Arise

A sharp clunk rang out beneath me as someone’s foot connected with the wooden leg of the chair in which I now sat. I looked up in time to see Jillian’s eyes dart guiltily down to her bowl of cereal.

I spared a quick glance at Joshua. He must have heard the sound too, because he glared at his sister across the breakfast table. I, however, just shook my head and pulled my elbows off the table. Obviously, I wouldn’t get to spend the morning sulking with my head in my hands as I’d originally planned. Instead, I would once again have to play peacemaker between the unwilling and the unreceptive. And these days I didn’t know which Mayhew sibling was which.

I placed what I hoped was a calming hand on Joshua’s arm, but he’d already begun to growl a warning at his little sister.

“Jillian, I swear …”

“Don’t swear, Joshie,” she taunted, the corner of her lips twitching. “Mom and Dad don’t like it when you swear.”

Joshua’s scowl deepened. “Seriously, if you don’t stop it—”

“Stop what?” she interrupted, raising her eyebrows innocently. She turned from one side to the other as if to solicit support from their parents. The older Mayhews, however, couldn’t have been more disinterested in their children’s fight. Joshua’s dad stayed buried behind his newspaper, and Joshua’s mom focused intently on her breakfast—almost too intently, as if deliberately avoiding any involvement in her son and daughter’s endless bickering.

So Joshua could have—should have—let the incident blow over. He could have ignored Jillian, like the mature older brother he was supposed to be. Unfortunately, our rough night had made Joshua as cranky as I was, and he decided to react.

Before I could utter the words Let it go, Joshua, I heard another sharp crack from under the table. When Jillian immediately yelped and bent down to grab her shin, Joshua grinned in triumph. Obviously his kick, unlike Jillian’s, had met its mark.

Upon seeing her brother’s grin, Jillian howled.

The howl echoed throughout the kitchen, nearly rattling the silverware and cereal bowls with its force. The sound was so piercing, Jillian’s parents had no choice but to pay attention. Newspapers and coffee cups dropped to the table as the older Mayhews let out almost identical, frustrated groans.

Rebecca focused upon Joshua first, fixing him in a gaze that could have frozen lava.

“One morning,” she said, shoving her mug farther away from her. “Just one morning I’d like to eat breakfast without having to break up a fight.”

I looked over at Jillian, who continued to moan in pain, albeit with a hint of glee in her hazel eyes.

“Sorry we bothered you, Mom,” she whimpered, intentionally quivering her bottom lip. “But Joshua just won’t leave me alone.”

“Are you sure, Jillian?” Rebecca asked. “Because I could have sworn I heard the first kick come from your direction.”

I had to choke back a laugh. Jillian, however, was less amused by her mother’s ability to simultaneously ignore and monitor her children. Jillian began to sputter wordlessly, a faint pink flushing across her cheeks as she came to the realization that her howls hadn’t fooled anyone. While she floundered for a response, her father tapped his fingers impatiently upon his discarded newspaper. He caught his wife’s eye and then shrugged.

“What do you think?” he asked her. “Ignore this stupidity or ground them both from the party?”

“Ignore?” Joshua offered, but not loudly enough to rival Jillian’s shriek of protest.

Her blush darkened to a livid red at the suggestion that she couldn’t attend tonight’s party, which promised to be the biggest of the semester. Worse, this was the first party that her parents had finally given her permission to attend—permission they’d only granted after Joshua and Jillian had both sworn, on penalty of military school or a nunnery, to stay far away from High Bridge.

This punishment was tantamount to social homicide, and Jillian knew it. So she blurted out what must have been the first defense that came to mind.

“I don’t know why you’re punishing me for anything,” she shouted. “Joshua’s the one who made Grandma Ruth leave—he deserves a lot worse than I do.”

The moment the words left her mouth, all the livid red drained from Jillian’s face. Just as quickly, an uncomfortable silence fell over the table. Each pair of eyes turned slowly, incredulously, toward Jillian.

To Jeremiah and Rebecca, such an accusation must have sounded outrageous, not to mention completely unfair. As far as they knew, Joshua hadn’t caused his grandmother to abruptly pack up her few possessions last month and move to New Orleans to live with Jeremiah’s sister and her family.

