A Guide to the Other Side (9 page)

“Kristina, whatever it was, it was bad. How did an evil spirit just communicate with me?”

“I don't know.”

“The Sheet Man just stares at me with his weird black eyes, but he never says anything, and he never actually touched me. But whatever just happened, that was new. And it's not good, especially since Halloween's over.” We entered my room and I shut the door. “It's not just the Sheet Man anymore. They're all starting to break the barrier, aren't they?”

She pursed her lips. “That's the last straw. Tonight I'm bringing in reinforcements.”

Not all ghosts stick around. 

AS IF I WEREN'T ALREADY
freaked out enough, the next morning I woke up to discover two horrible things.

First, I didn't have a candle. Candles weren't allowed in hospitals, according to some nurse with an attitude problem, because they were a fire hazard.

“Not having a candle is a hazard to my life,” I replied. “Do you want me to die? You need to find me a candle right now.”

“You're not getting a candle,” she said flatly, and walked out.

Second, Kristina was nowhere to be found. When I go to bed, she goes somewhere in the Beyond to learn, to update her spirit guides, to ask for advice, to socialize (I assume), and essentially to become a better ghost, all while loosely monitoring my dreams and making sure no one's attacking me in my sleep.

When I wake up, she's always there. It was completely and incontrovertibly unlike her to be absent.

Except for that brief period when she was gone for a while.

Just before I turned eight, I woke up early one day to find my grandpa sitting at the kitchen table. He lived out of town, and my parents hadn't told me he was visiting from Ohio. I ran over to him in my Ninja Turtle pajamas and gave him the biggest hug I knew how.

At least, I tried to hug him. Ghosts may not be transparent, but they're definitely not solid.

“Hey there, Baylor, my buddy boy,” he said, kneeling down. “Things are a bit different now, huh?”

I backed away, not sure what to do or how to react. I looked at Kristina, who seemed just as confused. Until then I'd never interacted with anyone on the other side except for Kristina, and as far as I knew, Kristina hadn't either.

Grandpa smiled, but in a strained way that looked more like a frown.

“You don't need to be sad or scared, Baylor. It's just me.”

In my head I definitely wasn't sad or scared. I'd been putting things together. Grandpa had lived far away when he was alive, but now he was dead. And I could communicate with ghosts. So that meant I'd get to see him all the time now. This was great news!

I told him so and then said, “I'm hungry. Want to watch me eat breakfast?”

Grandpa definitely wasn't reacting the way I'd expected. He looked heartbroken. “I . . . I came to say good-bye, kiddo,” he said. “I just want you to know how much I love you. And your parents and brother, too.”

“Huh?”

“And there's something else, too.” He reached out to Kristina, beaming. “My granddaughter. My beautiful granddaughter.” He stroked her face like it was the first time he'd seen her. . . . It
was
the first time. “You get to come with me for a little while.”

“I do?”

“You do,” he said, nodding. “It's time for you to learn some things in the Beyond. You just needed someone to show you how to get there.”

Kristina shot me a look of panic, and I shot her the exact same one back, and before I knew it, he took her hand and held tight.

“She'll be back soon, Baylor,” he said. “I promise.”

And with that, both of them walked forward and disappeared. They were gone. It was just me standing alone in the empty kitchen, stunned.

That's when I started crying. I ran to my parents' room, and I sobbed to them about how Grandpa had taken Kristina to somewhere else and I couldn't see them anymore.

The kicker, of course, was that my dad didn't know his father had passed away yet. Both of them shot up in bed and looked at me, each distinctly terrified of the answer to their next question.

“Which grandpa was it, Baylor?”

“Grandpa Bosco,” I whimpered, and I watched my dad fall apart in bed. I didn't get why he was so upset, and frankly, I was more upset that he was crying harder than I was and getting all the attention from my mom.

“He said to tell you he loves me and you and Mom and Jack,” I said, trying to return the focus to my problem, but it only seemed to make him feel worse. “Then he grabbed Kristina, and they both left!”

“Honey, I'm sorry they're gone, but your father is
very
sad right now,” my mom said with quiet exasperation, clutching my dad's head during his heaving.

“Mom, I'm sad too!” I cried. “What am I going to do without Kristina?”

That was a tough year for everyone. Just as my father mourned his father, I mourned the loss of my sister. Strangely enough, it was the first time I began to understand death.

The questions. The permanency. The heartache.

It took her 367 days to come back. I had never felt so lonely, and now that she was gone for the first time in years, a small but very distinct part of me began to panic.

Kristina had apparently learned a lot about her role in my life during our year apart. Whenever we mention that year, she always laughs because it didn't feel that long to her. To her it seemed like a long day of classes.

But she always emphasizes the
long
part. She's told me only bits and pieces—what she's allowed to tell me so far—but one thing she learned is that she was never meant to be alive. Kristina was always meant to be my companion in life, just as I was always meant to be able to communicate with dead people. We were slotted to be a two-person team from the very beginning, and maybe even before then. I was to be the message giver, and she was to be a sort of spirit manager—a buffer between the physical world and the Beyond.

Before she disappeared for that year, I could see ghosts, but I never communicated with them, nor could I block them out. Even during that year she was gone, the ghosts kept their distance, though I could still see and hear them. When she got back from the Beyond, she seemed different—older and more confident—and she told me it was time to start relaying messages to allow people to heal.

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.”

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?”