Beyond (13 page)

What is this? Power outage? Can’t see a thing. You’d think with all the radiation this monster throws off it would glow in the dark.

I wait for the lights to come back on.

“Hello,” I call out. “Anybody there?”

Nothing. Where’s the panic button?

“Little help,” I try louder. “I’m kind of stuck in here.”

Seconds tick by. Did the tech go on a break or something?

After a minute I decide, Screw it! I’m getting out. I put my hands up to try to push myself back out.

But my fingers hit something cold and damp. It crumbles under my touch, breaking apart and showering down on my face. I swipe it away. What the hell is this?

I press my palms against the walls of the scanner.

They aren’t there. It feels more like—

Earth. My fingertips sink into it. Reaching under me, I discover more dirt.

I’m losing it! This is not happening!

“Hey!” I yell into the blackness.

My voice is deadened, absorbed by these dirt walls.

The roof is so low I can’t sit up, can only move inches in any direction. Contorting my right arm, I stretch it past my head and find empty space. Like I’m in some kind of tunnel.

No! This is not real! I’m in the hospital clinic. Safe.

But my body’s not listening—my heart’s racing, legs shaking, I’m starting to hyperventilate.

Raising my head up till it hits the hard-packed earth
above me, I stare down the length of my body, straining to see.

There! What’s that? I see a little spark of light. Two lights, getting bigger.

I don’t even blink. Don’t want to lose sight of them.

“I’m here!” I call. “Over here!”

I focus on the sparks as they come closer.

“Get me out of—” I start to shout.

But now I make out what those lights are.

Eyes. Shining amber eyes.

And in the glow they cast, I make out a face.

It’s the guy from the waiting room, crawling toward me.

You’re mine
.

I feel a stab of panic, like an injection of ice water straight to my heart.

Mine
.

No! No! No!

Those eyes are on fire, closing in.

I claw at the dirt surrounding me. Gotta get out. Squirming back. Inch by inch. But the walls are caving in. Earth crashing down. Burying me.

I suck in a breath. Dirt in my mouth.

Something cold clamps around my ankle. I kick out frantically.

Then an icy hand grabs my knee with frozen fingers. Dragging me back.

No—

My eyes fly open. Light! Blinding white light. A stranger’s face looming over me.

“You okay?”

I can’t speak. Struggling for oxygen.

“Calm down,” says the technician with a worried frown. “You fell asleep. That’s all.”

I sit up fast. Too fast. My head pounds with a dizzy rush.

“Take it slow. Some people doze off in there. It happens.”

I’ve got the shakes. Shooting a glance over my shoulder, I see the scanner with its doughnut-hole tube.

No tunnel. No darkness. No eyes.

The tech gives me a reassuring smile.

“Bad dream?” he asks.

“Tell me I’m not crazy.”

“You want me to lie?” Lexi says.

“Be serious.”

We’re sitting in Shipwrecks Cafe. After my bad trip in the scanner, I called Lexi and she skipped her last class to meet up.

“Sorry,” she says. “Okay, seriously. Don’t panic. Maybe it was one of those waking dreams, that hypnagogia thing I told you about. You’re stressed, zapped with migraines, going on no sleep and full of pharmaceuticals. That’s a monster mess screwing with your brain. So maybe when you closed your eyes for a second, you snapped right into a nightmare. Doesn’t make you a nutcase.”

I gulp my coffee, trying to warm up, and trying to believe her explanation. I’m drinking decaf, since my nerves are already fried.

We’re sitting by the windows, leaning on the old counter with all those initials and hearts carved into it—the love log. Outside the wind is buffeting the glass. The
café is filled, and it’s good to be in a crowd, safer. The jazzy music and the general noise insulate us so nobody can overhear.

“What about that sick guy in the waiting room?” I ask.

“You sure you’ve never seen him before?”

“A total stranger. I’d remember those eyes.”

“Maybe your brain just spliced him into your scanner nightmare. He was fresh in your mind.”

That sounds kind of weak. But I’ll grab onto anything to keep from going under. Because I’m starting to think it was more than just some bones that got unearthed in the landslide. Like something else was uncovered with them and set free to haunt me.

“But I wasn’t dreaming the voice. I was wide awake in the waiting room when I heard it.”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. This has gone way past weird.”

We stare out at the rain. January is the grayest month here.

Lexi sips her coffee. “I found something on those near-death-experience websites that might fit in with what you went through when you were flatlining. When your shadow took you away. There are these things called
Grim Enders
.”

“What’re they?”

“Souls who don’t cross over into the light.”

I hug my arms close, trying to get warm. “Why don’t they?”

“Some say that they just can’t see the light. Like
they’re blind to it. Some think they’re scared of the light, or they’re sure it won’t take them. So they get trapped in
The Divide
.”

“The what?”

“The Divide. It’s this dark nothing kind of place that separates the living world from the
other side
—the afterlife. It’s where you end up if you can’t, or won’t, go to the light.”

“I never knew there was this whole geography to the afterlife.”

I can tell Lexi’s been chatting online with those Second Chance people. Death tourists, who were “just visiting” the other side.

“There are a lot of different descriptions of the Divide. They say for most departing souls who cross over, the Divide is just a borderline that’s as thin as a thread. But for some it’s like the Grand Canyon, darkness stretching to infinity, the end of everything. And it swallows them up.”

“Grim Enders.” The wind rattles the window, trying to find a way in.

