Hereafter (18 page)

Chapter
Twenty

W
ould you like to hear a story, Amelia?”

We’d been walking in the frost-covered woods for at least twenty minutes, weaving a crooked and seemingly directionless path through the trees. The scenery kept getting weirder and weirder—icy, clawlike shrubs clutched at my ankles; an almost purple moss covered every bare surface; and big gray flakes, like either snow or ash, had started to float down around us—but Eli had yet to tell me our destination.

In fact, Eli hadn’t said a single word during this excursion, even in response to my initial questions. As I watched his back—turned away from and always five feet ahead of me—I grew increasingly irritated. I threw around a few pointed sighs, even uttered a low “ahem” or two. My theatrics brought not so much as a peep from Eli.

So when he finally spoke, I actually jumped a little in surprise. It took me a moment to collect myself enough to answer his question, though when I was able to do so, my answer was rife with undisguised impatience.

“That depends, Eli. Is the story relevant?”

“What’s your definition of relevance?” Eli countered.

I sighed so loudly, the sound came out like a groan. Eli stopped walking and turned to face me. He placed his hands into his pockets and met my eyes for only a second. Then he lowered his own gaze to my feet and slowly raised it, scanning my body. The appraisal made me squirm uncomfortably.

“Tell me the story,” I said curtly, “to distract yourself from being so rude.”

His head snapped up, and he looked me fully in the eyes. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Was I being rude?”

Still glaring at him, I twisted one corner of my mouth in disapproval.

“Fair enough.” He appraised me again, although this time he did so with a less lewd stare. Then he nodded. “Since I’ve embarrassed you, how about I apologize by telling you something about myself?”

“Only if it has something to do with what I want to know.”

A smile twitched on his lips, and then he turned back around to march onward through the woods. I wavered, uncertain, before I began following him.

“Eli?” I prompted.

He remained silent for a moment and then called back, “Have you ever wondered why I’m dressed like this? What kind of profession I might have been in?”

I assessed the back of his fluttering black shirt. “Well, I had a feeling you weren’t an accountant.”

When Eli cast a quick, backward glance over his shoulder, he looked amused.

“You’re right about that. You know, if I’d known what was going to happen the night I died, I might have changed into more comfortable pants. Or at least have buttoned my shirt.”

Considering my own outfit, I had no room to judge. I swept an errant gray flake from my skirt—not ash but something like snow, I think—and nodded at Eli’s back.

“When you’ve just come from a concert in 1975,” he continued, “the last thing on your mind is changing clothes, I can assure you.”

“You died after attending a concert?”

“Actually, Amelia, I died before
playing
a concert.”

I stumbled in surprise and then stopped completely. “You did what?”

Eli stopped, too. After turning to face me, he gave me a lazy, self-assured grin. “In life I was the lead singer of a rock band. We were pretty good, too. Gaining a following . . . even negotiating with a record label.”

Only my eyes moved, running over Eli’s outfit once more: the impossibly tight pants, the wild hair, the cluster of necklaces on his bare chest.

“So . . . you were a rock star?”

“I was on my
way
to being a rock star. I even had my own groupies.” His grin widened. “My band actually had a pretty big gig in Oklahoma City, but our tour bus broke down in Wilburton before we could get there.”

“Wow,” I said, begrudgingly impressed. I paused and then asked, “I’m guessing you never made it to that gig, huh?”

Eli didn’t answer but instead raised one eyebrow for confirmation. Only now did his prideful expression falter. I couldn’t be sure, but I think it was the first time I’d seen Eli regretful, as if he actually mourned the loss of all that impending power and fame.

“So . . . what happened?” I asked.

Eli grimaced, remembering. “Our bus driver insisted on taking a shortcut in the dead of the night, across a rickety old bridge.” He frowned harder, as if trying to remember. “Of course, once the bus sputtered to a stop in the middle of the bridge, we decided to pile out and help the driver with the engine. We were pretty useless, though: a serious amount of drinking was involved, obviously, and maybe a few more chemicals. Soon things got . . . out of control. Eventually, someone had the brilliant idea to jump over the side of the bridge.”

