HOW TO KILL

{Meilori mourning Sam McCord courtesy of the fabulous Leonora Roy}

 

David Farland has a great post:

Strategies for Killing Your Babies -
http://www.davidfarland.net/writing_tips/?a=144&utm_source=buffer&buffer_share=203ad

A very important subject since I stopped reading Stephen King for a time because he habitually killed characters I had grown fond of.

If I want to lose people I care about, I just have to remember my own life.

Not that Death doesn't visit my characters.  After all, she is the mother of my young gyspy rascal, Victor Standish.

There is a scene in one of my favorite series, THE DRESDEN FILES, where an enemy shows Harry Dresden an open grave in a prestigious cemetery with the ornate headstone:

HARRY DRESDEN
HE DIED DOING THE RIGHT THING.

Later in the series, Harry did die. But being a wizard, death had ... complications.

As a ghost, he convinced his shattered apprentice, Molly, he was indeed Harry by saying: "You must go to the Dagobah System and learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me."

Molly falls to her knees sobbing, for she recognizes Harry's sense of humor and knows 1.) This is not some spectral imposter and 2.) Harry is indeed dead.

DEATH, LIKE EVERYTHING IMPORTANT, MUST BE DONE WITH SKILL:

1.) DEATH CASTS A LONG SHADOW -

Your first paragraph sets a tone. It should whisper Death is in the wings, waiting in the shadows ... no one is immune. Everyone dies at some point in this life.

2.) DENIAL IS NOT JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT -

Have Death thrust in the thoughts and conversations of your characters.  Do not ignore the 500 pound gorilla in the front room.

3.) THE THINGS THAT DEATH CAN BUY -

The 300 Spartans. The Alamo. A life well-lived is priceless. A death done courageously can be the door to life for countless others. Immortality is born from the fact that sometimes the worst thing about HELLO is GOODBYE.

4.) WHAT IS DEATH TO YOU -

Whatever worldview you hold, not everyone shares it. 

But you must remain true to what you believe awaits us after death. Your words should represent that belief in as stirring and simple prose as you can produce.  It will not ring true otherwise.

5.) AH, WHERE IS THE ETERNAL REST?

One of the reasons I chose "Science Fantasy" as a genre is that it is interesting and emotionally statisfying to show a possible world beyond death and the challenges that plane of "existence" has for its citizens.

6.) THE SUN ALSO RISES -

After Death visits, the dawn insists on rising to a new day. Have people living in it that the reader can like and relate to ... friends left to root for.

7.) KILL THE MESSENGER -

The reader may swear off your books when you kill a beloved character ... unless your words are the very best they can be, not just DURING the death scene, but AFTER Death comes and goes. 

The danger must still threaten, the fight still rage on in some fashion ...

and the prose should literally grab the reader by the shirt front, dragging her or him from page to page to find out who next will fall or if the protagonist has died for nothing.

How do you handle death in your novels?

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 43_I ALWAYS COLLECT MY DEBTS

Still sprawled on Meilori's carpet with Marlene half-reclining on me,

I leaned on my left shoulder to look at the monster I had only read about.

To say that the years had not been kind would have been an understatement.

He was sitting at a glowing table, pointing a luger at Marlene. Beside him sat Eva Braun. She was still beautiful ...

in a clammy, undead sort of way.

She was almost wearing a low-cut red evening gown of flimsy silk. Its neckline plunged so that her breasts were almost slipping out as she leaned forward on the glowing table at me. But believe it or not, I wasn't looking at her breasts.

Ah, alright, maybe a little. But it were her pale blue eyes that bothered me. They made the Cheshire Cat's look sane. She leaned even more forward so that any second I was sure one of us was going to get embarrassed.

And I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be her.

But it was Hitler that shook me. He pointed the luger at me as I took the fallen dagger in my right hand. I smiled crooked. What with the Eva's breasts, that made three dangerous weapons pointed at me.

Hitler looked more withered corpse than anything human.
But what was terrifying were the vibrating cables running from the metal pump on his back to his twitching neck.

They were clear so that I could see the red, bubbling liquid pumping into his neck. I watched in horrified fascination as his neck muscles spasmed as the red liquid turned green as it went from the right side of his neck to the left.

