Hereafter (23 page)

Chapter
Twenty-five

F
or a moment I thought something inside the graveyard—possibly a tree—had caught fire, but then I realized that the sounds accompanying the light weren’t fiery hisses. They were human murmurs.

Chants.

The fires glowed brightly and the sun had nearly set, so I had to squint just to make out the dim figures of the chanters standing just inside of the iron cemetery fence. At first, the scene made no sense. But when I looked up at the darkening sky, to the waning crescent moon that hung there, the pieces began to fit together until—

“Joshua, the exorcism!” I gasped. “It’s supposed to be tonight.”

In my rush to deal with Eli, I’d completely forgotten about the exorcism. But Ruth and the other Seers obviously hadn’t. They probably followed Joshua here tonight, knowing he’d lead them right to me.

Now the ache at my temples pulsed in time to their voices; it must have started when they began to chant, before we noticed them.

Joshua groaned and grabbed my hand to drag me through the cemetery, to the small hill near its gates. There, about ten people had gathered. Except for Ruth, each held a lit torch and had taken his or her place in a ring around
what looked like a circle of gray powder—identical to the kind now bordering the Mayhew house—sprinkled onto the grass. Through the ring of people, I could just make out a small, square object lying on the grass. Ruth’s herb-wreathed Bible, probably.

All of the Seers but Ruth stared intently into their makeshift circle. Ruth, however, stood off to one side and looked at Joshua and me.

Joshua gave his grandmother a curt nod. “Torches, Ruth? Wouldn’t flashlights have been a bit less heavy-handed?”

The corner of Ruth’s mouth twitched in irritation. “The torches add a touch of ceremony, Joshua.”

At the sound of voices, the other Seers finally glanced in our direction. I was surprised by their faces: mostly elderly but a few young ones, not much older than Joshua and me. But only a few of them—mainly the older ones—stared directly at me. As Jillian had done outside the school and then in the Mayhews’ kitchen, the younger Seers seemed to peer with difficulty at the space in which I stood.

“Why isn’t everyone looking at me?” I managed to whisper, although everything in my body, including my vocal cords, felt paralyzed.

“Not all of them have had a triggering event,” Ruth explained, turning her sharp eyes on me. “Some of them can’t see you . . . yet.”

“Then don’t let them,” Joshua pleaded.

Thank God he did, because I didn’t think I had the strength to choke out another sentence. I didn’t know whether this group of Seers had enough power to cast me into oblivion, but I knew this headache (not yet debilitating, but getting there) wasn’t a sign of good things to come. Whatever the Seers intended to do to me, I certainly didn’t want to go through it.

Nor did I want tonight to be my last in the living world. My last night with Joshua.

Ruth, however, shook her head at Joshua’s request. “That’s not possible. If she’s wandering among us, unclaimed by one afterlife or another, then she’s evil. And we can’t take the risk of letting her join the other spirit in hurting more people on that bridge.”

Joshua lurched forward, inadvertently yanking me with him. “You have the wrong ghost, I swear.” Ruth shook her head again; but Joshua continued, cutting her off. “No, listen to me, Ruth. Amelia has nothing to do with all the deaths on High Bridge. In fact, she was a victim of the guy you’ve been hunting—Eli. I know. I’ve seen him myself, and he’s seriously creepy.”

Ruth took a hesitant step away from her grandson as if his words confused her. Joshua took advantage and moved forward, fumbling with his free hand for something in his pocket. He produced his cell phone, flipped it open, and shoved it in front of Ruth.

At first she avoided looking, but soon her eyes were drawn to the phone’s glowing screen. She frowned, still staring at the device.

“What does this mean, Joshua?” she asked.

“It’s a text from Jillian,” he said, pushing the phone closer toward Ruth. “She and our friends are at some party on High Bridge, and we’re pretty sure Eli’s lured them there.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” he nearly shouted, his patience running thin. Each second of delay might cost his sister, and Joshua knew it.

Ruth still looked skeptical, with her mouth twisted with disbelief. Her eyes, however . . . in her eyes I could see doubt. I could see it each time her gaze flickered over to me.

