A Guide to the Other Side

by Robert Imfeld

  “That was me,” Rosalie said brightly. “Once I realized what he’d done, I decided to send my own message.”

  “And then you showed me the shoes,” I said to Alfred, “knowing Angela was back in town and had dropped them off.”

  “He certainly did,” Rosalie hissed.

  “I can’t believe you can communicate with ghosts,” I said, shaking my head. If my purpose in life was to help people, surely hers couldn’t have been much different. “How could you treat someone this way?”

  “Unlike you, dear,” she spit, “this curse is not something I’m proud of.”

  “Clearly, since you’re holding a reverend hostage with a knife at the moment.”

  “He’s my insurance,” she said. “With him as my hostage, you’ll do whatever I demand.”

  “You can’t go five minutes without terrorizing someone, you psychopath,” Alfred said, sounding amused.

  “Now that you’re dead, dear, your opinion is worth even less to me than it was when you were alive,” she said.

  “Fantastic,” he said. “Then it certainly won’t interest you to know that Baylor’s mother is almost here with a police cruiser close behind.”

  Her eyes flashed in shock, and she bit her lip. “Well, it looks like this will have to be fast, then. Baylor, now that you’ve taken away my puppet, you’re going to help me get the money Angela owes me.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said.

  “It is,” she said, “because if you don’t, I’ll find you, and I will hurt your family.” She smiled. “And I know you wouldn’t want that.”

  “Are you insane?” I asked.

  “The answer is clearly yes,” Kristina said.

  “Be quiet, you dumb girl,” Rosalie spit. “I thought once I had you out of the way, Baylor would be too stupid to figure any of this out. I was wrong about that, but since I know he was so dedicated to finding his dead sister, it’s not too big of a leap to guess he’ll be just as dedicated to keeping his family alive.”

  She grinned horribly, revealing her straight, coffee-stained teeth, while Reverend Henry’s hands gestured by his sides. He had remained silent the whole time, since he couldn’t totally follow the conversation taking place with the ghosts, but he now started to give me a strange look with exaggerated wide eyes, his lips clenched together in a white line.

  “What?” I asked slowly, trying to pick up his clues. “If I don’t help, you’re going to kill Reverend Henry? Or are you going to keep him alive and hurt my family? Which is it?”

  That’s when the reverend smiled. That was it! Of all people, he was the one most familiar with the ramblings of lunatics, and he could recognize a crazy woman without a plan from a mile away. Without wasting another second, I took off through the door and ran as fast as I could down the street.

  “Stop!” she screamed.

  I sprinted around the corner and down Main Street. Kristina was gliding next to me a second later.

  “She’s getting in her car,” she said. “She’s going to chase you down.”

  “The police will be here any minute,” I said, panting. “She should leave town before she gets arrested for attempted murder of a holy man!”

  “She’s not thinking clearly,” she said. “She wants that money, and she doesn’t want her kids to know what she’s done.”

  I veered into the tackle shop I’d visited with my dad on Sunday. “Call the police!” I yelled to the cashier. “A crazy lady with a knife is chasing me.”

  “I knew I should have stayed in bed this morning!” said the cashier, lifting up the phone and dialing 911.

  “Keep running, Baylor,” Kristina said suddenly.

  “Do you have another exit?” I asked. The cashier nodded furiously, pointing to a door in the back of the store. “Lock your doors!” I yelled, and took off running.

  I passed through a small office and clambered out the door, where there was a squat-looking ghost with hair twisted into a tight bun standing in the back alley. She looked sort of familiar, and my face must have tipped her off that I recognized her, because she sneered at me.

  “You should have helped me when I asked,” she said. Then it clicked—she was the ghost Kristina vanquished when I woke up in the hospital. Before I could say anything, she yelled out, “They’re back here!” her voice amplified like she was talking into a megaphone.

  “Argh!” Kristina yelled, stretching out both hands and blasting the ghost with blue energy; the woman flitted her fingers sarcastically as she faded away. “Now it decides to work,” she mumbled, clearly still bitter about the Bruton. “Run faster, Baylor.”

