AFTERLIFE

by Marcus Sakey

The kitchen was bright and clean. A breakfast nook was tucked in the corner, the booth alive with dancing sunlight. A large cutting board covered one counter, and the gas stove had six burners. The pantry was a cluttered, homey chaos of canned goods and baking supplies. Brody opened a cabinet, saw glasses and stemware. In another, he found pans stacked up. He pulled out a heavy cast-iron skillet. It was beautifully seasoned, the bottom glistening and a faint smell of oil to it. “It’s like whoever lives here just stepped out.”

  “This doesn’t seem like Edmund.”

  “No.”

  The dining room was warm and inviting. A farmhouse table glowed with polish. Brody ran his fingers along it as he passed, tracing the cool texture. One entire wall was given over to floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, thousands of hardcovers and paperbacks. The opposite wall was covered in framed photos, neatly arranged. Brody looked at them, did a double take. “Hey.”

  The pictures were of them.

  Claire in a café, smiling over a coffee mug, the steam rising.

  Brody and his father bent over the chessboard, a bottle of bourbon beside them, cigars in their hands.

  He and Claire on a beach somewhere, the shot obviously a selfie. He had two-day scruff and a tan. She wore an electric-blue bikini and an indolent, sun-stoned smile.

  Claire at some sort of press event or award ceremony, shaking hands with the director of the FBI.

  Brody in bed, apparently asleep in a tangle of white sheets, his hair mussed and sunlight spilling in.

  Photos that had never been taken, in moments they’d never lived.

  Claire moved down the row of pictures, leaning in to study them. “Oh. Oh god.”

  “What?”

  She drew a shuddering breath and turned to him. Pointed at a frame. He strode over to see.

  It was a picture of her, looking pale and exhausted. Her hair matted with sweat. Lying in a hospital bed.

  With a newborn baby on her chest.

  Brody gripped the baseball bat until his bones ached.

  The next picture was him holding up a baby girl in a purple onesie. He had her at arm’s length and must have been spinning her. The grin on his face didn’t look like the one he saw in the mirror. It was wider and purer and lit with emotion he could only imagine.

  This was the life they might have had.

  The life they’d only begun to dream about. This home was like the one they might have made together. These were the books they might have read in bed. That was the kitchen he could have cooked in.

  This was the little girl they never got a chance to meet.

  The offer was clear enough.

  And to earn it, all we have to do is ignore the things we know he’s done. Just look the other way and let evil get back to business.

  They stared at each other. A gaze beyond words.

  Then Claire turned and started walking, and he followed. There were stairs in the front hallway. She started up them slowly. Moving as though she were walking toward a cliff. The wooden stairs creaked beneath their weight. A familiar, cozy sound.

  At the top, Claire paused. Looked in each direction. Steeled herself, and chose the hard one.

  The room was flooded with sunlight. The walls were painted seafoam green, all except one, which was covered in chalkboard paint covered in scribbles, doodles and smiley faces and the alphabet. The ceiling was peaked and airy. There was a white dresser, and a bin of stuffed animals.

  In the center of the room, in a beam of light, was the crib.

  Nothing elaborate, no brand names or intricate woodwork. Just a bright wooden crib. A mobile of paper birds spun above it. In the crib lay a small purple cloth with the head of a hippo on it. A lovey.

  Claire sobbed, once. A chest-deep sound.

  “I thought we should talk,” said a voice from behind them.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Brody whirled, raising the baseball bat.

  Standing in the doorway was a teenaged boy. His hair fell to his shoulders in waves. His face was slightly androgynous, his cheeks soft and beardless. He looked something like a Caravaggio angel—except for the missing finger on his right hand.

  “You fucker,” Brody said. “You evil fucker.”

  Edmund cocked his head. “Why? Isn’t this everything you’ve ever wanted?”

  “You can’t think we’ll take it,” Claire said through clenched teeth.

