Chapter Eighteen: Moving On

Nathaniel

 

 

Through a haze of smoke, I discover Steven lying unconscious and alone on the ground. I cradle him in my arms and feel something sticky on the back of his head. I know it’s blood without looking. It doesn’t appear to be much, but whatever he hit his head on was enough to open the skin. His heart beats inside his chest, but it’s faint.

I move him out of the smoke as quickly as I can. His bloodstream and brain can only withstand a lack of oxygen for so long before there’s no hope of him coming back. Before I find fresh air and safety, Steven’s body decides to give up.

“I don’t think so.” I give him a small jerk.

Nothing changes. I speed forward and find a patch of sand and sparse grass. Placing him carefully on the ground, I begin breathing for him and attempt to restart his heart. Instead of returning to life, Steven leaves his body.

I’m fully aware of his vacancy and yet I give him another breath and chest compression.

“It’s too late,” he says.

I keep working on resuscitation as Steven stands by me in spirit form. “No, it isn’t,” I say without looking at him.

“I told you I mess everything up.”

“Lie down and I’ll bring you back.” I tip his head back, pinch his nose closed, and give him another breath.

“I don’t think it’s going to work, Nathaniel. I ruined my life and I don’t get a second chance.”

Second chances. How did I not see it until now? I rock back onto my heels and slowly rise to my feet. My heart pounds with the idea that has suddenly struck me numb. I stare hard into the night, seeing my client, the fire, the waves of smoke billowing into the sky with new found enlightenment. “What would you have done differently?”

“Everything.” Steven stares at his lifeless body. “Starting with my family. We should have talked to each other and actually listened.”

“I’ve seen people spend every day together and never see each other for who they are.”

“I don’t agree with how they treated me, but I could have responded better.”

“I’m glad you can see a slice of the truth now,” I say.

“Are you really here to take me to the other side?”

“Yes.”

“What if I want to see my father first?”

“We can do that,” I say. “He won’t know you’re there. It can be difficult to see them this way.”

“But you can translate for me, right? You showed yourself to me when I was still alive.”

This is going to be tricky. Like everything about my new position, I so often think I’m making it up as I go along. “Because you were my client. I can’t talk to strangers without a reason.”

Steven appraises me with his eyes. “But you showed yourself to the shaman and his son, and at Castle Hill Studios. I saw you,” he accuses.

“That was different,” I defend.

“What do you do, exactly? Why me? Why are you really here?”

“To save your life or take you to the hereafter,” I say as the web of my existence suddenly begins to tangle itself around me. Steven saw me as an angel and as Juliana’s boyfriend. I need to clear up his confusion about who and what I am.

“Will I be like you now? How do you walk around and show yourself? If I could do that, then I’ll go talk to my dad.” He squats down and tries to pick up a stone. His fingers pass through the solid rock.

I ignore his question and ask, “Did you collapse from the smoke?”

I drop my gaze to Steven’s body. Liam was clear about one thing. Whomever I trade with should be healthy. Their physical condition will become mine, even though I will look the same as I do now. We don’t have much time if we’re going to trade places. How many minutes have already passed since his heart stopped beating? A life with Juliana could be mine if Steven will agree to take my place as Angel of Death. Never again will I disappear from exhaustion, have to watch over my shoulder for Marcus, or hold back physically from her. We can grow old together instead of her aging while I remain always the same. The delicate strands of time could be mine again. I could weave a life with Juliana. It’s everything I want. Everything I long for. Could Steven give this gift to me?

“It was a stupid accident. I was tired and thinking about how Dominic left me to die. Then I sort of did. I tripped and fell. The slope was steep and I tumbled over an edge. Forget about that.” He shifts his gaze away from his body. “Teach me how you move things. How do you show yourself?”

“It can’t be taught unless you’re an angel.”

“Then make me like you.”

“There’s a lot more to it, Steven. We have an enormous amount of responsibility. I’m not here for your entertainment.”

“I can learn. I can make things right with my family. I can find my real mom.”

He’s anxious and the more he thinks about the change, the more excited he becomes.

“I exist in the service of others for all of eternity. Are you willing to take that on? There are rules and regulations. You’ll always be watched by higher powers.”