  I took off again and tried my best to sprint, but I didn’t know the area well and wasn’t sure which way would be the best route.

  “Left or right?” I said, as the road I was on was about to dead-end.

  “Right! Stay hidden, but stay close to the crowded areas!”

  I circled back to Main Street, wondering where Rosalie was. I was sprinting down the street, in the opposite direction from her house, when her car came screeching from a side street and stopped a foot short of hitting me.

  “Stop, Baylor,” she hissed, exiting the car. “Listen to me. You will help me, or you will never be free of me. Ever.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Kristina said. “You don’t stand a chance against me and my spirit guides.”

  “Tell that to the Bruton who nearly burned your brother to a crisp,” she said.

  Kristina’s mouth dropped open a little, but she kept her cool. “I’d be happy to.”

  Alfred appeared next to us.

  “Leave the child alone, you monster,” he said, getting in Rosalie’s face. “Haven’t you done enough damage?”

  “Get out of here, Alfred,” she said, her eyes hungry for me. “This no longer concerns you. You can cross over to the Beyond now.”

  “Rosalie, you idiot, I knew the whole time Angela was working with you, and I liked it,” he said. “I liked having a young, beautiful girl fawning over me in my last years.”

  Rosalie’s face was motionless. “What?”

  “You think I didn’t have anyone watching you after you didn’t get any of my money in the divorce? I knew what you were up to the whole time. I asked Angela not to split the money with you as my dying wish.”

  “You knew? And you left me and your children with nothing?”

  “Of course not. The children have trusts,” he said. “They’ll be granted access on their thirtieth birthdays.”

  Rosalie swallowed hard. “You left the kids money?”

  “Yes, and do you know what?” He took a step forward, like he was threatening her. “They probably would have been more than happy to share it with you. But not after they find out everything you’ve done.”

  Her eyes targeted me, and the crazy rage had grown manic. “You can’t tell them.”

  “Oh? Is that how this is going to work now?” I said. “And you’re going to stop me how, exactly? Both the reverend and I know about what you did. Are you going to kill us both?”

  She was silent for a moment, her eyes never leaving mine. Then, originating from somewhere deep within her, somewhere infernal, a shrill, inhuman scream erupted from her mouth, and black energy shot out of her hands and straight at my chest. Alfred leaped in front of it, and he screamed in agony and dropped to the asphalt as the Bruton descended to Rosalie’s side.

  That was my cue to run.

  “It’s time for this to end, Baylor,” she growled from somewhere too close behind.

  Kristina tried to blast her back, but the Bruton effortlessly absorbed the energy, fanning the flames in its eyes.

  “Fleetwood, we need your help!” Kristina yelled.

  I looked back to see Rosalie chasing me with the knife, her arm stretched out and slashing wildly just a few feet behind. I wondered if anyone could see this, if anyone else thought this looked as absolutely insane as I did. Where were the police? Where were the people to help? Had Rosalie’s evil power d
istracted them? Had she utilized the Bruton to do her bidding without us realizing it?

  I sprinted past the last of the shops and turned down a busy road, Rosalie hot on my heels.

  “You can’t win, Baylor!” she said.

  I didn’t say anything but heard a grunt a moment later. I looked back to find the knife hurtling at my head, but Fleetwood appeared and swatted it down with a flash of his sword.

  “You British maggot!” she said, picking the knife up off the road.

  Kristina gasped, looking into the distance ahead.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Run as fast as you can, Baylor!”

  “What is it, Kristina?”

  But she was gone. Where did she go? What did she mean? What on earth was I running from now?

  Rosalie continued chasing me down the empty street, flanked by Alfred, Fleetwood, and the Bruton, a flurry of black, blue, and white energy passing back and forth between them, and we traversed another twenty yards before the first car I’d seen the whole time finally appeared from behind a hill up ahead.

