What October Brings

I: Talitha Cumi

“Sorry. I thought an old woman died in here.”

The young doctor wandered back out of Room 11 and walked next door to watch an orderly cart out a human-sized blue box to the elevators.

With the minor interruption over, Anaea Robinson went back to the conversation the police detective and the hospital administrator were trying to have with her. The two women talked at her about what had happened to her grandfather a few hours before: Buchanan Robinson was murdered via lethal injection in this hospital room by a nurse at the age of one hundred and twenty years and seven months. Anaea had been at work when it happened, where she always was when all the important things in her life happened. Her daughter’s last three birthdays, her last three boyfriends breaking up with her, now her grandfather’s death all went by while she was running around being a good and overworked guest liaison manager at the most expensive hotel on the Caribbean island. Quay Way was frequented by anonymous billionaires, loud musicians, sloppy starlets, unfaithful footballers, incontinent Counts, and the occasional doomsday cult out for some fun in the sun before committing mass suicide in the hotel’s fifty room private villa. Cleaning up that mess took her staff the better part of last week and killed her latest boyfriend’s patience and interest.

The women continued to talk at her but Anaea just stared at and stroked the edge of the soiled blue sheet her Papa Buck died on.

“Your grandfather put up a fight and shouted for help, Ms. Robinson,” the detective said. “That’s how we found out about all this. The nurse… responsible is in custody. Doctor Greaves?”

“Thank you, detective Bosch. The hospital will be working closely with the police to…”

She paused, scoffed, and continued, “Fuck it. We’re going to make sure that sick bastard gets exactly what he deserves, Ms. Robinson. I’ve spoken with the police, the prosecutor’s office, and our board… and we have a unique proposition for you.”

Anaea finally looked the administrator in the eyes, a turn that shook her curly black hair.

“What could you people possibly offer me?”

The look of shock on Dr. Greaves’ face quickly turned to resignation. “Mr. Robinson was here under observation for his persistent cough… and one of our people murdered him. There would be nothing we could do beyond paying millions in a pre-emptive settlement but, as you already know, there may be more victims. Hallowmas starts tomorrow, Ms. Robinson. After our pathologists finish his autopsy, we can send him to an immortician.”

“I don’t have money for resurrection,” Anaea said angrily. “Buck was a boxer but there hasn’t been any money left since before I was born.”

“As I said, the hospital would end up paying you millions anyway, Ms. Robinson. The unique timing and nature of Mr. Robinson’s… passing doubled with the police and prosecutors wanting at least one first-hand account equals a chance for you to say goodbye to him. It’s literally the least we can offer you.”

“But you said Papa Buck was dead, mom,” Vanessa stated in confusion.

And Anaea thought the next difficult thing she had to explain to her eight year old daughter would be sex.

The living room looked pristine, straight out of a housekeeping digest, because no one did any living in it. Anaea was always at work or in her backyard gym, Vanessa was always at school or extracurriculars or bouncing between friends’ homes, and Buck was usually either in his room or the garden or the kitchen. Mostly murder happened in the living room since Jack Marsh, Anaea’s best friend and Vanessa’s godfather and Buck’s nurse, played hours of violent video games on the wall screen TV. There was no running over prostitutes who owed him money with his ’67 Chevy Impala hardtop tonight, though. Jack sat on the large blue couch beside Vanessa and Anaea being a responsible adult, not a drug-addicted ex-con on a virtual rampage.

“He is, Van,” Jack explained, “but being dead is more complicated than it used to be.”

Anaea closed her eyes and sighed silently, thanking him for taking the lead.

“Everybody dies, Van,” he continued. “Some people come back. It doesn’t happen often, sweetie, but it’s what’ll happen with Papa Buck. We all have something in us. Some people call them souls. I don’t know what they really are. I… Anaea, the immortician should be the one to explain it to her.”

“The immortician can explain it to me, too,” Anaea replied.

“Uncle Jack told me that babies come from sex, then people live, then they die,” Vanessa stated, much to her mother’s horror.

“You told her about sex, Jack?!”

“Only age appropriate information. She asked, I’m a medical professional, and you tense up every time she mentions it.”

“Jesus, Jack.”

“What’s an immortician, mom?”

“Like Uncle Jack said,” Anaea happily got the derailed conversation back on track, “people can sometimes come back from the dead, and the immortician helps.”

“Come back like zombies?”

“No, honey. Not like zombies.”

“But Uncle Jack’s always killing zombie hookers.”

Anaea shot Jack another stern look to which he replied with a shrug.

