A Guide to the Other Side

by Robert Imfeld

  “I actually like Tootsie Rolls!” J said, her floppy cap bopping up and down with every step she took.

  “Me too!” Aiden said quickly, close behind.

  “Whatever, you freaks can have them, then,” Bobby said. “I’ll trade you for the good stuff.”

  We’d been going for nearly an hour, walking as fast as we could between the houses, since it was only getting colder. Our bags were bulging, and I could tell I had gotten some decent treats. Three houses so far had given out king-size candy bars, which was akin to finding the Holy Grail three separate times.

  “Okay, let’s turn left down Acorn Road, since that’s a good cul-de-sac,” Bobby said. “We can hit a bunch of houses really fast.”

  “Perfect!” said J. “Then maybe we can think about heading back to Aiden’s? My legs have only got twenty more minutes, max, before they’re going to be classified as medically worthless.”

  “Are you kidding, J?” Bobby asked. “It’s barely been an hour!”

  “But we’ve gone to so many houses!” she said. “How much candy do you need?”

  “All of it, J,” he crooned. “I want as much as I can get.”

  She shook her head. “Twenty minutes, then I’m done.”

  “I’ll go back with you, J,” Aiden said quietly as Bobby ran ahead. “Don’t worry.”

  J looked up at him and smiled. She couldn’t see his face, since it was covered by a black-and-white skeleton mask, but I would have bet an even $1,000 that he was bright red.

  When we turned onto Acorn Road, we passed a group of kids in the grade below us. Bobby nodded to them and kept walking, but when I got a look at their costumes, it was like a lightning bolt had hit my spine.

  One had on a zombie mask with ripped flesh and bloody eyes. Another was dressed in a white shirt covered with blood and tire marks. And still another wore a hockey mask and carried a fake machete.

  I had been doing fine all night, focused on hanging with my friends and running from house to house and ignoring everything else, and I had barely noticed a spirit around. But when I saw those costumes, it was so jarring and unexpected that I lost my concentration and an invisible wall crumbled. I was immediately surrounded by spirits, good and demonic alike, and the deafening chatter of a thousand ghosts.

  I gasped, and all of a sudden Kristina was in front of me, reminding me to breathe, to shut my eyes and imagine only the good, and to let that image become my reality.

  But then she was gone, and my friends were too, and I was all alone on Acorn Road. I looked around at the houses, where all the lights had gone out, yet the decorations glowed an eerie red.

  Then, from the gaps in between the houses, a hundred men wearing sheets filed out and charged right at me. They weren’t moving their legs; they were floating, their feet angled toward the road like they’d just been hanged.

  And there were a hundred pairs of those awful eyes, beady pools of black evil, all illuminated a malicious red from the strange glow, boring into my soul, daggering into my skin.

  I turned and ran.

  TIP

  5

  Make sure you can run fast . . . or else.

  I RACED DOWN ACORN ROAD, cut a left, and sprinted like I was competing in the Olympics.

  I glanced back and saw the Sheet Men zipping toward me, like I was the magnet and they were pieces of iron, like I was the matador with a giant red cape and they were the angry bulls.

  No one else was around. No one was there to help.

  If these demons caught up to me and somehow attacked, I’d be all on my own.

  I looked ahead. I summoned up all the strength I had and willed my legs to compete with the speed of light. They blurred into pink nothings, moving so fast I couldn’t even feel them.

  I turned out of Aiden’s neighborhood and sprinted down the main road. Not a single car was anywhere in sight.

  I looked back again to see how close they were, and immediately I wished I hadn’t.

  The Sheet Men had taken on a V formation, like a deranged flock of murderous geese, and the leader was mere feet behind me, the white sheet not flapping an inch.

  I wasn’t fast enough. He’d catch up to me at any second. I could feel the energy around me changing, and everything becoming hazy. I could sense that he was about to take over my soul and enlist me into his sheet-wearing army. I knew it was over.

