AFTERLIFE

by Marcus Sakey

  The building was a rehabbed packing plant, and the developers had left as much of the industrial chic as possible. The cement stairs were worn smooth and sloped in the center, the ceilings open to expose the floorboards of the rooms above. He climbed two flights, walked down the hall, and opened the door to 307.

  Flipped the switches, and the lights came on. Magic.

  The loft was the first home he’d ever owned, and he’d loved it with an intensity that surprised him, especially considering what he’d laid down to buy what was essentially a rectangle. The only separate room was the bath, partitioned off with drywall that looked out of place against the old brick. He shut the door and stood examining the place. The bookcases he’d built himself, the Murphy bed hidden behind curtains, the pressed tin panels he’d hung on the wall, the stack of bills on the counter; everything was the same. He supposed that would change soon. Change was what the world was about.

  Home sweet home.

  Brody set the gun on the coffee table, went to the bathroom, and turned the shower to max. He stood in the scalding water, leaning against the wall and thinking until his skin wrinkled and turned pink. Afterward he brushed his teeth and shaved, a week’s worth of beard clinging to the side of the basin. He put on his favorite jeans and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, opened a beer and flopped down on the couch, let his favorite album wash over him.

  Idly, he picked up the Colt. It was familiar in his hand; the 1911 remained a common sidearm in the Corps, and he’d carried one for years before transitioning to a Beretta M9. This one was stainless steel with a textured grip patterned like wood.

  The universe Isabella had presented was horrifying in every way. He was a realist, knew that the world was not a merciful place. Nature documentaries were far more existentially frightening than slasher films. But he’d never considered predation on this level. Self-proclaimed gods manufacturing atrocities to feed on the fear of the living? Only a deeply warped mind would dream of such a thing.

  But that wasn’t what he was focusing on. He’d always been good at compartmentalization, and in the shower he’d started packing away the distractions to focus on the most pertinent piece of information.

  Claire was still out there.

  She was dead, yes. Here and in the echo. But as Isabella had pointed out, death was relative. Claire had simply moved further down the chain of worlds—and she could be pulled back up. That wasn’t speculation; all the proof he needed was to be sitting in his loft, warm from the shower, listening to music. Killing Simon and absorbing the energy Edmund had imbued him with had been enough to hurtle Brody back to life. Isabella had done it on will alone, when Edmund betrayed her. The boundary wasn’t impregnable. It was just a matter of power.

  Power like that in the creepy necklace in his pocket. The piece of Edmund’s soul. In theory, he could use it to return her to life. All he had to do was cross back, journey to the plains of shadow, find Claire before she disappeared, and then use the soul of a five-hundred-year-old serial killer to bring them both back to life, all while avoiding the notice of the self-made gods that had stalked the afterlife for centuries. Simple.

  Brody released the magazine from the pistol. Five rounds left after the three he’d fired.

  Over the speakers, Jeff Mangum sang how dad would dream of all the different ways to die, each one a little more than he would dare to try. Brody swallowed cold beer. God it felt good to be alive. How had he ever taken it for granted?

  This was a stolen moment. He knew that. He’d managed to claw himself back to the living world, yes. But not to his own life. To the world, he was dead. Soon someone would come and empty his loft, hire cleaners and painters and put the place up for sale. In a matter of weeks this would be someone else’s home.

  Generally he favored the truth as a strategy, but he couldn’t see that working here. He was dead, his original body in a freezer drawer or a coffin. Not like he could just explain what had happened, either. It had been cruel to tell the detective the truth; the guy had only been doing his job, and Brody had set him up for some dark midnights.

  Of course, there were people who wouldn’t care about the reasons, so long as he was back. Mom and Dad, for example. He couldn’t even imagine the pain they were in. He could reach out to them, tell them the truth. They’d be freaked out, sure, but also overjoyed. When it came down to it, what parent gave a shit about anything except that their child was alive?

