by Cege Smith
A glint of something crossed Jake’s eyes then that sent a chill down Ellie’s spine. She felt like her suspicions were confirmed. Jake’s appearance wasn’t a social call. She cast a quick glance down the hallway wondering if Jeffrey was within earshot. It seemed strange that he hadn’t shown up when Jake arrived. Jeffrey was always the one that gave Ellie the heads up when new souls came to the waypoint. It just added to the mystery of Jake’s sudden appearance.
“You are asking me things that I don’t know,” Jake finally said. His eyes fell to the floor. He scuffed at the floor with his boot. “I know that I died. I was somewhere else before, but I don’t know where.” He shook his head as if trying to clear it. “I don’t remember a lot about that place other than I don’t ever want to go back there again.” His voice grew quiet. “I think I was in Hell. Guess I probably deserved it, after everything I did and especially for what I did to you.”
Ellie was torn. The afternoon of Jake’s car accident, they had a reconciliation of sorts. If he had lived, Ellie thought that there was even a chance that they could have been friends down the road. But now here they were, lost in a place that couldn’t be further from home. “There was nothing that you did to deserve Hell, Jake. You were angry, lost, and misguided, but you aren’t evil. Maybe you were in Purgatory.”
“It was because of me that he found you,” Jake said.
Jake had revealed to Ellie during that last fateful conversation that he also had a psychic ability; one that had driven him to the drinking that destroyed their marriage. Jake stumbled into dark magic trying desperately to make the visions of the dead who haunted him go away. That fumbling foray into things he didn’t understand opened a portal that brought Mikel to their doorstep and Mikel honed in on Ellie. Ellie wondered how much of her life was of her own fate’s doing or Mikel’s from that point forward.
“It wasn’t your fault. I don’t hold you responsible for that,” Ellie said. Although maybe I should blame you, ran through a dark place in her mind. She tuned that voice out.
A smile lit up Jake’s entire face, and Ellie saw the visage of the handsome man who had once had possession of her heart. It made her sad. So many things had happened between them since then, and so many things had happened to them since they split up. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Peace, Ellie?” Jake held out his hand once again, and Ellie was stuck by a strange sense of déjà vu.
Warning bells went off in her mind like loud klaxons. She stared at his hand. She could see the hard calluses on the pads of his palm. It was all so familiar, and yet so foreign. Her eyes drifted back up to Jake’s face. She couldn’t guarantee it, but she thought she saw a ripple there just underneath the surface of his skin. His head whipped to the side.
“Don’t tell him you saw me, Ellie,” Jake’s voice trembled. “I need your help. Only you can help me, but if you tell him that you saw me here, then I’ll be stuck in that place forever.”
“What do you mean?” Ellie took a small step forward, feeling Jake’s panic wafting across the shallow gap between them.
“Promise me you won’t tell,” Jake pleaded.
“I don’t even know what I’d say,” Ellie admitted.
“I’ll be back. Just don’t say anything until we’ve had a chance to talk more. I need you, Ellie.” Jake’s voice faded away even as his image flickered and then he disappeared.
Ellie stared at the space that Jake had just occupied and then Jeffrey’s tall form filled the doorway to the kitchen. “Ellie, you have company.”
“I’ll say,” Ellie whispered. She wondered if it was possible to be haunted in the Afterlife.
She still didn’t understand so many things about her new world. Jake’s soul seemed to be in trouble. He had been in the Afterlife longer than she had, and that could make him useful. It was a cold thought, but with everything else going on, she wasn’t willing to risk cutting off any source of information quite yet. It made her feel better thinking that she may have a way to develop her own network outside the waypoint, plus she knew that she would help Jake. She knew she wouldn’t be able to tell him no.
Her mind was full as she made her way back to the kitchen. Her feet stopped their forward momentum as the young, breathless voices reached her ears. Three pairs of green eyes found hers. Just when she thought that she couldn’t be surprised by what she found in the Afterlife, it seemed that another curveball came her way.
