by Cege Smith
Ellie was stronger than she gave herself credit for. Ellie’s problem was that she took too much of the burden on her own shoulders. She didn’t let people in. But Lillian’s careful manipulations let David slip right under Ellie’s radar. Had David been aware of what Mikel and Lillian intended to use him for, he wouldn’t have agreed to be part of it, especially after he got to know Ellie. It was no wonder then that they chose to wipe his memory instead.
“How were we able to get to the Other Side?” David said out loud. He didn’t realize he had spoken the question out loud until he heard the soft voice answer behind him.
“They used you.”
David didn’t turn around. All of the new people that had come into his life in such a short amount of time surprised him and made him uneasy. David considered himself a private person. He also preferred to be self-sufficient. The whole re-emergence of his real past was disconcerting because it no longer fit with the person he had believed himself to be. That was how he knew that where he came from, and the people who raised him were poisonous. He had seen the light. He never wanted to be part of those old ways again.
He said nothing. Peter moved to his side and stood next to him looking out at the peaceful landscape. Of everyone that he had met in the Afterlife, Peter was the only one from Heaven. On the night that David was taken away, he had seen Falla briefly when Mikel was detained for his transgressions. Falla was Braz and Mikel’s counterpart from the sector of Heaven. Her demeanor was cool and aloof. Peter didn’t seem much different.
David took the quiet moment to study Peter. He was shorter than both David and Dane. His build was stockier than Dane, and David could tell that the other man had sinewy muscles beneath his fitted white shirt and slacks. If he met Peter on the Other Side, he would place him in his early twenties.
It annoyed him that the other man seemed content simply standing silently at his side. “So you care to elaborate on that?” David finally asked.
“The doorway is there, in the waypoint,” Peter said. With his hands clasped behind his back, he could have been a teacher in a classroom as opposed to standing on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. “But it’s supposed to be one-way. My guess is that Mikel didn’t even know what they had with you until recently, otherwise I’m certain he would have used that to his advantage long ago.”
“So what did he have with me?”
Peter laughed. “Isn’t it obvious? A way out.”
“I don’t understand,” David said. As if the weather could read his mood, the sun went behind a cloud, and the breeze felt cooler on his skin.
“There has been much speculation and discussion about you since your discovery,” Peter said. “The only thing that we can guess is that somehow, you create your own little waypoint, a waypoint that allows you to breach from the Afterlife to the Other Side. Lillian Bradford piggybacked off of your soul to gain access to the Other Side. Because you still have physical form here, you have the ability to traverse the paths of the living with ease. Lillian and Joseph would have had to stay close to the way point.”
David sighed, and he felt his heart rate increase. “Braz said something along those lines earlier. That people could use me to bypass the waypoints.”
“Yes,” Peter agreed. “I’m sure you can understand why that poses a problem for those of us that exist here the Afterlife.”
“It represents a loss of control,” David said. “You all seem to be about control here.”
Peter looked at him curiously. “You don’t agree? There has to be order to keep away the chaos. It is a system that has worked since the beginning of time.”
“It just seems to me like this whole Afterlife thing is one big black box. Souls go in it, but no one knows where they come out.” He wasn’t sure why he was delving into his observations with Peter, but it felt important.
“Think about what you knew of Death when you were on the Other Side. You sat at the bedsides of those who were about to cross over. I’m sure you remember their fear and their anxiety of the unknown. That doesn’t leave them once they arrive here. Wouldn’t you agree that it is a good thing that someone else takes care of them? That this person eases the soul’s way into its new state of being?”
“What other choice do they have?” David said. “You tell them this is what is going to happen. They don’t question you.”
Peter’s face broke into a wry grin. “Trust me, David. There are as many skeptics who cross over as believers. But when they arrive at their destination, all their questions are answered. It is natural that you would continue to have questions given the state of your existence.”
“I have no destination. I wasn’t supposed to exist.” The truth of saying the words out loud again was like rubbing alcohol in an open wound.
“Sure you were,” Peter replied. He clasped his hand on David’s shoulder. “We will help you figure out why.”
“Braz said that I was here to help Ellie,” David said. He wanted to trust Peter. The man seemed to have genuine intentions, plus there was the additional credibility of being from Heaven. But David wasn’t quite ready yet. After everything that had happened to him, he needed more.
“Perhaps, Ellie is here to help you,” Peter said. “Or you both are here to help each other. Whatever the reason, I believe that it is for a good purpose, not a dark one. The sooner you are able to uncover your true purpose or reason for being, the better.”
“Full circle,” David said. “What’s the plan?”
“We start at the beginning,” Peter said. “The kind of magic required to reroute a person’s destiny is pretty heavy stuff. It was also done on the Other Side, so it came from someone who had the ability to breach the boundaries. That narrows the possibilities down to a bare handful.”
“I take it that you know who those possibilities are?”