  Then, with an almighty bang, Kristina materialized in front of me, shimmering into my view as sparks of blue rained down around her. That red glow suddenly vanished, and after I skidded to a stop, I turned to see all the Sheet Men had gone too.

  Except now I was in the middle of a busy road, and a truck was speeding right for me.

  “Look out!” Kristina cried. She lunged for me, blasting me to the side of the road in another tornado of blue sparks. I rolled into a cold, muddy ditch, tumbling several feet down into a swampy crevasse.

  Once I stopped rolling, I lay there for a second, panting hard and shallow, my pink pajamas now covered in mud and bits of grass.

  “Baylor,” Kristina said, “are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  I didn’t respond because I hadn’t attempted to move any part of my body. The shock of the last couple minutes was still too great. I couldn’t feel anything.

  “Baylor, say something!”

  I squeezed my eyelids together, then looked over at her figure, which was still glowing blue, and said, “Did you see how fast I ran?”

  “Baylor! You almost just got killed!”

  “I guess you’re not a very good guardian angel, then,” I said, closing my eyes again, digging my head deeper into the mud.

  “You disappeared from my sight! I had no idea where you’d gone, or how. It’s never happened before.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” I mumbled.

  “I had to cross to the Beyond and get one of my guides to help me break whatever trance you were under.”

  “That explains the blue,” I said, waving my hand in a figure-eight pattern over her body. The shimmer had nearly faded away.

  “Yes,” she said stiffly. “I don’t have that sort of power yet.”

  “One day,” I said. I raised my torso, resting on my elbows to look around. No one had pulled over to check on me. My friends were probably still on Acorn Road, wondering how I’d vanished. I didn’t have the energy to find them and make up some lie. “Let’s go to the cemetery.”

  She cocked her head at me, but she nodded. Slowly I rose from the ground and tried to brush myself off, but a thick layer of mud and leaves stuck to my hand. I shook it off and started walking.

  As we made our way down the road, I couldn’t quite keep the spirits tuned out. It was just like listening to the radio and having static come in and disrupt a song. Every few seconds I’d suddenly see ghosts speeding down the highway at sixty miles an hour, surrounding the cars, and then they’d disappear.

  The cemetery was only a ten-minute walk, but in my current state it took double that time. We walked in silence. Once we’d reached Woodland Cemetery, I threw myself over the fence that divided it from the road, and landed on the soft grass with a gentle thud.

  I let out a big breath as a feeling of relief washed over me. I was in my sanctuary, and I felt safe. It didn’t matter that the spirits kept flickering in and out. I was now in the one place where none of them would be.

  I walked aimlessly for a little bit, passing by several unfamiliar stones, until I finally spotted the big spruce tree next to the little road that cut through the cemetery.

  From there I followed the road for a bit, looking for the tombstone topped by a cherubic angel with a chipped wing. Turning left, I counted seven markers until I got to the one I wanted.

  When I was eleven, one of my classmates died in a horrific car accident, the kind where they had to bring in dental records to identify the bodies. His name was Tommy Thorne, and though he wasn’t a good friend of mine, he was still someone I had seen nearly every day for almost my entire life.

&n
bsp; I got to know him better after he died, after passing on a couple of messages to Tommy’s father, from both his son and his wife. Since then, whenever I visited the cemetery, I always found myself back at his grave.

  The dark-gray stone was etched with his name, the words BELOVED SON underneath. I had traced my fingers through those letters so many times. It was fascinating to me that he had been in the physical world, eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast and then picking out his favorite shirt to wear for the trip to the mall with his mom, not suspecting a thing, totally unaware that his life was going to end. One second he was here, and the next he was there, on the other side, in the place where only I could still see him.

  Tonight I wasn’t going to say hi. I didn’t want to talk to anyone except for Kristina. But I made sure to send over some positive vibes through the mental barrier that separated my sanity from all the roaming souls and spirits, just to let him know I was thinking of him.

