My skin gets caught on more thorns and brambles than I can count as I sprint back towards the mansion, but the pain doesn't register. I'm so beyond pain, and terror, and all of the other emotions that can be adequately explained with words.
Simple words could never describe what I've just witnessed, what I've just felt.
When I finally throw open the back doors to the mansion, trembling head to foot, there's only one thought flitting through my mind: get out get out get out get out.
I don't know how or why, but it's exceedingly clear that Death has been lying to me the entire time. Hell, he might be lying to the other residents, too. He's not the harmless caretaker that he's tricked me to believe in. He is everything that I thought Death would be – worse – and I can't believe I ever thought any different. That I started to care for him...No. No, I would not be his next victim. I've spent too long running from death to give up now.
The stairs protest under my heavy footfalls as I rush up to the second floor and push into my room. It shouldn't take long for me to pack all of my things, and now with the gift of Mem's scooter, getting far away from this house in a short amount of time shouldn't be a problem.
But before I can zip up the bag and make my swift exit, I'm stopped short by a quiet voice at the door. "Don't leave."
The breath rushes out of me as I turn to face Lisa, barefoot, who is already blinking sleep from her eyes. The hurt in her gaze is unmistakable, and for several moments I struggle with what to say. Finally, I settle on, "I have to." Lisa's brow scrunches, and I add, "I don't think it's safe for me here."
"You got hurt?" Lisa's eyes widen as she surveys the pricks of blood on my arms, caused by my mad dash through the forest. I start to wonder if I should warn Lisa about Death when I hear his voice – his normal, human voice – rumble down the hall and Lisa swivels towards it.
"Lisa, is everything okay, dear?"
I'm not sure why, but I'm not fully prepared for the moment when he appears in my doorway, brows furrowed with worry. Totally normal; no sign of horns or scales or claws. No hint of that wicked scythe, either. At some point between now and our encounter in the garden, he'd thrown on a Kermit the Frog t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. As if it had all been a dream.
"I think Cara is leaving," Lisa replies, her lower lip wobbling as tears start to gather in her eyes. Death crouches down and picks up the sleepy girl, holding her to his chest. It's such a jarringly tender image that it makes me start to doubt what I'd witnessed outside. But no; I could never make that up, not in a million years. Gary, kneeling on the grass. The angel of Death, towering above him like a shard of fallen night.
How do I reconcile all of the horrors I've experienced with the man standing before me now?
"Is that right?" Death quietly asks Lisa. Her face is tucked against the hollow of his throat, so he's looking right at me all the while. His eyes speak for him in the silence. Don't go.
A burst of anger heats my veins. He really wants to act regretful, to put all of this on me, when he's the one that's been lying this entire time? As much as I want to slam the door in his face and ride off into the night, I also deserve an explanation. I don't think I could ever truly live the rest of my life without understanding what I'd just witnessed.
So I keep my chin raised and meet his gaze straight-on, still trembling as I carefully say, "It's up for discussion."
He nods softly, acknowledging my unspoken demand, and groans as he hoists Lisa higher in his arms. "Don't worry about it, love. Let's get you to bed. Cara and I will talk."
"Okay," Lisa says, rubbing her eyes and yawning as they round the corner to Lisa's room. Being that it's right next to mine, I don't have to wait much longer until I hear her door click shut and Death is once again standing in my doorway.
"Don't come any closer," I say with as much venom as I can muster. His jaw tightens but he remains in the same spot, somber and leaning against the jamb.
"I'm sorry," he says, staring at the floor.
"For what?"
"Scaring you."
"What about lying to me?" I spit. Death's gaze finally snaps up to mine, and I have a hard time reading the emotion there. His voice is quiet as a whisper when he says, "I never lied to you."
I scoff and kick my duffle bag across the floor. "Bullshit."
"I didn't. I told you that you weren't perceiving me in my natural form." His voice remains as calm as the surface of a frozen lake and it pisses me off, so much so that I stand from the edge of the bed and take two strides towards him. I wish he were solid, so I could push him, make him feel something.
So I could make him understand how much he hurt me.
"How can you be so stoic about this? About what you did to Gary? He's never hurt anyone in his life, and you just...You don't give a shit." He flinches a little, but I stand my ground. I think of that clearing, that heavy wind, the harrowing silence afterwards. Cold fear replaces my anger. "What did you do to him?"
