Hereafter

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  When the oppressive black water finally vanished, I woke up, coughing and sputtering in the morning sunlight. I found myself on my knees, leaning over on all fours and clutching the earth as if it were a life preserver. Which, in essence, it was.

  For the longest time I stayed in that position, bent over and staring at the ground. My hair hung in thick curtains on either side of my face, blocking my view of everything but the dry grass and patches of red dirt beneath me.

  Then I turned my head only a fraction of an inch to the right. Through my hair I could just make out my surroundings.

  The field. The trees. The headstones.

  I sat back on my bare heels and wrapped my arms around my chest. Only after providing myself that feeble protection did I shake my hair back so I could see the scene more fully.

  I’d had another nightmare, one far worse than any of the others.

  It began normally enough: the flailing, the coughing, the general sense of desperation. Soon, though, after I’d quieted from the initial shock of the water, I could hear the strange voices again, the raucous ones that reminded me so much of Eli’s netherworld. But this time, in addition to the voices, I heard laughter. Angry, violent laughter, coming from what sounded like a party.

  When I looked up to find its source, I saw them: a crowd of figures, standing high above me on High Bridge. Watching me struggle. Before I could make out their faces, I plunged once and finally under the water. Only then did I wake in this graveyard.

  Who were the people on the bridge? And why were they watching me with such obvious joy?

  These were questions I really couldn’t answer. And, of course, they brought up even more questions concerning why I could see them in the first place. Maybe I heard and saw them because I’d become more aware lately? Or perhaps it was like Joshua said: I’d repressed most of my memories about my death and now they were returning in vague but painful detail.

  Thanks, nightmares, I thought wryly, for being so consistently fun.

  This consistency, of course, led to another thought. A pattern seemed to have emerged in my nightmares, particularly with the way they began. Something to do with my emotional state maybe. After all, the last one began when Eli upset me the night he told me I had no choice but to join him in the darkness. Then this nightmare started with the touch of Joshua’s lips.

  No, I thought with a shake of my head. Not at the moment he first kissed me. But instead, at the moment I’d thought I might explode—from misery at the loss of my father and my mother’s forced isolation; from desire, sparked by the feel of Joshua’s lips against mine.

  At the thought of Joshua’s lips, I pushed against the grass and jumped up. I could think about the nightmares later; right now I had more important problems to solve. Such as the fact that a day had passed since our kiss, probably leaving Joshua with more than a few questions about my whereabouts. Without another glance at this terrible place, I broke into a sprint.

  Possibly a half hour later—I wasn’t sure—I skidded to a stop in the Wilburton High School parking lot. I panted, not from the effort of the run, but from fear that I’d arrived too late to find him.

  Luckily, one glance at the back lawn of the school let me know I wasn’t too late. All across the lawn, students gathered in little clusters over their lunches, laughing and basking in the sun. I hurried past them, studying each of their faces as I walked.

  Not seeing the one face I wanted, I had no choice but to wait outside the cafeteria door, tapping my foot and fidgeting until someone finally pushed the door open. I took one cursory glance at the students coming out of it and, dismissing them, circled around to squeeze inside before the door slammed shut. Once inside the cafeteria, I scanned the room impatiently and then began to walk forward.

  I was searching the tables so intently, I didn’t see him until I’d almost smacked right into his chest. We both skidded to a stop before impact, less than an inch from each other.

  A brief wave of real scent—sweet, musky, warm—washed over me and then disappeared. I raised my head, ever so slowly, until I met his gaze.

  I’d found Joshua.

  I felt a swell of joy. Joshua, however, appeared as though he didn’t share my feelings. In fact, he looked down at me with no expression at all, his dark eyes unreadable.

  “Joshua—,,” I began, but another voice interrupted mine.

  “Mayhew, dude, what’s the holdup?”

  “Nothing,” Joshua shot back without looking at O’Reilly.

  “You’re blocking the door, handsome,” a girl—Kaylen, I think—called from the crowd behind Joshua.

