Page 56 of After Life
Wait... did this even happen?
Light flared bright, white blurring out everything. A raspy, breathy sound left my throat as I tried to claw at my eyes, whether to block them or clear them I wasn’t sure. But the light disappeared as quickly as it flared.
Grandmere was playing her piano in her dimly lit music room. We were at the house in Hertfordshire, the one that had belonged to her side of the family and not Michel’s. Not something they had purchased together, either. The place was a rambling pile of different eras and smelled of orange wax, old books, and decades of strong tea steamed into the very wood and carpet around us.
Homesickness like I’d never felt slammed into me, knocking the wind from me as I watched her fingers—older than at tea—move over the keys. I didn’t have to see her face to know that her eyes were closed.
“When I was a young girl, I dreamed of being a concert pianist.”
Grandmere still played, but she was also beside me now. She looked different from when I’d known her in life. Her hair was still gray but more steel than snow now. Her face still bore lines and a few wrinkles but they weren’t as deep. “Are you wearing pink lipstick?” I asked, oddly delighted to see such a bright color on her after years of only knowing her bare-faced or in what she called mature shades.
“Am I?” she murmured, her hand coming up to touch her lips but stopping before making contact. “Well. That isn’t very surprising. I was happy here. This,” she gestured at herself from the bright pink of her lipstick to the surprisingly figure-hugging dress and sparkling high heels she wore. At the piano, Grandmere played on in her green silk bathrobe, oblivious to the conversation behind her. “Etudes-Tableaux by Rachmaninoff.”
“You used to play that to warm up,” I recalled.
She smiled, watching herself play. “Ever since I was young. Drove my instructors spare with that one.” Her smile was the same as the one I’d known but different as well. Softer, maybe. Less tense.
“Grandmere, where are we?”
“I’m dead,” she said, shrugging. “You are less so. I must say, though, I don’t know whether to be impressed with your audacity or disappointed by your temerity.”
“Why not both?” Ah, there was the Grandmere I remembered, in that pinch-lipped frown. “I don’t know what’s happening,” I admitted. “I was having tea with you and Heinrich a moment ago, and before that...” Where had I been? Light, so much light. Sand? No, that doesn’t sound right. Hertfordshire doesn’t have a sandy beach like that. Someone was mad. Tulips? One word popped out, sharp and clear. “Wreckers,” I muttered. Grandmere raised her brows. “That word. Wreckers. I was... with them? No, that feels wrong.”
“Really, Oscar.” Grandmere sighed. “Focus, child. Focus on your abilities. You’re allowing fear to cloud your natural instincts and powers.”
I frowned. “I’m not trying to be afraid! What the hell is going on, Grandmere? You’re dead, I’m...”
“Most certainly not dead,” she supplied flatly. “And that is a problem, Oscar.” She turned to face me more fully, the music she was still playing swelling louder until my ears ached with it.
Then, silence.
The white light was back but this time I wasn’t alone. Grandmere stood with me, a blur of shape and color until the light turned off and we were at the home where she’d mostly raised me. Standing in the study, beside the freshly laid tea cart. “Now, Oscar. You pour,” she ordered, taking up the armchair nearest the cart and gesturing for me to get on with things. She looked like the her I knew best—snowy hair, age lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes with a hint of exasperation in her movements. “Now, you’ve been complaining that I’ve kept things from you and hobbled your development as a medium. Don’t,” she said, raising one finger when I opened my mouth, “bother to deny it. Heinrich is a talker, and I’m not entirely ignorant of your muttered words thrown in my general direction.”
She glanced at the tea service, then at me with a pointed tilt of her chin. Years of practice kicked in and I started pouring out our tea, doctoring hers the way I knew she preferred: no sugar, a single slice of lemon, no joy. She watched as I added several sugar cubes to my own tea and sighed when I clinked my spoon by accident. “There’s no use reminding you that you’re not a child and adding so much sugar to tea ruins the taste.”
“No use at all,” I agreed.
“Hmmm.” She lifted her cup and sipped, closing her eyes. “I wish,” she said as she set the cup down soundlessly, “I could taste. I remember what things taste like, mostly, but there’s something to be said for being able to experience the sensation.”
My own tea tasted of nothing. It felt like nothing—no heat, no liquid, just a cup of air that looked like milky, sweet tea. “Is this how the afterlife works for you?” I asked, setting my cup down with a pang of disappointment. “Shifting scenes, tasteless drinks, changing faces?”
Grandmere sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers as she marshaled her thoughts. “This is not truly the afterlife,” she said after a long moment. “Though I’m quite dead. You’re not, however, and cannot cross the veil no matter how hard you throw yourself at it.”
Shoved being shoved someone shoved me... Jeremiah. Jeremiah pushed me. Ships, dark ships on a storm... Wreckers. Wreckers, Wreckers, Wreckers.
“Wreckers. I remember Julian said they weren’t ghosts...”
“Tell me what happened, Oscar.”
“Wreckers. Jeremiah Tibbins pushed me at the light. The Wreckers were emerging from it.”
“Where are you, Oscar?”
I glanced around the room. “Here. With you. Having air for tea and pretending like I don’t want to scream and rip my hair out in panic and frustration.”
“Where. Are. You.”
Beach. Fires. People watching. Help, help...
