The Death Agreement by Kristopher Mallory Page B

to
the dim light, and a shadow slid across the room. It paused as if
looking at me, then it slithered in a spiral, drawing closer to the
cot. Once near enough to kiss, it rose vertically until it towered
at least eight feet high.
    "What happened?" I
asked.
    "You crashed," the shadow
replied.
    "Am I dying?"
    "Part of you is already dead. You
know that, don't you?"
    A tear slid down the side of my
face. "Yes," I said.
    The shadow trembled, then ripped
like an amniotic sac. Teeth gripped the fold of one of the rips and
tore the shadow more. Taylor's face, covered in blood spatter,
struggled through the rip in the shadow as if he were pulling
himself from the gravity of a black hole. The shadow trembled
again, then fell to the floor like a pile of dirty clothes. Taylor
smiled. In one hand, he held up my severed leg, toes wiggling. In
his other hand, he held the white maple handle of a menacing,
rusted, antique saw.
    ***
    I awoke in a cold sweat, reaching
for my leg but finding only the prosthetic. I wiped the sweat from
my brow with my forearm, then looked out the window at the passing
cars. I could still feel my severed leg so I clenched my missing
toes and parroted what Taylor had said in the dream, "Part of you
is already dead."
    "What was that?" The driver met my
eyes in the rearview mirror.
    "Nothing. Thinking out
loud."
    "Pardon my saying so, pal, but you
look like you've been through the wringer. Wanna talk about
it?"
    I shook my head.
    He looked over his shoulder at me.
"Ol' Frank's been drivin' cabs for twenty years; I can tell when
people need to get somethin' off their mind."
    "Thanks, I appreciate it, but I'm
fine. Just tired."
    "I'm just sayin' if you want, I
can take ya to a meeting. AA? NA? Nine years clean myself. You
gotta work the program. Know what I mean?"
    I nodded.
    The cabbie sighed. "Suit
yourself," he said, and left me alone for the rest of the drive.
When he pulled up to the front gates, I took out the last bit of
money I had after paying off Hardesty and handed it to
him.
    "Sorry," I apologized while
getting out of the cab. "I wish I could give you more of a
tip."
    "No worries. Oh, and
pal?"
    I raised my eyebrows.
    "Thanks for your service," he
said, then waved as he drove off.
    I smiled and waved back before
flashing my ID to the gate guard. Once through security, I headed
toward my room, but halfway there I stopped and considered going
the other direction.
    Something about the dream had me
shaken.
    "The saw," I whispered. It had
been the same one that Taylor and I had discovered in the
sub-basement of the closed-off building. Yang had said the police
found a saw in the trunk of Taylor's car. "Could it be?"
    It seemed unlikely. Probably just
my subconscious trying to make sense of the madness. That's what I
thought, but I knew I wouldn't be able to rest until I checked that
room.
    I turned toward the old abandoned
wing of the hospital, sighed, then marched like a man heading to
the gallows.
    ***
    "Still be there," I whispered.
"Please, please, still be there."
    Making my way through the building
in the darkness wasn't easy. Every shadow moved as if it were
alive, and I felt as if someone had been watching me. Taylor and I
had joked about ghosts on our excursions, and even though I never
bought into the supernatural, each nerve tingled as if some kind of
power radiated from the walls of the old hospital ward.
    "It's not real," I said. Then a
small voice in the back of my mind, the voice I had often ignored
said: Yes it is, Jon.
    I made my way to the passage that
led to the sub-basement and stood outside the entrance for what
felt like an eternity, remaining silent, listening for any sound at
all. At that moment, if a pin were to have dropped, I would have
gone insane and screamed for the rest of my life. I clung to my
cellphone, imagining horrors outside of what the dim light of the
phone provided.
    Not knowing is the cruelest
torture. Maybe that's why God gave us knowledge of our own
mortality.