A Guide to the Other Side

by Robert Imfeld

  Then the floodgates opened. The ghosts that had always hovered nearby suddenly swarmed me, drowning me with their nonstop chatter, desperate pleas, and sometimes scary images.

  Kristina helped me out immensely. Whenever I had a problem, she was there. She was the one who came up with my daily routine. Once I started lighting my candle every morning to surround myself with light and positivity, talking to spirits became a bit easier.

  At first my mom refused to buy me a candle and my own lighter. I was much too young to be playing with fire, she’d say. But after my dad reminded her that I was also too young to deal with talking to dead people, she gave in.

  But then she wouldn’t let me keep the candle in my room, or let me light it. She didn’t understand why it was so important. But who could expect her to? How was she supposed to know that, without that positive energy, I could see menacing phantoms with creepy, glowing green eyes circling the house? How was she supposed to know that the light kept away the negative spirits who had left unfinished business on Earth? Heck, how was I supposed to know that, without Kristina guiding me?

  When I tried explaining it to my mom, she threw me into the car and drove to the community church, where she made the reverend bless me with some sort of spiritual protection prayer. It actually helped a little bit, but Kristina told me that any prayers from any person of any faith were always good.

  Afterward Mom explained my gift to Reverend Henry, and he became the first person outside of my family to know what I could do. I think my mom had expected him to deny it, to refute her claim, but he didn’t. Instead he knelt down beside me and whispered, “You have a very special gift, Baylor. Use it wisely. I’m always here if you need help.”

  After that my mom started asking me every day how Kristina was doing.

  “Is she . . . is she happy?” she’d ask, usually while fidgeting with my lunch box before school. I’d look over at Kristina, who would nod ferociously in her delight over our mom’s change of heart.

  “She’s nodding yes,” I’d say.

  My mom would sigh, her shoulders sinking low. “Good, good. I’m glad to hear that.”

  But if my mom asked about her today, what would I say? That she had been ghostnapped? That she wasn’t by my side for the first time in more than four years and I was trying not to panic?

  Unlike with a missing breathing person, no one could help me find a missing ghost. It was just me, with absolutely no resources except to ask other random ghosts if they’d seen the girl version of me walking around.

  Of course, they all said no.

  My mind jumped to all sorts of conclusions, ranging from She got lost on the way back from the Beyond and is in some undiscovered universe to The Sheet Man is holding her hostage, and it’s up to me to track them down.

  The only consolation of that morning was that I was so distracted by the poking doctors and prodding nurses and pestering parents that forgetting to panic wasn’t so hard. By the time I was discharged, when my dad had already left for work and my mom was waiting with Ella to take me home, I had a plan.

  “We need to make a pit stop before home,” I said gravely.

  “We do?” my mom asked.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll appreciate this particular stop.”

  TIP

  10

  Demon shoes are never in style.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER WE WERE at the community church. I needed some sort of higher-power blessing this morning, and if I didn’t have Kristina or my candles, Reverend Henry was the next-best thing. Plus, it had been a while since he had done any protections on me, and I secretly hoped that the barrier between me and the spirits had become more malleable because his auxiliary protections had lapsed.

  Leaving my mom in a pew with Ella, I found Reverend Henry back in his office, talking to someone on the phone.

  He grinned when he saw me and held up his finger.

  “Yes, I know that’s how you’re feeling right now, but you’ll soon see that it’s worth it. I promise you.”

  He made a funny face and tapped his thumb rapidly against his fingers, the universal sign for Yada, yada, yada, this broad won’t shut up.

  A couple of minutes later he hung up the phone and widened his eyes to ghost size.

  “Women, I tell ya!” he said jokingly. “My daughter, calling from her dorm room and panicked that she picked the wrong college to attend.”

  “She’s somewhere in Texas, right?”

  “Yep. In Austin. She thinks it’s too far away, she misses home and family and proper seasons, she thinks she should transfer, and so on and so forth. You know, normal teenager stuff.” He leaned back in his seat. “But enough about my daughter. What brings you here, Baylor? Shouldn’t you be in school right now?”

  “Things aren’t too great, Rev,” I said, before launching into the events of the previous few days.

  “And I just left the hospital and came directly here,” I finished. “Help me.”

  “That is some story, Baylor,” he said slowly. “Wow. Well, first things first, you didn’t get to do your routine today, so let’s light some candles.”

  Four candles and a hundred deep breaths later I felt the calmest I’d felt all morning.

  “Now,” he said, returning to his chair, “maybe you’ll have some peace of mind to think. I’m sure Kristina will return soon too. I guess the good thing about her being dead already is that you don’t have to involve police.”

  “Except that when she goes missing, there’s no one to help me at all.”

  “True,” he said, lifting his legs up and crossing his feet on his desk. “But as you said, she’s probably in the Beyond learning some more ways to protect you. It’s likely just taking a while, since you both have never faced anything like this before.”

  He kept talking, but I’d stopped paying attention because I’d noticed his shoes, and a deep chill ran down my back.

  “Reverend,” I said, interrupting him, my eyes fixated on his feet. “Where did you get those shoes?”