  He’d have to build a whole new life. No money; his bank accounts had probably already been frozen and credit cards canceled. His time with the FBI was over. Ditto the military or police or even being an EMT. There was no branch that wouldn’t involve fingerprints.

  Still. He was resourceful and he was smart. It wouldn’t be that hard to build a new identity. New name, new ID. Go off-grid, not in some dramatic disaster-prepper fashion, but something low-key. Move to the islands, maybe. Work in a dive shop, rent gear to tourists. Drink rum in the evening. Swim in the ocean, stare at the stars.

  Stop reading the news. Shun stories of massacres and shootings. Avoid thinking of what came after.

  Try to forget Claire.

  Brody ejected the round from the pipe, then locked the slide and peered into the chamber. Slight wear told him that the weapon had been frequently fired; the cleanliness of the works and faint sheen of oil showed that it had been well maintained.

  Claire was out in the darkness. If his understanding was correct, the echo they knew was just one in a chain. But that chain couldn’t go on forever. Everything came from life, from the energy and passion of living people. Each step away from that was a step toward nothingness. She stood on the precipice, but she hadn’t fallen yet.

  “Yet” being the operative word. Isabella had said that Claire’s time was short. He supposed she could have been lying, but it seemed out of character. She was too arrogant to bother. So how long did Claire have? Hours? Minutes? He had no idea. Nor did he have the first clue how to save her.

  That’s not true. You do have the first clue. It’s all the clues that come afterward that are the problem.

  Neutral Milk Hotel had reached the titular track, the least cryptic of the album. God, how this disc had blown his mind when he discovered it junior year. He’d listened to it over and over, puzzling over the references to heads in formaldehyde and Anne Frank, knowing that he loved it, that it touched something deep inside him, but not really sure what the hell it was about. Trying to solve it, like the music had been passed down from a higher power instead of made by human beings.

  It had taken almost twenty years to figure it out. Every song was rooted in a desperate desire for a love that transcended. A love that wasn’t about being with someone; it was about being them, melting into them. Losing yourself. The album at once yearned for that and acknowledged the fundamental childishness of the desire.

  He knew the lyrics by heart, and laughed to notice the moment: What a beautiful dream that could flash on the screen in a blink of an eye and be gone from me.

  Brody released the slide, picked up the magazine and slapped it home. Racked a round into the chamber. Lifted it fast and put the barrel in his mouth.

  He didn’t want to merge with Claire. He wanted to stand beside her. That meant gambling all that he was on a spin of the wheel in a game he barely understood, and which might be rigged.

  Still. Better to die as Will Brody than live as someone else.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Everything whipped away like a hat snatched by the wind.

  No pain, but impact. Force. Like he’d laid his head in front of a freight train. An explosion of intensity just beyond bearing.

  Then it was gone, and so was the music and warmth and the light.

  Brody tossed the gun. It clattered against something in the dark. His mouth tasted foul. Tentatively, he reached up to feel the back of his head. Just before his fingers made contact he imagined a jagged hole, wetness and sharp bone matter, and shivered. But all
he felt was hair.

  He waited for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. The blackness wasn’t complete; faint grey light filtered in through the windows. Brody stood and walked to them.

  The curtains had transformed into decaying rags, and the glass was cracked. Whole panes were missing, and the wind howled through. The view was and was not familiar. The buildings were in the right place. Shop windows were black mirrors, the neon dead. Nothing moved except debris stirred by the wind. Overhead, dense clouds of charcoal and green twisted and spun like water on the boil, so low he could imagine reaching them from the rooftop. Something like lightning tore across the sky, if lightning were pitch black and made the world darker instead of brighter. The rumble that followed sounded like heavy objects sliding slowly down stairs.

  He was back. Sort of.

