Hereafter

Late summer was not the season for a freezing wind. Worse, nothing around me had ruffled in the wind—not the tall grass on the bank or the needles of the nearby pines. The wind came from the wrong direction, too. It didn’t blow off the water behind me or down the wide alley that the river made through the woods. It came directly from the shadowed tree line in front of me.

Realizing all of this, I actually felt the hairs on my arms stand on end. I couldn’t help but raise my forearm to stare at the goose bumps there, marveling at the revival of my long-dead fight-or-flight response.

Without warning, the wind became a gale, whipping my hair across my face and obscuring my vision. I stumbled backward, knocked off balance by its force. It howled out from the trees, and my hands flew up to protect my ears from the sound. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the wind stopped. The bank became deathly still.

My hands still covered my ears, and I’d unknowingly squeezed my eyes tightly shut. I’d curled almost completely over, clutching my bent knees together with my elbows.

“Hello, Amelia.”

A male voice floated silkily out from the tree line. I remained curled over and opened only one eye, refusing to believe I could actually hear someone speaking directly to me. Someone other than Joshua.

“Do you hear me, Amelia?”

I opened the other eye and straightened myself slowly, still keeping my hands over my ears as if they afforded me some protection from this stranger’s voice. I couldn’t seem to force my vocal cords to work. He sighed impatiently, obviously waiting for me to provide him with an answer.

“Really, Amelia, you’re being terribly rude.”

“E-excuse me?” I managed to stammer.

The owner of the voice clicked his tongue in admonishment. “Still rude.”

His tone broke through the terrified frost that had begun to creep over my skin. I felt myself flush with the warmth of anger, as though I were able to blush from fury.

“You can see me, but I can’t see you. Don’t you find that a little rude?” I demanded.

He laughed, a smooth sound that didn’t do much to dispel the skin-crawling feeling. “Oh, I suppose I could remedy that problem, if you wish.”

The tree branches directly in front of me stirred as something crept out from behind them. I could tell that, whoever the speaker was, he moved deliberately, possibly to put me at ease and keep me from bolting from this place. It wasn’t a very effective tactic, because I could feel the twitch of impending flight in my muscles.

Before I made the final decision to run, however, the owner of the voice stepped out of the gloom of the woods and into what little sunlight still filled the bank.

I knew instantly that he wasn’t a living being, although at first I wasn’t sure why. As I stared openmouthed at him—another action he would likely find rude—I noted all the details of his appearance. He looked about my age, or maybe just a few years older, but he wore strange, wild clothing: an unbuttoned black shirt, its sleeves rolled up to reveal metal cuffs on both his wrists; impossibly tight jeans slung low on his hips; and several necklaces bunched together on his bare chest. Beneath the ashy blond hair that fell in messy curls to his shoulders, he looked terribly pale. As if someone had scrubbed all the color from his face.

Despite his pallor, I supposed you might call him handsome. Sexy, even.

The contrast of his skin against the darkness, however, gave away his otherworldliness. His skin was too bright, too unaffected by the dying sunlight. It had its own, nearly imperceptible glow in the dark, reflecting neither sunlight nor moonlight but illuminated by his very nature. Like a black-and-white photograph that had been given a slight sheen and then centered in front of the darkened scenery. Out of place and otherworldly, just like me.

“What are you?” I breathed.

“You know exactly what I am. I am what you are. The better question, Amelia, is who am I?” He halted his approach, folded his arms over his bare chest, and smirked at me.

So I was right. He was a ghost. A ghost of whom I wasn’t growing any fonder. I threw back my shoulders and raised my head high.

“I don’t think I’m really interested, but thanks anyway.”

“Funny girl. Of course you’re interested.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I’m the first of our kind you’ve ever seen.”

I stifled a gasp. How could he know that?

I thought briefly of retorting that it didn’t matter anyway, because he certainly wasn’t the first person to see me. Yet some protective instinct told me not to mention Joshua. To keep the very thought of Joshua out of my head, if possible.

