by Lyle, Dixie
On the other side of the rise, the graves were denser, closer together. And very, very busy.
Animal spirits of every kind bounded, flew, scampered, galloped, and scurried from grave to grave. There were ghosts continually popping out of those eye-like portals and just as continually jumping into other ones. The ones they were coming in by were all over the place, while the ones they were using to leave were fewer and always had a sealed cremains urn on them.
We just stood and watched for a while. The ghosts all had that internal glow Ambrose and the ferret had, but in a huge variety of colors: From the deep, burnished red-gold of an Irish setter’s fur to the silvery glitter of scales, it was like an animated, luminescent rainbow. Even animals that were mainly black seemed to be illuminated, somehow. While all sorts of pets were represented, four groups dominated: cats, dogs, birds, and fish. The fish swam through the air as if it were water, darting this way and that, glinting in the sun, the bright markings on many of them now glowing like actual neon. Tropically plumed parrots, budgies, and songbirds swooped and dove through the air, and below them a tangle of dogs and cats darted among the gray headstones and white marble monuments.
But tangle wasn’t the right word. It looked like a mass of confusion at first, but my eyes adjusted after a moment and started to identify patterns. The dogs seemed to move in packs of their own breed, like clusters of tourists all dressed the same; I followed some bulldogs as each one stumped out of a portal, then waited patiently at graveside for the rest of his fellows to join him. When they were all gathered, they moved in a waddling bunch to an urn-mounted grave and vanished into it.
The cats were another matter entirely. Their movements were much more chaotic, some of them jumping from headstone to headstone, others dashing between the graves.
“As you can see,” Eli said, “I have a few responsibilities of my own.”
“It’s amazing,” I breathed.
“Yes, it is. Your people have a name for it: They call it the Rainbow Bridge. Notice anything strange about how the animals are acting?”
I studied the tableau below me. “No fights,” I said after a moment. None of the animals was paying any particular attention to any species other than their own; there was no aggression, no displays of dominance, not even any butt-sniffing. The dogs were ignoring the cats, the cats were ignoring the birds, the birds were ignoring the fish. “They’re all behaving—”
“Civilized? Nope, that ain’t it. They all lived domesticated lives, true, but they’re still animals at heart. No, there’s another, simpler reason they’re all getting along. See, even though each of them now lives in their own special Paradise, they all—every one of them—are rushing to go somewhere else. Someplace better than Paradise. You know what makes it better?”
“Love,” I said. I could feel tears stinging my eyes, trying to get out.
“Yeah. They’re going to be reunited with someone they love, with someone who loves them. In the face of that, who’s got time to pick a fight or stop for a snack? Who would even want to?”
Not me, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I was afraid I’d start crying if I tried to talk.
“What’s driving them is the most powerful force in the universe; it’s the force that created this place. It’s worth protecting, don’tcha think?”
I understood why Eli had brought me here. It’s one thing to get drafted; it’s another thing to know—really know, deep inside yourself—what you’re fighting for.
And now I did.
“All right,” I said. “I understand. I do.”
“Good,” he rasped. “Now—what can I do for you?”
“There’s a few questions I need to ask—mundane ones, I promise. Will you answer them?”
“If I can.”
“There’s a person who claims he was here, in the—the Crossroads, last night. Can you confirm that?”
“Would if I could. But I don’t really take that much notice of the still-breathing, two-legged types—no offense.”
“How about the … commuters? Any chance one of them might have seen something?”
Eli chuckled. It sounded like gravel rattling inside an old tin can. “Nah, they’re pretty focused on other things. But one of the prowlers might have.”
“Prowlers? What are those?”
“Restless spirits. Animal souls caught between the worlds, not ready to move on. A lot of them are drawn to this place—they’re kinda like vagrants that hang out at bus stations, you know? Never actually get on a bus, but they like to use the facilities.”
“Facilities? I thought spirits didn’t have those kinds of needs.”
He gave his head a single shake, his white beak whipping back and forth. “They don’t. I’m talking about deeper needs—that feeling of being connected to others of your own kind. Even if all you do is watch them.”
“So they’re lonely.”
“Lonely ain’t exactly right. Some animals are loners by nature; they don’t need much in the way of companionship. Sometimes they come here because they’re confused. They don’t know they’re dead, or they know but refuse to admit it.”
Great. Mentally confused vagrants—or, put another way, crazy street people. “What kind of animals are we talking about, here? Stray dogs and feral cats?”
“Sometimes. But mostly you get the in-betweeners—creatures that weren’t quite wild, but didn’t have anyone really love them in life, either. Animals raised in captivity, mostly.”
I was trying to figure out who might fit that description, and got an image of a huge herd of pigs and cows. They were being ridden by chickens. “Livestock, you mean?”
“No, they get routed through a different place entirely. What we get here is a little more rarefied—animals from zoos, circuses, aquariums.”
“That doesn’t say much for those places.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. These days, only a small percentage of exotic animal owners mistreat them—but it used to be much higher. And souls have been gathering here for over a hundred years…”
I thought about that. “Any chance one of them might talk to me?”
