The Edge of Over There

by Shawn Smucker

  He kept going forward until something flew out of the woods and grabbed him from behind. All he felt were tight arms around his neck, and he fell to the ground. He couldn’t breathe, and darkness closed in around the edges of his vision. The last thing he saw was the expressionless face of Beatrice, looking down as she choked the life out of him.

  He gasped for one long breath, gulping in air. When he came to, he didn’t know if it was moments or hours later. He looked up through branches and realized he was on the side of the road. His neck hurt, and each breath felt like someone was pushing sandpaper down his throat, but he kept trying, and he kept breathing, and each inhale hurt less and less. Finally, he sat up.

  How was he still alive?

  The day seemed brighter, or perhaps his eyes had grown accustomed to the level of light. He wondered what had happened to Beatrice, where she had gone, why she had attacked him like that. He was perplexed at how such a small girl had been able to bring him down. He looked around quickly at the thought of her, hoping she wasn’t there.

  He was alone in the woods.

  It is difficult to describe what being truly alone felt like for Leo, a young man who had grown up on the outskirts of a city, a young man who drove a loud car and had loud friends and lived the life of an eighteen-year-old. Perhaps for some that sense of being alone would have driven them insane. To be in what appeared an endless forest on the edge of a long road to nowhere would have been too much space, too much emptiness. For others, this being alone would have led them to activity. They would have churned down the road for as long and as far as their legs would take them, ready to rid themselves of that empty feeling.

  But for Leo, being alone felt like freedom.

  The everyday troubles that a young man has to deal with, especially a young man who has lost a sibling and one of his parents (and was in the process of losing the other), were gone in an instant. The only thing in front of him was the possibility of finally finding out what had happened to his sister, and that filled him with anticipation. He stood up, and he would have continued down the road feeling that way, except for the fact that he heard someone coming. He ducked into the trees and waited, and the footsteps came at a slow pace.

  Leo saw her—it was Abra, and she walked in the middle of the road as if she was nothing more than a country girl wandering along a dirt road on a cool summer day.

  “Abra,” he hissed. “Hey, Abra!”

  She peered into the trees. “Leo? Is that you?”

  Abra ran to the side of the road. He was surprised at how happy he was to see her.

  “Leo! I’m so glad I found you. You have to go back. Get out of here! That door won’t be unlocked for long, and once it’s locked again, you might never get out!”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said quietly. “I’m here to find my sister.”

  Abra shook her head. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, and it was this seriousness of hers that he found so fascinating. She was only a teenager, but she carried the concern of an old monk looking out over the world from a high place.

  “I can’t wait around for you to find her. There are more important things—” She stopped short.

  “More important?” he asked.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I have to find the Tree, and then I have to lock the gate,” she said, sighing. “When I leave, I have to lock and seal the door. I can’t wait for anyone. If we get separated, you’ll be here. For the rest of your life. Please. Go back.”

  She looked so desperate and so kind and so thoughtful for someone her age that he could hear the wisdom in what she said. Her blonde hair perfectly framed her face. He stared at her, seeing her for the first time—or maybe she had changed, entering the darkness. Maybe he had changed too. But then he shook his head.

  “I can’t leave until I at least find out what happened to my sister. I have to know.”

  Abra looked at him and there was a deep regret in her eyes, as if she could see the ending, and the ending she could see wasn’t good. He wanted to ask her what she saw, what she knew, but he didn’t.

  “Have you seen Beatrice?” Abra asked, and he was glad to see that she wasn’t going to try to convince him to leave anymore.

  “Did more than see her,” Leo said, reaching up and tenderly rubbing his neck. “She tried to kill me.” He told her what had happened, how he had woken up in the trees. They both stood there in silence for a while, thinking about Beatrice.

  “I think if I can find her, I’ll find the Tree,” Abra said.

  Leo nodded. “I might as well stick with you,” he said. “I guess Beatrice could lead us to my sister. But watch out. She has a strong grip.”

  Abra sighed. “All right. Let’s go.”

  The two of them followed the flat dirt road farther in.

  “Maybe we should take a rest,” Leo suggested. The sky had been a dull, rusty red all day but was beginning to fade to darkness. He hadn’t been able to see the sun, and there weren’t any stars. Abra stopped in the middle of the road and peered ahead. Leo stared at the long, straight stretch.

  “Maybe,” Abra said before walking over to the side of the road and sitting down with her back against a tree.

  Leo followed her. “Maybe we should go a little farther into the woods, to take cover,” he said, standing there beside her.

  She took a deep breath. “Yeah, sure,” she said.

  They walked twenty paces into the woods and sat down, both of them resting their backs against the same huge tree trunk.

  “How long do you think this forest has been here?” Leo asked, looking up into the motionless leaves.

  Abra didn’t say anything right away, and he wondered if she had fallen asleep. The same lightness fell over him once again, the same freedom. He took a deep breath and was amazed at how incredible the air smelled, as if it was unused, fresh, unlike the stale air back home that had been breathed in by people and machines and exhaled over and over again for thousands of years. There, off the edge of the road, only the trees breathed, and the sky.

