The Afterwards

by A. F. Harrold

  ‘You’ve done it now,’ the cat said. ‘I warned you. She’s not to be toyed with, that thing.’

  ‘Ms Todd?’

  The cat didn’t answer the question, but said, ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ she said. ‘But I’ve still got that magic map thing. I’m gonna try to take us back.’

  This was a lie, but she didn’t know what else to say. The alternative was to sit down and forget everything.

  ‘It won’t work.’

  Ember knew that.

  ‘I’ve got to try.’

  ‘Yes,’ the cat said, rocking back and lifting one hind leg up high so it could nibble between the toes.

  ‘Why do you say it won’t work?’

  She already knew, of course, but asking the question gave her something to push against. Something to feel.

  ‘Rules,’ said the cat, between mouthfuls. ‘Always rules. In this world, in that world. Life has rules. Death has rules. The universe has rules.’

  ‘Uncle Graham broke the rules,’ she said. ‘He came and got Betty.’

  The cat said nothing, but moved on from its foot to its bum.

  Ember knew what it meant, of course, even if she didn’t want it to be true.

  ‘Balance,’ she said. ‘That’s a rule, isn’t it?’

  The cat made a noise that either meant ‘Yes’ or ‘This bit’s hard to get clean so I’m giving it an extra hard lick-nibble’.

  She’d known it, of course.

  They were both dead and they were both stuck.

  The cat was right.

  ‘How come you’re here?’ she asked again.

  The cat lowered its leg, sat up straight, licking all round its mouth. It looked at her, its odd-coloured eyes blinking slowly.

  ‘I like you,’ it said with something like a shrug in its voice, as if it weren’t a big deal, as if it didn’t mean much.

  It licked a front paw and rubbed it twice across an ear and an eye.

  ‘Five minutes,’ it said. ‘Come to the house in five minutes. And be ready.’

  With that it turned around, stepped behind itself and vanished.

  Ember waited for Ness to say, ‘What was that all about?’ But she didn’t say anything.

  She’d let go of Ember’s arm while the cat had been talking and had wandered away, not far, just over to the side of the road.

  ‘Five minutes,’ Ember said, looking at her watch.

  The second hand didn’t move. It read half past eight, the time she’d run down the alleys and into this place. She had no idea how long had passed since then, what time it would be back home now.

  She hoped it wasn’t too late.

  She didn’t want Harry to worry.

  As they stood outside the house and looked at it, Ember felt something weird happen to her. It was as if her heart had beaten, just once, in her chest, and all the blood that had been sitting still in her veins had suddenly moved round. She shuddered.

  She was being watched.

  There was something in the house.

  (She felt a shiver, a falling in her empty stomach. There was something wrong. A well that plunged into the dark below. Or meat left too long on the side.)

  The front door was still propped open with the walking sticks and umbrellas. They looked funny lying there, such ordinary things.

  ‘I can’t go up there,’ Ness whispered, pulling her arm away from Ember’s. ‘There’s something there. I don’t like it.’

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ Ember lied. ‘Come on, the cat’s waiting.’

  Be brave. Go on.

  She took a step into the front garden, through the little gate, and stopped.

  Was that a twitch of the net curtain? The front room’s net curtain?

  Had something tapped against the window?

  Scraped the glass?

  She couldn’t say.

  Had she seen a face in there?

  She didn’t think so, just the flicker of movement.

  It was hard to know, the world being so dim and shadowy. (Had it grown dimmer and more shadowy as they’d walked here? Since they’d talked to the cat? Maybe. It was just so hard to tell.)

  ‘Look, Ness, we’ve got to go in there.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what if there’s someone in there? They’re just a ghost, like us. Like what we are. I’m sure they won’t do us any harm.’

  Ember said the words calmly, even though she didn’t believe them, or trust them. Even though she didn’t know what they’d do when they got in there, when they got to the back gate. But someone had to take charge. Someone had to be brave. Someone had to be the one who pretended they knew what was going on, and today the job was hers.

  Who could be in Uncle Graham’s house?

  Why would anyone choose to spend their afterlife there?

  Whose house was this?

  It had been her mum’s childhood home, the house where Uncle Graham had looked after their parents when they got sick, long before December was born. And before then?

  She was cold.

  Oh.

  As she took a step up the path, a dazzling, startling, shining light, like a motorbike headlight, hurtled out of the open front door, leapt high over the bundle of sticks and landed with the pad of soft feet on the ground.

  It was the cat, running.

  Ember felt the heat as it zoomed between her legs, and she turned, eyes stinging with the brightness of its aliveness, to see where it went, only to find it sat calmly on the ground beside Ness, looking up at her as if nothing was amiss.

  ‘You’re back,’ she said.

  ‘It took longer than expected,’ the cat said. ‘But you waited. Good.’

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘You go through, December. You go home and it balances.’

  There were noises inside the house, coming from behind the front door.

  It was pulled open. Pulled wide.

  Sticks clattered as the pile slumped.

  Ember covered her eyes against the new light that burst from the doorway.

