American Ghost

by Paul Guernsey

  But after a long moment Angelfish said, “Well, isn’t it just so awesome when every little part of a plan falls into place just like you planned it.”

  Now it was my turn to pause. “I didn’t know that there were any little parts, other than to keep Pickle from becoming one of us.”

  “Yeah, you’re kind of innocent that way. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

  I went back to watching the small boats as they floated the river. They were piloted by wraiths in human form, their faces concealed behind grinning death’s-head masks. These costumed beings oared their boats into view from beyond the curtain of mist, and once they reached our shore they rowed parallel to the bank, apparently offering rides to anybody who wanted one. After they’d collected a passenger or several—not everyone who walked the bank seemed interested in going out onto the river—they headed straight toward the other side until they again were swallowed by the mist.

  “What do you think is over there?” Angelfish asked. “That other side?”

  “Beats me. And those dudes with the masks look kind of sketchy; I wouldn’t trust them to tell me the truth about it, either. Why? Do you want to give it a try?”

  “Not just yet. Let’s walk, can we?” We both rose from the ground.

  “Upriver? Or down?” I asked.

  “Which way is the beach?”

  “The beach? I’m not sure there is a beach. But if there were one, it would be downriver.”

  “Let’s go downriver, then.”

  “Or, we could go toward the mountains.”

  “Downriver, Thumb.”

  We moved to the riverbank and mingled with the throngs of spirits who were following the flow. Unlike on earth, ethereal people in this in-between place seemed not to mind walking right through one another; the result was a giant, sweet-natured swirl of souls. Now that we were in among the other ghosts, Angelfish and I began to see spirits who had chosen a vastly different appearance than they’d presented in life. There were human spirits in the form of birds, cats, flowers, and kites. I looked in vain for a twirling beach ball; I also searched the crowd for my father. I wondered where in this afterlife they might be.

  Both above and below the murmur of human speech and laughter there continued that odd, tenor-sounding thunder I had earlier noticed. At almost the same moment I started paying closer attention to it, Angelfish said, “That’s not thunder! That’s a voice!”

  We stopped to listen and, as spirits streamed around and through us, I realized she was right. Not only was it a voice we heard but, judging from its tone, it seemed to be reciting a litany either of warning or advice. The trouble was, not only could we not make out a word it said, but we found it impossible even to tell what language he, she, or it was speaking, and there was no way of knowing whether the suggestions being offered would do us any good. Angelfish and I asked several passing ghosts whether they understood the voice or could tell us what it wanted; no one did. However, one shaven-headed dude in an orange robe did pause long enough to say, “I think we must get closer.”

  “Which way is ‘closer’?” I asked. The man only smiled, shrugged, and continued on his journey.

  Suddenly, Angelfish said, “Thumb! I want to show you something!” She jerked the loose tail of her shirt to the top of her midriff, where she let it hover, then began unbuttoning her jeans.

  “Hey!” I said. “I don’t care what you see other people doing; keep your clothes on.” But she ignored me and pulled her pants down far enough for me to see that her lower abdomen was now pure white and unmarked. There were no blue, spiked letters, and no banded snake slithered south to hide its head inside of her.

  “Your Blood Eagles ownership tat is gone. Did that just happen on your way here, or did you make it go away yourself?”

  “I got rid of it just now. I only kept it as a reminder, and I don’t need it anymore.”

  “Good for you.” We continued our walk downriver, and after what might have been several hours of earth time we began to hear the roar of a waterfall, and to see the wall of mist it threw high into the sky.

  “That waterfall sounds huge,” Angelfish said, with excitement in her voice.

  “It does. I can’t wait to see it.”

  “Thumb. If the afterlife is eternity, you have to figure that the life we’ve already led will start to seem smaller, and like a lot less of a thing, all the time.”

  “Yeah; I guess it would have to, as a matter of proportion.”

  “I mean, in ten thousand years, my whole life up to now will seem like one day in a regular lifetime—although, of course, I won’t really be alive.”

  I did the math in my mind. “More like two days, more or less. But I know what you mean.”

  “And that confuses me, because even though I’m dead my life still is everything I am. So, what will I be when life is just a tiny part of all my time?”

  “We’ll be different then, I think.”

  “Maybe I won’t even want to look like myself anymore. Maybe I’ll want to go back to being nothing but a invisible spark, or a drop of water in the river, the way I was right after I died.”

  “Maybe. And, when you think about it, what do we need bodies for anymore?” Then I added, “But, if it’s any comfort at all, a lot of scientists say that time is just an illusion, anyway. Everything that happened while we were alive has always happened, continues to happen, and always will happen.”

  “I don’t really get it.”

  “No; I guess I don’t get it either. It’s a hard thing to wrap your mind around. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be true.”

  Soon, we were standing at the edge of the waterfall, which might have stretched the entire width of the river, although we could not see how far out toward the other shore it ran. The spray and mist it threw into the sky were so thick and rose so high that the water seemed to be falling in two directions at once. Most of the spirits traveling downriver were now moving out and away from the bank and floating like milkweed fluff down a steep, mist-shrouded trail toward the unseen base of the plunge. But as we stood watching, several souls surprised us by walking right out into the waterfall and disappearing.

  After a moment Angelfish said, “That’s what I want to do!”

  I hoped she was joking. “Really? What about the beach?”

  “No; this looks more exciting. And, it can’t kill us; we’re already dead. We could hold hands and step on out there.”

  I remembered Gib telling me not long after I met him, All rivers run to the sea; all waters meet. But I felt afraid, and I said, “We can’t hold hands; we’re ghosts.”

  “We can do what we can do. Let’s mix our hands together; hell, let’s blend our bodies into one and fly right off the edge.”

  So that, finally, was what we did: Angelfish and I came together in an indistinguishable tumble of color and motion—what would have been an embrace if we’d been alive—and we stepped out into the smoking emptiness.

  Up we fell.