“There she is!” Jeffrey said in a booming voice that reminded Ellie of a mall Santa Claus. “Ellie! Come meet Bobby, Melissa, and Christopher Palmer.”
Forcing a smile onto her face to cover her surprise, Ellie approached the table. The older boy stood up and made his way around to the empty chair across from his sister. He was a boy who was on the cusp of being a teenager. Ellie thought he couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. She saw tendrils of strawberry blond hair peeping out from beneath his black skullcap, and it immediately reminded her of Mikel. He wore a baggy plain black t-shirt and jeans that had the knees worn out.
“Hi, I’m Bobby,” the boy said as he drew out the chair for Ellie to sit down.
“Thank you, Bobby,” she said as she primly took the chair. She watched him return to his seat.
He nodded to his sister, a tiny girl whose green eyes seemed to overwhelm her entire face. Her skin was pale and a smattering of freckles covered her nose. She wore a light blue sleeveless dress that looked two sizes too big for her. The girl watched her shyly.
“This is Melissa. She just turned eight. Beanie’s four,” Bobby said.
“Beanie?” Ellie felt drawn to these children. She wanted to gather them close to her. She wanted to keep them safe from all of the bad things that she knew existed in the Afterlife. She knew that they could be pried from her hands at any moment.
“ME!” The small boy to her right stuck his hand straight into the air and then rammed his thumb into his chest. He was dressed in pajamas and Ellie could just make out the images of the characters from a popular kids TV show on them. Ellie couldn’t help but laugh out loud at Beanie’s confident declaration.
“Well, hello, Beanie. Melissa, it is a pleasure meeting you as well,” she said smiling at each of them in turn.
“Jeffrey said that you are going to take care of us.” Bobby was watching her carefully, and Ellie realized that he was sizing her up. His mannerisms seemed much older than his years.
“For now, I am your Guardian,” Ellie said, and wondered how to broach the next topic. She didn’t have to ask, and she thought that quite possibly it was unfair to ask. It wasn’t necessary information. She thought that she’d take Jeffrey aside and find out what she needed to know. But even as those thoughts crossed her mind, Bobby was already plunging ahead.
“Our mom met this guy last year. Her boyfriend, Nick, is a real douche,” Bobby said.
“Douche,” Beanie agreed.
“Hey, watch your mouth,” Bobby warned his younger brother. Beanie’s lower lip stuck out in an adorable pout that made Ellie want to reach out and tickle him. “Just cuz I say something doesn’t mean that you should repeat it.”
Ellie didn’t want to hear the end of Bobby’s story, but the older boy was on a roll. It was as if he had to get it off his chest as quickly as possible.
“So Nick was always ragging on Mom about us. He said he’d marry her, but if only she didn’t have any kids,” Bobby’s voice cracked and then his head dropped. His chest heaved, but then his chin shot back up. Although tears welled in his eyes, they never wavered from Ellie’s. “Mom wanted somebody to take care of her so bad. She said it was so hard taking care of us after Dad died. She was always so mean to us. Well, Mom made it so that she didn’t have kids anymore.”
The horror of Bobby’s words ripped through Ellie like a knife. Melissa’s small shoulders started to shake, and then Bobby leapt up from his chair and wrapped his arms around her. Ellie felt a small tug on her arm, and found Beanie’s huge green eyes staring up into hers. She didn’t
even think but pulled his compliant body up into her lap. He settled his head into the crook of her neck, and she started to rock him. Ellie, who had always wanted children, couldn’t imagine how a woman could so easily rid herself of the ones that she should have died protecting.
“You all are safe here, Bobby,” Ellie said. She didn’t know if it was true, but she couldn’t believe that the three innocent children in front of her were bound for anywhere other than Heaven. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Bobby scooted his sister over in her seat so that she leaned against him as he sat down. He left his arm draped around her. “I’m glad she’s gone. She was a bad person.” The venom in his voice left no doubt how he felt about his mother. After hearing his story, Ellie didn’t disagree with him one bit.