But Jillian and Joshua both knew the truth about what had really driven Ruth from this house.

Me.

Only a few months ago I’d inadvertently cost Ruth Mayhew almost everything she held dear. In doing so, I’d apparently taken away any reason she had for staying in Oklahoma.

Like Joshua, Jillian, and a surprisingly large number of people in Wilburton, Ruth was a Seer—a living person who, after some life-altering, “triggering” event, could see ghosts. But unlike Joshua (and, so far, Jillian), Ruth made it her mission in life to exorcise the dead. To banish them from the living world forever.

Ruth, and many other Seers, had moved to Wilburton expressly for that purpose, since High Bridge and the river beneath were such hotbeds of ghostly activity. Over time Ruth had earned her place as the cold, unrelenting leader of the Seer community, a role that she happily filled.

Until I came along and ruined everything.

Prior to my showdown with Eli on High Bridge, Ruth was constantly busy. Constantly surrounded by a mass of friends and obedient followers. But when she called off my exorcism so that I could save her granddaughter, things changed, in a way that made me think her mercy hadn’t sat well with her fellow Seers.

Soon after, Ruth spent most of her days sitting sullenly at the Mayhews’ kitchen table and most of her nights sulking in her bedroom. She almost never left the house, and the phone never rang for her. In fact, she hardly even spoke anymore. Sometimes she would toss a resentful glare in my direction; but, for the most part, she suffered her apparent banishment from the supernatural community in an angry, restless silence.

She only broke that silence last month when she announced her desire to move to New Orleans. Ruth packed all her possessions into a handful of cardboard boxes and hired a troop of professional movers. She claimed that boredom with Oklahoma had inspired the sudden move. But like I’d said, Joshua, Jillian, and I knew better.

Within a matter of days she left with nothing but a perfunctory good-bye to her son and his family.

The Mayhews’ initial reaction was one of disbelief. Even amusement. But shortly after the moving van disappeared into the thick line of trees at the end of the Mayhews’ driveway, a sort of hollowness began to echo through the house. Like something was missing.

No, not “like.” Something was missing. However badly Ruth might have treated me, she was still an essential part of this family, one whose absence had a profound effect on its remaining members. For Jillian to make such an accusation—that her brother had caused a dramatic rift in their family—was pretty serious stuff. Not something you just blurted out at the breakfast table in a last-ditch effort to avoid being grounded. Especially when the entire family would spend ten hours cramped in one car tomorrow, driving to the French Quarter to spend Christmas with Ruth.

So if anyone got the chance to respond to Jillian’s accusation, tomorrow would probably give new meaning to the phrase “road trip from hell.” Wisely, Joshua chose this, the tensest moment of an already-tense morning, to act civil. He cleared his throat and gave his parents a tight smile.

“Look, let’s just forget it.” He shot his sister a pointed look—one that said, Stop acting like an idiot or we’re both screwed. Aloud he said, “Sorry for the kick, Jill. Okay?”

In her first intelligent move of the day, Jillian caught the look and nodded. “Okay,” she answered and then, reluctantly, added, “I’m sorry, too.”

The apology lacked sincerity, but the fact that she’d delivered one at all bought her and Joshua a few moments to escape.

Joshua hiked his heavy winter coat off the chair and onto his shoulders with one hand. After sweeping his book bag off the floor with the other, he practically bolted from the table. Jillian scurried to follow. Jeremiah and Rebecca hadn’t even had the chance to reprimand Jillian for her combative comment by the time both of their children—and I—were out the back door.

Outside, Joshua and Jillian gave each other only the briefest of glares before dashing to their respective cars. I said a silent prayer of thanks that the brutal cold kept the two of them from lingering to fight some more. Within a matter of minutes, Jillian started her tiny yellow car and tore recklessly down the icy driveway without bothering to let her windshield defrost completely.

Joshua had already unlocked his driver’s side door and ducked into it to start the heater before he realized that I hadn’t followed him off the back porch. He looked up at me in momentary confusion, but then his face fell in recognition: he knew from my expression that I wouldn’t be joining him at school today.

He sighed and placed one hand on top of the roof of his truck. “Again, Amelia? Really?”

“I have to, Joshua. You know I have to.”

