Beyond

  “How are your parents handling it?” she asks.

  I pass by the potted palm tree in the corner, brushing my fingers over its flat leaves. They make a dry whisper.

  “My mom’s a nervous wreck. Takes my temperature ten times a day. She’s read enough about brain surgery to do it herself.”

  After my ghost cornered me in the basement yesterday, I slept with Mom again. I haven’t shared her bed so much since I was little. She likes having me close right now, so she didn’t ask why.

  “And your father? How is he dealing with it?”

  I shrug. “He’s a cop. A natural fixer. And what’s hurting me, he can’t fix. So I guess it’s eating away at him.”

  There’s an aquarium set against the wall. I bend to gaze at the crazy-colored tropical fish. Reminds me of the terrarium I saw in Leo’s room—with the frogs he kept—in those flashes of memory he shared with me when I died. He was collecting tadpoles from a pond when he was taken.

  “You know they identified the remains uncovered by that landslide? Those bones I saw. The murdered kid. He’s got a name now.”

  “Yes, I saw on the news. How are you coping with all that?”

  I’m about to say, Badly. But then I get an idea. Maybe Doc Iris can help me with my shadow-ghost problem.

  “I’m trying to get a grip on it.” I sit down again. “How could anyone do that to a kid? They’d have to be a psycho, right? I mean, do you think these child-killers are just born that way? All twisted. Or does something happen to make them into monsters?”

  I’m not really asking about Leo’s killer, but about Leo himself. Because he’s my monster. Maybe my doctor can analyze him, help me figure him out.

  “Well, in cases like this, where the victim was so young, you’ll usually find that the killers were victims themselves when they were children.”

  “Victims of what?”

  “Violence. Usually sexual abuse. It’s not uncommon for the abused to become the abuser.”

  Is that it? Was my ghost so warped by what happened in that black house that he turned into a monster himself?

  “Have you dealt with any guys who were abused like that?” I ask.

  “Yes, I’ve counseled some.”

  “What are they like? I mean, what kind of damage does it do to them?”

  “It can be emotionally crippling. They’re afflicted with a deep sense of shame and are left feeling worthless. They feel as if they’re marked by what was done to them, that nobody could ever love them again. Some isolate themselves, not wanting their families to see them after.”

  “And some get violent?”

  She nods. “But you need to focus on yourself right now, Jane. You look exhausted.”

  I sigh. “Yeah. I’m beat.”

  “Get some rest. Forget everything else. Give yourself a mental vacation.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Take a vacation from my life. Go somewhere far away.

  And leave my ghost behind.

  I wake up in the dark with the wind in my face. Rain chilling my skin.

  My scream comes out as a ragged gasp.

  What? Where am I?

  Shaking my head, I try to clear it.

  Must have been sleepwalking. But how did I get out of the house without setting off the alarm?

  I hold up my hand, checking for my ring. It’s gone. I know I wore it to bed. Maybe I took it off in my sleep. Do they even know I’m gone? Mom and Dad will be frantic.

  The moon shines a cool blue light down on me through a gap in the clouds. Where am I? Out in the open.

  My feet are like ice. Looking down at them—

  I nearly stumble forward. But I stop myself in time, arms out to keep my balance.

  My toes are curled over the edge of nothing. The ground ends in a sharp drop. I hear the waves breaking down below, invisible in the dark.

  An updraft whips my hair around, smelling of salt water and seaweed. I fight the shiver in my legs that could tip me over the cliff.

  Don’t panic!

  Gravity sucks at my knees, trying to get them to fold. If I lean just the slightest bit …

  Don’t even twitch!

  But my legs shake. Ready to give out.

  I stumble back, away from the cliff, and fall hard on the rocks.

  My T-shirt and sweatpants are soaked.

  Leaning up on my elbows, I try to figure where I am. Off to my right, down a steep slope, I can see the lights of Edgewood.

