Page 69 of After Life
Julian sighed against me, pulling me closer. “Part of figuring it out, hon.”
“Hon?”
“Hush. Go to sleep,” he said, his smile curling his words.
He did, but I didn’t. Not for hours. As tired as I felt, my brain wouldn’t shut down enough for me to rest. What had happened on Broken Palm, the ease that Sandra Cochrane had over slipping into someone else’s body, the Wreckers... I could still see their glowing shapes on the sand, stepping through the flames of Jeremiah’s ghost fires. The hulking darkness of the ships foundering. The choked cries of drowning men would forever follow me.
As I tried to at least doze, shifting shadows made me jolt more fully awake. It had been nothing—the branches outside, moving across the security light’s glow, but it had looked enough like a person moving to make me think of that shadow figure at the hotel, the way it had seemed so aware, so interested in me.
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe slowly, to focus on my senses—I knew we were alone in the room. I could feel it. But that didn’t stop my scared rabbit brain from churning out image after image, nightmare after nightmare.
Carefully, I slipped out from beneath Julian’s heavy arm and padded to the sitting room. My laptop was still sitting on the glass end table, waiting for me to take it out onto the balcony overlooking the wedge of the museum district where Julian lived.. It was late enough where most of the shops had closed, leaving only glowing store signs over dark windows with only the occasional car going past. Where are you headed at this hour, I wondered. All good children should be in bed by now. Someone hurried past the donut shop across the street, darting toward the one thing still open on the street: the Pik-N-Go convenience store.
Maybe I should put on shoes and go get one of those slushies Julian swears are the best thing on earth. I watched a handful of young people—younger than me, at any rate—tumble out of the shop, clutching drinks to their chests as they slapped at one another with their free hands, voices raised without a care of the hour or place.
I thought of the Wreckers, the Tibbins family, nameless ghosts so worn and faded they didn’t remember anything other than being a ghost.
Would that be me one day? Those kids? All of our laughing and fighting and crying and boring, quiet moments worn away to nothing? Or would some of us get to be proper ghosts or pass on without lingering in that strange between-state.
I thought of the Gleesons, on the beach with me. I’d asked Ezra to see what he could find on them. He’d come back with the names of a young couple who disappeared after telling relatives they were going to check out the island back in 1972, the two of them newly married and looking for a place to start a small business and build their life together.
When they didn’t come home, when the police gave up looking, the family assumed the worst and, unfortunately, rightly so. Both of them still had siblings living, and I had plans to reach out to them soon. It had to be done delicately, though, and that was always the hardest part.
Would they be able to move on after that? Maybe I’d need to go back to the island and see if they were released. The idea sent a sharp chill down my spine, a residual pang of fear from what had happened, where I’d been.
Jeremiah Tibbins never got the chance to tell me what it was like, where he was. Or maybe that was by design—he hadn’t been forthcoming in the first place, and at the end, when I was still on that side of everything, I hadn’t been given enough time to ask.
The smell of burned coffee wafting from the convenience store dragged me out of my memory. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting on the chilly balcony, just that it’d been long enough for me to pass being mildly uncomfortable and slip into being actively cold. Still, I reasoned, maybe the cold would keep me alert for long enough to get this email out. Pulling up the message from Charlotte, I stared at the few lines again, weighing the choices, the possibilities.
“If you decide to go,” Ezra’s sleep-rough voice came from behind me, “you better buy two tickets because I’m going with you.”
I huffed a silent, mirthless laugh. “Three—do you really think Julian would let me leave him behind?”
Ezra shuffled forward, his feet stuffed into his sneakers with his heels still hanging out and the hotel duvet draped over his shoulders. I scooted over to make room for him to drag up a chair and, after a moment’s fuss, we were sitting next to one another with the duvet wrapped around both of us. “I’m not even going to ask if you want to see about turning this into an episode,” he muttered. “I value my life.”
“Thank you. I was having horrible visions of the channel getting wind of this somehow and pouncing on it as an opportunity for a special episode or something.”
Ezra snorted. “Tonight, on a very special episode of Bump in the Night, Oscar learns the true meaning of friendship and love.”
“But first, a word from our sponsor,” I murmured, accepting the joint he proffered. “I’m assuming Harrison doesn’t know you partake?” It was mild, not the skunky weed I’d been expecting from him, and I took a larger hit than I normally might have.
“He knows. And he says he’s not a cop. And also,” he took the joint back. “Where do you think I got this? His shit’s better than mine. He uses it sometimes for migraines. I, um... I’ve been using it when I feel an episode coming on.”
I sat up, the incipient buzz annoying now as I shifted to pin Ezra with a glare. “How many episodes have you had that I don’t know about?”
“None. Since I’ve been heading them off at the pass, as they say.” He took another long hit and handed it back to me. “It’s not perfect, but it’s helped. I haven’t had a big episode since...” He trailed off, darting a guilty glance at me.
“I didn’t mean for you to... to have an episode. If I’d known...”
He didn’t reply, staring down at a new gaggle of people heading for the open shop. This one was far less exuberant than the other, moving as a solemn pack of dark-clad figures on their way to or from work, from the looks of things. No laughing, no joking, no raised voices. Just a quiet shuffle of people existing. I had a wild thought, wondering if they were dead, if they were ghosts stuck in a Sartre-esque loop of a mind-numbing jaunt to work every morning for the rest of their existence.
“Since Savannah, six.”
“Six?” I hissed, remembering Julian was asleep just feet away. “Ezra—”
“The first time, Harrison and I had just finished—you know, finished—”
“Yeah, I get it,” I muttered. “Stop stalling, please.” Passing the joint back to him, I nodded at it. “It’s nearly done.”