  But Joshua still didn’t move. He stared down at me in that frozen, immobile way. Eventually he stirred, keeping his gaze locked onto mine but turning slightly backward.

  “Just remembered,” he told his friends, “I forgot something in my car.”

  “Then could you, like, go get it?” Jillian whined. “Because ‘Joshua Mayhew’ isn’t a tardy excuse for the rest of us.”

  “It isn’t an excuse for me, either. Just ask Ms. Wolters.” He turned fully to the crowd behind him and gave them his normal, broad grin. But when he turned back to me, the grin faded and his eyes finally flashed with real emotion. He shrugged and pushed past me, exiting the cafeteria.

  I felt cold all over. Colder, even, than when the chilly air in the netherworld cut me to the bone. I easily recognized the emotion that had flashed in Joshua’s eyes, although I’d never seen it there before.

  It was fury. Joshua was furious.

  Trembling, I found an empty space between some of the students who were filing through the door and followed them. Once outside, my head swiveled around to find Joshua. I spotted him, already several paces away from his friends and striding quickly toward the school parking lot.

  Finally, I was able to break through the crowd, and I hurried to catch up with Joshua. One look at the rigid muscles in his neck, however, made me hesitate. I stalled several feet behind him, with one foot on the curb and the other wavering just above the asphalt.

  Joshua reached his car, opened the passenger side door, and made a show of digging around on the floorboard for his imaginary forgotten item. Standing upright, he gave me a sidelong glance and jerked his head toward the open door. Both gestures gave off a decidedly angry air.

  As my foot dropped to the asphalt, I gulped. I trudged past him and then crawled into the car. Joshua slammed my door shut and, once he was in the car, jerked his own door shut as well. I winced at the sound.

  Joshua didn’t look at me. He just sat there, hands gripped to the steering wheel and eyes glued to the dashboard. A thick silence fell over us. It seemed to squeeze out all the air in the car and, in the process, smother me. I would have preferred any amount of door slamming to this.

  “I had a nightmare—,” I began lamely.

  “Is that why you disappeared into thin air?” He spat out the interruption without taking his eyes off the dashboard.

  “I did what?” I asked.

  “You disappeared. Right after I kissed you. Or you kissed me. Whatever. We were kissing, but when I opened my eyes, you were gone.”

  “Joshua, I—I had no idea it happened like that,” I sputtered. “That I just disappeared. All I know is that I was kissing you and then I had a nightmare. I woke up less than an hour ago, and I ran straight here.”

  He finally turned toward me, scowling. “What do mean, ‘nightmare’? You had a bad dream or something?”

  “Not exactly.” I held his gaze while I explained. “Every time I have a nightmare, I don’t really sleep. I just go unconscious and—apparently—disappear from wherever I am before the nightmare starts. It’s like I black out, and then suddenly I’m drowning again. I call them nightmares because eventually I wake up.”

  Joshua remained silent for a long time
. When he finally spoke, his words still rang with disbelief. But I heard another chord in his voice, too—that of hurt.

  “But you just woke up an hour ago?” he asked. “It’s been almost a full day since you disappeared. How is that even possible?”

  I struggled to breathe normally. Calmly. “Like I said, sometimes I just go unconscious. After that I wake up somewhere else, and apparently some time else.”

  “So . . . you really didn’t just run away from me?”

  Now the wounded tone in his voice was perfectly clear. I realized then that all his anger probably hid a simple truth: my sudden disappearance had hurt him. A lot.

  Still, I threw my hands up in the air in exasperation at his stubborn refusal to believe me. “Why would I want to run away from you, Joshua?”

  “Because I kissed you.”

  “I kissed you back,” I pointed out, and then added, “and I wanted to.”

  Joshua frowned, but when he spoke, his voice was significantly softer. “Are you sure, Amelia?”

  I nodded vigorously. “Yes! Yes, to a million degrees! It’s just . . . well, I got really upset about my parents, and I guess I sort of lost it. After all, I’m a ghost. You know that.”

