Hereafter

by Terri Bruce

  Irene latched the gate and then took a seat. She settled herself on the edge of a brown and maroon striped cushion and braced her arms, hands on knees. She wanted to ask a million questions at once and wasn’t sure where to start.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised to see you here,” Mrs. Boine said companionably. “I knew something was going on. The police were at your mother’s house a few days ago, but since I didn’t see an ambulance or nothing, I knew it wasn’t anything to do with her.”

  Irene blinked. “A few days ago? What do you mean?”

  Mrs. Boine clucked in sympathy. “Oh well, it’s a shock at first.” She patted Irene’s knee. “So what happened? Not drugs, I hope.”

  “No, of course not!” Irene had forgotten that Mrs. Boine had a flare for the lurid. “Nothing happened. I was out with my girlfriends just last night.”

  Mrs. Boine patted Irene’s knee again. “It isn’t anything to be ashamed of, Irene. It’s got to happen to us all sooner or later.”

  Irene felt numb, not sure how to feel about Mrs. Boine’s words. She watched impassively as a car slowly trundled down the narrow street, swerving unsuccessfully to avoid the pothole. A scraping sound accompanied the rattling of the muffler.

  Mrs. Boine twitched with irritation. “Damnation!”

  Irene sighed. “I don’t understand. Suppose we are dead. Isn’t there supposed to be a tunnel or a white light or something? You know, angels and harps and all that? Where’s Heaven?”

  Mrs. Boine held up her hands in self-defense. “Hold on, hold on. Goodness gracious, Irene. You always did get so worked up about things.”

  “I’m not worked up!” Irene cried.

  Mrs. Boine reached out and patted Irene’s hand. “There, there,” she said, as if Irene were six. Irene felt a long-ago teenage need to grind her teeth, stamp her feet, and slam doors welling up within her.

  “Don’t I always tell you that things will work out? And don’t they always manage to find a way to?”

  Irene bit back the scathing retort that sprang to her lips. With as much self-control as she could muster, she said instead, “Okay, fine, you’re right. I’m not panicking. See? I’m fine.”

  Mrs. Boine smiled in delight. “That’s my girl. Such a trooper. Didn’t even cry when your dad died. Oh, I remember that day like it was yesterday. Such a sad day. You were so brave, supporting your mum and all—”

  Irene had no interest in revisiting that particular memory, so she cut in, saying, “Okay, so tell me this: where are all the dead people? Shouldn’t this place be wall to wall dead people?”

  At that moment, the front door of Mrs. Boine’s house opened and two little girls in long pigtails pelted down the stairs, leaving the door hanging ajar.

  “Grandma, Grandma,” they cried, tumbling across the lawn, “push us! Push us!”

  “Oh, they want their buggies,” Mrs. Boine said, her face going soft with fond indulgence.

  Each girl threw herself onto a three-wheeled toy—the preschooler version of a tricycle—and continued to cry for Mrs. Boine like a chorus of baby birds at feeding time.

  “Okay, I’m coming.” The old woman heaved herself out of her chair.

  Before she could reach the children, though, the silhouette of a woman appeared in the open front door of the house. “Girls? What are you doing? Get in here.”

  “Grandma’s going to push us!” the girls cried in unison.

  “You know you’re not allowed in the yard when I’m not there. Get in here this instant!”

  The girls reluctantly complied, climbing off the “buggies” and dragging themselves back to the house, whining, begging, and pleading the entire way. The front door closed with a decided snap.

  With a heavy grunt, Mrs. Boine reseated herself. Irene gave her an inquiring look. The old lady beamed. “My grandbabies.”

  “They can see you?”

  “See? No, but they know I’m here.”

  “How do you know they know you’re here?”

  Mrs. Boine didn’t seem in the least bothered by the incredulity in Irene’s voice. “They talk to me and leave me little presents. See here...” She drew a wilted dandelion from her pocket and held it up for Irene’s inspection, beaming as if it were a lump of gold. “I tuck them in and sing them to sleep every night. Oh, they know I’m here alright.”

  “What about your daughter?”