“Zombies aren’t real, Van,” Jack explained. “They’re just made up monsters in video games and movies.”

“I thought people coming back to life was made up, too,” the girl countered.

“We all did until a few years ago,” he explained. “If the timing of someone’s death is right and their soul wants to come back…”

“And if their family has enough money…” Anaea grumbled.

“…and a few other conditions are met,” Jack continued while shooting Anaea his own dirty look, “the dead person can come back to life for three special days starting on Halloween morning.”

“And Papa Buck will come back tomorrow morning?”

“We hope so, Van. He can help make sure the bad nurse who hurt him never hurts anyone else ever again… and we and Papa Buck can say our goodbyes to each other.”

“Will he be all rotten?”

“No, he won’t be rotting. He’ll look just like he did when we last saw him, maybe even a bit stronger.”

“You’re sure he won’t try to eat my brains?”

“Positive, Van.”

“You should bring a console controller along to protect us, Jack,” Anaea joked. Neither Jack nor Vanessa laughed.

“Can I watch Papa Buck come back to life with you and Uncle Jack, mom?”

“I don’t think children are allowed, sweetie.”

“I’m almost nine!”

“I’ll call the immortuary and see if they’ll make an exception in this case,” Jack offered.

“We should all be there for him, mom. We should all be there when Papa Buck comes back.”

Jack and Anaea were still on the couch a while later talking and occasionally looking into the kitchen where Vanessa had been suitably distracted with a kids show on her tablet and some pre-Halloween candy after a very early dinner.

“She’ll need you a lot more now without me and Buck here,” he said.

“You’ll still be around.”

“As long as you have that wall screen and surround sound.”

“Thank God for you, godfather.”

“My goddaughter barely sees her mother.”

“If she saw me more, she’d be seeing food less.”

“Anaea…”

“I’ll excuse you. You’ve got to call the immortuary.”

“That isn’t how you speak to someone doing you a favour.”

“No. It’s how I speak to family doing their job. Later, godfather. I’ve got things to kick.”

The garden shed she’d converted into a gym was Anaea’s sanctuary. Gloves and shin guards were the armour she put on every day, weights were every burden she had to bear, the skipping rope was every obstacle she had to overcome, the free-standing black punching bag was everyone she wanted to kill. She jabbed her right fist forward, threw a left hook, ducked, brought her right knee up, then kicked the dark obelisk with her left foot. She kept her hands up, ducking, squatting, lunging across the fluorescent bright interior of the gym. It took an hour before she realized what she kept wiping from her eyes wasn’t only sweat.

“I put Van to bed,” Jack announced from the plastic door. “You’ve been out here awhile. I’m not coming in so you can kick me in the nuts.…”

“It was an accident.”

“…again. I’ll stick to the shooting range.”

“I’m not going to break down, Jack. I’ve been prepared for this since before Vanessa was born, since before my parents died and Buck moved to the island to live with me.”

She uppercut empty air.

“He was old, Jack, as old as people can get. He couldn’t live forever!”

She grabbed the back of an imaginary opponent’s head, bringing it down onto her rapidly rising left knee.

“He just had a cough.”

She stopped fighting, fists still raised and ready, knees apart and slightly bent, redistributing her weight from side to side as she looked at Jack.

“He just had a fucking cough…”

They stood in silence for a bit.

“Phil called a few minutes ago, Anaea. He wants me to come over, thinks I need a hug.”

“He should know by now you’re not a hugger.”

“Neither are you,” Jack said as he walked in and hugged Anaea who reluctantly and sweatily hugged him back, “and we’re not big criers, either. Old Buck was like family to me, too. I’ll be back in the morning around four to help you and Van get ready for the rising.”

“You cared for us almost as much as you cared for Buck.”

“Just family doing their job.”

Jack released his embrace but Anaea held on for a few extra seconds.

“Get off me, MILF. I love you but I’ve got a boyfriend to go special hug.”

“I can’t believe you told my daughter about sex.”

They laughed.

“See you at four, Jack.”

“See you, budget Ronda Rousey.”

She raised her right knee dangerously close to his groin, causing him to deflect it with his hands.

“You’re learning,” she said with a smile.

II: The Green Treatment

In daylight, the infinity pool deck of the Coal Ridge Immortuary had a breathtaking view of the island’s rugged and mostly undeveloped east coast. In the early morning, however, darkness extended from the somber lights of the immortuary over the dense tropical forest and rocky promontories jutting up through the rough Atlantic Ocean to the stars and full moon above. Now that it was approaching six, the sky brightened considerably, and the sounds of animal life grew louder.