That explained why he was still alive. The chandelier's lights striking fire from Eva's long sharp canines explained her long existence.

He sneered at me. "It was never about you, Amerikaner."

The luger shifted to point at Marlene's head. "I put a death sentence on your head, traitor. And I always collect my debts."

He smiled wide. "I had to lure you here to Meilori's where you could die the final death."

He croaked that damn laugh of his. "I found that just a few drops of the liquid in my pump paralyzes ghosts. From there, it was just a matter of having Strasser bait you with those Havana cigars, treated with my liquid, to have this Amerikaner fool framed for Hemingway's 'murder.'"

Eva giggled, "His only refuge would be here ... where you could be killed, traitor."

Marlene spat on the carpet. "Dreck!"

Eva husked, "You are the filth, whore. My love offered you the world to make films for Mother Germany. And you pranced naked before the American troops."

Marlene smiled impishly. "Only for the most fortunate of their generals, Hündin."

Hitler growled, "I think I shall gut-shoot you, Dirne."

He nodded to Death, calmly watching all of us. "See, traitor? Death knows she will soon be needed."

As Hitler had been insulting Marlene, I had pulled up the scortched edge of my T-shirt and plowed a long gash along my side. Blood dribbled out. I was just finishing the fourth word when Hitler turned the luger to me.

"You have written your last, swine."

I edged back to let Marlene see what I had written : "Hemingway appears behind Hitler."

And no sooner had she read the words with wide eyes, Hemingway shimmered right behind the zombie.

"Fuck you, Hitler!"

He took hold of the twin cables from the pump, ripping them from Hitler's neck. He squealed in agony, writhing to the floor. As he fell, great gouts of the putrid liquid splashed onto Eva. She managed a gargled start of a scream before withering away into smoldering corpse.

She fell still beside the moaning mummy Hitler was becoming. Death flowed to them both. "I, too, always collect my debts, ghouls."

She swept her long black cloak around them both and was gone as if she and they had never been there.

Marlene scrambled to her feet as I followed her. "P-Papa? You are alive!"

He nodded as he picked up the luger. "Have been for most of this."

Marlene's face screwed up in sheer fury. "What?"

I said, "Marlene, he saved our lives."

Hemingway pointed the luger right at my heart. "Her life. Not yours."

I heard a heavy thump behind me and an angry yowling. A flash of white and scratched hands blurred by me. Mark Twain slammed a cut-up fist hard into Hemingway's bearded jaw. The man reeled backwards to slam into the carpeted floor and lay still.

Mark Twain chuckled like an evil woodchuck. "I've wanted to do that for years."

He started to turn to me, then whipped about to kick Hemingway's unconscious body. "And damnation, there was nothing wrong with the end of HUCK FINN, you blowhard!"

Marlene sputtered in laughter, "Clemens, what happened to your poor hands?"

He grunted, "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."

I whipped around. Gypsy's cat carrier was behind me. She sat glaring at Mark Twain. A massive shiny padlock secured the carrier door.

I turned to Mark. "You padlocked Gypsy in there?"

He laughed, showing me the scratched backs of his hands. "Ain't that the blessed truth!"

Marlene hugged us both. But she kissed me.

A caustic cough sounded to my right. Toya, the manager of Meilori's, who had tried to kill me twice. She was holding a thick package.

"Did you really think you had gotten away scott-free? McCord wants to see you up front."
***

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER SEVENTEEN_ A WILD NIGHT

{“Dying is a wild night and a new road.”
- Emily Dickinson.

“Many are of the opinion that there is no difference between Man and the Jackass.

This, of course, wrongs the Jackass.”
- Mark Twain.}

{Ghostly Samuel Clemens here. Death has finally brought us upstairs to her second rendezvous with a soul.

She suddenly seemed burdened with her garments, so she had cast them from her, leaving me with mouth open and Marlene with eyes narrowed.

Roland looked as if he had been pole-axed. I leave the rest to him.} :

Death covered her essentials gracefully with her long, black wings, and her face became so icy it scared me.

She spoke, and the sounds of it were as if icicles had been given voice. Her eyes grew deep and full of rage.

