Loss (7 page)

It won’t last.

A memory sliced through him: Billy, age seven, putting his beloved stuffed Cookie Monster into a carton, to be tucked away in the attic along with other toys and games he’d outgrown. He was old enough to know his dad was never coming back; therefore, he was old enough not to need Cookie Monster on his pillow at night. Billy remembered placing the weathered blue plush figure into the box, remembered feeling like someone was squeezing him too tightly because he’d found it difficult to take a breath. The box was sealed, and Cookie was gone.

Feeling hollow, Billy followed Death out of the house, pausing only to shut and lock the front door.

And then he turned and balked immediately when he saw the horse.

***

The pale horse had no need to breathe, so it reserved that action for when it was near the other steeds. Over the years, it had found that horses get nervous if one of their kind doesn’t breathe, especially when snorts and blows were so essential to communication.

Living creatures, the horse had long ago discovered, were easily spooked.

As it watched its Rider and the boy exit the house, the steed took a dusty breath. Always best to relate to humans as if they were horses. Simpler that way, even though horses were far more noble than humans.

The boy slowly turned away from the door and saw the steed. His eyes widened, and as the boy stared mutely, the horse caught a whiff of moonlight and bedbugs: the scent of the White Rider.

Interesting.

The steed considered the boy’s aura, a pulse of colors that indicated how much life had been already spent and how much was left in reserve. Through the colors was a thread of white, flickering from pristine to filthy. The horse squinted, and now it saw that the white was deeply tangled around the boy’s core.

Very interesting. The boy had been marked—not by Death, who chose all Riders, but by the Conqueror.

Well now. That was something new. The horse’s ears quivered. In its long, long years, the steed rarely came across anything new.

The boy was still staring at it. A fine sheen of sweat coated his forehead, and his mouth worked silently, opening and closing, opening and closing. Keeping background time to the breath of the world, the boy’s frantic heartbeat drummed in his chest. The human was clearly terrified . . .

. . . of the horse.

Not of Death, who could end all existence with a simple word, but of the Pale Rider’s steed.

The horse smiled, in the way that horses did. This, too, was new—and the pale steed was extremely amused.

***

. . .
At the edge of the park, he sees a white horse. Not a merry-go-round horse, either, but a real live horse, about a million feet tall and so white that it’s like staring at the sun . . .

Billy blinked and the memory vanished, but the horse remained. Not his horse, no—that horse, the nightmare horse, the one that came with the Ice Cream Man, was a blinding white, and the one dappled in moonlight outside his house was, if anything, leached of color. It made Billy think of the plant hanging in the kitchen: amid the lush emerald leaves were scattered bits of pale green, the color leaning toward off-white. The horse was the color of those dying leaves.

“Come on,” Death said, approaching the monstrous horse.

Billy’s feet refused to work. He opened his mouth to shout, but his voice died somewhere along the way. He watched Death pull himself atop the horse in an easy motion, watched him adjust the saddle bag that absolutely hadn’t been there a moment ago—for that matter, the
saddle
hadn’t been there a moment ago—but all Billy could do was stare, horrified, at the pale horse.

“Plenty of room,” Death said cheerfully.

Billy’s voice had betrayed him, but he could still turn his head. He did so, slowly, emphatically if silently saying,
No, nuh-uh, absolutely not
.

The horse grinned at him. He knew that was crazy, because horses don’t grin, but he would have sworn on his life that the thing was actually grinning at him.

“Is there a problem?” asked Death.

Oh yeah. There was a gigantic horse with glowing red eyes and looking like it had maybe drowned standing right there in front of his house. There was a problem, all right.

“It’s my steed,” Death said fondly, giving the creature a pat on its thick neck. “It won’t harm you.”

Billy shook his head once more, and managed to take a step back. The door was flush against his back.

Now Death was gazing at him like he had the word
LOSER
written on his forehead. In a soft, cold voice, Death said, “What frightens thee, William Ballard?”

Billy thought once more of the Ice Cream Man’s giant horse, screamingly white and yet somehow dirty, just like the Ice Cream Man himself, and he heard the Ice Cream Man tell him that he’s got something to show Billy . . .

No!

Shuddering, he looked away. No, he wasn’t thinking about the man in white. He wasn’t. That was a nightmare and nothing more.