  This must be Lookout Hill. They call it that for the view, and because if you don’t look out you’ll be taking a high dive onto the broken reefs.

  If I hadn’t woken up just now—what then? Would they be fishing me out of the surf tomorrow?

  Is this my shadow trying to kill me again? Two more days till they take the nail out. If I can just make it till then.

  The wind freezes through my wet clothes.

  Get moving. Get up!

  Rolling onto my knees, I’m about to push myself to my feet when I see it. I’m not alone.

  He’s standing by the drop in front of me. Wearing his hooded sweatshirt and jeans. Watching, amber eyes glowing.

  I don’t move. Don’t breathe.

  So close, his voice whispers in my head. You come right up to the edge. But you always pull back.

  I see now that he’s not standing on the cliff at all, but a few yards past the cutoff. Nothing beneath him but air.

  Go! Run! But my legs are so shivery I can’t trust them to hold me up.

  Come with me.

  He reaches his hand out.

  I shake my head.

  His hand falls back to his side.

  Don’t make me hurt you.

  He sounds almost sad.

  “No!” I yell. “You’re not—not going to hurt me anymore! They’re cutting this thing out of my head. And when it’s gone, you’ll be gone too. Back to sleep. Back where you came from.”

  You can’t get rid of me. I’m part of you.

  “You’re nothing to me! Nothing!”

  He shuts his eyes for a moment, snuffing their fire.

  But you’re everything to me. His voice quiets to a hush, like he’s telling a secret. Since we first met.

  “We never met!” I shout. “You went missing before I was even born.”

  We met before.

  “Before what?”

  His eyes open, flaring bright.

  Before your first breath.

  A cold deeper than the night wind sinks into me.

  When you were born dead. And your soul drifted away. I found you, lost in the dark. Lost like me.

  I don’t want to hear this.

  Your soul was so new and bright. Like a firefly. I kept you close, kept you safe. And you were mine.

  The breath shudders out of me, clouding in the frigid air.

  But they took you from me.

  I force myself to ask. “They?”

  The doctors. They made your newborn heart beat when it wasn’t meant to.

  I’m shivering all over.

  But I never let go.

  He was always there? Before my first breath?

  “But why? Why did you have to hurt me all those times?”

  You were meant for me. Nobody else.

  I squeeze my eyes shut to break away from his gaze. When I open them again I scramble backward on the slick rocks, getting my feet under me.

  And I run. Frantic and stumbling in the rainy dark.

  You’re mine.

  His voice follows as I rush downhill. Everywhere I look I see yellow afterimages of his eyes, flames burning in the night.

  Mine.

  I keep going, fast as I can.

  This must be what going crazy feels like. When all your delusions start making sense. And I guess the worst thing about being nuts is how alone you are, when you’re the only one hearing the voices or seeing the ghosts.

  If I didn’t have Lexi to prove I’m not nuts, I’d be so lost.

  When I got back from
Lookout Hill late last night I was surprised all the lights in the house weren’t blazing, that Mom wasn’t on red alert. But the place was dark and sleeping still. Nobody even knew I was gone. I managed to slip inside and up to my room, where I found my ring on the floor beside my bed. Mom and Dad think they don’t have to check up on me at night now as long as the alarm doesn’t go off.

  I was so exhausted and cold from the long run home that it was a struggle just to get out of my wet clothes and into some dry ones. Then I collapsed in bed.

  In the morning, I felt almost human again. But still shaky. The one thing keeping me from totally falling apart is knowing I only have two more days till the operation.

  It’s near noon on Saturday. The house is quiet. By now Mom will be down at the Blushing Rose.

  I find a note from her stuck on the doorknob of my room: Don’t forget your pills.

  I take a long hot shower to thaw out.

  I’m still in shock from what Leo told me last night. It’s like the whole history of my life just got rewritten.

  He’s always been there with me—every breath, every heartbeat—hiding in my shadow.

