Hereafter

by Terri Bruce

  Kitty ignored her, keeping his eyes on Irene and barking non-stop.

  Irene used the distraction to slip into the house. A few seconds later, the boy followed.

  “What are you doing?” Irene cried. “You’re trespassing!”

  “So are you,” he said hotly.

  “She’s my neighbor.”

  “I don’t think that makes any—” he started to say but Jamaica returned, holding Kitty with a finger and thumb clamped around the dog’s mouth like a muzzle. She didn’t seem to notice either Irene or the boy. As Jamaica shut the door with her foot, Kitty whimpered and stretched out a tiny paw to Irene.

  “What a bad boy you are today,” Jamaica scolded indulgently, dropping Kitty to the floor.

  Irene backed away, expecting Kitty to lunge for her ankles. Instead, he seemed puzzled. He plunked down on his haunches and stared at Irene, emitting bewildered whimpers and turning his head to cast Jamaica intermittent, inquisitive looks.

  “What?” Jamaica asked. “No, you can’t have a treat. You’re a bad boy.”

  With the boy trailing behind, Irene followed Jamaica down the hall to the kitchen. Something was cooking on the stove in a large pot and Jamaica went to stir it.

  Irene glanced around, trying to find some way of getting Jamaica’s attention. She grabbed a pen from the counter and used it to scrawl the words “Jamaica, it’s Irene. I need your help” on a nearby pad of paper.

  The boy let out a squawk of alarm. “I really don’t think you should do that.”

  “No one asked you,” she retorted.

  His ears turned pink and he ducked his head, causing the curtain of blond hair to fall across his face.

  Irene waited until Jamaica was rummaging in the refrigerator to slip the note onto the counter near the stove. Then she held her breath.

  A moment later, she watched in exasperation as the paper, propelled by the breeze of Jamaica’s movements, fluttered unnoticed to the floor. Irene gritted her teeth, retrieved the note, and set it back on the counter. This time, Jamaica set a package of raw meat on top of the paper, effectively ruining it. A few minutes later, the note, plastered to the bottom of the now empty meat packaging, went into the trash.

  Irene scrawled the same message on another piece of paper and held it in front of herself at chin level. She stood behind Jamaica, waiting for her to turn away from the counter where she was now chopping vegetables.

  “You don’t give up easily, do you?” The boy was watching Irene’s efforts with a look somewhere between incredulous and amused.

  “Quitters never win,” she replied.

  “I thought that was cheaters.”

  “Whatever. It works for both.”

  It seemed like Jamaica was never going to turn around. She lifted her head a couple of times, as if catching something out of the corner of her eye, but then went back to what she was doing.

  Finally, Jamaica did turn around, holding the cutting board loaded with cut food in one hand and the knife in the other. She walked to the stove and, using the knife as a scraper, began sliding the meat and vegetables from the board into the pot. Suddenly, she stiffened and whipped around, as if sensing someone behind her. She let out an ear-piercing shriek.

  Some instinct made Irene take a step back and then duck. At the same instant, the boy cried out in alarm and scrambled backwards. Vegetables, meat, cutting board, and even the knife flew through the air like a volley of arrows, passing through the spot where Irene had stood only a moment before, and pelted the cabinets behind her.

  “Holy shit!” Irene bolted for the door. She ran down the front steps and then raced next door to the safety of her own home. The boy was right behind her and followed her into the house before she could stop him. She slammed the door shut behind them and leaned against it, trying to catch her breath. Every few seconds she pulled back the curtain and peeked out the sidelight to see if Jamaica had followed her. However, outside all was still. No one was in sight.

  The boy appeared to be dumbstruck. He stared at her, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.

  “So... that was kinda crazy,” he said finally.

  “I didn’t see you doing anything to help,” she replied angrily. “Now start talking. What is going on?”

  His expression changed to one of nervousness. He shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “Look, I gotta go...”

  “Oh no you don’t.” She grabbed him by the arm. “In here.” She dragged him across the hall and thrust him into the living room.

