PROJECT MORTUUS: Killer In Silence

Chapter 18: The Return of Ghosts*

As Mortuus appeared from the darkness of the cave's mouth, Death's piercing gaze locked onto Mortuus's bloodied knuckles, his voice laced with a hint of concern as he spoke. "What transpired in there?" he inquired, his curiosity piqued by the sight of the crimson fluid trickling down Mortuus's fingers. It had stained the freshly wrapped bandages that he applied that morning.

At this point, Mortuus was spending more on bandages each week than a family of four was spending on groceries. And by now, the pharmacist was starting to give him weird looks.

"Every time I feel like I understand something about existence, there's always something that contradicts it." Mortuus exhaled heavily in response to Death's question. It was a valid statement, given the things he'd witnessed since he'd awoken that fateful day.

Death stood rigid against his scythe as he thought about Mortuus's words with careful consideration. "Thus is life, dear child." Death stated with a wave of his slim hand and a slight nod. Mortuus felt that his response was merely a repetition of his question.

Death seemed to notice how Mortuus felt about this, "The answer to absolutes often lies within the question." He answered unsurprisingly with insight; his voice was gravelly and dramatic as he recited Shakespeare.

Mortuus hadn't been out of the cave for longer than possibly fifteen minutes, and Death was already able to pick apart Mortuus's emotions and pin them in a neatly packaged box made of metaphors and understanding. Something he often managed to do.

Mortuus walked along the dust-laden beaten path of leaves and fallen branches with jagged edges. It was the only path made to get to the Cave of Souls, and it was uneven with hidden stones that often tripped up an unsuspecting wanderer. He kicked leaves aside as he spoke with Death, "Sometimes your understanding astounds me, Death."

The reaper walked beside him in silence for a moment before responding. "After more than a hundred years of observing humanity in its weakest and strongest, I have come to comprehend many things."

Mortuus went to say something, but before he could, Death added to his sentence. "There are things I could tell you that would ravage the very fabric of your mind." Death responded with such clarity and so matter-of-fact that it was almost unsettling.

Mortuus rolled his eyes while taking a hit of his pen, "Well, how kind of you to shut the fuck up about it." He responded with a heavily sarcastic tone as if he wasn't talking to the literal embodiment of Death. Death didn't appreciate Mortuus's sarcasm, but it was something he'd started coming to terms with.

In a way, Mortuus's lack of reverentialness was refreshing to the Angel of Death. As far back as the spirit could remember, people only showed respect through fear, but Mortuus showed respect in a new way. A way that Death had nearly forgotten over the years of people who would beg for their lives or cower in his presence. Rather than respect through fear of his title, Mortuus showed him respect by treating him as though they were equals.

As they walked back to the bunker, neither Mortuus nor Death spoke. Mortuus puffed on the cannabis, and Death walked beside him in silence-no words needed to be exchanged. Silence was a beautiful thing to both.

It wasn't until they got to the bunker that something seemed off. It wasn't the files and papers strewn about; those were always there. And it wasn't the smell of rotting flesh since that was to be expected when you're literally a walking corpse.

Rather, it was something about the air that just didn't sit well with him. It felt... choky almost. It was almost like it was hard to breathe the crisp, cool air, and it had become smoke. The part that was more concerning to Mortuus was that nothing was on fire. The air just had a strange feel to it for some strange reason.

Death seemed to notice Mortuus's distress and spoke up to confirm what Mortuus was thinking, "It is indeed uncouth in here." He responded. Mortuus rolled his eyes and entered cautiously, "You could just say strange." He retorted to the fancy 18th-century talk that Death usually used.

Death ignored his comment and followed for a bit. The spirit was surprisingly curious because, unlike what most people believed, he did not, in fact, know the future. The scythe would tell him who to guide. He crept beside Mortuus before fading into smoke and vanishing mid-walk again as he usually did. "Oh, fantastic! Leave me to face it!" Mortuus grumbled under his breath in slight annoyance.

Mortuus parted his trench coat and reached into an obscured pocket. Inside the pocket, he pulled his revolver from his leather coat pocket and held it up, keeping it close to his chest as he walked into the bunker. Somehow, the fact that he couldn't die was of no comfort when faced with the unknown. Mortuus had a deep-seated fear of dying but felt comforted by Death's presence; it was a strange irony that even he was aware of.

Maybe he feared dying because part of him knew that if he experienced a 'death,' he would live through that pain. "Pain without death is a cruelty of the fates." Mortuus would often say, but now that was all he could hear running through his head. The phrase he'd used a thousand times to explain his burden was now playing on an endless loop in his head.

As Mortuus turned a corner with his revolver up, he was hit with a solid punch to the face. With that single hard blow, Mortuus was sent reeling backward toward the hard tile floor, and his vision was blurring into black. As he lay on the cold and hard tiling, Mortuus's vision was waning between black nothingness and blurry scenes of his surroundings. The last thing he saw before fading into unconsciousness was a shadowed man with hollow eye sockets. A sight he'll soon know far better than he wants...