  “Actually,” he started hesitantly, “I kind of thought that had something to do with it. Like you were afraid I was going to exorcise you.”

  I blinked. “W-what? Were you thinking of doing that?”

  “No!” He shook his head, looking surprised. “No way. I just thought maybe you’d be worried about it.”

  “Well, now I am,” I gasped.

  “Don’t be,” he said, suddenly intent. “I wouldn’t do that, no matter what. No one could make me.”

  I blew out one frustrated puff of air. “Well, we’ve certainly got our problems, haven’t we?”

  Joshua gave a bitter little laugh. “Yeah, the list isn’t a short one.”

  “The nightmares are on there,” I pointed out. “So is the fact that you’re technically supposed to exorcise me.”

  And let’s not forget about Eli, I added in my head. Or my inability to help my mother and save my father from darkness. Or how about what happens when you age and I don’t, or when your grandmother finally decides enough is enough as far as I’m concerned . . . ?

  For now I kept those thoughts strictly internal. Aloud, I simply added, “I wish I could come back to life and make this easier on us. I really do.”

  Joshua seemed to be thinking along the same lines. He frowned heavily and then dragged his hand through his hair toward the back of his neck.

  “This is going to be complicated, isn’t it?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Seems like it, yeah. You know, I have no idea how this works. The nightmares, the whole ‘you and me, Seer and ghost’ thing. I just don’t know any of the . . . rules. . . .”

  The last word trailed out of my mouth, falling like a feather from my lips. It drifted away under the weight of something greater, something that had just occurred to me.

  Two people—well, one person and one spirit—knew the rules and could help me. Could help us.

  As I formed my plan, my eyes became transfixed on an invisible point outside the car. I started to speak in a businesslike clip to distract myself from the dark turn our conversation had taken.

  “Here’s the deal, Joshua: I think I know someone who might explain what’s happening. Someone who could actually help us understand how I . . . work, I guess. But I’ve got to go somewhere this afternoon to see if my idea is even possible. So can you meet me there after school? And can you trust me to be there?”

  “I think I can.”

  “Good,” I repeated. I bit my bottom lip and nodded emphatically. “Now, could you tell me where your grandmother is right now?”

  It didn’t take long to walk to the largest church in town, nor did it take long for someone to push open one of the doors and unknowingly let me inside. As Joshua had said, the church swarmed with people preparing for tonight’s midweek service.

  Finding Ruth within the church also proved easy enough: she was the one at the front of the chapel commanding a small troop of women in an imperious tone. Each time she shook her head—probably to reject some lower-ranking person’s suggestion—she reminded me of Jillian, and I had to stifle a smile.

  Any hint of the smile disappeared the moment Ruth turned around and caught sight of me. Upon meeting my gaze, she froze in mid order and let out a strangled noise of protest. Then, without breaking our eye contact or finishing her sentence, Ruth pushed past her minions and marched down the center aisle of the church.

  She only released me from her icy glare when she stormed past and hissed, “Outside. Now.”

  I followed Ruth outside the double doors of the chapel to the bottom of the church steps, where she waited with her back to me.

  “Ruth . . . I mean, Ms. Mayhew,” I started, keeping my voice steady. Self-assured. “I know you don’t want to talk to me, but—”

  “You shouldn’t be near such a sacred place,” Ruth interrupted, spinning around to face me. She didn’t meet my eyes but instead glared up at the church as if it, and not some teenage ghost, had addressed her. “You aren’t worthy to be here, much less to exist.”

  Suddenly, I wasn’t cowed, or even respectful. I was angry. So angry, in fact, I forgot what I’d undoubtedly been taught about respecting my elders.

  “Well, it’s not like I turned into a pillar of salt when I walked through the doors,” I snapped. “So obviously, someone divine is okay with my existence.”

  Ruth shook her head stubbornly. “If you’re dead and still walking this earth, you’re an abomination.”

