by Terri Bruce
“Oh thank God!” Irene said, throwing her arms around Jonah.
“Er, get off?” He tried to disentangle himself from Irene’s embrace. Irene let go just as abruptly, pushing Jonah away to hold him at arm’s length.
“You disappeared!”
“When?” he asked, bewildered.
“Last time I saw you; you just vanished! Where did you go? You freaked me out.”
“Study Hall was over. I had to get to class.”
“Class?” Irene let Jonah go and sat back, examining him more closely. “It didn’t occur to me that you actually go to school and stuff.”
“Uh, yeah. ‘Course I do.”
“So you really aren’t dead?”
“Er, not technically?” It sounded like a question, rather than an answer, and Jonah suddenly had a guilty air about him.
“What does that mean, ‘not technically’? If you’re not dead, then how come you can see me?”
“Well, like I said, it’s kinda complicated...” he said evasively.
“What do you mean?”
“You say that a lot.”
Irene’s expression turned threatening.
“Okay, okay.” Jonah held up his hands. “It’s just that it’s going to sound weird. I... I kinda found this book. It’s all about, like, what happens when you die and stuff.”
“And?” She shook him a little, prodding him to continue.
Jonah shrugged and looked down at the floor, scuffing one foot against the other. “Well, there’s a spell in it that lets you visit the land of the dead,” he said in an embarrassed rush.
“A spell?” Irene’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What, you mean like magic? Are you on drugs?”
Jonah scowled, turned a delicate shade of rose-petal pink and he looked away, intent on scuffing one toe along the bottom edge of the couch. “It’s instructions for a transcendental meditation, a kind of astral projection, really.” He shrugged. “It’s like magic, and spell just sounds cooler.”
“Is any of that even English?”
Jonah frowned at her. “You don’t get out much, do you?”
“I think what you mean is, I don’t stay in much. Is this some kind of geek thing, like Dungeons and Dragons?”
“No! It just means I can separate my spirit from my body and when I do, I can see dead people.”
She stared at him, at a loss for words. Finally, she said, “You can... separate your... spirit... from... your body? Yeah, okay, pull the other one, kid.”
Jonah looked blank. “Other what?”
“My leg!” She stood up so suddenly she nearly knocked him over. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“No, I’m not,” he said earnestly. He looked hurt. She stared hard at him, trying to figure out if he was for real or not.
“Look, I really don’t think I’m dead.” She put a hand to her chest. “I can feel my heart beating. I’m breathing. I took a shower...”
Jonah put a hand to his own chest. “Yeah,” he said, clearly feeling all the same signs of life that she did. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s like when a chicken gets its head cut off but keeps running around for a while.”
Under her hand, her heart gave an odd, galloping lurch. “What, like I’m on borrowed time and then the juice is just going to run out and that’ll be it?”
Jonah looked alarmed, seemingly recognizing that he had just taken a giant misstep. “No,” he said hastily. “No, I meant, maybe it’s more like a memory... like your brain thinks you’re still alive and so it thinks your heart is beating and stuff.”
Irene thought this over for a moment, not convinced. Then she sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “I need a drink. Do you want something?”
Jonah’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “I’m thirteen!”
“I meant like a soda.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay.”
Irene went to the kitchen. She returned, holding a highball for herself and a can of Coke for him. Jonah had arranged himself on the edge of a white suede overstuffed chair and sat hunched over, hands clasped between his knees. She handed him the soda and then flopped back onto the couch.
She took a sip of her drink and thought for a moment, trying to make sense of everything he’d been saying. “So you’re not actually dead?”
“Er...” Jonah paused in the act of carefully lapping overflowing soda from the top of the can. He tried to divide his attention between answering Irene and preventing the soda from spilling over. “No.”
“So... what? You do this trans-meditation thing for... fun?”
“Uh... yeah?”
“And you found this... spell... in a book?”
“Yes.”
Irene got up and paced back and forth, edgy and restless. The entire conversation seemed so surreal, so strange. “And you said you just happened to find this book lying around somewhere?”
“Yeah, in the school library. It was just there.”
“You found this book in a school library?” Irene asked, incredulous once more. “I don’t... okay, I’ll bite. How the hell did it get there?”
Jonah jerked in his seat as if he’d been stung. His face turned fuchsia. “How the hell should I know?”
“Watch your mouth.”
Jonah looked murderous, as if he wanted to say something heated, but he compressed his lips into a thin line and said instead, “Look, did you want something?”
“Yeah, I want to know what’s going on! Suddenly only two people in the world can see me—one of which is you—both of whom say I’m dead. Except, I’m not dead!”
Jonah’s anger melted away and now he looked sad, his pale green-blue eyes wide with sympathy. “I’m really sorry.” He looked down and became intent on spreading a bead of soda around the top of the can.
It was the sympathy that did it. Her anger deflated and she flopped down on the couch, her legs suddenly as weak as jelly.
“How?” she cried. “Wouldn’t I know if I was dead? Wouldn’t I remember dying?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No! Nothing. Just waking up on the side of the road. You said something about a car accident, but I don’t remember it.”
