Hereafter (20 page)

“Amelia, am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Joshua asked, frowning. “Is that . . . another ghost?”

Eli’s eyes darted to mine. “The boy—he can’t see me, can he?”

I shrugged angrily. “He’s a Seer, Eli. That’s what they
do
.”

“Well, make him stop.”

I couldn’t have been prouder when Joshua pulled back his shoulders and fixed Eli in a steely glare. “I
can
see you. But whoever or whatever you are, I don’t like how you’re talking to Amelia. So get off my property.”

Eli snorted. “Your property? How funny. Don’t you mean your parents’ property,
boy
?”

“Leave. Before I make you,” Joshua growled.

“And how do you propose to do that? I’m dead. You can’t even touch me.” Eli smirked, folding his arms behind his back.

“Do you see this beautiful girl in my arms?” Joshua threatened softly. “She’s dead, too. But I’m certainly touching her, aren’t I?”

For the first time, Eli’s expression actually scared me. Harsh lines crisscrossed his face, pulling his eyes into slits and tugging his lips up into a sort of rictus grin. In that moment, he truly looked dead. A malevolent dead thing that had suddenly locked his eyes on me.

“Amelia, I have to admit I’m impressed. You’ve been playing innocent, all the while trying to steal my things?”

“What are you talking about, Eli?”

Keeping that nasty smile, Eli jerked his head in Joshua’s direction. “I thought we were working as a team when he drove off the bridge. I thought our joint effort was the reason you finally woke up. But now the boy is here—alive—with you. So . . . you want to keep all of him for yourself, do you?”

Eli’s ability to think the worst never ceased to amaze me. Now he was implying that I intended to
own
Joshua, like Eli wanted to own me? Not likely. I sneered at the idea and opened my mouth to tell him so.

It was Joshua, however, who answered Eli first. “What Amelia wants is not your concern, because you’re going to leave. Now. I’m not going to say it again.”

“Please understand, boy,” Eli said without looking at Joshua, “that when I speak now, I’m not speaking to you. I’m not even going to acknowledge you from this moment forward.”

Eli’s voice dropped a low, chilling octave as he then addressed me. “Amelia, you know what I want. And you can only guess what I am capable of. Materialization isn’t my only trick. There are dark things in our nature, things you have yet to comprehend. I told you I control the dead, but I can do so much more than that. I have so many ways to . . .
hurt
 . . . a living being, too.” His eyes flickered momentarily to Joshua and then back to me. “Especially one who can see the dead. I’m sure someone like that could be valuable. A nice addition to my little army.”

A guttural sound bubbled out of my throat. With a little more power behind it, the sound could easily become a snarl.

Joshua blinked at me, but Eli just chuckled.

“Amelia, Amelia. I was there at your second birth—how could any little noise you make frighten me?” He raised one eyebrow, and then his expression unexpectedly relaxed. The strange, feral creases around his mouth and eyes smoothed, and his lazy grin slipped back into place.

“So,” Eli drawled, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Think about what I’ve said. There’s only one way you’re fated to spend your future. That is, if you want the boy to have any future at all.”

I began to snarl, but Eli cut off the noise.

“Tomorrow, at dawn. Your graveyard.”

He gave me a final, hideous wink and then vanished, leaving nothing but the darkness of the night behind him.

Chapter
Twenty-two

J
oshua hunched over his cup of coffee—the last remains of the pot he’d snuck inside to make several hours after his family had gone to bed. Neither of us felt comfortable falling asleep tonight, but unlike me, Joshua didn’t have the luxury of almost-permanent sleeplessness. He would have to make do with caffeine.

“No, Amelia,” he mumbled into his cup and then rubbed his tired eyes. He shook his head as adamantly as one could at four thirty in the morning. “I still think it’s a terrible idea.”

“Do you have a better one?” I snapped. I immediately regretted my tone, and I smoothed my hand down his arm in apology. “Sorry, Joshua, really. But I just don’t see any other options.”