  “These?” He laughed. “Believe it or not, they’re actually from a big donation we got from some out-of-towners. I needed a new pair, and I saw they were sort of run-down, but they seemed like a nice brand, nothing I could ever afford, so I thought, Hey, why not? Owning some secondhand name-brand shoes for once won’t kill me.” He paused for a moment and seemed perplexed. “I think it won’t kill me, at least. Why do you ask? Can you tell they’re old?”

  “No,” I said. “They’re the same shoes the Sheet Man was wearing.”

  His face fell. “Are you telling me I’m wearing demon shoes?”

  “I don’t know what I’m telling you,” I said, leaning forward to examine the silver buckles. “I just know they look like the ones I saw before the tuba fell on me. When did they arrive?”

  “Uh, last week at some point. Thursday, probably.”

  “Thursday was the first day the Sheet Man visited!” I nearly yelped with excitement. “Who made the donation?”

  “I honestly couldn’t tell you,” he said, taking his legs off the desk and slipping the shoes off. “But now I think I’m going to burn them.”

  “That’s not the worst idea, but let me see them first.”

  He set them on the edge of the desk. I hesitated for a moment because I was worried what I was going to see by touching the shoes. There was a big chance any memories attached to them were brutal.

  But when I picked one up, nothing happened. I turned it all over in my hands, running my fingers along the seams on the side and tracing the edge of the buckle, as if trying to massage a memory out of it, but it was just a normal shoe. The leather was so soft that I felt bad for telling Reverend Henry that they were probably cursed—I could tell they were comfortable.

  On the inside, just under the shoe’s tongue, I saw something written in black marker. I squinted, but it was blurry, like it had been written a hundred years ago.

  “There’s something written there,” I said, getting my phone out
to shine some light on it. “Can you make it out? I think the first letter is an A.”

  The reverend took the shoe and peered inside. “Sort of looks like it says ‘APARKER.’” He tilted his hand and moved the shoe an inch away from his face. “I think it says that, at least.”

  “What’s an aparker?” He handed back the shoe and I looked again. It did sort of look like that.

  “It’s probably a name, like A. Parker, with the A being an initial.”

  “What kind of man writes his name on his shoes? Especially a pair this nice.”

  “I can’t say. Could be any reason.”

  “I wonder if I could track him down online. At least I have something to work with.” I held out the shoe, smiling. “You can have this back now.”

  He threw his hands up. “I don’t want to touch that thing again.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “You’ve been wearing them for a few days now. I think they’re fine. I didn’t feel anything negative when I touched them.”

  He still looked hesitant. “I’ll wear them for today because I’ll be barefoot otherwise,” he said. “But tonight they’re going straight into the fire.”

  * * *

  I told my mom the news in the car, but she didn’t share in my excitement.

  “You didn’t tell me you saw that thing wearing shoes! And the reverend was wearing the same shoes?!” She gasped. “Oh my God, I hope you incinerated them on the spot!”

  “I don’t think they’re cursed,” I said. “They didn’t have a bad energy.”

  “Well, it can’t be a good energy, Baylor!” she said.

  “They’re just shoes,” I said. “They’re fine.”

  “Well, you’re a boy, so you don’t get it, but if I found out my shoes belonged to a dead lady who was haunting me, I wouldn’t be very happy. I’d probably even demand a refund.”

  * * *

  Mom agreed to let me take the rest of the day off instead of going back to school. At home there was a gigantic package of baked goods sitting on the kitchen table, courtesy of Aiden’s mom. She really had baked a lot: There were cookies, brownies, blondies, seven-layer bars, and a small lemon cake. I grabbed a cookie, ran upstairs, lit a candle, and hopped onto my computer. Just as I was about to start searching the web for some more clues about the Sheet Man, my computer started to fritz. The screen blurred for a few seconds, then turned blue.

  Then, letter by letter, a message appeared on the screen.

  Don’t worry about me. Be back soon. K.

  Then it disappeared.

  “Well, that’s just great,” I mumbled to myself. At least she wasn’t in danger. Still, she could have given me some idea of when she’d return. I told my grandma that I’d see her soon all the time, even though I had no idea when the next time would be. It could be a year, for all I knew.

  “Soon” was what you said to comfort someone. I didn’t want to be comforted. I wanted my sister back to help me solve this problem.

  Think logically. You’re being followed by something Kristina thinks is really bad. She wouldn’t leave you for a long time, since she knows you need her help. She will be back soon, and by “soon” she means shortly.

  Feeling a bit better after rationalizing away my paranoia, I took to the Internet to dig up information on A. Parker.

  First I typed in “A. Parker shoes.” Nothing.

  Next I tried “A. Parker sheets.” Still nothing.

  Then I typed in “A. Parker, Keene, New Hampshire.”

  It turned up some results, but nothing too specific. I tried to think of what else I knew that would be helpful, and then I smacked my hand to my forehead.

  “Of course!” I added one word to the search bar: “obituary.”

  Jackpot. It turned out an Alfred Parker had died some three years earlier in Winchester, a nearby town. He’d been seventy-two when he died, been divorced, and had a son and a daughter. Seemed he was a late starter with having kids—both of them were only in their midtwenties when he died. It looked like he’d remarried, too. It didn’t state what he’d done for work, just that he’d “pursued many successful entrepreneurial endeavors.”

