Hereafter (A Reaper Novella)

by Snyder, Jennifer

  Jet moved from my side to the window. “So what are we supposed to do, go through each little scene until we meet up with her?”

  “Something like that.” Val flopped down across the dusty bed and began playing with her hair. “This moment was pivotal—a moment that led up to her suicide. There were a series of moments like this in her life that occurred and led her to the point of suicide. It’s those moments that make up her personal cycle, her very own Purgatory.”

  “She’s here somewhere, in this room?” I shifted my eyes around the room, looking past the poignant gloominess and focusing solely this time on searching for my mother. She wasn’t here. We were the only ones in this dust-filled room.

  “No, we’ll catch up to her eventually. We’ve just entered her loop and have to make the right choices in order to catch up—which is why you have me, a Tracker, to make the right ones for you.”

  I shook my head in confusion. “I don’t understand. If I’m waiting for you to make a choice and tell me which way we need to go next, then why are you sitting on the bed doing nothing?”

  I couldn’t be sure if it was my own fear of not catching up with my mother in time before she Crossed Over that caused the iciness of anxiety to twist my mind and panic to beat steadily inside of me, or if it was simply Purgatory messing with me again. Either way, I felt as if I had to get out of this room. Now.

  “Because there’s nothing I can do until we see what this moment is. We’ve been entrapped in her cycle,” Val answered, the toe of her boot tapping against the metal bed frame. “And now we’re stuck until this moment plays out.”

  The icy hands of anxiety twisted into burning hands of horror. It flamed within my soul as Val’s last words looped through my mind on repeat and birthed more concerns. How long would my mother’s cycle be? How long would it take us to catch up to her? Would it be long enough for Purgatory to corrupt our souls like Jet had mentioned before?

  I crossed the room, headed toward the door and jiggled its knob only to find that it was locked. I spun around the room, searching for another way out, but there was nothing besides the window that Jet stood in front of.

  He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, his frustration of the situation matching mine. I watched as he reached out and attempted to open the window he’d been gazing out of. It wouldn’t budge. Val had been right; we were stuck. We were caged in.

  “How long are we supposed to wait?” Jet asked, irritation lacing each of his words heavily.

  A noise outside the door silenced us all before Val had a chance to answer. It was a tiny voice, a little girl, and she sounded as if she were arguing with someone.

  “When I tell you to wash those dishes, I mean wash them—get in the cracks, make them sparkle!” an older woman shouted. “Since you refuse to listen…you’re going to spend your timeout in here.” Rage dripped from the woman’s words.

  “Please, no, Mrs. Willard! Please, don’t make me go in there alone! Don’t lock me inside there again. I promise I’ll clean the rest of the dishes good!” The little girl sobbed. “I promise!”

  “Hush it, Salene, and get inside!” the woman insisted harshly. She jerked the door open to the bedroom we stood in. “I gave you your warning yesterday. Today, you’ll spend fifteen minutes in timeout!”

  My hands flew to my mouth as I realized who the little girl was—my mother. The name Mrs. Willard danced through my mind until I remembered why it sounded so familiar. It had been the name of my mother’s meanest babysitter. Glancing around the room again, I struggled to remember what it was my mother had said about this house and the time when Mrs. Willard had been her babysitter. I couldn’t remember anything. Maybe it was because she had never said anything in particular, only that the house had been just as horrible as her babysitter.

  I watched as my mother’s tiny six-year-old-looking frame was flung across the threshold and into the room with unnecessary force. The door was slammed shut behind her and locked from the outside. Ebony hair swayed around her shoulders as her bright green eyes, wide with terror, searched the room.

  “Can she see us?” I asked Val in a faint whisper.

  “No,” Val answered, her voice nearly as low as mine. She’d sat up on the bed and froze in place, the same as Jet and I had.

  My mother’s tiny feet carried her to the window Jet stood at. He shifted out of her way, pressing his back against the window. She passed him, oblivious to his presence, and latched onto the chair in the corner. She tugged, moving it until it was directly in front of the window. Jet backed away slowly, his eyes never leaving her. I continued watching her, unmoving and completely mesmerized by the sight of her as a child, as she sat and gazed out the window. Her rapid breath fogged up the little patch of glass in front of her face.

  “I’m happy. I’m safe. I’m happy. I’m safe,” she repeated. “I’m outside playing in the garden.”

  Jet moved to my side just as the temperature of the room dropped drastically, its iciness seeping into my soul. My mother pulled her tiny legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them tightly as though she could feel the temperature shift as well. She buried her face into her knees, her silky hair creating a shield between her and whatever it was about this room that frightened her.

  “I’m happy. I’m safe. I’m happy. I’m safe,” she continued to chant at a faster pace now, her warm breath slipping between her strands of hair and coiling up into the air before disappearing.

  A shadowy figure became visible directly behind her. It was a tall man dressed in strange clothes. He loomed over her small frame with a twisted smile on his face. As he extended his arm, splaying out his bony fingers covered in dirt to reach for her, I again felt the spasms of fear and panic twist my soul even tighter. As soon as the figure touched her, my mother grew still and silent. The only sound that filled the room was her labored breathing.