“I’m still surprised work gave you time off,” Jack whispered to Anaea.

“My grandfather was murdered and he’s about to be resurrected. Work didn’t have much choice. And I think that’s my cue,” she replied while adjusting the flowing white robe she wore for the ceremony then walked to the water’s edge.

Jack, Vanessa, and representatives from the hospital, police, and prosecutor’s office sat in wicker chairs at mahogany tables arranged in an arc around the large circular pool’s near edge. Rising ceremonies were all essentially the same, varying only in the amount of money you wanted to invest to make sure they actually worked. Most were lavishly catered affairs like this one with incense, exotic sweets, expensive alcohols, and cooked meats in abundance to entice the recently released spirit temporarily back to its former carcass prison. There was no need for this extravagance, though. The centuries-old original way with participants smoking tobacco while eating raw sugar, drinking cheap rum, and slaughtering livestock worked just as well sometimes if the spirit was truly eager to return. And the spirit had to be willing. There were reports of souls being dragged back to their corpses and trapped there, but immorticians denounced such tales as malicious rumours.

Two attendants in black wetsuits helped immortician Yewande Ayodele bring the white shroud-covered body of Buchanan Robinson through the small crowd and down a ramp into the pool. Ayodele, a middle aged, thin woman with light brown skin, wore a top hat and a well-tailored tuxedo into the pool where Anaea joined her. The mistress of ceremonies’ watch vibrated with her two minutes to sunrise warning, and the attendants left her and Anaea holding Buchanan’s body in the water.

“The souls of the departed can always hear us but today, All Hallows’ Eve, when the walls between the living and the dead become fluid,” immortician Ayodele pronounced, “we can also hear them. There are many words that can be said to the dead, and none will move them except words from those they loved.”

Anaea leaned down and whispered in her dead grandfather’s ear, “Come back to us, Papa Buck. Just for a little while. Please.”

As dawn threatened, the two women submerged and surfaced his body once, then again. On the third submersion, immortician Ayodele let go of the body, leaving Anaea alone holding him. As the sun broke over the Atlantic with a green flash at 5:52 AM, Anaea saw a similar tongue of green fire appear on Buchanan’s head underwater, then his eyes and mouth opened to show verdant energies burning within. Steam rose and the infinity pool’s water bubbled and roiled as Anaea raised Buchanan’s head and shoulders into the light of a new day. The young man in her arms who had seconds before been a supercentenarian shouted his last words first, “Keep that damned needle away from me!”

“Papa Buck! What does that mean, Uncle Jack?” Vanessa asked.

Jack remembered his distant Sunday school lessons, furiously made the sign of the cross, and mumbled, “He’s had too much wine.”

III: Harlem Smoke

“How did he die?”

Seated in the living room, detective Bosch cleared her throat before answering Anaea’s question.

“We found Herb Easterman dead in his cell two hours after your grandfather identified him as the nurse who caused his fatal cardiac event. You know Easterman confessed to using an ajmaline and lidocaine cocktail.”

“How did he die?”

“Easterman had brain hemorrhaging, bits of his glasses embedded in three skull fractures, a shattered eye socket, multiple cracked ribs, a punctured lung, ruptured spleen, bruised kidneys, and a broken collarbone.”

“Someone beat the shit out of him.”

“Someone beat the life out of him. He looks like he went ten rounds with Mike Tyson but the irony is the coroner thinks Easterman died of cardiac arrhythmia.”

“And Buck used to be a boxer.”

“Yes, a world champion nicknamed the Harlem Smoke, and you’re one of this island’s best amateur mixed martial artists.”

“We went with you to the hospital and the police station after the ceremony, then you made sure we got back here safely.”

“Can anyone vouch for you after I left?”

“It was just me, Buck, Jack, and Vanessa here for hours. Buck’s been following the immortician’s orders: meditating and contemplating and all that.”

“I’ve heard of risings where paraplegics come back able to walk again, Ms. Robinson. No one has ever heard of one where the dead returned a century younger.”

“Immortician Ayodele is just as shocked as the rest of us, detective, and she’s researching it right now. If she can look up the esoteric stuff, why can’t you just look at video to see who killed that pale bastard?”

“Our cameras in that part of central station haven’t worked in weeks. We’re fully staffed so security hasn’t been a problem… until now.”

“The regular police beatings were fine but this one got out of hand? The thirty six murders Easterman confessed to were too many?”

