Spirit Wars (5 page)

“ ‘On this exact hour thirteen years from now,’ she went on, ‘at
three in
the morning of October 31st
, come and visit me. I
shall be waiting for you.’

“I indulged her macabre game. I touched her tiny fist clenched at
her side and held it in the semblance of a handshake. I made her sense me like
a cold draft too, in that dark, shut room, while her whole bare arm broke out
in goose bumps as big as when men still shuffled forth on their knuckles. Then
I went to work.

“First, I froze the Sands of the Horologium. Next, I plucked out
the rotting, almost dissolved kidneys wrapped in layers of pustules, what had
been withering her father from the inside right before her eyes. So he’d live a
whole decade more. I breathed the sweet breath of cherubs down the parched
mouth, the sandpapery throat until he awoke with a gasp. They embraced each
other and, as you fleshies are wont to say…

“They all lived happily ever after,” Sephtimus finishes with a
smirk that I see inches from my face.

“Does she remember?” I blurt out. Completely spellbound by the
story, I forget who I’m speaking to; at the same time there’s a kind of
split-second delay and it feels like I’m jolted back into Death’s office. “…
the promise that she made?”

“What
do you think? Humans are Janus-faced creatures. At times of need they shall
call upon the names of all the saints and then take back whatever they promised
as soon as they're out of harm’s way. Even more so with Death. Naturally no one
remembers me. I’m the Ever Uninvited Guest; the one thing no mortal thinks of
unless it's absolutely certain and can no longer be postponed. Never mind that
I'm the closest friend you have, at least second to your shadow.”

Sephtimus
finally puts out his cigarette
in the most unlikely ash tray. Another skeletal arm, this one sort of
elongated, bursts upward out of the floor and opens bony fingers like petals.
The osseous ash tray then sinks away in the same manner it has emerged and
leaves no sign
whatsoever
that it was ever
there.

“But when I signed off her father’s extension,” Sephtimus
continues, “I no longer cared how long I made it for. From that day she stood
up to me, I thought of claiming only one thing: her own fragrant soul. And the
appointment she set on that fateful day thirteen years ago is drawing near.
The
appointment of October 31st
falls on
the hour
barely two weeks from now.”

Two weeks before another light is snuffed out, I think to myself.
“But what if she was meant to live out all the days of her life? You can't take
anyone's life short of its natural span, can you?”

“This
is true. I cannot. Which leads to your repulsive presence here and the only
need I have of you. Which explains why you’re still holding on to a shred of
your sanity and not dribbling down your chin...” Sephtimus drifts backward then
does an about-face like the ghost of a bullet-riddled military officer. Instead
of heels to turn around on, the coat’s skirt which is the bottom tip of him
spins and flaps daintily, almost touching the floor.

“There's
nothing in the Book of Life and Death that gives me the power to do just that,
answer someone's death wish or influence another person to take a life. I'm
bound to practice non-interference, all to preserve the autonomy and freedom of
choice that was granted to insects like you. I was relegated to sneak around in
the shadows like some whipped mongrel waiting to be thrown table scraps by its
master.”

This makes sense. The idea of Death being no more than an executor
of things has been around in some folklore. He’s an agent, an enforcer who
simply does what he’s told and carries out fates that have already been set.
But how to explain the reprieve that he gave the woman's father?

“Yes, it's a fucked-up, ironic business when you think about it.
Death being a mere bagman,” Sephtimus continues. “As a bagman, I can choose to
be lenient and award a grace period, extend man’s sojourn in his world but not
hasten it. Life isn’t for me to give or to take.

“In fact,” he says after a long pause, “in the natural order of
things, the responsibility of taking lives falls into the very capable but
violent talons of the Crows.”

“The what?”

“Crows.
Don’t you believe in angels, meatball? Storks
for the entry of innocent cherubs and for the departure of other pure spirits.
Cro
ws for the arrest of the illegal, overstaying
ones. These two forces are the original immigration police of the world. The
Great Duality. One for continuity and propagation, the other for control and
stoppage. One for existence, the other for perpetual cancellation. It’s very
dangerous business to get involved when it’s not yet your proper time. Like if
you were love-ripe and next to a troll, or if you were at death’s door and
still vacillating.”