"Cara." His voice remains devastatingly soft. "Gary passed away today. From natural causes. It was his time."
No.
The word spills out of my mouth and I gasp, my hand flying up to my throat as tears start to tighten it. Just this morning, in his store, he had been so alive. So excited for the future, so eager to see his grandkids...The room spins before me. It's not fair. It doesn't make sense. None of it. How can a person be there one moment and not the next? My entire body shudders as all of the same thoughts that followed my mother's death come flooding back, leaving numbness in their wake.
"I was doing my job." Death watches me unflinchingly, his jaw set, as if he's had to practice this speech a million times. His eyes go dim, devoid of the joy that at some point I'd foolishly started expecting to see. "When it's time for a spirit to move on, I have no choice but to assume my true form and to see it through. If I fail, if they refuse to leave this world..."
He doesn't have to finish his sentence, because I know exactly what happens to them. They end up here, in Death's home, forever chasing the things that kept them clinging to life. But I think of Louis's Death Day party, of the lazy afternoons spent gathering around the fire, of the residents' teasing and laughter during meals...
"Living here in this house as a lost soul...Surely that's the better alternative than what happened to Gary. To dying." I shake my head, remembering the gleaming point of the scythe, and Death's gaze softens the slightest bit.
"My true form has struck terror into humanity since the beginning of time. I cannot change that, the way that I cannot change how they perceive me. But my essence is not good or bad. It just is. The way of our universe is balance. If I allow undead souls to linger, then the balance of things would be upset. Do you understand?"
I cross my arms, nonplussed. "What's so bad about the balance being upset?"
He chuckles a little, the sound coming from deep in his throat. "For starters, you would cease to exist. As would I. As would everything. Without order, we are but particles flying through a vacuum. Death gives life its meaning." He takes a few steps forward so that we're nearly touching, and I'm too overwhelmed to complain. His voice is a soft caress, wrapping around my skin, unraveling the gathering tension in my muscles. "Tell me, Cara, which is more precious: the mosquito trapped in amber for a million years, or the moth swallowed by a blazing flame? That which is precious is that which is scarce."
I remain still, trying to control my uneven breathing, and stare into those depthless eyes. Eyes that have known history, love, horror – eyes that are inexplicably both cold and tender.
Eyes that have gazed upon my mother.
My voice remains remarkably steady when I say, "Gary's family won't give a shit about the greater meaning of life, or the balance of the universe, when they're standing at his grave. They will want him. Just him."
"He is in a better place. It's for the best, even if they can't understand it."
"So the living can just fuck off, right?"
He flinches again, ever so slightly, even as his voice is tinged with regret. "I am not in the business of the living."
It feels like a slap to the face, and I stumble back from him. The coldness of his words pierces me, devastates me in a way that nothing has up to this point. They are proof that death takes and takes, caring nothing for what's left in its wake: the ones who get left behind to put together the shattered pieces.
And the fact that I'd ever started to think any different...
"Will you let me show you something?" Death's voice is softer than I've ever heard it. And despite the anger and despair that's currently writhing through me, I find myself nodding.
I slip on my shoes and we creep through the night-dark corridors, silent as cats, before stopping at the bottom of a shadowed staircase. The same staircase that leads up to his room, which no one else has ever been allowed to see.
Until now.
Suddenly, my pulse starts to race for an entirely different reason.
"You're taking me up there?" I ask, my voice nothing but a dry rasp. Death smirks, just enough to make my stomach flip.
"Is there any reason why you wouldn't want me to?"
I shake my head, at a loss for words, and follow Death up the cramped vestibule and to the attic door. The moment that he moves to open it, my anxiety flares. "Wait," I say, raising a hand to his shoulder before I remember that I can't touch him. He looks at me expectantly. "Why are you doing this? With me?"
"Because..." He watches me for a moment, sea-blue eyes dipping over every inch of my face. My eyes, my nose, my lips... "Because you already saw part of who I am tonight. Let me show you the rest."
My breath catches in my throat as he opens the door, revealing one of the most interesting rooms that I've ever seen. It looks like an antique store, carefully curated. But among the piles of personal items on the floor and various sketchings covering every inch of wall space, my gaze goes to one thing and one thing only.
There, on the wall directly across from me, is an expertly drawn pencil portrait of a woman. A woman with my hair, with my eyes, with my smile. There's no need for me to read the name scrawled across the bottom.
I'd recognize my mother at the end of the earth.