There was a stillness to the house that people instinctively recognize yet can never fully define. Although the stillness held no threat, it was nonetheless a stillness that made most people uneasy. It was the stillness of a place where someone was about to die.

Cadence was old. She was also sick and weary but still she fought. Every breath, every heartbeat, was a victory won over and over again. Every night the stillness fell and so she refused to fall asleep. So many people, too many people, were taken that way and Cadence refused to simply slip away.

Certainly, there were times she slept, she had to, but she never slept when things were still. She napped during the day when her daughter came to clean house, or when her son came to care for her plants. Some nights the stillness didn’t come and she would sleep peacefully and deeply. Those nights were far and few between these days.

She was too weak to get up and move around much and so most of the time she stayed in bed. There was a television set that her son had brought her but too often she found herself nodding off while watching it. She only ever turned it on when she was well rested and the house wasn’t still. Instead, she busied herself with looking up at the old plastered ceiling and picking out shapes and faces in the swirled design. She had done for so long now that she didn’t even have to try anymore to see some of her favorite ones. There was the smiling clown over in the corner. The jumping dog beside the light fixture. The dancer near the wall.

There was something of a knock at her door. It wasn’t a knock, not really, but she had heard it enough times to know what it was.

Even speaking was getting difficult these days but she managed to rasp out an invitation.

“Come in,” she said.

The door did not move but nevertheless she was at once aware of a man standing in the room. He did not appear, but rather it was more like Cadence becoming aware of him, as though he had been standing there the whole time and simply waiting for her to notice him. He looked young, perhaps in his twenties or thirties, but he felt ancient. The way he moved, the way he looked at the world around him, everything denoted countless millennia of experience and knowledge. He wore a well-tailored suit whose fabric appeared at first to be a dark black but if she stared at it long enough she would begin to see shades of color here and there, moving as though they were highlights in the fabric that were catching the light. Those brief flickers of color came regardless of whether or not the man was moving and Cadence refused to ever ask him about it. She knew the fabric, like the man, was nothing earthly.

“You’re wasting your time,” Cadence told the man.

He smiled warmly but with obvious disagreement and Cadence felt like a child trying to convince a loving parent that bedtime was a bad idea. He never got angry or lost patience with Cadence. She doubted there was anything or anyone who could perturb him. He had, quite literally, seen it all.

“Well, have a seat if you’re going to stay a while,” Cadence told him and gestured to the chair beside her bed.

He moved with an intense grace, practically floating across the carpeted floor as he strode over to the offered seat and sat himself down. The scents of old forests, of cut grass, of soil, and of so many other things that teased at long forgotten memories followed him. Cadence loved those smells because they always brought back memories of her life. Both the smells and the memories were always different each time he came to her room and it was one of the few things she looked forward to with regards to the man.

“How are you?” Cadence asked him.

He never spoke first and Cadence had long since found that she disliked sitting in silence with him. She always tried to ask him different questions whenever he visited, if only to break up the monotony. She was all too familiar with the boredom associated with being asked the same old questions over and over again. Tonight, she was too tired to come up with anything particularly original, though.

The man held her gaze as he answered her question.

“I am eternal,” he said in a quiet yet easy to hear voice, “and feel the sorrows of all the mourners, the pains of all the dying, and the myriad states of being for every living thing that has passed on since time began.”

He paused and flashed a rare, and perhaps embarrassed, toothy smile before continuing.

“Although I suppose I can more easily say that I am content and leave it at that.”

“Hmmm,” Cadence murmured. “Been keeping busy? I imagine you’ve got other people to see this evening.”

“Never so busy I can’t spend some time with you.”

His tone was kind and a bit playful.

“Careful there,” Cadence warned him teasingly, “my husband might hear you and become jealous.”

Cadence allowed herself a grin before resuming her usual scowl at him. It was difficult to not like the man and she had to remind herself from time to time not to let down her guard.

“Your husband passed on seven years ago,” the man said in more solemn tones.

“I don’t need you to remind me of that,” Cadence snapped. “I was just trying to lighten the conversation.”

“My apologies,” he said with a humble nod of his head and left it at that.

Cadence wanted him to say something, rather than her always having to fill the space between them with her questions. Small talk was never a strong suit of hers and it was even harder when this man was the one she had to talk to.

She tried to ignore him for a while, looking back across the ceiling or counting the dead flies in the light fixture, but nothing eased her mind with him sitting right there beside her. Glancing over to him she noticed how his hand was placed ever so subtly on the edge of her bed, almost as an invitation to take it.

“Please take your hand off my bed,” she stated flatly.

He obliged, sliding the hand onto his lap but nevertheless maintaining it in that open position as though still offering it to her.

“I’ve told you before, you aren’t taking me!”

