Afterworlds

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Come away from here, Lizzie.” Yamaraj pulled at my arm, but I shook him off.

  “I have to make sure he’s still alive.”

  “You don’t want to go any closer to that house,” he said.

  As I opened my mouth to ask why, one of the little girls moved. Her head turned slowly, the rest of her body utterly still, until her gray eyes rested on us. She was a little younger than Mindy, wearing overalls and sneakers. Her gaze lingered, her expression blank except for the barest hint of puzzlement.

  Yamaraj turned to face me. “Don’t look at them.”

  “But they’re just . . .” My words faded as the other girls, all in one motion, turned their heads to stare at us. Their five little gray faces regarded me with growing interest. “Okay, maybe this is kind of weird.”

  Yamaraj was already kneeling, his palm on the asphalt. He stood up as the bubbling oil began to expand beneath our feet, and put his arms around me, his muscles tense and hard.

  “You don’t want them in your memories,” he whispered as we began to sink into the street. “Just think of home.”

  * * *

  Our second journey in the river seemed faster, as trips home often do. It was easy to hold an image of my own house in my mind, because I wanted to be there so badly. But it was harder this time to ignore the wet, shivery things that brushed against us. Some part of me had realized what they were—loose memories, fragments of ghosts who had faded away.

  I kept my eyes shut the whole way, head pressed against Yamaraj’s chest, his warmth and solidity protection against the blank stares of the gray-faced little girls.

  We came to a halt on another windy expanse under a blank sky, but somehow I could feel home just overhead. Or maybe it was beneath us—the afterworld had confused me on the concepts of up and down.

  But before I returned to my bedroom, Yamaraj took me by the shoulders.

  “You give this up, Lizzie. Don’t go there again.”

  “I have to help Mindy. It’s what I would do for a living person.”

  “But those ghosts are in your head now.”

  “That’s for sure.” I shuddered, seeing their gray faces. “But why is that such a bad thing, besides the potential for nightmares?”

  “Ghosts go where they can for nourishment. Think about it. Mindy died in that house, didn’t she? Hundreds of miles from here, but she lives with you now.”

  “Right. Because my mother remembers her.”

  “More than anyone else in the world. More than her own parents.”

  “That’s kind of sad. And weird.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not as strange as you’d think. Sometimes when children go missing, their parents can only stand to hold on to their memories for so long. When they let go, those children fade, unless someone else keeps them in mind.”

  My mouth was dry. “But that means those little girls are there . . . because the bad man remembers them better than anyone else?”

  “Their last days, perfectly. But what if they had you to nourish them instead?”

  I imagined the five little girls on my front lawn, waiting and wanting, and a shudder went through me. I could still see the face of the first one who’d turned to look at me—her worn overalls and the half-dozen sparkly barrettes in her short hair.

  “How am I supposed to forget what I just saw?”

  “You can’t, Lizzie.” His hands fell from my shoulders, and he sighed. “It was only a glance, not enough to bring them here.”

  “So you’re just trying to scare me?”

  “You should be scared.” He was angry now, his brown eyes locked on mine. “Promise me you’ll never go near that house again.”

  I turned away. I’d had enough of being afraid, and Mindy had been trapped with her fear for decades. I couldn’t just leave her in limbo, now that I knew where the bad man lived.

  I chose my words carefully. “I promise I won’t ever see those little girls again.”

  Yamaraj stared at me a moment longer, but finally he nodded. “Thank you.”

  With the anger fallen from his voice, he sounded tired. He was probably starting to think that I was a lot of work, like a student driver who keeps crashing the car in her first lesson.

  At least I knew that the bad man was still alive. Mindy was safe, for now. We had Yamaraj to thank for that.

  “It was nice of you to come and save me.”

  The storm in his eyes lifted a little. “I’m not sure you needed saving.”

  “Maybe not. But it was fun seeing you chase that guy off.”

  Now a smile danced at the edges of his mouth. “I was wondering if you were going to call. My sister was certain you would.”

