by Amy Cross
“No idea,” Douglas replied.
“You wouldn't know anything about the bones, would you?”
“Bones?” Douglas paused. “What bones?”
“I got a call from the local station up there. Some time in the past twelve hours, a human skeleton showed up in the garden of Emily Stone's place. Seems like it came from deep down, maybe an unmarked grave. It's old, at least a couple of hundred years, and the coroner thinks it's female.”
“What will you do with it?” Jenna asked.
“It'll be examined,” he replied, “but I guess eventually it'll be given a burial. Probably at the local church.”
Jenna turned to Douglas. “Could that be her?” she asked. “Maybe that's why she wanted to come back through? Maybe she wanted someone to find her body and it was there all along, in the garden?”
“It's possible,” Douglas replied.
“Do you two want to loop me in on this?” the detective asked. “Do you have any proof at all to back up your version of events?”
“I already told you,” Jenna replied bitterly. “There's nothing.”
“Emily Stone can tell you what she saw,” Douglas suggested. “She was there. Lizzie too.”
“Ms. Stone has already told me that she believes your version of events,” the detective continued, “but that she remembers very little. Her daughter wasn't much use, either.”
“You won't find him,” Jenna replied, with tears in her eyes. “He's gone.”
“Gone where?”
She paused. “To whatever was on the other side of that... doorway. To whatever's out there waiting for people when they die.”
“But you said you don't believe Doctor Slocombe died?”
“He's in that place,” he continued, “but he's not necessarily dead.”
“Okay,” he continued with a faint, frustrated smile, “you're gonna have to run this past me again, because I'm getting all caught up in knots. Forget about proof for a minute, forget about trying to persuade me. Just tell me, in your own words, exactly what you think happened tonight.”
Jenna paused for a moment. “I think we lost someone we shouldn't have lost,” she said finally.
“You think he's dead?”
She paused. “No. I think the woman got exactly what she wanted. She came through and took his place, which means... I guess he must be where she was.”
***
At first he did what the others were doing. He tried desperately to climb the wall, to find a way up to a soul that might be weak, one that might let him through. He fell, of course, and finally he realized that there was no point. Even as the others all around him continued with their doomed quest, he stopped and took a step back, staring up at the wall. Finally, he turned and walked away.
“Joyce?”
Stopping suddenly, he realized that one of the figures heading toward the wall was familiar.
“Joyce!” he said again, hurrying toward her before realizing that she hadn't even noticed him. “It's me!” he added, grabbing her arm and pulling her back.
Turning to him, she stared with blank, dead eyes that seemed to have receded slightly into her skull. Her hair was loose and straggly, and the yellowy-orange nicotine stains on her lips were more noticeable now, set against gray skin.
“It's me,” he said again, keeping hold of her arm. “It's Doctor Slocombe from the university, remember?”
A flicker of recognition seemed to cross her eyes.
“Listen to me,” he continued, “we need to work together, we have to find a way to -”
Before he could finish, she turned and resumed her walk toward the wall.
“No!” he shouted, trying to keep hold of her. “Joyce!”
Turning again, she lunged at him, snarling with such ferocity that he took a step back and let go of her arm. For a moment, she seemed poised to attack him, before the anger faded as quickly as it had come.
“I have to...” She paused, before turning to look up at the wall again. “I have to get back,” she stammered. “It was too soon! I'm not ready!” Stumbling forward, she began to fight her way through the crowd.
“Joyce, wait!” he shouted, trying to keep up with her before realizing that she was already gone, lost in the sea of clamoring figures. He took a step back and watched as several men and women, in the distance, tried to climb the wall, only to fall before they could get too far. “This isn't going to work,” he whispered, struck by the hopelessness of the situation as more and more groaning figures pushed past him, heading to the wall. “There has to be another way back.”
Turning, he began to walk against the flow of the crowd, forcing his way through as everyone else hurried toward the wall, their cries ringing out like an eerie dusk chorus.
After several hours, once he'd reached the back of the crowd, he turned and watched them. More were arriving all the time, determined to climb the wall and find some way back through to the land of the living. Their cries and screams echoed through the air, and the wall continued to churn as new souls were born at the bottom and old souls rose higher and higher until they could disappear without being seen. The sight was like nothing he'd ever imagined, and he stood for some time before turning and looking out across the vast valley beyond.
The dead place, in all its glory, lay before him under a cloudy gray sky.
Drawn onward by the thought of finding some other way home, Doctor Robert Slocombe began to climb down into the depths of the valley. Eventually the mud gave way to wet grass, which dried as he got further along until he reached the bottom of the valley, where a river ran down from nearby mountains. He knelt and drank, although he no longer felt the need to fill his body at all. No hunger, no thirst, just a sense of being complete. Once he was back on his feet, he looked both ways before setting off away from the mountains, following the flow of the river as it meandered through the landscape. Occasionally he saw another soul passing, heading the other way and, no doubt, determined to reach the wall and climb up.