If I spoke honestly, it seemed we were out of options in a lot of ways.

For starters, instead of lying curled up together on Joshua’s bed, we sat huddled on the bottom steps of the gazebo in the backyard. After Eli disappeared, Joshua and I had tried to enter his house, but something kept me from doing so every time I’d tried. A quick check of the ground revealed our culprit: a layer of chalky gray dust now bordered all the entrances into the Mayhew house, probably sprinkled there today by Ruth. The chalk barred my entry like some invisible wall; even when Joshua swept away the chalk, the magical barrier remained intact. As if I needed another reminder of the painful—and maybe permanent—exorcism that awaited me tonight.

Unfortunately, Eli currently took precedent over my Ruth problem since I didn’t doubt the sincerity of his threats against Joshua. I’d explained everything to Joshua: Eli’s mad need to own me, his staunch insistence that I was fated to turn evil and serve him, even his role in Joshua’s near-death.

Joshua, however, remained undeterred.

“How can meeting that guy—alone, in a
graveyard
—be our only option?” he demanded. “And how can you even think about giving in to what he wants?”

“How can I not?” I groaned as I flopped sideways onto the gazebo steps. I stared at Joshua, who had propped himself against a wooden post. “You know Eli’s not going to leave us alone until I talk to him again.”

“So? Just let him try and mess with us.”

“Joshua, that’s very brave of you and all, but could we please avoid pissing off a dead guy who can disappear at will? God knows what else he’s capable of.”

Joshua snorted. “Oh, disappearing. Real spooky.”

But even through Joshua’s sarcasm, I could hear a subtle hint of uncertainty. I pressed the point.

“Yeah, disappearing. At will. Something I can’t do yet. And I don’t think he was lying when he said he had even more tricks up his sleeve.”

Suddenly, Joshua was alert. He lurched forward and grabbed my hips, pulling me closer to him. When our knees almost touched, he stopped pulling but left his hands clasped around my waist.

“Exactly, Amelia!” he cried. “Don’t you see? That’s why you can’t go there by yourself to meet him. We have no idea what he’s going to be able to do to you. Like you said: even my grandmother and her friends haven’t been able to stop him from hurting people. So what makes you think
you’d
be safe?”

Joshua’s concern touched me, far more than I let him see. But no matter how Joshua felt, no matter that today was the deadline Ruth had set for my exorcism, I had to end this skirmish with Eli; I had to clear him from Joshua’s life before Joshua got hurt. I kept my expression rigid, firm.

“I’m not going to argue about this anymore. I’m going to the graveyard. That’s that.”

Joshua sighed heavily and closed his eyes.

“Amelia, Amelia, you are a stubborn girl.” He sighed once more. “If you’re going, then you’re not going alone.”

I opened my eyes and pulled myself from his arms. Joshua fell forward, too tired to react in time to my movement. He righted himself and gave me a baleful stare. I ignored him and shook my head forcefully.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “You’re not coming with me. We’ve already covered this, Joshua.”

“But—”

“But no,” I interrupted him. “I can’t give in on this one, Joshua, I’m sorry. Eli wants me. Just me. He wants to love me, or own me, or whatever . . . but I don’t think he’d actually hurt me. At least, not in a permanent way. He wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you, though, if it meant getting to me. So you can’t be there. Period.”

“You’re right,” Joshua muttered. “I know you’re right.” He frowned and stared down at his lap.

His apparent surrender surprised me, and it momentarily caught me off guard. But when Joshua looked back up at me, I could see that he wasn’t surrendering. Not at all. His eyes showed nothing but absolute resolve.

“You
are
right, Amelia,” he repeated with an air of finality. “Which is why I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure neither of us goes to see that guy.”

Joshua clasped his hands back around my waist. I couldn’t feel his arms, but I could see them tighten around me. His grip on me, and his hard gaze, made his point perfectly clear: he would do anything humanly possible to keep me with him, and away from that graveyard.