Unbidden, the memory of floating in the beautiful blue-green light resurfaced, dancing before her eyes. She felt the crushing weight on her chest again and a wave of panic washed over her. She shook her head to dispel the images and took another long drink, draining her glass.
“You didn’t wake up in the cemetery?” he asked.
She stood up. “I need another drink. Do you want anything?”
She saw him glance surreptitiously at her glass. Then he shook his head. She went to the kitchen, mixed a rum and coke, and then returned to the living room. She began pacing once more.
“Okay, fine. Let’s say for the sake of argument that I am dead. What’s your book say about what’s happening to me? Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?”
“Uh, well, I don’t know. It’s mostly in some other language. I can’t read most of it.”
“So what you’re saying is you don’t actually know anything?”
Jonah bristled. “Hey, I know a lot of stuff. A lot more than most people!”
“Like, for instance...?”
“Okay, well, I know the word for Heaven in twenty-six languages. Heban, Heofan, Himil, Tian, Loka, Elysium, Yalu—”
Irene threw up her hands. “Great. Very helpful. That was just the information I was waiting for. Now it all makes sense.”
A red flush crept up Jonah’s neck. “You know, you’re really sarcastic.”
Irene’s shoulders sagged and she let her head fall back so she could stare at the ceiling while she counted to ten. In a more reasonable tone of voice she said, “Any description of where Heaven is or how to get there?”
“What makes you so sure you’re going to Heaven?” The words rushed out and he clearly regretted them as soon as he said them. He ducked behind his hair and focused intently on the top of his soda can again.
Irene stared at him. Frostily, she said, “Why would you think I wasn’t?”
“I just meant,” Jonah mumbled, “that Heaven usually comes later. First, the dead have to go through judgment or a sort of waiting room—”
“Nice save,” she said dryly.
The bit of Jonah’s ears visible through his hair turned maroon but he continued, “...like the Asphodal Meadows, Hel, Misvan Gatu—”
“Wait... Hell?” Her heart thumped uncertainly.
“Er, with one ‘l.’ That’s the Norse version of purgatory.”
She contemplated this for a moment. Then she sat down, willing herself to be calm and logical about the situation. “So you’re saying I’m in purgatory? Well, how long does that last?”
“No. Actual purgatory also happens after you’ve been judged. It’s one of the three possible outcomes of judgment, along with Heaven and Hell.”
“That would be the double-l version of Hell?”
Jonah nodded, though he clearly thought she was being sarcastic again. “Anyway, it’s where the people who haven’t been very bad, but who haven’t been very good either, go until they’re good enough to enter Heaven.”
“Okay, whatever,” she answered. “The point is, I’m not seeing any kind of hall of judgment or anything. So what am I supposed to do?”
“Well, you have to get to the land of the dead first. You know, Hades, Mictlan, Olam Haba—”
“That is really annoying!”
“Sor-ree,” Jonah replied. “You asked.”
“Okay, wait. What do you mean I have to get to the land of the dead? Isn’t this the land of the dead?”
Jonah shrugged. “I think this is still the land of the living.”
“What do you mean, ‘you think’?”
“Well it’s not like I’ve done this before.”
Irene blinked. “What do you mean by that?”
Jonah shrugged and slurped his soda, avoiding Irene’s eyes.
“Jonah?”
Irene watched with amusement as the tips of his ears turned pink again. It was kind of funny the way they went from white to red and back again like a mood ring.
At that moment, the phone rang. They both froze, the strident ringing growing more insistent. The machine picked up and the muffled sound of her mother’s voice floated in from the kitchen. In the background, the refrigerator cycled on, the mechanical hum unnaturally loud against their silence.
They remained frozen until the shrill beeping of the answering machine alerting Irene to the fact that she had a new message began to sound.
Jonah shifted in his seat and then answered the question Irene had posed before the phone rang. “Well...” he said, “technically, you’re the first dead person that I’ve met.”
“I...” Irene cut herself off and snapped her mouth shut. She breathed out slowly through her nose, once more needing to count to ten before continuing. “I thought you knew all about this?”
“I do!” he protested. “I know everything there is to know about the afterlife. I’ve read every book there is.”
Irene snorted. “Yeah, I saw them in your room. It was kind of creepy.”
“Speaking of creepy... how did you get into my house?”
“Me? How about you? How did you get in here by the way?”
“The front door was unlocked,” he said heatedly, slapping the can of soda down on the table, “and you invited me.” A small geyser of dark liquid shot out of the can, puddling on the beautiful maple surface.
“Oh crap! I’m sorry,” he cried, using the edge of his T-shirt to frantically wipe at the liquid.
Irene jumped to her feet. “Christ! Be careful! That stains you know.” She ran for paper towels and returned a second later with a handful.
“I said I was sorry,” Jonah muttered as Irene brushed him aside to mop up the spill.
“Whatever.”