  He seemed relatively normal. Nothing screamed that he would transform into a creepy demon stalker.

  I read it once more and stopped at the line about the children, Isabella and William.

  I had a feeling they would be my best bet, so I searched for them next. The results were limited, though, with just a few viable entries before everything devolved into sign-ups for online yellow pages. But I did find some pertinent information, like some old articles about Alfred and their mom, Rosalie T. Parker, and even some old photos. I managed to figure out Isabella was in California working as a teacher, and William was going to school in Boston.

  William seemed the most promising, since Boston was only a couple of hours away from Keene.

  The only problem was figuring out how to get there.

  “Absolutely not,” my mom said when I told her about my discoveries. She was sitting on the floor of the family room playing with Ella, and I was shoving down a brownie. “I am not driving you to Boston so you can attempt to meet up with the son of the dead guy who put you in the hospital. End of discussion.”

  “But, Mom,” I said, my mouth filled with chocolate, “what if he needs my help?”

  “Baylor, haven’t you mentioned several times now that Kristina can’t confront him because he’s evil? Maybe he should have thought about getting help before he died and had to face the consequences of his poor life decisions.” She looked at Ella and cooed, “Isn’t that right, Ella-Bella? You make good choices in life! Good choices!”

  “Good!” Ella screamed, throwing a block into the air.

  “That’s right!” My mom laughed. “Good girl. Don’t be bad, or else your brother will have to deal with you from the Beyond, and we don’t want that.”

  “So that’s it?” I asked, annoyed. “What if I ask Dad?”

  “Don’t bother. Even if he were up for it, I am forbidding you to go.”

  “Forbidding? Mom, I can talk to dead people because I’m supposed to pass along healing messages. You’re preventing me from doing my life’s duty. You realize that, right?”

  “I’ve grown to appreciate your gift and think it’s wonderful that you can help people who need it,” she said as she scooped up Ella and headed to the kitchen. “But when you wind up in the hospital because of it, guess what? I get to put my foot down. And if someone on the other side has a problem with it, you tell them I would be more than happy to discuss that with them.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Got it?”

  TIP

  11

  Consider developing your whittling skills.

  THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL every time my classmates saw me, they would stare awkwardly or say something like, “Feeling okay, Baylor?” Apparently, news had traveled to everyone about my collision with a tuba.

  To make matters worse, Kristina still hadn’t reappeared. I lit five candles that morning and asked her to come back, but when I got done with my shower and looked in the mirror, there was a message written in the fog.

  Stop being a baby.

  It freaked me out she had been there without even saying hi. I just hoped she couldn’t see me in the shower. The mere thought made me shudder.

  At lunchtime I told Aiden that it seemed like everyone was making a bigger deal out of the incident than they should be.

  “Well,” he said, unpacking his usual pepperoni sandwich, “they’re not talking about your accident as much as they are the fact that you screamed like a banshee and had the scariest face any of us have ever seen outside of a movie.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, people think you’re haunted or something,” he said, shrugging. “Not everyone gets what you can do.”

  “That sucks!” I said, slamming the table. “Being in band is bad enough for my reputation. I don’t need that rumor on top of it.”

  “You should know that what people thi
nk of you doesn’t matter,” he said pointedly.

  He was right. How many times had I passed on messages from ghosts saying they wished they had lived their lives the way they wanted instead of the way others wanted? Too many to count.

  But still . . . junior high is hard enough without ghosts yammering in your ear, and I needed all the help I could get.

  “How’s that head, Baylor?” J asked, stopping at our table on the way to her next class. She wasn’t in our lunch period, thankfully; otherwise, Aiden would be in danger of choking to death every day.

  “A bit sore,” I said. “Too bad people think I’m haunted.”

  She smiled. “Well, better to be haunted than stupid.” Aiden was grinning like an idiot at his sandwich the whole time. “Uh, are you okay, Aiden?”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine, fine,” he said, looking up at her. “Just pretty happy about this pepperoni, is all.”

  I turned my head and closed my eyes. It was so painful to watch and hear.

  “Well, enjoy,” she said, shaking her head. “Let’s hang out this week? Maybe head to the Patty Joint on Friday night?”

  “Sounds good,” I said as she walked away.

  I let a moment pass before turning to him. “Seriously? You’re going to die alone.”

  “I know,” he said, taking a bite of his sandwich. “I know.”

  * * *

  After school I had an injury-free band practice, although my ego was still slightly tarnished. Mr. G., in an effort to be nice, had placed pillows around my chair in case I collapsed again. My cheeks were on fire as I thanked him, but all he’d really done was inadvertently remind everyone that I was the crazy guy who’d had to go to the hospital.

  But all the embarrassment melted away when I walked through the door of my bedroom and saw Kristina waiting for me on my bed.

  She wasn’t alone, though.

  Standing beside her and gazing politely around my room was the ghost of a man dressed to the nines as an eighteenth-century British soldier, complete with leather kneecaps, a tricorn hat, and a vivid red coat.