“Maybe. But I’d be careful—not all of them are friendly. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem for someone who still has a pulse, but you’re different now; your new abilities come at a price. You can be affected by spirits, even attacked.”
That, of course, immediately reminded me of the shadowy bulk I’d encountered before. “Anything really big? Like T. rex size, made out of solid blackness?”
Eli cocked his head skeptically. “Not a lot of T. rexes in zoos, Foxtrot. And none of the big dinos were black, anyway. In fact, some of them had plumage that was downright showy.”
I didn’t know if he was pulling my leg or not. “I don’t know what it was. But it was the first thing I saw here that I couldn’t explain, and it was big and dark and giving off flashes of light.”
It was hard to read the expression on a crow’s face, but I could have sworn Eli frowned. “It might just have been your eyesight adjusting to its new range, trying to focus on things it couldn’t see before. Flickering lights, dark spots.”
“Maybe.” I never had vision problems that seemed to be chasing me, but Eli was right: It could just have been a trick of my new vision, a temporary side effect. In any case, it didn’t seem to be affecting me now. “One last thing. Any tips on who I start with, and where I can find them?”
Eli considered this, then gestured with one white wing. “Try Two-Notch. She does a regular circuit of the entire Crossroads, and this time of day she’s probably near the outer edge. She might talk to you.”
“Thanks. How will I know her?”
“I don’t think you’ll have any problem with that.”
I knew a competency test when I heard one. I shrugged, thanked him again, and set off down the slope, keeping parallel to all the activity. In a minute I’d reached the bottom of the rise, where a path curved around another gentle hill. I followed it, and in another
minute all the rushing ghosts were out of sight again.
This part of the graveyard was newer, the graves more orderly, the paths forming a grid. I saw a lone skunk scurry out of a grave site, eye me benignly, then totter off across the grass. I wrinkled my nose; seems my eyes weren’t the only sense that had been spiritually amplified.
The perimeter fence was made of sturdy, chest-high iron. When I reached it I debated whether to go left or right. I decided the best choice was neither—if Two-Notch did a regular patrol, then it was smarter to let her come to me rather than risk going in the wrong direction.
So I waited. I sat down on the grass with my back to the fence and kept my eyes open. Every now and then one of the plots would spit out a rabbit or a hamster, and it would bound away over the hill. I even saw a snake that must have been six feet long slither out of a grave, which sounds creepy but wasn’t; its scales gleamed with an amazing aurora of color, startling reds and vivid greens and unearthly blues, all so deep and rich that the pattern seemed three-dimensional, not two. It was like watching a fluid neon sign come to life.
And then I saw something approaching me, from the left. It was ten feet off the ground, moving about as fast as Ambrose had but in a different way. Ambrose had reminded me of a spaceship gliding serenely through interstellar space; the newcomer was more like a cruise missile looking for somewhere to detonate. It was at least eight feet long from head to tail, and in life must have weighed several hundred pounds.
It was a shark.
It passed right over my head without stopping, its underbelly a gleaming white. I couldn’t see its dorsal fin, but I was willing to bet it had two gashes on it. “Hey!” I called out. “Two-Notch!”
It kept on going. I stood up and tried again, this time thinking the name as hard as I could. Two-Notch! Shark! I’m talking to you!
It banked sharply to the left. Circled and came back around at me. I suddenly wondered just how good an idea this actually was—I swear I could hear the Jaws theme playing in the background as the shark got closer and closer.
But it veered away at the last second, settling into an orbit twenty or so feet in diameter and four feet over my head. It—no, she—tilted to one side so she could get a good look at me, studying me dispassionately with one large, black eye.
what does food want
The voice I heard in my head was a little unnerving, like a woman with an accent I couldn’t identify speaking in a very loud whisper. And it took me a second to realize that Two-Notch wasn’t posing a riddle—she was referring to me as a potential snack.
“I’m not food,” I said firmly. Sometimes you need to clarify things right up front. “And what I want is to ask you a few questions. That okay with you?”
Two-Notch continued to circle and stare. i will answer
It was taking an act of will not to spin around as we talked, but that would just make me dizzy. I forced myself to stay in one spot and tracked her with my eyes when I could. “My name is Foxtrot. I was wondering if you saw another human here, in this graveyard, last night.”
Notch kept moving. Was she a little lower this time? i am waiting for question
I thought back and realized I hadn’t actually asked one. “Did you see another human being in the graveyard last night?”
don’t know what graveyard is
“This place. Everything inside the boundary of this fence.” I gestured with my hand at the fence, which was about six feet away.
not fence~~glass~~wall of aquarium
Oh. For the first time, I noticed that Notch’s orbit took her right up to the fence but not beyond it. She believed that—just like when she was alive—there was an invisible barrier there.
Because she didn’t know she was dead.