“Stop that ‘arrest and molest’ foolishness. We don’t abuse our prisoners, Ms. Robinson,” detective Bosch said sternly, “despite what people may think. Look, we have no idea how someone could have gotten into the station, slipped past a dozen officers, beat the nurse to death, then escaped without anyone seeing or hearing anything.”

“Sounds like you’re here trying to find a way to blame this on anyone but fellow officers,” Anaea said as she got up and opened to the front door. “If you have any more questions or accusations, we can speak in the presence of the most expensive lawyer the hospital’s blood money can summon. Until then, please leave.”

The unmarked police car backed out of the driveway, and Anaea watched it disappear down the palm tree-lined avenue. Plastic skeletons and papier-mâché gravestones decorated the house across the street, a sign of the more Americanized tastes of her upper middle class area. The neighbourhood children would be trick or treating in a few hours so Anaea had a jack o’lantern bucket filled with candy by the front door to be neighbourly even though she wouldn’t allow Vanessa to go door to door begging almost strangers for confectionery. She unwrapped and munched on a mini-Uranus bar as she walked to the backyard gym. Some local priests decried anything to do with Halloween as pagan but most people simply saw it as another opportunity to get drunk and dress up provocatively.

Buck was wearing nothing but one of Jack’s borrowed sweat pants as he bareknuckle jabbed in basic one-two combinations at a punching bag suspended from the shed’s ceiling. She had known him all her life as thin and frail, not the six feet tall, two hundred pounds of sweaty, brown muscle expertly pummeling her equipment with his powerful fists. Buck’s dark arms were slightly longer than normal for someone his height, giving him an increased range that provided an advantage he ruthlessly exploited. He had been a world heavyweight champion, one of the best boxers of the early twentieth century, a man who had three of his fights dubbed ‘the fight of the century’. She could see some of that in his movements now though he was taking things relatively easy. Buck looked just like he did in old pictures and news reel footage: tall and handsome, built like he could break through skulls with a single punch or hearts with a single smile.

“That’s not meditating,” she said.

“It is for me, girl.”

He added some footwork, moving around the bag on his bare soles as his simple strikes continued.

“All these years in this house and the closest I ever got to out here was gardening and cooking in that fucking kitchen.”

Anaea flinched. She had never heard her grandfather curse in all her forty years.

“You… Uh… You baked some great ham… and you never showed any interest.”

“I did this shit hours a day for thirty years. I should never have given it up.”

“After the accident…”

Buck stopped, his hands falling to his sides as he pulled himself up to his full height.

“I took punches to the head for decades but one car accident turned me into a retard. Ain’t life fucked?”

Anaea’s grandfather had been a sweet man who cared for his third and final wife and their son by working numerous menial jobs up and down the Carolinas. Her grandmother never talked about what Buck had been like before he crashed his car in 1946 but there were more than enough articles and tabloid gossip from the time to piece together that he wasn’t the nicest person. Drinking, cheating, spending all his prize money on everything but his family… That young Buchanan Robinson was a terror Anaea was happy to have never known, and she realized she might not to be happy knowing this young Buck, either.

“Nice setup in here, girl. I got a good workout.”

“Glad you enjoyed it. We need to talk, Papa Buck. It’s about that nurse.”

“Easterman? The scrawny cunt who killed me?”

“He’s dead.”

“Can’t say I’m broken up. Who offed him?”

“The police aren’t sure.”

“At least I got to look him in his blue four eyes this morning and let him know I’d be the one sending him for lethal injection this time around. Hhh. I guess someone who knew other people he killed got him first. Remember what he said in that weak voice? About killing people because he got off on trying to save them? Sick fuck had it coming.”

Buck took a towel from a weight bench and wiped his sweaty face and muscular chest. As she watched, Anaea had to remind herself this gorgeous man barely in his twenties was her supercentenarian grandfather.

“You stopped him.”

“He still stuck me and killed me. It’s the best thing that could’ve happened, though.”

“What?”

“I’d rather spend three days like this, being myself again, than fuck knows how much time I had left in that hospital bed.”

“The doctors said you were getting better.”

“There ain’t much to look forward to when you’re a hundred and twenty, girl. I’ll take these three days, thanks.”

“Papa Buck…”

“Just call me Buck, yeah.”

“Buck… Do you remember dying? Do you remember anything about the other side?”

Anaea had never seen anyone with the look on Buck’s face before. She couldn’t identify it, either, beyond being possibly an otherwise impossible mélange of disparate emotions.

“The immortician said not to talk about that. Breaks the spell early.”

“I didn’t know, sorry.”

“It’s OK, girl. I’m going for a shower. Have some of those little Lazarus cakes for me when I get out.”