The other ghost was too sharp—he noticed my pause and narrowed his eyes.

“I can understand your shock, Amelia. I’ve been watching you for years, keeping my distance. You’ve never seen me, and I’ve never noticed you encounter any of our kind. Unless you’ve been sneaking around behind my back.” He smiled, showing off a slightly chipped front tooth. The effect would have been charming were he not so creepy.

“But … how do you know my name?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “you spent a lot of time screaming it at the living, didn’t you?”

I felt myself retch.

This ghost, this dead thing, had been watching me—for years? If so, then all of my private moments had been exposed to him. Shared with him.

I came to another, quick conclusion: if he’d been watching me, then he’d let me wander, utterly lost and alone, for God knows how long. He’d left me without a guide or a friend, amusing himself with my humiliation and loneliness. How cruel did someone have to be to silently watch another’s suffering for so long?

Anger sparked within me, glowing like a small coal in my core. I found myself suddenly grateful for the implication that this ghost apparently hadn’t seen Joshua and me together.

“Why haven’t I ever seen you?” I tried to speak evenly, carefully choosing my words to reveal as little as possible.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve always been too lost, too blind, to know I was there, sometimes right at your side. Except for those odd times when you disappeared all at once and I had to hunt for you afterward.”

I exhaled quietly in relief. He couldn’t follow me into my nightmares. Strange that I would now appreciate the solitude they afforded me. Luckily, he didn’t notice my change in expression but instead continued to explain himself.

“You have to know, Amelia, it was quite the momentary surprise to see you turn around tonight. You see, the wind you just felt is … well, a kind of supernatural announcement of my entrance. My calling card perhaps.” He smiled, almost proudly. “You’ve always been too unaware to feel the wind, just as you’ve never seen me before. But now you do.”

“Yes,” I said flatly. “Now I do.”

He sighed. “Then I’m obviously left with a dilemma.” He paused, apparently waiting for some sort of audience participation from me. I stared at him in silence, willing myself not to glare outright.

“My dilemma, Amelia, is a complex one: what do I do with you now?”

I winced. “What do you mean?”

He sighed again, intentionally drawing out the drama of the moment. “I’ve grown pretty fond of watching you stumble along. But now that you’re awake and aware, I can’t really let you wander around anymore. Rules are rules. So, like I said: what exactly do I do with you now?”

I resisted a strong urge to scream at him that he wouldn’t be doing anything with me, ever. Now I wasn’t the least bit angry that he hadn’t pulled me from the fog and explained my nature to me. I had nothing but a foul taste in my mouth at the very thought that he’d been so near to me at all. Instead of expressing these thoughts, however, I responded quietly and calmly.

“What’s your name?”

“In life my name was Eli.”

“And in death?” I couldn’t hold back the trace of scorn in my voice.

“Eli will do just fine,” he said.

“I think I have a solution to your dilemma, Eli.”

“Wonderful. Would you share it with me?”

“Well, Eli, the way I see it, I can feel that wind now. It’s not one of those things you can easily hide, is it?” I smiled sweetly but tried hard to make sure my derision was as thinly veiled as possible. “So it stands to reason that you won’t be able to watch me unannounced anymore, right?”

Eli frowned deeply. I could tell he had no glib reply, no way to circumvent my logic. Inside, I shouted a silent cheer. Apparently, there were no loopholes that might allow him to continue to watch me unseen.

After a long pause Eli sighed and smiled. I could have been imagining it, but his smile looked much less cocky than before.

“Yes, Amelia, you’re right. You’ll always be aware of my visits from now on.”

“Great. Since we’ve got that settled, I’d appreciate it if you’d limit those visits from now on, too.”

A shadow seemed to pass over his face. “What are you saying, Amelia?”

“I’m saying that I know what you can ‘do’ with me, Eli,” I said, faking a bright grin. “And what you can do is leave me alone. Permanently.”

Instantly, Eli’s frown deepened and lifted the curl of his lip until he looked like an animal baring its teeth. I half expected him to growl; and, involuntarily, I flinched.