  “Oh? Does Yami have an opinion about me?”

  “She thinks you might become a distraction.”

  “I hope she’s right.”

  He nodded. “She’s always right.”

  “Yamaraj . . .” I shivered a little, saying his name aloud again.

  “Call me Yama. ‘Raj’ is only a title.”

  “Really? What does it mean?”

  “Prince, or perhaps lord.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You mean, I’ve been calling you Lord Yama all this time?”

  He was fighting a smile. “You’ve only said it once or twice.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been thinking it in my head!” I groaned, feeling like a ditz. “Anyway, now that I actually know your name, will that work? I can call you and you’ll come?”

  He nodded. “The name is important, but it’s like traveling to a place. There also has to be a connection.”

  “You heard me tonight. So there’s already a connection.”

  “There is.” He took a step closer. “But it could be stronger, just to be safe.”

  “And how do we do that?” My eyes were drifting closed.

  “Like this.”

  As his lips met mine, something keen and buzzing flowed into my body. It bloomed in my chest, making my breath skid and shudder, scattering the fear this long night had left inside me. The kiss grew hotter, fiercer as I pressed my mouth against his, hungry for more.

  The wind of the river turned sharp and dry around us, filling with pinpricks that played across my skin. My eyes opened for a moment and I saw sparks swirling past, like when Yama had appeared to save me, the air burning around his feet.

  “Did you make those?” I murmured.

  “Not just me.”

  We didn’t say much more.

  * * *

  An hour later I left him and descended into my bedroom, safe and welcoming and familiar. My skin still tingled. My body felt lighter. The cold place inside me was almost gone, burned away by Yama’s lips.

  There was just one little problem left. My mother was sitting there on my bed, staring at her phone.

  After everything that had happened tonight, I’d forgotten her coming into my room just before I’d sunk into the river. She hadn’t seen me, of course, and I was still on the flipside, but I couldn’t stay here forever.

  With Yama’s body against mine, I had felt boundless, powerful. But now I felt like a little kid about to get grounded. If I went outside and came in through the front door, pretending to have been taking a walk, how would my mother respond? After this week, she might flip out. Or worse, start checking on me every night.

  I didn’t even know how long I’d been gone. And I couldn’t let her sit here any longer, not knowing where I was. I had to think of a reasonable explanation why I wasn’t in bed.

  Mindy was gone, probably having scampered back to my mother’s closet after I’d sunk through the floor. Which gave me an idea . . .

  I wasn’t an expert at walking through walls yet, but the door to my closet was open a little from when I’d changed into jeans. I slipped inside, and settled myself on some dirty clothes on the floor. My closet wasn’t as spacious as my mother’s, but it was big enough to huddle there and pretend to be asleep.

  I took a few sharp breaths, making my heart bea
t faster, and soon my grasp on the flipside was fading. The slant of light coming though the closet door showed colors bleeding back into the world.

  When I’d crossed over, I quietly slipped out of my jeans and hoodie, then let out a soft yawn.

  After a long wait in nervous silence, I was about to yawn again when I heard my mother’s voice.

  “Lizzie?”

  I pushed the closet door open. It swung with a plaintive creak, revealing my mother’s astonished expression.

  “Oh, hey,” I said sleepily. “What’re you doing in here?”

  “I heard your voice, and I came in to see what was up. And you weren’t . . .” She shook her head. “For heaven’s sake, Lizzie. What are you doing in your closet?”

  “Um, sleeping.” I sat up, blinking my eyes and stretching. “I had this really scary dream. And after I woke up, it just felt safer in here.”

  The sorrow on her face made me feel awful. But a made-up nightmare was a better explanation than, Got accosted by an evil psychopomp, then went to visit an old serial killer’s house. Oh, and hooked up.

  “Lizzie, I’m so sorry. Do you need to talk about your dream?”

  I shook my head. “No big deal, no airports or terrorists. It was just . . . my feet were stuck in this black goo. I was sinking.”