"I have come to render the final payment due you for your lucrative property, Madame Levi."

Madame Levi was a tall, angular woman who looked like a female version of Scrooge. Her gray and white, no nonsense Victorian dress seemed so starched that I was surprised she could move in it.

But move she did. Backwards, with her shaking hand to her mouth.

"I - I run a perfectly legitimate --"

Death motioned slowly with a long forefinger, and the suddenly trembling woman was dragged against her will right up to us. "Y-You have no right --"

"Speak not to me of rights, daughter of Eve."

Death leaned forward and whispered in words of stone. "This night thy soul is required of thee."

Then, Death inhaled deeply. I jumped in fright and horror, for Death sucked in the body of Madame Levi as it was turned into smoky vapor.

The Landlord had just enough time to make a mewing whimper before she was totally inhaled by Death. She snorted in disgust.

Marlene looked paler than I had ever seen her. Even, Mark Twain for once had no words. I didn’t blame him.

"Her stench was worse than I expected," murmured Death.

"Maybe you should give up smoking,” Mark Twain muttered.

Now, dressed fully in the robes I had seen Bast wear, she looked down at me with eyes of steel. "Do you still think of me warmly, son of Man?"

I wet my lips. “I don’t cut pie wedges out of my friends. I accept them for who they are. All of them, not just part of them. You do what you have to do.

But I’ve seen you cry over it. That makes you special in my book.”

She breathed soft, snowflakes shimmering from her lips, and mussed my hair with fingers colder than the shivers down my spine.

"You still break my heart. Above you stands the Door of Nasah and the twilight of innocence, where deaths lurk like sleeping fears."

Mark Twain raised an eyebrow. “That’s fortune cookie for someone need us up there, right?”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she whispered one word. "Yes."

"T-Then, that's where I'm going," I said.

Her face became totally hidden by living shadows. "Your Night is falling. I am called elsewhere. And the last tangle of knots in your skein of days lies before you."

"Oh, is that all? For a second there, I thought I was in real trouble."

As she rose like a swam taking flight, I whispered, "Why could Madame Levi see us, and those other people couldn’t?"

"Because their Moment of Accounting, though close, has not yet come."

Her smile was as cold as my blood. "The cliche is wrong, Roland. You do see the bullet that claims you."

And with a start, I realized I was at the head of the last flight of steps without any memory of having climbed them. "What the?"

Death was back to wings and nothing else as she looked sternly down upon me.

"The most effective path to Hell is the gradual one, without signposts, without sudden turns."

She made a grand flourish with her right wing, as if tempting me to look at her naked body.

I reached out and squeezed Marlene’s hand. She squeezed back and smiled sadly.

"Behold, the Door of Nasah," murmured Death.

There in that fancy hallway of red carpet and lush amber wallpaper, covered with flying cupids, stood the Door of Nasah.

It was metal and seven feet tall if it was an inch. As I walked closer with Death studying me, I saw it was made of solid gold.

The thing had to be heavy. How did anybody open the damn thing?

The huge door, carved in the shape of a leering dragon's head, slowly swung open.

"Cue the spooky music," I whispered.

“If you would enter, you must do so now. And quickly!”

And so it was that I, sometimes called DreamSinger, walked through the Door of Nasah and into the final tangle of knots in my skein of days.
****

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER SIXTEEN_HELL IS WHERE THE HEART ISN'T

{“The question is this : Is Man an ape or an angel?

I, my lords, am on the side of the angels.”
- Benjamin Disraeli.}

{Samuel Clemens’ ghost here. Old Benjamin had a point. Better to be on the side of the angels – especially if it is the Angel of Death.

She had led us to a brothel of the damned where the killers using the group name “Jack the Ripper” were burning up what little was left of their souls.

She is leading us up the stairs to find a way back to Meilori’s, the supernatural jazz club and sanctuary for lost souls like Roland, the ghost of Marlene Dietrich, and myself.

But I’ll let Roland take the story from here.}:

Death tugged me gently to my feet with fingers so cold I flinched from the pain of them.

"Time is short, and we must make a small stop on the second floor before proceeding to the third."

She turned a sad eye to me. "Once long ago, farther back in time than even I can comprehend, the universe was small."