  It was like a visitation, like a glowing alien emerging from its spacecraft, like an angel from an old myth come to share good news.

  ‘You? You!’ shouted a voice, disbelief spilling over the edges.

  It was Uncle Graham.

  How had he got here?

  The cat had brought him.

  That answer was easy enough to guess.

  And then, from between his legs, a grey shape fell, snapping and chomping and dribbling.

  Ember jumped aside and the dog lumbered past at speed, oblivious to her, focused on something else.

  There was a hiss and a flash of claws and the dog barked and whimpered at the same time as the cat leapt up on to the garden wall and simply ignored the slobbering thing. It looked the other way. Licked at its front paw.

  Betty scratched at the wall frantically, bouncing on her hind legs, but she wasn’t tall enough.

  ‘Down, girl,’ snapped Uncle Graham.

  The dog stopped jumping, but growled and whined, paced back and forth, turning in pathetic circles, all the while glaring up at the cat and dribbling ghastly black and white dribble.

  Then Uncle Graham looked at Ember properly.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘You’re all … grey.’

  He waved his hand at her, as if showing her herself.

  ‘Ms Todd,’ said Ember.

  ‘Her?’ he said, in a voice that spat.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  ‘She’s a lying piece of work,’ he said. ‘Don’t trust her.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No,’ Ember said.

  As they spoke she had been thinking.

  The cat had brought Uncle Graham here for a purpose, for a reason.

  Now, here, in the world of the dead, there was a living person.

  That meant that one of the dead could leave, could go back down the alleys, so long as Uncle Graham remained behin
d.

  Balance.

  That was what the cat had said.

  But, she thought, the cat wanted her to go home. It had brought her uncle here in order to let her live again.

  Like Ms Todd, the cat wasn’t thinking about Ness.

  But …

  She didn’t want to go home alone. The whole point of this had been to find Happiness, to take her back, to bring her back. What would the point be if she went back without her very best friend?

  And the answer spun in her: no point at all.

  ‘Ness,’ she said, turning to the faded girl by the wall, and speaking softly but quickly. ‘You need to go through the house. I’ll distract my uncle. You run! Go out the back and down the alley. It'll take you home … Quickly, go now.’

  Ness didn’t move.

  ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered, almost too quiet for Ember to hear.

  The cat had jumped down and led Betty a merry dance across the road, to the gardens on the other side, and Uncle Graham had followed, trying to keep his dog under control. Trying to keep her safe from this strange and dangerous cat, as he saw it.

  But now he had turned, come back towards the girls, huddled in their conspiracy. The colour and light spilt from him, hurting their eyes and making Ness cower.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted.

  Ember thought that he must know what she was thinking. How could he not see what her plan was? It was so obvious. Obvious, but the only plan she could think of.

  But it seemed he didn’t.

  ‘Amber,’ he said, ‘what’s going on? What’s all this muttering about?’

  He was standing on the pavement, and Betty had slumped herself by his feet.

  The girls were in the front garden, the front door behind them.

  If they could get in the house, Ember could keep her uncle away while Ness ran for the back door. She could give her friend enough time to get away before her uncle, bigger and stronger than her, got into the house.

  Her unbeating heart was light now she’d made her decision.

  Ness had a dad and a mum and a big brother, she had cousins who came to visit, lots of grandparents, she was much better at being friends with the kids at school, she was going to be a doctor or a vet or an actor one day … she had so much to live for, so many people who were missing her back home … and all Ember had was Harry … not that this was maths, it wasn’t just a sum, balancing this side with that, but Ember wanted more than anything for her friend to be alive again, to no longer be just this shadow of the girl, this echo, this bored grey whisper … and even if that meant she, Ember, wouldn’t get to see it, it didn’t mean it wasn’t still the right thing to do …

  What did they call it? When you gave something up to help someone else?

  There were clouds around her. Grey. Heavy. Dull.

  Forget the word, she thought, just run.

  ‘Quick,’ she said, pushing Ness ahead of her. ‘Run!’

  Through the door.

  Into the hall.

  Tripping, slipping on the clatter of sticks and umbrellas.

  The two girls, the two ghost girls, fell and rolled across the floor.

  A rattle like hail falling.

  December spun in place and began pulling the sticks away.

  She had to close the door. Get it shut quick.

  She could see her uncle moving from the pavement to the front garden.

  Heading for her, for the door. For her.

  Through the gap, as she scrabbled frantically, she saw a thought cross his shining face.

  That face like a flaming beacon, that face filled with life in this grey place, had a thought on it, a memory, a realisation suddenly settling, suddenly understanding itself at last.

  He knew, she knew, that if the front door shut he would be locked out.

  And he would be shut here, trapped here, to wither forever among the dead.

  He began to run as Ember pulled the last umbrella away and threw herself, from her knees, at the door, slamming it shut.

  Crash!

  He thudded into it. Outside.

  They were safe.

  He banged at the door, hammered at it, called her name, but she was safe. For the moment.

