by K.N. Lee
“Irene.”
“Well, now, this is exciting.”
“Mmm,” Irene said noncommittally, looking around the room again. “So, we’re in the land of the living, right?”
“Yes.”
“And this is America, right?”
“Uh, no. We’re in Thailand.”
“Thailand! But you… you’re not…” Irene stumbled, not sure how to phrase the question.
Zara smiled. “No. I’m not Thai. I’m American. From Chicago, actually. But that’s why I can’t really help you track down the person you’re looking for. By the time I track down a phone number for this other psychic and call her and we play phone tag—well, really, I thought it would just be faster if you found a way to reach her directly.”
Irene absorbed this for a moment. She was back in the land of the living, and yet on the other side of the world from where she needed to be. In theory, she could make her way back to America from here—she could stow away on a boat or in the cargo hold of a plane, hell there might even be some kind of ghost transportation. The logistics wouldn’t be that hard.
Irene’s heart gave a tentative thump of excitement. Had she really made it back to the land of the living? Journey’s end? Was it really just that easy?
“I’m going to get some more tea. Do you want anything?”
Irene shook her head as Zara stood. The psychic put a hand on Irene’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Irene smiled wanly, not sure why the woman thought she needed comforting. The psychic then crossed to the door and disappeared into the next room. She came back a few moments later with a fresh pot of tea and resumed her seat across from Irene.
“If you don’t mind,” Irene said, “I’m going to pop back through the crystal ball to the land of the dead. I have a friend there, waiting for me, and I need to tell him I’m okay.” If she was going to stay here, then, at the very least, she needed to say goodbye to Andras. But a decision this big… it didn’t seem fair for her to make it alone. If she stayed—would it be forever or just long enough to check on those she had left behind? Could she ask Andras to wait for her when she didn’t know how long she’d be? And what if Andras decided he wanted to try to follow her here? No, this was definitely something they would need to talk about together before she made any decisions. Now that she knew she could just cross from a crystal ball back to the land of the living, everything had changed.
“Oh…” Zara set her tea down abruptly. “Well, before you go, I was hoping you could do a favor for me.”
“I won’t be gone long—”
“That’s what the dead always say, but one never knows what will happen, do they? Please… it won’t take long.”
Irene frowned. She really needed to get back to Andras. However, she didn’t want to offend Zara—mostly likely she’d need the psychic’s help once she returned, and, of course, she didn’t need the psychic blocking her return by covering the crystal ball. She needed to stay on Zara’s good side. “Uh, okay, sure, I guess. What’s the favor?”
“There’s a dead boy, a ghost, that refuses to move on. He died last year, and he hangs around his father’s market. It breaks my heart to see the father and son, both so sad. The boy is very shy—he won’t talk to me. Perhaps if you talked to him—one spirit to another—you could convince him that it was safe to trust me. Tell him that I will take care of him—he can come here and stay with me, and when he’s ready, he can move on to the other side.”
Irene frowned. “Why does he have to stay here?”
“Well, he’d be safer here with me, is all I mean. There are things that hunt the dead, you know.”
Irene nodded; she was well aware. In the land of the living, there were “Uglies”—malevolent, formless spirits that killed other spirits. She still had the scar on her thigh from when one had attacked her.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll see what I can do,” Irene said. She pushed back her chair and rose to her feet.
“Hang on one second,” Zara said. She went to the work bench and picked up an unframed rectangular mirror about the size of a piece of paper. She crossed back to Irene, and squatted down about a foot away. She stood the mirror on its edge on the floor, reflecting back at herself.
Irene raised an eyebrow, not sure what Zara was doing. She looked down at the wooden floor and gasped in surprise as she recognized a series of symbols carved there: ghost repelling charms. She had seen them on door frames in Boston when she’d last been in the land of the living. She followed the line of symbols and realized they formed a ring around the table, effectively penning her in.
“Hey!”
