They'd christened him Jerry. Or Jury, pronounced with a peculiar 'juh-ri' sound to it. It wasn't his real name but he was a creature of the realm of the undeada nd their names tended towards either the extremely long or the short and with vowels and consonants shifting in its own ethereal language.
And they deferred to him as he. It must be a human thing. See something big and looming, claiming your soul and instead of anything neutral, it was 'it is he! The lord of the dead comes for me!'
It didn't matter. The humans entertained him. They could call him every name under the sun for their short lives and he wouldn't care.
For he was buoyed up and created by their belief. They believed their souls had to go somewhere, there had to be a ferryman. They could go peacefully and have their earthly shackles sliced by his claws or be unwilling and struggle but still he'd take their soul and move them on. They could praise him or curse him. It was all belief. For as long as they believed, Jerry would exist.
And that was another thing he had noted.
Humans for all their struggles in leaving sometimes never did. Below him was the town of Nowhere, somewhere on the border of California and Nevada. Except... it wasn't.
He perched like a gargoyle on the old church. In this rality, it was very much thriving. His huge frame resembled taht of a Deathclaw but stretched, made supple with a longer neck. His spine was that of a Deathclaw crossed with a brahmin and it tapered to a long tail of bare skin, such as you might find on a rat's tail. His legs bent at an unnatural angle, claws (including a raptorian one) gripping the church spire. His forearms were long and bore five digits. Finally the head... Yeshis head was a skull with shaggy fur forming a beard below it. The skull was taht of a Bighorner but the horns were swept forward like an alpha Deathclaw.
Observe him for a moment. In this plane of existence he looks normal. But elsewhere he'd look horrifically stretched and shadowed. His every movement takes seconds to execute. But in the worl of the living, he'd be the slow-moving ambush predator, stretching out his neck to horrifying lengths, tasting the air, watching for the next soul.
Jerry saw dead people. Rather he saw their shades. Below him, this town of Nowhere, for there were many, had reformed itself around those who'd died there. He saw it all. He saw the first settlers in a place three houses strong and with trees neary that the desert had not encroached on. Then he saw those initial settlers die and their souls moved on, not beyond but here. They remained.
Then he'd see how the town grew. Now 25 houses, five shops, a farrier, a smithy. More people. He watched as they moved about their daily lives. Some were children. Not because of a grisly end, far from it. He'd claimed their souls when they were adult and somehow, a sheer propulsion of belief in an afterlife had regressed them to a time when they remembered it most fondly. He was un-moved but curious. How the mortals believed so strongly!
He saw dead people.
But he saw them as a steward would. He reaped their soul and let them go to their respective heavens or hells, or even nothings. But the ones who remained here, they lived as if they were alive. And when it came to Nowhere's Dance of the Dead in a bitter November, he'd usher them to the church gates to give them a chance to visit their relatives in life. The only time that the realm of the dead and that of the living crossed over.
After that was over, he'd usher them back. There was always next year.
Yes. He'd say he saw dead people. He saw them every day on his long long life. But they were his people. He'd look after them with the care of a shepherd with a flock. It was what they had created him for.
He settled onto the church spire, limbs settling at awkward and unnatural angles as he lay on it like a cat. The dim blue light in his sockets glowed ashe continued his observations.