Gatekeeper

by Natasha Deen

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It might just be that death shocked your system. I transitioned a lady one time who’d been hit by a car. It took her a bit to realize she was dead, too.”

  “Oh.” Kent turned back to Serge. “So, being dead and living in this world. Can you do anything cool? Other than texting, I mean.”

  “Maggie and I have a psychic connection. She can call for me.” Serge twisted to get a better view of the ghost. “I can hone in on her and the house, but that’s it.”

  “You saved me,” I reminded him, “and Rori.”

  “Dr. Pierson’s kid?” asked Kent. “Is that what all the ambulances were for?”

  I gave him the back-story.

  “That’s decent,” said Kent and turned back to Serge. “But you can’t go over to the next world then back again?”

  “No. I think you have to be a special kind of supernatural to do that. Like Maggie’s boyfriend. He transports the dead, so he goes back and forth all the time.”

  Mention of Craig reminded me that I hadn’t heard from him. And reminded me I had been so focused on Kent that I hadn’t even thought of him. Was that good or bad?

  “But you didn’t cross over. Don’t you want to?”

  “It would be cool to see stuff and know what’s on the other side…” He shrugged. “But my afterlife is linked to Mags and I’m okay with that.”

  “But what about the other stuff? Like knowing you’ll never be with a chick, again? How do you handle that?”

  Serge’s jaw slackened, his eyes lost focus.

  Thank God he was already dead. The reminder that Serge would never get to stick his hand up some girl’s shirt looked like it was going to kill him. I jumped into the conversation before Kent reminded Serge he couldn’t eat or drink either. “I’ve crossed over souls and it looks like there’s a lot of good things on the other side.”

  The streetlights cast Kent’s frown in shadowy light. “I’ve never considered harps and clouds.” He paused. “I’ve never considered an afterlife. I always thought you live, you die, that’s it. You know—the worm goes in, the worm goes out, the worm plays pea knuckle on your snout.”

  Oh, boy, if he didn’t have a concept of life after death, then despite the outwardly calm demeanour, this guy was in for nine kinds of confusion and culture shock. “I’m sorry.” Wow, was I Canadian. Had I just apologized to a ghost for him getting his philosophy wrong? “It’s not all bad. It’s not like your life is over.”

  “My life is over.”

  “Okay, so it’s not like your existence is over. There’s lots of stuff that can happen to you, now,” I said. “You can be reborn, move to a different plane, re-die”—Good one, Maggie—“but not you…it’ll be fine for you, I’m sure.”

  Kent pressed his forehead against the glass. “But this time, this life is gone. I can’t go back to my mom or dad. I can’t do all the stuff I wanted to—I’ll have to start over, all over again.” In the rearview mirror, our gazes met. “Do you know how hard I worked? How much I sacrificed to get to where I was? And now it’s all trashed and I don’t even know why. Was I hit by a car? Or did I die trying to save someone’s life?”

  “You don’t lose everything. Your experiences become part of your subconscious knowledge—”

  “Unless you’re telling me I can be born again with my high school diploma and acceptance into university already set, then I’m starting over.” He groaned. “I hate physics and now I have to do it, again.”

  Okay, my sales talk for reincarnation wasn’t going so well. Time to pitch something else. “It really won’t be all bad. When the time comes for you to move on, someone from the other side will claim you. It’s a chance to reunite with everyone who’s gone before you.”

  “Someone from the other side?”

  I shrugged. “For some people, it’s their grandparents or relatives. Other people it’s a pet—”

  “My grandparents on Dad’s side died before I was born. And on my mom’s side when I was just little.” He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t they claim me right away?”

  The leather seats and springs creaked as he moved closer to my chair. “Did I do something wrong? Is that why they didn’t come to pick me up?” There was a beat of silence, then, “Oh, man. Is something else coming for me?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Something, you know, with horns and who likes fire and brimstone?”