  Mrs. Boine set the flower down and then waved a dismissive hand, her smile disappearing under a heavy-browed frown. “Oh, Gloria was always too stubborn by half. Thinks the girls have too much imagination.” She said the word as if it were something catching. “It’s a damn shame how the living only see what they want to see, but that’s life, I suppose.”

  Mr. MacKenzie appeared in his yard, closely inspecting his lawn and seeming not to like what he saw. Mrs. Boine raised a hand in greeting. “Yooo-hooo!” she called. Mr. MacKenzie didn’t notice.

  Mrs. Boine dropped her hand with a wistful sigh. “That man,” she said with a regretful shake of her head, as if she deeply pitied Mr. MacKenzie.

  Irene was still thinking of Mrs. Boine’s daughter. “Well, can’t you just write Gloria a note or something? Provide irrefutable proof that you’re still here?”

  Mrs. Boine looked at Irene over the rim of her glasses. “Let me give you some advice, dear. Don’t upset the living and they won’t upset you.”

  Irene shook her head. “There has to be a way to make people believe that we’re here. I can’t believe that I’m just... stuck. That I... I just have to hang around... forever... doing nothing.”

  Mrs. Boine gave Irene another disapproving look. “There’s plenty to be doin’. Who’s gonna watch over your mother now that you’re gone?”

  “My mother is just going to have to learn to take care of herself for once,” Irene snapped without thinking and then instantly wished she could take back the words.

  Mrs. Boine’s face twisted in an affronted pucker. “Oh, well... if you don’t have anything to keep you here, then I suppose you’ll be going off to the city to live again... or going off to look for your angels and harps and whatnots.”

  “Well, if there’s somewhere else to go, why wouldn’t we leave? Why would anyone hang around here?”

  Mrs. Boine looked at Irene as if she’d lost her mind. “Why would I leave? I’ve got everything I want right here. This house has been my home for fifty years, and now Gloria and the girls live here. I would never dream of leaving.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Mrs. Boine seemed very certain that both of them were dead. She also seemed very certain that hanging around as a ghost was perfectly natural.

  Irene climbed to her feet. Mrs. Boine looked surprised. “You’re not going, are you?”

  “Yeah, I have... stuff... to do,” Irene finished lamely, realizing that she didn’t actually have anything to do.

  “Well, don’t be a stranger, Irene.”

  A car bounced down the street. Irene heard Mrs. Boine swear as she closed the gate behind her.

  Four

  Well, she had managed to confirm that she wasn’t the only person stuck in this limbo-like state, but she wasn’t sure where that left her.

  She passed a faded young woman—surrounded by a blue glow—standing on the sidewalk, a frozen tableau of wistfulness as she gazed at an old yellow colonial. She looked like an old photograph bleached by the sun, so worn and pale she was nearly translucent. She wore a slim, empire-waisted dress and her colorless hair, cascading in unbound curls, fell to her waist. She turned her wide, faded, green eyes to Irene.

  “They won’t let me in,” she said. The woman spoke with such sadness Irene felt her own heart constrict with pity. She dropped her eyes and hurried on, feeling embarrassed and ill at ease all of a sudden.

  She had a sudden image of spending her days taking unseen care of her mother until Deborah also died and joined Irene in the afterlife. Irene shuddered at the thought.

  If she was to believe Mrs. Boine, this
was it. There was no bright light, no pearly gates, no harps and halos. Of all the possible outcomes of dying that she had been led to believe—including the belief that there was no life after death—none of them had been quite this... ordinary. Certainly, no one had ever said Irene would have to spend all of eternity with her mother for company.

  She became conscious of the fact that she had stopped walking and was standing before a plain white house with forest green shutters—the kind of modest, run-of-the-mill house she had so desperately wanted as a kid. It didn’t look familiar. She studied the neat exterior, trying to figure out what had made her stop. She noticed the name on the mailbox—Johnson.

  Johnson. Johnson. Why does that seem familiar?

  She remembered the tall, scrawny boy from the day before. Hadn’t he said his name was Johnson and that he lived in the neighborhood? She felt a flutter of uncertainty. He’d been a weird, annoying kid, true, but on the other hand, he did seem to know what was going on. More importantly, he could see her.