  “That sounds awful, kiddo.”

  “Sorry I woke you up.” I crawled from the closet and stood.

  My mother managed a smile, and rose from the bed to give me a long hug. When we parted, she looked down at my makeshift nest on the floor.

  “It’s funny,” she said. “You used to be afraid of closets when you were little. But the house where I grew up had these huge walk-ins. I used to do sleepovers in there with . . .”

  I waited for more, but Mom was still staring. She knelt and lifted something from the closet floor. It flashed in her hand—the kitchen knife I’d taken with me to the afterworld. It must have fallen from my pocket when I pulled off my jeans.

  I tried to smile. “Oh, yeah. I was kind of scared.”

  The look on her face was so sad.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I know it seems weird.”

  She held the knife carefully with both hands. “I know what it’s like to be scared all the time. After my friend disappeared, I was like that for months. You’ll do anything to make yourself feel safer.”

  I nodded, an image of all those little girls flooding back into my head, and I knew for certain that, in a way, my mother understood. And I also knew that I would be going back to Palo Alto, to make sure that the bad man never hurt anyone again.

  CHAPTER 19

  HER FAVORITE PART OF SETTING fires had always been the matches. She liked the way they rattled, stiff little wooden soldiers in a cardboard box, and the way they bloomed into hot flowers between cupped palms. She loved the ripping, fluttering noises they made as they fought the wind. Even their remains were beautiful—spindly, black, and bowed—after they’d burned all the way down to fire-calloused fingertips.

  Ariel Flint never went to school without them.

  She was early today, so she headed for the smokers’ den, a hidden corner of the school grounds formed by two temps wedged against the backside of the gym. The temporary buildings had been classrooms years ago. Through their cloudy windows, you could still see blackboards on the walls. Now they were storage for the theater department, stuffed with old sets and props, racks of costumes with the tattered look of moth food. The temps were always locked, but they stood on cinder blocks and you could crawl away beneath them in a pinch.

  This morning’s pinch was already under way when Ariel came around the back of the gym. Peterson, the school’s rent-a-cop, was on one knee in the corner, peering into the shadows beneath the temps. He was calling threats after some escaping student, the radio in his hand sputtering and angry.

  Ariel spun around on one heel, ducking her head. Once a month or so Peterson busted the smokers’ den, rounding up everyone for detentions and “community service,” which meant slopping out food in the cafeteria. The thought of wearing a hairnet for a week of lunches sent Ariel into a run, heading toward the gymnasium’s rear doors.

  A moment later she burst onto the basketball court. The doors slammed behind her, filling the empty gym with echoes—booms mixing with the squeak of her boots on the pine floor. She froze for a moment, breathing hard and coming up with excuses, but Peterson hadn’t followed her.

  Ariel smiled and spun once at center court, miming a shot at the basket to the applause of an invisible crowd. Capture evaded!

  The year before, she’d written a paper on gambling for psychology, about an experiment with caged pigeons who fed themselves by pulling a lever. If the lever always produced a single food pellet, the pigeons pulled it only when they were hungry. If the device stopped giving them food at all, the pigeons soon gave up on it. But when the lever worked like a slot machine, sometimes giving nothing, other times paying off big, the pigeons got addicted. Even when they already had plenty of food, they wanted to see what would happen with the next pull.

  Pigeons, like people, loved to gamble.

  While writing this paper, Ariel had realized that getting caught in the smokers’ den worked the same way. Had Peterson shown up every day, everyone would’ve found another place to smoke, or maybe quit altogether. And if no one ever tried to bust them, smoking wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. But Peterson came along just often enough to keep things interesting.

  Of course, the smokers at Reagan High were addicted to nicotine, not gambling, and would’ve been fine with being left alone. But Ariel had never been a smoker. She was there to light other people’s cigarettes, to watch the smoke curl from their mouths, to glory in fiery tips flaring with every drawn breath. For her, the chance of getting caught was part of the thrill of starting fires, large or small.

  “What the hell, Flint?” boomed a voice from across the gym.

