“Now, don’t let anything you see scare you. Most importantly, don’t talk. If you have something to say, I will know,” Herbert said.
I’d already gotten accustomed to this peculiar kind of fusion, piggybacking on someone else like a homeless soul. “No worries, I’m aware,” I replied.
Before I could register the changes, reality began to warp around us. The Calliope I knew drifted away before his very eyes, in colorful threads—like streaks of watercolor dissolving in black water. Seconds passed as I listened to the sounds of the ocean going farther and farther away. The chilly softness of the afternoon breeze was replaced by the cold of the cosmic void.
And Herbert dropped, the peak beneath us disappearing. We fell for what felt like the longest minutes of my life, but I kept my mouth shut. Every inch of me wanted to scream with horror as we plunged into the vast unknown of the In-Between. I kept it together, and my restraint was quickly rewarded.
Soon enough, Herbert was merely a wisp of iridescent flesh and bones, literally flying away from Calliope and toward the edges of Eritopia, where clouds of stardust stretched for millions of miles, delineating a solar system protected by the Daughters, once home to a bloodthirsty warlord who had forsaken the wisdom of the Druid species, choosing to slaughter and dominate instead. Azazel seemed so far away now.
I wanted to tell Herbert, as we shot between thousands of wandering stars and just beneath an asteroid field, that he should be mindful of the stardust stream. I wasn’t sure which were controlled by Brendel, and I certainly didn’t want to find out.
The ghoul, however, already tapped into my mind through no fault of his own, immediately registered my thoughts, and moved to a lower angle. We passed the swollen river of pink-and-orange stardust and proceeded toward Neraka. We couldn’t see it yet, but I recognized the general direction, along with the star clusters we zoomed by.
Silence settled around us. The quiet of open space, where a creature like Herbert was free and needed only to be careful not to get tangled in some random mass of jagged asteroids. Space was a wonderful thing, but it was huge, perhaps endless, and riddled with all kinds of things—both good and horrifying. I only wanted to see Neraka again.
“Can I speak?” I whispered.
Herbert chuckled. “Yes. It’s pretty peaceful out here, for now. I don’t see any ghouls.”
“You’d see them, normally? Just drifting through space?” I asked.
“Mm-hm. But given the number of souls still tethered to their bodies inside your fae sanctuaries, I can see why they’d choose to focus on them. They’re like starving wild animals, hoping a soul might get lost, or that at least they’d get to feast on the bodies once they die.”
The thought alone was enough to make me want to hurl. It made him growl.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help feeling that way,” I said.
“That’s fine. I, for one, am starving as well. But I’m too determined to regain my freedom to let myself fall prey to my hunger,” Herbert replied.
“You know, I’m wondering… Why did you want to become a ghoul? From what I’ve learned so far, being a Reaper comes with some benefits. All you have to do is carry souls into the world of the dead,” I said.
Herbert didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but I knew that he was trying to formulate a sincere answer. I could feel it. There were upsides to hitching a soul-ride in other creatures’ bodies, it seemed, for I could sense their thoughts and intentions. Granted, I could only do this with Ramin and ghouls—though, so far, I only trusted Herbert to take me in without eating me.
“I never really wanted to become a ghoul,” he finally said, surprising me. “Perhaps that’s why I was so easily trained by the witches. Why I obeyed and listened to Ibrahim over the years. Why I was more or less okay with being cooped up in that pencil box for so long. It kept me from committing heinous crimes… eating souls…”
“Then how did it happen?” I asked, trying to understand. At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for the guy. He seemed genuine.
“I was tricked by an original ghoul. You see, darling, being a Reaper isn’t at all easy, especially in the beginning. In my time, there was something we referred to as the Critical Hundred Years. The first hundred years spent as a Reaper are crucial, a difficult adjustment period, during which time we learned to leave our lives and everything we knew behind. Reapers have to be neutral and controlled in their demeanor. They must tell people that they’ve died, that this is the end for them, and that they cannot tell them about what’s on the other side. Believe it or not, it’s a tough one, even though we all were in that position before. It’s difficult to deal with the five stages of death that beguile one’s soul.”
“Five stages?”