“Even nightmares have elements of truth,” Death murmured.

Billy shivered again, and this time his voice didn’t fail him as he faced the Pale Rider. “I’m not riding a horse.”

It was a pivotal moment: Billy Ballard, the most bullied kid in school, had chosen to stand his ground. It wasn’t because he thought he could win. He’d reached his breaking point. Death could kill him, and that didn’t matter. There was no way that Billy was getting on that horse. Period.

Silence echoed as Death stared at him, considered him. Judged him. At last, the Pale Rider grinned. “No worries,” he said. “We’ll go the pop culture route instead.”

The horse snorted.

“Don’t be grumpy,” Death chided.

The pale steed snorted again, and then it wasn’t a horse at all but a yellow car, its engine already running. It looked like the love child of a Volkswagen Beetle and a Delorean. Death, in the driver’s seat, leaned his blond head out the window and said, “Well?”

Billy, stunned, said, “Your horse is a Transformer.”

“Technically, a transmogrifier. But hey, whatever floats your boat. Get in.”

Billy got in, pausing only to take in the name on the vanity plate. As he fastened his seat belt—which was purely habitual, because really, was he going to die when Death was driving?—he asked, “Um. What’s ‘Mortis Prime’?”

Death smiled, sighed, and said, “Dude, you’ve
got
to read the classics.” And with that, he hit the gas.

***

One thing Billy could say definitively about Death: the personification had a lead foot.

Billy realized immediately that the horse/car wasn’t limited to things like speed limits or physics: Death shifted gears, and suddenly they were in the air. Up they went, traveling across the sky fast enough to turn the images outside the window into watercolor blurs. One look was enough for Billy; he squeezed his eyes shut and recited Linkin Park lyrics in his head to keep from losing his mind. Bad enough they were inside a horse somehow, but inside a
flying
horse? Going at ridiculous speed? No. Just no. Mentally singing songs about pain and loss made it bearable. Sort of.

After a small slice of eternity (or, in real time, four songs), they came to a sudden, jarring halt.

He didn’t open his eyes until Death said, “Here we are.” That was when Billy realized that A) Death had gotten out of the horse/car and B) Death had opened the passenger door for Billy.

Well, at least he hadn’t screamed during the trip. That had to count for something, right?

“Absolutely,” Death said with a wink.

Right. Death could read his mind. He’d probably been bopping his head as Billy had channeled his inner vocalist.
Remember to think nice things about the grunger Grim Reaper
, Billy thought as he threw himself out of the car/horse/thing.

“Sage advice,” agreed Death, shutting the door.

They were parked outside of a hospital; that was clear from the large red cross on the white building, even though Billy couldn’t read the sign over the entrance. What language was that—Greek?

“
Né
,” said Death.

“No?” Billy repeated.

“Not ‘no.’
Né
.” Death smiled and tapped his nose. “You got it in one, William:
That’s Greek. Appropriate, considering that we’re in Greece. Follow me.” And off he went, striding toward the entrance like he was about to take center stage.

They were in
Greece?
Billy stared at the hospital sign, then looked back at the yellow car that, another continent ago, had been a horse. Then he looked back at the sign.

Right. They were in Greece. This night couldn’t possibly get any stranger. He hurried to catch up to the Pale Rider.

They walked briskly through the entrance, the automatic doors swooshing importantly. Inside, Billy was struck by the smell: a combination of antiseptic and ammonia, strong enough to sting his eyes. But beyond that initial stench was something subtler, deeper: a metallic tang, both sharp and yet soothing. It was a comfortable smell, one that made Billy feel at home even though they were in a foreign hospital.

Blood
, he realized as he and Death turned a corner and strode down the hall. Beneath the hospital stench of Spartan cleanliness, he was smelling blood. And it smelled . . . good.

Great. Now he was turning into a vampire.

Next to him, Death laughed. It was a rich sound, so completely at odds with the sterility around them. “You’re many things,” said the Pale Rider, chuckling. “But a vampire isn’t one of them.”

Just as well, Billy decided. If he were a vampire, he’d be the one that got staked first. “So why does it smell so good in here?”

“Blood is life,” Death replied, as if that answered the question.