  I let the heat of the shower sink into me, breathing the steam and losing myself for a while in the mist.

  Drying off, I check my computer and find half a dozen new messages from Lexi this morning. But none of them urgent. So I click on her email from two days ago instead. The one where she showed me the trappers’ hut.

  Like in the rough sketch my shadow made me draw, the horns stick up from opposite ends of the roof. The reason it has those two chimneys is that one was for the living space, and the other was for the room where the trappers butchered and smoked their meat.

  While I’ve been busy with doctors and tests, Lexi has been searching online archives, trying to find out if any of these huts are still standing.

  I’ve got to tell her about last night. But I need to wake all the way up first and get something to eat. I’m starving.

  Downstairs I find Dad slouched and snoring on the couch, his mouth hanging open. He’s still in uniform from the night shift.

  I watch him for a minute, wanting to wake him up and tell him what’s really going on. When I was growing up, he always made me feel safe. But he can’t save me from something he could never even believe in.

  Spread out on the coffee table in front of him are heaps of files. Sneaking a peek, I see that they’re all about Leo Gage. Nearly twenty years of investigating this case adds up to a mountain of paperwork.

  I quietly shuffle through a small stack, finding interviews with Gage’s family, friends, classmates, teachers and neighbors.

  The officers ask the same questions again and again: When did you see Leo last? Any problems at home, at school? Had he made any new friends lately? Gotten in any fights? Has he ever run away?

  Another stack has more interviews, but these have cover sheets with mug shots. Registered sex offenders. Dad says it’s standard procedure to check out the local sickos when any kid goes missing. I do a quick flip through their shots. None look familiar.

  Buried under all this paperwork I find a thick file with another boy’s MISSING poster attached to the cover. Christopher Ford. Twelve years old. Inside, I find a copy of his autopsy report. He’s not missing anymore.

  Dad lets out a loud snort, waking himself up. He looks over, blinking me into focus.

  “Hi, Boo.”

  “Hi, Bulldog. You’ve got a little drool on your chin there.”

  He swipes it away with his sleeve. “What’re you snooping at?”

  I show him the kid’s photo. “Who’s he?”

  He squints at it, sighing. “Another dead boy.”

  “So is he connected somehow to the Leo Gage case?”

  Dad stretches with a groan. “Nothing like waking up to an interrogation. We don’t know if there’s a connection. He was missing for three years before his body turned up. Buried in the forest.”

  “But it says here he was found way over in Tumbler Ridge. That’s a long way from Edgewood.”

  “Two hundred and twenty miles.”

  “So is there anything that links the two deaths?”

  He rubs the sleep out of his eyes. “Not yet. But the profiler experts see a possible pattern. The victimology is too similar to ignore.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  He reaches over and takes the file from me, slipping it back in the envelope. “You don’t need to hear any of this.”

  “Sure I do. I was there when you found the kid’s bones. Really, I need to know.”

  Dad scratches his fingers through his gray hair. “Well, the profiles of the victims are very close. Both were twelve or thirteen, white, taken from rural towns along the coast and found buried in heavily wooded areas. And the autopsies show the probable cause of death is the same: fractured skull.”

  “So what are you saying? You’re looking for some kind of serial killer?”

  “Who knows? It’s a possibility. A theory. But two hundred or so miles is a lot of geography between the burial sites. Serials usually like to cluster them closer together.”

  “Why do they do that?” I ask.

  “So they can go back and … visit them. Relive it all.”

  Dad starts stacking the files. I notice a large yellow envelope with MCD in big black letters.

  I point it out. “What’s in that one? MCD?”

  “Those are bulletins from the Missing Children’s Database. Open cases of missing kids from across the province who fit the same basic profile.”

  “More victims?”

  “No. Hope not. Most missing kids turn up as runaways or parental abductions. Leave this stuff to me, Boo. It’s my job.”