“You?” I gasped. “You
jumped
off High Bridge?”

Eli laughed vibrantly. The sound of it contrasted strangely with his story.

“Well, Amelia,” he said, “I obviously didn’t fly. And that was my messy end, so to speak.”

We were silent for a few more moments as both of us digested his words. My distaste for Eli lessened slightly in light of his last revelation: we had died in the same awful place. And now we were both stuck between the living world and whatever else existed outside of this dark, icy limbo.

Frowning, I stared down at the icy moss beneath my feet. “You know, Eli, I don’t remember much of anything. But I’ve got to be honest with you—I
really
don’t remember any stories about a rock star dying on the bridge.”

Eli sniffed imperiously, and I looked up. From the twist of his mouth, I could see I’d offended him.

“Like I said, Amelia, I was on my way to becoming a rock star,” he explained in a clipped tone. “At the time I died, not many people knew me or followed me. But they were going to . . . I’m sure of it.”

For some strange reason, I felt a little guilty about wounding his pride, at least on this issue. The story of Eli’s human life was the only thing that made him seem . . . well,
human
. “Sorry, Eli. Really,” I said, with only the slightest smile. “I’m sure you were going to be huge. A big star.”

When he appeared somewhat mollifed, I pressed him again. “Keep going, Eli. Tell me what happened after you died.”

He sighed, and the focused look settled upon his face again.

“Believe it or not, the initial years of my afterlife were far less peaceful than yours. Those years were my punishment, no doubt. I died angry—not at the world but at myself, for giving up all that success. All that power. I wanted to lash out at the living instead of beg for their help, as you did. I suppose I became a bit of a poltergeist. I found that, through strong emotions, I could affect things in the living world. Move them, even. I managed to break windows, overturn lamps. Make myself a general nuisance.”

“Hard to believe,” I murmured.

“Quit interrupting,” Eli instructed, but he gave me a quick grin. “I went on like that for a few years. Until
they
came for me, of course.”

Something about the way he said “they” made me flinch.

“I’m not sure what they saw in me that made me worthy,” Eli went on, unaware of my sudden discomfort. “But one day, while I paced uselessly by the river, they appeared to me. They told me about all the things I’d hungered to know: my nature as a ghost, my powers, and my purpose. They told me I was special . . . essential, even, to their mission. Like I told you before, they then commissioned me for an important task and gave me control of this place. They gave me
power
again.” He gestured grandly around him: to the crooked, shimmering trees and the flat black sky above us.

I shivered. “An icy tundra made for one?”

“The cold is a part of their world, Amelia. And ours.”

“Yours,” I corrected him softly.

“You’re wrong about that,” he said offhandedly.

“Oh? And what exactly am I wrong about?”

“About the loneliness of this place. It’s meant to be shared, you know.”

“By whom?”

“My masters have always wanted two ghosts to work together, pulling new souls into this world.”

“Two ghosts?” I raised one eyebrow and looked meaningfully around us at the otherwise empty forest. I knew Eli wanted me to join him, but it struck me now that he had spent an awful lot of time on the job without help.

A strange look passed over Eli’s face, one I couldn’t quite place. A number of emotions might have explained that look: defiance, arrogance . . . and even a little bit of fear. Before I could decide whether it was one of those or all of them, Eli gave a curt reply.

“I had a mentor once. And now I don’t.”

He turned away quickly, so that I couldn’t read his expression. Obviously, he meant to end this topic of conversation, and fast. I blinked back, startled by this evasion.

“Um . . . where’s your mentor now, Eli?”

With his face still turned away from me, Eli shrugged. “Gone. And that’s that.”

I could sense there was more to it—much more. I had the sudden, overwhelming urge to find out what had happened to Eli’s former mentor; if I had to guess, I’d have bet it wasn’t anything pleasant. I opened my mouth to push the issue, but Eli’s dismissive wave stopped me.