The immortuary provided Lazarákia since the spicy-sweet breads were part of the ongoing ritual to keep this old yet new him, this renewed him alive.

“OK, Papa…” Anaea stopped and corrected herself. “OK, Buck.”

“Good girl.”

Buck squeezed her shoulder with his free hand, looked into her eyes, smiled, then went into the house. It was all Anaea could do not to pull away. As the punching bag slowly swung, Anaea wondered how much of the old Buck had returned and how much of the true Buck she had ever really known.

IV: Deep Taint

“These aren’t the kind of damages I was expecting you to discuss, Dr. Greaves,” Anaea said to the woman seated across the desk from her and immortician Ayodele. The hospital administrator’s room was cozy, filled with books and family pictures and plants, its view took in the hospital garden and the river that ran through the heart of the capital along which a few tourists kayaked.

“With the unprecedented return of your grandfather’s youth, we’re taking special note of abnormalities and anything of interest, Ms. Robinson,” Greaves began. “We have his MRI results and a preliminary genetic analysis.”

The doctor tapped a few buttons on a keyboard, and a holographic screen appeared between her and the other two women. Greaves reached into the blue light and enhanced a slowly rotating three dimensional brain scan with her fingers.

“Mr. Robinson’s brain as seen in his full body scan taken when he was admitted last week. As his doctor discussed with you, there was severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy common to people who fight and play football and other contact sports. Violent behavioural and destructive mood disorders are almost universally present at this level of traumatic brain injury… but everyone describes Mr. Robinson as a sweet, gentle soul perhaps a bit below average on the IQ scale.”

“That sounds right. And what about his scan from today?”

Greaves reached into the hologram again, enhancing and rotating a second brain scan.

“Instead of being shrunken and withered, his brain is now, just like the rest of his body, perfectly healthy… except for here,” Greaves said while pointing at an area highlighted in yellow near the center of the second brain scan. “There is greatly reduced activity in his orbital cortex which regulates emotions, impulses, morality, and aggression. With everything around it suffering from a degenerative disease, it was impossible to see this. All that damage most likely also mitigated against the sociopathic tendencies many with this condition exhibit. Has he done anything strange since you took him home?”

The boxing, the cursing, the way her skin crawled when he touched her shoulder and smiled at her…

“No… I… don’t think so.”

“Watch for them. His preliminary genetic screening showed the MAOA-L gene variant as well as at least two other mutations linked to impulsive behavior, sleep disorders, mood swings, hypersexuality, and violent tendencies. This is very serious.”

Greaves sighed, took a deep breath, and continued.

“I’m sorry for throwing so many terms at you, Ms. Robinson.”

“No kidding,” Anaea replied, not even trying to appear unflustered, “since you’re telling me Buck is insane.”

“Sociopathy manifests itself as egotism, persistent antisocial behavior, and impaired empathy and remorse… and I promise I’m done listing pathologies now. Some incredibly successful and non-violent people have these traits to varying degrees. Ruthlessness in business and sport can be an asset, and Mr. Robinson was an incredibly successful boxer. He was described as fearless and unflappable according to my research.”

“Detective Bosch already called you.”

“She asked me what the tests had found so far, and I told her only you or Mr. Robinson can divulge his medical information. She didn’t say why she was so interested. Is there something I should know about?”

“I… don’t think so, no.”

Immortician Ayodele touched Anaea’s shoulder, causing her to flinch.

“I don’t believe that’s entirely true, Anaea,” Ayodele commented, “but you must decide. I decided to perform Buchanan’s rising because his soul was… very eager to return, the most eager of all those whose families vied for their return today. It spoke to me even before the ceremony, saying it would no longer die, that it was immovable. I’ve never felt such force before in my forty years of performing the rising.”

“Did that… force have anything to do with him becoming young again?” Anaea asked.

“That has more to do,” Dr. Greaves interjected, “with the unique gene mutations governing his Wnt and telomerase proteins.”

“Even with resurrection as an undeniable fact,” immortician Ayodele countered, “scientists still refuse to believe in the spirit’s true power.”

“You can resurrect the dead for three days with magic,” Dr. Greaves replied. “I want to keep people alive forever with science.”

“Stop it!” Anaea shouted as she stood, pushing her chair back and toppling it over with a loud thud. “Fight on your own time!”

“I’m sorry, Anaea,” Ayodele apologized. “These arguments are for another place and time. I asked to be here because I am afraid for you and your family. I should have refused such a supremely assertive soul access to the living world again, and hearing now about its body’s tendencies toward violence only strengthens that fear. You should leave him alone or let the police watch over him, anything but remain with him in your home.”