  “Hey! HEY!” The boy flailed his stick-thin arms in protest. “This is accosting a minor. You can’t do that.”

  Irene let him go, suppressing a smile as she did so. “I’m pretty sure there’s no such crime as accosting a minor. Now talk. Who are you?”

  The boy pushed his hair out of his eyes and peered around the room. “Jonah, Jonah Johnson. I live a few blocks from here.” He turned in place, taking in everything. “I like your couch.”

  “So why do you keep saying that I’m dead?”

  He looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “You’re glowing and no one can see or hear you. That sounds like a ghost to me.”

  “A ghost?” She didn’t like the sound of that, but he seemed sincere. It would certainly explain everything that had been happening to her. She looked him up and down again, almost ready to believe him. “Wait a minute... you don’t glow. Are you a ghost?”

  He suddenly looked furtive, his eyes dropping to the floor. “No.”

  “Then how come you can see me?”

  “Er... well, that’s kinda complicated...”

  “Ha! That’s what I thought,” she said triumphantly. “Nice try, kid. You’re obviously some kind of delinquent. I don’t know if this is just for kicks or what, but I’m calling the police.” She headed for the kitchen.

  “Hey,” he cried, trailing after her. “I’m an honor student!”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not a delinquent.”

  “Huh,” she heard him say, “I wonder if they have police in the land of the dead.” His voice deepened in an imitation of a television announcer: “Cops Undead: Miami.” Then it rose back to his normal pitch. “That would be cool!”

  Irene crossed into the kitchen and picked up the phone. “We’ll see how much of a smart ass you are when they’re threatening to throw you in juvie hall.”

  “For what? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Then start talking.”

  “I told you...”

  Irene paused in the middle of dialing the phone, waiting for him to finish the sentence. The silence stretched out. She turned around. The hall was empty.

  “Jonah?” Irene moved back down the hall peering into the other rooms and calling his name. “Jonah? This isn’t funny.” It only took a minute to realize that he was nowhere to be found. She was alone. The boy was gone.

  Three

  The gin and tonic she had mixed earlier was still on the hall table. She grabbed it and drained the glass in one long swallow.

  “Okay, think, Irene.” The sound of her voice was reassuring in the silence. With the boy gone, the house suddenly seemed incredibly empty. “Think. There has got to be a logical explanation for all of this.” She thought about that last sentence. “Okay, a logical reason other than being dead.”

  A boy who disappears into thin air... the inability of anyone to see or hear me... waking up on the side of the road.

  She bit her lip, contemplating options. Other than the whole “being dead” thing, she couldn’t think of a single thing that would explain what was happening to her.

  What if she was dead? What then?

  No, she refused to believe that. There had to be something else going on. There was no way she could be dead.

  Think! she told herself. She needed help. How was she going to get it?

  She could always go back and leave a note for Jamaica to find—by the bed or in the living room, perhaps—but what would be the point? The whole idea had been stupid from the be
ginning. What did she actually want Jamaica to do? How was Jamaica—or anyone she might try to contact—supposed to fix whatever was wrong with her if she herself didn’t know what the problem was or how to fix it?

  A heavy, dull ache began gnawing at the pit of her stomach. She went to the kitchen and mixed another drink, pausing to take a swig of gin straight from the bottle for good measure before putting it away. The greasy, scalding burn of the straight gin was like a dash of cold water to the face and momentarily subdued the rising panic.

  She downed half the glass in one gulp and began to feel like she was in control again. She set the glass down and looked at her hands and arms and then at her torso and legs. The glow extended all around her body. She noticed the occasional odd flash of light when she moved suddenly, like sunlight reflecting on a mirror.

  Could I really be dead?

  She put a hand to her chest. How could she be dead when she could feel her heart beating, her chest rising and falling as she breathed, her skin growing clammy from fear?

  Besides, when you died, wasn’t there supposed to be a white light and a tunnel, then Heaven? She racked her brain, trying to remember everything she knew about life after death. What was it the boy had said—something about this being “the land of the dead” and that she was a ghost?