  This wasn’t the echo he had known. Brody had expected that; whatever existential physics drove the afterlife, the decision to kill himself would have an impact on his destination. He imagined the chain of worlds Isabella had described as a series of progressively tighter strainers through which souls were sifted. The more potential energy, the earlier they were caught. And just as in Arthur’s example there was a difference between an old man riddled with cancer and a young girl hit by a train, there was a difference between a murdered FBI agent and a lover who knowingly ate his gun.

  It took five minutes to make his way to the street. No lights, and the floors were untrustworthy. He kept a hand on the wall and moved slowly, the sound of his breath bouncing strangely around the dark hall. When he reached the entrance, the door was jammed, and he had to shoulder it open. It was freezing out on the street, the wind knifing between the buildings.

  Another bolt of obsidian lightning split the clouds, and by its darkness he saw the skyline. The buildings were ravaged, windows shattered, walls torn apart, whole sections missing. Skeletal superstructures screeched in agony. A world of ruin like the wake of a bomb blast. The only hint of color was the tornado-green of the sky.

  A girl was walking down the street toward him, holding her left arm in her right, staring at it, tracing it, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The wind whipped her hair into tangles. She was naked, her skin rippled with goose bumps. Brody held his hands low. “Hey.”

  She didn’t look up, just kept tracing her arm and walking, as though operating on some lost instinct. Heading for a destination she’d already reached. The queasy lighting hollowed out her eyes. She padded past on bleeding feet, and he turned to watch her go. The last he saw before the darkness swallowed her was a flash of pale white flank as she turned a corner.

  Right. Well. Now what?

  He’d have been the first to admit that he’d acted rashly, without anything that counted as a plan. He’d just known that Claire needed help, and that time was running out. Now an acid spike of fear rose in him. What had he done? He’d thrown away his life. Left another corpse of himself where it was sure to be found, much to the pain and confusion of those he loved. All to land in a place that made the echo look pleasant.

  Well, you already leapt. So may as well look.

  Existence was a chain. Life at one end, vibrant and powerful; nothingness at the other. The echo he’d known had to be one of the first worlds, the valley closest to life. They would grow more grim with each step. So finding himself here proved the concept.

  So . . . it’s a good thing.

  As with any lie a person tried to sell themselves, it was best not to linger on it, and Brody didn’t. He was here for Claire, and her time was short. That was why he had eaten his gun. It was why he hadn’t wasted time finding an anonymous place to do it. It was why he hadn’t reached out to his parents to offer them comfort; what comfort could he offer when he knew what he was about to do? He was here for Claire, and her time was short.

  If existence was a chain, she was at the end. What the old witch had called the plains of shadow. Brody had taken the first step when he’d left life behind. It was time to take the second.

  He put a hand in his pocket and pulled out the necklace. As before, it was at once so light he could barely feel it and weighty enough it seemed like he shouldn’t be able to lift it. He held it by the thong, looked at the spinning bones. If his hunch was right, that was Edmund’s index finger. Three bones of a sailor who died five hundred years ago, after murdering and eating his shipmates.

  Just looking at the thing made his lips curl and his palms sweat. In the living world, it had been a couple of dry sticks. Here it was different. It hummed with dangerous potential, like fireworks that hadn’t exploded when lit. The idea of wearing it was as appealing as hanging a loop of warm intestines around his neck.

  Got a better idea?

  Brody raised the cord and put it on.

  It was like grabbing both terminals of a car battery. A rush of energy so much so fast that it was hard to tell if it was pleasant or painful.

  He thought he’d understood power in the echo. He’d seen people move too swiftly for the eye to follow, had watched them bend iron bars and leap off of buildings unscathed. He’d done some of those things himself.

  Kid’s stuff. Light beer. With the strength he had now he could crack the moon. He felt buoyed with light, remade by it, pumped full of radiance. The power itched and burned, tugged at him. It wanted to be used, to be spent, to run roughshod over everything like water released from a dam.

  Well, why not? Take a test-drive.

  Brody turned to the building opposite, a payday loans place, all dead neon and thick glass. He’d always hated it; it was ugly and garish, but more than that, he hated the clear metaphor of the place: petty servants of power behind bulletproof glass, the less fortunate queuing up to be taken advantage of.