He obviously read the fear in my reaction, because his sneer widened into a sharp grin. He looked no more pleasant for the change.

“As you wish,” he murmured. And miraculously, he spun around to leave, stomping through the pine needles piled upon the ground. But before he crossed into the tree line, he stopped and turned around to face me. He folded his arms over his chest, the wicked grin still plastered on his face.

“I won’t follow you again, Amelia. There’s no point, really.” Eli lowered his head to stare up at me, his eyes hooding over. “But you’ll come find me soon enough, I can promise you that. You have no idea what we are—what you are. But I do. So I’ll simply leave you with a warning. A little taste of the place where you truly belong. The place where you’ll eventually be trapped, now that you’re awake, if you don’t seek my help.”

As Eli uttered the last few words, I felt a sudden chill, sharper and more piercing than any I’d felt before. Unlike the wind announcing Eli’s arrival, this cold wasn’t directed or brief. It was all around me, as if the temperature on the riverbank had instantly dropped at least thirty degrees. I gasped from the shock of it, and my breath puffed out visibly in front of me.

I was so transfixed by the chill that I almost didn’t notice when my surroundings began to change, too. Before I understood what was happening, the riverbank darkened. Within seconds it appeared as though the sun had disappeared entirely, taking with it all the light and color.

At first I thought the bank had plunged into total darkness, but that wasn’t right at all. Everything around me had become a cold, deep gray everywhere I looked.

I stared back at Eli, who seemed perfectly at ease in this new environment, his arms still folded casually across his chest. In the charcoal darkness, his pale skin looked brighter, even more unnatural.

“What …? Where …?”

My whispers couldn’t shape themselves into real questions. In response, Eli chuckled darkly but didn’t answer.

He stared intently at me for a moment longer and then his eyes began to dart to my right and left, as if seeking something beside me. Without thinking, I turned to catch a glimpse of whatever seemed to have distracted him.

That’s when I saw them: the clusters of strange, black shapes moving along my peripheral vision. Like enormous moths, or shadows, twisting and flitting just outside my line of sight. I whipped my head from one side to the other, trying to get a solid look at them. But each time I turned my head, the shifting black shapes would move with me and out of sight.

I whirled around completely, turning my back to Eli and facing the river. And in that moment, I forgot all about the shapes still dancing at the edge of my vision.

Only minutes ago a normal river had drifted behind me, greenish and brown in the late-summer sun. Now, even in the gray darkness of this place, I could see a dramatic change had overtaken its waters.

Something floated in this version of the river, but certainly nothing as benign as water. Between the banks of the new river, a thick liquid moved past me. It looked like tar, so inky and black that I could barely see the signs of movement along its surface.

It did move, though, drifting sluggishly toward High Bridge. Slowly, I turned my head toward the bridge; but before I could take in its new form, I found my attention riveted to what lay beneath it—to the place where the dark river seemed to lead.

There, beneath what may or may not have been High Bridge, an enormous blackness gaped. If it were possible, this expanse was even darker than the gray riverbank, darker than the river itself. The top of the expanse brushed against the underside of the bridge, and the bottom of it pawed at the water and the nearby shoreline. Peering into the darkness, I couldn’t see an end to it; I couldn’t see one speck of light in all that black.

It was the darkest point in an already dark world.

It almost seemed to pulse beneath the bridge as if it were some living, breathing beast waiting for something. For me maybe.

I managed, with great difficulty, to pull my eyes away from the chasm beneath the bridge and stare down in horror at my feet. My toes were inching, of their own will, toward the river—drawn by some unseen force to the water. With no small amount of effort, I yanked my feet away from the river’s edge.

I whirled back around to Eli, truly scared now. More scared than I’d ever been before.

“Where am I?” I finally managed to ask.

“You really want to know?” he whispered, his eyes glowing with what could only be malicious delight. I nodded mechanically.

In reply Eli rolled his head around, gesturing to our bleak surroundings. “This is part of the hereafter, Amelia. This is where dead spirits are supposed to go. While you were lost, I kept you safe from this place. But now, only one thing can keep you from ending up here forever.”