  Dad heads for the kitchen, and I follow. There’s a note stuck to the handle of the fridge door.

  “ ‘Make sure she takes her pills’,” he reads.

  “I know. I know.”

  “Hey, don’t let your mother know we’ve been talking about this stuff. You’re supposed to be resting. No stress. No drama.”

  Right. Talk to my ghost.

  I try to catch my breath. I’ve been talking nonstop for the past ten minutes, telling Lexi everything about last night on the cliff. Pacing around her room, ranting and raving till I run out of air.

  I sit down on the desk chair, breathless but feeling a little better. Now that I’ve shared the madness, I don’t seem so alone in it.

  “Wow,” Lexi says. “Haunted from the start. You never had a chance.”

  I just shake my head. Damn, is that really the story of my life?

  Above her desk, I see she’s been expanding her “wall of death.” Besides the afterlife images with the otherworldly light, spirits and souls in flight, the rest of the space is dedicated to my ghost. A collage of pictures and articles, from Leo Gage’s original MISSING poster to the old newspaper stories to the flood of new coverage.

  The initial searches led nowhere. They dredged nearby ponds, scoured the coastline, ran down hundreds of tips.

  But it was like he just stepped out of the world that day. Into nothing.

  “The way he talked about how we met. You know, how our souls were both lost in the dark? It sounded a lot like the Divide.”

  That place of never-ending night separating the living world from the light.

  I’ve checked out all the websites about near-death experiences, with stories brought back by Second Chancers like me. I’ve been trying to figure out why some souls get trapped in that void and become Grim Enders. Why won’t they go to the light?

  I found out that the light feels different to some people. For most, like me, it was this perfect healing sunshine, taking away all my pain and fears, giving me a deep sense of peace.

  But for some it burns. In these rare cases the light hurts so much they pull back from it. Those who have experienced this pain describe it as feeling like their soul was set on fire.

  Why does it burn them? They say the light makes you truly see yourself. Ma
kes you face all your fears, your guilt and shame, the bad you’ve done, and the damage that’s been done to you. The light brings out your deepest darkness. Then burns it away in a flash.

  But when the dark goes so deep in you that’s it’s taken over—if you can’t let go or can’t face it—then the moment of pain from the fire doesn’t end. And your soul is left in agony.

  Those who can’t give up their darkness are doomed. Scared of the light, they lose themselves in the Divide.

  “So Leo tried to kill you,” Lexi says. “To take you back. All because he thinks you belong together? Belong to him? That’s a twisted kind of love.”

  “It was never about love.” I pick at the bandage on my wrist. “He wants to own me. I’m all he’s got, and he won’t share.”

  “We have to do something to keep you safe till surgery.” Lexi leans on the desk next to me. “There’s no way you’re sleeping alone anymore. I’m going to crash at your place till your operation.”

  “Be my bodyguard?”

  “Hell, yeah. You need guarding.”

  What would I do without my Creep Sister?

  “Then you’re hired. I’ll pay you in pizza.” Trying out a small smile, I glance at the ghost wall beside us. “All this work. You’ve been busy.”

  “You know me. Maniac insomniac. Which makes me a perfect night watchman.” Lexi grabs her mug off the desk. “I need caffeine to keep up with this weirdness. You want some coffee?”

  “Sure. But decaf.”

  While she heads downstairs, I let my eyes wander over the wall. Leo’s MISSING poster shows him smiling. What changed him? Was he warped by the Divide, the total isolation and loneliness? Or was it what happened to him in that house of horrors he drew for me?

  Lexi’s been emailing me these bits and pieces. When I see it all together, there are so many details that I can’t tell what might be important and what’s nothing. It’s been barely two weeks since the landslide uncovered those bones. But it feels way longer, like it’s been January forever.

  I spot that famous photo of me on the wall, the awful image taken after the landslide unearthed the skull. I’m standing behind Dad. The skull seems to glow in the glare of the flashlight.