“Ruth,” I said quietly, stepping forward with Joshua’s hand still clasped in mine. The pain at my temples grew in intensity the nearer I got to her, but I kept moving. “Ruth, I know you don’t trust me; and all things considered, I don’t blame you. But you’re right about one thing: Eli Rowland is bad news. He controls that river, and I’m almost certain he’s behind this party tonight, after what he showed me about my death today.”

I could still see uncertainty in Ruth’s eyes, so I leaned closer. “Please,” I murmured. “Just hold off on this exorcism for now. At least long enough for me to do something about Eli, and to make sure Jillian is safe.”

Ruth looked back at her group of Seers, each of them watching us intently, and then she turned back to us.

“Please,” I repeated.

Slowly, so slowly I wasn’t sure she even moved, Ruth nodded at me.

“I can hold them off for a while,” she whispered. “I’m not promising any length of time—a day, two weeks, who knows—but you have to make sure my granddaughter
is safe. If she isn’t . . .”

Ruth trailed off, but I didn’t need her to finish the thought. If I didn’t save Jillian, nothing could save me. I bit my lip, nodding as well.

I turned to Joshua, who still looked pale, afraid. “Joshua?”

Finally, he stirred, moving his eyes from his grandmother to me. Once I had his full attention, I gripped his hand hard, sending fire racing up and down our arms.

“Joshua, you’ve got to go,” I commanded him. “Now!”

Those words were all the motivation Joshua needed. He dropped my hand and began to dash to his car, jingling his keys out of his pocket. He had made it almost to the door before he noticed I wasn’t behind him. Only then did he spin back around to me.

“Amelia?”

“Go on without me. I can get there a lot sooner if I materialize.”

“Great idea.” Joshua nodded. “Do whatever you can. I’ll drive fast.”

His expression told me that he was too distraught to question what exactly I could
do
once I beat him to the river. Within seconds he had ducked into the car and started the engine.

As he skidded off across the gravel, I turned back to Ruth.

She stood motionless, still watching me. Her eyes flickered briefly to her Seers, all waiting expectantly—almost angrily, it seemed—for her to take some kind of action. When Ruth’s eyes flickered back to me, I could see the emotions warring in them: worry for Jillian; frustration about the position in which she’d just been put; and, of course, unadulterated hatred.

Of me.

Her blatant hatred angered me, especially since the headache still throbbed along my temples and threatened to break into that awful, incapacitating montage of images. I was about to risk myself, my own afterlife, just to save her granddaughter; a little gratitude, or at least a little less intentional infliction of pain, couldn’t have hurt.

Despite my irritation, however, I didn’t feel intense enough emotions yet. I would need to get much more agitated before I tried to materialize.

So, instead of Ruth, I thought about Serena Taylor and Doug Davidson. My best friends in life. The two people, outside of my family, about whom I cared most in the world. I pictured their crazed, possessed faces on the night I died: horrible distortions of the good people they truly were. Pawns, played with indiscriminate cruelty by Eli in his little game to procure souls. None of them—not Eli, nor his dark masters—had ever considered that our own volition should have something to do with our futures.

Hence my current lack of a future.

Immediately, I became angry. Violently so. The emotion began to simmer somewhere in my stomach. It threatened to bubble up into my throat and break out in a growl. The force of it made me dizzy. I reached out but found nothing except empty air to steady myself.

While I grasped, I felt an unexpected sensation brush along the skin of my palm: air—as cool as if it had come blowing in off water—shifting with the movements of my arm.

I opened my eyes and stared down at my hand. It still flailed, clenching nothing but darkness and hovering several feet above asphalt. Out of my hand’s reach, the asphalt ended in grass. Not the grass outside the cemetery, however, but a thicker, coarser grass that sloped steeply down into rushing water. Into a river.

High Bridge Road—I was now standing on it.

I could have spent some time congratulating myself on this second materialization, and marveling at the fact that my headache had suddenly vanished, had my attention not been drawn elsewhere by a chorus of voices. My head jerked toward them.

A huge crowd of young people—Wilburton High students, by the looks of their purple shirts and hoodies—clogged the road across High Bridge. Someone had parked a car in the middle of the bridge, and loud music blasted out from its open doors. Just next to the car I glimpsed the shining metal rim of a beer keg.