For a second I’m reminded of those pointy, birdlike things that
swooped down on me in the fisherman’s boat and delivered me to this Land of the
Eternal Dead. I shudder at the memory.

“Why’s
that?”
I venture, sensing Sephtimus is a chest
brimming with secrets, even bursting to reveal all.

“The raw forces that they are, they tend to be unthinking. Like
fifty-foot babies they’re unstoppable once they get started. The Storks, for
instance, are pure love and creation. If they had their way, promiscuity would
be the way of the world and you’d all be fucking like jackrabbits and flooding
the earth with your bastard children. The Crows, on the other hand, are the
embodiment of rage and destruction. They’d rip you to shreds in their blind
fury, devour everyone and everything in their path and never stop their feeding
frenzy.”

“Where do you fit in?”

“Death is the one who unleashes and points the Crows in the right
direction. Mass-scale in times of war and disaster. On ordinary days,
everything’s pretty much automatic so I just sit back and watch them at work.
In a few rare cases, I can stop them to grant an extension like what I did with
the woman’s father or if I ever wanted to pick a random soul up in person.
 But most of the time even if I want to, I just think,
To hell with it
.
To me, a person alive a little longer isn’t any different from one who’s
already stiff. So once your appointment comes up on the Interweave, that’s all
there is to it. There’s nothing that can change that except my… Presidential
Pardon, if you wish to call it that.

“But it’s all a matter of perspective, naturally. To the Crows,
I’m the unnecessary bureaucrat of Necro City and they’re always this –” he
makes the equivalent gesture with his thumb and index finger – “close to
booting me out.

“Especially now that I have a flaw growing inside me. This…
love
,”
he hisses. “This human emotion that’s been nesting inside my chest, little by
little overrunning the space where there was once nothing but dust and swirls
of abysmal matter. I was a fool not to notice that the more I hid it, the more
it blazed and consumed me. Now here I am burning feverishly with it. I cannot
allow this. Not with the Crows watching me at every turn, smelling something
different in me, peering at my thoughts and guessing my weakness.”

I
can sense it in Death's voice, the truth of it all.
The
Angel of Death sounds hunted, like a graying alpha lion now
feeling the weight of leading its pride.

“And
so, I have sought the counsel of every seer, warlock and witch in all the
territories of Necro City. Privately of course. They were all baffled by this
malady except one. An ancient creature like Death itself. She whose many eyes
pierce the intricate network of Wyrm-tunnels, from the pettiness of human lives
to the grand sweep of the universes. She whose nature it is to spin and to
plot: the Fate Weaver, the Spin Doctor Spinstra.

“She
instructed me that, because it is a human condition it should be treated
following the ways of humans. And so I have labored to understand a little of
your world – the world of my inferior and prey, can you imagine? Like a monk I
pored over tome after tomes in huge mausoleums of paper (after I gave up on the
World Wide Web) till I came upon the most promising solution to my troubles.”

An
unmistakably human sigh.

“Instead
of keeping this feeling secret, I must confess it to no less than the source.
Only then shall I be released and cured of this insanity.”

At
first, nothing makes sense. Then it comes to me with the flung weight of a
bullet train. 

“What are you saying? You want to... propose to her?”

“Yes. This you will help me do,” he speaks matter-of-factly.
“Since the only way to conquer love is to yield to it, I shall allow myself to
be swallowed by it whole. Isn’t that what your philosophers say? I have to face
my fear of rejection and walk through the fire. If I come back unscathed, then
I will be twice as strong as I was. And nothing can touch me. I used to
bask
in the scent of human fear. As corny as it is now, in order
for Death to continue existing, Death must also be loved. And theoretically, a
lover who makes a human fall shall have a claim on both her heart and soul.
Yes, there’s this tiny clause in the Book of Life and Death that speaks of
this.”

I can't believe it. Here I am surrounded by the crackling fires of
hell thousands of kilometers below surface and this demon-lord who holds the
key to my cell, all he can talk about is his sick,
preposterous
love! 