She put her thumb and forefinger together and looked haunted at me through the tiny space. "Very, very small. And everything made sense."

She sighed, "Then, it got very hot and very big very fast. And since that time, nothing has ever really made much sense to me."

"I don't understand," I said.

“What he said,” grumbled Mark Twain, though I noticed Marlene looked haunted.

Death lightly mussed my hair and blew away the flakes of ice that formed from her touch.

"Neither do the people who think they have all the answers, Roland. The universe is too vast to comprehend. Just ride the tide, do not try to drink it, or you will drown."

"In other words, things are going to really smell on the second floor, and you don't want us to throw up, is that it?," snorted Mark.

"The third floor will be even worse."

Marlene murmured, “Worse than this endless preamble?”

She eyed my friend coldly. "That depends on your definition of 'worse.'"

I sighed, "I don't define. I just care. As I care for Marlene, Mark, and … you."

She stroked my cheek with fingers that felt like cold knives. "You ... break my heart, Roland."

She sniffed back something wet and pushed me away. "What you will see on the second floor will not be pretty. It is the worst form of woman farming imaginable."

"Woman farming?"

Her face became icy rage. "Yes, turning women into serfs, no, worse than serfs, into slaves, into cattle, dependent on the proprietor for food and clothes and shelter.

They have no property of their own, not even their own bodies, which belong to the female fiends that run places such as this.

They are forced to fulfill the evil wishes of these 'landlords', who receive the majority of the income received for the selling of their dignity, their bodies."

She tugged me up the stairs as she walked with grace and precision. "No property, no rights, no will, no hope -- in short, not one attribute of independent life, save the right to suffer, to decay, while wretches more vile than they prosper at their expense.

These brutal tyrants demand everything from the poor girls whom they pervert and destroy, giving them but the bare necessities. And many times, not even that."

Mark smiled crooked, “Oh you mean treat them like the government treats us.”

A shrill voice cut through the gloom as we reached the second floor. "How dare you walk here naked? My God, th-those wings are real!"

I whipped my eyes to Death. Oh, jeez. She now wore wings and nothing else. I cringed, my heart sinking. I would bet cash money that it was a double-bonus sin to see Death naked.
*******

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER FIFTEEN_BROTHEL OF THE DAMNED

{“Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold :

Her skin was white as leprosy,

The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,

Who thicks man’s blood with cold.”

Coleridge – RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER.}

{Samuel Clemens - ghost, your guide here.

Trapped in Victorian London, we are being escorted by Death to a brothel where it is said the men who are Jack the Ripper are waiting for their next victim.

Me, the ghost of Marlene Dietrich and Roland – each of us is suspicious of Death’s offer to lead us back to the present and to the supernatural jazz club, Meilori’s.

Here is Roland’s account of it.}

We walked unnoticed onto the fog-choked sidewalk, packed with dozens of men and women, their faces weathered, wrinkled, and haunted.

I smelled alcohol on most of their breaths. So drunk, yet so plainly unhappy.

Death reached down, tapped the top of my head, and pointed to the dirty red, three story building in front of us.

An ornate but faded sign proclaimed it to be The Princess Alice. There was a hard-eyed redhead at the front door, calling out to each man that passed her.

"Mary Kelly," sighed Death, "where is that little girl of yesteryear?"

And then, without any warning at all, Death, Marlene, Mark, and I started to slide across the cobblestones, up the three steps to the door, and right on THROUGH the door as if it were no more than thin air. I started to shiver.

I looked over to my friends. They seemed unruffled. Apparently, Marlene and Mark as ghosts were used to this sort of travel.

But I wasn’t a ghost. It unnerved the hell out of me.

We slid right THROUGH the milling customers of the brothel as they made their way to and from the bar and the tables clustered all about.

We stopped at the base of the stairs leading up into the murky darkness and the sounds of coarse laughter, badly played pianos, and the squeaking springs of old, worn-out beds.

I turned to the customers. Were these men responsible for the terrible butchering of so many prostitutes? Their hard eyes certainly seemed up to the job.

The women who sat beside them or on their laps looked as if they would happily hand their “customers” the knives. I squinted at them through the gloom. Each table had only one candle … one very short candle.