I raised one eyebrow. I had a feeling I knew what that “one thing” was. He confirmed my suspicions as he went on.

“Without me, Amelia,” Eli insisted, “you’ll be trapped. Without me, you’ll spend eternity here, unable to move between worlds at will. So now you see why I know, beyond any doubt, that you’ll seek me out again. All you have to do is call for me on High Bridge … and you will, soon.”

Despite the terror crawling over every inch of my body, I rankled at Eli’s words. At his implication that I needed him, that I couldn’t avoid this foul place without him. Even now I had enough sense to suspect his motives, and to remind myself that this dead young man hardly resembled my concept of a guardian angel.

I straightened my back, as much as I could, and met his gaze squarely.

“We’ll see, Eli,” I murmured. “We’ll see.”

Now it was Eli’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Obviously, he hadn’t expected this small display of courage. Instead of reprimanding me, however, he gave a final, amused nod and spun around once more to disappear into what used to be the woods.

If sharp, cold winds announced Eli’s arrival, then the opposite evidenced his departure. For a long second it felt as though a vacuum had sucked away everything, including the cold wind. I didn’t feel anything—no chill, no gale, not even myself. I’d never felt so numb in my entire existence. I choked, clutching my hands to my throat.

Then, almost as quickly as it began, it was over.

The soft greens of the riverbank shimmered and reappeared around me, and the late-summer air swam gently back into my lungs. Gasping, I collapsed onto my hands and knees on the grass.

Chapter

SIX

That night I didn’t mark the passage of time with uncertain pacing as I had the day before. Instead, I marked the time in absolute stillness, crouched on the riverbank, my eyes never moving from the spot in the woods where Eli had disappeared. I remained motionless as dawn broke over the tops of the trees. I kept my hands pressed hard into the grass, ready at any moment to sprint away if I felt another gust of that cold wind.

Finally, reluctantly, I stirred. Inch by inch I raised myself out of my uneasy stance, never taking my eyes from the trees in front of me. I spared a glance upward, trying to gauge how long I’d crouched against the unknown. I blinked at the light in surprise.

Although thick gray clouds covered most of the sky, I could see the occasional ray of sunshine break through, halfway between the east and west horizons. It had to be nearly midday.

While I waited, almost an entire day had passed without Eli’s return. Without a return of the dark, terrible world he’d shown me.

Before me the woods remained just that: normal, living woods, with normal, living trees. I spared one glance over my shoulder. The river, once again a murky green, flowed rapidly toward High Bridge, beneath which lay nothing but the river itself.

I willed my body to relax and then stretched each limb in turn. The effort was needless, since my dead muscles hardly had any reason to cramp, even when held in one position for many hours. Still, the gesture seemed appropriate. I wanted to feel my new resolve in my body as well as in my mind—my resolve to never allow Eli to control me.

This resolve felt important—essential, even—because I suspected I would meet him again. Though Eli promised he would stay away for a while, he’d also said that there were many things about him and our kind that I didn’t know or understand, things he would inevitably tell me. His words certainly had the ring of threat to them, especially when delivered in the awful place he’d shown me.

Yet, although ignorant of my ghostly nature, I was no longer ignorant of some things. I didn’t doubt that the next time the wind cut across my skin I would know Eli was there. He couldn’t take me back to that dark place without me first knowing he was present. There was some comfort in this knowledge.

I couldn’t promise myself I wouldn’t be waiting, watching, dreading. But I refused to stay by this river anymore. Because I didn’t want to let fog, or fear, keep imprisoning me.

And because it was almost noon, judging by the position of the sun.

Yesterday I’d decided not to meet Joshua again. I’d had every intention of hiding, and letting the confusion take me back. After Eli’s sudden appearance, however, I had no intention of ever going back into the fog. I intended to stay as awake and alive as possible.

And Joshua made me feel very much alive. He was the reason behind all of this change, this newness. The reason I’d woken up from the fog.

