I remember the night I met him as vividly as if it had only been hours ago, the memory etched into my mind as if it had been engraved into hard granite and locked behind steel doors, the foul remembrance able to be recalled on with every clear detail. It’s odd how sweet memories are of laughs and smiles, gentle scents and the flittering of words scarcely evoked to the perfection of the moment. Yet a vile recollection is there for eternal time, all aroma, image, breath and words hovering in shadows with flawless accuracy, crouched to emerge in an inopportune instant to haunt the mind behind tormented eyes.

As such I remember explicit details that I should not be able to that night, such as the sable sky like sticky ink that had been knocked over by some careless hand. The stars dully flickered and the moon was of the yellow of an old bruise slowly recovering. It was a half moon, and looked as if some one had plucked it from the sky and sliced it cleanly in two then devoured the other half. Night had come early; it engulfed the lingering light until all day was snuffed out and night ruled supreme.

However, if I should have noticed some ominous sign in the early dark or the unsightly yellow of the moon, to this day that admonition has eluded me. I was as clueless as any college girl could have been, my head resting on my boyfriends shoulder as he drove, my eyes heavy with the brush of Sleeps fingers on my eyelids.

I was vaguely aware of my surroundings at the time as I was drifting from slumber to stirring. We had been driving for only a few hours now, we had left Sean’s friend’s house in Vermont late and he was cruising at a desperate speed to make up for lost time. We had spent a rather enjoyable weekend with some of Sean’s old friends from before Sean had moved to Massachusetts, though the pleasant time I had now is obscured by the dark blanket of what was to happen in the days to come.

I sighed as we hit a bump that may have seemed less disturbing if we had been going at anything other than a death defying speed down Route 90, and lifted my head off of Sean’s shoulder. Though his Honda may have been small, it still was placing a crick in my neck from leaning that far over the centerpiece to reach him. I entertained the thought of placing my head against the window but dismissed it at the quick image of me clucking my head against the glass every couple of seconds.

The music that had been playing had broken off; leaving a cutting static that was quickly growing eerie. Annoyed, I reached to click off the music.

I had looked up when I did it.

Now, after the fact, I wonder what would have happened if I had not looked up, or had tried to sleep for only a little more. There was a window of mere seconds that I had caught, and if I believed in fate I would be forced to acknowledge the crude manner in which it had swept me up into its grasp.

The dim yellow headlights barely lit the black road and the disturbing sight of a tiny patch of light against overpowering darkness caused me to blink. A split second shutter of my lashes, and when they were once again open, he was there.

The headlights flashed up his body, any color he may have been wearing washed in sudden light. With the speed we were traveling there was only a half gasp, a freezing of the heart and an icy flood through my veins before out car was upon him. I saw deep black eyes, they locked with mine in the very second when I realized the strike was inevitable, that his death was unavoidable, that the actions had already been put into play and I could do nothing but watch. I wanted to scream, to warn either him or Sean, or even to lament the event that would shatter my life, no matter the outcome.

Sean didn’t pause; there was no touch of the brake or turning of the wheel. He didn’t gasp or shudder, there was no warning and the car plowed into the man standing alone on the highway.

Into him, through him, yet there was nothing. No thump, no bump, the man was gone and the car was airborne.

I felt my body twist, watched in fascinated horror at the black pavement that had been below me, to the side of me, then above me. There was a screaming of metal, a retching shriek, a shatter, yet I hadn’t made a sound. My breath was frozen in my throat, my stomach anywhere but in place, hands out and braced against the crumbling metal and nails digging into the soft material of Sean’s seat. I was wrenched, thrust to one side, shoved another, my body crying in protest as my head snapped forward, back, my hands losing their brace, the my seat belt beating into my chest and across my hips.

Someone was merciful then, perhaps knowing my doomed days to come and decided to slip me a small sliver of luck. I was spared hell as the car rolled and twisted to a stop. Somewhere in the turns I was knocked unconscious.

How long my sleep held out I have no way of knowing. I do know that I awoke, dim flickering lights called my attentions behind closed eyes.

I dragged my eyes open, the very effort enticing a heavy groan. My body was a fire of sharp pains and pounding aches. Surely someone had ripped me apart from inside! Had doused my body with flames or covered my skin with knives! Even through blurry eyes I tried to roll my head away, desperate, almost mad with the need to curl around my body, cling to the screaming parts of me that shrieked with utter agony. For a moment I longed to crawl away from my battered body, anywhere to remove myself from the pain.