“They’re condemned to the dark because they can’t face the light. No afterlife for them. No nothing. Just this sad and lonely sort of hell. That’s their eternity.” Lexi digs in her pocket and hands over a folded sheet of paper. “I got this off one of the sites.”

I smooth it out on the counter.

It’s an illustration, with a caption that says
Grim Enders at the Gate
. It shows a glowing moonlike “gate” to the other side, surrounded by darkness, and a ghostly woman in a nightgown with long hair about to step through it. But all
around the edges of this gate black creatures are hanging there like gargoyles. The light dies on these things, leaving them as faceless shadows. They reach out, dark fingers brushing over the woman’s hair and tugging at her gown.

“Has anyone had a close encounter with these Enders?”

Lexi nods. “It’s pretty rare, but there are reports of them lurking in the Divide to spy on the souls crossing into the light. And when the near-death people are brought back to life, on their return trip to their bodies, they say the Enders cry out to them. Sometimes even touch them as they pass by.”

I know that touch. When my shadow in the emergency room ripped me away from the light it left an invisible tattoo, in the shape of its fingers.

“You think that’s what my shadow really is? One of these Enders?” I look at the picture with the dark creatures that seem dead to the light.

“Kind of matches your description. But they’re supposed to be powerless. They can’t attack you. They’re trapped in the Divide. They don’t try to steal you away and don’t follow you home.”

But somehow my Grim Ender did.

This is Lexi’s idea. A day off from death and darkness.

“You need a break,” she told me on the phone this misty Saturday morning. “Before you have a breakdown.”

She’s right. I need to forget everything for an afternoon and try to find my way back to the real world.

So here we are at the mall.

“I’ve got the perfect cure for you,” she says as we step inside. “Let’s try a little white-trash spa.”

I smile. Exactly what I need. By “spa” she means a mall crawl, where we go around the stores trying out cosmetics and perfumes, giving ourselves makeovers and collecting samples, and skimming magazines in the bookstore.

I’m doing it all in kind of a daze, so sleep deprived it feels like a sweet, silly dream.

Then we take photos of us trying on clothes we’re not going to buy, from ultrasleek to dead skanky. Everything looks good on Lexi; she’s got a petite hourglass figure. But me—flat, no hips and no bounce in my butt. People see me and think tomboy. If only they knew what was hiding
in my room—wallpapered in half-naked guys, my library of lust in the closet.

After the crawl, we end our spa at the food court, in a peaceful spot near the fake waterfall, eating nachos and curly fries.

I say no to seeing a movie. I’m not up to sitting in the dark for two hours, constantly looking over my shoulder.

I feel safe in this crowd, under the bright lights. So relaxed I could curl up for a catnap next to those plastic palms. I try to focus on what Lexi’s saying.

“Look at this shirt. My mom keeps stealing my stuff from the laundry. It’s all stretched out by her big boobs. She says people think we’re sisters when they see us together, which is completely delusional.…”

Her voice gets lost in the background noise of falling water. I nod, closing my eyes for a second.

Snorting awake, I look around, disoriented. Then I notice Lexi filming me across the table.

“How long was I …?”

“Just ten minutes.” She sets her camera down. “Thought I’d let you rest a while. You know you get all twitchy in your sleep? Like a dog who dreams he’s running.”

I stretch my back with a groan. “If I see that online I’ll use your guts for garters.”

She laughs. “So are you up for a drive? I was thinking of taking some video for my rain flick. Perfect weather.”

“Sure. Where to?”

*  *  *

Widows’ Peak is the highest point on this stretch of coast. It looks down on Edgewood and all the way over to the cliffs of Lookout Hill on the far side of town. The two rises stick out from the old forest that surrounds the town, bookending the place.

“How does this thing work?” I ask Lexi.

She’s got me helping with the sound, using the directional microphone she borrowed from her film club.

“You just aim it and press Record. Wear the earbuds so you hear what you’re catching. And don’t worry, it’s waterproof.”

We’re parked at the end of the gravel road that leads to the peak. Getting out of the car, I stick the buds in and pull up the hood of my yellow slicker. Lexi looks more than ever like the Reaper’s little sister, with her hood hiding her face and her black slicker reaching down to her ankles.

A heavy drizzle is falling, but I can still see pretty far. The view from here is why the fishermen’s wives and mothers came to this peak. They could look out to sea, trying to spot the fishing boats with their husbands and sons coming home. But for the ones who never made it back, the widows kept watch till all hope was lost. I can just make out the tips of the Teeth, the jagged spine of reefs that’s been chewing through boat hulls for over a century.

Experimenting with the microphone, I wander around capturing rain sounds. The mike magnifies everything, turning the drops into drumbeats. The rain patters like
hail on the car roof, crackles in the leaf-stripped bushes, sizzles off the rocks.

Standing by the edge of the peak, I aim down to where the surf is breaking on the rocks. The waves roar in my ears, loud and wild, making my heart pound.

This close to shore the wind mixes the drizzle with the crashing surf, so the rain picks up a salty taste, like tears. I lick it off my lips.

Gusts make the drops hiss as they hit the microphone.

Lexi’s filming a little waterfall created by the downpour, running off the peak. She’s collecting shots to add to her
thousand words for rain
. There are so many ways of saying it—from cloudbursts to torrents, flooders, soakers and drenchers. Drowned dog days and weeping nights.