  “Not long and forever,” Abra said. “That’s how long this forest has been here. Can’t you feel it? Something about it is new, and something else is old. Very old.”

  Leo thought she was right.

  “Are you worried you might not find your sister?” she asked him.

  “A little,” he said. “It’s been eight years. A lot can happen in eight years.”

  “Yeah,” Abra said. “Actually, it doesn’t even take that long.”

  Abra’s breathing became soft and rhythmic, and Leo thought she must be asleep. He felt suddenly energized and regretted his suggestion to stop, so he stood up and walked over to the road, glancing over his shoulder to see if he had woken her up. In all of that great stillness, every one of his steps sounded to him like an explosion of twigs and leaves, but Abra slept on.

  He waited there by the road, and something inside of him wanted to go stand in the middle of it, and something else inside of him warned him that it wouldn’t be a good idea. He wasn’t sure where those feelings came from or what caused them, but their combined effect left him standing there on the edge of the road, hiding behind a tree with a trunk that split off into five main sections close to the ground. He didn’t know why he felt like hiding, but he pressed himself up against the tree and waited. For what, he didn’t know.

  He felt ready for the journey, ready to discover answers to eight-year-old questions. What he was not ready for was witnessing those who used the road—those for whom the Passageway had been created.

  Long before Marie Laveau had begun letting people through the gate in her grave, the Passageway had been in use, as Mr. Henry had explained to them. This was what gave the place its ancient feel. This was what rubbed the dirt road so smooth that it looked paved.

  Leo heard them before he saw them.

  At first it was only one. This thing—this spirit as some might call it, this soul as others might refer to it—whisked past him so fast and with
such intensity that at first he wondered if he’d had a flash of light-headedness. It was a bright whiteness, that one, and when it passed him it made the sound of a scream. It made him drop to his knees.

  He was terrified.

  He waited for what felt like a very long time, and when he felt it might be safe to move out from behind the tree, another rushed past him. Instinctively, he ducked. He couldn’t figure out how big they were, in the same way that it’s hard to tell how big a water bug is while it skims over the surface of the water. The second one he saw was darker than the first, and the shriek it made was much lower, almost like a moan, the wind in the trees.

  He thought he should probably go get Abra, but she was already coming slowly through the trees.

  “What was that noise?” she asked. Leo held up his finger, telling her to wait.

  More came down the road every few minutes, like bats from a cave. At first they emerged in singles. After that they came in twos and threes and fours. Finally, they were one long, constant stream, and the sound was overwhelming. Abra and Leo both fell to the ground, covering their ears, afraid it would never end. Even with their arms wrapped up around their heads, the sound was a physical force that pounded and tore at their bodies. Leo felt like he was in a boxing match.

  Abra stood up. Leo looked up at her, wondering what she was doing. He reached up to pull her back down beside him, into safety, but she shed his hand and, still covering her ears, walked out into the street. The bright ones and the shadowy ones and all of the in-between ones roared around her like water in a stream rushing around a new rock. She spread out her arms and looked straight up into the sky, and the movement almost seemed to go through her. Leo wanted to cry out to her, beg her to come back, but he didn’t, and she stayed until the lights and the shadows became a trickle, until the stragglers rushed past them.

  The silence they left behind in the dim, red light filled Leo with an emptiness he had never felt before.

  21

  THREE DAYS PASSED before they saw the city off in the distance. Three long days of walking the hard-packed dust of the road, three long nights of hearing the souls of the dead rush past on their way to Over There. Three days is a long time when you don’t know exactly where you’re going and your surroundings don’t change a bit. They found food, small berries growing in thickets on both sides of the road. They drank from springs that gurgled up about a half day’s walk apart. Leo wondered if they had been spaced deliberately.

  The food itself seemed to nourish him on a molecular level, as if it was somehow pure nutrients, the exact stuff his body needed. Not just any body, but his. The spring water tasted slightly sweet, like the sap from a maple tree before it has been reduced down to syrup. They were eating less than they had ever eaten before, but they felt healthier, more nourished.

  The first house they saw was just outside the city. It was a small, one-story brick cottage with large windows and a red door. The shutters were black. The air around the house felt a little off—if the rest of the Edge of Over There seemed specifically designed for human life, the house itself felt slightly askew, like the slightest bend in an otherwise perfectly straight wire. Abra walked quietly up to one of the windows and peered inside.

  “I don’t think anyone lives here,” she said.

  Leo knocked on the door, and when no one answered, he shouted, “Anybody there?”

  But no one was there, or at least no one answered. The forest swallowed his voice. When Leo tried to turn the knob, he found it was locked. He reached inside his pocket and felt the lock-picking set, the cold metal, the multiple picks. He decided to leave it in his pocket. If he had been alone, without Abra, he probably would have given it a try, but there was something embarrassing about being someone who could break into places, someone who could undo things not meant to be undone. So he shrugged, and they walked away with many backward glances. The house gave them the feeling that someone was watching them, someone they shouldn’t turn their backs to.