I can’t believe how eager he is to learn about what I do. My dreams are being laid before my feet, and instead of grabbing the opportunity, I’m overanalyzing every aspect of the situation. I’ve witnessed people struggle to attain lofty goals and what I learned was, the work involved is the most essential part of the reward. Have I worked hard enough to have Steven handed to me by the fates? I see eagerness and selfishness in his expression. A sugar-coated vision of an afterlife filled with endless freedoms glistens in his wide eyes.

“Yeah, dude. How hard can it be?” he says with a grin.

My hopes drown into the quicksand of my reality. I could struggle to the end of eternity looking for the perfect replacement. Someone with morals as high as Everest, truth and kindness equal to Saint Teresa’s. Would anyone ever measure up? Steven isn’t ideal, but he’s willing. Would I be okay with leaving him in my place?

“Come on. Teach me how you speak without being seen? That really messed with my head. Dominic could use a good dose of freak out. He took off on my horse and didn’t come back to look for me. The punk-ass.”

“You want to scare your friend?” I ask.

“Yeah. Well, maybe after I go flatten all the tires on my step-monster’s truck.”

The last sprinkle of hope glittering in the back of my imagined future dims and disappears altogether. Still unable to let it go, I say, “Steven, it can’t be like that. You will have recently departed souls to escort to the other side. One after another. It never stops and you have to be there for them.”

Steven turns to face the city. From this distance and the haze of smoke in the air, the glow of lights in the north can’t be seen. He considers my words, but no matter what he says next, I know it won’t be enough.

I visualize the veil between life and death. Then I reach out and open it. Like an iridescent curtain, I pull aside the barrier and expose the path to cross over. It’s distant at first, as if miles away, then slowly the other side of forever is opens to us. There’s a break in the luminous landscape as a shadow forms. The visitor moves closer until I can see the outline of a person.

Steven asks, “What about free time? Surely everyone deserves a day off.”

He turns back around and notices the opening in the veil for the first time. “What’s going on? What is this?”

“Do you not recognize the way out of here?” I ask.

“Huh? No. How did you do it?”

“This is where you step across and stop worrying about the frailties of life on earth,” I say.

How many times have I stood here holding open the doorway? How many times have I chauffeured the recently deceased to their loved ones and to a future without the constraints of time and distance?

“But I’m not finished here,” he says and steps back.

“Aren’t you? You wanted to end everything only hours ago. What’s different now?”

“You. You said I could learn to do better. You said I could have another chance to make something of my life. I want to try again. I want to prove I’m not a screw up.”

His angst is rising when it should be lowering. Once free of their body, most people feel the lightness of their spirit and the ease of existing without physical dependency.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance, Steven. I wanted to help you figure things out, but you wanted to follow your friends.” I have to hold back the shrug. He refused to listen when I tried convincing him to return to his car.

“You have to let me be like you. I’ll go back and finish what I started. I can get my own place and finish college. I want to study pyrotechnics.”

“Returning isn’t an option any longer. Now, you are completely free. Take a look for yourself and tell me it doesn’t feel amazing,” I say.

He grits his teeth and shakes his head in stubbornness. “No. I will hang out with the dead. I want to be what you are and I’m not leaving this spot until you make it happen,” he says, fists clenched at his side.

With my own fantasies of starting over with Juliana lying shattered around my feet, my patience is flimsier than cellophane. Can I hurl him into the afterlife while cursing about the injustices of being an Angel of Death? Can I walk away and let him wander as a lost soul with no home? These thoughts cross my mind and I know I will do neither. I was chosen for this because no matter what happens, I do what’s right. I will lie down in front of destiny and let it steamroll me if that would save one single soul. Creator knew this about me when I was chosen and I have risen to meet expectations. I can only be who I am and Steven would be a poor replacement. My sense of accountability and my integrity won’t let him take my place.

“Go on. She’s waiting to speak to you,” I say with a wave of my hand toward the visitor who has come to greet Steven from the other side.

“You keep running your mouth about how great it is to be dead, but I’m not changing my mind. I want what you have. I need to speak to my dad. He has to know how evil his wife is.”

“Steven, say hello to your visitor,” I say with barely controlled impatience. I suck at my job tonight, but what the hell. I may have walls built of principles and morals, but I also have a mote filled with irritating, intolerable annoyances. “Look at her for God’s sake.”

I have a strong idea who this woman is, but I want Steven to see her for the first time without my influence.