For the moment, Ellie was able to forget about everything that had happened to her in the Afterlife. She forgot about Mikel. She forgot about Lucy. She forgot about her parents’ secret past. Only David remained near her consciousness because this was the future that she wanted with him. She wanted a houseful of children and David beside her, adoring her just like her father had adored her mother. It was her dream.
“Jeffrey, I’m going to take the kids upstairs and let them pick out their rooms,” she said. She lifted Beanie up as she stood, and he immediately wrapped his legs around her waist. She didn’t mind. His small warm body tucked against hers felt natural. It was like he was hers, and it made her happy to think that, even just a short time, he was. She nodded to Bobby with a smile. “Follow me upstairs. You can have whichever room you want.”
Melissa squealed, and Bobby’s face broke out in a wide grin. “First one upstairs is a rotten egg!” he yelled. The two older siblings tore out of the room towards the front of the house.
Ellie knew that Jeffrey was watching her closely, but she didn’t care. For a little while, she was going to enjoy her role because, for the first time in what felt like forever, she knew exactly what to do.
CHAPTER FOUR
With the three Palmer children settled into their rooms, occupying three of the four bedrooms on the second floor, Ellie returned to the landing of the staircase and was turning to go back downstairs when Lucy materialized in front of her. Ellie tripped and found herself pitching forward into a free fall. She caught Lucy’s look of horror just before her head whipped around and saw that she was rushing toward an impact with the top risers. Ellie brought her arms up to break the fall when her forward momentum suddenly stopped, causing her to choke on the yell that had built up in her throat. Her eyes opened and she found her prone body floating inches away from the carpet.
“Sorry, El! Here, let me help you,” Lucy called down to her.
Ellie felt the air around her swirl and then her body slowly raised from a horizontal to a vertical position. Her feet floated gently down to the step and then she felt the weight of her body return to her. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute. Although she suspected she’d heal quickly, she still didn’t want to risk broken bones in the Afterlife.
“Geez, Lucy! You scared the heck out of me,” Ellie said once she felt as if she had caught her breath. “Can you not appear out of nowhere like that? Or at least give me some kind of warning?”
Lucy shrugged as she flounced down the stairs to stand at Ellie’s side. “Be mad at me all you want. You are going to love me in two seconds when I tell you what I found out.”
Ellie scowled at her friend. “Unless you tell me that Max Turner is on his way here right now, fat chance.”
A nail file appeared in Lucy’s hand as she leaned back against the railing. Lucy was perpetually filing her nails. “Oh, okay Ms. Grumpy Pants. I won’t tell you then that I can take you to see your boyfriend.”
Ellie’s mouth fell open. “David? You found out where they are keeping David?”
The look of nonchalance on Lucy’s face was replaced by a Cheshire grin. “I did.”
“So can we get him out? Bring him back here? Hide him or something?”
The smile slid from Lucy’s face. “I said I can take you to see him. I didn’t say that we were ready to stage a jail break yet.”
“We can’t leave him there, Lucy. We have to protect him,” Ellie argued. The thought of seeing David and then having to leave him in whatever hellish place he was being kept filled her with dread.
“We don’t even know how to protect him, El. First things first, I thought you may want to talk to him. I know you didn’t really have a chance to say goodbye the night he was taken. Plus he may have heard something or knows something that could help us. He probably understands the situation even better than we do right now.”
Ellie nodded slowly. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, it made sense, and she wanted to see him. She needed to see him. “When do we leave?”
“As soon as you’re ready,” Lucy said with a smile. “I’m assuming you’ll want to freshen up, but we have to get there before my contact’s shift is over. This is kind of a one-time thing.”
Ellie had a million questions to ask, but knew that she needed to focus. “So I can leave the waypoint, and everything will be fine?” She glanced at the bedroom doors on the second level. “I’ve got three kids that came in after you left. I don’t want to do anything that would hurt them. I didn’t sense any psychic abilities in them, so I don’t think the transports will be here to retrieve them right away.”