Eventually, the river met two others and together they began to rush toward the top of a waterfall. When he reached the edge, he looked out and saw the vastness of the land before him. It seemed impossible that such a world could exist, yet he remembered Douglas and Jenna showing him sections of the Myrkia that referenced precisely such a landscape. The world of the dead was just as vast and just as varied as the world of the living. Finding a set of steps that had been carved into the rocks, he began to make his way down the side of the waterfall until finally he reached the base, where he found to his surprise that an old man was sitting on a nearby rock, watching the water.
“Where am I?” Robert asked as he stepped closer.
Slowly, the old man turned to him.
“How do I get back?” he added.
“Back? To where?”
“I'm not...” Spotting more dead souls nearby, wandering in the direction of the valley and the wall, he realized that most people in the land of the dead were drawn to seek a way out. “I don't belong here,” he added finally, turning back to the old man. “I fell through, but this isn't where I'm supposed to be.”
“Pretty much everyone says that.”
“Feel my pulse,” he continued, holding his arm out. “It's true.”
Smiling, the old man felt for a pulse, and a flicker of surprise crossed his face as he realized that Robert wasn't lying.
“There has to be another way back,” Robert told him. “I don't care how far I have to go, but I shouldn't be here. I'm not dead! I have friends I have to see, and work I have to get done.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
“Then...” The old man paused. “Your only hope is to go back the way you came, and try to climb the wall.”
“It's madness there.”
The old man nodded.
“So what am I supposed to do?” Robert asked. “I need to go back and prove to them all that this is real!”
“If there's another way,” the old man replied,
“then I do not know of it. Then again, I would never present myself as an expert. If I were an expert, I would find better things to do with my time than sit on this rock and watch the water flow past. I mean, I suppose it makes me look quite wise and thoughtful, but the truth is, I'm just sitting here because I don't know what else to do.” He shrugged. “I suppose there are worse things. At least I gave up trying to climb the wall. Some do.”
“Which way should I go?”
“I have no idea. You will find people, though, regardless of which path you choose. There are new arrivals here daily. Many of them make straight for the wall so they can try to break back through, but the ones who are at peace, the ones who can accept what has happened to them...” He smiled again. “You'll just have to find out for yourself.”
“There's another way back,” he replied, stepping past the old man and hurrying along the shore. “I'll find it, I swear! There's no way I'm going to end up stuck here!”
With that, he hurried away, heading toward the vast horizon of a new world.
Epilogue
Six months later
“I think they like it,” Emily said as she sat next to Lizzie in the garden. “I think they even might put in an offer before they leave. They're not part of a chain, either.”
“And then we can move to that other house?” Lizzie asked.
“That's the plan.” Looking down at her hand, she slowly, and with some effort, clenched and then unclenched her fist. “It doesn't hurt much now. Looks as good as new, huh?” She watched as Lizzie linked some daisies together.
“It's for Doctor Slocombe,” the little girl explained after a moment. “Wherever he is.”
“That's nice of you. I'm sure he'd appreciate it.”
“Is my name Lizzie Sloane now?”
Emily nodded.
“And you're Emily Sloane?”
“It's not a big change. Anyway, I've got this new job coming up and I really don't want to have to deal with people asking questions again. We're starting a new life down in Kent, and I think that should apply to everything.” Reaching out, she put her arm around her daughter. “How about we go and put some flowers on Grandma's grave this afternoon? Once we move, we won't get back up here so often. And then we'll go and visit Uncle Stan and tell him the good news. Does that sound like a plan, or what?”
“It sounds like a plan,” Lizzie replied.
“And now,” Emily added, getting to her feet, “I'm going back in to make sure these people take the house. Wish me luck, I'm going to have to try to be charming.”
“Good luck.”
After watching as her mother headed inside, Lizzie turned and looked across the garden. She was waiting to see the lady again, the same lady she'd seen several times since the night at the laboratory. There had been no more strange noises in the house, and everything thought that the ghost was gone, but Lizzie had seen her a few more times, except that now she looked happier, and she seemed to spend her time in the garden, as if she liked being out in the sun. Most of the time, she was down by the old cherry tree over by the fence, which was where some bones had been found a few months earlier.
Spotting a hint of movement near one of the trees, she glanced over just in time to see a figure slipping through the sunlight. It was gone in the blink of an eye, but Lizzie knew it was her again. Whoever the ghost was, she seemed much happier now, as if she'd finally got what she wanted. The strangest thing was that when she saw the women in the garden, Lizzie no longer felt scared. She smiled as she realized that the ghost was at peace.
***
With all the boxes finally packed, Jenna stopped and looked around the room that was once Doctor Robert Slocombe's office. Six months after his disappearance, and with the police investigation having reached a dead end, the university had finally decided that they needed to use the space. She allowed herself a faint smile as she imagined Robert's reaction if he one day returned and discovered that his office was being turned into a janitorial storage room. The worst part was that the janitor had complained about the lack of a window, and now one was being installed.