A normal enough scene. Just a high school party on a Friday night, one full of people having a great time. And one held directly over the mouth of what I no longer doubted was some cold, pitiless outpost of hell.

I wove my way through the mass of bodies, searching the faces of the students but not finding anything unusual. Aside from the effects of the beer, everyone looked relatively normal: no blurry, possessed eyes, no maniacal laughter. Maybe I’d overacted? Maybe there was no danger here, except for a few possible hangovers?

Ahead, a few yards between me and the bridge’s newly repaired guardrail, were some familiar faces. O’Reilly stood closest to the keg, with one arm around Kaylen, sloshing beer from his cup as he gestured to Scott and Jillian. Although Kaylen looked mildly bored, Scott kept sneaking glances at Jillian, who blushed each time his eyes met hers.

I sighed in quasi relief, mostly because none of them looked crazed. Maybe I
had
overacted.

“All’s quiet on the western front,” I muttered, shaking my head at my own foolish paranoia.

A familiar whisper, so close to my ear that it felt like a cold caress, made me shriek.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say
all’s
quiet, Amelia.”

Chapter
Twenty-six

I
should have known, from the first moment I spotted all these people on the bridge. I should have made the connection and trusted my instincts.

Because Eli would never let me go free without a fight. Not after today’s argument in our graveyard. He wanted another confrontation with me and as he had done in the past, he’d used as many pawns as he needed to provoke one.

“Hello, Eli,” I whispered.

Keeping uncomfortably close, Eli circled around me until we stood directly face-to-face. He smiled, obviously pleased with himself.

“Nice party,” I said. “Looks a little familiar though.”

Eli’s grin widened. “Ah. So you remember.”

“Yes. I remember now.”

As I spoke, I took slow, cautious steps toward Jillian and her friends, trying to circle Eli so I placed myself between him and them. With each step, I prayed Eli wouldn’t notice until I was close enough to do . . . who knows what.

Eli kept grinning, still oblivious to my movements. He probably thought I was just trying to avoid him, which, on some level, I was. Then his eyes flickered to my feet. I stopped moving, but too late. Eli caught my movements, and his face darkened.

“Stop,” he commanded.

“Or what?” I asked, trying to sound brave.

Eli gave me another grin. “Or else, obviously.”

The smug glint in his eyes made me want to wipe the grin off his face. I tried to straighten my spine, to ignore the shivers running along it.

“I don’t believe you, Eli.”

“Well, you should, Amelia.” He twitched his head to something behind me. Without letting him out of my sight, I peeked over my shoulder to Jillian and her friends.

I was horrified to find that, in the few seconds I’d been distracted, the entire scene had changed. O’Reilly still had his arm around Kaylen, but the expressions on both of their faces had shifted drastically. Each of them wore an idiotic grin, and each had those unnaturally wide, unfocused eyes. Even Scott’s sweet glances at Jillian had become vaguely maniacal.

Of all the people in the small crowd, only Jillian remained unaffected. She glanced nervously from friend to friend, clearly unnerved by their sudden, hysterical giggles. All around her, the party had grown wilder, more uncontrolled. She sensed it, just as I had on the night of my death.

And there, woven throughout the party, were a few new guests; the inky, shapeless forms had arrived, weaving and oozing between the partygoers like smoke. Each time one of these dark souls brushed past a partyer, the living person would stiffen and then began to laugh louder, more vacantly.

I turned around fully to Eli. Although I already knew the answer, I asked, “Who’s the latest victim?”

“Well, Amelia, it’s none other than Little Sister over there.”

“What makes you think she’s Joshua’s sister?” I asked, disdainful. The bravado in my voice sounded too shaky, however. Unconvincing. Eli smirked in response.

“Because I’ve been stalking Big Brother’s house all afternoon. And wouldn’t you know, I eventually found the perfect candidate to invite to a party. A few whispered suggestions in some teenage ears, a few promises to my masters, and voilà—the party of the year.” Eli gestured grandly to the throng of people around us. “I could have chosen to inspire a suicide like I did with Melissa, or caused a car accident like I did with your lover boy, but—considering my audience—I thought I’d put on a repeat performance instead. The exact same thing I did more than a decade ago when I needed to find a new assistant.”

