Hereafter (24 page)

Chapter
Twenty-seven

I
rushed to the guardrail, but I was too late. Before I’d even gripped the metal, I heard a loud splash from beneath the bridge. Right afterward, Joshua slammed into the railing next to me, and we leaned over together. Only a circle of white foam gave us any clue as to where Jillian had fallen.

Joshua howled wordlessly. Through the howl I heard a timid, boyish whimper from behind us.

“W-what just happened? Mayhew?” O’Reilly moaned. “Dude . . . I think I’m gonna puke.”

I ignored his pleas and pulled Joshua down from the railing over which he’d begun to climb.

“No, Joshua, don’t! You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I don’t care,” he shouted, trying to brush my hand off his shoulder.

“And how will you help her then?” I pleaded. He tossed me the briefest of looks. The misery in his dark eyes made me cringe.

“Go down the hill,” I commanded. “It’ll be safer for you to get in the water from there, and then you can swim to her. I’ll jump in and try to find her this way.”

“No. Not you too.”

“I can’t die, Joshua,” I cried, shaking him. “Now, hurry, please, before it’s too late.”

He twitched for a moment as though he might scream again. But then he spun around and ran away from me. I saw him bring his cell phone to his ear, presumably to call for help as he ran. Only when he disappeared down the grassy hill did I turn back to the crowd.

O’Reilly’s face was now a light shade of green, and he’d dropped to his hands and knees on the pavement. The poor boy looked as if he couldn’t quite catch his breath. Beside him, Kaylen and Scott panted, clutching at their sides.

“O’Reilly, man,” Scott groaned. “What’s going on here? Why do I feel like this?”

I looked over his hunched back at Eli. Judging by the expression on Eli’s face, the party was no longer going as he’d planned. He seemed to have folded in upon himself in the middle of the moaning crowd, his eyes darting this way and that as he tried to figure out what to do. My lip curled up in distaste.

“I’ll deal with you later,” I growled. Then I spun away from him and bent over the metal railing again. Far below, I could just make out Joshua’s figure on the dark riverbank as he struggled to pull off his shoes.

Free of his sneakers, he waded into the river. When he reached a sufficient depth, he began to swim furiously against the current, toward the place where Jillian had fallen.

Now it was my turn. It should have been a simple enough task. I would use the metal girders to climb up onto the railing. Then I would dive.

Piece of cake.

Instead of climbing, though, I shivered. I couldn’t lie to myself: the idea of jumping off High Bridge petrified me, no matter what the circumstances were. I looked over the railing once more, down to the black water. It seemed to spin in strange, dizzying circles, moving closer to and then farther away from me.

I had vertigo. Powerful and debilitating.

I gasped and leaned back, letting go of the railing. I closed my eyes and tried to force my breath back into an even rhythm. I had to do something, I had to. But it seemed as though I couldn’t force myself over the edge of this bridge. I couldn’t make myself plunge down into the river where, in another world, an evil darkness waited; where, in another existence, I had died.

Then an idea struck me. I had a far easier way to travel, one that didn’t involve me falling off High Bridge for the second time. I could go to Jillian immediately, if I desired it strongly enough.

Materialize.

I repeated the word in my head while picturing Jillian’s face. To my endless relief, it worked, and much faster than it ever had before. Only seconds later, I opened my eyes to the familiar, greenish black darkness.

This time I didn’t panic at the sight of the water undulating around me. Thank God I was becoming an expert at navigating this river, because I now had a clear purpose in being here. I twisted myself around, searching.

Finally, I saw a blurry figure floating several feet from me, its thin arms and long hair waving in the water. Jillian. She resembled her brother as she floated, unconscious and dangerously peaceful. A dark streak of what could only be blood trailed in the water just above her.

I whipped my head around, looking for Joshua. I knew from experience that I could do nothing for her, and I wondered why this thought hadn’t fully occurred to me before, when I’d told Joshua I would get to her first.

“Joshua?” I called out, my ghost’s voice perfectly clear and unaltered by the water.

No one responded. As I looked back at Jillian, her head bobbed lightly in the current. The motion shook loose a few bubbles, which raced from her lips to the surface. I frowned, uncertain of what to do.