  “I really think you should,” Edmund said. He strolled into the room, sat in a rocking chair in the corner. “It’s the best you’ll get.”

  “No,” Brody said. “Killing you is the best we’ll get.”

  Edmund smiled. “You think I’m offering this because I’m frightened.”

  “You should be,” Claire said. “We’re winning.”

  “No,” the boy said, with a soft laugh. “No, you’re not. It was a noble effort, but there’s no chance of success.”

  “Then why try to buy us off?”

  “While you hold my totem, I can’t simply destroy you,” Edmund said. “But I can fight this battle for as long as it takes, while you’re here on borrowed strength. Eventually, I’ll wear you down. However, it will cost me a great deal of energy. Energy I collected over a long time. Far simpler to just give you what you want. It’s what your contemporaries would call a cost-benefit analysis.”

  Brody wanted to argue. Wanted to beat his chest and rage.

  Because Edmund was right.

  Their best chance of winning relied on surprise. They had no power here. The only weapon they had belonged to their enemy. When they’d first attacked him, it had seemed like there was hope. But as soon as the dead had begun to pull themselves from the sea, Brody had known it was over. They were insurgents in an enemy’s stronghold, and now that the moment of surprise was past, they were wildly outgunned.

  He’d kept fighting because that’s what there was to do. Not because he thought they would win.

  As if reading his thoughts, Edmund said, “The damage you’ve done isn’t nearly enough to tempt the others to risk facing me. You are in my world. I make the rules. You cannot hide beneath the protection my totem affords while using its power to attack me. And without that protection, I’ll wipe you from existence.” Edmund smiled beatifically. “Why not spare yourselves?”

  “Take the bribe, you mean.” Claire shook her head. “Even if we were willing, do you think we could live with ourselves afterward? What you’ve built here is a fantasy. Knowing the price would poison it.”

  “I can remove the memories of your time here. All of this will seem like a dream. As if you never died at all.”

  Was it possible? Brody supposed so. Isabella had made bolder offers. He imagined it for a moment. Not only returning to life, but forgetting all they’d learned. Going back to the happy ignorance of the living. Worrying about bills and sex, instead of dark gods that arranged atrocities. Forgetting the long fade to the plains of shadow, and not discovering it until they were walking it properly.

  “Don’t let pride compel you.” Edmund leaned forward. “If you continue to fight, I will annihilate you. And your sacrifice will mean nothing.”

  Brody imagined stepping forward, swinging the bat at this smug monster’s head. Shattering his skull and painting the wall with his blood. Impossible, he knew. Edmund would never make himself vulnerable in that way. The boy in the chair wasn’t really him.

  Edmund was the world. The sea and the sky and the ship. The army of the dead. This house, manifested out of nothing, and perfectly tailored to them.

  How could they fight that kind of power?

  “What would you know,” Claire said softly, “about sacrifice?”

  “A great deal.” Edmund smiled.

  “That’s taking,” she said. “Sacrifice is giving. It’s me stepping in front of the lightning.”

  Brody remembered the flash of blinding white. The roar of electricity. What an incredible thing she had done. No hesitation, no faltering. She’d simply thrown herself between him and death. He remembered the
scream—

  Wait. That scream.

  It hadn’t been Claire. He’d felt it, not heard it. It had been a visceral thing. It had been the world screaming. Edmund screaming.

  Of course. He summoned the lightning bolt to kill you. It never occurred to him that Claire would put herself between it and you.

  The Eater mentality, all over again. Just like with Isabella. No trust, no faith. No belief in anything. No love you would die for.

  No love you would die for.

  The very concept was foreign to Edmund. For five hundred years he’d practiced nothing but predation. The notion of willing sacrifice was completely foreign. Valuing something more highly than his own survival simply wouldn’t occur to him. It was a blind spot in his mind.

  And a blind spot could be exploited.

  What had he said? You cannot hide beneath the protection my totem affords while using its power to attack me.

  Maybe there was a way to win after all.