“I have a better idea...” I look at him from the top of my eyes
and through a
malicious
smirk scrunching my face. “
How about I just sit
back and
watch those fucked-up bird monsters of yours
tear you to fucking pieces?!!”

I spit the words out in
boiling
anger. I myself am taken
aback by this outburst. It’s like I’m so full of rage I could just strangle
someone to the last shuddering breath. I guess this place does that to a
person.
But
it’s Death who raises one hand in the air and arranges his fingers as though
they were squeezing something in them. At the same time I feel pressure
mounting around my neck, my windpipe being crushed like a drinking straw.

“You
speak as if you have a choice. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

All at once the Lachesis monitors switch to the scene inside the
office. I can see the head reaper's back and his surprisingly vice-like hand
still poised in the air, but the figure
chained against
the elevator wreck isn’t anyone I recognize. My wetsuit
appears to have fused onto my skin and the result is somehow tattery, sort of
hazy and distorted in its own aura of water. Worse,
my face is
grotesque, with what appears to be the cheeks and jawline of the missing link
between humans and fish. In fact, I have scales for skin and fins where my ears
should be.

“In case you haven’t noticed, you're dead, Nataniel Cuervo
!
” Sephtimus shrieks and laughs. It’s twice shocking to hear
my name in this place. For one, I can't remember the last time I was called by
it and for another, the fact that this monster has access to what I thought was
my only remaining layer of identity plunges me to utter despair.

“I hope you don’t mind but the Fate Weaver has taken the liberty
of dressing you in different clothing. As if you were one of the souls cleared for
reincarnation. But before you rejoice, know that you’ve been reduced to a
slave-wraith – to be precise, a shipwreck fershee, a wailing spirit – until the
time that
you
outgrow your usefulness to me.”

I feel the scream rising in my chest. I’ve been transformed into a
monster, a freak that belongs to neither land nor sea, to neither the living
nor the restful dead.

“A nonperson in your mortal life, you shall still remain trapped
in this subhuman form for all afterlife!”    

Sephtimus,
having morphed the fingers of his other hand into overkill talons, rips one
ear-fin off the abomination on the wall as a boy would tear the wing off a fly.
I feel great waves of pain coursing from the left side of my face then
throughout my body, all nerve endings humming at the violence as ice-cold,
silvery ghost blood squirts out of me in jets.

I shriek - an inhuman, screeching noise at all the abuse I’ve
suffered
through
the day -
and great rivers of tears course down my
cheeks. My voice has taken on a life of its own in the supernatural world; it’s
now high-pitched and echoey. And I cry out of, more than the pain, the
desolation that grips my heart now that I feel my new shape slowly laying its
claim on me.

“Shut
it!” Sephtimus screams and behind him all the screens take on the menacing
grayness of a tempest at sea, his voice coinciding with the boom of very close
thunder. I’m taught the literal meaning of the words “zip your mouth” when I
feel hook-pieces instantly pull my fish lips shut.

“What
manner of man are you that you cower and wail at the consequences of your own
act?
Now, THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO...”
Sephtimus enunciates the words while pressing his lips close to my now
amorphous, smoothed-out mouth. The thin strip of his human lips is bent into
the snarl of his mental voice. “You shall be my slave and perform your tasks as
a fershee reaper. More importantly, you shall instruct me on how to walk and
talk like one of your filthy kind
.
Because I
shall take her soul one way or another like what has been promised. And in the
end I shall squash her like the leech that she is!”
The reaper’s eyes
are once more fiery-red. “Do as you are told and I might even let you visit
that hot ex of yours. Samantha, isn’t it?”

Leave her out of this, you snake!
I scream
inside my head. I feel faint, having lost a great deal of blood out of the torn
side of my face.

“You mortals have called me many things,” Sephtimus roars.
"But one thing I shall not stand is a human accusing me of
playing
false!”

Sephtimus
grabs the fershee’s gory cheek
with bone-crushing tightness. I can only whimper as my brain dimly registers
the narrowing of my sight.