Excerpt: All Hallows' Eve

It was a cold autumn’s night on November 21st, and a life was about to end. It was not my choice, for my superiors had made the ultimate decision for me. This child that was soon to be born would die within minutes of her birth, and knowing the tendency of small children to cling to their new life like spiders from a dark corner of a room, she must be monitored and brought back to the Underworld once she died. Too strong of an emotion could keep her bound to the living realm, and that would be a danger not only to her undead soul, but to her family. Therefore, I was assigned to make sure her sound would arrive safely in the Underworld, no harm done.
Cries came from the house up on the hill as soon as I emerged in the town of Beathan. It was quiet here at night, almost eerily so. It reminded me of lonely days of a hundred years past, cold nights of even longer ago. The house on the hill was where I was headed, where the mother, so past her breaking point after five sons and no daughters, was giving birth. Her sobs of pain and agony, yet of the joy of brining her first daughter into the world, pierced the night air like the howl of a wolf to a cold blue moon. Recognizable, but undesirable.
I was cautious of entering the house myself, for this was my first mission out of my office in the Underworld. He had ordered me directly to take care of this child, which was odd, because he never spoke to anyone except the supervisors of my supervisor’s supervisor. She was to be born in exactly three minutes – all I had to do was come in and collect the soul once she passed on. That wasn’t to say my job was easy; people of all ages, though especially children, clung to life like it was their last hope. I prayed silently to myself before gliding through the wall to fully complete the task at hand.
The woman’s shrieks were louder inside the house than outside, reverberating off the thin walls and the eardrums of her exhausted husband. One o’clock was coming just around the corner as she gripped the edges of her bed, holding her breath while she shoved life into the world. A pity that that life would so soon disappear; I only wished I wasn’t the one to take it.
A boy, maybe fourteen, came in close to her and gripped her hand. He whispered something in her ear while the baby was taken quickly to a bin of water. The cord clipped and tied by another son at hand, who was much older, he washed the blood off her face and wrapped her swiftly in a tea towel. The teenager moved away, making way for his new sibling – a sister.
She was crying, like any baby should, but it seemed more joyous than one would normally associate crying with. It wasn’t loud, piercing, annoying; it was soft, like she was just doing it to test the boundaries of this new world, to make sure her words would be heard when she had the ability to make them. It didn’t stop, per say, but it became more of a soft background noise to the cooing of her family. They gathered around her, staring into her large brown eyes, not yet hidden by dark brown hair. She had her mother’s face, a roundness and an innocence that only a deity could bestow upon a person. And she would die tonight, at my hand.
My breath caught in my throat briefly when her eyes turned to me. They were fixated on mine, not letting go. I pulled away, sunk back into the shadows of the house, away from the flickering candle that lit up this terrible gathering. Still, she stared at me, unblinking.
I needed to get out. I couldn’t do this job, not yet. She’s not supposed to die yet, that’s all I could think. But the records said she had to. That’s what the truth was.
Briefly, there was a pulse of bright light that forced me to blink. And in that instant, somehow, the small child that had rested so silently in her mother’s arms drifted out of her human body and into my own arms. It was strange, not only because she was warm to the touch, but that she had done so on her own volition. Like she was ready to die. I stared at her, transfixed, for a few moments, until the shrieks began anew.
“Lorraine!” Her mother pulled the baby away from the family, now an empty shell of a body, no longer alive, no longer happy and free. “My baby!” Her sobs broke the joy of the moment. The first son, the doctor, tried to pry the child from her arms, but it only caused her to shake more violently, twisting the tea towel wrapped corpse away from the world. “Lorraine, no, don’t die on me, Lorraine.”
As her words died out with her jubilance, I felt a small tug on my cloak. The small child had wrapped her hand inside some of the evergreen fabric, playing with it while she soundlessly oohed and aahed. Unintentionally, I pulled her closer to the spot she had found, letting her pulling up and away until it fluttered back down to my chest again.
The mother’s cries were muted by the infant, so small and yet so powerful. I watched her, absentminded, until I realized that I hadn’t yet completed my job. I passed through the wall again, not daring to look bad, for fear that I might try and replace the girl into a body that would never be hers again.
The grate lay open on the ground a hundred yards away. I picked up speed as I approached, not only for me and my state of mine, but for the child in my arms.
If only I had known my mistakes would start there. Maybe I would have found a way to bring her back. But one look in that baby’s eyes was enough to keep me moving forward.
And we both descended, together, into the Underworld.