The Blunt Reaper

Her eyes opened to blue light.

She struck the edge of the bed, rolled from it and crashed onto the floor. The chair overturned beside her. One leg struck the washbasin hard enough to send it sliding against the wall.

The memory fragment remained clenched in her hand.

She tried to release it, but her fingers had locked around its surface. Hooked limbs still scraped across stone somewhere inside her skull. Teeth pressed against her palms. The machine continued whirring even though the room had become silent.

The door shook within its frame.

A second impact broke the lock.

Rook entered with the one-handed scythe raised above his shoulder. His coat hung open, and the chains securing the coffin had been fastened unevenly, as though he had thrown it onto his back before fully waking.

His eyes swept across the room.

He checked the window, the space beneath the bed and the shadows beside the wardrobe before looking at Mara.

"Where is it?"

She could not answer.

Mara remained on the floor, staring at her arm. The sleeve had pulled back during the fall, revealing skin untouched by tubes, blades or teeth. It belonged to her again.

Rook followed her gaze.

Then he saw the fragment in her hand.

His expression changed.

"You touched it."

Mara swallowed and forced her fingers open. "I only tried to look."

"And how did that go?"

"Poorly."

"Good. Perhaps the lesson survived."

He lowered the scythe and crouched beside her. Mara attempted to sit upright, but pain tightened across her forehead. She pressed one hand against her temple and closed her eyes.

The darkness made everything worse.

She opened them again.

"I can still feel them," she whispered.

Rook put a piece of cloth in his hand, and used it to take the fragment from her. The instant it left her palm, some of the pressure eased, though the sensations remained embedded inside her mind.

"Feel what?"

"The deaths."

"They weren’t yours."

"I know that."

"Does your head?"

Mara pressed harder against her temple. She could still remember hiding beneath the cart. Not witnessing it. Remembering it. She knew how the dirt had smelled beneath the broken wood and how one jagged stone had pressed against her ribs. She remembered the certainty that something was about to bite through her skull.

None of it had happened to her.

Her body did not believe that.

Rook’s irritation faded as he examined her. "How many?"

"I don’t know."

"That means too many."

"They kept changing. Every time one ended, I was inside another."

"Final moments leave the deepest impressions. Fear, pain, surprise. The things a soul carries hardest when it dies."

Mara looked at the fragment resting in his cloth covered palm. Its dark interior had become still.

"Were all of them killed by that creature?"

"Probably. Abominations accumulate pieces of the souls they kill. Memories cling to them, especially if the same victim returns and dies to them more than once."

"Why would anyone go back?"

"Revenge. Lost memories. An attempt to Cull what killed them. Sometimes they return near the same place and never get the choice."

Mara pulled herself onto the edge of the bed. "Why can I still feel what happened?"

"Because you entered without separating anything. You opened the fragment and allowed every memory near the surface to pass through you."

"Will they go away?"

"Most should."

"Most?"

Rook gave her a hard look. "You pushed several dozen deaths into your head. Be grateful I’m not answering with maybe."

Mara looked down at her hands. There were no cuts across her palms, but she could feel the paths the teeth had taken through them.

"What happens if they don’t?"

"You carry pieces back. A fear that was never yours. Pain from a wound you never received. You might begin recognizing places you’ve never visited or hating people you’ve never met."

"And if I keep doing it?"

"You stop knowing which parts belong to you."

The answer settled more deeply than the pain.

Mara had already entered the Underworld with most of her life behind a barrier she could not cross. She knew her name, fragments of the world she came from and enough of herself to understand who she was, but much remained missing or at least hidden for now. Not as much as Rook, she still remembered her name, her friends and family. But If foreign memories took root inside those empty spaces, she might never recognize them as intruders.

Rook wrapped the fragment in a strip of cloth and folded the material around it several times.

Mara watched his hands. "One was different."

He stopped.

The pause lasted only a fraction of a second before he resumed covering the fragment. "Different how?"

"There were no Abominations. I don’t think it was even here."

"What did you see?"

"White light. Glass. Some kind of machine."

Rook finished wrapping the fragment and tied the cloth shut.

His expression gave her nothing.

"Someone was there, standing... he wore... white clothes...Like a doctor... they said something I couldn’t pick up. Then the machine started."

"And?"

"Pain."

"That narrows it down."

"It wasn’t like the others."

"Every memory feels important when it’s drilling through your skull."

"You don’t believe me?"

"I believe you nearly filled your head with the final moments of several dozen strangers."

Mara studied him.

His tone had not changed. Neither had his posture or expression, but the stillness felt deliberate. He had stopped examining her for signs of damage the moment she mentioned the white room. Even his fingers had become motionless around the wrapped fragment.

"You know something," she said.

"I know you ignored a warning."

"About the white room."

"No."

"You reacted."

"You saw wrong."

"You entered my room carrying a coffin and a scythe before I finished falling out of bed. You weren’t that tired."

Rook rose. "You need someone capable of separating the memories before anyone tries entering this again."

Mara recognized the change of subject but allowed it for the moment. "You mean Voss?"

"I mean someone competent."

"Is there a person whose job involves sorting through memories?"

"A Remembrancer."

"A what?"

"Someone trained to enter fragments, isolate memories and leave without dragging half of them into their own head."

"Where do we find one?"

Rook remained silent.

Mara waited.

His expression slowly worsened.

"The Forty-Second."