  “Please leave me alone,” she whispered in a tiny voice.

  “What have you done today, Elizabeth?” the man asked, his voice rough and loud. Its harshness bounced off the walls and sent a shiver through me.

  “Nothing, I haven’t done anything.” She tilted her head up toward the man. “And I’m not Elizabeth. My name is Salene.” Her voice quivered when she spoke.

  The man reached out and gripped her upper arm, hard. Her startled scream echoed along the walls, but as his grip tightened, it faded to nothing but a tiny whimper.

  “Is this real? Did this really happen to my mother?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. This was insane! No wonder she had been afraid of what she was. If all of her encounters were like this one, then she had every reason to be.

  Val nodded, her face twisted into terror. “Yes, this was a moment that actually happened to her.”

  “But I thought souls couldn’t hurt you,” I insisted, confused and horrorstricken as I watched the man jerk my mother from where she sat by her forearm and onto the hard floor.

  “They can if they concentrate hard enough…or in his case, if they’re angry enough,” Jet replied.

  I watched my mother struggle to be free of the evil soul’s grasp. She kicked, screamed, and thrashed about, but it did no good. His grip was too tight. The man flipped her over onto her stomach and a brown leather belt appeared in his right hand from thin air. My fear became palpable around me. It took form and buried itself in my chest directly where my heart would be.

  “We can’t just stand here and watch this happen!” I took a step closer to where my mother wrestled with the man whom I thought should be labeled as a demon. “We have to do something!” I could taste the fear that had nestled in my chest on the tip of my tongue. It coursed through my body, slowly shifting from ice to fire as it quickly turned to rage due to the hopelessness I felt in this situation.

  “It’s done. This is in the past. There’s nothing we could do to stop this,” Val insisted.

  “What did I tell you about acting out, Elizabeth?” the man shouted through gritted teeth. “You be
tter learn to mind!”

  “Please don’t! I’m not Elizabeth!” My mother bawled as tears streamed down her chubby little face.

  I darted from Jet’s side and across the room to grab the man’s arm and make him stop. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t latch on. My hand went right through him. The belt came down as though there had been no interference by me whatsoever and cracked across my mother’s tiny back repeatedly. Her cries and screams filled the room, bouncing off the walls and searing into my soul. My hands flew to my mouth, and I squeezed my eyes shut. My body jerked with each cry that came from her and each crack of the leather whipping across her tiny back.

  “Hush, girl, that’s enough of your bellowing! Ten more minutes added to timeout!” old Mrs. Willard shouted from somewhere outside the door.

  My knees trembled and I fell to the floor. This was one of the reasons why my mother had been so afraid of being a Link. This was why she was so afraid of what she could see. I didn’t blame her. In fact, I understood. I stared at the little girl curled into the fetal position before me, her face red and blotchy with tears, her back slashed with welts…and cried.

  It was the first time I had cried since my death. The wetness slipping down my cheeks had startled me at first, but then I realized it was just another part of Purgatory, another part of its torment—the way it allowed you to feel, the way it gave in to your most horrible emotions and magnified them.

  “Let’s go. The moment is over,” Val said, her voice snapping me out of my darkened state.

  Jet reached a hand out to me and I took it. “I’m so sorry you had to see that,” he whispered, his expression slack and his eyes dulled by sadness.

  I didn’t speak. Instead, I allowed him to help me up and curled myself against his chest. His hands rubbed the length of my back as he pressed me to him tighter.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I finally said, gazing up into his sapphire eyes I loved so much.

  “I’m glad I’m here, too.” He stroked my cheek with his thumb and kissed the top of my forehead.

  “Come on, we don’t have time for this,” Val shouted as she pushed open the window and disappeared through it.

  Jet and I followed, carefully maneuvering around my mother’s mangled, tiny frame. Glancing back once more as I straddled the windowsill, I took in my mother’s tearstained face and felt the need to see her again, the real her, possess me completely. I slipped through the window with more determination than ever to find her so that I could tell her I understood now. That I got why she did what she did.

  CHAPTER NINE

  As soon as all three of us were through, the window disappeared behind us, fading into a solid wall, and I noticed we stood in another bedroom. This one was brighter, cleaner. It had white wallpaper with yellow and pink flowers. A twin-size bed with a pink quilt stood in the center of the room, a small toy chest beside it. Two more things caught my attention as I glanced around the room. One: There were two windows and two doors visible, which meant four possible exits. And two: My mother sat in the far corner, slightly older than what she had been in the previous memory, playing with the dollhouse, alone.

  “There are four ways out this time. How will we know which one is right?” I asked Val as I glanced around the room once more.

  “Oh, I’ll know, trust me,” she said as she stepped farther into the room and closer to my mother.

  Jet rubbed his hands through his hair. “God, I hope this one isn’t as awful as the last.”

  “You and me both,” I said, staring directly at my mom, watching as she moved around the tiny furniture.

  An image of a little girl with blond ringlets framing her face blinked in and out directly beside my mother, until it became solid. I noticed how unfazed my mother seemed to be by the little girl’s presence, how the temperature of the room never dropped, but remained the same, and how tiny the little girl seemed to be in comparison to my mother.