“We do,” Peter said. “If there is one thing that is regulated more closely than the waypoints, it’s the souls who cross over who have supernatural abilities.”
“Let me guess,” David said. “You have a Council who governs those souls.”
Peter raised his eyebrows. “How did you guess?”
David burst out in laughter. “Because everything is ruled by committee here. So it is so ridiculous that, of course, it would be true.”
“It’s about balance, not necessarily consensus,” Peter replied.
David could tell by the terseness of the transport’s words that he had offended Peter, but he found that he didn’t really care. He wasn’t an accepting fool any longer. If getting someone else riled up helped his cause, he would do it.
“Whatever. So we’re going to go see this special council?”
“We will take you to them. But you have to understand that this is risky.”
“This is insane!” Dane’s voice cut through the still breeze. “We’re going to be lucky if they don’t turn our souls inside out and decimate us simply for being loony enough to go looking for them. They aren’t going to give us any answers.”
They both turned, and David found Dane and Lila a short distance behind them. He wondered how long they had been there. It was unnerving how quiet people in the Afterlife moved. At least on the Other Side, as long as you were paying attention, you could feel the movement and change in the air when someone else was in your personal space.
“They will give me answers,” David said with more confidence then he felt. “If you are right, then they either are the reason I am here or would know how I came to be.” What he didn’t say was that he also wanted to ask the most salient question of all: how could he make it so that he and Ellie could be together for an eternity?
“C’mon, Dane. I’m going,” Lila said. “Peter will take me.”
Dane’s face turned bright red and David watched his jaw clench. The transport from Hell was wound up tight, and it appeared that Lila knew just the right words to get him to do what she wanted him to do.
“Fine,” Dane growled. “It’s going to be all of our funer
als. Real ones.”
Lila clapped her hands together. “Excellent! I’ll drive. You navigate.”
“How does this work?” David asked.
“We’re about to find out,” Dane said, rolling his eyes. He blew out a deep breath and then moved to stand at a ninety-degree angle to Lila. Peter stepped so that he was facing Dane. Then the three of them looked at David.
Lila’s smile was sweet. “David, you stand there and face me.” With David’s hesitant steps forward, he found that the four of them formed a tight circle. “Good. Now hold out your hands please.”
The men’s faces were expressionless, so it was easy for David to focus on Lila. Her eyes sparkled and he thought that if angels did exist, then it was easy to believe that Lila could be one of them. His arms came up. Lila took his hands in hers and turned his hands so that his palms were up.
As her brow furled, it crossed David’s mind that Lila was the representative from Purgatory. She wasn’t a soul crossing through and awaiting her turn for redemption. She was an employee, which meant that Lila had done something in her life that gave Heaven pause and Hell saw an opening. For all of the light inside of Lila, there was darkness too. Just like him. Just like Ellie.
He didn’t see flashes of metal until it was too late. Peter slashed the palm of his right hand while Dane slashed the left. Then Lila’s hands clasped down tightly on his, causing him to cry out. As the peaceful scenery dissolved around them, the only thing David could focus on were Lila’s eyes.
They were burning bright red.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As the bright light wrapped around her, Ellie felt the tension mount inside of her. She wanted to know, but at the same time she didn’t. She wanted to remember her life, her life on the Other Side, as being happy and normal. But no matter which way she spun it there was some part of it that held a dark truth that tied her right back to the Afterlife. Her life had never been anything close to normal. She just needed to accept that.
Her eyes opened to the gloom of the basement inside the mansion. She felt Mikel’s arms slip around her, and she didn’t resist. He held her close to him, and she could hear his heartbeat. Ellie wished that he was David, but at the moment, she just needed the connection to something solid outside of herself to feel real.
“I met your mother shortly after my own arrival in Hell,” Mikel said quietly. “Because of her father’s position, she was highly regarded and led a rather pampered life by my standards. She was assigned to me to help me with the transition. Honestly, I hated her with a passion for quite some time.”
Ellie was curious to hear about this side of her mother. She had difficulty reconciling the sweet warm woman she remembered with a person who could lead an ambitious life in Hell. “So what made you stop hating her?”
“One day, as I was struggling with my anger and my despair for where my life on the Other Side had led me, Milla took me aside and basically told me to get over myself. She told me that I could have purpose and that my Afterlife didn’t have to be that way. She said that I could chose to be reincarnated, but then she offered another alternative. She saw potential in me, and she told me that if I applied myself that I could rise quickly within the hierarchy of Hell. It was a heady proposition and one I readily accepted. So she recommended me to her father for service. An endorsement from her for someone like me was like gold. At the time, I thought she was crazy to do that, but the last thing I was going to do was mess that up.”
Ellie pulled away and looked up at him. “That sounds exactly like something my mom would do. She always rooted for the underdog.”
A wry grin crossed Mikel’s face. “That would have been me. After that, I became a sponge. I learned everything that I could learn. I started to advance upwards just like she said that I would. I think she would have been proud to see my appointment to the waypoint Council.”