“No, I don’t,” he said, frowning heavily. “Besides, it’s freezing today.”

I shrugged. “So? It’s not like I can feel it.”

This time I heard a note of defeat in Joshua’s sigh. “Fine. But just be careful out there, okay? Don’t get too close to it.”

I smiled, but not very widely. “I never do.”

Pulling his door fully open, Joshua just shook his head. He didn’t even try to mask his disappointment as he slipped into the cab of the truck.

Just before he slammed the door and started the engine, I called out, “See you back here this afternoon.”

Through the frost on the windshield, I caught one last glimpse of his face—still wearing that disappointed expression—before he backed the truck down the driveway and disappeared onto the main road.

Late that afternoon I stamped my feet on the ice-encrusted grass and rubbed my fists along my bare arms a few times. Then I made a little cave of my hands and placed them in front of my mouth so that I could puff air into them as if I could warm them with my breath. As if I even needed to warm them in the first place. Still, the gestures made me feel more normal. And normal was a feeling I desperately needed right now.

In front of me the river moved more quickly than usual, its waters swelled and muddied by all the sleet last night. The river, however, wasn’t the ugliest part of this scene. That honor went to the remains of High Bridge, only a few hundred feet downriver from me.

The ruined bridge stretched across the muddy water as bleak and stripped as the forest surrounding it. From here I could see the mangled girders and places where large chunks of concrete had fallen, leaving gaping holes around which someone had placed sawhorses and crisscrossed ribbons of yellow tape. More sawhorses guarded each end of the bridge, warning drivers to find some other route if they didn’t want their cars to become aquatic. Along the edges of the bridge, the metal railings tilted at crazy angles as if some enormous force had knocked the entire structure off-kilter. Which, in essence, it had.

At that thought I smirked. I didn’t feel one ounce of regret for wrecking the bridge. I hoped a strong wind sent the whole thing crumbling down into the water below.

I gave it a final scowl and then turned my attention to the barren trees across the river from me. Something about their skeletal branches, clawing at the gray sky, suited my current mood. And my current task.

I closed my eyes and began to breathe heavily, slowly, in an effort to calm myself. To focus. Against the black canvas of my eyelids, I pictured a scene similar to that of the living world today but even colder. A place much darker, too, and more menacing. An otherworldly place where rogue ghosts, enslaved wraiths, and demons waited.

Eli’s netherworld.

I squeezed my eyes tighter, concentrating on the things I remembered about it: the violent purple sky; the gnarled, glittering trees; the river of tar moving toward the dark abyss underneath the netherworld version of High Bridge. Then I pictured the black shadows—dead souls trapped there by Eli under order of his masters—as they shifted among the netherworld trees.

I wanted them to reappear so badly I could almost hear them whispering in the darkness. Begging, in hushed but urgent voices, to be set free. I kept my eyes shut for a few more moments, wishing, praying.

But when I opened my eyes, my heart sank. Nothing around me had changed—not the cold gray sky, not the icy grass, not the muddied river.

I sank to the ground, letting my dress puddle around me. I didn’t want to admit defeat, but I’d started to run out of excuses for myself. Every day I tried to reopen the netherworld, and every day I failed. Why should today be any different?

When I’d decided to pursue this task several months ago, Joshua thought I’d lost my mind. After all, I’d only narrowly escaped an eternity spent trapped in the netherworld. So he had no idea why I would want to waste even a second trying to get back into it.

Even now a small part of me wondered whether Joshua had a point: maybe what I’d spent months doing at this bridge was crazy or, at the very best, in total disregard for my own safety. Honestly, though, I didn’t care about my safety, and I certainly didn’t care about crazy. Not where my father was concerned.

It broke my heart when I learned that my father had died not long after I had. But not knowing what had happened to his ghost hurt far worse, mostly because I knew what waited for him after death.

If my experience as a ghost was any indication, my father was now spending his afterlife in one of two ways: either lost like I’d been or trapped by Eli in the darkness of the netherworld. Since I’d never run into my father during my years of wandering, I had to assume he’d fallen victim to Eli—a fate I obviously couldn’t allow him to suffer.

But none of my attempts to help him had worked.

