Chapter 1

“Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” - Yogi Berra

There are no cast-in-stone fundamental rules to life, except perhaps for “Life is a bitch, and then you die.” That’s pretty apt. ‘Life’ is actually pretty damned complicated and it would have been nice if the Creator, Fate and/or Karma ... and all of his/her/its/etc minions had provided us with a user’s manual to refer to at times during the experience. Sometimes, those that still believe in the Lovecraftian supreme creator Azathoth, the ‘blind and bloody crazy idiot god’, believe that this explains everything about what’s wrong with our world, and sometimes this makes a great deal of sense ... that we’re all of the product of someone’s insane dream. The good, the bad, the ugly ... and all of the what-the-fuck in-between.

I won’t entirely buy that theory, but the world and realms Above and Below (and those in-between) certainly operate by very peculiar rules that are unfathomable to the living.

If just living is confusing enough, then being ‘dead’ can be doubly so. At least.

During long moments of reflection, of which I’ve had two hundred years’ worth of quiet moments to ponder over things, I’ve come to just two definitive conclusions. First, the world (then and now) is heavily populated with idiots. Someone once calculated that there are about 5000 different belief systems and various religions known to humanity, and nearly all of them state as a Divine Commandment that it’s considered very bad form to go about deliberately killing your fellow human beings, either for profit or just for the sheer pleasure of the slaughter ... even if you’re a postal employee.

Secondly, everyone (or damned near) believes that Rules, felonious, political, religious or secular, are for other people. ”We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes”, as Leona Helmsley famously once said. A far too many people believe in the so-called ‘golden rule’ as gospel – we have the gold, so we make the rules. They live by it ... and some will die by it, and some of the worst of those folks just might encounter me on some dark night.

Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord ... but that’s why he/she/it/them/etc have minions (like me) to ensure that especially naughty miscreants are delivered up promptly (and quite unwillingly) for expedited divine justice! Getting caught just isn’t even conceivable to most of them, and when I suddenly show up a great many hardened career sinners sudden have a major crisis of faith. The vast majority of idiotic socio and psychopathic serial killers will get caught by the police sooner or later, or have the fickle steel-toed boot of karma go straight up their fundament via hundreds of nasty and creative ways ... and thusly, become someone else’s problem – and not mine.

Me, I’m strictly empowered to just go after the top .01% of miscreants that are either too vicious, too brilliant, too magically or politically protected, or worse, are possessed by a trans-dimensional entity, for any other more conventional solution. When the job is given to me, it’s always handled quietly ... and never makes page one headlines ... at least not in any newspaper that serious people read.

Somedays (few and far between) I must admit, I miss the late departed the National Enquirer, The Tattler, and Weekly World News. Some of those now-dead fish wraps had chaps with a sense for my sort of High Strangeness. Fortean Times still runs an occasional column chronicling a few of the odd and mysterious deaths or the sudden disappearances of people with a reputation for being extremely naughty. A few rumors of my existence (and garbage collection activities) have even had the odd comment on Reddit r/HighStrangeness. It’s all fun reading, but don’t believe more than half of anything you hear, read or see.

Oh, that ought to be a third iron-cast rule – NOTHING, either on earth and heaven or hell, or parts unknown in-between, is ever exactly what you believe it is. Out of those 5000+ belief systems I don’t believe any of them completely get the complete and entire picture of what happens during life and death ... and some rather peculiar stages in-between. I’m not sure that this is an entirely bad thing – it keeps the smarter mortals thinking and the bars busy on most nights. Our Creator, he/she/it/them/etc, gave us that free-will for a purpose ... and then (in my humble opinion) popped up a big batch of popcorn to munch while resting and enjoying the resulting fiasco. Maybe those Lovecraftian worshipers do see some of the big picture behind the façade after all.

Me? Heck ... I don’t think I understand the situation of life, death, and the Afterlife™

much more clearly now, even after I’ve been dead for three hundred years, than I did right from the start ... and frankly I’m not too unhappy about it. For me to do my job, promptly and neatly, I just don’t need to know. I’ve picked up a few hints along the way, but I’ll let you make your very own prognostications. Besides, it’s much more fun that way.

But there’s no time left for chat or idle wool-gathering ... I have some clients to collect.

The worst part of being a Revenant, or being quite utterly clinically diseased – but still shuffling about in the mortal realm in a quasi-phantasmal but yet a somewhat physical material state - is that you have no internal body heat and if it’s cold (or worse, cold and wet) you really do feel it all the way down to your bones. Tonight, this late October early morning, it was both, almost cold enough for an early season snow ... but reluctantly settling for a constant icy drizzle and a biting wind instead. Why is it that I never get to collect any clients in a nice sauna bath, or a Caribbean beach? Nope, there are no warm beaches within in my assigned region of responsibility, alas.

