Page 57 of After Life
“I’m not dead,” I repeated slowly. “But I’m here... My... I’m on the beach. At Broken Palm. There was a storm I think...”
Grandmere set her cup down and gently dabbed at her lips with what I knew to be a linen napkin, at least when the room was real. “And?”
“And what?” I felt like I wanted to panic, like my breath should be coming in gasps, my heart racing but the sensations that came with having a body were distinctly lacking in my current state.
Maintain now, panic later.
That had been one of Ezra’s favorite things to say when we were in school and it was exam time. Maintain our composure during recitations. Don’t panic during the pen and paper portion. Go back home and scream into our pillows.
Seemed like a solid plan now, as well. “And,” I said slowly, wrapping my fingers around the teacups handle and feeling only the memory of its texture against my skin. “And I’m scared,” I sighed. “What’s happening, Grandmere?”
She nudged the plate of biscuits toward me. “Take the bourbon cream. It was your favorite.”
“Was?”
“It might have changed since I died,” she said pointedly. “It’s not as if you’ve had me for a visit since then.”
“Grandmere, is now really the time for this argument?” I sighed. The bourbon cream was another ghost, the taste tantalizingly close but more like a faint itch in the back of my mind than an actual experience.
No wonder so many ghosts were in piss-poor moods. This would drive me mad if it were my eternity.
Grandmere made a disapproving noise.
“I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud?”
“Mind your manners, Oscar. Don’t embarrass me.”
I shook my head. “Thank you, probably. For the biscuit,” I clarified.
She sniffed. The room pulsed, wavering around the edges, and she sighed again. “This isn’t my home, Oscar. And you’re not dead. This place will reject you as soon as it is able.”
“Are you really you, Grandmere? Or is this... Am I imagining this?”
She didn’t reply. Just picked up her cup and took a delicate sip before nodding at me to do the same with mine.
The cup didn’t shatter when I slammed it onto the table, but I wished it did. “This is a nightmare. All of it! Julian and I were—”
Grandmere looked at me expectantly.
“Julian. Is he...” I trailed off, trying to remember. “I think I left him at the house, where we were staying. How long have I been gone?”
“Contrary to popular belief, we have better things to do than monitor every moment of the living’s existence.”
The room pulsed again and Grandmere set down her cup far more gently than I had. “We’ve wasted too much time with our posturing.” She sighed. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull you back to me again in this place.”
Everything felt like it was vibrating, the sensation of a heavy lorry trundling past my small flat’s window. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said, child! Where we are, it’s not for you. It’s barely even for me.” She looked up as the room shimmered and melted slowly into the image I held from my parents’ photo: the golden-lit porch steps, the summer-washed garden. Grandmere made a small sound of surprise, pressing her fingers over her lips before she gathered herself and resumed her air of cool control. “I know this place as well, though I never do come here.”
“It’s a memory of mine. Of a sort. A memory of that picture of Mum and Dad.”
“No, this is real.” She stood, the chair she’d been in vanishing back to the parlor I assumed. “It just hasn’t changed much since they died. Here.” She held out her hand to me. When I didn’t take it, she rolled her eyes. “Oscar. Really.”
“Sorry. Just you haven’t tried to hold my hand since I was about nine.”
“Well. You were a very self-sufficient child.”
“Because I had to be,” I muttered, following her to the porch. She dropped her hand and shot me a glare but didn’t comment any further. “Is this where we take a Dickensian turn and you walk through walls, expecting me to follow a la A Christmas Carol?”