Zara smiled apologetically. “One never knows what’s going to come through from the other side; not all spirits are nice.” Zara nodded, indicating that Irene could cross the barrier. “Cross right here, near the mirror,” she said. “The mirror is reflecting the runes outwards now, so they no longer hold you in.”
Huh. That was kind of a nifty trick. The symbols had been carved in such a way that their force was directed toward the center of the circle, which allowed a ghost to cross into the circle but not back out—like a roach motel, for ghosts. Irene hesitated, an uneasy feeling passing over her; she would be the roach in that analogy.
Irene felt a tremor of trepidation as she stepped over the line of runes. Last time she’d tried to cross one of these ghost repelling charms, she’d gotten a sharp, electric zap strong enough to deter her from trying again. She wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.
However, nothing happened as she passed over the line of symbols. Apparently, this psychic knew her stuff.
I wonder if it works on Nephilim? She’d have to try that when she got back. Maybe she could carve the runes on trees or something—make a line of defense so that anything that might be following them couldn’t go any further…
She paused; she wasn’t going to need to do that, because she wasn’t going back to the land of the dead permanently. She just needed to go back, speak to Andras, say her goodbyes if that was what it came to, and then she’d come right back here, to the land of the living.
She bit her lip; it was hard to believe her journey might really be over, that she’d finally made it back. Her brain didn’t really seem to be absorbing that fact. It still seemed like an aspiration to her, not reality.
Zara broke into Irene’s thoughts by ushering her forward, toward the doorway to the next room. Irene did as she was directed, and they crossed into what might be a living room, with a low-slung coffee table surrounded by a short, dark orange sofa on one side and large, brightly colored floor cushions of lime green on the other. The motif of white walls with dark wooden trim and embellishments continued from the previous room into this one. The coffee table was ornately carved with a swirling, geometric design. At the far end of this room was a large wooden door. The psychic stepped past Irene and opened it, revealing blue skies beyond.
“Holy shit,” Irene said, hurrying forward. When had she last seen the sun, the real sun? It felt like forever.
As Irene crossed the threshold, Zara stopped her. “The door is warded,” she said, pointing to a large charm painted on the outside of the door. “You’ll have to ring the bell.” There was a large brass bell beside the door, with a short length of course rope dangling from the center, like one might find on a ship. Zara smiled reassuringly and then ushered Irene the rest of the way through the doorway. “Now, don’t forget—bring the boy back with you.” She closed the door firmly behind Irene.
Irene might have been offended if she hadn’t been so overjoyed at being back on Earth. She had already forgotten Zara by the time the door latch clicked.
She was assaulted by the sights and sounds and smells of the land of the living: birds chirping, voices raised in conversation, wind strumming in the trees. She blinked rapidly in the bright light and even brighter colors. She’d forgotten how loud the land of the living was—or, maybe more to the point, she’d grown accustomed to how silent the land of the dead was.
She s
tood on a small landing at the top of a flight of rickety stairs that led down to a dusty patch of ground alongside a narrow dirt road. The psychic’s house was part of a small cluster of homes that all looked similar: bird’s nest things of wood and thatch on stilts, squatting at the edge of the road like overgrown ostriches. Around her, tropical trees—palm, coconut, banana and more that she couldn’t identify, grew so thickly she couldn’t see between them, the green of their fronds so vibrant it hurt her eyes to look at them. Raucous birds screeched from somewhere deep in the encroaching jungle.
Irene blinked in surprise
Definitely not America.
A smattering of people—men, women, children—passed by on the road going in both directions. It seemed to Irene they averted their eyes and sped up a bit as they passed by the psychic’s house.
All the people on the road were Thai; Irene wondered if they spoke English. Not that it mattered; the people were alive—they couldn’t see her. The boy she was supposed to help—in theory, he’d be able to understand her because ghosts communicated telepathically. In theory. She’d never actually tried to speak to a ghost in the land of the living who spoke a different native language than she. She wasn’t sure if the ability to communicate was just something that happened on the higher planes or if it happened universally. Well, there was only one way to find out.
