Hereafter

Despite his pallor, I supposed you might call him handsome. Sexy, even.

The contrast of his skin against the darkness, however, gave away his otherworldliness. His skin was too bright, too unaffected by the dying sunlight. It had its own, nearly imperceptible glow in the dark, reflecting neither sunlight nor moonlight but illuminated by his very nature. Like a black-and-white photograph that had been given a slight sheen and then centered in front of the darkened scenery. Out of place and otherworldly, just like me.

“What are you?” I breathed.

“You know exactly what I am. I am what you are. The better question, Amelia, is who am I?” He halted his approach, folded his arms over his bare chest, and smirked at me.

So I was right. He was a ghost. A ghost of whom I wasn’t growing any fonder. I threw back my shoulders and raised my head high.

“I don’t think I’m really interested, but thanks anyway.”

“Funny girl. Of course you’re interested.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I’m the first of our kind you’ve ever seen.”

I stifled a gasp. How could he know that?

I thought briefly of retorting that it didn’t matter anyway, because he certainly wasn’t the first person to see me. Yet some protective instinct told me not to mention Joshua. To keep the very thought of Joshua out of my head, if possible.

The other ghost was too sharp—he noticed my pause and narrowed his eyes.

“I can understand your shock, Amelia. I’ve been watching you for years, keeping my distance. You’ve never seen me, and I’ve never noticed you encounter any of our kind. Unless you’ve been sneaking around behind my back.” He smiled, showing off a slightly chipped front tooth. The effect would have been charming were he not so creepy.

“But … how do you know my name?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “you spent a lot of time screaming it at the living, didn’t you?”

I felt myself retch.

This ghost, this dead thing, had been watching me—for years? If so, then all of my private moments had been exposed to him. Shared with him.

I came to another, quick conclusion: if he’d been watching me, then he’d let me wander, utterly lost and alone, for God knows how long. He’d left me without a guide or a friend, amusing himself with my humiliation and loneliness. How cruel did someone have to be to silently watch another’s suffering for so long?

Anger sparked within me, glowing like a small coal in my core. I found myself suddenly grateful for the implication that this ghost apparently hadn’t seen Joshua and me together.

“Why haven’t I ever seen you?” I tried to speak evenly, carefully choosing my words to reveal as little as possible.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve always been too lost, too blind, to know I was there, sometimes right at your side. Except for those odd times when you disappeared all at once and I had to hunt for you afterward.”

I exhaled quietly in relief. He couldn’t follow me into my nightmares. Strange that I would now appreciate the solitude they afforded me. Luckily, he didn’t notice my change in expression but instead continued to explain himself.

“You have to know, Amelia, it was quite the momentary surprise to see you turn around tonight. You see, the wind you just felt is … well, a kind of supernatural announcement of my entrance. My calling card perhaps.” He smiled, almost proudly. “You’ve always been too unaware to feel the wind, just as you’ve never seen me before. But now you do.”

“Yes,” I said flatly. “Now I do.”

He sighed. “Then I’m obviously left with a dilemma.” He paused, apparently waiting for some sort of audience participation from me. I stared at him in silence, willing myself not to glare outright.

“My dilemma, Amelia, is a complex one: what do I do with you now?”

I winced. “What do you mean?”

He sighed again, intentionally drawing out the drama of the moment. “I’ve grown pretty fond of watching you stumble along. But now that you’re awake and aware, I can’t really let you wander around anymore. Rules are rules. So, like I said: what exactly do I do with you now?”

I resisted a strong urge to scream at him that he wouldn’t be doing anything with me, ever. Now I wasn’t the least bit angry that he hadn’t pulled me from the fog and explained my nature to me. I had nothing but a foul taste in my mouth at the very thought that he’d been so near to me at all. Instead of expressing these thoughts, however, I responded quietly and calmly.

“What’s your name?”

“In life my name was Eli.”

“And in death?” I couldn’t hold back the trace of scorn in my voice.

“Eli will do just fine,” he said.

“I think I have a solution to your dilemma, Eli.”

“Wonderful. Would you share it with me?”

“Well, Eli, the way I see it, I can feel that wind now. It’s not one of those things you can easily hide, is it?” I smiled sweetly but tried hard to make sure my derision was as thinly veiled as possible. “So it stands to reason that you won’t be able to watch me unannounced anymore, right?”

Eli frowned deeply. I could tell he had no glib reply, no way to circumvent my logic. Inside, I shouted a silent cheer. Apparently, there were no loopholes that might allow him to continue to watch me unseen.

After a long pause Eli sighed and smiled. I could have been imagining it, but his smile looked much less cocky than before.

“Yes, Amelia, you’re right. You’ll always be aware of my visits from now on.”

“Great. Since we’ve got that settled, I’d appreciate it if you’d limit those visits from now on, too.”

A shadow seemed to pass over his face. “What are you saying, Amelia?”

“I’m saying that I know what you can ‘do’ with me, Eli,” I said, faking a bright grin. “And what you can do is leave me alone. Permanently.”

Instantly, Eli’s frown deepened and lifted the curl of his lip until he looked like an animal baring its teeth. I half expected him to growl; and, involuntarily, I flinched.

He obviously read the fear in my reaction, because his sneer widened into a sharp grin. He looked no more pleasant for the change.

“As you wish,” he murmured. And miraculously, he spun around to leave, stomping through the pine needles piled upon the ground. But before he crossed into the tree line, he stopped and turned around to face me. He folded his arms over his chest, the wicked grin still plastered on his face.

“I won’t follow you again, Amelia. There’s no point, really.” Eli lowered his head to stare up at me, his eyes hooding over. “But you’ll come find me soon enough, I can promise you that. You have no idea what we are—what you are. But I do. So I’ll simply leave you with a warning. A little taste of the place where you truly belong. The place where you’ll eventually be trapped, now that you’re awake, if you don’t seek my help.”

As Eli uttered the last few words, I felt a sudden chill, sharper and more piercing than any I’d felt before. Unlike the wind announcing Eli’s arrival, this cold wasn’t directed or brief. It was all around me, as if the temperature on the riverbank had instantly dropped at least thirty degrees. I gasped from the shock of it, and my breath puffed out visibly in front of me.

I was so transfixed by the chill that I almost didn’t notice when my surroundings began to change, too. Before I understood what was happening, the riverbank darkened. Within seconds it appeared as though the sun had disappeared entirely, taking with it all the light and color.

At first I thought the bank had plunged into total darkness, but that wasn’t right at all. Everything around me had become a cold, deep gray everywhere I looked.

I stared back at Eli, who seemed perfectly at ease in this new environment, his arms still folded casually across his chest. In the charcoal darkness, his pale skin looked brighter, even more unnatural.