Page 62 of After Life
Her hands weren’t strong enough to choke me to death, but it was damned painful and inconvenient, her thumbs pressing in just hard enough to make me gag as she screamed wordlessly in my face, her weight on my chest pressing me into the wet sand.
“He’s mine,” she shrieked. “He’d been waiting so long for me! So long!” Her cries broke into sobs, her grasp weakening enough for me to push her off and aside. I struggled to my feet, my cane too far to grab without her stopping me. I sent up a prayer to whoever was listening that she didn’t try to tackle me again—I wasn’t sure my hip could take it, that I’d be able to get back up. Sandra rolled to her knees and scrambled to stand, sand and tears and snot and blood streaking her face and hands. “When I came to the house, I was so alone. So. Fucking. Alone. I’d lost... I’d lost Paul,” she snapped. “Just gone. They kept telling me it was a mercy. That it was so fast, and he didn’t have time to really suffer but he suffered, Goddamnit, and I had to watch him. I couldn’t help him. Nothing I have ever learned or done prepared me for losing him. For not being able to stop him from dying.” The sound she made was pitiful, painful. A deep, shuddering sigh that seemed dragged from the depths of her heart. Raking a shaking hand through her hair, Sandra shook her head, sniffed, and turned her hard, shining gaze back on me.
I pressed my lips into a tight line, keeping back the words that bubbled forth naturally. An offer of sympathy, a murmur of commiseration. That’d do none of us—her, me, or her dead—any good now. In fact, it’d probably make things worse.
“When I found the original copy of the founder’s book, I nearly killed my assistant.” She sniffed, a distant smile tinging her features. “If she’d brought it to me just a month before, maybe. Or even a week. But they embalmed him. Do you know what that does to a person, Doctor Weems? You do. You do.”
“Sandra,” I said, trying to sound soothing but my voice was shaking too much for it to be believable. “What you’re trying to do, it’s murder. Do you understand that?” My stomach lurched at the thought. It took everything I had and then some to keep from retching on the sand at her feet, from throwing myself at her and begging, pleading for her to stop.
If it came to it, I decided, I’d offer myself. I couldn’t let this happen to Oscar, and maybe she’d take me instead, even if it was just to shut me up. Give him a chance to flee.
“When I came here, I found Jeremiah. He was alone too. For so fucking long. He understood the pain. He knows. He knows...” She shook her head, focusing on me once more, the small smile disappearing as her tenuous grasp on everything crumbled further. “When he found out I knew about the book, that that’s what led me here, he was overjoyed. I made him happy. The first time he’d felt happiness in decades. Decades! And knowing I was going to bring back the old ways, the ways of his family? Jeremiah needs me. I can help him. I couldn’t save Paul, but Jeremiah is still here. He needs me. I need him.”
“Sandra, no,” I rasped. “Jeremiah doesn’t want this. This isn’t helping him! This isn’t going to bring you any peace. It’s—”
“You wouldn’t know!” she screamed. “You wouldn’t know!”
“I’ve seen the museum,” I shot back, grasping so hard at those straws it was a near physical pain. “He died because he tried to help this place, right? The story says he was killed, but it wasn’t an accident, was it?” The display had been vague in that way museums could be when trying to make the truth palatable. And I knew, without being told, that Jeremiah’s death had been a vengeful one. That his ghost wasn’t hanging around because he loved the place so much but because he hurt.
Oscar would be so proud, I thought wildly. If we survived, I’d have to tell him.
“Fuck you, Julian Weems. You don’t know the first goddamn thing about this pain. About the peace I can give Jeremiah, the peace Paul was denied. Ray-Don and Delia, they’re pathetic little suck-ups. They thought I’d be able to do some table shaking bullshit and find the treasure their ancestors hid. They didn’t understand. The treasure wasn’t some stupid pirate hoard. It’s this, it’s what I’m about to do,” she shrilled, jabbing her finger at her chest. “I’m the one who saved the ways! Ray-Don only knew part of it—his dumb ass was too interested in that fucking salvaged garbage! And Delia—she knew, she knew the ritual, but she’d never been brave enough to do it. What if it doesn’t work? What if I kill someone? Pathetic! But me?” She shook her head. “I knew where the real important shit was. In that book.”