  “Carol Ann, I told you yesterday after what happened I couldn’t play with you anymore,” my mother said, her eyes never lifting from the dollhouse furniture she held in her hand. “I heard mommy and daddy talking last night. They’re going to call a doctor and have him look at me now.”

  The little blond girl, Carol Ann, reached out and grabbed two of the doll figures and began making them prance around the tiny little kitchen of the dollhouse.

  “No, Carol Ann, you’re not allowed to play with me anymore. You’re not allowed around me because you didn’t tell me my mommy was there yesterday and she heard me talking to you again. She got scared and now she doesn’t look at me the same. You made her afraid of me Carol Ann.” My mother reached out and jerked the dolls from Carol Ann’s tiny hands. “I want you to go away now and never come back!”

  I continued staring at the two little girls as the scene unfolded before me, unsure of what scared me most—the fact that Carol Ann never talked, or the murderous glare that entered her eyes as soon as my mother took away the dolls.

  “Go, Carol Ann. I want to be alone today. I’m trying to be good so that mommy won’t take me to see that doctor, but if she hears me talking to you again, then she’ll take me for sure.”

  The temperature shifted in the room. My mother’s breath coiled from between her lips and up into the air like wisps of smoke. Her eyes grew wide as she finally shifted her gaze directly to Carol Ann. Jet took my hand and laced his fingers between mine. The fear that had centered in my chest right where my heart used to be began pumping in a steady rhythm, reminiscence of my heartbeat.

  “I’m sorry, Carol Ann. Please don’t be mad at me,” my mother pleaded. “I’ll play with you, I promise. We just can’t talk. That’s all.”

  Carol Ann tucked her legs beneath her, her big brown eyes remaining fixated on my mother. “Don’t ever tell me to go away again, Salene.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise?” Carol Ann asked, her lips twisting into a smile.

  My mother nodded. “Promise.”

  Carol Ann inched closer to my mother, her odd smile never wavering.

  “Here,” my mother held out the dolls she had taken.

  Carol Ann reached out a tiny hand for them. “This is so you never forget what I’m like when I’m angry…so you never tell me to go away again.”

  Instead of grabbing for the little dolls, Carol Ann gripped onto my mother’s hand and sunk her teeth into her wrist. My mother’s bloodcurdling scream bounced off the walls and crashed into me. I bolted from where I stood, ripping my hand from Jet’s and rushing to her side, remembering too late that there was nothing I could do and that this was another memory from the past, a memory that had already taken place.

  Carol Ann released her grip on my mother’s wrist, and I saw the damage that she had caused—how she had bitten her so hard that it had broken the skin and droplets of blood rolled down the side and splashed onto the white carpet, staining it.

  “I can’t take much more of this,” I said louder than necessary. “How many more of these do we have to go through?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” Val said, her violet eyes flashing like little strobe lights as she felt with her hands against the window, before moving on to what would be the closet door. “But I can tell you that we’re getting closer to her. I can feel it.”

  I shifted my gaze back to my mother, watching as she held her bleeding wrist to her chest and rocked back and forth, whimpering in pain while Carol Ann laughed. She lunged forward to bite her again and instinctively, I moved to stop her, but Jet’s arms were wrapped around my waist in an instant, holding me back.

  “You can’t do anything to stop it, so don’t feed into it,” Jet said, his lips brushing against my ear.

  He was right. All I was doing was fueling Purgatory with my emotions. I was feeding it.

  “Over here,” Val said, motioning for us to join her next to the door at the far end of the room.

  “C’mon, maybe she’ll be at the next one,” Jet insisted as he tugged on me, forcing
me toward Val and away from the horrific scene of my mother being attacked.

  Bitter-tasting tears streamed down my cheeks as Val opened the door and stepped through its threshold into solid whiteness. I didn’t know how my mother, being as young as she was, had managed to handle all that she had in her life.

  “I don’t know how she went through all of this,” I said with a sniffle. I shook my head. “I couldn’t.”

  “Yes, you could. You’re strong just like her,” Jet said, his eyes penetrating through me. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

  “Come on, we don’t have all day,” Val insisted as she started at us from inside the doorway.

  “Let’s go,” Jet said stepping forward and pulling me along.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A sterile smelling hospital hallway stood on the other side. Sea foam green walls with a dingy, peeling white chair rail caught my attention first. Then, the white and gray marbled flooring came, and an extra hospital bed entirely empty except for crisp white sheets and a folded blanket the color of puke sitting at the end. The year or time of day was unknown, but I found myself immediately beginning to search the long hall for my mother.

  “There,” I said, pointing to a young girl who looked to be about fourteen standing outside someone’s room. She was dressed in a pink and white candy striper outfit and carrying a pitcher of ice water. “That’s my mother.”

  Val walked ahead of us, glancing around as though she could see something I couldn’t. “We aren’t that far behind in her cycle. Your mother’s trace is faint, but it’s still here.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  Val glanced at me, her eyes flashing a slight bit faster. “Souls leave a trace—an energy—behind. Something that is very distinct to who they were. I can see and feel it. It’s almost like being synesthetic in a way.”