“I’m not going to talk about the time when I played apprentice, Amelia, so don’t bother to ask. What I’m more interested in is the subject of my
own
apprentice.”

“Oh, and I’m the current winner of that prize, right?” I twisted my mouth disdainfully to show Eli exactly what I thought of
that
honor.

“Actually,” Eli said, giving me another strange look, “you weren’t the first helper I chose out of the souls I’d brought to this world.”

“Huh?” I asked. “Who are you talking about?”

His face changed then, shifting from smugness to some other expression, one I couldn’t identify at first. Then it struck me—Eli was sad. Not snide or condescending, or even angry. Just sad.

Slowly, he walked over to a low-lying tree branch—one that curved up, looped around, and then extended into the gray air like a misshapen
J
—and sat down on the makeshift bench it created. He removed his hands from his pockets and placed his palms on his knees. When he spoke again, he stared at a fixed point in the moss beneath his feet.

“Melissa.” He said the name tenderly, mournfully, as if each of its three syllables was precious.

“Who’s Melissa?”

“She is . . . was . . . my first real taste of life after death.”

Eli’s head suddenly jerked upward. He caught my gaze and held it, his own eyes glowing with a near-violent intensity. I felt as though I were hypnotized by the power of that stare. Eli didn’t even blink when I folded my legs beneath me and sat down on the moss in front of him.

“The best night of my death,” Eli whispered, still staring hard at me, “I stood on the bridge, preparing to collect a soul. Just business as usual; all I had to do was wait for her to fall off of it.”

I made a small choking sound, but Eli didn’t seem to hear me.

“While I waited, I watched her,” he went on. “She was beautiful, with bright auburn hair that floated around her in a halo. She looked like an angel set on fire. I tried to reach out to touch her, but of course I couldn’t yet. I was dead, and she was still living.

“Part of my mission consisted of listening, waiting until her heart thudded to a stop and then pulling her soul from the river so I could take her to the darkness. But the moment before she fell, I caught a glimpse of her eyes. They were green, and as bright as yours. She looked straight at me, and I could have sworn she
saw
me, even before she’d died. At that moment I was hers. Immediately and completely.”

Eli paused for a moment, studying my face—for what, I wasn’t sure. Then he went back to staring at the ground, the faraway look of remembrance in his eyes as he spoke.

“I had to have her. I had to. After she died, I pulled her from the river and begged my masters to let me keep her as an assistant. To my surprise, they agreed.

“Because I’d woken her immediately after her death, the girl never experienced the fog like you and I did. She retained all of her memories of life, and seemed more than willing to share them with me. She told me her name was Melissa and the year was 1987. In her life, Melissa had been a student, studying nursing at that little college off of the highway. And although she had died violently, she was still . . . cheerful. Sometimes joyful even.

“She was everything I wanted in a companion: smart, beautiful, full of fire. I loved her immediately.

“But, maybe because of her nature, Melissa quickly grew unhappy with our existence. Unlike you, I didn’t exactly give her my detailed job description. Still, it wasn’t long before she realized what my mission consisted of and expressed her distaste for it.

“For a few weeks she tried to convince me to give it up—to let go of my power and set all my followers free. When she saw that approach wasn’t working, she began to disappear for days at a time, materializing away and then reappearing with little explanation for her activity.

“Then one autumn morning less than a year after her death, she came back to me looking . . . different. Her skin still glowed like ours; but it was brighter, warmer. Like real fire . . .”

Eli trailed off, frowning at the moss across which he absently raked his shoe. Small sparks of ice drifted up in the air and hung there, stirred up by his feet. I waited for almost a full minute for Eli to go on, but my impatience eventually outweighed my empathy.

“What did she say to you then?” I pressed.

He shook his head. “She told me I couldn’t trap souls in darkness for eternity. She said the dead are meant to decide for themselves where they go. She said that, by forcing them into this world to serve me, I wasn’t helping them at all. I was supposed to let the newly dead wander lost, because only after they wake up from the fog should they choose which of the afterworlds they wanted to occupy.”

“After
worlds
?” I breathed. “What other worlds are there?”