Don't Tell Ellie

Benjamin’s arm is extended, his palm open and waiting for me to take it and all I can do is stare into his eyes. I was right, in the brightness of this room the light reflects in them just so and they shimmer like two beautifully polished gems.

I don’t know where I’ve gotten the nerve to stand here with him and accept the fact that in my mundane life peppered with tragedy and uncertainties, there are doorways to the past granting me an opportunity to make sense out of all that has happened to me.

Any rational person would run, hands flailing and screaming from this house, but I don’t want to. I step forward and place my hand in his, “I’m ready.”

He pulls me to him gently and studies my face before speaking. “I never wanted harm to befall you, Eleanore, but my family—our burden...” his voice falters. “When your time came I couldn’t bare it and I’m so very sorry.” He wraps his arms around me, and I can feel tears burning in my eyes. I have no idea what he is talking about, but I’m not afraid of him, I only want to know more.

“What are you saying?” I whisper into his chest. “What do you mean when my time came?”

“I think you know that you weren’t supposed to make it this far.”

I pull back and look up at him, “What are you?”

“Not yet.” He shakes his head, “You’re not ready, yet.”

“Benjamin, I’m here, willing to walk through these doors with you, risking my life to see whatever it is you think I should know, please tell me who or what it is that you are.”

“I will, just not now.” He steps forward and ducks below the doorframe, guiding me behind him, our hands still linked.

As I enter the room on the other side, there’s an intense feeling of deja vu, the feeling always makes me uneasy, like I’m about to do something I shouldn’t be doing.

The door slams behind us and I jump. “It’s okay,” Benjamin reassures me, “It will unlock when we are done.”

“I thought you said the doors only open every four days at midnight?”

“That’s only the one in my study.”

I look around the room we’ve just been sealed into, and it’s oddly familiar, but I can’t place it anywhere in my mind. The same wallpaper covers the walls—clouds and teddy bears, though it’s smaller than the room we’ve just come from.

There’s a white crib against the far wall, and dozens of stuffed animals seated on pink wooden shelves. A name is written above the crib in large block letters painted in a soft pink and it reads, Eleanore.

I gasp and Benjamin squeezes my hand, “Is this my—”

“Yes, this is your nursery.”

I move toward the crib and try to drop Benjamin’s hand but he holds it tighter, “You can’t let me go,” he says, “it’s the only rule when we are on the other side.”

“Why not?”

“Just trust me.” He says in his authoritative way.

Why the hell not? I think. I’m already in the thick of it. I pull him along with me as I lean over the crib and stare down, but it’s empty.

“You’re not here quite yet.” He answers my unasked question.

“Not born yet?”

Benjamin nods and I move around, looking at the Dr. Seuss books in the bookcase, and at the white toy chest that matches the crib, this I do remember. I had it up until my family passed away, but they wouldn’t let me take it when I moved into foster care.

Benjamin tugs in my hand and moves me back toward the door we came through, “What are you doing?”

“Watch,” he says pointing to a second door that leads into the rest of the house.

It swings open and my mother runs in, she’s so young and heavily pregnant with tears streaming down her face. A man is trailing her, old enough to be her father, he looks unhappy, maybe even a little angry. There’s one thing that’s undeniable though, he looks like a much older version of Benjamin.

“Wes Marston,” Benjamin says and I look back at my mother expecting her to flip out when she sees us huddled in the corner, but she doesn’t even flinch. “This is why you’re holding my hand. Think of it as a cloak of sorts, no one in the past will be able to see us.”

Wes Marston closes the door gently behind him and steeples his hands as he sets his eyes on my mother. “We made a deal.”

“I was young,” she cries softly, “I didn’t think any of it was true and I didn’t think I’d ever have one child let alone two.”

“Yet, here you are, ready to burst with a new little bundle of joy and it belongs to me.”

I look back at Benjamin, “Are they talking about me?”

He says nothing, motioning back to my mother and his...father? “Is Wes your dad?”

“Great grandfather. Pay attention.”

I refocus on the scene before me, my mother is so distraught and it’s heartbreaking to see. “Please, Mr. Marston, please give me another way to fix this!”

“I only deal in lives.”

“Take mine!”

“I will snuff out the entire Brennan line if need be, do not tempt me, Angela.”

“You aren’t giving me a choice!”

“There is no other way.”

“Please!” My mother crumbles to her knees, cradling her belly with one hand and clutching at Wes’s suit jacket with her other.

“Begging is unbecoming of a young mother, you should be ashamed.” Wes brushes my mother’s hand away and flourishes his own in the air before a cloud of black smoke swallows him and my mother is left alone, defeated and sobbing.

My mind races, but I don’t have time to understand what I’ve just seen before the chorus of clicking begins behind me and cool air rushes over me as the door that leads back to present-day pops open and Benjamin ushers me through.

I drop his hand as soon as I’m back in the room and turn to him. “What the fuck is going on? Did my mother sell my soul, are you some sort of demon?”

“Wes wanted you then and he still wants you now, I’ve never known the reason. But, this is has everything to do with your disappearance twenty years ago.”

“What are you Benjamin, tell me now!” My voice cracks through the air and Benjamin winces at the force of my words.

“Death, Eleanore. I am Death.”

“What?” I’m laughing, it’s spilling out of me like someone has hexed me with an uncontrollable laughter spell. Death. The nerve of this guy. Alright, fine the doors are weird, supernatural, scientific whatever you want to call them, but death? Like the grim reaper, come on, Benjamin.

