Page 43 of After Life
Stop, I tried to say. Let me go. But the smoke was sweet and soporific. Everything was a gray hazy cloud, cool and soft and sliding through my grasp. But for that moment, I found I couldn’t care. **
I woke on the beach.
What the fuck?
“Julian? Julian!”
People moved between massive fires, spitting in the rain and stinking of kerosene. The eye of the storm, I realized. A small reprieve from the torrential winds and downpour. It wouldn’t last long. I had to get back... “Help! Hello?”
Figures moved in the firelight, ignoring me.
Except for one figure. Jeremiah Tibbins approached from the water, growing more solid the closer he got.
Jeremiah was staring at me oddly, eyes wide but lips pursed. “She really did it. She really...” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, damn.”
Shaking my head took effort. Everything felt slow and heavy, even my eyelids. Grit made me tear up, stinging my eyes as the wind pounded the beach. “We should go inside,” I said. “The storm—”
“The storm’s always coming,” Jeremiah muttered. “It never stops. Not in this place.” He turned, staring out at the ocean, lips pressed into a thin line that disappeared into his thick beard. “I can get you close to the house, but tonight, I can’t come in.”
“What are you talking about?” I stepped toward him, then paused. It was far easier to walk this time—the soft, abundant sand wasn’t dragging at my feet, slipping into my shoes. Just stinging my eyes and spattering my face as I tried to look toward the ocean, toward Jeremiah.
He jerked his hat from his head, raking his fingers through the wild thatch of blond hair that stood up like the seagrass at our feet. “Sandra. I told her to wait, if she was so certain. That the time would come...” He trailed off, turning to look at something over his shoulder. I couldn’t see whatever he was looking at, but it unsettled him and he motioned for me to move. “Let’s go toward the water then.”
I started walking, feeling sluggish and thick. Had I been drinking? I never could handle my liquor. Not like Ezra.
Ezra... Why did I feel sad thinking of him? Was he okay?
Looking back toward the ridge of seagrass and sand, I saw Jeremiah much closer than I expected. He had a strange light about him, a fire-lit glow that made his eyes seem dark even while picking him out sharply against the darkness of the island.
“Why is it so dark? Where are the lights?”
Jeremiah didn’t answer, just nudged me forward. “Stop here. Go no further.”
We were at the edge of the beach already, the shiny darkness of wet packed sand like a sheet of glass stretching out before me.
He shook his head. “It’s the middle of the night. The eye of the storm is overhead now.” He gestured up at the sky. Overhead, the dark clouds had thinned somewhat, making it seem less ominous. They moved in a sluggish, slow spin, a hole in the sky larger than the island. “It’s time.” He sighed. He turned back toward the shore and walked toward dark figures coming down the rocky slope. The fires were burning high again, three of them now, laid out as points in a triangle. In the middle, someone bent low, scraping at the sand with their hands. The figures were person-shaped but strange. I couldn’t make out features, just suggestions of them. They moved oddly, too fast at times and too slow at others. My stomach clenched with nausea, bile and acid climbing my throat in a numbing burn. “Is this...”
Jeremiah paused and looked back at me over his shoulder. “You’re not meant to be here. But because you stand on the line between the two sides, you were able to cross into this.” He waved his hand at the dark, shifting beach. The fires moved like oil on water, the people stretched and dark shapes on the sand as they all bent and scraped and dug. “I had hoped Sandra wouldn’t push for this but now that it’s begun there’s nothing I can do to change her mind.” He made a shuddering, rasping sound that mimicked a sobbing breath. “This isn’t what I wanted. Not for me, or you. Not for any of the ones before... God, I am so sorry!”
Oh god... “Am I dead?” I whispered, touching my fingers to my face, my chest, checking for some sign of life.
But if I expected to see one, wouldn’t that happen? I’d encountered many ghosts who had no idea they were dead, who bled, who gasped and cried and breathed. And many who absolutely knew they’d passed but still mimicked their living states just out of habit.
So, feeling my heart under my hand meant nothing, did it?
I stared around me, my thoughts a broken jumble I couldn’t sort through just yet. Everything was off. Like watching the world through greased glass.
Jeremiah was the only thing that looked solid, living.
And that jumble started to slip into place.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I murmured.
“All of us feel that way.”
“What’s happening?” I asked, part of me morbidly fascinated—this had never been seen by a living person! Hell, a living person had never been on this side of the veil... as far as I knew, anyway. But the rest of my brain was in full panic mode, my body itching to flee. Where would I go though, I thought. Behind me was the ocean, stretching wild and dark. In front of me were the figures on the sand, working their intent into the sand.
Julian’s remarks about the land spirits pushed through my tangle of thoughts, about genius loci and landvaettir and the dozens—if not more—other examples of ‘land spirits.’