I wanted to choke, or even scream, upon hearing what Eli had just revealed: that he’d intentionally killed Melissa, that he’d purposefully lured my friends to a party on this bridge so that one of them could die. Or maybe so that I could die? Had he engineered the whole party more than ten years ago just to capture
me
?

“You should know, Eli,” I said in a still-shaky voice, trying to distract not only Eli but myself, “that Jillian Mayhew is a Seer, like her brother. They’re exorcists by birth, and their family has a long tradition of sending ghosts to hell.”

Eli snorted, undeterred. “Not scary, Amelia, considering the girl obviously can’t see me right now.”

“But she will,” I insisted, “if you keep up with your plan tonight. And her Seer grandma isn’t the forgiving kind, trust me.”

Eli just smiled, totally disinterested in my threats. Disinterested in the Seers who’d been hunting him without success for so long. When his eyes briefly flickered back to the crowd, mine followed. As I saw the increasingly glazed expressions on the partygoers’ faces and listened to their shouts of laughter, I realized how little time I had left. I had to think, think,
think
of some way to make Eli stop.

“A trade!” I cried out suddenly.

Finally, Eli looked back at me, his grin fading. “A trade, Amelia?”

I took a quick peek at Jillian, only to find her being propped up on the guardrail by O’Reilly, with Kaylen and Scott giggling and bending over to hold her legs. One could have easily interpreted this scene as harmless play among friends.

But I knew better.

O’Reilly had his arms around Jillian, but he seemed to be struggling
forward
, as if he was making an effort not to prevent Jillian from falling backward, but to keep her from sliding down off the railing, onto the safety of the road. The same went for Kaylen and Scott, who both looked as if they were trying to pin Jillian’s legs to the rail, not keep her steady. As for Jillian, her fingers had clenched into white claws, dug firmly into the skin of O’Reilly’s arms.

“Guys,” she said with a seemingly casual roll of her eyes. “This has been a real riot and all, but it seriously stopped being funny about twenty seconds ago.”

Her friends merely laughed and pressed her more firmly to the guardrail.

I spun back around to Eli.

“Yes, a trade,” I said, now desperate. “Me, for them. My life, for theirs.”

Eli blinked, obviously surprised by my willingness to negotiate.

“And you answer a question for me first,” I added hurriedly.

“Well . . . I might be able to do that,” he sputtered. Then his face grew serious, almost reproachful. “As long as you’ll hold up your end of the bargain, of course.”

“Of course.” I nodded.

“And that entails you, staying with me. Forever.”

“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently, “for however long forever lasts.”

Eli blinked again. Then a wide smile began to spread across his face, one that had only a touch of incredulity to it.

“What’s your question, Amelia?”

I hesitated for a moment, knowing that now wasn’t really the time for this, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Why me?” I asked.

Eli tilted his head to one side, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you kill
me
? What about me was so . . . special, you just had to have me join you? I mean, other than the fact that you thought I was trying to kill Joshua.”

To my surprise, Eli laughed. “I could just tell we were meant to be together. I knew it from the first moment I saw your green eyes across the bridge at your birthday party. I didn’t even know you were the guest of honor until I started pressing my army to chase you. I only knew your eyes were like hers. Like Melissa’s.”

My mouth dropped open in shock.

My
eyes?

My death, my afterlife, my struggles with Ruth and Eli—they had nothing to do with my supposedly evil nature? The whole, tragic thing had started with my
eyes
?

I shook my head, stunned, trying hard to remember my purpose here. To remember my promise to help Jillian.

“Oh,” I finally managed to say.

“What on earth made you come to this decision anyway?” Eli asked, unaware of how much he’d shaken me. “Not that I’m disappointed.”

I shrugged as nonchalantly as possible under the circumstances and fought to speak again. “Well, if you’d stop behaving like this—if you’d stop trying to hurt the Mayhew family—then I guess I could see you in a better light. Maybe I could learn to feel like we’re meant to be together. After all, you’re dead, I’m dead. It makes a weird kind of sense, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does,” Eli said. “But what about the living boy?”

“What about him?” I tried to feign a smile.

“Well, obviously, if I let this girl go, if I leave her and her brother alone, then you have to give me your word you’ll never see him again. Even in his own hereafter, whenever he becomes like we are now. Can you promise me that, Amelia?”