  “No. Those guys claim their souls right away. My theory is when people die unexpectedly or if they can’t believe they’ve died or if the death is shocking, there’s a gap that’s created. I think to transition naturally, either with a previously passed loved one or a ferrier—”

  “What’s a ferrier?”

  Great, Maggie. Go ahead and complicate an already complicated situation. Nice job. “That’s Craig but it doesn’t matter, sorry. What I mean is because you didn’t expect to die, the natural connection that would have occurred, that would have made a bridge between this world and the next, didn’t get created. That’s why you’re still here and I’m involved. We’ll get you to your mom and hopefully, it’ll go smoothly.”

  He gave a humourless laugh. “Yeah, smoothly, whatever ‘it’ is.” Kent slid back into his chair.

  Serge glanced back then whispered, “How are we going to do this?”

  I shrugged. I was really hoping that Kent would see home, be warmed by it, and somehow cross over. What I didn’t want to do was knock on the door and pass on any messages from the dead.

  “I was rude to her,” Kent said from the back. “This afternoon, when I saw her, I was mean. And now it’s the last thing she’ll remember of me.”

  “See your memory’s coming back. That’s some good news, right?” I hung a left for Parsons Ave. “You saw her today?”

  He nodded. “I came in for the Thanksgiving weekend. We had dinner, then I went for a walk.”

  Whoa. What? I hit the brakes, pulled the car onto the shoulder. “What?”

  “This weekend, Thanksgiving weekend. I thought I’d take a couple days from the university. She and I hadn’t talked for a while—”

  “You came for Thanksgiving.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanksgiving.”

  He looked at me like I should be checked for a brain injury. “Yeah. Thanksgiving.”

  “Thanksgiving is the second weekend in October,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know that.”

  “It’s mid-November.”

  “No, tonight’s the Saturday of the Thanksgiving long weekend—”

  “It’s Sunday of a regular November weekend.” There was no point in preparing him, so I pushed forward. “Kent, you’ve been dead for weeks.”

  His outline blurred and his body bowed and went blobby like an amoeba. “If I’ve been dead for weeks,” he asked, his voice faint. “Where’s my body? And where’s my consciousness been all this time?”

  Chapter Six

  What an idiot I’d been. I should’ve been paying more attention. The newly dead always smell like pine trees and evergreens. When I first saw Kent, he didn’t put off the smell. That should have tweaked me to the fact he’d been a ghost for a while.

  “What does that mean, Maggie?” Contained panic was in his voice. “If I’ve been dead for weeks—”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “and there’s no point in pretending I have answers.”

  “But you have to have a theory—you’ve been doing this since you were born.”

  An exaggeration, but he was right. I had a theory but I didn’t think he’d like it. “The only thing I know is we need to transition you. You’ll get all your answers on the other side.” I spun around and belted myself back in. “Let’s get you to your mom.”

  A few minutes later, I rolled the car to a stop in front of his house.

  “Home sweet home,” he said. �
��I wonder if she’ll stay in Dead Falls now that I’m gone.”

  “Does she have friends here?”

  “Not really, I mean she knows people, but she doesn’t really have friends here...she really doesn’t have friends, anywhere. I’m—I was all she had.”

  “This is where I step in,” said Serge. “Thanks for the ride, Mags. Kent, come on. I’ll show you how to move through the walls. We’ll find your mom and I’ll help you cross over.”

  You’re sure you’re okay with that? I went for mental communication to talk to Serge.

  What choice do we have? You can’t go knocking on her door and telling her you have a message from her dead son.

  Do you know what to do? You’ve never crossed anyone over before.

  Maybe not, but I have a lot of experience being dead and letting go of the life I lived.

  I didn’t have an answer for that, only sadness for the way he’d died. Fair enough.

  Dead Falls didn’t have much in the way of cosmopolitan appeal but it had woodland that bordered the town. The city fathers and mothers hadn’t developed the land, and most people used the forest for off-leash dog walking, hiking, biking, and running.

  Since Kent’s house was next to one of the forest entrances, I told Serge I’d park there and he could meet me when it was done—no need for Mrs. Meagher’s neighbours to look out their window and see me sitting in front of her place.

