Chapter Nine
Family Secrets
“No!”
I’m the one screaming now.
I remember wondering earlier if some idiot had run out of the shortcut and scared them, causing the crash. Apparently an idiot had done just that. Me.
I was right to blame myself. It was my footprints running out of the shortcut into the road. But why didn’t Dad brake?
I can’t think about that now—I can still save them. I can get them out of the cab before the truck bursts into fire.
Before I take two strides, a hand closes over my wrist. I turn, and Uncle Karl is standing on the grassy verge, where he won’t leave any prints for the investigators to wonder about.
“Time to go back, Mort,” he says. Is that satisfaction I hear in his voice?
“No!” I try to twist away, but he pulls and I see the silvery curtain shimmering in the afternoon sun, dark shadows flickering hazily beyond it. Try as I might, I’m not strong enough to break free of him and stay with my parents, and he pulls me through, into the pit.
I’m half furious at him for grabbing me, and half afraid he’s going to be furious at me for going through the screen in the first place. How many times has he told me and Eric not to go near the screen, over the years?
But Uncle Karl isn’t furious. In fact, he’s smiling. “Finally,” he says, and now I’m sure he sounds satisfied. “Finally, you discovered your destiny.”
I stare at him like he’s flipped out. I thought I was going crazy, walking into movies, but Uncle Karl not only knows all about it, he’s talking about my doing it like he’s not surprised at all, like this is something wonderful, instead of my parents dying all over again.
He’s waiting for some response, so I repeat, “My destiny?”
Uncle Karl nods enthusiastically. “You’re special, Mort. Your father wouldn’t tell you—he hid his and your mother’s real identities and told me I couldn’t tell you the truth until he thought you were ready, but you’re coming of age and it’s time you know. You’re Mort.”
When I don’t react, he shakes his head impatiently. “My brother Pete, your father, is really Pluto, king of Hades, and your mother, Sophia, is really Persephone, his queen. They were in their human forms when they died.”
I shake my head. He’s crazy. I’ve got to get Eric and get out of here.
“Karl is only my human name,” he goes on. “I’m Karon. I ferry the dead into Hades.” He laughs. “We gods like spending time up here with mortals. Pluto wanted to come to earth from Hades. He wanted to raise a family and enjoy life.”
When I just stare at him in horror, he tells me again,
“You’re Pluto’s son—you’re Mort.
“You’re Death.”
I’ve got to make him shut up. “I don’t -” I whisper, but I can’t go on.
“You already killed Mr. Gordon,” he says calmly. “I’m not sure why you chose to take him and leave the rest of his family, but Death always chooses who he sends to my ferry, and when.”
I stare at the screen, which is frozen on my mother proudly holding up her award. Uncle Karl follows my glance, and says, “Our family has always had ways to step into other people’s lives when it came time to take them. In earlier times it was paintings, or books, or letters, or the sound of their songs. Now it’s just more high tech.”
He pats me on the shoulder and I can’t help flinching. “I can step into other people’s deaths and ferry them to Hades, but only you and your father can actually take their lives. Your father has been doing it for millennia, and I told him it was high time you began your training, but he insisted you weren’t old enough.”
He switches off the player and chuckles a little in the shadowy room, lit only by soft light filtering in from the hallway. “While you’re getting used to the job, I thought it might be easier to use moving videos, and to leave you a filament of light to lead you back to your—well, your base of operations, I suppose. I know you’re still only Death-in-Training now, but as you become more adept, you’ll be able to move through time and space at will, and you won’t need any sort of light to guide you back. You can use the video, or just a still frame, to set the scene, and then choose when you want to go there. That’s how I got to your parents’ house to tamper with the brakes in that truck.”
Finally, something he’s said sinks in. “You tampered with the brakes?” That’s why Dad couldn’t stop when he saw me on the road.
Uncle Karl shrugs one shoulder, and pulls his beard. “I just drained some of the brake fluid. Not enough to look suspicious—just enough to make the brakes sluggish at high speed.”
“You killed my parents!” I can’t believe it. I never liked Uncle Karl all that much, but I never imagined he could be capable of murder.
“Actually, no,” he says. “I’m not Death, Mort. I’m just the ferryman. You killed your parents.”
I remember thinking that something scared Dad, something so terrible that he couldn’t think what to do. Whatever Uncle Karl did to the brakes, it was seeing me on the road and realizing that Dad couldn’t stop in order to avoid hitting me that terrified my parents just before they died. I jerk away from my uncle as if he sucker punched me.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he says quickly. “Pluto and Persephone can’t die. Their human form is gone, but they still rule in Hades.”
I gape at him. Even if I believed him, that’s just like telling a kid, ”Oh, it’s okay your mom and dad are dead, but they’re safe in Heaven.” Some consolation.
“I know this is a lot to get used to.” Uncle Karl shakes his head. “I kept telling my brother it was high time to tell you the truth. If he’d done it sooner, I wouldn’t have had to send him back to Hades, but he insisted he wanted you to grow up loving life before you had to pass out death.”
Suddenly my eyes flood with tears. Everything else he’s told me has sounded totally far-fetched, but this sounds just like Dad. He always told me to love life, every minute of it. Is Uncle Karl just using that to convince me? Or does it mean that everything he’s told me is absolutely true?
Am I really Death?
(Chapters 10-18)
