Read Online Croak by Gina Damico - Free Book Online

scene, what Lex could see of it. She was afraid to breathe, not wanting to disturb anything or wake the woman up—until she noticed that one of the pill bottles had tipped over. It lay on its side, small green pills spilling out over the edge of the table.
    But they weren’t falling. They were frozen in midair.
    Lex’s eyes bugged. “What—”
    Uncle Mort shushed her. “Watch.” He reached out a single white finger and touched the woman on the cheek.
    A brilliant flash of white light briefly illuminated the room —the same sort of blaze Lex had seen on the bus ride—along with the strangest noise: a loud pop mixed with a shrill, piercing screech. A sort of mist began to emerge from the woman—a bluish-tinged light gently flowing out of her body, floating through the air like an unearthly aurora.
    Lex exhaled. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
    Zara stretched her hand toward the light. It seemed to obey her movements, gracefully swirling into her open fingers as if it were eager to be collected. She carefully guided it into a spherical container—Lex couldn’t tell what it was—until the last wisps disappeared and the light was gone, fading from the air with an almost human sigh.
    Zara put the container back into her pocket and withdrew the shiny object again. She and Uncle Mort swiped them through the air in unison—drawing them upward this time—and blustered back into the vortex.
    Lex let out another screech, every one of her organs flopping in delight. She was still screaming when they landed, minutes or eons later, in the same spot from which they had left. All air gone from her lungs, she slumped down off her uncle’s back and began staggering around the grass.
    Zara made a face. “Is she going to throw up?”
    “Lex?” asked Uncle Mort. “Are you going to throw up?”
    “No.” Lex coughed. “No, I’m fine. Just give me a sec.”
    She put her hands over her eyes and tried to breathe evenly. After a beat, she exhaled and dropped her hands to her sides.
    “Oh my GOD!” she yelled.
    “That’s it.” Uncle Mort elbowed Zara. “That’s the face.”
    “How did we—where did we—
what was that?
”
    “Let me answer that question,” Uncle Mort said, reaching into his hoodie pocket, “with a present.”
    He removed a polished, oblong black rock made of stone so dark it seemed to negate the very idea of light. Riveted, Lex took it from him and ran her fingers over its smooth, impossibly hard surface, ultimately reaching a bump. She grabbed the small protrusion and unfolded it like a penknife, her heart beginning to race as she realized what it was: a curved, razor-sharp blade made out of the same pitch-black stone. It pivoted noiselessly outward and came to a stop at a ninety-degree angle to the handle, forming a crooked
L.
    She held the weapon as if it were made of the brittlest glass, turning it over and over in her hands. She never would have thought it possible to fall in love with an inanimate object, but in this case, as in many cases, love didn’t follow any particular set of rules.
    “What is this? A knife?”
    “Nope,” Uncle Mort said, his eye glinting. “A scythe.”
    Lex just stared.
    “Allow me to explain.” Uncle Mort sat on the ground and leaned against the Ghost Gum. “The nothingness—or rather, everythingness—from which we just returned is called the ether,” he said as the two girls joined him on the grass. “It is the method of transportation that we use to transfer souls from this life to the next.”
    Lex listened, engrossed. She hadn’t blinked in minutes.
    Uncle Mort was pleased with her reaction, as it was finally not one of disgust or outrage or both. “We always work in pairs, because there are two types of Field jobs—Killers and Cullers. You and I are Killers,” he said plainly. “With a single touch, a Killer officially ends the life of a human being by releasing the Gamma, or soul, from the body.”
    “That was a soul?” Lex said