  He agreed. I told Kent goodbye and good luck, then drove away. I spent the next fifteen minutes worrying about Serge and Kent, and hoping Serge’d be able to do it…and hoping he wouldn’t. Not that I wanted to see him fail, but I’d gotten used to having him around—really used to it—and I worried that him seeing the bridge to the afterlife could mean he would cross over, too.

  A few minutes later, I looked up to see Serge coming my way. A mixture of relief and pride gave my heart quick twist. The smile on my mouth dipped a few seconds later when I saw Kent jog up beside him.

  My phone binged with a text from Craig: Free to chat?

  Yep, I texted back.

  A second later, Craig appeared in my room.

  He grinned, then leaned over and gave me a kiss that warmed me to my toes.

  “Seriously,” I said. “You can never teach Serge how to appear in people’s rooms. He’ll never leave Nell’s bedroom. And while we’re at it, let’s never tell my dad you can do it, either.”

  He laughed. “I’ve taken on a lot of scary things in my life, but taking on Hank is out of my wheelhouse. The secret will die with me.” Craig sat on the bed and reached for Ebony.

  The cat purred and climbed onto his lap.

  He rubbed her head. “How did the transitioning go?”

  “Not well.”

  “Really? I’m surprised Serge isn’t here with you, then. I thought he’d be all over solving the mystery.”

  “They’re in Serge’s room, trading dead stories.” I told him of our abject failure in transitioning Kent then kept going. “Kent’s a mess. He’s all Type A ‘how can I fail at dying? How stupid am I that I can’t cross over?’ And it’s affecting his ability to stay in a coherent form...and Serge isn’t happy about it, either. I think that stupid conversation about what he’s doing with his afterlife got him all riled up and he wants to prove he’s more than an otherworldly text app and defibrillator.”

  “The answer seems easy enough for Kent,” said Craig. “His mom’s not the unfinished business that has him lingering.”

  “That’s my guess, too, but…he’s dead and he didn’t know it at first—”

  “That’s not unusual—”

  “—and he’s been in some kind of unconscious state until now because he’s been dead for weeks. He still thought it was the Thanksgiving long weekend.”

  “That’s more unusual.”

  “Have you heard of anything like that?”

  Craig nodded. “When the death is so sudden and shocking, the spirit can’t process it, and so the soul goes into a limbo state. It falls asleep.”

  “Like what happened to Serge?”

  “Worse—”

  Oh, boy. “However Kent died, it’s affected his core identity.”

  “It’s more than him not being able to believe he’s dead or coming to grips with the fact he knows who killed him,” he said. “It’s a combination of all of it, and the way he died might factor in, too.” He leaned back against the pillows. “What’s his view on suicide?”

  “That hasn’t come up…you think that’s how he died?”

  “Maybe. Often the limbo state happens with these types of death—but only if the person had thought of suicide as a mortal sin. Priests, pastors, that kind of thing. They sleep until their soul can find peace with the action.”

  “Kent doesn’t believe in an afterlife or divine punishment. At least, he didn’t at the point of his death. But even if that’s the case, then Kent waking up should mean he’s resolved the inner conflict.”

  “Or it could mean the combined, heightened energies of you, me, and Serge when we were looking for Rori acted like an alarm clock and woke him up. Or maybe he didn’t kill himself and it’s something else entirely.”

  “Thanks. You’re just so great at clearing these things up.”

  “Always there for you. Now it’s all about you finding out what happened the night he died.”

  “Any supernatural hints or clues?”

  He pulled me into his arms. “Sorry, when it comes to him, I’m clueless.”

  “Doesn’t seem quite right. You have the ability to move through worlds and transport spirits but you’re as blind as I am when it comes to Kent.”

  “Destiny,” he smiled. “It sucks but I’ll help in any way I can.” He grimaced. “When I get back.”

  “Get back from where?”

  “Africa.”

