Grimm, is it always this cold in here? He didn’t respond. . . . Actually he never responded. Josh wasn’t even sure that the spectre could talk. They had been like this for a while now, the two of them. A couple of years ago his cloaked travel companion had just appeared in the middle of the night. One moment Josh had been sleeping, the next he was being nudged awake by a chill that crept from his toes to the nape of his neck. At the foot of his bed had stood Grimm, or at least that’s what Josh called him, he had never formally introduced himself you see.

Josh had never been quite sure how Grimm had gotten into the room, what with his head nearly scraping the ceiling. And what was with that scythe anyways? it LOOKED menacing enough, but in all their travels Josh had never seen his towering friend use it for anything but gesturing and glowering. On one particular occasion Josh had asked to hold the weapon but Grimm was oddly protective of his oversharp walking stick and just glided away when asked. Grimm really could be very selfish and wasn’t a very good sharer.

Tonight they were out on the town. Well, a town. . . .To be honest, it wasn’t a town at all. It was more like what used to be a town. There were some walls here and there that probably used to be houses, and they were walking on what he assumed was supposed to be a road, but frankly it was hard to tell where the road started and the dirt ended.

It wasn’t a place Josh had ever been, but he suspected it wasn’t somewhere you would find on your every day map. Grimm’s visits were always unexpected, but they had been going on these little adventures for years. Usually when Grimm brought him along Josh could at least guess at where they were, but this place was decidedly not normal. For starters there were two suns, neither of which were yellow (or orange, whatever), and both of which looked like they had seen better days. One was pitch black and looked like a light that had been off for a very long time. The other looked aged, as if it were were a candle at the end of a long life and could snuff out at any moment.

The second sun gave off just enough light for him to see where they were headed. From a distance Josh could just begin to make out two objects at the end of the street. As they approached, the broken dirt road began to steadily turn into misfit cobbled stones. Grimm floated quietly over them, not noticing the difference, but Josh’s foot caught on a particularly oblong one and he pitched forward onto his hands.

“Awesome.” He grumbled, looking down at his throbbing hands. Pieces of skin had been torn from his palms but it wasn’t too bad. He felt a brush on his shoulder and he looked up as the hem of Grimm’s black cloak passed by him. The spectre paused for a moment and turned his. . . Head? to look down on Josh as if to say “what are you doing, stop fooling around” and then just continued his stroll down the street. With a sigh Josh picked himself up and followed after dark his tour guide.

The street was widening now, opening into the mouth of a large circle. As they got closer the dim haze from the two suns began to clear and the objects at the end of the street came into view. They were two stones of equal height, about 10 feet high and 3 feet wide. They sat opposite eachother on either side of the culdesac. Josh found that It was a bit easier to see here, the suns were directly above them now, one in either side of the circle. The dark sun took up residence on the left and the dim sun on the right, both positioned directly above the stones, as if anchored there by the rock beneath it.

From where he stood at the mouth of the circle, Josh could see that the stone on the left was compeltely smooth, as if polished by a very dedicated person for a very, very long time. Grimm didn’t seem too keen to move so Josh left Grimm to floating and moved closer to it. He was drawn to the stone, crossing the distance to the obelisk without realizing it. He ran his hand over the face of the stone, it was cold and smooth as a pane of glass in the shade. His finger passed along the face until it felt an almost impermissible imperfection in the stone, a single jagged white line etched into the rock.

Josh realized he had been holding his breath and exchanged through his nose. He pulled his hand back and turned to ask Grimm why they were here but Grimm wasn’t where he had left him. Turning in circles Josh scanned the circle to see where he could have gone, but it was difficult to make things out in the darkness. “When did it get so dark?” He hadn’t realized it at first but the sun above the far stone had begun to darken significantly, beginning to show black etches cross crossing across its outline in the sky.

Josh began to cross the circle back towards the second stone and could begin to feel his palms sweating. He had to squint to focus see now; continuing to try to pick out the outline of Grimms cloak against the rest of the darkness. It was truly starting to darken now, and he could barely make out the outline of the stone, but as he approached his eye caught on a glint against the dying light. The scythe, standing upright, alone; against the face of the rock. Josh looked around. Grimm had never let the weapon out of his hand let alone out of his sight, but he was alone. He moved closer, and he stared at the smooth grain of the scythes handle. As his eyes moved up towards the steel point Josh noticed something etched into the face of the rock. Two jagged white lines, the tip of one just touching the point on the scythe.

Josh swallowed. He looked down at the weapon as his heart hammered in his chest. He could barely see his hands in front of his face now, looking up the sun was almost pitch black. He breathed in and out once. . . twice, and reached his hand towards the long weapon. He had known this day might come. From first night Grimm had taken him with him, and brought him back alive. Grimm had never had to tell him, Death waits for no man. . .

As he moved back down the cobbled street, death passed over an odd brick that jutted from its spot. He looked down at where is hands had been, the throbbing was gone, but there was an ache of sorts, but that wasn’t because of his hands. Death had lost something more than his hands. He turned to look one last time upon the sun shining brightly between its two dark brothers. And then he simply vanished. Death waits for no man, and there was work to do.