“We agree on that, at least,” Dr. Greaves concurred.

“There is nothing I can do to help you, Anaea. Only the arisen can break the resurrection spell before the triduum…”

“I think you’re all overreacting,” Anaea cut the immortician off as she righted the chair. “Thank you both for the information, and I remember that immorticians are bound by a code similar to doctor-patient confidentiality. I’m going to enjoy every minute of his brief time with us. I’ll see you Tuesday morning, Ayodele.”

Anaea walked to the door, opened it, and closed it firmly behind her.

“I wonder what her brain and DNA look like,” Dr. Greaves mused to herself as Ayodele bowed her head in prayer to the benevolent orishas.

V: Slow Perdition

Apart from a persistent distant cousin of Buck’s who kept calling to get some of the supposed hospital settlement windfall, the rest of Hallowmas passed uneventfully. The young old man spent most of his time alone either in his room or training in the backyard gym. Vanessa wanted to spend time with her great grandfather but Anaea sent her to play with friends or stay longer at swimming and ballet classes. Jack wasn’t around the house much, either, due perhaps to something Anaea hadn’t witnessed but could clearly see in the cold way Buck looked at him and the resultant unease in Jack’s face.

With the end of Buck’s time almost upon them, Anaea invited a few friends over to celebrate his life before the katabasis ceremony. The guest of honour remained silent most of the night, only tersely answering questions about what it was like boxing and winning in early twentieth-century America as a black man.

“Sure as fuck wasn’t easy but I beat everyone stupid enough to get in that ring with the Harlem Smoke. No matter what colour you are, you still cry the same when I beat your ass.”

His secret to longevity was just as eloquent.

“Get knocked too stupid to die.”

He not so politely declined requests to see his fighting technique.

When dirty plates and glasses and bottles were randomly left around the house and those who abandoned them were long gone, only two guests remained along with the immediate family. Dionne and Makeba both worked in accounts at Quay Way, and both looked far older than their forty-five years. They helped Anaea clean up while Jack put Vanessa to bed. Buck slipped out of the proceedings half hour earlier to train in the gym one last time.

“I should go, Ann,” Dionne said after they’d brought everything into the kitchen. “I was at church early on Sunday to get a good parking spot, and you know how Mondays at that hotel can drain you. I need a good night’s sleep or I’ll be useless to myself.”

“Pushing fifty, no husband or kids, buried in work and the church…” a shirtless, sweaty Buck said from the back door, “I bet you’re still a virgin, too. Sounds like you’re already useless, Dionne. You don’t need God. You need fucking.”

He smiled broadly at her shocked face.

“I can help you with that. I saw you looking at me like I’m communion you want to swallow.”

Dionne put down the two empty bottles of wine on the cluttered counter, turned, and walked briskly to the living room to get her bag.

“Jesus, Buck!” Anaea shouted.

“What do I care? I’m dying again in the morning… for good this time. Didn’t even get any pussy while I was young again.”

The stack of dirty plates in Makeba’s hands was liable to fall to the floor and shatter. Buck walked over, took the plates from her, and put them in the sink. He grabbed a half empty bottle of Extra Old rum from beside her, had a swig, and continued smiling.

“You should probably go with your friend… unless you want to stay and help me with my problem. Or are you and her together? I haven’t had that in a while, either.”

“I’ll see you at work next week, Ann!” Makeba blurted out and followed Dionne into the living room and out the front door.

“Anaea? Are you alright?” a tall, blonde man asked as Makeba rushed past him.

“Phil?!” Anaea exclaimed, “Jack’ll be ready in a few minutes! Why don’t you wait out in your car, please?!”

“Phil, huh?” Buck asked after taking a gulp of rum. “You’re the batty boy’s other half, right?”

All Anaea could do was stand by the refrigerator in stunned silence.

“Yeah, we’re a fudge package deal,” Phil explained, “and you’re the asshole who punched my man in the stomach.”

“You hit Jack?!” Anaea shouted at Buck.

“Little fag tried coming in my room when I was changing. He might have helped bathe and dress me when I was ancient but that shit won’t work now.”

“I thought you should know but Jack didn’t want to tell you, Anaea, so I kept quiet.”

“I still didn’t want her to know,” Jack said. He stood next to Phil and put a hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder. “We should do like everyone else and get the hell out of here.”

“Jack, please…” Anaea began before Buck cut her off as he walked slowly toward the men.

