Tara Hudson - Hereafter

“Great. Since we’ve got that settled, I’d appreciate it if you’d limit those visits from now on, too.”

A shadow seemed to pass over his face. “What are you saying, Amelia?”

“I’m saying that I know what you can ‘do’ with me, Eli,” I said, faking a bright grin. “And what you can do is leave me alone. Permanently.”

Instantly, Eli’s frown deepened and lifted the curl of his lip until he looked like an animal baring its teeth. I half expected him to growl; and, involuntarily, I flinched.

He obviously read the fear in my reaction, because his sneer widened into a sharp grin. He looked no more pleasant for the change.

“As you wish,” he murmured. And miraculously, he spun around to leave, stomping through the pine needles piled upon the ground. But before he crossed into the tree line, he stopped and turned around to face me. He folded his arms over his chest, the wicked grin still plastered on his face.

“I won’t follow you again, Amelia. There’s no point, really.” Eli lowered his head to stare up at me, his eyes hooding over. “But you’ll come find me soon enough, I can promise you that. You have no idea what we are—what you are. But I do. So I’ll simply leave you with a warning. A little taste of the place where you truly belong. The place where you’ll eventually be trapped, now that you’re awake, if you don’t seek my help.”

As Eli uttered the last few words, I felt a sudden chill, sharper and more piercing than any I’d felt before. Unlike the wind announcing Eli’s arrival, this cold wasn’t directed or brief. It was all around me, as if the temperature on the riverbank had instantly dropped at least thirty degrees. I gasped from the shock of it, and my breath puffed out visibly in front of me.

I was so transfixed by the chill that I almost didn’t notice when my surroundings began to change, too. Before I understood what was happening, the riverbank darkened. Within seconds it appeared as though the sun had disappeared entirely, taking with it all the light and color.

At first I thought the bank had plunged into total darkness, but that wasn’t right at all. Everything around me had become a cold, deep gray everywhere I looked.

I stared back at Eli, who seemed perfectly at ease in this new environment, his arms still folded casually across his chest. In the charcoal darkness, his pale skin looked brighter, even more unnatural.

“What …? Where …?”

My whispers couldn’t shape themselves into real questions. In response, Eli chuckled darkly but didn’t answer.

He stared intently at me for a moment longer and then his eyes began to dart to my right and left, as if seeking something beside me. Without thinking, I turned to catch a glimpse of whatever seemed to have distracted him.

That’s when I saw them: the clusters of strange, black shapes moving along my peripheral vision. Like enormous moths, or shadows, twisting and flitting just outside my line of sight. I whipped my head from one side to the other, trying to get a solid look at them. But each time I turned my head, the shifting black shapes would move with me and out of sight.

I whirled around completely, turning my back to Eli and facing the river. And in that moment, I forgot all about the shapes still dancing at the edge of my vision.

Only minutes ago a normal river had drifted behind me, greenish and brown in the late-summer sun. Now, even in the gray darkness of this place, I could see a dramatic change had overtaken its waters.

Something floated in this version of the river, but certainly nothing as benign as water. Between the banks of the new river, a thick liquid moved past me. It looked like tar, so inky and black that I could barely see the signs of movement along its surface.

It did move, though, drifting sluggishly toward High Bridge. Slowly, I turned my head toward the bridge; but before I could take in its new form, I found my attention riveted to what lay beneath it—to the place where the dark river seemed to lead.

There, beneath what may or may not have been High Bridge, an enormous blackness gaped. If it were possible, this expanse was even darker than the gray riverbank, darker than the river itself. The top of the expanse brushed against the underside of the bridge, and the bottom of it pawed at the water and the nearby shoreline. Peering into the darkness, I couldn’t see an end to it; I couldn’t see one speck of light in all that black.

It was the darkest point in an already dark world.

It almost seemed to pulse beneath the bridge as if it were some living, breathing beast waiting for something. For me maybe.

I managed, with great difficulty, to pull my eyes away from the chasm beneath the bridge and stare down in horror at my feet. My toes were inching, of their own will, toward the river—drawn by some unseen force to the water. With no small amount of effort, I yanked my feet away from the river’s edge.

I whirled back around to Eli, truly scared now. More scared than I’d ever been before.

“Where am I?” I finally managed to ask.

“You really want to know?” he whispered, his eyes glowing with what could only be malicious delight. I nodded mechanically.

In reply Eli rolled his head around, gesturing to our bleak surroundings. “This is part of the hereafter, Amelia. This is where dead spirits are supposed to go. While you were lost, I kept you safe from this place. But now, only one thing can keep you from ending up here forever.”

I raised one eyebrow. I had a feeling I knew what that “one thing” was. He confirmed my suspicions as he went on.

“Without me, Amelia,” Eli insisted, “you’ll be trapped. Without me, you’ll spend eternity here, unable to move between worlds at will. So now you see why I know, beyond any doubt, that you’ll seek me out again. All you have to do is call for me on High Bridge … and you will, soon.”

Despite the terror crawling over every inch of my body, I rankled at Eli’s words. At his implication that I needed him, that I couldn’t avoid this foul place without him. Even now I had enough sense to suspect his motives, and to remind myself that this dead young man hardly resembled my concept of a guardian angel.

I straightened my back, as much as I could, and met his gaze squarely.

“We’ll see, Eli,” I murmured. “We’ll see.”

Now it was Eli’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Obviously, he hadn’t expected this small display of courage. Instead of reprimanding me, however, he gave a final, amused nod and spun around once more to disappear into what used to be the woods.

If sharp, cold winds announced Eli’s arrival, then the opposite evidenced his departure. For a long second it felt as though a vacuum had sucked away everything, including the cold wind. I didn’t feel anything—no chill, no gale, not even myself. I’d never felt so numb in my entire existence. I choked, clutching my hands to my throat.

Then, almost as quickly as it began, it was over.

The soft greens of the riverbank shimmered and reappeared around me, and the late-summer air swam gently back into my lungs. Gasping, I collapsed onto my hands and knees on the grass.

That night I didn’t mark the passage of time with uncertain pacing as I had the day before. Instead, I marked the time in absolute stillness, crouched on the riverbank, my eyes never moving from the spot in the woods where Eli had disappeared. I remained motionless as dawn broke over the tops of the trees. I kept my hands pressed hard into the grass, ready at any moment to sprint away if I felt another gust of that cold wind.