Slowly, Irene descended the steps, taking in every detail of her surroundings. The sun was high overhead, and though the day was warm, it was kept from being overly hot by a light breeze that playfully tossed the leaves of the trees, bringing with it the fresh, salty scent of the sea.
As Irene came to the last step, she saw a collection of what looked like over-large birdhouses, each perched atop a pole stuck in the ground. Each house was ornately decorated—painted in vibrant colors and decorated with feathers, fake jewels, and other ornaments. Instead of one large opening, each house contained a half dozen or more small openings. Irene peered into each one, wondering what kind of birds they were meant for, but they were all empty. Each of the other nearby human homes each had at least one of these strange birdhouses as well.
Weird, Irene thought.
She looked both ways down the dusty dirt path that served as a road; there wasn’t much to see in either direction. After an “eeny-meeny” moment, she decided to go right. She smiled to herself as she set off, joy bubbling up inside her. She felt like Dorothy taking her first steps on the yellow brick road.
As she walked, Irene took in as many details as she could—looking for other ghosts or for anyone living who might be able to see her. She waved and smiled at everyone she passed, feeling conspicuous in her skimpy dress, blood-streaked legs, and the fact that she clearly wasn’t a local. She pulled her jacket tighter around her, trying to look more modest. Her concerns, however, were unwarranted: no one could see her.
The trail bent to the left and disappeared around a cluster of banana trees. Around the corner stood a thatched canopy about six feet high perched atop slender, none-too-sturdy-looking sticks. It was enclosed on three sides by pieces of rusty, corrugated metal that leaned precariously against the thatched roof. The entire thing was just big enough to hold two wooden carts heaped with melons.
Irene paused. This wasn’t the market, was it? Surely not…
However, sitting on the ground under the canopy, Irene could see a small boy—glowing with the blue aura of the dead. An older man, heavier, with a thick mustache and thinning hair, his front covered in a white apron, sat outside on the edge of one of the carts, cooling himself with a large paddle-shaped fan. He must be the boy’s father.
Okay, time to test out her guardian angel wings; she could do this. Irene squared her shoulders and ducked under the canopy. The boy looked up at her in alarm.
“Hey there! It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.”
The boy didn’t look convinced.
“Uh… my name is Irene. What’s yours?”
The boy continued to give her a wide-eyed stare.
Irene deflated a little. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought.
Even though the stall’s canopy provided shade, it actually seemed hotter underneath it. Irene could feel sweat pooling in the small of her back. She flapped the hem of her coat at her face, trying to create a bit of breeze in the stifling humidity of the closed-in space.
Valiantly, she tried again with the boy. “You can understand me, right?”
The boy gave a tiny nod of his head.
“Ah, okay, good. So, there’s a lady down the street who would like to meet you—"
The boy shook his head.
“It’s okay, she’s nice. She’s worried about you. It’s dangerous out here. At her house, it’s safe. She has… tea. Probably cookies. You like cookies, right? I mean, who doesn’t?”
The boy was staring at Irene as if she had two heads.
“Look, why don’t you come with me, just to meet her. If you don’t like it there, you don’t have to stay, okay? But you’re dead now, and when we’re dead… well, we need all the friends we can get.”
Irene held out her hand to the boy, expecting that he’d take it. Instead, he gave a little shriek, jumped to his feet, and took off running. He crossed the street and disappeared into the trees beyond.
Irene stared after him, too surprised to react. “Ooookay… wasn’t really expecting that reaction.” Okay, so maybe she wasn’t good with kids, but that seemed a bit extreme.
Part of her wanted to wait a bit and see if he returned, but she knew she needed to get back to Andras. She stepped out from the canopy into the less humid warmth of the sun and moved across the road. She didn’t feel right just leaving; the boy really was too young to be on his own. She struggled internally for a moment and then decided she could wait a few minutes to see if he reappared. She leaned against a banana tree while she waited. It was sturdy and reassuring against her back, and for the first time in a long time she felt the tension drain out of her. From the moment she’d died, she’d been on the move—fleeing Uglies, fleeing Hungry Ghosts, fleeing Nephilim. It had been one constant crisis after another. She’d had no time to stop and think.
