Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury by Sam Weller, Mort Castle (Ed) Page A

said.
    “Who?”
    Even at a distance, their eyes were intense.
    “Hey!” he called, “Wait. I want to talk to you.”
    They turned and walked away.
    “Stop!”
    They receded into the falling snow.
    Frank hurried toward them, leaving the plaza, heading along a quiet street. The snow fell harder.
    “Frank!” Debby called.
    He looked back. “They went toward the restaurant!”
    “Frank!” This time the word came from Alexander where he waited with Brother Richard in front of the restaurant.
    Frank stepped toward them and felt his shoes slip on ice under the snow. He arched backward. His skull shattered against a lamppost.
     
    S tanding next to Alexander and Brother Richard, Frank watched Debby slump beside his body, sobbing. A siren wailed in the distance. People emerged from the restaurant and approached in shock.
    Oddly numb, Frank couldn’t feel the cold or the snow falling on him. “I’m dead?”
    “Yes,” the elderly man said.
    “No.”
    “Yes,” the young man said.
    “I don’t want to leave my wife.”
    “We understand,” Alexander said. “We had people we didn’t want to leave either.”
    Snow fell on Debby, covering her coat as she sobbed next to Frank’s body. Bystanders gathered around her.
    “Ice under the snow?” Frank asked. “I died because of a crazy accident?”
    “Everything in life is an accident.”
    “But you lured me toward it. You distracted me so I’d walk faster than I should have in the snow. I told Debby you were guarding us, but she didn’t believe me.”
    “She was right. We’re not your guardians.”
    “Then what are you?”
    “Your companions. We stopped you from dying when you weren’t supposed to, and we helped you to die when it was your time,” Alexander said.
    “We died as you drove past our wrecked car on the highway, going to the opera,” Brother Richard continued. “The rule is, you bond to someone in the vicinity of where you die. Then you help that person die when he or she is supposed to, and you stop it from happening sooner than it’s supposed to. Everything in its time.”
    “The opera?”
    “You weren’t supposed to be there. The storms, the difficulty of flying home from Los Angeles, they were supposed to make you stay away. When you went to such extreme efforts to come back to Santa Fe and go to the opera, we had to convince you to leave early.”
    “You’re saying Debby and I would have been killed in a car accident if we stayed until the opera was finished?”
    “Yes. In a crash in the storm. But only you. Your wife would have survived.”
    “And at the farmers’ market?”
    “You’d have been killed when the truck swerved to avoid the bicyclist.”
    “Only me?”
    “Yes. Again your wife would have survived.”
    “I don’t want to leave her,” Frank said.
    “Everybody dies. But in this case, you won’t be leaving her. She was so near you when you died that you’re now her companion.”
    Frank slowly absorbed this information. “I can be with her until she dies?”
    “Until you make sure that she dies when she’s supposed to,” Brother Richard said. “Eight months from now, she will die falling from a stepladder. Unless you stop her. Because that’s not her time. Six years from now, she will die in a fire. Unless you stop her from going to a particular hotel. Because, again, that’s not her time.”
    “When will she die?”
    “Twelve years from now. From cancer. That will take its natural course. You won’t need to assist her.”
    Frank’s heart felt broken.
    “She’ll have remarried by then. She and her new husband will adopt a little boy. Because you love her, you’ll share her happiness. Afterward, she, too, will become someone’s companion.”
    “And after we fulfill our duty?” Frank asked.
    “We’re allowed to find peace.”
    Frank gazed at his sobbing wife as she kneeled beside his body. Blood flowed from his skull, congealing in the cold.
    “One day I’ll be allowed to talk to her as you and I