  I tried, unsuccessfully, not to shout. “Abomination? How dare you! You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know enough,” she said. “I know if you’re still wandering around, chances are good you came from that bridge.”

  She had me there. I could only sputter, “Yeah . . . but . . .”

  “But nothing. Even if you aren’t evil at this point, you’re—at best—an empty vessel that evil will eventually fill, and use. You’re unclaimed, but you won’t be for long. I’m sure he wants you . . . the boy who haunts that place. The one we’ve been hunting for years. So now that you’re here too, our work just got more complicated.”

  The memory of Eli’s warnings about my nature—and my future—flashed unbidden into my mind. Then something else struck me. As I’d suspected when Joshua first described the Seers, Ruth and her friends knew about Eli, at least vaguely. They’d been hunting him for years, apparently without success.

  “How do you know all these things about ghosts, and about High Bridge?” I asked.

  “Because I’ve been studying the supernatural most of my life and watching that bridge for decades. I know what happens to the very few souls who don’t move on to an afterlife. And I know what happens to the ones who haunt High Bridge: they become slaves to it, just like that boy we’ve been trying to catch.”

  “But I’m not haunting High Bridge,” I protested weakly.

  Ruth finally met my gaze and gave me a cold smile. “You’re haunting my grandson. That’s enough for me.”

  So this must have been what she meant that night at the Mayhews’ house when she’d said I wasn’t what she’d expected: although dead and freely roaming, I wasn’t the “boy” she’d been trying to catch. Even so, Ruth obviously intended to treat me in the same manner as Eli. As if I were some evil, rogue spirit.

  I held my head as high as it would go, considering how much I’d started to tremble. “Joshua likes me too, you know. I’m not haunting him against his will.”

  “That doesn’t matter. He’ll understand his role as a Seer soon enough, and then he’ll make the right choice.”

  Ruth nodded, as if to emphasize the inevitability of this conclusion. But something about her words made me pause. I tilted my head to one side.

  “Just so I understand all the rules: Seers get a choice to participate in this battle
?”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “That question doesn’t really matter since every Seer has participated after they’ve had their triggering event.”

  “Until now,” I pointed out.

  Ruth blinked, obviously surprised. She recovered fast, though, and shook her head. “Joshua hasn’t made his choice yet. He wouldn’t have, without consulting me first.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” I answered, speaking softly but with a certainty even Ruth couldn’t doubt. However angry Joshua had been (and might still be) with me, I believed him when he promised he wouldn’t use his gift against me. Ruth looked as if she believed it too, now.

  She stared at a point past me, not really looking at anything in particular. Thinking. Then, more to herself than to me, she began to murmur.

  “I was biding my time with Joshua. Waiting for the right moment to tell him about his heritage. But maybe that was a mistake. . . .”

  She trailed off, and I took advantage of her distraction to push the issue further.

  “If Joshua made a choice you didn’t think he could make, then doesn’t it make sense that I could do the same thing? That I could choose not to be evil?”

  Pursing her lips into a thin, prideful line, Ruth drew herself up to her full height. “Joshua can deny his nature all he wants, but eventually he’ll come back to it. He has to.”

  I raised one eyebrow. “Are you saying neither of us has free will?”

  Ruth narrowed her eyes; and, for all their beauty, they suddenly appeared predatory.

  “Joshua is free to make his mistakes,” she said, “for now. But I wouldn’t want you to think, for even a second, that we’re going to give you the same opportunity of choice.”

  I felt an ominous little shiver crawl up my spine. “What exactly are you saying?” I whispered.

  “I’m saying you’d better get moving to one place or another, because your days in the living world are numbered. We have plans for you, and they don’t involve dating my grandson.”

  The ominous shiver broke free of my spine and turned into an allover tremble, one that threatened to make my teeth clack together. I fought to wear a cold, calm expression and to keep my arms at my sides instead of wrapped protectively around me. Before I could show Ruth how much she terrified me, I had to get out of here.