One of the first things that Ellie learned after becoming the new waypoint Guardian was that, for some reason, the number three had great significance in the Afterlife. Souls transitioning through the waypoint came in threes. Each section of the Afterlife, Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell had a designated representative in the group that collected the souls from the waypoint. Those representatives were called transports. If a soul had physic abilities, that soul carried a higher priority, and so the transports arrived sooner.
“Kids, huh? That sucks,” Lucy said. “As long as you aren’t gone long, the waypoint should be fine. Remember that little field trip you took with Mikel? It should be the same thing. We’ll get in and get out.”
Ellie had been led to believe that since the waypoint depended on her energy for its survival, she needed to be there at all times. It wasn’t the first time that the truth was carefully arranged in a way that it wasn’t quite the truth, but not quite a lie either. Since arriving in the Afterlife, she had only been away from the waypoint once, but that had been with Mikel. It hadn’t escaped her notice that, without help, she had no choice but to remain at the waypoint. She had no idea how to navigate the pathways between the waypoints and the other sections of the Afterlife. She had to trust that Lucy knew what she was doing.
Ellie started up the stairs. “Give me five minutes.”
She ran all the way up the stairs to the third story leaving Lucy behind her. Her thoughts were filled with David. She couldn’t believe that she was about to see him again. It felt as if it had been years since they had been together, and for all she knew, it had been. She had no way to tell how long it had been since she entered the Afterlife, and she had spent a period of time in a place that she remembered only as floating darkness before Mikel brought her fully into the waypoint. Years could have passed, but to her it felt as if she had accepted Mikel’s offer to take Lillian’s place as the Guardian there just a few weeks ago.
As she entered her room and made her way into the bathroom, Ellie felt a small tendril of doubt curl in her stomach. David had been the reason that she pulled out of her depression on the Other Side. She had fallen head over heels for him as he helped her pick up the pieces of her life and put them back together. He had been her rock of support, and had given her hope that she could have the life that she had always dreamed of; the life she saw her parents have when they were alive.
But it scared her to know that it had been Mikel’s doing that brought David into her life. He had wanted Ellie to fall in love with David. He knew that their love would be enough to restore the energy to the Bradford mans
ion waypoint and bring it alive again so that it would draw souls to it once more.
When Mikel threatened David’s life as well as her own if she didn’t leave the Other Side, she had agreed without question. It had been that, or become victims of Lillian and Joseph Bradford, who would have sucked her life energy and used it to keep the waypoint hobbling along until they could coerce David to return to the Other Side and find another psychically gifted woman like Ellie. David had been innocent of the whole mess, but Mikel and Lillian’s pawn nonetheless.
David surrendered himself without a fight to Braz after Mikel was banished back to Hell to await his punishment. Somehow David had known that he posed a threat to Ellie, and he hadn’t wanted to affect her any more than he already had. Ellie remembered the tortured look in David’s eyes. He blamed himself for everything. David didn’t believe that he was good.
She shook those thoughts from her mind. No matter what David thought, he was still the man that she had fallen in love with. Mikel had not manipulated that. There was no way that David was a bad guy. She wouldn’t believe it. Ellie stared at herself in the mirror and then quickly ran some lipstick over her lips, and brushed her long hair so that it was shiny and smooth. Her eyes looked tired, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. Sleep was a fleeting thing in the Afterlife, not really necessary and so something she often forgot.
Then she changed her shirt and wondered what people wore in Purgatory. Was she going to stand out?
“We aren’t going to be out in the open, but even if we weren’t you look just like everyone else there,” Lucy said from the doorway. “We pretty much get to dress exactly like we used to on the Other Side. The lighting there makes everything look pretty bland though.”
A deep frown crossed Ellie’s face. “Are you reading my mind?”
Lucy laughed. “No. I’ve just been standing here watching you pick at your clothes for the last two minutes. It wasn’t hard to follow your train of thought.”