“I doubt she would have been as pleased to watch you manipulate my life and use me to advance your own interests,” Ellie said with a frown pulling away from him.
Mikel shrugged. “I owed Milla a lot. I have done nothing to harm you, Ellie, and I won’t. But at the same time, I am who I am. Right now I’m a man on the run and until I figure out a way out of my predicament I will do what is necessary. Whether you believe it or not, your introduction to the Afterlife was quite tame. While you may be angry with me for using your Ripher gifts to my own ends, at the same time I put you in a position that was out of the line of sight for others here. I would have protected you and kept you safe. You and your friends are the ones who put you in the limelight. You and your beloved David as well.”
“You expect me to believe that you brought me here for my own good?” Ellie sputtered. She felt bile in the back of her throat. “I bet you actually believe that. You are disgusting.”
A crash from above their heads caused both of them to look up. “What was that?” Ellie said.
“I don’t know,” Mikel answered. “You better go find out.”
“You aren’t tagging along?” Ellie looked at him through narrowed eyes.
“In the event that someone from Hell has tracked me here, I’d rather not reveal myself so easily,” Mikel said.
Another crash got Ellie’s feet moving. “Fine. You hide behind someone else like the coward you’ve always been. I’ll deal with it.” She wasn’t sure who she was angrier with in that moment; Mikel for continuing to display his selfishness or herself for allowing him to slip into her good graces during her moment of vulnerability.
She quickly climbed the spiral staircase leading out of the basement. The stone steps turned to wood, reminding her that the house was a strange hybrid of planes of existence. She cautiously emerged from the stairwell and into the hallway between the kitchen and front foyer. Everything was quiet. Remembering that she still didn’t know what happened to Jeffrey, she decided she needed to proceed with caution.
Ellie pivoted her head to the right and left. She couldn’t see any movement in the kitchen. To have heard the noises in the basement, she knew that the activity had to have been somewhere on the first floor. There were two doors into the library, and on the other side of the staircase there was a sitting room and the dining room. Ellie decided to check the library first. She moved stealthily to her left toward the kitchen. The library door was on her right. She peeked around the open doorway. Once she saw that the room was empty, she stepped inside.
There was a large fireplace on the far wall with two sitting couches running horizontal to the fireplace in front of it. A fire crackled from inside the stone. She didn’t remember the fire burning when she returned from her last foray outside of the mansion, but she easily could have missed it.
A tingly sense of wrongness came over her, and she wondered if it had been a mistake to leave Lucy there by herself. She just hoped that the Palmer children were still sleeping safe and sound upstairs. Ellie quickly moved through the room and had just crossed the threshold into the front office space that was connected with the library when a hand slid around her mouth and a strong arm yanked her off to the side.
Ellie started to struggle when she found herself looking into Jake’s wide brown eyes. He brought a finger up to his mouth. He shook his head. He slowly lowered his hand.
“Jake! What is…”
Jake’s hand flew back over her mouth and he leaned against her shaking his head desperately. That was when Ellie heard the voices. Children’s voices.
“You sure she’s coming back?” It was Melissa’s voice.
“She’ll be back,” Bobby’s voice sounded… older. “She has to come back. She’s bound to this place.”
“What if the witch finds her before we do?” There was a pout in Melissa’s voice.
“I’ve already told you that I’ll take care of the witch. That minion from Hell complicates matters, but we will be handsomely rewarded for bringing him back too.”
“You make it sound easy. I think you may think too highly of yourself, Robert.” Ellie knew that voi
ce too. Little Beanie’s sweet voice was filled with a hatred that was years older.
“We have to be ready,” Bobby said.
“We are ready,” Beanie said. “I suggest you keep an eye on the way line instead of standing here wasting my time. Just get her up here when she returns, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“You sure about this, Christopher?” Melissa’s voice was hesitant.
“There was nothing that said what condition the woman had to be in when we brought her in,” Beanie’s dark laugh curled Ellie’s toes in fright. “So we’ll have a little fun. Then we’ll split.”
Jake’s eyes caught hers. Ellie could see a few feet into the front foyer and saw a shadow emerge on the floor. She pressed herself tighter to the wall and waited as the shadow moved and then disappeared as Bobby went around the corner and down the hall.
Jake’s mouth moved next to her ear. He spoke quietly, but Ellie still wondered if the children outside might hear. “You need to get into the servant’s staircase. I can’t make you invisible like me. I’ll meet you there. You only have a few seconds. MOVE.”
Ellie didn’t even think but spun around the wall back into the library. She heard the click of the door that told her Bobby had just gone into the basement. The other door out of the library beckoned her. Trembling, she moved to the doorway. She could hear giggles coming from the top of the staircase, but at that angle, the only way that Beanie would be able to see her would be if he looked directly over the railing and down at her. The panel that opened the door to the servant’s staircase was almost directly across from her. She tiptoed across the hallway, feeling exposed.