Some were shorter than others. Some gave off so little light I found it hard to believe that flame could be so faint.

Mark Twain looked up at a somber Death. "What in blue blazes is wrong with this place? Can't they afford their gas bill? Damnation, you'd think this place would make enough money to buy new candles at least."

"Those are not candles, Clemens," Death murmured. "Rather they are the pathetic remains of the soul of each man that sits at the table."

I turned and looked in horror at the men, the flickering light of what little remained of their souls casting weird shadows across their faces. I started to shiver in spasms.

It was too much.

I started to breathe shallow and fast, not being able to take enough air into my lungs.

I started to make thin squeaky sounds deep in my chest. I pressed my hand to my heart which felt like an ice pick had suddenly been stabbed into it.

My fingers and lips felt numb. I was scared, yet felt outside of myself.

Things were beginning to grow dim. What was happening to me? And as soon as I asked myself, I knew.

I no longer thought all of this was some dream or nightmare. This was all real. As real as a rattler that springs up at you from the shadows. And it was all too much for me.

It had been the terrible death of the two year old girl that had been the last straw.

Now, these men burning up what little was left of their souls as cold-eyed women smiled, knowing what was happening and not giving a damn.

No, worse. They were glad of it. The wet squeaks got higher, faster. I leaned on the stained wall, fighting for a breath that wouldn't come.

Marlene took my arm and murmured, “Liebling, if you fall now, who will bring Papa’s killer to justice? You can push this horror to the back of your mind. You can.”

“I - I can?”

Marlene brushed her lips against mine. “I know because I did the same when I stumbled upon horror after horror at the front lines in World War II.”

“B - But you w-went on the front lines … d-despite the death sentence … on your head. Y-You’re a hero.”

Mark and Marlene said it together, “And so are you.”

I knew better.

Marlene leaned forward, kissing me with ghostly lips that had me re-breathing my own gasps. I smiled bitterly. She could have used a paper bag to do it. But this was much better.

Finally I could breathe again.

Maybe it was her kiss. Or perhaps Marlene’s and Mark’s faith in me did the trick. No matter. I could breathe on my own again.

I felt Death’s cold eyes on me.

How long would that breathing go on?
*********************

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER FOURTEEN : MURDER AS A KINDNESS

{“Mark Twain again.

Tesla taught me how to use this bejiggered contraption to write these posts as they are called.

With the strangest look to his eyes, he told me, “Life is all memory,

except for this present moment that flits by you so quickly, you hardly notice it going.”

Have you ever searched for a lost item? Torn up the house doing it, like a dog digging up the yard for the bone he’s already chewed to nothing?

Then, there it is in front of you, shining as if lit with fires unseen to the normal eye.

Where did it come from? The Shadowlands.

The Shadowlands have their strange ways. Roland’s battered note pad turned up last night by his black magic box folks call a laptop of all things.

Though Roland had no time to write an account of what happened, here on these pages, in his own hand, is paragraph after paragraph of the details.

So I will post them as they happened to the three of us, Roland, the ghost of Marlene Dietrich, and my own spectral self.

In this post, Roland finds himself in a Victorian London alley on the run through time for the murder of the ghost of Ernest Hemingway …

none of us knew the scoundrel had only been poisoned and was still alive … if such can be said of a ghost.

The being calling herself Death has just forced the three of us to witness the gruesome killing of a two year old girl by a swarming, biting pack of hungry rats.

Death is leading us to a brothel from which we can return to Meilori’s, the supernatural jazz club and sanctuary of sorts.

Unfortunately, the band of killers who are slaughtering poor prostitutes, using the group name “Jack the Ripper,” stand between us and the doorway to safety.

Here is the account in Roland’s own words} :

Death turned to us, and her form was of the many-armed, bloody Kali. “I am not your enemy.”

Mark Twain grunted, “Try being on this side of your eyes and still saying that.”

Marlene said softly, “Why did you have to show us that baby’s death?”

“It was her fate drawing me. Remember, Magdalene, I am everywhere, allwheres simultaneously.”

Mark Twain arched an eyebrow. “Something like that could put off your digestion.”