His eyes flicker toward the woman. She waits on the precipice between this life and the next. Her face is serene and filled with love as she stares at her son.

Steven falls silent as he takes a closer look at the woman. Her hair is a similar color to his. Their sweep of eyebrows beneath a straight forehead and the angular curve of jawbone to a pointed chin are nearly identical to one another. With the drama and heaviness of the physical life behind him, truth and clarity come much faster on this side of life. Even in his worked-up state, the truth is obvious. His mother is here to greet him as he passes through the veil. His mother that he didn’t even know was deceased has come to be the first person to stand by his side.

Steven stares at his feet and takes a hesitant step forward. He raises his gaze. “Are you…? But I thought…”

He can’t finish the question as emotions swell. His gaze darts from me to her to his body.

She smiles brighter and says, “I’ve waited for so long to speak to you, Steven. Will you join me now?” She holds a hand out to him, inviting him to take it.

“She would like to know her son,” I say softly. “I think you’ve been separated long enough, Steven.”

He takes one last look at me and walks into the rift. He wraps his hand around his mother’s and crosses without another thought of his finished life.

I close the pathway and sink to my knees. In my body, I want to feel the ground dig into me. I want to smell the smoke and cry out to the sky. I want the agony of my loss to consume me completely so I will never want something so badly again. He’s gone and my chance to have a life with Juliana went with him.

A wide jagged rock lies on the ground a few feet in front of me. I consider banging my head against it and knocking myself out like Steven did, but it won’t make any difference. I’m already dead. The dead don’t die again. The dead don’t rise again. It’s a fairytale with one reader. Me. Dreaming of the unattainable.

 

∞

 

“What in the dickens do you think you’re doing?”

I stare at the mangled chicken thigh and leg on the cutting board. I’ve cut them up so the bone sticks out and the meat hangs off the side. Not really caring, I scoop up the mess with the edge of my knife against my hand and drop it into the pot.

“Cooking dinner.”

“Nathaniel, it’s six o’clock in the morning,” Vivi says as she tightens her bathrobe and gives me a penetrating glare.

Instead of replying to the obvious blunder I’ve made about which meal I should be making, I turn to the onion, celery, and carrots. “This is my last day on the ranch and I thought you should have a decent meal.”

“What do you mean last day?” she asks with a scoff.

Vivi works around me in the kitchen and starts a pot of coffee.

Before entering the house, I chopped and stacked firewood while waiting for the sun to rise. The repetitive, mindless chore had to be done to help Vivi stay warm in her massive log home. I ran out of logs to split and didn’t want to start the chainsaw. Part of me must have known my employer was still asleep. Why that didn’t translate to cooking breakfast instead of dinner is as much a mystery to me as it is to her. As I worked on the firewood, I was also waiting for a new assignment. The pull on my spirit to be with my next suicidal client didn’t happen. And now I’m cooking.

“Listen here, Nathaniel. You’re contracted to work here until I’m worm fodder and long after I become the next year’s flowers.”

I chop vegetables on the cutting board as the coffee maker begins to gurgle.

“I’ve never signed a thing, Vivi.”

“Signatures are needed between friends now, eh?”

I sense her hard green gaze on me, but it doesn’t change my mind. “This is pointless. I can’t keep pretending. I’m not a rancher. I have other responsibilities.”

“Damn right, you do. To me, for starters. We made a deal and you’re not getting out of it because your ego has taken a beating.”

“It’s not about my ego,” I defend.

She moves to the cupboard and grabs her favorite coffee cup. I hear her wheeze and know a cough is coming. Vivi is dying or recovering from cancer. She rarely shares the details of her illness with me, preferring to bear the burden alone. But she opened her home to me and allows me to ease some of her discomfort by channeling healing energy for her. She also hired me as a caretaker and ranch hand. After what happened with Steven, I decided the job wasn’t meant for me. I scrape the last of the vegetables into the pot, rinse my hands, and move to her side. Even if she’s perturbed with my resignation, she’s still my friend, and I won’t let her hack until she’s blue in the face.

After the spasms in her lungs settle, I retrieve the ingredients for the medicinal tea that helps ease her symptoms. She’ll drink it with her coffee if I put it in front of her.

“I thought Juliana was a sweet girl. I’m surprised she broke it off with you so soon,” Vivi says to my back.