“Yeah, get the fuck out of here before I tell her you’re in the living room watching ‘Open Rearlationship’ and ‘Net Dicks’ and ‘The Little Hermaid’ on the big screen when the girls are out and you think I’m sleep…”

It was Buck’s turn to fall silent as Vanessa pushed her way past the two men and into the kitchen in her pajamas.

“Why’s everybody shouting?” she asked. “Papa Buck needs to sleep before his kitty basics.”

“Katabasis,” he corrected her then scooped her up in one muscular arm.

Anaea went numb.

“They’ll put me back to sleep, Vanessa. At least you got to know me in my prime.”

He gave her a kiss. She laughed and tried to push his face away.

“You’re stinky, Papa Buck!” she said through her giggles.

“And you’re beautiful just like your mama and your grandma. Now go back to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“OK, Papa Buck. G’night!” she said as she weaved her way between Jack and Phil again and back to her bedroom.

Anaea hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath for the last minute until the pain in her chest became almost unbearable. She inhaled sharply, felt a bit lightheaded, and held the refrigerator door for balance.

“I’ll take this baby with me so I’m not alone in bed again,” Buck said, raised the rum bottle for emphasis, and pushed past the men. “Excuse me, ladies.”

Buck disappeared down a corridor with the slamming of his bedroom door punctuating his exit. Anaea slumped down the side of the refrigerator and sat on the kitchen floor.

“Who is that?” she asked no one in particular. “That isn’t the man I grew up with. That isn’t the man I loved and took care of for twenty years. I need you to take Vanessa with you and Phil tonight, Jack. I… I don’t want her here and I don’t want her at the ceremony tomorrow.”

“OK,” Jack agreed. “I’ll pack a bag and get her… quietly.”

“Whoever that is,” Phil reasoned, “that isn’t your Buck.”

Anaea sat outside Buck’s door for the rest of the night and into the early morning. There was nothing to do but watch and wait in the silent darkness.

VI: A Dust Full Of Hand

Buchanan Robinson said nothing during his last meal of Lazarákia and a bitter drink made from tree bark called mauby. The ride to the island’s east coast was another half hour of silence between him and Anaea, a silence unbroken even after arriving at the immortuary to Yewande Ayodele’s barely restrained concern in her greeting. Buck didn’t ask where Jack or Vanessa were or if there would be anyone else but him and the two women on the immortuary’s pool deck for the ceremony. The only emotion Buck showed was when he stripped naked before following the two women in white robes into the infinity pool. He liked that their eyes took in all of his magnificent body, and he took special notice of how uncomfortable his bare flesh made his granddaughter. Buck, naked as he was reborn, floated between the women with Anaea’s hand on the back of his head.

“Conduct life gently that you may die a good death…” immortician Ayodele began.

Buck’s almost unblinking eyes stared right into Anaea’s as her shaking hand closed them with only minor resistance from him.

“…that your children may stretch their hands over your body in burial,” Anaea completed the prayer.

The sun’s rising green flash flared at 5:53 am. Buck lay still in the water, and Anaea’s sigh of relief was cut short when he reopened his glowing green eyes.

“Iná l’ọmọ aráyé lè pa kò s’éni tó lè pa èéfín!” Buck said in a voice that startled both women and rumbled through the early morning air. “You can put the fire out but you won’t get rid of the smoke!”

He grabbed immortician Ayodele by the throat then threw her with inhuman strength out of the pool and into a section of the tables and chairs arranged around it. She lay unmoving amidst the upturned furniture. His other hand wrapped around Anaea’s throat. He effortlessly lifted her while he walked out of the pool, glistening water dripping from his nakedness in the rising sun.

“You know what I used to do, girl? I used to raise the dead. I was an immortician, a babalawo of Orunmila for almost a hundred years. I got older and older until I realized I was terrified of dying… so I didn’t. My body just started getting younger, aging backwards.”

Anaea tried everything she could to break free, every move to break an arm, every kick to his body or head but none worked. She began to see spots but could still hear Buck’s booming voice.

“Columbus was pretending to discover America when I was discovering myself and what I could do. Worst thing was when I got thrown in a slave ship heading for the U.S. a lifetime later. Fuck, it wasn’t even the United States back then. I did what I had to do to survive. You’ve got to be cold to live forever. All that love and compassion shit doesn’t work when you hit the middle of your second century and everyone you love is dead, when people only know you as an old man. You forget about your wives, and your kids’re just meat you make and leave behind. I can’t tell you how many of my kids and grandkids I’ve fucked but most of them weren’t as pretty as…”

There was a click behind him as Jack shouted, “You sick fuck!”