  It was my mom’s SUV. I had no idea what Kristina had planned, but I remembered her words and commanded my legs to pump harder and faster than they’d ever worked before, rocketing me forward, away from Rosalie.

  Fifty feet.

  Thirty feet.

  Ten feet.

  A half second later I closed my eyes and leaped forward as my mom’s car swerved left, cutting just behind me. I could feel the wind from her car pushing me forward, and then a piercing scream hit my ears, followed by a terrible thud.

  My mom scrambled out of the car, not sure whether to run to me or to check out the scene on the other side of her car.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” she screamed over and over as she decided to run to me first. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Connie Bosco, you need to calm down and get back in the car,” I said. Rosalie could be creeping around the corner to attack us at any moment. I grabbed her arm and threw her into the backseat. I lunged in behind her, locked the doors, and crawled past her to the other side to survey the scene.

  Rosalie was slowly getting up and looking around. It was a brutal sight. Her face was covered in blood, and her expression was more savage than ever.

  “We need to call for help! She’s probably hurt,” my mom said.

  “Mom, she was chasing me with a knife,” I said. “She’s not the one who needs help.”

  “It’s still not safe for you,” Kristina said, appearing in the car. “Tell Mom to hit the gas!”

  “You don’t need to tell me twice,” I said. “Mom, get in the driver’s seat and get us outta here.”

  She started to protest and motioned to Rosalie, who was now reaching for the knife. “But what about that—”

  “Kristina just said we’re in danger and need to go!”

  I’d said the magic words. She crawled into the front seat and shifted gears. We’d made it about three feet when Kristina and I both gasped simultaneously.

  My mom slammed on the brakes. “What’s going on?”

  She couldn’t see it, but the Bruton had glided over and latched on to Rosalie with its fingers, if you could call those black, talonlike appendages fingers.

  “What are you doing?” Rosalie screamed as black smoke rose from the point where the fingers were touching her. “Stop it!”

  “What’s happening to her? What’s that smoke coming from her arm?” my mom whispered in fright.

  “The time has come for you to repay your debts,” the Bruton said with a crackly, deep voice, like a blazing fire pit come to life.

  “But I’m not finished here!” Rosalie screamed, her voice earsplitting.

  “We say otherwise.” Its wings beating vigorously, the demon ascended toward the sky with Rosalie in its clutches, like a squiggling mouse caught in the talons of an owl, away from both the physical world and the Beyond, to a place Kristina and I knew little about. The last thing we heard from her was one long, anguished scream.

  “How is that woman flying?” Mom yelped. She looked at me in horror. “You can’t fly, right, Baylor? Please tell me you can’t fly.”

  I shook my head. “Definitely not.”

  * * *

  The police arrived shortly after, and I felt justified in my thinking that the Bruton had kept them from getting there faster when they mentioned how their sirens had caused three different car accidents, delaying their journey into town.

  “Hey, you’re that ghost kid!” one of the officers said, a goofy smile on his face.

  “Uh, yeah, I am,” I said.

  “See any ghosts around now?” he asked excitedly, looking from left to right as though he might be able to spot one passing by.

  His grandmother swatted him on the hand. “Tell Patty-cakes to shut up and do his job.”

  “Your grandmother would like me to say, ‘Patty-cakes, shut up and do your job.’”

  The color drained from his face. He pulled out a notepad and coughed a little. “All right, sir, let’s get your statement.”

  TIP

  23

  And most importantly: Be brave.

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE interesting, to say the least.

  Mom was featured in the local news as a hero who saved her baby boy from a crazy woman who had somehow evaded capture and was on the loose, and the story made national news when they realized the baby boy was none other than yours truly, Baylor Bosco, the weirdo extraordinaire who could speak to ghosts.

  Once that happened, reporters camped outside my house, looking for me to give them any sort of material. They wanted the wondrous boy medium to deliver healing messages on camera, which I politely declined. They asked if I was nervous that Rosalie Parker—or as she’d been known since the divorce, Rosalie Timmons—might come out of hiding and attack me, but when I told them that a demon had taken her away, they laughed like I was joking.