That same someone was on my side again, sympathetic, and darkness waved over me.

My awakening this time was with a far better welcoming. There was a cold numbing in my body, and with an appreciative sigh I was able to open my eyes.

The night sky had not progressed much from when I had last seen it, though this time I was gazing up at it, sprawled over short, stinging grass. Either the cool night air had chilled my body or Death was already dragging his fingers over my skin.

I found at the moment I had no preference with which of the two was true. Instead I sucked in the cutting cold hair, fast, frantic breaths that filled my lungs and cleared my head.

The pain, or at least the unbearable pain, had left me, in its stead a dull aching that threatened me with the possibility of shock.

I wiggled my fingers, finding them sticking to the grass, but they moved, along with my arms. Slowly I could turn my head, staring at the grass that wasn’t green, but black. A black that once touched would smear against my skin causing sickly black blotches and streaks down my arms.

I turned my head the other direction and froze.

Fate or God or Luck had been sparing with me. It wasn’t the same case for Sean.

He sat, half propped up against a tree truck, head lolled to one side. His body twinkled like the lights on a Christmas tree, glittering yellow and white in time with a faint clicking sound.

I squinted, trying to make sense of the scene. I couldn’t call out his name. The very word was stuck in the base of my throat, frozen and solidified with the fear he wouldn’t answer. Something in the listless, gray eyes warned me away.

I pulled my gaze away, considering the capsized and crumbled Honda that lay before me, the passenger side of the car pinning my immobile legs against the black grass. The headlights were dashed, stranding us in the light of the ill moon.

The driver side blinker flickered on and off with dying clicks, the orange light doing little to light the area. Instead, it cast iridescent sparks over Sean, lighting the blackness around him and turning it red while dancing off the thousands of shards of glass that littered his skin.

I gagged, a scream cut off by the bile that rose in my throat. I managed to fling my head to the side in time retch into the grass. Choking, I roused myself to a half sitting position, sickness waving over me. I stared back at the man who had been my friend and companion for almost a year now. The numbness that stretched over my legs and broken body reached up and clutched my mind as well. I could think nothing, feel nothing, useless, only to stare in his unblinking eyes and beg for tears to come.

But there was nothing. I glanced about, my addled mind racing to find a person, a sight that might save my already dead Sean. We were well enough alone, the slight grassy area before the forest entirely obscured from the view of any passerby.

My voice was shrill and sharp against the silence as I called out, with no response. I don’t know how long I screamed for, just that my throat ran raw and my head light with the effort. I was starting to understand that it wasn’t for Sean alone that I was calling for. I couldn’t tell whose blood had painted the grass more, his or mine. With the car sufficiently pinning me it was only a matter of time before I, too, would find Sean’s fate.

Entirely alone, desperation slowly scratching at my mind, I leaned over, trying to drag my upper body closer to Sean. I longed to just touch the tips of his upturned hand, though why I’m not sure. Maybe to not be so alone, maybe with one last hope that he hadn’t actually abandoned me in this hellish limbo between life and death. The movement sent shards of pain racing up my legs and I had the breath left enough to scream out. I fell back, beaten, exhausted, destroyed. I turned my head away from Sean and cried, the tears coming back with the pain that seemed to help clear my head again.

“Don’t cry,” came a sharp voice, male, and from above me.

My eyes flew open with a gasp, hope surging through me so hard it hurt. Yet, when I glanced about, there was no one there. “Hello?” I cried out expectantly into the dark.

Two black glittering orbs shuttered, and it took a moment for me to realize they were eyes.

“Who’s there? I need help!” I sat up, staring hard at the eyes, waiting for my eyes to adjust to see the rest of the man.

He slowly came into view, painstakingly so, and I recognized him at once. “You?” I questioned. It was the same black eyes that I had glanced into before our car had hit him on the highway.

He was perched on the side to the Honda that was now the top, staring down at me from its height. Before I had a hard time telling what he was wearing, now I could see that, like the night, it was all black, a long coat or cloak wrapped around him, his bronze colored hands and face the only part observable. He cocked his head at me in an oddly bird like manner.

“How can you be… we hit you,” I wanted to rub my eyes, to assure that I was in fact seeing what I was seeing, but I was using my arms to prop myself up on my elbows and the movement couldn’t be spared.