So I would have to resort to inhuman tactics.

I gave him a soft smile. “Can you promise me something?” I asked quietly.

“Not if it has anything to do with you trying to go out there.”

I shook my head, still smiling. “Joshua, please. Just listen. I need you to make me a promise. If you don’t see me again, I need you to promise you won’t come looking for me, okay?”

“Amelia, what are you—,” he began in a panicked voice, but I cut him off with a firm kiss.

This kiss was entirely different from our first two. Now I kissed him roughly, moving my lips against his with a force that belied my desperation. Joshua was so surprised by this attack, he couldn’t help but kiss me back. And, of course, his reaction just made me kiss him more fiercely.

Then, without warning, I jerked away and shut my eyes tight. Before Joshua could pull me back to him, I concentrated on difficult thoughts.

Thoughts of my mother, lonely and alone inside her worn little home. Thoughts of my father’s face—a face I may never see again, in any of the afterworlds. And thoughts of Joshua. Not the happy thoughts of the last few days but thoughts of
forever
, as only my kind could understand it. Forever, spent without him.

On top of all these sad thoughts, I forced an overlay of one image: that of the graveyard in which I awoke after each of my nightmares. I squeezed my eyes tighter, burning the image onto the backs of my eyelids.

And suddenly, I couldn’t feel the pressure of Joshua’s arms around me.

My eyes shot open.

At first I couldn’t feel or see anything. Everything was numb, and black. Then, painfully, my eyes began to adjust to their new surroundings.

Wherever I now sat, it wasn’t entirely black, as I’d originally thought. This new place was just very, very dark.

A bird called out somewhere to my right, and my head jerked toward the noise. The movement brought into view dark shapes amassed all around me. As my eyes adjusted more, I could just make out the structure of the shapes. The tall ones were trees, drooping toward the ground. The shorter ones were less uniform: some of them, although wide at the base, narrowed into obelisks at the top; some formed squat half circles above a field of grass. Whatever their form, all of these shorter shapes were unquestionably gravestones.

I’d done it.

I’d willed myself into the graveyard a few hours before dawn.

A sharp, bitterly cold wind slammed into me, whipping against my cheeks and whirling my hair up in the air. When the wind died down, a dry voice slithered out from the darkness.

“You’re early, Amelia Ashley.”

“Well,” I said shakily, trying my best to sound calm as I pushed myself upright. “What can I say? I’m a punctual girl.” Then I paused and frowned. “Wait . . . you just said my last name, didn’t you?”

Eli stepped out from the shadow of a tree, coming into dim view.

“Quite right, Amelia,” he said. “How do I know your last name? And how do I know this is the graveyard where you wake up after your accidental materializations?”

I felt my stomach drop.

In my haste to get this over with, and to spare Joshua in the process, I hadn’t even considered that detail.
Your graveyard,
Eli had said. He shouldn’t have known about my graveyard. Unless . . . .

“You’ve been lying to me again, haven’t you? You know more about my life than you let on.”

“Only a little bit.”

“How much is a little bit?” I demanded.

“Well, why don’t you turn around and look at the gravestone you’re practically lying on? That should provide some explanation.”

I didn’t want to look away from Eli’s face. I didn’t want to lose sight of him in the great likelihood that he had another nasty surprise planned for me. Yet my head seemed compelled by other forces. It turned slowly until I faced the grass and dirt just behind me.

I’d never wanted to stay in this graveyard long enough to study its headstones or search for my own grave. I merely assumed I’d been buried here, and the assumption was reason enough for me to run away from this place each time I entered it.

I also assumed that, should I stumble upon my grave, I would likely find it overgrown. I don’t know why I’d made this assumption. But in the long years since my death, I’d forgotten my parents and their love for me. To my depressed, lonely mind, it only made sense that whoever I left behind wouldn’t remember me or my grave.

The little, well-tended patch of earth I now faced proved this last assumption wrong. And despite that fact—despite the obvious love that went into the grave’s care—its very appearance broke my heart into a million pieces.