My assignment zone is the Appalachian Trail (and about a hundred miles of territory on either side of it), but I almost usually drive along it back and forth ... although I’ve walked the full length of it at least twice over the years, small bits at a time ... usually in the line of work. If I have at least a week of downtime, I’ll wander up or down whatever section of the hiking trail that is most convenient. Getting to know better the lay of the land, its people, and get a feel on my radar for anything remotely ‘what-the-fuck?’ operating in my patrol area. Or even just a bit weirder than usual.

Usually, nearly all of my summons to collect a client fall within the northern (and longest) parts of the Appalachians, from about Charleston, West Virginia northeast to the southern borders of Vermont and New Hampshire. I especially enjoy the long stretch of the Chestnut Ridge running through Pennsylvania, not least because I was born near there. Strange things always happened there, even before the days of the first settlers, and I get annoyed if anyone/anything wicked or supernatural takes a piss right in my old home’s backyard.

Anything from the White Mountains north to the end of the trail at Mount Katahdin, Maine is someone else’s problem, not mine. That zone is such an extreme hotbed of High Strangeness that it’s a full-time job for at least two other Revs, and once in a while I’ll even get a sudden call to head up north to give them both a hand. I hear that the Wendigos or Kiwakwa (or something worse) are starting to become a serious problem again. Maine was always ‘weird’, long before Steven King started writing about it. It’s nearly as bad on parts of the southern trail too, but perhaps to a slightly lesser extent. The zone covering Virginia and Tennessee down to northern Georgia is supposedly also a full-time job for another pair of poor dead souls just to deal with all of the aliens, bigfoot, dogmen, and other trans-dimensional beings that seem to be attracted to the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory facility like bugs to a streetlight. I really wouldn’t want that job ... it’s undoubtedly a punishment detail for someone that got out of line and really pissed off Upper and Lower management.

So, my zone covers the most physical miles ... and with the least amount of coverage. Is it even proper to say ‘manpower’, if the guys and gals involved are technically dead? Well, I’m not complaining - I like my current job just fine, thank you all very much!

Now, this early morning, I moved through the wood like an apparition, not fully material, and I never made the slightest sound that even an owl could hear. An annoyingly hard gusting northern wind would help completely obscure the ghostly silence that marked my passing, which normally all animal, birds, insects, and other fauna to freeze up in silence, fearing my presence. Nope, as far as I know, insects and all lower-order animals have no soul, and no dedicated grim reaper, or so I suspect. Cats, dogs, bears, foxes, and owls do, I think. Coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions might also ... I’m still debating that theory. The spirits of deer, elk, moose and anything that lives to be fodder for predators, probably don’t move onwards after death ... except perhaps moderately naughty souls reside within as a special recurring punishment for being naughty, thus spending a life (or endless series of them) being something else’s dinner. Maybe they all have a Happy Hunting Grounds too.

Finding my quarry rather preoccupied, I stepped up behind him and cleared my throat loudly. I was brought up in a very proper polite age and it would have been quite unsporting of me to just stalk up to my victim and rip his head off by complete surprise ... unless they’d previously really pissed me off.

“Mr. Edgar Jason Phelps, if you would please,” I politely suggested, please disengage yourself from whatever nasty and unhygienic thing you were doing within Miss Jordan’s posterior, and if you wish, you may make a hasty confession of your numerous sins to your Creator. I’d keep it exceedingly brief, as I get the distinct impression everyone both Above and Below (and all points in-between) are quite put-out with your behavior. And please, if you would, avoid pleading for my mercy ... I find it annoying, at best ... as you rather pointedly didn’t grant Miss Jordan any, or the other five women that you’ve killed and buried here, I don’t feel that you deserve my favorable condescension. The less said about all of your other victims, elsewhere, like your late wife back in Georgia and several other ex-girlfriends, for example ... the better. Oh, and pull your pants back up please! You’ll just look silly if you’re found this way by the authorities later, with your manhood ... what little there is of it ... all flapping out loose. Show some dignity, man!”

“AND...”, I hastily added, “if you try running away, you’ll only annoy me more than I already am and you’ll just die a few minutes later, very tired ... but with several more broken bones than would be strictly necessary to complete the requirements of the job.”

Running in a blind panic in near pitch-black dark in a forest with one’s trousers bunched around their ankles wouldn’t have helped any escape attempt ... even from a mildly annoyed raccoon, let alone from a Revenant like me. I could feel exactly where he was at every moment since I felt the calling to ‘collect’ him. Here and now, a few dozen yards away, or yesterday, when I was over 200 miles away. I’d called him by his full name, as it had appeared on his birth certificate, because names have power ... in birth and in death. It was a sensible precaution, as I’ve been surprised before by unexpected developments.

If the job was easy, then someone else would be doing it.

So ... although I knew my lady client’s full name as well, i.e. the freshly murdered victim, I’d never use it. I had no need to command her spirit or take temporary control of her now soulless flesh ... and most importantly, for a gentleman of my upbringing and generation, it would be unthinkable to brazenly call a strange young lady by her Christian name, without a proper introduction and the prior understanding of an intent to court her first. And probably with accompanying chaperones present to ensure our proper behavior. Sometimes adhering to old-fashioned etiquette can be extremely inconvenient! Not every societal custom was better back then in the past, than it is nowadays, I’d agree.