  Brody felt a smile creeping onto his face. He had to find a way to communicate the idea to Claire. He looked over at her, trying to put it in his eyes, ready to mouth—

  And saw that she was already there. She’d worked it out before he had. Of course. That was why she’d said the thing about the lightning. It had been a cue to get them on the same page. And now that he’d caught up with her, she was waiting to see if he was game. Knowing the path, but unwilling to make the decision for him. They would do it together or not at all.

  I love you, Claire McCoy.

  Brody said, “Okay.”

  Edmund smiled. “Excellent.” He stood, stepped forward, one hand out.

  Claire grabbed the necklace of bones and jerked hard. The leather thong snapped. “Find me in the next life?”

  Brody nodded. “Nothing could stop me.”

  She smiled. Without taking her eyes from his, she flipped the totem across the room.

  The necklace arced slow, a tail of leather unfurling behind.

  Brody cocked the bat and unwound with all he had.

  A clean, smooth motion.

  The metal bat caught the bones square.

  They didn’t break.

  They exploded.

  And the world tore open.

  The house flickered and vanished. They were back on the boat, the Persephone bobbing in a wild sea. But there were no dead men this time. And this time, they weren’t alone.

  Edmund stood at the prow of the ship. Still a teenager, but no longer a Caravaggio angel. His hair was greasy. His arms were thin. His delicate lips were wide in a shriek, a howl like a thousand hurricanes as he stared upward—where a jagged rent split the sky from horizon to horizon.

  Nightmares piled through it. Beings of pure force and hunger. So massive that they could barely be conceived, much less comprehended. So powerful they could not be withstood.

  It was like watching an avalanche, all sense of scale swept away. A rushing wave of black energy, rolling, tumbling, spinning. Sweeping everything before it. Moving at impossible speeds. A wall that grew ever closer, a defined edge beyond which there was nothing but destruction.

  It slammed into Edmund. It bore him up and tore him apart. Hungry shadow mouths with vicious teeth. The wail that rose wasn’t a sound or a taste or a feeling. It was all of them at once. A shriek of pure panic. Of disbelief and horror.

  It was five hundred years of predation being ripped apart by its own kind.

  The avalanche didn’t even slow.

  Brody dropped the bat and turned to Claire. They locked hands and locked eyes. Two lovers in the path of destruction they could not avoid. A path they’d chosen willingly. Together until the very last moment. Unsure what came next.

  But facing it together.

  Just before everything went away, they smiled.

  I have been here before,

  But when or how I cannot tell:

  I know the grass beyond the door,

  The sweet keen smell,

  The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

  You have been mine before,—

  How long ago I may not know:

  But just when at that swallow’s soar

  Your neck turn’d so,

  Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

  Has this been thus before?

  And shall not thus time’s eddying flight

  Still with our lives our love restore

  In death’s despite,

  And day and night yield one delight once more?

  —Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The sign had come down the week before.

  He’d been up in the tree, working on the fort, when a woman arrived in a grey car. The trunk had opened, and she’d gone to the sign stuck in the front lawn and started wiggling it. A few minutes later, she’d freed it from the ground and put it in her trunk. Then she’d driven away.

  He’d gone back to work. At this point, the fort was pretty simple, just a couple of 2 x 4s between the broadest limbs. He’d put a lot of thought into it, though, and knew what he wanted to do. First, finish the platform. Then build a spy spot in the very upper boughs, probably just like a shelf nailed in the crook of them. The tree was big, and swayed with the breeze, and he figured the spy spot would be a lot of fun to sit in, like surfing the wind. Maybe add some ropes too, big thick ones like jungle vines, for swinging between the branches or sliding to the ground.

  Unfortunately, all of these plans required stuff he didn’t have. He’d raided all the scrap lumber in the garage. Dad had said he’d take him to the hardware store when he had the money, but it would take a long time on his allowance.