Behind me, a concrete slab lay flush to the ground. Concrete, I suppose, because my parents couldn’t have afforded much else. Someone had carefully cleared away the grass from the slab and wiped it clean of dead leaves. A ceramic pot filled with silk daisies sat at the base of the stone.

Simple block letters were imprinted on the stone’s surface. Apart from the epitaph, the letters read much like my senior yearbook inscription:

AMELIA ELIZABETH ASHLEY
APRIL 30, 1981—APRIL 30, 1999
BELOVED DAUGHTER FOREVER

Seeing those words, all I could imagine was my father’s face as he chose that headstone at the funeral parlor and my mother’s hands as they gathered up those daisies in the fabric store.

My dead and unbeating heart could still ache with grief, so it seemed. Fiercely so. I wiped at the one tear that had coursed its way down my cheek and turned back around to stare up at Eli. Even his unpleasant face would be better to look at than the last gifts my parents had left me.

Meeting my eyes, Eli nodded grimly. “So, now you see why I know your last name, Amelia Ashley.”

“How did you find this?” I asked.

“I was here myself only a month ago, wandering a bit and thinking. When, lo and behold, who did I see appear out of thin air? My little Amelia, choking and gasping right on top of that grave. You must have materialized here without meaning to. By doing so you solved a great mystery: where does Amelia go when she disappears? After answering that riddle for me, you ran away, not seeing or sensing me.”

I nodded absently, processing this information. So, Eli had watched me wake up from a nightmare. That explained how he knew about “my” graveyard and how he’d discovered my last name. Yet, another question remained.

“Why were you here in the first place, Eli?”

Eli frowned heavily. “It may surprise you to know, Amelia, that I find this place as distasteful as you do. But, just like you, I return to it occasionally, for reasons even I don’t fully understand.”

My eyebrows knit together in an unspoken question. In answer, Eli held out his hand.

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

I stared warily at his outstretched hand. Eli sighed impatiently and waggled his fingers at me.

“It’s not a snake, Amelia. It won’t hurt you.”

“No, but you might.”

Eli sighed again and pulled back his hand. “Fine. Would you at least follow me, then?”

I thought about the request for a moment, then rose to my feet, trying to repress the thought that I currently stood on my own grave. And that I actually walked across my own grave as I followed Eli deeper into the cemetery.

Eli strode slowly through the grass for a while until he came to a weathered headstone. He stopped at the foot of the grave and, expressionless, stared at it.

“This,” he said, gesturing to the stone. “This is why I come here.”

The writing on the marker was plain and nondescript, perhaps intentionally so. It merely read:

ELI ROWLAND
1956—JULY 11, 1975
CLIMBING THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

“Yikes,” I murmured.

Eli snorted in agreement. “My band mates obviously couldn’t remember my birthday. I don’t even think they contacted my family about my death. But the Led Zeppelin inscription’s a nice touch, isn’t it?”

“Heartfelt.” I turned back to him. “So . . . this means we’re buried in the same cemetery?”

He nodded, and then the tiniest smile crept over his features. When he spoke again, his tone had lost some of its bitter edge. “More proof that we’re fated to be together, don’t you think?”

“If that were the case, Eli, I’d have a whole graveyard full of choices, wouldn’t I?”

Eli chuckled darkly but then turned his eyes back to his headstone without further comment. He didn’t even watch me when I walked away from him.

I picked my way through the weeds, back to the relatively manicured area in which my own concrete slab lay. Once there, I knelt at the foot of my grave and pressed my hands to the low grass. It seemed firm enough beneath my hands. This plot of earth was no dream, no nightmare.

I had an instant, sickening thought: what lay in the grave now, just six feet below my fingertips? I didn’t know, but I could guess. An unbidden picture flashed into my mind, and I gagged. I turned my face to my shoulder so I wouldn’t have to stare at this suddenly repulsive stretch of grass.