At this point I couldn’t deny my strongest suspicion: that I’d lost whatever ghostly powers I had discovered the night I overcame Eli and his dark masters. Sure, I could still touch Joshua, and I could still (sometimes) control my materializations in the living world. But I could no longer create that supernatural glow upon my skin or feel its surge of power, and I couldn’t materialize into the netherworld.

Arguably, what I did at the river this afternoon was no more productive than what I’d done every few mornings for the last two months: sit on the front porch of my childhood home and watch, unseen, as my mother prepared for her day.

Though my visits were sporadic, I’d easily memorized her daily routine. Each morning she drank two cups of coffee in the front room, staring blankly at either the steam rising from her mug or at photos of my father and me; I couldn’t tell which. After that she left—usually forgetting to lock the front door—and drove off to work in her creaking brown sedan.

Every time I saw her she looked tired and lonely; every time, the sight of her flooded me with angry, impotent guilt. Which was why I couldn’t bring myself to visit her every day. I just didn’t have the strength.

But today I did.

This morning, after I’d left Joshua, I followed my mother to work and watched unseen as she worked a punishing job as the stockroom clerk for the local hardware store. When her shift finally ended at 3 p.m., I materialized to the river, determined to do something—anything—for at least one of my parents.

Now, standing uselessly beside the river, I sighed. However much I wasn’t helping my mother, I certainly wasn’t helping my father, either. This afternoon’s activities had proven as much.

I ran one hand through my hair, tugging at its dark brown ends as if the pressure might force me to concentrate harder. Assuming my concentration had anything to do with my ability to reopen the netherworld. Assuming I hadn’t been barred from it entirely.

I released the poor strand of hair, which I’d twisted fiercely around my index finger, and groaned in frustration. The groan echoed back from the barren tree line, mocking me.

I pushed myself up off the ground and brushed my skirt smooth, although the ice hadn’t actually wrinkled it. Then I turned my back on the river and walked toward the tree line. There, on the trunk of the largest cottonwood, hung a wristwatch. Joshua had nailed it there a few weeks ago, after I’d come home late one too many times.

I leaned in close enough to see both the little and big hands resting near the dayglow five.

“Crap,” I murmured. Late again.

I could try to blame it on the blank gray sky—much darker, I realized, than it looked when I usually left. But what was the point? No matter what my excuse, I’d probably still find Joshua disappointed but unsurprised when I materialized back to the Mayhews’ house. On the plus side, he’d have almost no time to obsess over his calculus final, and even less time to argue his way out of the party I’d finally convinced him to attend.

I cast another brief glance at the watch, and a thought struck me. What if each second ticking away on the watch’s little face meant something? What if those seconds, blending together into minutes then hours then days, had started to create something?

Like a rift. A growing distance between Joshua and me, lengthened by each second that we lived separately—me haunting my parents, and Joshua living his life, as he should.

The rift had already begun to form, I was sure of it. But when would it become too wide to cross? Maybe sooner than I thought …

Suddenly, a blast of frozen December air hit me. I felt the cold along my bare shoulders, and the chilly silk of my skirt raised goose bumps wherever it touched my legs. Before I could react, I heard a soft snap somewhere inside the forest.

I immediately dropped into a protective stance, shoulders hunched and fists clenched. The sudden chill, the mysterious noises … past experience had taught me what—or who—they preceded.

“Eli?” I whispered, staring into the darkness of the forest.

Then I blinked back in surprise at myself.

Because, upon saying his name, my voice had sounded hopeful. Was I so desperate to rekindle my powers, so intent on reentering the netherworld, that I would welcome the reappearance of my enemy? My murderer?

I had to be crazy to want to see him again.

Fortunately or not, nothing answered my whisper. I waited, motionless, but I saw no movement in the woods except the occasional stir of a branch in the wind.

In all likelihood I was probably freaked out over something as benign as a squirrel running across a twig. That explanation made far more sense than the return of my ghostly nemesis who, for all I knew, was trapped somewhere darker than I could imagine. Besides, the cold sensation had disappeared almost as soon as it had arrived, even before I spoke Eli’s name.

But still, I shivered—whether from the memory of the chill, or from the dark thoughts buzzing around my pessimistic brain, I didn’t know. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to leave, now. So I closed my eyes, thought of Joshua, and prayed that this materialization took me where I really wanted to go.

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