The Grim Reaper (The Grim Reaper Duology - Book 1)

Call

It's now time for our therapy session. I'm completely dreading it. I want to confide in someone who'll listen to me about this whole predicament and I know a psychiatrist will, but they're only interested in diagnosing me with a mental illness that I know I don't have and throwing a prescription at me. Any medication that they'll prescribe won't have the desired effect because I'm not sick.

Each of us are assigned a doctor and we're waiting outside their room. There's a handful of us in line to see Doctor Franklin. Cole has a different doctor, so I'm unacquainted with any of his other patients. But, that Lenny guy is sitting at the other end of the queue. He's resting his elbows on his knees and rocking his leg up and down. He's keeping to himself and none of the others around are so much as even acknowledging his existence. I feel bad for him because of that, on top of Marc picking on him earlier on. "Hey, Lenny, right?" I say, taking a seat beside him.

"Yes, that's me," he mumbles.

I smile at him. "I'm Tho--"

"I know who you are," he states. "And I'd rather you'd stay away from me."

I frown. "What do you mean? Look, I'm just trying to--"

"Don't act like you're this good-natured guy who just wants to be everyone's friend. You're no better than your dad, so stop pretending to be. You're only fooling yourself."

I raise my eyebrow. "What exactly do you mean by that? My dad's--"

"Got a lot of secrets," he interjects. "Maybe at your visiting slot, you could ask him all about it."

"What are you talking about?"

The door to Doctor Franklin's office swings open. "Thomas Burton," he calls. I take a glance at Lenny and stand up. I've got to find out what he was talking about, so I'm going to both approach him again later, and bring this exchange of words up in a conversation with my dad when he and Mum visit later on.

"So, Thomas, it's on your file that you had a very upsetting nightmare and some traumatizing visions. Do you want to tell me about those?"

He slowly takes a seat and gestures for me to sit opposite him. "They're not just visions," I sigh. "They're real. I know everybody else has thought so, and you're probably thinking it too, but I'm not delusional. And, I didn't have a nightmare. It actually happened."

"What happened?" he asks.

I swallow. "There's this murderer. Actually, he's a serial killer. Every Halloween, he comes to our town and he goes on a killing spree. Last year, he killed my friend, and I wanted to catch him. But, he had been stalking me, so he sent me a note, telling me to meet him. When I came face to face with him, he knocked me out using some kind of drug," I explain. "He tied me to a chair, and made me choose one of this year's victims. And then he, he, he--"

"I'm sorry," I swallow, looking down. "Take your time," he says.

I nod painfully, trying desperately to regain a sense of composure. "Then, he told me that I could free his soul. He said he could fragment part of his soul in my body, by taking some of my blood. He cut my arm and filled a tube with it. He then poured in some of his own blood and mixed it together. Then, he threw it onto a fire and I could feel my muscles tightening. My body started reaching a sweltering temperature. It felt like my skin was physically on fire. The pain was unbearable. I genuinely felt like I was going to die. And I think I passed out, because when I woke up, I was back in my bedroom. It was like I had woken up from a nightmare. Except I didn't. This definitely happened."

He nods. "Okay. Tell me about the vision you had."

I look down. What's the point? I know that he's already coming up with a list of possible mental illnesses I could have and is trying to eliminate some of them. He thinks I need to recover from it. But there is no recovering. Part of him is living in me and I'll never get rid of that. When I decided on Mr Blanchard, I thought I could do something to stop it. I thought that maybe I could lurk around his house on Halloween and stop the Reaper before he could actually commit the murder. But, it's Halloween in tomorrow and I'm stuck in here, helpless to do anything. Doctor Franklin is watching me intently and it's making me uncomfortable. So, I just continue.