Page 25 of After Life
“I covered you up and built the fire because you were shaking so hard your teeth were chattering. I couldn’t wake you up. I tried to call Sandra when I couldn’t find her in the house to find out how to get you to the mainland when the ferry isn’t running, but she didn’t answer...” Julian sat back against the arm of the sofa, my head in his lap. “You didn’t have a fever, but it was as if you were having a febrile seizure or something.”
I shook my head, the urge to curl up and freak out a bit stronger than I expected. It was easy to dismiss it as an illness, some strange sleep issue, anything but what I knew in my core that it was. Closing my eyes, I bumped my head against Julian’s shoulder, thinking hard and fast. It wasn’t a lie, really, when I said, “I’m just very tired. I’m sorry, Julian. I’m not sure what’s gotten into me.”
He nodded, still openly concerned as he reached up to stroke my hair back from my face. “I want to find Sandra, see if there’s a doctor on the other end of the island we can call, maybe.”
“No.” When Julian looked like he was going to protest, I added, “Not yet. Please. If I’m still feeling like this later... We can call someone.”
Julian stopped stroking my hair and instead gently cupped my chin, tipping my face up toward his. “Oscar, talk to me. What’s going on?”
For the first time in a long time, I hated my ability, hated dealing with ghosts, hated being different from most people. I just wanted a damn week away with my boyfriend! Can’t I just have a few normal days? Cupping his hand where it rested on my face, I shifted to press a kiss to his palm before admitting, “I don’t know.”
Chapter 4 – Julian
Despite our best efforts to the contrary, the evening was unsettling and felt brittle somehow. Oscar had rallied from his odd spell and made himself a cup of the herbal tea from the bag Sandra had left on the kitchen counter for him, but he hadn’t taken more than a sip or two after returning to the study. We were clingier than usual, neither of us wanting to move far from the other.
Oscar had retreated into himself a bit, and I was restless. We decided to settle in the study for the evening, the storm outside ebbing and flowing around the island and lending the entire scene a rather gloomy, foreboding air.
“We first met during a storm,” Oscar murmured, resting his head against my arm.
I nodded. “Remnants of a hurricane, even.”
He smiled softly, though it was more anxious than romantic. “I wonder if that’s some sort of omen for us.”
“I think it could only be a good one,” I protested.
Outside, a stiff gust of wind made something crack and snap—probably, I realized, one of the old palms out front. Oscar tensed, relaxing only when the creaking stopped and the wind seemed to fade just a bit.
If I was one to be swayed by signs and portents, I’d have been nervous. As it was, I was nervous for entirely different reasons. The window of time to leave the island was rapidly closing. As it was, the ferry was no longer running due to the increased swells, but emergency evacuations were still possible via the Coast Guard. Oscar seemed fine, hours after the weirdness, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever had happened wasn’t a one-off. He swore he was alright but I couldn’t shake the anxiety that had settled into my bones after his spell earlier. So I gritted my teeth and faked it, picking up a book from the library room that caught my eye, something that promised a bit of local history and weirdness, and took up my post on the settee in the study while Oscar read something on his phone, the two of us falling into familiar, warm quiet for quite a while. Occasionally, he’d giggle, or make a sound of surprise, and shoot me a heated glance when whatever he was reading got racy, and I pretended not to notice so he could have the thrill of pouncing later (not that we’d done this before—Oscar did love a good sneaky pounce). I dove back into the odd little book I’d found in the library. I’d only read a few chapters of it but it was compelling, drawing me in until I stopped noticing Oscar’s increasing glances and heated sounds.
“It makes no sense.”
Oscar fixed me with a distinctly unimpressed glare, and I corrected to, “In this context, it makes no sense. This is definitely folklore, but it’s specific to this island. Just this island. It was uninhabited before the first colonizers arrived in the area, and then only a handful came out here because the indigenous people on the mainland said it was unlivable.” I flipped to the fragile flyleaf, the map of the island, and turned the book so he could see it more easily. “This is from... Okay, looks like 1698? Maybe 1699? Hard to read the handwriting honestly. No fresh water sources, the tides are rough and drastic thanks to the offshore drop on this end,” I tapped the spot that would later become Tibbins Quay, “and this end where Rosie Sands is,” I paused, closed my eyes, and exhaled with the world-weariness of a man who was over just about everything. “Haunted.”
Oscar’s snort was nearly elephantine. “Julian, my darling, that didn’t come up in your research before booking the trip?”
My cheeks warmed. “Honestly, no. Not one single mention of ghost, specters, spirits... not even a tourist-friendly pirate captain looking for his lost treasure.” I flipped to the first chapter with careful fingers. “This first part is archaic in the language but whoever had this reprinted kept it faithful rather than attempting to modernize it. It’s not terribly oblique but there’re some parts...” I trailed off, shaking my head. “Even if this isn’t the original, it’s still well in the realm of antique and it’s definitely rare. I tried searching it up on the Library of Congress then widened to an international search and there’s no record of it ever existing.”
“That’s not unusual though,” Oscar said. “Especially with older or niche books. If someone wrote the first one just for themselves, and later a descendant wanted a copy, hoping to save something of dear old grandad’s when the original finally fell apart... It might never have been sold widely.”
I nodded. “I know, I know. But the fuckery comes in with this. Chapter One: On Blood and Sand to Rouse The Spirit,” I read aloud. “Firstly, a fire must be built of the vines that run yellow-sapped in summer. Ensure it is hot enough to burst the body of the plant and cause the sap to burn with thick smoke and sweet scent.”
Oscar furrowed his brow, leaning forward to peer at the book. “Do what now?”
“It goes on from there.” I reached out and gave my phone a nudge in his direction. “I’ve summarized some of the first few chapters in my notes but,” I shook my head, “there’s so much. Some of this, I have to admit, I’m not quite grasping. I studied a bit of Southern folk magic practices but only as they pertained to death and burial practices in specific regions. This is not only out of my wheelhouse, it’s in an entirely different boat.”
Oscar picked up my phone and read the note I had open. “Chapter Five: Vessels of Flesh Chosen by Man.” He sat back, folding his hands across his lap, staring into space for a long moment. “Okay, nope. I cannot fathom a single reason that title wouldn’t be unsettling.”
“It gets better.” I turned the pages to the one that had caught my eye. “This is a sigil.” Oscar leaned forward again to peer at the book, a whiff of his sandalwood and berry and salt-air scent distracting me for just a moment. He knew, judging by the smirk he shot me.
“We’re still on holiday, don’t forget.”
“Couldn’t if I tried.” I responded sweetly, biting down on the snarky response I wanted to throw his way, a reminder that he’d been making friends with the resident ghost apparently, while we were on our holiday.
Oscar snorted but didn’t comment further on that topic.
He made a pleased little noise. “I don’t recognize this. Not even in part. Granted, I don’t work with sigils myself, but many mediums do, and many of our clients fall into using things like that for their own reasons. Does it mean anything to you?”
“It doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before, but that doesn’t mean much. The thing is, though,” I said, turning to the next page. Another sigil, a mirror of the previous one, took up half the page with thick black lines and delicate scrawls that looked like waves. “This is a grimoire. A spell book. Or something like it. And whoever wrote it was determined to raise the dead.”