Buck didn’t flinch as Jack unloaded six rounds from his Glock pistol into the immortal man’s chest. Buck merely turned around to face Jack, reaching out with his free hand wreathed in green flame.

“None of that shit!” Jack shouted as he fired two bullets through Buck’s head. “I play video games!”

Anaea gasped for breath when she and Buck’s body fell to the wood deck, and she scrambled to Jack’s side.

“What? How?” were the only words she could manage through her bruised throat.

“Detective Bosch called me when she couldn’t reach you.”

“Turned phone… off…”

“Your idiot cousin in South Carolina? Dan? Police found him beaten to death last night. His last call was to you trying to get some of the hospital settlement. They called Bosch. She’s on her way here now.”

“Why… you… here?”

“When do I ever listen to you? I was already coming to make sure you were alright and that son of a bitch died for good this…”

An invisible force bashed in Jack’s nose. Blood spewed all over his shirt and Anaea’s wet white dress. It hit him twice more, lifted him into the air, and threw his body and his gun over the edge of the infinity pool into the deep, wooded gully beyond.

“Jack!”

“Cudn’t… mmmgm… do dat…. gggh… fore I died,” Buck slurred. A bloody scalp flap attached to a chunk of skull swayed as he shambled toward Anaea, the green energy beneath working to heal his gunshot wounds.

Anaea crouched, clenched her fists, and rushed him. Buck smiled crookedly, his brain still rewiring itself, and tried to take a defensive stance. The world heavyweight boxing champion from eighty years ago wasn’t prepared for the swift kick to his exposed testicles that was her specialty. When he hunched over in crippling pain, Anaea pulled his head down and shattered his nose with her rising knee, sending him crashing to the floor. She wanted to snap his neck but something unseen punched her in the stomach then forced her to her knees.

The Buck that approached her was a smiling, bloody mess.

“If I’d known I could do this just by thinking about it, I would’ve died the first time around and let another babalawo bring me back on Halloween. We called this the Season of Souls back then, and an adamant soul reborn in an immortal body? Power from the other side is bleeding through me!”

Anaea struggled helplessly against the invisible grip.

“After I kill you, I’ll go find Vanessa. I’ll have her calling her Papa Buck ‘daddy’.”

“Did you always know?” Anaea asked in a strained whisper.

“What?”

“That you were afraid to die because you were going to burn in Hell?”

Now fully healed, Buck crouched beside Anaea. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“When I was first young, our people believed in reincarnation through your bloodline… but some souls were too evil for that, some souls would only know torment forever. I brought back one like that by force, a woman whose family was happy she died. She told me about the absence of light and hope, the nothing, the pain… and she told me she’d see me there soon. We had nothing like it in our religion, no place where the dead were punished! The truth was too horrible, too unimaginable! You can’t fathom getting older, feeling the dread getting worse and worse, knowing there was only horror on the other side of life!”

“But you beat it. Your genes…”

“Genes, blasphemous prayers, who fucking knows?! I reveled in everything this life had to offer for centuries. Drinking, fighting, fucking… but that car accident must have been too much for my already addled brain. I turned into an invalid who forgot he could become young again, a fool who let himself get killed. I have to thank you for bringing me back, Anaea.”

“So you could kill the nurse and Dan?”

“Worthless little shits deserved it, and I’m sure a lot more will, too.”

“You’ll stay alive and keep murdering, sending souls where you’re afraid to go?”

“Those few hours I was dead were an eternity of being broken over and over again into smaller and smaller pieces that screamed louder and louder! And there was something there, girl, something… something happy. I’m never going back to the devil of the shards!”

“But you have called it by name, Buchanan Robinson,” immortician Ayodele said from her unmoving position amidst the disarrayed furniture in a voice unlike anything Anaea had ever heard before, “and you have spoken of your fate in its realm. Now say ‘yes’ to the pit of shards, Buchanan Robinson, and break for all eternity!”

The grip on Anaea slackened, and she uppercut the terrified Buck away from her into the infinity pool which immediately started to boil. He screamed unintelligibly before there was a flash and the superheated water disappeared in a burst of annihilating steam.

Anaea crawled to immortician Ayodele’s unconscious side. Whatever said those words, it wasn’t her. With as much strength as she could muster, Anaea got to her feet and looked over the edge at the now empty pool, its spotless white tiles, and the brown fingers that clung to the outer edge of the pool’s glass back wall.

“I knew… you’d kick him… in the nuts,” a hoarse voice croaked.

Anaea gasped in surprise and happiness, and rushed to pull a traumatized Jack back from the other side of infinity.