“I—I promise.”

Not only did I stutter, but my voice cracked at the word “promise.” Without thinking, I winced at the sound. Eli’s eyes automatically narrowed into dark slits. He obviously saw through my ruse, and fury began to brew upon his face. Without another word, Eli flung out his arm toward the group of people clustered around Jillian Mayhew.

Suddenly, their laughter took on an animalistic quality, like the howls of an attack. The black, shapeless souls began to gather around them and writhe frantically. In response, Jillian’s captors began to shake their arms, rocking Jillian back and forth against the railing. Her eyes widened in terror, and her mouth open in a silent scream.

“Let her go!” I shrieked. I launched myself at Eli, grabbed the arm he’d extended, and sank my nails into his dead flesh.

For one silent moment, Eli stared down at his arm and the small half-moons of blood my nails had drawn from it. We both knew he shouldn’t—
couldn’t
—bleed. And yet, as he’d done to me in the graveyard, I’d hurt him now.

“What the hell?” Eli began when a strange, groaning noise erupted under us. It sounded like metal against metal, protesting as it began to fold.

Eli jerked his arm from my grip, and we both looked in wonder at the road beneath our feet. There, zigzagging through the thick asphalt between us, was a narrow fissure. It ran from one side of the road to the other, as if some impossibly large force had cracked the bridge itself.

“Amelia, what did you just do . . . ?” Eli murmured, but the sound of squealing tires cut him short. All of our heads—Eli’s, Jillian’s, and mine—whirled around to the sound.

At first, all I could see were the negative images of two headlights, flashing black spots against the backs of my eyelids. As I tried to blink them gone, a car door opened, and I heard a wonderfully familiar voice.

“Let them go, Eli, or I swear I’ll kill you a second time.”

“Joshua!” Jillian and I cried simultaneously. I turned to Eli with a triumphant smile.

Eli looked past me to Joshua. “Your knight in shining armor?” he asked me softly, dangerously.

“Yes,” I whispered, suddenly fervent. I grasped his open shirt. “Please, Eli. I love him. I do. And I don’t think you’re evil, either. Just . . . misguided. So prove me right and let Jillian go. Let them all go.
Make
me care about you, Eli.”

For one unbelievable moment, Eli wavered. I saw the war of thoughts on his face, the battle between his need for power and his desire for something else. . . .

“Amelia,” he whispered, and reached out with one hand to cup my cheek. But the moment before his fingers brushed my skin, I pulled away from him.

Eli grunted, in both anger and—I was sure—hurt. “I can’t stand this anymore,” he muttered to himself.

All at once the partygoers straightened and froze. They stood absolutely still, their wide eyes suddenly immobile, vacant. Then, in unison, they began to twitch and convulse.

Almost at once the wraiths pulled back from the living people as if the force of their involuntary movements had frightened the spirits. The partygoers trembled so hard they appeared to shimmer, the lines of their bodies wavering like the air above a hot tar road in the summer.

From what I could see, all the living people convulsed, with no exceptions. Which would also mean . . .

My head whipped back to Jillian and her friends just in time to see O’Reilly slump like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Both of his arms went slack at his sides, including the arm that, until now, had been one of the only things holding Jillian upright. When Kaylen’s and Scott’s convulsions caused them both to fall backward, they also lost their tenuous hold on Jillian’s legs.

Everything after that seemed to happen in slow motion.

Jillian’s eyes briefly flickered to her brother, who was still pushing through the twitching crowd, and then flickered back to her friends. Her arms lifted from the railing like a trapeze artist’s as her body shifted farther backward.

She screamed, just once. The noise was muffled and dull in my ears, as was Joshua’s shout behind me. But I heard the next sound clearly, the one that cut Jillian’s scream short.

A sharp crack rang out, followed by a low, vibrating twang as Jillian’s head connected with one of the support beams that extended up from the bridge.

Instantly, her mouth went slack and her eyes rolled back until only their whites showed. Her head slid away from the beam, leaving a dark red smear on the metal. For less than one second, Jillian’s entire body relaxed. She looked peaceful. Lovely. Then, without another noise, she toppled over the railing and into the darkness below.