Page 58 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“. . . huh.” Coachmen used to be common, but they were fading out even as long ago as my own death, no longer nearly as likely to arise from deaths on the road. They’re ghosts who loved their methods of conveyance—whether horse and carriage or engine and chassis—so much that they carried it with them into the afterlife, and then became one with it. Which also explained a bit of his evident disdain for the old man with the rake. Homesteads are ghosts who loved their stationary homes so much they pulled the same trick, and they never leave their properties. They’re not haunting houses; theyarehaunted houses, in a sideways sort of way. So was Carl. He was just...a haunted house on wheels.

“I can tell by looking at you that you’re not a road ghost, and you’re not newly dead, either. What brings you to the Rainbow Road, Miss Mary?”

“I’m a caretaker,” I said, hesitantly. He was such a young coachman, as coachmen went, that he might never have heard of them, and from his blank expression, he hadn’t. “I haunt a family, and I take care of their children.”

“All right . . . ?”

“One of those children died today.” I didn’t need to explain that Jane was a grown woman, had lived a good life and had children of her own before the gunshot took her life; none of that mattered, here in the twilight. She was a child in my care, and she was gone, and that was all the justification I needed to go anywhere I damn well pleased.

His face fell. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too. Anyway, I had to bring her body into the twilight to protect the rest of the family, and now I need to move it to a different location in the land of the living, but she’s too heavy for me to move on my own.” I looked at him critically. “I’d ask you for help—Jolene is certainly big enough to haul her somewhere far away from here, but she’s in the woods, and I’d never be able to get her out on my own, or you deep enough in to load her up. I’m going to the ghost of Portland to look for help.”

“It’s not Portland here,” said Carl, “But otherwise, that’s not the worst idea. I can get you to the city limits.”

“If it’s not Portland, what is it?”

“Stumptown, most days. The Clearing, some others. Depends on which city’s ghost is at the forefront.”

“Ah.” A lot of phantom cities work that way, draping themselves in the burial shrouds of past names and past identities. I didn’t know much about either past version of Portland, only that they existed, and that I’d always been enough outside the local ghost communities that I’d paid them no real mind. Who needed the dead when you had never pulled away from the living? Some days, I felt like I was more attached to them now than I’d been before my death, more connected to the daylight world.

Carl kept driving, and the road accommodatingly shortened itself to carry us along, trees and rivers and the occasional house flashing by outside the windows. I was almost surprised when Jolene came sliding to a stop, and Carl gestured toward the window on my side of the cab.

“We’re here,” he said. “Looks like Stumptown today. That’s the Portland Hotel over there. Be careful of the saloons and the like. It can be pretty rough for a girl who looks as young as you do.”

“I think most older ghosts can tell what my job used to be from my eyes, and they’ll give me a pretty wide berth,” I said, opening the door and sliding out.

Carl blinked. “What your job used to be?” he asked.

I looked at him gravely, and stopped trying to mask the miles in my eyes, letting him see the long and empty highway that waited there. “I served the crossroads for more than fifty years, before they were destroyed,” I said. “It’s nice to have met you, Carl. You and Jolene drive safe now, okay?”

He flinched away, pressing himself against the driver’s-side door, but managed to nod and say, “All right. It was nice to meet you, Miss Mary.”

“Bye now.”

I didn’t need to close the door: Jolene did it for me, and her engine roared as I walked away, the truck already gathering speed as it raced off down the road. I walked toward the hotel Carl had indicated, a tall, elegant construct of iron and glass, swooping lines and nineteenth-century flourishes making it a centerpiece of the skyline around it. Stumptown was lower to the ground than Portland, not yet graced by the towering fruits of modern architecture, although I could see pops of that modern world showing through: recently lost establishments that had been beloved enough to worm their way in here, into the collective memory of the city.

I let my clothes change as I walked, adjusting themselves to the time period, hems getting lower and sleeves getting longer. My hair remained a loose white cloud around my shoulders, rising into the air slightly to hang around me like a corona, one of those impossible styles accessible only to the dead—or to those who don’t mind keeping one hand on a live electrical wire. I looked eerie and unworldly as I stepped through the hotel doors and into the lobby beyond.

I had never been to the Portland Hotel, and I had no idea whether the elegant, light-filled room in front of me looked anything like the original. Cut-glass chandeliers hung from the ceiling, their crystalline arms blazing with little bulbs, while ghosts lounged on leather couches or stood in small clusters, talking. Most of them looked more modern than I did, recently deceased Portlanders who were playing historical recreationist in the older versions of the city. Some were rougher around the edges, and as I looked around, I spotted a cluster of lumberjacks by the bar, their axes over their shoulders and their meaty hands engulfing their bottles of beer. If I’d been in the starlight, I would have taken them for Sasquatch. As it was, they had definitely been haunting these parts for a while.

I shifted trajectories to head for the group, weaving around furniture and other ghosts as I walked. It’s considered rude to walk through things in the twilight, if it’s even possible—everything on this level of reality was a ghost, whether the ghost of a person or the ghost of a couch, and ghosts can’t always pass through each other. Just one more wrinkle to deal with as I made my way to help.

The men looked around as I approached, regarding me with only dull interest. I looked at them more openly, trying to figure out what kind of ghosts they were. The axes were a good indication that they might be able to manipulate the physical world in some way; lumberjacks who couldn’t would probably still manifest their axes out of habit, but they wouldn’t be likely to bother with them while they were inside drinking.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” I said. “I was wondering if I might have a moment of your time?”

All five of them focused on me, and I felt abruptly as if I were being stared at by a pack of wolves or something equally large and predatory. Their eyes were flat and cold, assessing me and dismissing me as any sort of threat. The shortest member of the pack stepped forward, expression not changing as he looked me up and down, then said, “What do you want?” in a surprisingly high voice.

Some people die young. I’m unliving proof of that. “My name is Mary Dunlavy,” I said. “I’m a nanny for the Price family, and we just had a family member die. Unfortunately, her body has been compromised such that it can’t safely be near her family, and I don’t have the strength to move it by myself. I left her in the trees. Can you help me move her?”

“What’s in it for us?” asked another of the men.

“I have living family in the area, and they know about the twilight,” I said. “They can do you favors in the land of the living, or I can, if it’s something a ghost can accomplish. And you’d be doing us a real solid favor. I don’t like leaving her there alone.”

“Wait,” asked a third. “The Prices? You mean the crypto-whatsits? The ones who take care of the other people in the woods?”

From his tone, I guessed that he was distinguishing “people” from “humans.” I nodded. “That’s the ones.”

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