In truth, she’d been afraid to stop and think because that would mean deciding to want something—and wanting something was bound to put her in opposition to Andras, because they wanted different things. And that would mean parting ways and being alone. And the absolute last thing she wanted was to be alone in the afterlife. Between the monsters and the deafening sound of her own insecurities and recriminations in her head, she’d go mad. Truth be told, she worried that she was a hair’s breadth from turning into a Hungry Ghost, a mindless spirit consumed by despair—only Andras’s steadying presence kept her from succumbing to the loneliness and fear.
But now… now she was back in the land of the living. And she was infinitely more experienced and knowledgeable than she had been when she’d been here before—both when she was living and dead. She could make a life here. Not back home in Boston; too many memories and regrets there, too many ties to the land of the living. But she could travel, go anywhere in the world. When she’d thought she was limited as a ghost to stowing away on transportation for the living, travel had seemed like a logistical nightmare. But since then she had seen dead ships and dead trains and she had learned to travel by crystal ball and she knew how to move between planes of the afterlife. Suddenly, “traveling while dead” didn’t seem quite so daunting.
Bees buzzed drowsily nearby, adding a somnolent element to the warm, fragrant air. Irene let herself relax and enjoy the peace, the quiet. God, she’d forgotten just how amazing a warm breeze felt on the skin. She shrugged off her jacket and let it drop to the ground at her feet. She splayed her arms wide and threw back her head, letting the wind stroke her shoulders and throat. The breeze ruffled her skirt, lifting it as it tickled her legs, and she didn’t even care. It wasn’t like anyone could see her, and damn but it felt good. God, what she wouldn’t
give for a pool or a beach right now—to feel the sun on her skin and then the sudden refreshing splash of cool water as she dove in and then the resulting goose pimples as the droplets evaporated…
She shivered at the memory of the feeling.
Irene eyed the melons in the grocer’s cart, a sudden, overwhelming urge to bite into one, to feel the juice trickle down her chin as the soft flesh crunched in her mouth, overtaking her. It wouldn’t be real—it would just be a relived memory since she was dead, but it didn’t matter. It would be real enough.
She grabbed her jacked and darted for the melons. She threw the jacket over one and scooped it up like a baby in her arms, sprinting away again just as quickly. She ran down the dusty road, back toward Zara’s house like a pack of devils were on her heels. No one could see her; she was invisible to them, but it didn’t matter. It was the rush, the thrill of the illicit, that fueled her flight—the sheer exhilaration of being alive.
Once out of sight of the merchant, she breathlessly came to a stop, doubling over to catch her breath. Laughter bubbled up inside her. She suddenly felt free—freer than she’d ever felt.
The Guide had said she needed to go forward to go back. Is this what he had meant? Had she finally gone far enough through the afterlife to gain the skills and wisdom she’d need to return to Earth as a ghost? No more fighting, no more fleeing, no more assessing and judging and trying to be good enough, brave enough, strong enough to not break down, to not be killed?
She unwrapped the melon and studied it; it was unfamiliar—green and white striped like a watermelon, but smaller and more oblong, something that didn’t carry in America apparently. It didn’t matter. She made a few futile feints at breaking it open with her hands but that was clearly impossible. She looked around, searching for something that she could use as a knife and spied a rock. She dropped to her knees on the dusty road and grabbed the stone. She used the improvised combination hammer and chisel to pound at the melon until she had punched a hole in the side. She stabbed at the hole, widening it, until she could wedge her thumbs in, and then was able to pry the melon apart. Juice spurted in her face and she didn’t care. She licked her sticky fingers, testing the unfamiliar flavor, and of course, she couldn’t actually taste it since she had no memory of it, so her brain decided it tasted like watermelon, which was a-okay with her. She held one half of the melon up to her face, inhaled the crisp, clean, summery scent of fresh watermelon, and then dug in, sticking her face right into the light green flesh and taking a big bite.