Then again, she knew there was no hope. She'd accepted a long time ago that wherever Robert had ended up, he wasn't coming back.
“Knock knock,” Douglas said suddenly.
Turning, she saw him standing in the doorway, holding the Myrkia book in his hands.
“Sorry I didn't get down to help out,” he continued as he stepped inside. “I was too wrapped up in this thing.” Reaching the desk, he set the Myrkia down. “I finally read it all the way to the end, including each and every addendum.”
“I spoke to some people in the faculty office,” she replied. “I don't think they're going to give us the funding we need.”
“Then we'll find someone who will,” he muttered, opening the book and turning to one of the pages near the back. “This isn't over yet. We have to keep working.”
“He's not coming back,” she pointed out.
“I know.”
“Then why -”
“Have you read to the end of this thing?” he asked.
“I skimmed it. There's been so much to do lately.”
“So you haven't read this section?” he continued, pointing at one particular section of text.
“What does it say?” She took a glance at the last line. “They say he walks still? What does that mean?”
“It might be nothing,” he replied, “or it might be...” He paused, before starting to read from the top of the page. “The land of the dead is a vast, unmapped place. Some of the dead roam freely, while others look to create something new here. Those who accept the end of their lives are able to discover a new way of existing, but those who refuse to accept their new state are doomed to an eternity of pain and longing, usually at the foot of the great wall as they desperately try to climb up and -”
“We know all this,” she pointed out impatiently.
“Hang on,” he continued. “Only one person has ever truly set out to catalog and map this world,” he read out loud. “He appeared once at the foot of the great wall. An inquisitive, curious man, he himself tried to find a way back to the world of the living, before finally accepting that he should, instead, walk this new place and learn as much as he could, exploring all its areas and attempting to create the impossible: a map of this dead world.” He paused, before turning to her. “Sound like anyone we know?”
“You can't be serious.”
“Don't you think that's what Rob would have done if he'd survived and ended up trapped over there?”
“But...” She looked down at the book. “This thing was written hundreds of years ago.”
“We know that time works differently there. We also know that the Myrkia was supposedly transcribed by a man who heard voices in his head. After everything we've seen, let's not pretend that a discrepancy of a few hundred years makes much of a difference.”
“Still, we can't...”
He waited for her to continue.
“Can't what?” he asked.
“Let me see it,” she replied, making her way around the table. After a moment, she began to read from the book: “The man walked and walked, and since he had no means of writing his discoveries down, he carried them all in his mind, and he found that he never ran out of space, and he never forgot anything he had learned.” She paused, with tears in her eyes as she imagined Robert all alone, exploring a strange new world. “He befriended people along the way, he stayed with some of them, but he always moved on eventually. He was in no rush, he had all the time he could ever need, and he devoted himself to the twin acts of discovery and exploration. He saw things...” She paused again, taking a deep breath as a tear ran down her cheek. “He saw things...”
***
He saw things no living man had ever seen before. He walked the land of the dead, and yet he himself was not dead. Somehow, in some manner that has become lost to the mists of time, he had found some other way into this place. It is said that as he wal
ked and walked, he saw everything there was to see. He crossed the Valley of Blood and met the Herremanites on the other side. He climbed the jaws of death and saw the view from the top. He met Archylegia and discussed the next step while sipping tea from the arches of an ancient city. He dined with the twelve-sided god and offered advice on the problem of the Mes. He even crossed to other worlds for a time, and spent many years with the Drazi, and learning the ways of the Grandapams, and wandering the continents of the Great Library. It is said that no living creature in all of existence has seen so much, and that no matter how long or how far he walked, he never tired and he never forgot a thing.
They say he walks still.
***
“Come on!” Emily called out from the back door. “Let's go and get some ice cream!”
Smiling, Lizzie got to her feet and hurried to join her mother.
OTHER BOOKS
BY AMY CROSS INCLUDE
Horror
3AM
The Farm
The Scream
Tenderling
The Girl Clay
The Prison
Asylum
American Coven
The Night Girl
Devil's Briar
Ward Z
Ward Z: Revelation
The Last Priest
The Devil's Photographer
Fantasy / Horror
Dark Season series 1, 2 & 3
The Hollow Church (Abby Hart 1)
Vampire Asylum (Abby Hart 2)
Dead Souls volumes 1 & 2
Lupine Howl series 1 to 4
Grave Girl
Graver Girl (Grave Girl 2)
Ghosts
The Library
Journey to the Library (The Library Saga 2)
The Ghosts of London
The Vampire's Grave
The Werewolf's Curse
Thriller
Ophelia
The Dead City (Ophelia 2)
Fallen Heroes (Ophelia 3)
The Girl Who Never Came Back