The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL) by Amber Benson Read Free Book Online Page A

Shady Glen Row Home For The Aged were all around him, enjoying the extracurricular activities and suppliesthat abounded in the recess room: cards, board games, books, painting supplies, clay to mold…even a television set for the lazy ones. There was a wealth of things to do if you wanted to participate—and he wanted to participate.
    He looked down at his gnarled old hands, the skin coated with liver spots the size of silver dollars, and was disgusted. When had he gotten so old?
    It was a question he asked himself on a daily basis.
    He sighed, wishing he were anywhere but in the old, worn down body he was in—and that’s when he noticed the lightness. It was in his fingers and toes, inching its way up his arms and legs toward his core. He’d never experienced anything like it before. He tried to speak, to let the woman sitting beside him (he had no idea what her name was) know there was something wrong with him, but words just wouldn’t come.
    A stroke? Was he having a stroke?
    Not long before Flora died, they’d watched an old woman having a stroke at lunch. It’d been awful, the woman’s face going slack as her body shook, then she was pitching forward into her plate of oatmeal. The aides had run over as quickly as their crepe-soled shoes could carry them, but the woman was already dead. He’d known it, Flora had known it, all the other old people around them had known it…because being so elderly themselves, when Death came to cull one of the herd, it tipped its hat to all of them.
    He tried to get a word out, any word, but his vocal chords weren’t working. He looked around, eyes fluttering in their sockets, trying to catch someone’s gaze, let them know he was in trouble, but no one seemed to be paying him any attention.
    The lightness quickly overtook his body and he knew there was no coming back from it. Whatever had ahold of him wasn’t going to let him go.
    Liddy had noticed Howard nod off, but she hadn’t thought much of it. He usually fell asleep halfway through gin rummy, leaving the others to finish the hand without him. But the game had ended now and Howard was still asleep, his chin resting against his concave chest.
    “Howard…?” Liddy said, reaching out a stick-thin arm, the skin hanging off the bone like a flesh drape.
    She poked Howard in the fatty part of his upper arm, butinstead of a startled, sleepy response, Howard remained inert, his chin continuing to rest against his chest. Liddy didn’t need to poke him again. She had a pretty good idea Howard wasn’t going to be playing gin rummy with them anymore.
    “It’s all right, Liddy,” Howard said as he stood above her, the sight of his own, lifeless body a bit hard to take.
    He reached out a hand and placed it on Liddy’s shoulder, but it just went right through her like a shadow. He lifted up his hand, surprised to see that the skin was still old and liver spotted. He’d hoped his ghost would be in the image of his younger self.
    “Oh, well,” he murmured, just glad the pain from the rheumatoid arthritis he’d been battling these past five years was finally gone.
    He waited patiently for Liddy to collect herself. It took her a few moments of deep breathing before she was calm enough to sound the alarm. Her voice came out in a tight, nervous curl, but the two on-duty orderlies heard her and ran toward the table, their dark eyes sad with the foreknowledge that their efforts would be futile—and then, as the two men in their crisp white orderly uniforms began to probe his dead body, looking for his nonexistent heartbeat, Howard slowly backed out of the room.
    *   *   *
    freezay and his charge didn’t make it to the car. They were attacked the moment they set foot outside—well, the moment
Freezay
set foot outside; the kid was a ghost, whether he knew it or not, and didn’t have a corporeal form.
    The assailants moved so quickly Freezay didn’t have time to prepare for the onslaught, instead, all the years he’d spent