“All right,” I said carefully. “Let me rephrase that. Did you see any other human beings last night in the aquarium?”
yes
“What did they look like?”
not female~~black kelp on head~~lower half like seal
A man with curly black hair, wearing leather pants. Keene. I smiled, wishing I could tell him he’d just been alibied by the ghost of a confused shark, then realized that maybe I was putting a little too much faith in the word of said confused ghost. “What was he doing?’
playing with shell
Okay, Notch was definitely getting lower with each pass. She and I were almost eye-to-eye now, and every time she circled behind me my shoulder blades started to itch. I needed to wrap this up quickly. “What kind of shell?”
shiny on top~~many colors
That sounded like—what? A phone, maybe? “Was he holding the shell up to the side of his head?”
no~~watching colors~~pinching with claws
Pinching? Oh, that probably meant using his thumbs or fingers—which sounded like he was texting, or maybe surfing the ’Net. Keene claimed he came out to the graveyard for inspiration, so maybe he was even writing a song.
“Thank you, Two-Notch.” Now that she was lower, I could see that the fin on her back did indeed have two triangular notches in it. “I appreciate your help.”
don’t know word appreciate
Except for maybe the ate part. “It means…”
What did it mean, exactly? That I now owed a favor to a non-corporeal entity? Or that I was mouthing meaningless social niceties to a creature that in other circumstances would view me as food?
Neither.
What it meant was that Two-Notch had never been appreciated. That she’d been displayed, but not loved. That she—
Was trying to eat me.
It happened so fast I barely had time to react. One second she was arcing behind me—and then I caught a blur of motion out of the corner of my eye. I spun, panic exploding through my brain, and got a close-up glimpse of that dead black eye as it shot past only inches away.
I knew a few things about sharks, mostly due to Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. I knew, for instance, that most victims never saw the attack coming; sharks liked to attack from below or behind, often doing massive damage with the initial bite and then leaving their prey to bleed to death before chowing down. But some used what was called the bump-and-bite method, where they slammed against their target first. Luckily for me, that’s what Two-Notch did; I could see that her mouth was closed as she zoomed past.
Except it wasn’t so much past as through.
She was obviously trying to ram my shoulder—and while her accuracy was good, her solidity wasn’t. It had a definite effect, too, though not the one she was aiming for: Her ghostly body intersecting mine felt like an icy gust of wind blowing through my upper body. I gasped, off balance and terrified, and almost lost my footing.
She was already coming around for another pass. This time, her mouth was open.
I ran.
Straight at the fence. It wasn’t that high, but at that moment I think I could have cleared something taller than I was. I dove over the top railing headfirst, did a shoulder-roll I learned in fourth-grade gymnastics, and wound up back on my feet. I was pretty sure I sprained something along the way.
Two-Notch eyed me as she glided along parallel to the fence, exactly like a fish in an aquarium. I wondered what those jaws would have done to me if she’d tried for a bite instead of a bump; somehow, I didn’t think all I’d feel would be a cold breeze.
“You tried to eat me!”
i answered questions
“And you think that’s a fair trade?”
yes
I took a second to compose myself and get my breathing under control. Okay, sure, why not? From a shark’s point of view, it almost seemed reasonable. Get in a little polite conversation, then devour your dinner companion. “Look, here’s the thing. I’m not food. We can talk, but you can’t try to eat me.”
why
I thought for a moment before I replied. This was like negotiating with a toddler; you had to use logic, but you couldn’t let yourself get bogged down by long explanations they weren’t equipped to under
stand. “Because it won’t work. You passed right through me, didn’t you? If you tried to bite me, the same thing would happen.”
i try and see
“No. I don’t like that. Try that again and all that will happen is I’ll leave. Then we can’t talk anymore.”
I held my breath. This was the crux of the matter—if Two-Notch didn’t care about talking to me, then she wouldn’t care about driving me away, either. I was gambling that she was probably more bored than hungry, and that her attempt to turn me into lunch was more habit than need.
i will talk~~not feed~~yes
I let out my breath in a sigh of relief. “Yes. Good.”
And then I walked forward, and climbed back over the fence.
Was it stupid? Maybe—but it was also necessary. Standing up to someone bigger and scarier than you are was all about confidence, and in a situation where you’d just faced someone down, you needed to reinforce their impression of you as quickly and forcefully as you could. Winning once wasn’t enough; you had to make them believe that you’d win next time, too, so that there wasn’t a next time. And while sprinting for my life and leaping over a fence wasn’t exactly a grand victory, I did get Two-Notch to agree to my rules. Acting like I wasn’t worried about her anymore not only made me look stronger, it implied that I trusted her.
None of which explained why she abruptly turned around and zoomed away at high speed.
“Was it something I said?” I asked pointlessly. I hate it when people just leave without acknowledging you in any way; to me, that’s the height of rudeness. I think it has something to do with abandonment issues—
Flash.
I think, right at that instant, that my idea of what was scary changed forever. I had always associated fear with darkness; the dark was where monsters hid, the dark represented the unknown and unknowable. Anything could be lurking there, and your imagination held more terrors than reality ever could.
But it wasn’t dark now. It was a bright, hot morning, the sun holding the shadows at bay. What difference could a little more light make?
Ask the ghosts of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
It was unearthly, that light. It wasn’t so much its brightness as the way it overpowered the sunshine, like a harsh noise drowning out a softer one. That light had edges; it was hard, sharp, and unforgiving. It didn’t illuminate, it exposed.