  She bit her lip. It was really galling to think her ability to figure out what came next rested entirely in the hands of a fourteen-year-old, but no other resources were coming to mind.

  “Come on, Irene,” she told herself. “Put on your big girl pants. Other people manage to get through death on their own.”

  Still, she hesitated. What could it hurt to pick the kid’s brain?

  She headed up the walk to the front door. A tawny yellow cat—the color of old gold—lay stretched out, sunning itself in the front yard. As she approached, the cat opened a lazy eye and regarded her with suspicion. Never a fan of cats, she stuck out her tongue as she walked past. The cat closed its eye and went back to sleep.

  Her ex-boyfriend, Geoffrey, had once told her that she had “cat eyes.” She didn’t know what he’d meant. She’d thought maybe he meant the color or the shape, but since she had wide, expressive brown eyes—rather than slanted, enigmatic green ones—it hadn’t really made sense. Later, she had learned he hated cats—thought them untrustworthy—and if they hadn’t already been broken up, that would have done it.

  As expected, the front door was locked.

  Shouldn’t I be able to walk through doors and walls, now? she thought as she walked around to the back door, which was also locked. She bit her lip, thinking hard. She could always break a window, but that seemed extreme.

  An open first-floor window saved her from having to commit a random act of vandalism. It took some effort to get the screen off since it opened from inside the house. She had to bend back one corner so she could squeeze a hand in and slide the metal clips holding it in place off the screws. She tossed the screen to the ground, pushed open the window, and boosted herself up over the sill. As she wiggled inside and slid to the floor in an undignified heap, she was torn between laughing and crying at the absurdity of the situation. She stood up and dusted herself off.

  She was in the living room. Irene surveyed it with interest. Whoever had decorated it—she assumed Jonah’s mother—favored pastels and floral fabrics but sensible, affordable furniture. The overall impression was of a blue-collar French-country chic.

  A noise startled her and she turned to see a dowdy, middle-aged woman carrying a basket of laundry past the room. The woman had paused and was searching the area where Irene was standing with surprised eyes. Then, seemingly satisfied, she turned and continued on her way.

  Irene let out her breath. The woman had seen her—just for an instant, but she had seen her, Irene was sure. A couple of times she’d thought Jamaica had seen her, too, out of the corner of her eye. Perhaps Mrs. Boine had been right—the living could see the dead but chose not to.

  Curious, Irene followed the woman—who she assumed was Jonah’s mother—up the stairs to the second floor. Photos lined the wall all the way up, and Irene stopped to look at them. Overall, it looked like an ordinary happy family. Everyone was smiling, though Jonah always seemed on the periphery of each photograph, as if he was trying to sidle out of the shot. There appeared to be a sister, perhaps sixteen, who was very pretty and a bit of a vamp. In every photo she was striking a theatrically seductive or flirtatious pose.

  Irene suddenly realized she was snooping in someone else’s home and felt a prickle of discomfort. Now she understood why the afterlife was always described as being “elsewhere”—up in the sky or deep underground—and why people tried so hard to mark ghostly noises and moving objects up to seismic activity, tricks of the light, or UFOs. How would you ever feel comfortable again knowing there were invisible people about? It was bad enough to think that God was watching you everywhere you went—even in the bathroom—but what about complete strangers? Even worse, people you knew! Irene shivered. She definitely did not want Grammie trailing her to bars and watching her random hook-ups.

  She hurried upstairs, anxious to find Jonah and leave.

  The woman was in a large bedroom to her left—Irene took this to be the master bedroom. Straight ahead was a bathroom. To her right stood two closed doors, one with a large, pink sign that said “Caitlin’s Room” circled by hearts; the other must be Jonah’s.

  Irene rapped softly on the door, hoping the mother didn’t hear. When no one answered, she pushed the door open and stepped inside to take a look.

  “Huh.”