  They passed a few more houses built in the woods off the road, but they weren’t paying attention to the houses anymore. The city was closer now, its buildings rising up out of the trees. But there was one building in particular that got their attention, deep in the city, one that rose so high above the others that it looked thin and exposed.

  “There’s something strange about that building,” Leo said on the morning of the day they would reach the city. This marked their fourth day inside the grave of Marie Laveau.

  “You mean besides the fact that it’s so tall?” Abra asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t like the look of it.”

  They walked quietly, their feet patting a gentle rhythm against the hard dirt of the road.

  “It doesn’t have windows,” Leo said.

  “What?” Abra asked.

  “The tall building. It doesn’t have windows.”

  They kept walking, the two of them staring up, the way flowers’ faces follow the sun. Abra shielded her eyes from the midday light.

  “Are you sure?”

  Leo nodded. “You know what else I’m sure of?”

  Abra looked at him.

  “That’s where my father is,” Leo said.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  He looked at her and smiled. “I just know,” he said, shrugging. “That’s where he is. And if he’s there, my sister’s there too.”

  Arriving at that city was like arriving at no other city in the world. The woods ran right up to it—no suburbs, no gradual urbanization, no high overpasses that skirted factories and ran over no-man’s-land. This city simply grew right up out of the trees. One minute they were on the dirt road that led from the gateway, and with their next step they were on the first city street, looking up at the tall buildings. It was like emerging from Central Park in New York City, a head-spinning transition from grass and green spaces to concrete and thin slivers of sky.

  “Where do you think everyone is?” Leo asked. The quiet of the woods was one thing—the silence of the city under the red sky was something entirely different.

  “How do you know there is anyone? Maybe it’s empty. Maybe something happened,” Abra said.

  “Do you think the quiet has something to do with the Tree you’re looking for?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  A breeze blew from the far side of the city, came rushing through the streets, and passed them by. It moved the branches and the leaves of the forest and made a loud shushing sound. Abra’s hair danced in the breeze.

  “Smells kind of like the ocean,” Leo said.

  “There’s definitely water out there somewhere, the sea that Mr. Henry told us about. I wonder what it’s like. I wonder how far away it is,” Abra said in a wistful voice. She pointed down the street to their right, the one that ran along the forest. “What’s that?”

  Leo squinted. “Is that . . . ?” he began.

  “Beatrice?” Abra said.

  It looked like her. She was nearly out of view, blending into the shadows on the forest side of the street. She walked fast, sometimes skipping a step, then slowing again to a walk. She didn’t look back.

  Leo moved to cross that first street and enter the city at exactly the same time that Abra turned right and started walking the line between the city and the forest.

  They both stopped in their tracks.

  “Where are you going?” she asked him.

  “I have to go to that building,” he said. “I’m sure that’s where my sister is.” He stared at her, and when she didn’t say anything, he asked, “Where are you going?”

  “I have to find the Tree of Life. Beatrice knows where it is. I’m positive.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, waiting for the other person to change their mind and follow. Leo had grown used to Abra’s company. He didn’t want to walk alone.

  “But how do you know?” he asked. “I mean, the Tree could be anywhere. It could be a trap.”

  “How do you know your sister
is in the building?” she replied sarcastically.

  Leo clenched his fists and took a deep breath. “We really should stay together,” he said, trying to remain calm. “We don’t know what’s happened to this city. We don’t know where all the people are. We don’t know who’s in that building. I think until we figure some of this stuff out, we should stay together.”

  “I agree. We should stay together. So, come on, let’s go. Beatrice might lead us to your sister too!”

  “Why do you have to be so stubborn! You don’t know the Tree is that way. It could be anywhere!”

  “And you know your father is in that building? How?”

  Leo bit his lip and shook his head. “Listen, come with me for today, a few hours. I bet we can be at the building by the time it gets dark. If my sister isn’t there, I’ll come with you.”

  “And waste two days walking in and walking back out when your father isn’t there? I’m following Beatrice.”

  “Okay,” Leo said. “Whatever.” He threw his hands up in the air and turned to walk away, trying to hide the disappointment and frustration that welled up inside of him. It reminded him of the day his father and sister had gone into Marie Laveau’s crypt. He didn’t think he would ever find Abra again.

  “Good luck,” Abra called after him. He turned to look at her, and she looked like a little girl again, small and pale against the backdrop of that immense forest. But there was still something that seemed much older. Maybe it was her eyes—they held a certain kind of sadness, as if she was about to enter a trial she had already experienced before, the kind where she knew the pain before it even started.

  “Same to you,” he said, but his voice came out dismissive and curt.

  The streets were empty of people, but there were signs of destruction everywhere, a kind of chaos the silence did not explain. Glass windows were shattered and lying in shards on the sidewalk. Doors were bent and mutilated, hanging from hinges. Even the brick and concrete of the buildings bore huge craters, as if someone had gone along with a sledgehammer and randomly taken swings. But it wasn’t only explosive destruction—there were also the marks of time. Long cracks split the sidewalks, and the glass was coated and streaked in dust. It was eerie, the emptiness paired with the destruction.