  Ariel turned from the empty bleachers, and found a pissed-off Erin Dale striding toward her.

  “Um,” Ariel said. “Just made the winning shot.”

  Coach Dale came to a halt a few yards away, crossing her arms. She wore her usual uniform, a tight sleeveless T-shirt and sweatpants, her hair tied in a long ponytail. On her left shoulder, three red claws extended out two inches from beneath the shirt. No one had ever seen the rest of the tattoo, but Ariel was somehow certain that it was a dragon curled between the coach’s breasts.

  “It’s nice to see you take an interest in sports, Miss Flint. But you’re wearing Doc Martens on my pinewood.”

  “Oh, right.” Ariel looked down and saw a spiral of tiny black marks around her feet. “Whoa. Sorry.”

  Coach Dale regarded Ariel coolly. In gym class, Ariel only ever worked at running, jumping, and climbing—useful skills for getting away—and was hopeless at anything involving a ball or a score. But she had an old and smoldering crush on Coach Dale, and wouldn’t have dreamed of smudging her basketball court.

  In a show of contrition, Ariel lifted one offending boot from the floor and balanced there, untying its laces. Wobbling only a little, she wrangled it off, then did the same with the other.

  “Good coordination and flexibility,” Coach Dale said. “Wish we saw more of that from you in class.”

  Ariel didn’t answer. The gym floor was cold beneath her stocking feet, and she felt small and penitent under the coach’s gaze.

  One of the rear doors swung open. It was Peterson, radio still in hand.

  “Hey, Coach,” he said, his eyes on Ariel. “Anyone come through here?”

  Coach Dale’s pissed-off expression didn’t change. “Not that I’ve seen. Have you seen anyone, Miss Flint?”

  Ariel shook her head.

  Peterson didn’t look like he bought it, but he flashed the coach a salute and went back through the gym doors to resume his hunt outside.

  After another moment of silence, the coach uncrossed her arms. “It’s pointless telling you how bad smoking is for your lu
ngs and stamina. But you know it makes your lips thinner, right?”

  “And gives you yellow teeth, puffy skin, and wrinkles around the eyes,” Ariel recited. “That’s why I don’t smoke.”

  Coach narrowed her eyes and came closer, until they were face-to-face. Ariel tried to keep from staring at the red claws sneaking out from beneath the T-shirt.

  The woman sniffed. “Is that smoke I smell?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not cigarette smoke. I built a fire this morning . . . to warm up.”

  The coach raised an eyebrow. But Ariel wasn’t lying, and cigarette smoke didn’t smell at all like an honest fire.

  It had only been a small one. Ariel had indulged on the way to school, in an already burned-out oil barrel behind the Shop ’n’ Save. Someone had left a bundle of three-foot cardboard tubes in a Dumpster, impossible to ignore. She’d arranged them into a pyramid balanced on the rim of the barrel, and it had taken only a few minutes before the burning structure had crumbled, spitting a galaxy of sparks into the air.

  “Whatever you say, Flint. Follow me.”

  Ariel trailed her toward the girls’ locker room, boots in hand.

  The locker room smelled as it always did, like old sweat and cheap soap. Coach Dale opened the door to the Cage, which was what everyone called her office with its walls of metal grating. She slid open her desk and pulled out an eraser the size of a cigarette lighter, pink and new.

  She tossed it to Ariel, who caught it with her free hand.

  “That should do the trick. Use spit if you need to.”

  Ariel stared at the eraser for a moment, and Coach Dale sighed and reached across the desk. She plucked the boots from Ariel’s hand, slid open a file drawer, and dropped them in. She shut the drawer and turned its lock.

  “You get those back when I can’t find a single mark on my court.”

  “Okay, but—” The blare of the first bell cut Ariel off.

  Coach Dale sank into her desk chair, picked up a clipboard and pen, and kicked up her feet. “Fifteen minutes till first period. Better get erasing, Flint. Just remember to rub with the grain of the wood.”