  I had other things on my mind, though. Bigger, scarier things.

  Namely, the fact that my sister kept being forced away by a silent, creepy man covered in a white sheet who had apparently recruited many more demons to help him . . . help him what? Kill me? Attack me? Scare me? Send me a message?

  I had no idea why any of it was happening. A simple note or a few quick words would have been a tremendous help, but I got nothing. So I sat there in my dirty Halloween costume, my back against Tommy’s grave, and wondered aloud to Kristina all those thoughts.

  “It’s so random,” I said. “I have nothing to go on. It’s like I’m being attacked for no reason.”

  Kristina nodded. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Didn’t you say my ‘protection’ had been amped up? What happened?”

  “If there was really a hundred of them chasing after you, the extra protection probably didn’t help much. These are evil beings, Baylor. They’re infiltrating our defenses in ways I can’t understand, and it definitely doesn’t help that I can’t get a look at them to see what we’re dealing with.”

  “Then I need to fight back, Kristina,” I said. “What can I do?”

  She stared at me for several seconds and began to pace.

  “First things first, you need to begin surrounding yourself with light every hour. Twice a day clearly isn’t enough. Carry a candle and set an alarm to remember to light it. We’ll keep several candles lit at night, too.”

  “Great. More candles. Got it,” I said, picking at the grass. “I’m not going to lie, Kristina, I’m getting a lit bit tired of having to rely on freaking candles. There’s got to be a more powerful weapon I can use, maybe something that’s actually a weapon and not what kids blow out on their birthdays after making a wish that won’t come true.”

  She stopped moving and shot me a look. “Candles are fine for now,” she said tersely.

  “So there is something else!” My eyes narrowed into slits. “You’ve been keeping it from me!”

  “You know the drill, Baylor,” she said, pacing again. “We’re not ready yet.”

  I rolled my eyes. Of course.

  “Plus, I want to see if the disturbances will continue once Halloween is over.”

  It was a good point. In just a few hours the costumes would be peeled off and tossed away by everyone in the city, and the negative energy would begin to fade—not all at once, of course, but it wouldn’t be maxing out at its current wattage.

  “So we’ll wait,” I said. “I’ll layer myself with plenty of light, and we’ll hope that the visits stop now that this terrible day is ending.”

  “I think that’ll do for now,” she said, nodding. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll come up with a plan.”

  I smiled grimly. “Tiki torches?”

  * * *

  A bit later I called my mom and asked her to come pick me up at the cemetery. When she arrived, she got out of her car and ran over to me, looking frantic. She squeezed my face and then sort of attempted a hug, but after she saw how dirty I was, it turned into more of a pat on the back.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, shaking mud off her hand.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” I said. “I’ll tell you back at the house so Dad can hear it too.”

  I spent most of the ride home deflecting concerned texts from Aiden. He wasn’t mad or anything, just really confused, since I’d dropped my bag of candy and then disappeared without anyone noticing. He said he’d bring the candy to me on Monday, but he couldn’t guarantee there’d be much left, because Mrs. Kirkwood thoroughly enjoyed the spoils of Halloween.

  * * *

  Mom and Dad were not happy once I relayed all the events of the last couple of days.

  “That thing was in our house and you didn’t bother to mention it until now?” my mom shrieked. She had begun chopping random vegetables midway through the story, even though it was nearly eleven o’clock at night. She’d plowed through two onions, a red bell pepper, and a lumpy sweet potato by the time I finished.

  “I didn’t know the Sheet Man was going to return,” I said. “I thought it was a one-time visitation.”

  “One-time visitation,” she scoffed under her breath. “Till the thing came back with a hundred of his dead little demon friends and made you almost get hit by a semitruck.”

  My dad sat across from me at the table, his chin pushed back into his neck, creating four additional chins. He was looking at his hands, and I wasn’t sure if he’d heard a word I’d said.