He just smiled, a quick, almost nasty smile that shouldn’t have suited such a handsome face. He was all sharp features, prominent cheekbones, narrow chin, strong jaw, and aristocrat nose. His black hair was even darker then his cloths, shining in the slight light.

“Help,” I chocked out. He couldn’t be the same man and I wasn’t going to care if he was. At the moment he was fine and Sean and I were not. “Help him,” I glanced over to Sean’s still form. “He’s-“

“Dead,” said the man. “Death came not too long ago to take him away.” He glanced once at Sean then looked away with an indifferent sniff. “It’s you that is in the dilemma now. Death hasn’t strayed far. Can you not see him?” He pointed to behind Sean and the tree and, out of habit; I followed the direction of his finger.

It was a thing in a form of a man, cloudy, so black that no that no light brushed it, a terrible object that moved what could have been its head to stare in my direction.

I screamed, jerking away, sudden terror flooding my brain and body. The apparition moved little more, just hovering by, watching.

“What is that!” I screamed out, ignoring pain as I tried to drag myself all the farther away.

“Death. I told you.” The man hopped off the car but the car didn’t react to the removing of his weight. In fact, there was no change in the heaviness that crushed against my legs.

I didn’t know who to watch more, the man or the thing he called Death. “Are you going to help me?” I asked. I didn’t know if getting the car off me was going to help, but once it was moved I would drag myself if I had to, as far away from the thing watching me as I could make myself go.

“Of course,” he purred and crouched down next to me, balanced on the tips of his toes. “But the question is, my dear, if you want my help.”

Incredulous I glared up at him. “Of course I do. You have to call the police or get this car off me.”

He spread his hands wide. “Both of which I can not do.”

My head was starting to swim. I blinked my eyes. It was odd, but I remember specifically that the grass under his feet didn’t bend under his weight. It was as if he wasn’t there at all. “Why not?”

“I am here to offer a whole new kind of help. One that does not involve Death in any of his many forms.”

I furrowed my brow, trying to piece together what he was saying. Seeing my difficulty he continued.

“You see, as a mortal you have never been far from my friend here,” he gestured towards the phantom that had drifted ever closer. “He is your ever shadow, from birth to his namesake. I, on the other hand, can offer you freedom from him.”

Somewhere in the back of my head I was already laughing at the question I was about to ask. “Are you telling me you’re some kind of vampire?”

Outraged the man spine snapped straight as he sat back, clucking his tongue in indignation. “Don’t group we with such nonsense triviality.” He glanced away, brow drawn in dark anger. “I am not of fiction and myth.”

What he was was clearly mad, I reasoned with myself. But a mad man or not, help was help. I wasn’t going to argue with the form in which it came in. “Ok, I’m sorry. Do you think you can get this car off me? I mean, just move it a little so I can wiggle out?”

He glanced down at me and said coolly. “No.”

I blinked at him, stunned. “No? You’re not even going to try?”

He sighed in ire at me. “I could try a thousand times for a thousand days. I have no influence in this physical realm.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” was my dumbfounded response.

He leaned closer to me, and I noticed something else odd. So close I should’ve felt his breath on my face, a slight warmth from his skin. Instead I felt nothing.

“Do you really not recognize me, Pan-Pan?”

I jerked back, not in reaction to his closeness, but the familiarity in which he said my name. Pan-Pan. A silly family nickname short for Pandora, a wretched name my mother had cast on me after reading some sappy romance novel and snatching up the name for her daughter.

“How do you know my name?” I whispered. Not just my name. My nickname.

He sighed again. “Alas, I fear my lady had gone and forgotten me quite well. Do I not invoke the slightest of remembrance?”

But I would’ve remembered having met him. Handsome yet eerie with his black eyes, seductive with his full lips yet cold with his disinterested gaze, he was not a face, or, more precisely, a man I could forget.

“You must have me confused with someone else,” I reasoned, despite that he might know my nickname.

He arched on fine eyebrow. “Do I? Perhaps this will help.” He leaned forward again to whisper in my ear. Yet again there was no breath against my skin. “’Remember me, dear friend, don’t forget like everyone else. Take me away, far away, where no one can reach us. Promise me that you’ll come back.’”

I gradually felt my jaw go slack, a sensation of utter disbelief creeping across me. I slowly leaned back and stared into his eyes. Now I could see the oh so slight resemblance. “Craven?” I asked, knowing there was no way it could be true. Those words I remember well, having whispered them in another ear so long ago.