The clinking of her spoon as she mixes sugar in her coffee is a familiar morning sound. It’s surprising how much I’ve grown used to Vivi’s habits, even though we haven’t known each other long.

“She didn’t break up with me,” I say.

“Well, what else would have you spewing such nonsense at the crack of dawn?”

“I will continue to stop by and check on you, but I’ll never have my life back so there’s no need for a paying job. My afterlife involves babysitting the dead and dying and that’s it.”

Vivi shuffles her slippered feet past me and sits at the dining table on the other side of the long counter.

“Since this is your last day,” she says. Her tone of voice has switched from scorn to all business. “How about two eggs over easy and toast with jam? After which, I would like you to finish clearing out the guestrooms. Then I need you to move the piano in the living room. The dust under that thing would have the fairies sneezing for weeks.”

“Is that all?” I ask dryly.

“No. It’s not. I need help moving about two tons of topsoil into the greenhouse, and I want you to help me turn over one of the garden beds to prepare for the fall planting.”

I sprinkle salt, pepper, and parsley into the pot of what should be chicken and dumplings but a key ingredient is missing. The cans of chicken broth stare at me from the counter and it takes way longer than it should for me to realize I haven’t poured them in yet. The mental distractions have my head so far up my backside that it’s making cooking a nearly impossible task. I open the cans and pour them into the pot then start brewing Vivi’s tea. We have an unspoken arrangement since we met and she became aware of my presence as her angel. When I’m around, I make her breakfast. Otherwise, she’ll drink coffee, often with a shot of Scotch in it. In my opinion, that isn’t a suitable meal for any elderly sick woman. I crack eggs over the frying pan and slip slices of bread into the toaster.

“You might as well spill the rest of it, young man. You’re moping about is intolerable.”

“I am intolerable. I don’t know why you or Juliana deal with me.” I scrub my fingers over my scalp. “I’m going to focus on the service I committed myself to. I never asked for it, but I guess this is where I’m supposed to be. I manage a never-ending turnstile of needy spirits crossing over.”

“We’re having a pity party, are we?” she asks and takes a sip of coffee. “It’s not for me to judge, but you stink at this.”

I place a plate of food in front of her and consider her list of chores. None of it is a problem and I could complete the list easily, except for the guestroom closets. That takes two of us because she wants to see what has been stored away and knowing Vivi, she’ll only work on it a couple of hours at a time before taking a break.

“I’m intolerable and stinky. Go ahead and add miserable and grumpy, too.”

“You had one failing and you’re already giving up. What kind of man are you?” she accuses.

“You don’t understand, Vivian. He wanted to take my place as Angel of Death and I said no. I can’t walk away from this. I’m stuck.”

“You are not,” she says. “Tell me why you didn’t choose him.”

“Because he would have used the angelic powers inappropriately. He wanted to play games and manipulate people.”

She takes a forkful of eggs and is quiet for a minute. I strain the tea, place the mug on the table, and begin cleaning up the hellacious mess I’ve made in the kitchen.

“Well, now, I think I’ve figured it all out. Become my personal slave. Stay here where you’re protected in the boundary lines around the house and your pretty girlfriend can come over any time she wants.”

“That will never work. The guilt would eat me alive. Souls would be wandering around lost without me there to open the path to the other side.”

“I’m not serious, you fool.”

Her mockery is at first lost on me, but it sinks in to my core seconds later.

“What is the problem, Nathaniel? You wouldn’t let another idiot loose on the world. Good for you. Now, go back out there and find the right person to take your place.”

“I know it’s not going to happen.” I stop washing the dishes to give Vivi my full attention. “This decision is bigger than me. My wish to be with Juliana and have a normal life is nothing compared to the needs of the world. Life is vast and I am a tiny unimportant speck in this universe.”

“A dream is the grandest thing of all. Don’t let the teeth of fear take you by the throat and rip out your hope.”

“That’s my point. My hopes don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.”

“Stranger relationships have succeeded long before yours and Juliana’s. The moon has never stopped chasing the sun. They have perfect harmony with each other. Find the balance between work, play, and including Juliana in your life.”

I sigh and return to the dishes. “In other words, get off my pity throne and get on with my life because the sun keeps shining whether I want it to or not.”

“You got it,” she says, and takes a bite of toast.