind, and Amy opened her mouth to say something when something tugged at her. It was something between a physical and mental pull, and her head shot up and Amy knew she needed to be somewhere.

Damian had the same reaction. He had been in the process of reaching out his hand to pull her into him when his posture changed. “We should go,” he whispered.

He gave her a moment to pull on a jacket over the shirt she had slept in and then jump into a pair of black jeans. Chocolate hair fell around her in soft waves as she ran her fingers through the locks.
“Why don’t we walk,” he said, taking her hand and starting for the door. A pair of black sunglasses folded over his eyes, and just like that he was the Damian she remembered.

Hand in hand they left the apartment, their power mingling together and weaving a shield around them. Amy couldn’t risk being seen and with him, and Damian no longer wished to be in the human world.

“Do you know where we are going?” he questioned her as they rounded a corner.

“An old house,” she said as an image built in her mind. Back in the apartment Amy had seen just a flash of a woman and where the death was taking place. Now as they walked quickly, she saw in more detail, but she didn’t need to see the house. Her feet seemed to know where to go. “The sides are covered in vines and the light blue paint is chipping. The woman’s husband used to tend to the garden, but since he died…” How did she know these things?

Damian squeezed her hand quickly, reassuring her with the simple action.

They arrived at the house much quicker than a human would have and Amy realized that they had been moving faster than the cars they had pasted on the road. It was another aspect she hadn’t adjusted to. Amy just couldn’t stop thinking like a human. Even though she knew it was true, that she could move faster and that she was strong, she didn’t act like she knew those things. They just happened when she went to do something.

The house was just as she had seen it in her mind, the blue walls covered in veins that twisted together in intricate patterns. Like snakes they crawled up the sides, covering the windows and the crooked shutters. A garden had wrapped around the small porch, but all that was left was the crumbled remains of soil and the drooping leaves of dead plants. A gravel road stretched up to the rickety stairs that lead to the porch, dead on either side of the makeshift driveway. The old house seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, the sides huffing out and the foundation sinking under some unseen weight.

“Do you want to remain here? I can go in alone to asses the situation and complete retrieval,” Damian said, his voice even and calm as he spoke.

Amy shook her head. “I should go in,” she whispered. A light wind tickled the fine hairs on her arms and blew strands of dark hair into her face.

“Alright.” Damian squeezed her hand again. “Prepare for a didactic event.”

She giggled, the odd way he talked making her smile. Unlike high school students Damian was equipped with a hefty vocabulary and the way that he spoke was erudite. It was not conceited or mocking of those who spoke with colloquial terms.

“I have done this before, Damian…” Amy shivered, suppressing tears that threatened to pour down her cheeks as she remembered her mother.

He sighed and pulled her into his arms, kissing the top of her head gently and mumbling, “It won’t be the same… Your mother was a test.”

“Test?”

“If you did not take the soul of your first they would have revoked your…rights. You would have been put to rest.”

“You mean I would have been dead; they would have taken me from you. I can do this Damian. Don’t worry.” Amy wiggled away from him and headed inside, glancing over her shoulder to see if he was following. She walked up to the house running her fingers over the vines that twisted together across the house, choking the life from the structure. Then she entered the building, the stench of death wrapping around her and pulling her to the room of the woman.

She had braids of white hair, little bows tied to the ends and cascading down her arms. Lying in bed her head was propped upon a single pillow, a blanket wrapped around her waist her arms pinning it at her sides. They had arrived at the moment the spirit had passed from the body, lifting from the flesh cage and arriving for the angels of death to herd on ward.

A smile tugged on Amy’s lips and, ignoring Damian as he entered the room behind her, she approached the woman. “It is time to leave.”

“I know, dear.” The woman spoke, a soft glow twisting around her body as a smile touched her lips. “I’m going to be with him forever now.” She turned and vanished into the light without another word and Amy giggled, bringing her hands together and turning to Damian with a grin.

“So romantic.”

He shook his head and walked into the room, taking her hand and leading her from the room.
“It’s death, Amy, not romance.” Damian’s voice was steel piercing her. He never wanted to talk shop with her, when she had been human. When Amy had first been told the truth she had a million questions for him. Damian had just chuckled and said he was glad she believed him. From then open he tried to push away her questions with vague answers and reminding her that it was death he was dealing with.

The way Amy saw it was they were moving people forward from this world to a new one. The fact that they existed, she and Damian, confirmed that there was something after death.