  So for now all he could do was sit on the 2 x 4s, which is what he was doing, reading a fantasy novel, when he heard a rumbling sound. A big yellow truck turned the corner and rolled down their block. It pulled up to the house across the street, and men climbed down, began opening the side doors and extending a ramp from the back. A minute later, a regular car pulled into the driveway, and a family climbed out.

  He watched for a few minutes. Then tucked the book into the waistband of his Levi’s and climbed down.

  In the house, Mom was in the kitchen, NPR on in the background. “Hey kiddo. Want a sandwich?”

  “No thanks.” He pulled himself up on a stool. “New neighbors are here.”

  “Oh yeah?” She mashed tuna fish and mayonnaise together. “Any kids?”

  “Girls.”

  “Your age?”

  He shrugged. “One of them, I guess.”

  Mom smiled. The radio story changed to the sniper. Normally he thought the news was pretty boring, but he liked hearing about that. It was the ten-year anniversary, and they’d been talking about it a lot.

  It was scary in an interesting way. Partly because Mom and Dad had a story about it. Mom had told him a million times, how most of the gas stations had been wrapped in tarps, but how she’d had to pull into one that wasn’t because her car was empty. How Dad had come over and offered to pump the gas for her. How they’d started talking, sitting on the floorboards of her car, and how she’d known right then that they were going to fall in love and get married.

  It was interesting trying to picture the city like that, all turned upside down. Sometimes walking to Sean’s house he pretended that the sniper was still out there. Aiming at him. It gave him a shiver like the horror movies Sean’s mom let them watch.

  “Mom, can I please have some money?”

  She laughed. “What for?”

  “I need to buy wood for the fort.”

  “What about your allowance?”

  “It’s gonna take forever.”

  “Patience is good for the soul,” she said. “Builds character.”

  “But I’m bored.”

  “Toughsky poopsky,” she said. “Why don’t you go across the street and introduce yourself?”

  “I told you, they’re girls.”

  “So? Girls don’t bite.”

  “They don’
t play anything fun, though.”

  Mom looked up from her sandwich. “Kid. You’re bothering me. Go make a friend. That’s an order.”

  “Fine,” he said, and jumped off the stool.

  The men were busy unloading the truck. It was packed full. Weird seeing all that stuff that was normally in a house stacked on top of itself in a truck. He stood and watched the men work.

  “Hello.”

  The voice came from behind him, and he jumped. It was the older girl. She was skinny, her arms thin inside a T-shirt with an enormous cartoon mouth on it, the tongue sticking out. “Hi,” he said.

  “You live here?”

  “There.” He pointed over his shoulder. He thought he should say something else, but wasn’t sure what. “Cool shirt.”

  “You like the Stones?”

  “What?”

  “A lot of people say Sticky Fingers is the best, but I prefer Let It Bleed.” She wore braces, and spoke in that lips-covering way girls with braces did. He had no idea what she was talking about. “Were you up in the tree?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m building a fort.”

  “Cool.”

  “I don’t have much yet. Wanna see?” He led the way across the street. At the base of the tree, he pointed up. “It’s just the frame now.”

  “Can we go up?”

  He looked at her, then back at the frame, fifteen feet off the ground. “Well, I don’t have a ladder yet—”

  She was hanging from the lowest branch and swinging her legs. It took two tries, but then she got a foot over and pulled herself up. She rose slowly, her legs shaking as she eased up the trunk to grab the next branch.

  Huh.

  He followed, the bark rough against his palms. By the time he’d reached the frame, she was already sitting on one of the boards, her legs kicking. “This is really cool.”

  “It will be. This is going to be a big platform. I want to put on a roof too, so I can come up here in the rain. But I need more wood.”

  She cocked her head as if thinking. “I’m pretty sure we have some.”

  “Really?”

  “In the old house, anyway. I could ask my dad if we can have it.”

  He noticed the “we,” wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He’d planned to build the tree house himself. But she climbed up here on her own. And you could start building right away. “That’d be awesome.”