Chapter One

Take my hand. Walk with me a while. Let me tell you a story. Let me show you a life. Don’t be afraid; don’t be nervous. I will not harm you. Take my hand. Walk with me a while.


The night is young, the stars are bright. You take my hand, your fingers shaking with
cold and fright. I can smell it. Leaking from every inch of your skin, fear of what has happened and what has yet to happen. Fear of the night, of the dark and of the creatures that lurk. Fear of me. Of the cold that radiates from me. You are a fearful creature and I pity you, yet at the same time, I envy you.

“What do you envy?” I hear you ask. So I shall tell you.

I was like you once. Hard to imagine I know, but true none the less. I was like you once. A fragile being, scared of everything, but especially death. I held onto life like it was all I possessed, and in truth, at that time it was. And then I died. Not a nice clean death either, let me tell you. I was mashed under the wheels of a truck. A big truck. I was dead before anyone had time to realise what had happened. Dead dead dead. As dead as dead can be. And some.

And then I had nothing. Nothing to hold onto. Nothing to fear. Nothing to live for, or rather to die for. I was alone in a blackness so thick, an emptiness so vast and unforgiving. And then there was you. With your fears and your life. You had everything and yet the only thing you asked for was death. I had death. I had had death for five long years. And believe me, it wasn’t pretty.

So you take my hand. Cold fingers of darkness against shaking ones made of life. And we walk. Shall I begin? Are you ready? I’ll tell you a story and show you a life. And you shall listen my child for I have the advantage of fear. Your fear. But don’t be too afraid my dear, there’s really no need.



Unusually for a story I shall start at the end. Not the end of the story mind you, but the end of a life. A girl’s life. Madeline Alice Fletcher.

Little Maddie ended her life prematurely. Like a premature baby born before its time, she arrived at death too early, she wasn’t ready for it, and she found it difficult to survive. When she realised how death was, she struggled against it. I know this because I met her. On the wide plains of death I found her wandering, her soul struggling against the darkness. She had taken her own life when everything had become too much to handle, and had ended up on the death plains like the rest of us who were not meant to die. I pitied her. She could not accept what had happened to her and the more she fought against the fact the harder it became for her to stop and the worse she deluded herself that she could make a difference.

I stayed with her for many a darkness, before eventually she attracted the attention of the Thieves.


Now before I proceed with the story I must quickly explain to you the Thieves. The Thieves are dead for one. They wander the death plains with the rest of us. But they are not the same, an evil swims through their veins that the rest of us cannot comprehend. And they feed on fear and hope. That is the important factor. Both ends of the spectrum. Fear and Hope. Hope and Fear. It gives them power, an evil gift. The power that they have is to wake us. Us being the dead. Sounds nice enough right? Sounds like they would be doing you a favour, waking you. They would like you to think that it’s a good thing. It’s not. Once you die you’re not meant to wake up. No matter how untimely your death, it’s not meant to happen. But they have a way of convincing people, the Thieves. And once you’ve agreed there is no turning back. You wake up to find yourself alive and on earth once more. So far so good.

The problem? Try spending time with humans and there it is: If a human is in your presence for a total of 24 hours… They die. Notice that I say human. It works only on humans. You can spend as much time as you like with trees and plants and animals and other living dead. But not Humans. Never Humans.

Only of course, the Thieves don’t tend to tell you this. Not really a great selling point.


Anyway back to the story. They came for Madeline Alice Fletcher. There was nothing I could do. I tried telling her, but she was so sure that it would work out as she wanted to believe and she accepted the offer. She let them bite her so that their powerful venom circulated through her veins; making them stronger, as though she was an extra limb for them to control. Then they took her to the edge, as I followed at a distance. With their venom in her veins she could pass through the barrier. I never saw her on the death plains again.


I walked the plain alone for a while. My footsteps echoing soundlessly over the darkness. I wandered. I wondered. Time, like so much else, is measured in darkness. Five earth minutes can be longer than an earth hour on the plain, depending on how quickly it seems to pass. And much darkness passed before I made up my mind.  Perhaps had I been on earth it would have been a mere minute, but as it was I will measure it with much darkness. Whichever way you decide to measure it the important factor is that my mind was made up.  
I called for the Thieves.
They came.

Only a very small measure of darkness later I passed through the barrier, falling into daybreak.


You are shivering my child. Take my cloak; the cold does not bother the dead. Shall I continue? Or have you seen enough, my dear. We have barely started though and we have enough minutes. I will continue.


Madeline woke as they told her she would. I am sure that when her eyes first opened she had to close them again sharply due to the brightness of the clear blue sky, which hung above her like a tent. I do not doubt that the sight of trees and grass and light brought tears to her eyes, for they did to mine when I woke in the same forest a little over two days later. Which answers an earlier question if I am correct. For we now know that what I perceived as much darkness on the plain was just over two earth days. What a strange thing time can be.

I am not sure exactly what Madeline did for those first two days. But she told me she merely wandered. Trying to come up with a plan as to what she should do next. I think it rather lucky that I arrived when I did, for I cannot imagine what she would have done had I not.

When I first woke in that forest it was to trees and grass and light. The light was bright, and green. It burnt holes in my eyelids and it was several minutes before I could open my eyes fully. When I did I saw that I was in a small clearing. It was roughly two and a half hours before I found Madeline, she was standing fully clothed, up to her waist in water, in a river.


"I can't feel anything." She said to me, her dark eyes confused. "I'm not cold or warm and... and I have no pulse."

I could only watch as she put her fingers first to her wrist, then her throat, searching desperately for the beating blood she longed to feel. Finally she put her hand to her heart and squeezed her eyes tight shut as if she could make her heart start beating  just by sheer willpower.

Finally she looked up at me tears spilling rapidly down her cheeks.

"We're not alive are we." She whispered, walking through the water to take my hand and press it to her still throat, while she pressed her own fingers against my equally lifeless neck.

"No." I replied looking back into her black eyes. "We are in the world of the living but we are little more than solid ghosts. We..." I meant to tell her then, meant to tell her about the human problem but she looked already so appalled that I couldn't do it. "We look human but we are not alive. We do not feel temperature and we cannot die, or feel physical pain. I'm sorry, I tried to tell you, but the thieves can be very convincing..."

I stared at her, my brain unable to comprehend what my eyes were telling me. Madeline was suddenly wearing a huge smile and her eyes were wide with excitement.

"What?" I asked. "What is it?"

"We don't get hot or cold and we can't feel physical pain." She whispered her face suddenly alight. "That means we can do anything. Anything and... there's no consequences."

I stared at the girl before me, sickened comprehension freezing me to the spot. A moment ago being a lifeless immortal had horrified her and now she was looking as though there was no greater gift.

And even though I couldn't physically feel temperature, I felt myself go cold inside.

Reviews

[Beatrice Mars]

Kinda confusing, but so good and tres disturbing, in a good way.

[Donald Meikle]

Great tale with a great twist ending