  There were long days filled with police questioning for me, my mom, and Reverend Henry, but in the end there was nothing to be done. Rosalie was gone. My mom felt indirectly responsible for Rosalie’s disappearance, since she’d swerved in front of Rosalie and precipitated her capture by the Bruton, but I reminded her that Rosalie had been chasing me down the street and trying to kill me. I asked Kristina why the Bruton had taken Rosalie away so suddenly, but she shrugged and said, “The evil play by a different set of rules.”

  The best part was getting to talk to Will and Isabella Parker. They came to Keene devastated and distraught, but with Alfred’s assistance I got to tell them the truth they’d been waiting years to hear.

  In a matter of minutes they went from destroyed over their mother’s disappearance, to horrified by the news of what she’d been doing, to overwhelmed with joy over the revelation that their father had known exactly what he was doing.

  “Tell Isabella she can finally move back home,” Alfred said, gazing affectionately at his sobbing daughter. He was still battered from Rosalie’s black-energy attack, but Kristina said he’d be fine eventually. “She has nothing to run from anymore.”

  He also gave me permission to spoil the news of their trusts. They were going to get a special letter on their thirtieth birthdays, but he decided that now would be as good a time as ever to reveal the news. That led to more crying and joyous outbursts, followed by one more message from Alfred.

  “Find Angela,” I said to them. “She made your dad very happy, and he’d like for you to have a relationship.”

  Their faces tightened, but they didn’t protest.

  * * *

  Keene High School’s homecoming game was that weekend, and since my dad was a teacher there, he liked for the whole family to attend. My parents, unfortunately, hadn’t forgotten about my disaster with Aunt Hilda, so this year they invited her to come along with my grandparents as a gesture of goodwill. It was a cold night, the first time we had to break out the winter gear and bundle up, and I hoped Aunt Hilda would be wearing too many layers to be able to
speak.

  The night was going smoothly until some freshman girls spotted me in the stands after the band’s halftime show and started clamoring for messages. Since I’d been on the news so much, the number of Baylievers had skyrocketed. Meanwhile, Aunt Hilda sat there with a big frown plastered on her wrinkly face, suddenly fascinated with the gum stuck to the metal bleachers by her feet.

  I had delivered a few messages when a woman with the same attitude as Aunt Hilda spoke up. She had blond hair that was cut short above her shoulders, and she turned around to look at me down her nose.

  “Honey, I have a close relationship with my maker,” she said with a condescending grin, “and I know where you’ll be going if you keep up this spirit nonsense.” She pointed down to the ground.

  “Hey, now,” my dad said, “there’s no need to be rude, Mrs. Jalasky.”

  “I’m just stating my beliefs, sir,” she said, turning back around.

  My dad was about to say something else, but I put my hand on his shoulder and tried not to laugh out loud. The woman’s father was standing next to her, rolling his eyes and saying, “Do you hear this girl? Can you believe I raised someone so closed-minded?”

  “Give him something specific to say to her,” Kristina said, nudging him.

  “Tell Tammie she shouldn’t be judging you when she’s the one who’s been buying five bottles of wine every weekend instead of donating that money to people who actually need it.”

  “I can’t say that,” I murmured, blushing.

  “And one more thing, Mr. Bosco,” Tammie said, turning around yet again. “Now that I know the beliefs you instill in your children, I can’t say I’m too thrilled about my son having you for his teacher.”

  My dad’s eyes flickered in shock, and I knew he was thinking of his dad. He’d finally confessed to me that Grandpa’s message was about his insecurity over changing jobs. I guess he’d been worried about the fact that he wasn’t making as much money working as a teacher, but it made him happier than working as an accountant.

  Seeing the pain in my dad’s eyes, I was suddenly furious with the woman. “Hey, Tammie,” I said, enunciating every syllable, “your dad says to lay off the weekend wine and donate the money to people who need it instead.”