  She turned to Ness, who hadn’t helped her, and saw that the moment of safety had been a short one indeed.

  Somehow, perhaps in that last split second when she’d thrown herself at the door, Betty had got in. Running ahead of her master, grey and unnoticed, she had slipped through the closing gap, and now she was growling at Ness, who was lying where she had fallen on the hall floor.

  Circling round, staring and snarling, the dog dripped grey drops of dribble on to the carpet.

  She was between the girls and the kitchen, her wide shoulders blocking the corridor, her grey eyes glinting with violence.

  Ness had enough sense left in her to back away, shuffling up the hall, inching away from those jaws that snapped but didn’t bite.

  Ember climbed to her feet and pushed herself to think.

  Had she been alive, adrenalin would have been pumping through her veins, surging her thoughts quicker, her breaths faster, her fear higher, but grey as she was it took effort to even remember the urgency. The need for haste slipped away if she didn’t keep reminding herself.

  She pinched her arm, like a dreamer.

  There was a battering on the front door, and then it stopped.

  A moment’s silence, and then Betty barked.

  She was getting bolder. She wanted her master back, maybe. Was afraid of the girls, maybe. Felt cornered, perhaps.

  Ember looked around for a way out.

  They could run through, run past the dog, for the kitchen, but that seemed too dangerous.

  Up the stairs, but that seemed too far, and too dark.

  And so, without real thought, simply for a moment’s safety, she grabbed Ness by the arm, dragged her up on to her feet and dodged through the half-open door at their side, into the front room.

  Click!

  The door shut behind her as she leant on it.

  Betty banged it from the other side, barked twice, and then there was silence.

  Or not quite silence.

  There was the crackle, the hiss in the air that December had noticed in the house before. It came from in here, from this room, and she finally understood what it was.

  In the bay window was a television, a big, old-fashioned one that took up a whole table.

  Its screen showed static. Black and white dancing.

  Facing the television, away from the girls, was a wing-backed armchair, tall, tatty and grey.

  All she could see of the occupant was a woman’s hand resting on the arm. Pale. Clad in thin, patterned cloth. A bracelet with small stones set in flower-shaped mounts.

  For a moment the flowers looked blue, but that had just been a trick of the mind. They were as grey as everything else.

  The hand didn’t move.

  Ness was shaking.

  Ember’s heart lurched again, a single great pump sloshing blood through her veins.

  She felt sick.

  Betty barked twice, out in the hallway.

  Not knowing why, not understanding her feet, Ember stepped closer … towards the television, towards the chair.

  The room was laid out differently from the same room back in Uncle Graham’s house. Everything seemed older, from another decade, another century. There was no dog basket.

  Ember saw the grey face of the woman in the chair.

  Be brave. Go on.

  She was watching the static on the TV, gaunt and distant and lost.

  She didn’t notice Ember.

  She was a young woman, but so very dead. A young face, with long dark hair, like someone falling away underwater, drowning and sinking and staring.

  ‘What is it?’ said Ness.

  A whisper.

  Nervous.

  Shaking.

  ‘It’s my mum,’ said Ember.

  She stood there for a long
time, wondering what to do.

  Ness lingered in the background.

  Just the hiss of static.

  And then –

  A crash at the window. Glass not quite smashing, but cracking, rattling in the frame.

  Ember knew she should have jumped. Any red-blooded girl would have jumped at the sudden sound. But her blood was grey, and because she’d been staring so hard at the woman in the chair she hadn’t any spare attention to be surprised.

  Nevertheless, she looked round.

  There at the window Uncle Graham’s hands and face were looking in, from beyond the net curtain.

  It was like the sun had risen.

  Light poured in.

  ‘Gray?’

  This, a voice of cobwebs and smoke.

  The woman in the chair looked up and a wavering hand pointed at the window.

  ‘Gray?’ she said again.

  Uncle Graham vanished, went off looking for some other way in.

  Greyness washed the room once more.

  In Ember’s chest her heart gave another sluggish thud.

  ‘Mum?’ she said quietly.

  It took a few seconds, years, for the word to cross the gap between them, but once it had the woman in the chair slowly turned her head.

  The eyes! Ember thought. Those are my eyes.

  Another moment passed by with just the hiss of the television for company.

  The woman’s hair drifted round her head, and her mouth moved soundlessly, searching for the right words.

  And then she spoke.

  ‘Em?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ember.

  ‘Oh,’ said her mother.

  A hand lifted up from the arm of the chair, hovered in the space between them.

  ‘You’ve grown,’ she said. ‘You’ve grown so beautiful.’

  The words were slow, tiptoed into the air.

  Ember didn’t know what to say. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe.

  Her mother looked liked the photos of her, but greyer, lost at the edges.

  She was the age she’d been in the photo of the three of them, when Ember was really small.

  Yet another surge of blood lurched through her veins, making her feel, making her burn.

  She glanced at Ness, but her friend was cowering by the door. She was looking away, looking as if she were about to turn the handle. She didn’t want to be there.