  What about him, then? He’d said he wasn’t a ghost but clearly Jamaica hadn’t been able to see him, and he had just disappeared into thin air. Maybe he was the one who was dead and didn’t know it. Maybe he was the cause of all of this.

  What about the mail and all the voicemails, the little voice asked. Irene shook her head as if she could physically dislodge the thought.

  She wasn’t sure what to do next. The house was quiet and still. She felt the thick, gathered pause pushing around her. Irene shivered. She crossed her upper arms, trying to smooth away the sudden goose bumps. How could she get goose bumps if she was dead?

  She grabbed her drink again. Just at that moment, the phone rang, causing her to jump. Her drink crashed to the floor. She stared at the phone stupidly, and then, recognizing LaRayne’s phone number on the caller I.D., she grabbed the receiver.

  “LaRayne?”

  “Irene?”

  “Yes, it’s me!” Relief flooded through her. LaRayne could hear her!

  There was a pause and then LaRayne said, “Hello?”

  “LaRayne? Can you hear me?”

  “Hello? Irene?”

  Relief fizzled away. Disappointment washed over her, so strong her knees buckled and she grabbed the counter for support.

  The line went dead. LaRayne had hung up.

  Slowly, Irene replaced the receiver, numb with shock.

  The phone rang again. Irene let the answering machine pick up this time.

  “Hey, Irene. It’s LaRayne... I’ve left you some messages... well... you know... call or whatever.”

  Irene cleaned up the spilled drink, sweeping the broken glass into a dustpan and dumping it in the trash, and then mixed herself another. She wandered back to the hall and then back to the kitchen and finally to the living room where she dropped heavily onto the couch. She sipped her drink, not really tasting it. Then she spied her laptop across the room on a chair. She fetched it, firing it up with mounting excitement.

  Email. Yes, that’s it—email. I’ll email everyone and tell them what happened, she thought through a fog of mounting hysteria.

  Even as she thought it, dully watching the computer scroll through start-up screens, the “drunk emailing” incident of a few years ago—which had led to then-boyfriend Chase becoming ex-boyfriend Chase—came to mind. The part of her that was still thinking rationally pointed out that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to email anyone until she knew for certain what exactly was going on.

  You still don’t know what you want anyone to do, she thought. Call a doctor? Perform an exorcism? What, exactly, was the remedy here?

  She stared blankly at the computer screen. After thinking hard for a moment, she launched the Internet browser and typed “life after death” into the search field. Excellent! Now she was getting somewhere.

  The next thing she knew, she was blinking awake. Daylight streamed through the windows. She sat up, disoriented. Then the previous day’s events came flooding back.

  Searching the Internet had been a gigantic waste of time, revealing hundreds of websites on near-death experiences, none of which resembled, in the least, her current reality. The only thing she had learned was that almost universally everyone saw a white light, a tunnel, and even angels—except her. That seemed like an indicator that she maybe wasn’t dead after all.

  She groaned in frustration. She was no closer to finding an answer, and she had no idea what to do next.

  She stood up, her muscles, cramped after a night on the couch, protesting. She groaned again, this time from pain. She stretched muzzily, still not quite awake. On autopilot, she shuffled upstairs and brushed her teeth. She avoided looking in the mirror—she wasn’t really interested in its perspective on the situation. She wasn’t given to histrionics, but if she looked in it and didn’t see a reflection she would be forced to freak out.

  She climbed into the shower. She stood under the water, letting it run over her for a long time, her mind heavy and blank. She had no idea what to do next. Everything seemed so... uncertain.

  As she rubbed shampoo soothingly through her hair, a thought came to her.

  I can’t be the only dead person around. Not that I’m dead, she amended, but if I am... there must be others.

  She finished her shower in a rush, jumped out, and hastily threw on some clothes—barely pausing to dry off. She stopped just long enough to run a comb through her hair then sprinted for the front door where she slipped and slid through the lake of mail in the hall before emerging outside.