As they walked, Billy noted that the people around them didn’t look at them at all—not the doctors or nurses in their scrubs, not the patients in their seats or lying on the cots lining the hallway, not the people in the waiting areas, staring listlessly at television screens. A cluster of doctors grouped in the middle of the hall, chatting in an animated way in a language Billy couldn’t understand—Greek, he assumed—but rather than steer around them, Death marched straight into them . . . and the doctors sidestepped at the last instant, not pausing in their conversation. Billy stared at the group as he walked past, wondering how they could react to Death’s presence even if they didn’t see him. He decided he really didn’t want to know.

Soon they were entering a small room. Billy took in the lone hospital bed, the assortment of machines surrounding it, the staleness of the air, and his first thought was,
There’s no one here
. And then, on the heels of that:
There’s a man in the bed.

He stared at the empty bed, frowning at its clean white sheets. And as he stared, he saw the impression of a man lying in the bed. Billy blinked, and the image vanished.

“Focus,” Death murmured.

Billy squinted, and once again he saw the vague image of a man in the narrow hospital bed. As Billy peered, the man’s shape solidified, and now Billy was looking at a man with a ruined face, lying in bed like it was a coffin.

Recognition slammed into Billy, tightening his gut and locking his knees. He choked out one word, one desperate plea:
“No.”

There, unconscious in the hospital bed, lay the Ice Cream Man.

Chapter 7

Billy Staggered Back . . .

. . . as he shook his head, saying, “No” and “no” and “no” again. The man in the bed
couldn’t
be there. He was nothing more than a lingering terror from childhood. A bogeyman.

And yet there he was, shrouded from chin to toe in a dingy white blanket.

Horrified, Billy stared at the Ice Cream Man’s waxy face. The skin, riddled with cold sores and pox, sagged as if overcome by gravity, pooling by the ears and jaw. His lipless white mouth hung open enough for Billy to spy rotted teeth. The eyes, thankfully, were closed, but Billy knew they would be rheumy with pus. Greasy black tendrils of hair fanned along the pillow like an oil-covered starfish.

“You know him,” said Death. It wasn’t a question.

Billy swallowed thickly. Oh, he knew the Ice Cream Man, all right. He’d been the central figure in Billy’s recurring nightmare for years. Not trusting his voice, he nodded.

Death stood at the side of the bed, exactly halfway between the headboard and foot rail. His too-long blond hair curtained over his face, casting his eyes and nose in shadow. His mouth, though, was set in a wide grin, showing too many teeth for Billy’s comfort. “Oh, he’d like that,” Death said with a chuckle. “Ice cream and emperors go well together.”

The words surprised Billy into speaking. “He’s an emperor?”

“He was, long ago.” Death glanced over his shoulder at the unconscious man in the hospital bed. “A ruler more than an emperor. And a ruler more than once. But more than anything else, he is a Rider.”

“Like you,” said Billy.

A pause, like winter frost gathering on a windowpane. And then Death said quietly, “None is like me.”

Wind slapped Billy’s face, bringing sudden tears to his eyes. In that moment, he thought he saw wings unfurling behind Death’s back, spreading wide enough to fill the room and beyond—but then he blinked and the image was gone, leaving Billy with a vague sense of terror and awesome beauty.

The moment passed, and Death, no longer terrifying or awe-inspiring, grinned once more. “But you’re close. He’s a colleague of mine. Say hello to Pestilence, Conqueror of Health, Bringer of Disease, White Rider of the Apocalypse. Also, not a bad bridge player.”

Thoughts whipped through Billy’s head, some questioning what he’d just witnessed, others pouncing on Death’s declaration about the man in the bed. Pestilence? The Ice Cream Man, the nightmare man, wasn’t just real—he was a Horseman of the Apocalypse?

He shook his head. It was too much. Too crazy. He grasped on to that thought like a lifeline. Yes, he was going crazy. He could handle crazy. He’d enjoy crazy. The notion of being locked up someplace safe, far away from responsibilities and consequences, was extremely inviting. More likely, he wasn’t crazy at all. He’d hit his head in the locker room—repeatedly, thanks to Joe—so maybe now he had a concussion. A head injury. Yes, that had to be it—he was hallucinating from pain. Or maybe he was dreaming. He’d gone home after being humiliated in front of Marianne, and he’d probably thrown himself on his bed, his iPod buds snug in his ears, and he’d fallen asleep to a soundtrack of angst.