As she wiped up the mess, her mind returned to what Jonah had been saying earlier about the land of the dead and the different types of possible afterlives. If it was true, then there was an afterlife—an actual Great Beyond—somewhere out there. She just had to find it. She left the room to dispose of the paper towels and wash her hands, her mind working furiously.
She returned to the living room, her lips pursed in deep thought. “Okay, so say I wanted to get to... the land of the dead. I don’t suppose you know where the tunnel is?”
Jonah frowned. “Tunnel? What do you mean?”
“You know... when you die you see a white light guiding you to a tunnel, right?”
Jonah’s frown deepened and he shook his head. “No, it always starts by crossing a river—over a bridge or by boat. I’ve never seen anything about a tunnel.”
Irene quirked an eyebrow. “Are you kidding? It’s always a tunnel. You know, in the movies ‘follow the light, Timmie!’ That kind of thing? Tell me this sounds familiar.”
“Huh.” Jonah seemed puzzled. “Yeah, that’s weird...” He frowned up at the ceiling, as if thinking hard. “I know what you mean but none of the stuff I’ve read says anything about that.”
“Well maybe you’ve been reading the wrong stuff.”
Jonah gave her an exasperated look. “Hardly. I’ve read everything there is.”
“Yeah, I saw the books in your room. It’s a little creepy.”
“You said that already.”
“Yeah, well it’s worth repeating. It was really creepy.”
Jonah turned pink. “I needed the information for a report for school.”
“A report? On what?”
“Burial rituals of the ancient world. It was for history.”
“That’s when you found your magic book?”
Jonah nodded. Irene studied him through narrowed eyes. Jonah saw her scrutiny and shrugged. “I just found the stuff interesting is all. It’s actually pretty cool. Like, did you know that most cultures bury objects with their dead that they think they’ll need in the afterlife, like money and swords and food and stuff, and—”
“Jonah! Focus. Tunnel. Location.”
He scowled again, but then, just as quickly, his look turned thoughtful. “Okay, well, maybe the tunnel or the bridge or whatever is in the cemetery? Because normally that’s where you’d be, right? You’d die and get buried and so it would make sense for it to be right there, the first thing you see when you wake up.”
Irene stood up. “Well, okay, Einstein, that’s an easy enough theory to test out. Greenlawn is just up the road.”
Jonah looked surprised. “What, now?” He looked out the window. “It’s dark out.”
“I thought this was just the kind of thing teenage boys loved,” she said, a challenge in her voice.
He sighed and stood up. “You’re like a two year old, you know that?”
She glared at him and then headed for the hall. She stuffed her feet into her sneakers and grabbed her keys from the table. She held the door open for him and then followed him outside.
It was cool but pleasant out, and a gentle breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees. As the days grew shorter, the nights were growing chillier. They were still almost two months from the first hard frost, but the gentle beginnings of fall were already in the air.
They set off toward Sargent Street, a wide, tree-lined avenue that would take them straight to the cemetery. Irene shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms. Jonah looked at her. “Do you want to go back and get a jacket?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not actually cold. Just...” She wasn’t sure what she was. She felt like she should be cold—should, in fact, be creeped out and afraid to the point of knee-shaking terror. She was caught in a limbo-like existence—not really dead but not really alive—and now she was visiting a cemetery—at night—looking for some kind of tunnel that would take her... where, exactly?
She didn’t feel anything, though. She was just sort of numb, like none of this was real, and that bothered her, too. She didn’t want to be scared, but she didn’t want to be an
emotionless automaton, either. Perhaps this was shock. Maybe she just needed time for it all to sink in.
They were walking parallel to the cemetery now, a dense copse of oak trees shielding the graves from view. Irene turned off the road and cut through the woods. A minute later, they stepped onto the neat grass lawn of the cemetery.
The graves stretched out before them, tidy, solemn, and still. A clear, bright moon shone high overhead, which was lucky as neither one of them had thought to bring a flashlight.
Irene remembered the last time she had been here—a bright and sunny day in June ten years ago when they had buried her father. The sun had seemed like an insult; shouldn’t it be raining when you buried someone? As much as she hated a clichéd, syrupy scene, she had felt a sharp resentment at the ludicrous sunshine.
She paused to look out over the rows of tombstones. She had no idea where her father’s grave was. They all looked alike, arranged as if they were troops in formation. She shivered. At some point, they were going to put her in a place like this—cold, orderly, suffocatingly uniform—and then they would forget about her. She swallowed and hastily pushed the thought aside. With luck, she wouldn’t be around when that happened.
Jonah had kept walking and was wandering down a row of graves, looking at the headstones. She followed. “So, any ideas?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I guess we just look around.” He pointed at a headstone. “Some of these are pretty interesting.”
Irene made a non-committal noise.
“You know, it’s really interesting how different the beliefs are about how to bury people,” he continued. “The ancient Egyptians mummified people but Jewish people don’t embalm their dead at all. Hindus and Buddhists cremate their dead, but the Baha’i forbid it.”
They had reached the end of the row. They turned and walked back down the next one. “Did you know it took anywhere from fifty-three to more than two hundred days to mummify someone?” he asked.