“Oh, you know, the classics. Denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. It’s grief that you experience first, when you realize that this is it for you. So, even though you’re a soul, you still go through these motions,” Herbert explained. “And it’s heartbreaking for a Reaper, especially a young one, like I was. To listen to people crying and pleading and cursing and bargaining… Some took longer than others to accept that everything that was happening to them was real. It got to me.”
“And you wanted a way out?”
“I did. I begged the other Reapers to get me off this task. I couldn’t do it anymore, but they all encouraged me to keep going, saying that it would all become better, eventually.” He sighed. “One day, I came upon an original ghoul. He’d been like this for a long time, simply scavenging the world for souls to eat. As you may know by now, some souls just… slip away. A distracted Reaper. A late Reaper. You’d be surprised. But anyway, that’s how ghosts come to be. I don’t think there is a single Reaper out there who hasn’t lost a soul, at least once. Whether they admit it or not.”
“What happened then? You said you didn’t want to become a ghoul.”
“Well, this original ghoul, he was nothing like his kind had been described to me by the elder Reapers,” Herbert said. “He was friendly and kind. He seemed to like me. He showed me what his life was like. Unfortunately, I didn’t know at the time that it was just an act. He told me that all I had to do was eat one soul, instead of reaping it. And then, I’d be free. I’d be like him. I didn’t mind the ghastly appearance of him, as long as it came with freedom. I was miserable.”
“And you believed him…”
“I was young and foolish, my sweet plum. I didn’t know any better. I figured it was only one soul, selfish and desperate as I was to renounce my position,” Herbert continued. “I did it. One day, I just found the courage to do it, and… I ate a soul. A warlock, killed before his old age. I just gobbled him up.”
The mental image made me shudder. I could almost see that moment, through a thin, dark veil, a distant memory of Herbert’s. The astonished look on the face of the warlock, who’d already been reduced to a mere translucent version of his old self. The consumption, the exhilaration that followed… and the dread.
“That’s right,” Herbert said. “As soon as I consumed him, I knew he’d never be enough for me. That I would want more. My insides burned and decayed. My bones began to shift… the process was agonizing, to say the least. And the ghoul… he just stood there, watching me and laughing, eager to have a friend to hunt with. Naturally, I felt betrayed. I couldn’t turn back, either. I’d committed the unforgivable sin. I’d disgraced myself. Every Reaper out there would be eager to drive their scythe through me and obliterate me. So, I ran. I ran from the ghoul, I ran from the world I was only just beginning to know.”
So, that was the tale of Herbert, of how he’d become a ghoul in the first place. My sympathy for him only grew. I felt sorry for him.
“Don’t,” he replied. “I’m good. I was in a bad place for a long time, fighting against my ghoulish, primary instincts. Until the witches found me. I was both thrilled and terrified back then. But, you see, once they starve you properly and you devolve into this form of mine… carcasses are good enough to give you some sustenance. At least, like this, I didn’t touch the living. It was difficult to resist the miasma of a soul, of course, but while I was in the witches’ care, I got meat and bones to feast on. I was fine.”
“Why did you demand your freedom, then?” I asked.
Herbert let out hissing laughter. “After decades spent in that wretched pencil box? It was obvious that my time with Ibrahim had come to an end. He no longer had use for me. Neglected me. I don’t hold it against him, but I certainly don’t plan to live out the rest of my existence inside that tiny thing. No, thank you. It was simply time for him to let me go.”
“What do you plan to do, once you’re finished with me?”
“I… I’m not sure yet. I’ll stop by a graveyard, somewhere, first. I will dig up the freshest corpse I can find. I will eat. And then? I suppose I’ll wander through these worlds of the In-Between. I’m positive I’ll have a lot to see.”
I couldn’t disagree with him there. “The In-Between is beautiful, indeed. Lots of worlds to explore. But aren’t you worried you’ll come across a ghost and not be able to resist?”
“I don’t know. I’m not eating you, am I? Perhaps my self-control is stronger than we both thought,” he quipped.
Glancing around, I saw the cosmic landscape change, gradually. The stars were bigger and brighter. Up ahead, still at least a million light-years away, was the triple-star system of Neraka. Strings of violet-and-bright-green space debris crisscrossed the glimmering field we had to cross in order to reach Neraka’s solar system.
This felt odd. Only an hour ago, we were falling off the cliff on Calliope.