Free The Reaper by Jonas Saul Page B

focused on this town and even said he used to live here. Something weird was happening. Something I didn’t understand. I wanted no part of it. It fucked with my current reality. But should I react with how I was feeling about Novar? All I could do was turn back around and stare out the front windshield at the oddly familiar landscape. I was too close to the end to allow the ruse to be taken from me. No one could stop the killing now.
     
    Jacob directed his dad to pull over. There wasn’t much of a shoulder on the narrow road, but John did his best to keep the car from going down the small embankment. He put the hazards on and we all got out.
     
    The afternoon sun beat down but I took my sunglasses off. I wanted to enjoy every moment as the killing time approached, see everything, feel all of it.
     
    I smiled to myself as John and I silently followed Jacob through tall grass and weeds. We walked across a small clearing, and then my pulse raced as if I was in free-fall. I felt faint. I grabbed my chest. John reached for my arm to steady me. What the hell was happening? This had never happened before in any of my thousands of incarnations. Maybe my age was catching up with me. Perhaps it was my soul that was to be stolen?
     
    “We lived right here,” Jacob said, his arms wide.
     
    In that moment, I realized he was right. The earth under my feet was once my garden. I could see everything and understand nothing. I should remember it if I had lived here before. I looked around and noticed indentations in the foliage that resembled a pattern. When I pushed a few shrubs aside, I could see pieces of the foundation of a building that once stood here. When I looked up, Jacob was thirty meters away and moving fast.
     
    “Jacob. I mean Mark! Where’re you going?”
     
    “I want to show you the tree. And then you can have your surprise.”
     
    I’d had enough surprises for one day. I was having an involuntary epiphany. I didn’t want to know what I was discovering. A part of my rational side rebelled. Anger rose in me; violence too. The killing was coming, along with it the sweet rush of a murder. So delicate and yet so satisfying.
     
    Humans do it every day. They kill each other. They kill animals for sport. Everything down to a fly swatter kills and they take great pleasure in it. I live on another scale, another plane, one greater than all the others. My pleasure in death is immense. Watching it, causing it, feeling it, being killed myself. Everything to do with it is why I exist.
     
    I am, therefore I kill.
     
    I followed Jacob another fifty yards, with John close behind. We came to a clump of trees and there, scraped into the bark of the largest one was the name Mark and the year 1931 .
     
    I looked at John. If he didn’t figure out who he was soon, he would wonder what all this meant. Was his son reincarnated or psychic? John would have questions. We were down to the end. I didn’t want to have to kill him without the knowledge of who he is. It hurt when their last breath came out, their eyes darkened, and they had no idea why. Knowledge is power. I love death when we know why. It’s a rich power. The only kind. That’s why I do what I do and I’m so good at it. The power.
     
    “Can I help you folks?”
     
    Nothing pissed me off more than being startled.
     
    My human body jumped a foot and let out a small squeal as all three of us turned around and stared death in the face. The man standing with the aid of a cane was twenty feet away. He must have been at least ninety years old. The side of his face looked melted, like he’d kissed a fire and paid for it. He was simply gorgeous.
     
    “I’m sorry, we were just looking around,” John said.
     
    Do you realize how dumb that sounds? Oh, we’re just looking around in the middle of the tall grass and huge trees . We must’ve looked like complete idiots.
     
    “I haven’t seen anyone this far off the road in a long time,” the old man said.
     
    “Is