The Hand of Death

The first time I saw the Hand of Death, it was reaching for my sister. We had taken our father’s fishing boat out into the middle of the lake. My sister hopped out for a swim while I remained in the boat. She was wearing her lifejacket, at my mother’s insistence, and hadn’t waded far from the vessel when I saw the hand reaching out of the water toward her.

“Hannah!” I screamed as I pointed at the hand.

“What?” she asked fearfully. She turned and could obviously not see the hand. I reached out and grabbed the back of her lifejacket and pulled with all my might until she was safely in the boat.

“What?” she said again. “What was it, Tommy?”

I looked back at the hand just as it was disappearing beneath the surface. “I–I saw…something,” I stammered. Though I was sure of what I saw, it just didn’t make sense, and I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud. My sister recounted the incident to our mother later. “It must’ve been a big fish,” I explained. At the end of that same day, my father related some news to my mother.

“Mack Wilson died today,” he said.

My mother gasped. “What happened?”

“He was fishing on the west side of the lake and apparently had a heart attack,” my father explained.

I felt a chill at the coincidental occurrence, but reasoned that the two events were surely unrelated; that is, until I saw the hand again. It was about a year later when we were visiting my grandmother at her home. She was battling cancer and was sent home under hospice care. She seemed in good spirits as we visited with her at her bedside.

“Gary,” she said to my father, “Fill that bird feeder just yonder, will you?” She pointed out the window to a half-filled feeder hanging from a tree branch just a few yards from the house.

“Yes, mama,” he replied. “I’ll fill it on our way out.” She nodded her approval.

Not long after, my grandmother was starting to nod off, so we said our good-byes. As we were exiting the bedroom, I looked back at her. The hospice nurse was standing on one side of the bed, but suddenly, there was a very dark shadow on the other side of the bed, and a hand was reaching out toward my grandmother. I gasped and began to speak as the bedroom door closed.

“Shh…” my mother said. “She needs her rest.”

A year had passed since the incident on the lake, but I distinctly recognized the hand. The figure to which it belonged was obscured by the dark shadow, but I clearly saw the hand itself. Moments later, the hospice nurse came rushing down the hallway, just as we reached the front door. She motioned for my father to follow her back to the bedroom. My grandmother passed away.

There were other instances through the years when I saw the hand reaching toward me. I was a teenager when some friends and I were canoeing on a river in southern Missouri. Several rope swings hung from trees along the banks that extended over the water, and many cliffs were perfect for diving. I stood at the edge of one particular cliff, about to jump, but as I looked down at the river, a familiar sight appeared. As the hand emerged from the water, my legs began to shake.

“Come on, Tom,” one of my friends shouted behind me.

I refused to jump, despite the jeering and taunting of the other boys. “This doesn’t look like a safe spot,” I used as my excuse.

“Well, if you’re too chicken,” Todd began, and then, before I could stop him, he ran and jumped from the edge as the other boys clapped and hollered. We looked down at the water to watch him emerge before the next boy jumped, but he didn’t resurface. We all scrambled down the hill to the water. We were all calling his name, taking turns swimming beneath the water to search. It was a slow-moving river, fortunately, so it wasn’t difficult to dive under without being swept away by the current.

“It’s not funny anymore,” Chad called out nervously.

“Look!” Garret said, pointing downriver.

Todd was floating face down, against a large branch protruding from the water. We all splashed frantically as we swam to him, but as we approached, we could see that the back of his head was soaked with blood. We worked together to pull him to the bank. Chad tried performing CPR–at least, what he knew of it from watching TV. We all knew it was in vain.

I knew it more certainly than anyone.

I carried guilt with me for years afterward and chided myself for not being more insistent about picking a different place to jump. Could I have made them heed my warnings? Would Death have chosen someone else anyway? I wasn’t sure of the rules, but I know that I should’ve been the one who died that day.

These incidents made me worry for my sister as well. I saved her from dying, though she was unaware of it at the time. Would Death keep coming for her? Not long after she graduated from high school, I finally worked up the nerve to confide in her what really happened on the lake when we were younger, which she could barely recall. She didn’t believe me about the hand at first, but then she saw the seriousness in my demeanor.

“Listen,” she said, “We all die. It’s one of the few certainties in this world. You can’t spend your life worrying about it. It’s going to happen to me just like it’ll happen to everyone else. And even if you can prevent it, you can’t be with me all the time.”

I wasn’t with her, in fact, when she was in college and was involved in a car accident that claimed her life. A car accident happens so quickly. If I had been there, would I have seen the hand in time? Instead of berating myself, I was proud that I was directly responsible for many years she wouldn’t have experienced otherwise.

In recent years, I have seen the hand of Death more frequently, and I know that one day I will not be on my guard. I can’t escape Death forever–none of us can. I know that one day I’ll be unsuspecting when it wraps its cold gray fingers around my throat.

Copyright © 2022 Brandon Ellrich

This short story was in response to a prompt at Keep It Alive. Please visit their page as well.

If you enjoyed this short story, you may also enjoy my short story A Picture is Worth a Thousand Warnings.

Thank you for reading! If you liked this story, please click the like button and leave a comment. Click the follow button as well to receive updates on future posts.