  “It was either the truck or a hundred Sheet Men getting their wispy hands on you,” Kristina said from her spot at the head of the table. She’d been reminding me of details to add in.

  “That’s true,” I mumbled.

  “What’d she say?” Dad asked, looking up suddenly.

  “She said it was better to nearly get hit by a truck than to have a hundred of those things finally catch up to me.”

  My mom threw down her knife, which clanged violently onto the counter, and marched over to me.

  “Kristina, I don’t know where you are, but you need to do something, okay?” my mom sputtered. “You need to make sure this can’t happen again.” She looked at me, then quickly turned to stare out the window into the blackness, but not so quickly that I couldn’t see the tears welling up. “I’ve already lost you,” she said, her voice cracking. “I can’t lose another one.”

  Kristina’s mouth hung open slightly. I had never seen her speechless before. She rose from the table and walked over to Mom. She tried to hug her, but as always, her body just sort of sank in, making them look like Siamese twins.

  My mom shivered violently and her shoulders jerked back. “I’ve never gotten the chills that bad before!”

  “Kristina just hugged you,” I said.

  She shot me a strange look, a mixture of sadness and panic, then hurried back to her cutting board and resumed her violent chopping.

  “Well, this has been a stranger night than usual,” I said after another minute of silence. Part of me wondered if I should have just kept all this to myself. The stress of hearing this story would do no favors for my dad’s rapidly graying hair.

  My dad nodded, throwing his hands open. “I don’t know what to say, Baylor. I feel so helpless. If those guys wearing sheets were real people, I’d say forget the police and just hunt them down myself. But in this situation . . . I don’t know what to do.”

  “We light candles,” I said, smiling sarcastically at Kristina, who stuck her tongue out at me. “And we stay positive.”

  He attempted to smile, but it resembled that same sort of pained, teeth-baring grimace that he’d worn after finishing his first marathon a couple of years ago. He stood, walked to the hall closet, and pulled out the duffel bag of candles we had stockpiled inside.

  “Let’s get to work.”

  We finished protecting the house in less than ten minutes, and afterward I went up to bed while my mom was throwing all the ingredients into a pot to make some veggie chili.

  “Might as well,” she s
aid. “I won’t be sleeping tonight anyway.”

  In the bathroom I finally peeled off my dirty pink costume and looked at myself in the mirror. Man, I was gross. My entire face was flecked with mud and grass, and everything else ached from the extensive tumbling I’d done off the side of the road.

  I took what must have been a thirty-minute shower and then collapsed into my bed.

  “Good night, Baylor,” said Kristina, who was lit up by the glow of the ten massive candles I’d placed around my room earlier.

  “Good night, Kristina,” I said, yawning. “Thanks for your help tonight.”

  “Of course,” she said. She hesitated a moment. “I just wanted to say, before I go for the night, that I’m sorry I didn’t protect you better.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, my eyes closed. I secretly wished she’d go.

  “I know,” she said. “But I still feel like I let you down.”

  “You didn’t,” I said lightly, peeking my eyes open. “You did your best.”

  She looked odd, though, and if I hadn’t been so tired, I would have pressed her on the subject. But before I knew it, she’d vanished, and I passed out not five seconds later.

  TIP

  6

  Tubas may cause bodily harm. Proceed with caution.

  I SPENT ALL SUNDAY IN bed, my body positively on fire from the tumble the night before, but between the frequent bowls of veggie chili delivered by my mother and the hours of TV that I mindlessly watched, I began to feel somewhat better.

  Monday, however, was dreadful. I could barely walk, and I’d completely forgotten about a science quiz I needed to study for.

  “What kind of a ridiculous jerk gives a quiz the Monday after Halloween weekend?” I mumbled to Kristina on my way to the next class. “And you wouldn’t even help me out with any of the answers. I bombed that so bad.”

  “You know I can’t help you, Baylor!” Kristina said. “We’ve been over this maybe a million times.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt anyone to help me out a little bit.”