  The room was fairly neat for a teenage boy. There were no piles of dirty clothes, trash, or dirty dishes. There were, however, piles of intermingled textbooks and paper covering the desk, the end of the bed, and sections of the floor that, on closer inspection, turned out to be book reports, neat rows of math calculations, and lists of vocabulary words. A jumble of model parts—perhaps a space station or perhaps a castle, it was hard to tell—covered the surface of a small table in the far corner. A poster—almost as tall as Jonah himself—of a purple and red dragon adorned one wall. The other walls, painted a quiet shade of beige, were blank.

  Something nagged at Irene. It seemed pretty clear that Jonah was a regular, living, breathing boy. So how could he see her when no one else could, and why hadn’t Jamaica been able to see him?

  The answer probably had something to do with the books crammed into a tall wooden bookcase. The shelves were so full the whole thing looked ready to burst. A History of Death: Burial Customs and Funeral Rites, from the Ancient World to Modern Times. The Enchantments of Judaism: Rites of Transformation from Birth Through Death. Death for Beginners. Hindu Death Rites. Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China. Good grief—there was definitely a theme here. Two additional sets of shelves were also crammed full of similar books.

  The one thing missing here was Jonah himself. Irene sighed and then picked up the small white-board hanging from the doorknob by a string. With the attached marker she wrote: “I need your help. Irene Dunphy.” She thought for a moment and then added her address. She looked around for a place to put the white-board where he would see it, but his mother would not. Finally, she replaced it on the doorknob, hoping he’d see the message written on it.

  She made her way back downstairs, skirting Jonah’s mother who was carrying another load of laundry upstairs, and let herself out the front door as quietly as she could.

  As she continued down the street, she saw an elderly man—living—walking a miniature poodle. What would I normally be doing at this time of day? she wondered. She guessed that it was around three o’clock.

  Three o’clock on a Tuesday... she’d be going to Starbucks for a latte.

  Then she would head back to her desk and power on through the work of designing and managing a major retailer’s e-commerce strategy until six or seven p.m. Then to the gym for two hours, and finally, out—either on a date or with friends for dinner and drinks. Well, she wouldn’t be doing any of that anymore.

  There had to be more dead people around here somewhere. It was impossible that a city as old and full of history as Salem could only produce three ghosts—well, four if she counted herself.

  She decided to head downtown—the old town hall,
historic Derby Wharf, the Witch House, and the old Federal style ship captain homes of Chestnut Street all seemed likely places to find dead people.

  However, three hours later, a street by street search of the historic district and the downtown had turned up only one ghost—a young man in an old-fashioned, knee-length vest, knee breeches with white stockings, and a strip of white linen tied round his neck who asked, “Have you seen Mr. Corey?” as he hurried past.

  As she walked through the Essex Street pedestrian mall, a sign advertising ghost tours and a museum of “supernatural curiosities” caught her eye.

  This ought to be interesting, she thought as she slipped through the door. Twenty-minutes later she left, torn between amusement and exasperation. The museum had just been a schmaltzy wax history museum meant for tourists. It didn’t contain anything about the actual afterlife.

  Her feet hurt, and she was officially out of ideas. The only thing she could think to do at this point was to go home and wait for the boy to show up.

  Five

  The next thing Irene knew, someone was shaking her. Her eyes flew open.

  “Hey, wake up!”

  Irene bolted upright, blinking hard. Jonah stepped back to avoid having his nose broken by her head.

  She had come home and had a drink... or two. Annoyed by the mail in the hall when she had walked in, she had scooped it all up, with no grace or care. She’d heard the crackle of paper colliding and the sound of cellophane being bent and mangled as she gathered it all into one big pile in her arms. Without looking at any of it, she had dumped it in the trash. After all, what was the point? As if she was going to pay the bills, and there wasn’t really any reason to follow fashion trends and celebrity gossip anymore. However, this simple act had left her feeling restless and bored and, to be honest, more alone than ever.

  She had taken her drink to the living room where she had turned on the TV. She’d tried watching some Judge Judy, but everyone’s problems had seemed so small and unimportant. On a trip to the kitchen she’d spied a half-read novel, forgotten in a stack of old magazines, and fished it out, intending to finally finish it. She must have fallen asleep reading it. Now the amber rays of light driving horizontally through the windows indicated that it was after five o’clock.