The Reaper's Token

Violet Gives me the Skinny

I looked down into Violet's bright green eyes as they stared hesitantly back at me. Only the raindrops interrupted what would have been a tense silence.  

"He vanished about a year ago," she said, turning her head away from me. Violet stared at the pouring rain through the busted glass door. "Xavier," she said almost in a whisper.

She pinched the bridge of her nose like she was having a headache and said, "In a nutshell, he died, then he somehow came back, threw me off the side of a cliff, and disappeared - until recently."

"He did... what? Okay, hold on. Start over. So he was dead... when he killed you?" I asked.

"You haven't heard anything about my death?" Violet asked. " Alice or Keith didn't tell you anything?"

"No," I replied a little sheepishly. "This may come as a shock, but I haven't been here that long - about 72 hours? I still feel like I am falling down the Rabbit's hole in Wonderland. Not to mention this new existence of mine may already be threatened by power-hungry megalomaniacs!"

"Talk about self-absorbed!" Violet said. She stared at me hard and then burst out laughing. She was stunning when she laughed, and I couldn't help it. I started laughing too. Soon we were doubled over in a fit of laughter. It felt terrific. A brief moment of reprieve from the growing questions and fears swirling around us like thick smoke. 

When we finally pulled ourselves together, I asked her to explain her death and how this, Xavier, was involved.

Violet sighed as she leaned her back fully against the wall.

"I knew him, Xavier, when we were kids. He did awful things - cruel things, for fun. He was the mean kid in my neighborhood. You know how sometimes the mean kid is a natural leader, and other lesser, mean peons follow him?"

I nodded. Yeah, I knew the type.

"Well, not Xavier." Violet continued, "Everyone was leery of him. He was... just off somehow and, no one wanted to be around him for long. Our families had been friends before he and I were born, but Xavier's behavior became an issue.

We felt sorry for his parents. They didn't ignore his alarming habits, but they didn't know what to do to help him. It sounds terrible... but he truly seemed to have been born evil. Anyway, my parents didn't feel like it was safe to be around Xavier, so we stopped socializing with them as a family, and my parents only met them out when Xavier wasn't around."

"What kind of stuff did he do?" I asked.

"He seemed to like hurting younger kids, smaller animals, and peers in particular. He liked to discover your fears and then torment you with them. If you were afraid of water, he would push you into deep, dark water. He just wanted to see what would happen or what you would do. Xavier wouldn't stop unless someone made him stop. It was compulsive and terrifying."

"For you, it was heights, wasn't it?" I asked.

Violet looked at me surprised and then nodded. I remembered my dream of the little girl on the monkey bars and each of her fingers being pried off as she screamed in a complete panic.

"Toward the end of his life, he was sick." Violet continued. "He had a terminal disease. I saw him a few weeks before he died... his request. We met at the side of Lands End Labyrinth facing the Golden Gate Bridge. He looked angry, weak, and distraught the entire time. Xavier didn't cry; in fact, he never even said a word. That surprised me. I thought he wanted to apologize for all his cruelty... but I was wrong."

When he died, I went to the funeral. After I kept finding these strange notes, they said they were from Xavier and wanted to meet me at the Labyrinth - the last place I saw him. I thought it was a prank at first. It started small, but then it was everywhere. They were in my mailbox, locker, lunch box, car, doorstep, the books I was reading for school. Then it was outside my bedroom window." Violet said gravely, lost in thought.