Death turned slowly to him. “Some find your humor quaint. I am not one of them.”

She turned back to me. “I have taken you with me in this way to confound your enemies that have the limited sense to try to use me for their own ends.”

I forced my throat to work. “That child’s death was the price of our admittance back into Meilori’s?”

“Yes, Lakota. And no.”

“No?,” frowned Mark.

“There is one more death yet to come before I can take you to the Door of Nasah.”

Marlene’s fingers went to her mouth. “That is the door of the damned.”

Death was now in armor and a horned helmet as she nodded. “And it will take you three to Meilori’s. A most detestable part of that club. But it is the best that I can do.”

She gestured to Mark Twain, and her form now was that of Blind Justice. “Behold your ‘low-rent district,’ Clemens. London of this age is undoubtedly the largest and richest city the world has yet known. “

She spat and her spittle sank smoking into the cobblestones. “Here in its underbelly, there are 90,000 full-time prostitutes, 7,000 brothels, and the highest rate of syphilis in Europe.

Here, in Whitechapel, little girls of ten or less can be bought like slaves for thirty guineas a head.

And elite bordellos owned by DayStar send 'respectable' gentlemen fancy brochures advertising 'pretty young lads with pink bottoms ripe for a birching.'"

Marlene’s eyes became haunted. “How like my Heimat Berlin in the ‘20’s. There doesn’t need to be a Hell later on. It’s already here.”

Death mussed her hair gently, but frost layered it just the same. "In such a place as this, murder might be viewed as a kindness."

Death laid a soft hand on my shoulder which went numb at the coldness of her touch. "We are there."
***

I AM DEATH_{GHOST OF A CHANCE interlude}

I am Death.

And I walk beside you as you live each moment.

Choose wisely. Breathe deeply. Love that which so quickly shall pass through your fingers … for soon or late your steps will lead to me.

Oh, what to tell you that you would comprehend.

I am remiss.

Roland always starts with a quote to point the way of his thoughts.

Here is mine :

“Riddle of destiny, who can show
What thy short visit meant, or know
What thy errand here below?”

Those lines were by Charles Lamb written upon the death of an infant soon after her birth.

Do not think ill of me. I give to each of you what I give to all – a lifetime. Make of it what you would.

What you love is mortal. What you love is not your own. What you love has its season like a rose in summer. Cherish the moment.

Winter is coming.

Roland wonders if his chapters grow stale and flat, if he should continue. I cannot say. Mine are not mortal eyes. You can say better than I.

As for flat words, Samuel Clemens hated the “flat things” great men are reputed to have said on their deathbeds.

He wrote a fanciful praise of me to save him from that error. Yet, when I bent over him, gathering up his spirit to my bosom, his last words to his physician were incomplete : “If we meet ….”

What was his thought? Who knows? What is your life? Uncertain. The only certainty is that we shall meet.

What are you doing with the time allotted you?

Please excuse me. I am called elsewhere.

If you feel my hand upon your heart, you will know whose name was next on my list.
***********

CHAPTER THIRTEEN : TO DRINK FROM THE NILE RUNNING

{"Smooth the descent and easy the way;

The Gates of Hell stand open night and day;

But to return and view the blissful skies,

In this task grievous labor lies."

- Vergil : AENEID.}

Gabrielle turned from her daughter to me. “You speak French oddly.”

“That I speak it at all is a surprise to me.”

Her eyes flicked to Marlene and Mark Twain and became worried again. “What brings you here, Stranger.”

I sighed. Now, that her enemies were dealt with, suddenly I was a stranger.

“Stranger enemies. I think they wanted me separated from my friends here.”

Her eyebrow arched. “Why would they want that.”

“I think they want me dead.”

Gabrielle’s eyes hollowed and went to her husband’s sword at her feet. “Enemies usually do.”

Marlene frowned. “I still cannot fathom who would want you dead, Liebling.”

Mark Twain gnawed his lips. “If we could stumble onto why, Valkyrie, it might just tell us who.”

I rubbed my face wearily. “Or who murdered the ghost of Hemingway and pinned it on me.”

Like the whisper of useless regret, words of ice came from my pocket. "I am Death. I will not be the tool of an echo! Take out this box."