  Irene hesitated at the end of the walkway, unsure which way to go. She knew the neighborhood well—after all, she had grown up here—but she’d never gone ghost hunting before.

  She thought for a moment and then struck out in the opposite direction of her mother’s house, reasoning that she hadn’t noticed any ghost along that route yesterday. Her stomach swirled with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.

  As she walked, she could see jarring deviations from her childhood memories. The Bassetts had erected a swing set in their yard. The Gunds had cut down the giant maple tree. She couldn’t remember how many times Mrs. Gund had chased her and Becky out of that tree with a broom. Fresh sawdust ringed the massive stump, which looked raw and out of place, and laid bare the bay window, protruding from the front of the house like a wart.

  The Woodburys had painted their house green. Irene raised a hand in greeting as she passed Mrs. Woodbury watering her lawn. Mrs. Woodbury didn’t wave back. Irene let her hand fall, her buoyant mood suddenly evaporating.

  A few blocks later, her spirits lifted again when she saw, approaching from the opposite direction, a distinguished-looking man wearing an old-fashioned three-piece suit—the jacket reaching nearly to his knees—complete with waistcoat, pocket watch, and top hat. A faint blue glow surrounded him, and when she waved, he inclined his head ever so slightly to acknowledge her. He didn’t stop, however, and as he passed, the sound of his ebony walking stick striking the pavement at regular intervals faded into the distance.

  Everyone else on the street took no notice of her.

  Irene made a loop around the neighborhood, eventually circling back to her mother’s house. Across the street, her old babysitter, Mrs. Boine—whom Irene, as a girl, had delighted in torturing by purposely mispronouncing her name so that it sounded like “bone”—was sitting on her patio, shaded by a palatial table umbrella. Her ample figure was clad in a vivid muumuu—what she always referred to as a “housecoat”—of shockingly bright shades of purple and pink. Her short, straight, iron-gray hair looked the same as it had when Irene was a kid.

  Irene raised a hand in automatic greeting. To her surprise, Mrs. Boine waved back. Irene’s heart lur
ched then broke into a gallop. She darted across the street.

  “Mrs. Boine?”

  “Well, hello there, Irene! How are you, dear?” Mrs. Boine’s eyes, watery and blue behind her eyeglasses, lit up with delight. She had a flyswatter across her lap, like a scepter, and, with the Robin’s egg blue of the tiny bungalow behind her and the assorted children’s toys scattered around the yard like pebbles, she reminded Irene of the staged portraits of English royalty.

  “You can see me?” Irene clutched the waist-high slats of the white picket fence with both hands.

  “As clear as day. Same as you can see me.” Mrs. Boine said this as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

  Irene went limp as the tension drained out of her. “Oh thank God!” She sagged against the fence, holding onto it for support.

  “You’re not going... to... believe...” Irene trailed off. “Mrs. Boine, would it sound crazy if I said that it... well, it looked like you were sort of... glowing?”

  Mrs. Boine burst forth with a thin, high-pitched peal of laughter. Irene tried to swallow the lump of mounting dread that had risen to the back of her throat. “Mrs. Boine? Can I ask... are you... dead?”

  The old lady laughed again. “Well, I’ve been dead every day for the last two years, so I suppose I still am.”

  Irene’s hands clenched on the fence, the wood digging into her hands. “What? When did that happen? Mom never said anything.”

  The old lady waved a hand in the air. “Oh, well, a lot of fuss and bother about nothing.”

  Irene felt a twinge of dismay. How could I not know?

  Behind her, she heard the muffler of a passing car rattle as the car hit a large pothole.

  “Damnation!” the old woman cried. “Will they ever fix that?” Then she seemed to recollect herself and added, “Excuse my French.” She waved her hand again, this time beckoning Irene forward. “Why don’t you come on in and take a load off. Visit for a while. I’d love a bit of company.”

  Not sure what else to do, Irene accepted the offer. She stepped through the gate and started forward. “Oh, close the gate, dear. It drives my daughter crazy when it’s left open. She always blames the girls.”