Then I heard a faint noise. A
thud, thud, thud
a few feet from me. A rhythmic, pumping, living thud.

The thud of Jillian’s heart.

The sound of her heartbeat could mean only one thing if I heard it: Jillian Mayhew would die, and soon.

“Joshua!” I screamed, frantically whirling around again in the water. After several spins I found him, although I realized he wouldn’t provide us much help.

I could see him, submerged but high above us. He had his head above the water and was therefore unable to hear my screams. More disturbing, however, was the fact that he was swimming in the wrong direction, moving away from us and upriver.

The current had probably carried Jillian at least twenty feet away from the place where she’d originally fallen—the place to which Joshua now swam. If he stayed on course, Joshua would have no way of finding us. Not in time to save Jillian, judging by the audible thud of her heart.

I swam the short distance to Jillian and began to clutch at her, trying in vain to grab the folds of her light jacket. Unable to grasp that, I reached for the hood at the back of her neck and prayed that my ability to touch her brother would manifest itself now.

It didn’t. My hands grasped at nothing. I felt the numb pressure of her clothes, but not the clothes themselves. It was as if Jillian was surrounded by an invisible shield against my dead hands. However much I could touch Joshua, or hurt Eli, I couldn’t move Jillian.

I couldn’t help her.

The truth of it crushed down upon me. I wanted to throw back my head and scream at the dark water. To howl at my own uselessness.

“Please!” I called out into the dark water. “Please help me. I . . . I don’t know what to do. Please help me.”

Jillian sank a little farther in the water as her heart continued to pound, its beat noticeably slowing but growing louder in my dead ears. I brought my hands to my face, covering it in a cowardly attempt to shield my eyes from the sight of Jillian Mayhew dying.

At that moment something—or someone—answered my prayers.

At first I didn’t really see it; I was too involved with my sorrow, too wrapped up in my misery. But something began to glisten red in my eyes, bright and insistent, distracting me. I pulled my hands away from my face and frowned at the small light that seemed to have formed in them.

The glow moved like a little tongue of flame, pulsing and flickering upon my skin. It looked as if I held the flame as it danced in my palms. This idea made no sense, of course. Yet the light continued to dance, spreading out to my fingertips and up my arms. Soon my arms glowed red and orange, bright like fire beneath the water.

What was happening? Had my terror for Jillian finally found its way to the surface, bright and suddenly visible?

Possibly. I wasn’t just scared, though. I was frustrated, sad, even hopeful that I could still help Jillian. An entire range of emotions burned inside of me. They were powerful. Painful.

But the fiery light on my skin wasn’t. It didn’t hurt at all. It just shined.

I twisted my hands up and then down, watching the light spread past my elbows and up to my shoulders. I kicked one leg into my line of vision and saw the glow there as well. Soon I could see my entire body radiating the glow.

I’d become a luminous beacon in the dark river.

And then, like a miracle, Joshua was there, treading water beside me. For the briefest of moments, he stared at me. His eyes, wider than I’d ever seen them, sparkled with the reflection of red and orange. He gestured back and forth, between his eyes and my glow; apparently, he’d seen the glow from above the water and swam down toward us. Now his expression was one of awe and, possibly, a little fear.

The moment passed with a quick shake of Joshua’s head. Neither of us needed a reminder of why we were in this river again. The light on my skin could wait.

Joshua wrapped one arm around his sister’s waist. Grabbing my hand, he began to tug us both toward the surface. I squeezed his hand before casting it away from me; without me they could rise faster. I followed them up, pushing Jillian whenever I could though I knew my efforts accomplished nothing.

It felt like hours had passed—though it may have only been seconds—when Joshua lifted Jillian above the water. Only after she reached the air did Joshua himself rise, coughing and gasping. He pulled his sister to him as he paddled to stay afloat. Unfortunately for Joshua, she was as close to deadweight as a living girl could get. Her head flopped lifelessly against her brother’s shoulder; and, almost as lifelessly, her heart thudded slower with each passing second.

“Joshua,” I shouted over the rush of the water. “I can hear her heart.”

“Good,” he yelled.