I couldn’t explain it, any more than I could explain why I’d wandered lost after death, or why I didn’t now. But the new desires that had filled me after Joshua’s accident hadn’t changed. They’d grown stronger, more acute. Even more than the first moment I saw him, I wanted to be near him. I wanted to feel him, maybe, just once more. Anything, even the sight of him running away from me when he learned the truth, would be worth the risk.

Now I sensed a new purpose to this day. I stared at the river and its bank one more time, drinking in the image of the green water and the summer-yellowed grass. This was the scene of so many of my changes: life to death … and maybe back to a sort of life again? Maybe. It was worth trying to find out.

“See ya,” I said aloud to the water.

And I began to run, bare feet flying across mud and grass, then pavement, leaving the river and High Bridge Road far behind me.

I reached the park with only a little time to spare. A clock sitting atop a large wooden platform outside the park entrance read 11:50.

I slowed my pace until I was almost strolling up the cedar-lined road that led to the picnic area. Although I’d run for miles, I wasn’t winded or even ruffled. Still, I began to fidget, smoothing invisible wrinkles from the skirt of my dress and running my hands through the thick waves in my hair. I felt … jittery. I guess a case of nerves could survive even death.

I nearly turned back, my previous resolve shrinking. My future hinged on Joshua and the outcome of our conversation. I felt this in my core, and I suddenly couldn’t fathom how I’d decided to face him with such bravado.

But my feet were traitors. Or more loyal, depending on one’s perspective. They kept marching me down the road, through a parking lot and a thin grove of pines, past a cluster of empty benches, and to the only occupied one.

Joshua sat, not on the bench but on the concrete table to which the bench was attached. He stared to his left, into the woods surrounding the picnic clearing. His profile—square jaw, high cheekbones, and full lips—made me shiver as a wave of desire and fear washed over me. I watched his black eyebrows pull together while he continued to study the forest. Perhaps he was thinking I had, in fact, stood him up.

“Hey, Joshua.”

Although I’d all but whispered, his head jerked toward me. Then a huge, radiant smile spread across his face. He jumped off the table and strode toward me, one arm lifted as if he intended to touch me.

Instinctively, I took a quick step back.

He stopped and frowned.

“Uh … sorry. Too enthusiastic?”

God, no. I just wasn’t ready for this to end before it starts.

“No,” I said aloud. “Just … unexpected.”

He laughed. “Sorry. I probably looked like a golden retriever or something. Big, dumb dog. But this was a little unexpected too, you know?”

“How so?”

“You showed up. Unexpectedly.” He half smiled, and the ghost of a dimple tugged at his cheek.

I found myself smiling back a little too. “I aim to please.”

“Then mission accomplished.”

“Oh.”

Brilliant, Amelia, I screamed in my head. Death had obviously not improved my vocabulary. Joshua’s half smile crept a little farther upward, possibly a sign of his amusement at the flustered look on my face.

Unfortunately, our banter wasn’t going to last forever. He swept one hand back to the table like a maître d’. “A quiet park bench, as promised?”

I sighed. No putting this off any longer, so it seemed. “Yeah, I guess it’s time.”

Joshua’s eyebrows knit together as I strode past him to the bench.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not going to conduct the Spanish Inquisition or anything.”

“I know,” I said flatly.

I sat down, feeling the pressure of the bench but not really the bench itself, and folded my hands in my lap. Joshua turned toward me but made no move to sit. I stared down at my lap and tried to ready myself for the inevitable ending. But there was something I needed to know first.

“Before we get into explanations, can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

I looked up to see him shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tilt his head to one side. Judging by his stance, he was probably more than a little bewildered by my behavior, so I asked my question carefully.

“Did you … intentionally drive off the bridge?”

“Ha.” He barked out a sort of laugh. “Not exactly.”

It was odd, but I thought he sounded almost embarrassed. I too tilted my head and raised one eyebrow, encouraging him to continue. He laughed again, a little sheepishly, and a flattering blush spread across his cheekbones.