Chapter Ten
The Missing Aunt
After Uncle Karl tells me he sent my parents to Hades because it was time I learned that I’m Death, I run past him, out of the pit, and lock myself in my room. I should try to sleep, but I’ve never felt more awake. I sit on my bed, staring into space and thinking. Not just about Tough Kid and Mr. Gordon dying because I went through the screen, and not even about my parents veering off the road to their deaths to avoid hitting me. I’m thinking about the other deaths.
I remember going hiking with Andy and a couple of friends from school. One of the guys, Emerson, fell and hit his head funny. By the time we got down to him, he was dead. I remember I was ticked off at him about something. Did I kill him?
And when I was a little kid—I can remember having trouble in kindergarten. This brat was always pushing me and taking whatever toy I was playing with. I got so I hated going to school. Then one afternoon the kid had some kind of seizure. I don’t actually remember that he died, just that he never came to school again and I didn’t have any trouble after that.
I remember Dad sitting me down and telling me, “There are lots of bullies and jerks in the world, Mort. It’s important that you feel sorry for them, instead of getting mad and wanting anything bad to happen to them.”
I didn’t think that was fair, and Mom said, “That’s right, it’s not fair, but you have to be nicer than the other kids.”
I remember feeling mutinous, and asking why. All Dad said was, “That’s the way it is.”
After that, he kept reminding me to feel sorry for jerks instead of getting mad at them, and I guess the lessons mostly took. I kept my feelings under control. Now I’m tired of controlling my anger. This has been happening to me all my life, the way people have been dying around me, and it’s all my parents’ fault! They’re the ones who didn’t tell me who I was! They’re the ones who wanted to live as mortals—they’re the ones who let me kill people because I didn’t know any better!
I pace the room, my heart pounding furiously. Why didn’t Dad explain everything to me sooner? I want to throw things, I want to kill someone, I want -
I stop, realizing what I just thought. But I don’t really want to kill anyone. I never did.
My anger drains away. Today I wish Dad had explained things, but did I really want to know any of this when I was just a kid? I wouldn’t have understood it then. I’m not sure I understand it now.
Eric bangs on my door sometime in the morning, but after a while I hear Uncle Karl tell him to leave me alone. He says something about my having had a rough night. He’s right about that.
Eric goes away, and I remember his mother collapsing. But I can’t remember being mad at her. What happened? Why were we talking in the kitchen, just the three of us? Where were my parents? And where was Eric?
I stare at my closet, with Dad’s Bobcat sweatshirt and his favorite “Be Yourself in Montana” T-shirt hanging beside my stuff. It happened the summer before I started first grade. I was just a little guy. What were we talking about?
I close my eyes and think hard. I can see Aunt Daphne sitting in the kitchen, drinking her coffee. She was frowning, but I wasn’t mad at her, not the way I’d been mad at the bully. In fact, . . .
My eyes fly open. I wasn’t mad—I was confused. Uncle Karl was the one who was mad. He was talking about my parents, and Aunt Daphne was arguing with him.
“He was goading her,” I whisper. “He wanted to make me mad, and I started to cry before Aunt Daphne collapsed. I was the one crying, not Uncle Karl. He goaded her until she said something that made me so angry I forgot what Dad had told me.”
Horrified, I spin around and stare at my locked door. Uncle Karl got me to kill his wife, Eric’s mother!
– End Chapter Ten –
