Page 48 of After Life
“The fuck?” I shouted, not caring if anyone heard me. Hell, let them—it was a great summation of my feelings. A low rumble of thunder pushed my decision-making process, and I sighed. Honey Walk was just a bit farther ahead of me, and it would be beyond dangerous to keep running around the town while a hurricane was nearly on top of us, and no one knew where I was. “Goddamnit!”
I pushed on, fat drops of rain pelting down harder as I followed the path of what was likely the least helpful ghost ever in the history of dead people. As I neared the house, a flicker of motion caught my eye and I paused.
The porch light had just come on.
Someone was there! If it was Sandra, I would beg and cajole her to help me search for him. Hell, I’d even offer to read her damn monograph and offer advice if it helped. But if it were Oscar already back at the house... Well. I was torn between wanting to shake him and wanting to throw myself at his feet and meep piteously until he promised not to disappear like that again.
Wow. Stage five clinger alert. Awesome.
The last several yards to the door were painful on any level I could think of. I hesitated before pushing the door open, expecting the house to be empty after all, the light to be a figment of my imagination.
A panicked thought occurred to me—what if Oscar didn’t want to be found? What if our disagreements were actually too much, and he was just done?
No, I thought fiercely. He wouldn’t just walk off. Not Oscar. He’d want to have it out, to let me know... No, he was missing because something was keeping him from returning. Something was in his way otherwise we’d both be back at Honey Walk, safe and dry and waiting for the storm to pass.
I was saved from my dithering by Ray-Don, who flung open the door to glare at me. “Took you long enough, Doc.”
“Did you make me walk back here when you could’ve driven me?” I demanded, my voice a near-shout. “What the hell?”
He grunted, shrugging. “You didn’t ask.” He stepped aside to let me in, as if he owned the place. It was through sheer force of will I didn’t wallop him with my cane as I passed. The only thing that kept me from rounding on him was the sound of Oscar’s laugh from deeper in the house. “Oh, thank god,” I breathed, the words hitching on a dry sob. “When did he get back? Oscar!” I called.
Sandra appeared in the entry to the kitchen area, scowling as she approached me. “He’s having a shower to warm up. He’ll be down shortly.”
I was shaking with relief. “Oh, god,” I repeated. “Pardon me, I need past.”
“Now, Doctor Weems,” she said with the barest hint of a snide smirk. “I think it’s best for you to go up to your room for a bit and let Oscar be. He’s had a rough day and is very tired.”
Something was definitely wrong—she was pressing in like a shark scenting blood. “What’s going on? Oscar?” I called. “Are you alright?”
“He can’t hear you, Doctor Weems,” Sandra chided. “I’ve sent him to my cottage to use the shower there and get some rest. He’s a mite unsettled about you, it seems. All that fuss earlier, he didn’t take it too well.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me past.”
“Now, Doctor Weems,” she soothed. “Let’s not go making folks upset. Wouldn’t be good to start something up now, would it? When you ain’t go nowhere else to go, and no way to get there even if you had?”
I looked between the two of them, all but hearing the slam of jail doors in my head. “Right,” I nodded. “So. Upstairs, then.”
“Just for now,” Sandra said with a tight, fake smile. “Until things are... better.”
They watched me go the entire way, and I had a strong feeling they’d be watching my door once it closed behind me.
Chapter 11 — Oscar
“I feel like I’m in a fluorescent bulb,” I murmured, the glare of the white light sizzling along my neck and down my spine. It had begun happening faster, these flashes of light and change. Everything crackled for a moment, like standing in a ball of lightning, When the light faded, a cluster of tall, spidery shapes stood around me, shadows moving in the dark of Grandmere’s library. The vast room that had been my grandfather’s domain in life and kept as unchanged as possible after his death. It had been the single concession to lifelong mourning my grandmother allowed herself, the preservation of his favorite room in the exact state he’d left it the day he died.
But this version of the library was different—these figures had never been at Grandmere’s home.
Wreckers. The name popped into my thoughts and burned there, but I pressed my lips tightly shut against speaking it aloud.
One of them detached from the others, slipping down the floor-to-ceiling shelves (the section where he kept almanacs and local histories, I noted distantly, wondering if I could read one or if it would be like the tea and biscuits, or would it be different because this was a real place, and I wasn’t a real ghost yet). It moved toward me with a disjointed grace, stopping just a few feet away. I couldn’t make out a face or any features other than spindly limbs and an elongated torso, nowhere near human but far from much else. It was considering me, I realized. Something about its posture, its stillness.
“They called you Wreckers,” I said into the quiet. “Like the pirates.”
The Wrecker shifted, a shudder moving along its limbs. I thought it might be laughing.
“Julian thought you might be like... oh, damn it, what did he call you? Genius loci. Landvaettir. That sort of spirit?”
The Wrecker didn’t move, but it felt watchful. Waiting. Not threatening but curious.