“You find this funny?”

I can’t stop, I’m slapping my knee and holding my stomach like this is the best joke I’ve ever fucking heard. “Death!” I manage through two hiccuping laughs, “Spooky!”

“It’s true,” Benjamin says, confused by my emotion, “this isn’t a joke.”

“Come on,” tears are spilling from my eyes and my stomach hurts from laughing so hard, “Death isn’t born, your family is fucking delusional.” Finally, I’ve stopped laughing and I wipe the tears from my face, “Wait.” I say holding a hand up, “Did your crazy fuck of a grandfather kill my family?!” He doesn’t respond, why isn’t he responding? I clap my hands together loudly, “Answer my fucking question!”

Benjamin is staring down at me in a daze, so much for composure, Mr. Grim Reaper. He walks back to the door of the nursery we’re in and swings the door open, he stomps into the hall, his shoes clattering onto the tile and he screams, “Open!” There’s a crashing sound and my blood runs cold.

I step into the hall to see every single double door pushed open.

“Take a look,” Benjamin sneers, “Every room in this house has a doorway to a single moment in your life. It’s a fucking shrine to a life you should have never lived.”

I’ve never heard him curse before and it makes me feel like I’m being scolded by a parent.

Benjamin’s eyes snap to me and they’re no longer brown, they’re black and cruel. His voice echoes through the hall in a thundering reverb as he speaks, “You think the living have any idea about the afterlife? All those stories about the white light are bullshit, there’s no dark shrouded figure with a scythe, there’s no heaven waiting for you. This is what it is. A curse placed upon each firstborn male of my family, a job to stomp out that spark you call life. I know everything and nothing—a lesson I learned when I tried to save you from the same fate I was given. We are the same. Our futures were stolen by the decisions of our ancestors, but my mistake has ruined so much.”

I stand there feeling naked, shaking in the sudden chill surrounding me. I think back to all the times I longed to die, all the times I thought peace would finally come with the comforting embrace of death, but death is here now, chastising me, making me feel small and insignificant.

“I didn’t ask for any of this!” I cry, “I didn’t ask to be born, or saved, or condemned!”

The blackness drains from Benjamin’s eyes like ink receding from water, “I know.” He whispers, “I know that better than anyone.”

“What am I supposed to do? This is all too much!” I cover my face with my hands and try to stop the tears from coming, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Go home and rest.”

“I don’t want to be alone.” I can’t believe I’d rather spend the night in his house, but there’s no one else I can talk to, no one else who would believe me. “I want to be with someone who knows what’s going on.”

“Vivienne knows.”

“What do you mean? And how do you, Vivienne?” Or right, he’s dead, I’m sure there’s not a single soul who he doesn’t know.

“Did you think she was just a psychic shop con artist? She knows far more than she should.”

Jesus. What else don’t I know about my past?

“I will take you to Vivienne.”

“It’s too late,” Why don’t I want to leave him? He’s all but just told me that his family killed mine.

“Trust me.”

Benjamin drives a black Lincoln town car with leather seats. Of course, he does, I think as I rest my head back against the passenger seat. I feel like I’ve run a marathon, every muscle in my body aches. I’m nearly asleep when I feel Benjamin’s warm hand on my knee, gliding back and forth in a soothing rhythmic pattern.

“Can Death fall in love?” The words tumble out of my mouth in a dreary haze and I feel my lips twitch into a stupid smile. After all these years of chasing after the most horribly broken men I could find, all I needed to search for was death himself. That’s a sweet kind of its irony.

I’m asleep before I can hear his response.

“Where did you go?” Marlow is sitting next to me on my bed, her head laying on my shoulder as she holds my hands in her lap. “Ellie please tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Mom and dad thought you were dead, they didn’t say it, but I know they did. Mom cried every day since you’ve been gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? Did you run away?”

“No.”

“Ellie. If you don’t tell the truth, we are all going to die.”

I pull my hands away from Marlow and jump off the bed. This is not how this conversation went. Marlow’s face is turning a deep shade of blue, her lips nearly purple. “Marlow!” I shriek grabbing her shoulders and shaking her, “Marlow, breath!”

“You’re killing us,” Marlow exhales a deep rotting breath into my face and I cover my mouth and nose with one hand.

“Daddy!” I scream. He can help her, he’ll save her, “Marlow can’t breathe!”

No one is coming, they’re all dying or already dead, how can I stop it? I’ll say anything they want me to say, I just can’t remember.

I was asleep, I was in the house and then I woke up, I don’t remember anything else, I just know I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. But something snaps in my brain like an overflowing dam and a memory floods my thoughts, I do remember, I remember her voice, “I was with Vivienne!” I screech. “She told me I couldn’t tell! She gave me medicine and said I would wake up at home, but I was in that house! Marlow, please! She said she would hurt you if I told, Please don’t die, Marlow!”

“Eleanore!”

“No! No!” I scream.

Benjamin is shaking me, his voice is blaring in my ears like an alarm, “You’re dreaming!” He’s shouting somewhere far away, “Wake up.” My eyes snap open and his face is two inches from mine, I gasp.

“What just happened?” He asks.

“I can’t go to Vivienne’s.” I splutter, “She’s the one who kidnapped me.”

Benjamin sinks back into the driver’s seat and sighs, his hands grip the steering wheel and his knuckles turn white, “I know.”