Page 10 of Reaper's Ruin
Was it over? Was this strange dream, this strange experience, finally done?
It felt so comforting to be somewhere familiar after being in so many unbelievable places since this all began. But as I began walking through the living room I’d spent countless hours in during my twenty-four years living here, I immediately sensed something was wrong. The colors seemed slightly faded, the edges of everything almost imperceptibly blurred. The living room was just as I’d left it—Netflix still paused on the TV, my blanket in a heap on the couch, but the kettle corn... it was spilled across the floor.
When I tried to touch the back of my couch, my hand passed through it like it wasn’t there. I moved toward it, but before I could reach it, I froze in my tracks, my gaze dropping to my feet at theblood spreading across the carpet in front of the couch. I backed away, a scream building in my throat as I saw my body lying on the floor. I stared down at myself—at the bloodied pajamas identical to what I was wearing now, at the vacant eyes staring at nothing, at the multiple stab wounds that had torn through fabric and flesh.
“This isn’t real,” I whispered, backing away. “This can’t be real.”
But I knew it was. The memories still too fragmented to piece together but I remembered more now—the man who’d suddenly appeared behind me, the strange dagger in his hand, my screams, the burning pain as the blade had plunged into my chest again and again.
“Oh my God.”
I sank to my knees, the realization crashing over me with devastating clarity. The blood on my clothes. The fragmented memories of pain and fear. The way no one could see or hear me.
I was dead. A ghost. And this... this must be some sort of afterlife.
A mixture of sorrow and rage and confusion surged through me. I was so young. Only twenty-four. My whole life had been ahead of me. I suddenly felt robbed, overwhelming grief racking through me over the life stolen from me.
The career I’d never have.
The husband I’d never have.
The children I wouldn’t rock to sleep at night, reading them the same stories my mother used to read to me.
I wrapped my arms around my waist, rocking myself as I sobbed, trying to accept this impossible reality, but a reality I could no longer deny. But if I was dead, why was I here? Why wasn’t I in Heaven? I’d been a good person, hadn’t I? Or was that place, the one with all the lava and the ice and the strange people and trees and flowers, was that Heaven? Hell? Something else I’d neverlearned about in Sunday school? And who was the shadowy man who kept hunting me?
“I’m dead,” I whispered, tears sliding down my cheeks. “I’m dead. I can’t believe I’m dead.”
Suddenly, a new memory of that night broke through, and this one sent an icy sliver of terror slicing through me.
My mother’s scream.
I rose abruptly, spinning around in the room as if I’d just heard it. But only silence met me. I stood in that room, the one that should feel like home, but now felt eerie and terrifying, listening. Waiting.
Nothing.
“Mom?” I called out, equal parts hope and terror colliding in my chest. “Mom, are you here?”
Silence answered me. I moved through the house, my bare feet making no sound on the hardwood floors. The kitchen was empty, dishes from our last meal together still in the sink. Her jacket was on the hook by the door, her purse on the kitchen table next to mine.
“Mom?” I called again, moving now toward the hallway.
Then I froze.
Blood. A dark trail leading from the living room toward the bedrooms.
“No,” I whispered, doom piercing my gut. “Please, no.”
I followed the trail, though every instinct screamed at me to turn back. It led to my mother’s bedroom door, slightly ajar, more blood smeared on the white paint.
With trembling hands, I turned and looked inside, my whole world shifting at the sight before me.
My mother lay crumpled against the wall, her body bloody, her eyes—eyes so like my own—staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
“Mom!” The cry tore from my chest, a sound of pure anguish. I fell to my knees beside her, trying desperately to touch her, to hold her, but my hands passed through her body like smoke. “Mom, please! Please wake up!”
But she wouldn’t wake up. None of this was a dream. We were both dead, murdered in our own home by a man with a strange dagger and cold, determined eyes.
Grief overwhelmed me, crushing my chest until I couldn’t breathe. I curled in on myself, sobbing with my whole body, wishing I could feel my mother’s arms around me one last time.
