Introduction

The bike was blue—the same shade as the sky.

She had decorated her helmet with stickers of all her favorite things, from rainbows and smiling faces to the garish characters of a popular cartoon. She wore denim shorts, turned up, a T-shirt tied at the navel into a knot, and sneakers without socks. Her hair was down, billowing out behind her as she descended the hill.

I knew her. She was six or seven years younger, a child, and I was all but an adult. I had seen her on the road in and out of town often over the past year, traveling the same journey down and then up, coming and going from the local school. In the way of children, she was fascinated by me, by the rumors of the mysterious Vossen women who guarded the lighthouse at the top of the hill.

We had never spoken. Our interactions had been shy glances and friendly smiles, and that had been sufficient for us both.

The car was black. I heard it coming before I saw it. The windows were wound down and music pounded out above the sound of the engine. I did not recognize it, but the hill road intersected at the base with the main road out of town from the beach. And it was the summer school holidays, the day was hot, and the beach was busy.

The beach was likely the destination of the girl. An afternoon of swimming with her friends and ice cream from the café before the long pedal back up the hill which I was about to embark upon.

Confident with the steep descent having traversed it all year, she had let the bike gain speed.

The car was going too fast and was not slowing as it approached the intersection.

She saw the car and panicked, applying the brake too hard. The wheels locked up, painting the road with their rubber, and she was catapulted over the handlebars, landing hard, her body seeming to skim across the bitumen before coming to a stop.

The car did not notice and disappeared along the main road.

I stopped dead and looked around, desperately hoping that I was not alone, that there was someone else on the road, someone else who had seen.

There was no one else around.

I rode my bike towards where she had landed, my heart racing and my mouth dry. Sweat stuck my clothing to my skin. I could see the blood on the road and the fabric of her clothing. One of her legs stuck out at an angle, and she did not move, not even as I let my bike drop and knelt at her side.

Her eyes were open, but she was not looking at me. "I fell."

"Yes…"

There was blood on her teeth.

"It hurts."

"Yes." There was so much blood on the road. I was afraid to move her. Afraid of hurting her more. Afraid of causing more damage. Afraid of what I would see.

"Make him go away," she said, and I followed her gaze to where it was locked on empty air. "He is frightening me."

"I have to go for help." I was frantic with panic. "I don't have a mobile phone." I had been saving for one, working weekends at the coffee shop through the school term, and every available shift now that I had finished high school.

"Don't leave me," she whispered. There was an overlap to her face as her spirit rose from the flesh, a sheer layer that matched but did not quite align. She was dying. "I don't want to be alone with him." It was the spirit that spoke, not the body.

The spot where her dying gaze was fixed was no longer empty. There was a shadow there that gained density as her spirit did. The shadow became a man in a cloak. Within the cowl of the hood, where the light touched, it revealed bone, the curl of horn, and eyes that burned red. Boney fingers were outstretched towards the spirit girl.

"Come with me." His voice was the whisper of leaves over gravestones, of dark shadows, deep earth, and marrow.

A grim reaper. Come to take her spirit on, but she was too afraid to take his hand.

"Don't be afraid," I told her. "He is here to help you. He is a good guy. An angel of sorts. His job is to guide and guard you to a place where… Well, you'll see. There is no pain there."

The reaper's head turned slightly in my direction, and I sensed his puzzlement. I should not be able to see him. I had always seen ghosts, however, so it was not so surprising to me that I could see a reaper too in the moment of the veil thinning as he reached across to take a spirit to the Underworld.

"I don't want to…"

"Don't be afraid," I coaxed her. "See… He is not harming you or me. He is just waiting, ever so patiently, for you to take his hand. He is your angel. Your guardian. You can trust him."

"Are you sure?" She whispered. The spirit knew it needed to take his hand, but enough of the human girl lingered to be afraid.

Was I? I looked up into those burning eyes. "Yes, I'm sure."

She took his hand, and he drew her into the folds of his cloak. For a moment, our eyes locked again, and then he inclined his hooded head ever so slightly, a polite acknowledgment, and they were gone.

And I was alone once more on the road, beside the corpse of a little girl whose day had ended very, very badly.