  I went still. “You’re being shipped to Africa? Why? Is it the gang upstairs? Did you get in trouble for helping Rori?”

  “No, nothing like that. Like I said, if it had been her time, I wouldn’t have been able to stop it. It’s the gang down here, actually. Human problems. There’s a virus outbreak in western Africa. I’m going to be gone for…” He sighed. “I don’t know how long. There’s so much death. A lot of ferriers have been called in. I’ll be moving souls. It could be a few days, it could be a week. Maybe longer. Depends on how fast the death toll rises.”

  That sucked on so many levels, I didn’t know where to start. We talked for a bit more, did a couple of fun boy-girl things, then he blipped to Africa. I stuffed down the rising sadness and went back to figuring out how to help a ghost with an identity crisis.

  Chapter Seven

  “I don’t know why we waste our money going to the movies,” Nancy said when I came downstairs the next morning. Dad let me skip school when I told them about Kent, the fact that he’d been dead for a while, apparently sleeping in the Piersons’ pond, and was now crashing at our house. Now I’d just finished telling them about our failure to transition him. She tossed a smile at my dad. “Hank, your daughter’s life is all the drama I need.”

  She set a cup of coffee in front of me. The wooden legs of the kitchen chair jittered against the linoleum as she pulled it out from under the table and sat. “Let’s run through this again. Kent’s dead?”

  “Yes. Serge is keeping him occupied so we can talk.”

  “I don’t know what’s worse.” Dad sat beside his girlfriend and put down the plate of chocolate-chip cookies. “Finding out you’re dead or finding out you’re dead and you’ve been in some unconscious state for weeks.” He reached across the table and put his hand over mine. “I’m sorry this is your problem to solve.”

  It was a comforting gesture and one I’d come to depend on. My whole life, it’s been me and Dad. He and I were teammates against the world and the afterworld, too. Because of my unique skill s
et, we’d moved a lot. He worried my abilities would come out and set me up for even more bullying or put me in the tabloid spotlight.

  Dad never made me feel bad for the moves or my abilities. He’d never complained about having to restart his life. But now that he was with Nancy, I hoped we wouldn’t have to move again. Dead Falls was finally a place we could both call home.

  “That poor kid,” said Dad.

  “Something doesn’t make sense.” I stopped and took two giant bites of Nancy’s homemade cookies. “His mother.” There was a beat of silence, then I registered the look of confusion on the sheriff’s face.

  “I appreciate how close we are, kid, but you talking with a mouth full of food is still incomprehensible to me.”

  I swallowed my mouthful and tried again. “His mother. Kent’s been dead for weeks. How did his mom not know?”

  Nancy made a sound and I didn’t need a translator to know the meaning: Kent’s mom was a pain in the sheriff’s neck. “That woman.”

  I helped myself to another cookie and waited.

  “She has problems.”

  “Kent said she was a good mom.”

  “That’s because Kent’s a saint. He put up with a lot from her.” Her gaze drifted to the stairs. “Actually, when you think about it, his relationship with his mother was a lot like Serge’s relationship with his mom. Fragile women who make their sons the parent in the relationship.”

  Great. Another whack-job mother for me to deal with. “You said Kent put up with a lot. What kind of problems did she give him?”

  “The kind that comes from an ugly divorce and an even uglier custody fight. She and Kent’s dad, Doug, split when the kid was five or six, and she never stopped being out for blood where Doug was involved. If Kent was two minutes late coming home from school, she was phoning me a missing person’s report.” Nancy leaned back, flipped her thick, blond braid over her shoulder. “There’s a difference between a legitimate call and a nuisance. There wasn’t a dedicated police station in Dead Falls at the time.” She paused for a breath. “That woman wouldn’t even call to say he was home and we could disregard. She’d make us drive the forty-five minutes to Dead Falls so we could verify he was really okay. Her anxieties over her son and her grudge with her ex-husband got so bad that Doug ended up leaving the town when Kent was in junior high. He just couldn’t stand it anymore.”