“Not good, Joshua. If I can hear it, that’s not good at all.”

“Why?”

“I heard your heart, just before it stopped. That’s how I knew you were dying.”

Joshua didn’t answer me, but he began swimming more furiously toward the shore.

I impotently watched him struggle, both to drag his sister toward land and to keep her head above water. All the while I listened to Jillian’s faltering heartbeats as they grew louder.

I could still hear them when our feet touched the river bottom and we stood upright to run upon the shore; they beat so loudly I hardly noticed the shouts from the people on the bridge as they began to flee the scene of their disastrous party.

Although he couldn’t hear his sister’s heart, Joshua also ignored the cries from the bridge. He laid Jillian upon the shore and then dropped to the ground beside her. I bent next to him in the mud, still tracking those loud beats with a dull terror.

I only stopped tracking them when Jillian’s eyelids fluttered open.

Joy swelled inside me in response to this small sign of life. I turned to Joshua to celebrate, but the sound of Jillian’s weak voice stopped me short.

“Who are you?” she whispered. I looked down at her, and, unbelievably, she looked back at me. Her hazel eyes stared directly into mine.

My mouth gaped open. I looked back at Joshua, but he didn’t seem to have heard Jillian. He checked her pulse and then leaned over to listen for breath, thoughtlessly stroking the fan of her hair on the mud. When he did so, Jillian’s eyes fluttered closed, and her heart started to stutter more unevenly.

My head began to spin.
If she saw me . . . if she can see me now . . .

“Joshua,” I cried, “you have to do something fast. I don’t think she’s doing too well.”

“Oh, God,” Joshua moaned. He looked up to the road, which was still empty of any emergency vehicles. Then he bent back over Jillian’s motionless body.

“I used to know some CPR, if I could just remember it.” He tilted her head back and began to murmur. “Is it, breathe then push or push then breathe? Which is first? Which is
first
?”

Watching Joshua press his hands to Jillian’s sternum—obviously, without a clue how to save her—I felt a hard, painful clench in my own chest. I ignored it, and decided to do the only thing I could think to do. I pushed my hands into the mud and leaned in close to Jillian’s ear.

“Jillian,” I whispered, “I know you don’t know who I am. But I love your brother, and I know you do too. So . . . do you think you could wake up? Do you think you could at least try?”

For far too long she gave me no response. I’d just about given up—hung my head and prepared myself for the inevitable, impossible job of comforting Joshua—when Jillian whispered back.

“I guess. Since you asked so nicely.”

In spite of everything, a quiet laugh escaped my lips. “Thank God. Because I have a feeling you’d be a huge pain in the ass if you died.”

The faintest smile twitched upon Jillian’s lips. Then she coughed.

The effort was feeble, and it didn’t even part Jillian’s lips. But Joshua must have heard it, or at least felt the vibration of it, because he jerked away from Jillian’s body and stared down at her intently.

“Jillian?” he asked.

In response, she coughed again. This time the cough wrenched itself out of her, loud and clear across the riverbank. Her back arched from the force of it, and her hands squished into the mud beneath her. She coughed for a third time, rolled to her side, and began to choke up the river water.

“Yes!” Joshua crowed. He pressed one hand to Jillian’s back and grasped for me with the other. I clutched myself to him, entwining my fingers with his and wrapping my free arm around him. I laid my forehead against his shoulder and felt it shake from his laughter.

Our laughter came in sharp bursts that verged on hysterical. I can’t imagine what Jillian must have thought of the noises coming from her brother, if she could even think clearly. The poor, bedraggled girl continued to cough, although—miraculously—I could no longer hear her heartbeat.

I tilted my head as far back as it would go. “Thank you,” I mouthed to the night sky. “Thank you so—”

The sound of another voice, high above me, cut off my prayer.

“You see, Amelia? She’s safe, like I said she would be. We can finish our trade now—your life for hers.”

My head snapped around to the sound. I could see Eli, standing on the now-empty bridge, calling out to me. Claiming me.

Though the riverbank lay too far below the bridge for me to see Eli’s face clearly, I knew it well enough to identify his expression. I didn’t need binoculars to see the confidence in his wretched smile.