The birds stopped singing in the branches. The cool breeze wisped to nothing. Shadows filled the verdant glade. I nodded to Rafferty and her mother.

"Go into the cottage."

Rafferty pouted, "But --"

"Now!," urged both Marlene and Mark Twain.

Eyes gone hollow and deep, Gabrielle took Rafferty in a rush to the small cottage that reminded me somehow of Snow White. Death murmured from the dry-ice chill of the rune-etched box I held in my burning fingers :

"Now the play is near over,
The closing curtains are drawing nigh,
Shadows of death
Steal across the sky."

I placed the box on the grass, the blades crisping burnt and dead in a growing circle around it. A billowing black fog swirled from the opening lid.

"Step in, ghosts and mortal. All entrances back to Meilori’s are blocked except the path I take."

I managed to get my voice to work. “But your path is the one of death.”

Mark Twain shrugged. "The scalded child fears cold water. We aren’t children anymore, son."

Marlene smiled faintly at me. "Our fears make us traitors to our better selves."

"And wise dogs drink from the Nile running," I muttered, thinking of unseen dangers, and walked with my two friends into the welcoming embrace of the dark mists.

Death spoke softly, “Roland, how much do you know of Victorian London?”

“Not very –“

And in the middle of the sentence, the world changed around me. Just like that, no pop, no trumpet blast, no anything on Death's part.

Reality just flickered like a dying light bulb, then grew bright as a whole different setting billowed before my eyes.

Thick fog boiled around me, and somehow it felt unclean.

The cold, damp street smelled of unwashed flesh and decaying garbage. The cold drizzle made all my old scars throb and my joints ache.

Death, Mark Twain, Marlene, and I were standing in the middle of a dark maze of ooze-slick alleys, pubs, opium dens, and brothels.

Brooding, hungry men brushed right past us without even looking our way. I had a feeling that Death had made us invisible.

" --- much," I said, my voice trailing away.

“Behold the low-rent district,” grumbled Mark Twain.

"Welcome to Whitechapel, Clemens," sighed Death. "As you can see, this little clot of diseased humanity is packed to the suffocation point with the dregs of Cockney, Jewish, and Irish society."

Mark grumbled, “First, France. Now, Victorian London. Roland, there’s a pattern here if we can but ferret it out.”

The black fog took on form.

Death in black, form-snug robes and hood. Her upper lip curled. "Ferret? You must mean the high-class "toffs" out for a weekend of slumming."

She touched my shoulder, and I winced from the intense cold of her fingers.

"Here, down this alley. It is a shortcut to the intersection of Wentworth and Commercial."

"What's there?," I whispered as I slipped on a puddle of something I didn't want to look at too closely.

Death's shadowed face became a study in ice. "The Princess Alice."

"A princess here?"

"Not a princess but a pub.”

Marlene, showing she time-traveled more than once, sneered, “ A brothel is more like it."

"Weird name for a place like that," I said.

Death hissed, "Not so strange. DayStar named it to please Rev. Dodgson."

I went cold at the name of the worst character in all my novels, but the other name confused me. "Rev. Dodgson? You mean L-Lewis Carroll?"

Death murmured so angry that I shivered, "Yes, though you might know him better as Jack the Ripper."

"What? Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper?"

"One of them," murmured Marlene with her lips twisted in disgust.

"One of them? Do you mean to say there was more than one?"

Death laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Tonight, The Princess Alice’s every customer will have killed as the Ripper."

Marlene cried out as she looked over my shoulder. She started to rush forward. Mark Twain saw what she was heading for and joined her, alarm on his face.

Death, now in a black toga, held up her hand. Both Marlene and Mark were held as if caught in an invisible vise.

I turned and pulled up short. A two year old girl was clutching a stale crust of bread in one hand and pawing off a pack of lunging, biting rats with the other.

The little girl was losing the fight. I started forward, but Death stopped me with an icy palm.

"It is her time, Lakota."

She hustled me on, though I lunged forward to help in some way.

She wrapped two arms of steel around me and literally dragged me down the alley. I glared up at her. There were tears in the one eye of ice that I could see through the shadows.

"Why, Death? Why won’t you let me help her?"