Cadence’s anger was rising now and she wanted to slap his proffered hand. She probably would have done it if she hadn’t been afraid that once her hand touched his, that it would clamp shut on her like a trap.

“I never take,” he told her in his calming way. “Few have the choice that you do, of when to pass on, but even for those who do not have that choice I am not the one who takes it from them.”

“Well, like I said, I’m not going anywhere with you so you can just get going and don’t bother coming back.”

“And to where would I go?” he asked.

“That’s not my problem,” Cadence told him. “I just don’t want you here.”

He nodded understandingly but still did not rise to leave.

“I…” he breathed in deeply and then let it out in a low sigh. “I know the fear and uncertainty feel. There is so much unknown to you, to most people, about what happens when you pass on. For some, there is the fear of retribution for deeds done in this life. For others there is the idea of a nothingness, a nonexistence whose finality is too terrifying for them to comprehend. Others still cling to the familiar, to the things of this life, because here at least there is some certainty in what tomorrow would bring.”

Cadence tried not to give any sign as to which of those he had listed most closely matched her own fears. She didn’t want him to understand her, to show that her resistance was pointless. Yet something in his words caught her attention. Why she hadn’t noticed it or thought of it before was beyond her. It should have been obvious from the beginning.

“What does happen when a person dies?” she asked.

“Upon death,” he said, “the functions of the organs cease. In particular, with the heart and lungs no longer providing oxygen and nutrients to the body’s cells, as well as no longer removing their waste products, the toxicity within the cells builds up. In a matter of minutes, the most delicate cells are dead. In a matter of hours, most other cells in the body have followed suit.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Cadence told him.

“That’s true,” he replied and went no further.

“You don’t know, do you,” Cadence accused him and even she was surprised by the anger she felt and heard in her voice. “You just come here, to people like me, and ask us to take you hand and follow you, but you don’t have any idea what’s waiting for us!”

“I do know,” he assured her with a quiet intensity that made her tremble. “But it isn’t given to me to share with you that knowledge.”

“Why not?” Cadence demanded. “If I’m about to die, why not tell me what I should expect?”

“When you are ready to pass on,” he said, “then you will learn what there is beyond the veil.”

“Well, I guess I’m living forever then,” Cadence grumbled, crossing her arms and pulling her blankets up to her neck as if to create even more separation between the two of them.

“Oh Cadence,” he sighed, “just because you have the choice now, whether to come with me or not, does not mean you will always have that choice. Eventually your body will fail on its own.”

“Then why bother coming here night after night and bothering me?”

“Are you not in pain?” he asked her. “Do you not long for release from your frailties and illnesses? Does not this forced reliance on others for even simple things chafe at you? Would not you rather soar above the struggle and the pain that has come to consume your life and define your days? That is what I am offering you. There is no more need for you to labor on as you have done. Come with me. Take my hand.”

He extended his hand out to her once again. Everything he had said was true. She was dying, no matter what she said or however long she resisted him, and the promise of respite from it was tempting. She wanted so badly to be free from the daily pains of old age and poor health. But what if there was nothing waiting for her on the other side? What if she could have even just a few more days before winking out of existence? Then again, if there was nothing waiting for her, then what difference did a few more days make?

Or what if there was an afterlife? There were too many conflicting ideologies surrounding the subject and she had no way of knowing if her life matched up with the good endings or the bad ones. Would she be able to see her husband again? Would he even still be her husband? Would there be any point in being married in that afterlife? There was just so many questions. Too many questions.

“I can’t,” she was surprised to find tears sliding down her face as she spoke. “I…I can’t do it. We spend so much time learning how to live that no one ever teaches you how to die.”

“Learning to live is learning to die,” he said gently. “Life is full of uncertainties and you learn to deal with them. Some uncertainties come on gradually while others are sudden. So too, is death. Sometimes it can be seen coming along from a great distance. Sometimes it springs out and catches you by surprise.”

“At least I had people who could share their experiences,” Cadence objected. “There’s no one who can help me with this.”

“That is true,” he agreed. “All of those other uncertainties were, in part, to help prepare you for this one, and part of that preparation was to provide some comfort, some additional guidance, like training wheels on a bicycle, or an older friend to lead you by the hand and show you around.”

He extended his hand yet again towards her.

“I said no,” she said but with less conviction this time. “At least not tonight.”

His expression was hard to read as he withdrew his hand and folded his arms. His mouth was somewhat tight, drawing his lips into a thin line, but his eyes were soft and full of understanding. Pity, perhaps? Cadence turned away from him on her bed and did not speak to him again that night. Eventually the stillness of the house went away and she knew he had gone along with it. Finally, she could let herself sleep and she gave herself over to it. Maybe the next time he came she would accept his offered hand. Maybe tonight had been his final visit and she wouldn’t see him again until she couldn’t hold on any longer. Those were thoughts for tomorrow, though. For now, all she wanted was rest.