“Well, Miss Jordan,” I signed, speaking to her corpse, “you’ll have to wait for a few more minutes it seems ... but I suppose you’re not going anywhere at present, so sit tight and I’ll be right back.” Considering that my primary client Miss Monica Jordan had been dead for close to two hours now and still had a pair of stockings wrapped tightly around her throat, she wasn’t likely to get up and start taking a walk ... but you never can completely tell. In my line of work, ‘weird shit’ happens on a regular basis. The Appalachians are one long enormous vortex of High Strangeness, and perhaps the most difficult region to spiritually regulate in the entire country, culling the most extreme of the wicked ... and the rather odd forces that toy with them.

Her murderer was still crashing though the wood blindly now, but perhaps with just a bit more speed now. If I’d had to guess, I would have assumed that he had taken my advice and hauled his pants back up. From the sound of things, he was tripping over a few less rocks and fallen branches running wildly in the near pitch black dark of night, but by no means making a swift and smooth getaway. Nope ... that was never going to happen.

“Oh! Mr. Phelps! Why do you so shun my company? I really have nothing but the sincerest malevolent thoughts towards you. You could have made this so very simple, but now I’m going to have spindle, fold, and mutilate you just a bit!” The louds of a particularly loud shriek and crash suggested that my quarry had panicked at hearing my voice just a few yards behind him and he had tripped and now plunged down in a small streambed, giving his skull a good whack in the process.

Somehow, the little weasel cleared his muddled thoughts just enough to reach into his pants pocket and pull out a small revolver and with a great deal of effort, aim it at me. I snorted with a bit of derision, as it appeared to be a ‘woman’s gun’, maybe a .38 or something smaller – for when even a 9mm is too ‘manly’ for you. He unloaded it at me, with four of the five rounds striking me at point-blank range, but all passing harmlessly straight through me. Mostly so, anyway ... annoyingly, he just put eight new holes through both my new jacket, sweater, and shirt! The small bullets entering and passing through (harmlessly) my unliving flesh and exiting out the back.

You can shoot at me as much as you’d like, if it gives you comfort in your final moments, but it’s not worth the time and effort, or the ammo cost.

A moment of mild discomfort later, as my flesh near instantly healed without even leaving a bruise, and I was standing by his side, hauling him up to his feet with a firm grasp. Another moment of slightly worse discomfort later and I’d phased us both right back to the small clearing where the corpse of Miss Jordan ... and the graves of his other five victims locally buried here, were all patiently waiting. Someone else would have to deal with all of those mundane out-of-town trapped spirits, later, but that was a concern for one of the Shepherds, and not me.

I would normally have ‘finished’ the matter right then and there, but he insisted upon vexing me further by begging and pleading for his life. Worse, then he even tried to bribe me, offering me money. Bad move ... I did politely ask him to refrain from doing that.

Rule number four? There is no such thing as a free lunch. No good deed goes unpunished ... and that goes double for bad deeds. Ultimately, only the Creator can judge the worthiness of a person – and my job is to gather up the folks like Mr. Phelps, the very worst of the worst, for some expedited delivery to a much higher court.

Since I really had nothing further to say to him, and certainly nothing that could be considered ‘polite’, I grabbed him with two strong hands and flung him face-first into the nearest large tree. I heard some ribs break but his spine held up (mostly) until after it was flung into a few more trees, hard, before his back ... and nearly every other bone in his body was broken. Well, I did warn him.

“Slaves ... my slaves for the afterlife ... they’re still all MINE and now I’ll go to them and endlessly rape them for an eternity ... that’s what I was promised, the bargain I made,” he gurgled, spitting out more blood than air as he spoke.

“Nope, sorry,” I sighed, “that’s a Rule #3 violation, since neither heaven nor hell are precisely what you think they are. Whomever you made your ‘deal’ with ... has been telling you porkies and has lied. They do that, I’m afraid. Those from both Above or Below, or all of the interdimensional entities, spirits and even the bloody aliens and travelers in-between, all never tell the real truth about anything. Slaves for the afterlife? Really? You really believed that whopper? I’d thought that flavor of stupidity went out in the 1970’s with the Zodiac killer. We met, you know, him and I, professionally, back in the day, and on a night much like this. You’ll likely meet him where you’re probably going, so tell him ‘Hi’ for me, if you happen to share the same burning pit.”

I even meant it – I’ve never found any sense in holding drudges, especially if it’s ‘just business’. Actually, I had almost no clue what sort of judgement and ‘punishment’ awaited him ... but just mentioning fire and brimstone usually give my more naughty clients a pretty decent scare. Rule #4 again ... they all think that they’re going to ‘get away with it’, until I suddenly come along.