"If you save her life, she will suffer even worse in the years to come. This death will open the door to a kinder, gentler plane of existence. Spare her, and hers will be a path of darkness that leads but to DayStar."

Mark Twain snapped, “Who’s this DayStar you keep talking about?”

“You know him as the Dark Stranger.”

“Oh, Hell.”

“Exactly,” nodded Death.

Marlene struggled against her invisible bonds. " I do not see this other plane of existence you babble about. All I see is a baby being torn apart by rats. Let me help the little girl!”

Death sighed, and sparkles of stardust trailed from her lips.

"Children do not last long in the East End of London. Cease your struggling, Magdalene, she is already gone from this plane of existence."

Marlene husked, “What need of a future Hell when Man makes his own here on earth?”

Marlene, Mark, and I exchanged glances. We had made a mistake trusting Death. Now, what to do? Hell, what could we do …

… against Death?
*********************

CHAPTER THREE : DEATH TAKES NO SIDES

{"... the time of life is short;
To spend that shortness basely were
too long."
- Shakespeare (HENRY IV)}

A tall Valkyrie held me in a crushing embrace. I went cold. She looked just like the Angelus of Death of whom I wrote in my novels.

"Rind?," I squeaked.

Long, platinum hair hid a long face already masked by living shadows. One eye of winter frost burned out at me from the darkness. The head shook. My heart sank.

"Not Rind," I managed to get out.

Words of living ice whispered, "No, son of Adam. I take this form only because of the pathetic limits of your imagination."

Her head tilted, the club's gas lights skating along the sheen of her ice hair.

"The life you seek

cannot be found but

endless paths exist."

She gestured with too long fingers, and a tiny globe of an cloud-splattered earth spun slowly in front of me.

"What if all Creation is but a dream inside the mind of God?"

I smiled sadly. "It's gonna be a real shock to all of us when He wakes up."

"Have a care, Roland. I am not Rind. But - I - am - Death."

I heard the capitol letter. "Not too surprising. Every creature in the Shadowlands thinks I can kill ghosts. The ghosts want me dead. The others want the secret ... then they want me dead."

I shook my head. "So of course you're Death."

The words were like lashes of sound. "You did not kill Hemingway."

"You believe me?"

She shook me like a dog would a wet sock. "I am Death, moron. Of course I know you did not kill Hemingway."

"Never figured Death for a coward," drawled a low, angry voice.

I looked around. I was in the front section of Meilori's, its dim Victorian furnishings off-set by its supernatural customers. And then I saw who had spoken.

Sam. He was glaring at Death. Marlene had her saber pointed at her. Death laughed, and it was the sound of breaking bones.

"I am threatened by echoes. How frightening."

I clamped my fingers around her frigid wrists. "You have to go through me first."

She leaned in close to my ear. "You will fold like a cheap paper bag."

"Ever hear of paper cuts?"

The laughter again, but it seemed warmer. "I like you, Little Lakota. Your time is not just yet. And when I do come for you, I think it will be as a ... friend."

"So you're going to help me?"

The laughter stopped abruptly. "No. And yes ... in a way. All here in Meilori's have seen me talk to you. When I walk away, there will be worrisome mutterings. Why did I not take you? Am I on your side? It will stop the more overt attacks on your person."

"What about the covert ones?," murmured Marlene.

Death wrapped the shadows around herself. "You were always greedy, Magdalene."

And she was gone.

A woman with the skin the color of cream coffee struted up to us. She was dressed as a buccaneer in a skirt so short it qualified as a wide belt. I smiled wide. The manager of Meilori's. She was my friend.

"You! You always bring us trouble," she snapped.

Or maybe not.

"Sam," she said, as she rushed to his side. "Victor's in trouble. Some undead gal's about to have him for dinner."

He nodded grimly and turned to me. "I have to go help him. He's just a boy."

Marlene protested, "You cannot leave us!"

Sam jerked a thumb at me. "Blame Roland. He's already written this chapter of CAPTAIN OUTRAGEOUS. I'm compelled to go."

"No," sobbed Marlene.

But she was protesting to empty air. Samuel McCord, our protector, was gone.

We were alone. Alone in his club of the damned.
*************