“Sandra, you’re talking about a dead man here,” I said, trying to sound calm and reasonable. “He didn’t even know you when he died. He wasn’t waiting for you. What you’re doing is hurting Oscar. He... He has people who love him and who he loves, too. He’s still alive to share that, Sandra. Jeremiah isn’t. He’s using you. He’s greedy. You’re greedy, and selfish! You both want something you’re not entitled to!” I hesitated, then added, “Paul is gone, Sandra. I don’t know what you think this ritual will get you, but it’s not Paul. Jeremiah isn’t him. He can’t step into Paul’s place, no matter what you think will happen next. Let Oscar go. Hell, let Oscar go so he can make Jeremiah go. You don’t deserve this, Sandra,” I said, wincing as soon as the words were out, knowing she was going to pounce on those and twist them the wrong way.
She shook her head, sobbing openly and wetly. “No,” she hissed. “You don’t deserve the knowledge. Someone like you, you’re lost. I was lost once. Blinded by what they tell us about magic, about spirits, about what comes next. I thought maybe heaven, you know? Hell. But it’s worse than that. When you’re like Jeremiah, there’s nothing. Just years and years of waiting for something that never happens. Jeremiah told me. And the Wreckers, they help us, you know? When they open the veil to come across, the volunteer’s spirit goes across. No one is hurt.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that for Jeremiah,” I said. “Oscar can help him cross over. I’ve seen him do it for others.”
“No,” she growled. “No, you’re lying! He wouldn’t do that for Jeremiah!”
“Sandra,” I said, trying to keep the panic from my voice as I reached out toward her. “Sandra, he would. Oscar cares about the spirits he works with. He cares about their living loved ones. And he wouldn’t refuse to help just to hurt you. Or Jeremiah. Is this really what Jeremiah would want?”
She jerked away from me, baring her teeth in a feral growl of pain. “You don’t fucking know! You don’t know what it’s like to be alone! For everything you thought you had, for your entire world to be taken from you!”
“And I don’t want to!” I cried. “Sandra, please!” I glanced at Oscar’s body. Or was it Oscar-proper now? I didn’t know—he was breathing, or his body was, but was Jeremiah gone yet? Was Oscar safe? Sandra was ignoring me now. She made a broken, choking sound and was dragging one of the larger pieces of driftwood through the sand, muttering under her breath between sobs. She was tracing out a sigil between the smoldering fire remnants, distracted. I hobbled forward, scooping up my cane and moving to Oscar’s side. “Oscar,” I whispered. “Fuck... Can you hear me?”
“No,” Ray-Don said, making me whip around to find him swinging on me with one of the pieces of driftwood. “But I sure can.”
I pushed away as hard as I could, rolling onto my back with a pained cry. Ray-Don missed me by mere inches and was swinging again by the time I pushed myself into a sitting position, scooting back like a worm. “Ray-Don, you don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, fuck off, doc,” he groused. “I want my birthright, okay? What’s due me as a Noonan!”
“Murdering me is what’s due to you?” I demanded. God, it hurt to get up, but I tried, struggling into a crouch and pushing up on my good leg, staggering to one side as Ray-Don swung again. I was slipping in the wet sand, my body not wanting to cooperate with my brain as Ray-Don snarled and took another swing, then another. Every swing he took put me another step closer to the water, which was rushing closer and closer with each gushing wave. “Ray-Don,” I tried again. “Listen to me. Sandra will get caught. People will miss us when we don’t go back in a few days.”
“You died in a tragic accident during the hurricane,” he said, the words sounding as if he were repeating something he’d been trained to say. “It’s rare, but it happens.”
“We’re on TV,” I reminded him desperately. “You don’t think people will want to come see where we disappeared? Do some sort of investigation? Ghost hunting shows will be all over this island, hoping to talk to the spirits of a famous medium and... Well, mostly him, okay.”
Ray-Don hesitated, glancing at Sandra. “No,” he said after a heartbeat, taking one more swing at me before I stumbled, my leg collapsing out from under me. “They won’t. Not when your body washes up on the mainland.”
He threw his weapon aside and closed the distance between us, raring his foot back for a kick as I tried to roll away.
WHY AM I WET? FUCK, everything hurts... I tried to open an eye but got sand in it for my trouble. “Shit!”
“Stay still,” someone whispered beside me. “You got a goose egg but I think you’re okay. Your friend looks like shit though.”
I lolled my head to one side and finally got one eye pried open. The ferry boat captain kneeled beside me, watching something past me.