  He raised his hand. Visualized what he had in mind. Swung lazily at the air.

  A wash of blistering force crackled across the street like a tornado. The building exploded, glass and brick raining out in ten thousand individual arcs each of which he could trace as the force of his will smashed forward, tearing down ropes and stanchions and smashing through the Plexi like a fire hose through a paper bag.

  Brody closed his hand. The destruction froze. Chunks of debris hung motionless. He walked to a jagged chunk of glass, plucked it from the air. Examined the wicked edges, the portion of a decal from the sign. Dropped it to shatter, and the rest with it, the energy stripped from them, everything falling straight down.

  More. He wanted more. To smash and burn for the sheer raucous pleasure of it. Brody imagined stampeding through the city, toppling skyscrapers with a wave, shaking out the streets like carpet, tossing El trains in the lake.

  His laugh felt better than an orgasm. And why not? What he’d just done, the power that flowed through him, was miles beyond anything the Eaters were capable of. He was made of light, of crackling ionized energy. In this dark place, he shone like a sun. None of this pale world mattered. Nothing mattered.

  Nothing matters?

  What kind of thinking was that? He’d spent his whole life helping people, fighting for the side that built rather than the one that destroyed. Sure, everyone had the urge to smash something beautiful, but he’d never had trouble keeping it under control.

  Then he remembered. The necklace wasn’t just power. It was Edmund. He’d put on a piece of the monster.

  Not the monster. A monster. There are others.

  Isabella had said as much. It wasn’t just her and Edmund; there were others. Old killers and gods of slaughter. Elder predators who had hunted for centuries. One-time humans who had grown so strong that merely feeding on the people in the echo wouldn’t sustain them. Who preyed on the living world, orchestrating atrocities and horrors. Who sought power above all things.

  Power like you just flashed.

  Brody looked up, and knew fear.

  What he was seeing couldn’t be real. Everything was still there, the desolate street and the ruined building, the wind-whipped garbage under grey-green clouds. But there was something
else too. A thing that couldn’t exist. A presence his mind couldn’t grasp, its shape changing and impossible. Massive as a moving mountain. Rows of teeth in ruined ranks. Around it the world warped like heat shimmers, and ruin ran behind it.

  Something was coming, and it was hungry.

  Sweat soaked his body, and his bowels ran riot. He’d faced death before, thought he understood the fear that accompanied that. But it wasn’t death on the line here, it was something much bigger. Much worse. Death, entropy, decay, they were natural.

  The beast that came for him now was something else. It promised not an end but a beginning, an anguish that would never stop, a blooming red flower of pain and evil scored by screams. It knew only hunger and offered only agony. It could not be reasoned with, could not be fought.

  It blotted out the skyline, swallowed the clouds. It was at once a black hole that could tear the world apart and, somehow, a man on a horse, his lips pulled back, eyes wild as he whipped his frothing steed, the horse mad with a misery that would never end. Waves of power rolled in his wake, toppling buildings and tugging down the sky.

  He tried to tell himself to fight, but how did you fight a mountain? There was nothing to do but wait to be devoured.

  That, and choose your last thoughts.

  Brody lowered his hands and closed his eyes and remembered the morning in her condo, their heads on the same pillow and eyes locked. Her hair flattened with sleep and her breath dank and her body warm and their future ahead.

  The wind whipped at him, and he could hear the horse’s hooves, its shrieks of mad pain. The air reeked of scorched metal. There was a heat against his chest, a sudden burning fierce as a brand. Brody stayed with Claire, the wrinkled white pillowcases, the sunlight flickering through the break in the curtains, the freckles spilled across her chest—

  The world swayed like debris bobbing in the wake of a mighty ship. The shift in balance yanked him from his farewell fantasy, made him reach out a hand for a support that wasn’t there, expecting to see his end inches away.