The Mayhews’ initial reaction was one of disbelief. Even amusement. But shortly after the moving van disappeared into the thick line of trees at the end of the Mayhews’ driveway, a sort of hollowness began to echo through the house. Like something was missing.
No, not “like.” Something was missing. However badly Ruth might have treated me, she was still an essential part of this family, one whose absence had a profound effect on its remaining members. For Jillian to make such an accusation—that her brother had caused a dramatic rift in their family—was pretty serious stuff. Not something you just blurted out at the breakfast table in a last-ditch effort to avoid being grounded. Especially when the entire family would spend ten hours cramped in one car tomorrow, driving to the French Quarter to spend Christmas with Ruth.
So if anyone got the chance to respond to Jillian’s accusation, tomorrow would probably give new meaning to the phrase “road trip from hell.” Wisely, Joshua chose this, the tensest moment of an already-tense morning, to act civil. He cleared his throat and gave his parents a tight smile.
“Look, let’s just forget it.” He shot his sister a pointed look—one that said, Stop acting like an idiot or we’re both screwed. Aloud he said, “Sorry for the kick, Jill. Okay?”
In her first intelligent move of the day, Jillian caught the look and nodded. “Okay,” she answered and then, reluctantly, added, “I’m sorry, too.”
The apology lacked sincerity, but the fact that she’d delivered one at all bought her and Joshua a few moments to escape.
Joshua hiked his heavy winter coat off the chair and onto his shoulders with one hand. After sweeping his book bag off the floor with the other, he practically bolted from the table. Jillian scurried to follow. Jeremiah and Rebecca hadn’t even had the chance to reprimand Jillian for her combative comment by the time both of their children—and I—were out the back door.
Outside, Joshua and Jillian gave each other only the briefest of glares before dashing to their respective cars. I said a silent prayer of thanks that the brutal cold kept the two of them from lingering to fight some more. Within a matter of minutes, Jillian started her tiny yellow car and tore recklessly down the icy driveway without bothering to let her windshield defrost completely.
Joshua had already unlocked his driver’s side door and ducked into it to start the heater before he realized that I hadn’t followed him off the back porch. He looked up at me in momentary confusion, but then his face fell in recognition: he knew from my expression that I wouldn’t be joining him at school today.
He sighed and placed one hand on top of the roof of his truck. “Again, Amelia? Really?”
“I have to, Joshua. You know I have to.”
“No, I don’t,” he said, frowning heavily. “Besides, it’s freezing today.”
I shrugged. “So? It’s not like I can feel it.”
This time I heard a note of defeat in Joshua’s sigh. “Fine. But just be careful out there, okay? Don’t get too close to it.”
I smiled, but not very widely. “I never do.”
Pulling his door fully open, Joshua just shook his head. He didn’t even try to mask his disappointment as he slipped into the cab of the truck.
Just before he slammed the door and started the engine, I called out, “See you back here this afternoon.”
Through the frost on the windshield, I caught one last glimpse of his face—still wearing that disappointed expression—before he backed the truck down the driveway and disappeared onto the main road.
Late that afternoon I stamped my feet on the ice-encrusted grass and rubbed my fists along my bare arms a few times. Then I made a little cave of my hands and placed them in front of my mouth so that I could puff air into them as if I could warm them with my breath. As if I even needed to warm them in the first place. Still, the gestures made me feel more normal. And normal was a feeling I desperately needed right now.
In front of me the river moved more quickly than usual, its waters swelled and muddied by all the sleet last night. The river, however, wasn’t the ugliest part of this scene. That honor went to the remains of High Bridge, only a few hundred feet downriver from me.
The ruined bridge stretched across the muddy water as bleak and stripped as the forest surrounding it. From here I could see the mangled girders and places where large chunks of concrete had fallen, leaving gaping holes around which someone had placed sawhorses and crisscrossed ribbons of yellow tape. More sawhorses guarded each end of the bridge, warning drivers to find some other route if they didn’t want their cars to become aquatic. Along the edges of the bridge, the metal railings tilted at crazy angles as if some enormous force had knocked the entire structure off-kilter. Which, in essence, it had.
At that thought I smirked. I didn’t feel one ounce of regret for wrecking the bridge. I hoped a strong wind sent the whole thing crumbling down into the water below.
I gave it a final scowl and then turned my attention to the barren trees across the river from me. Something about their skeletal branches, clawing at the gray sky, suited my current mood. And my current task.
I closed my eyes and began to breathe heavily, slowly, in an effort to calm myself. To focus. Against the black canvas of my eyelids, I pictured a scene similar to that of the living world today but even colder. A place much darker, too, and more menacing. An otherworldly place where rogue ghosts, enslaved wraiths, and demons waited.
Eli’s netherworld.
I squeezed my eyes tighter, concentrating on the things I remembered about it: the violent purple sky; the gnarled, glittering trees; the river of tar moving toward the dark abyss underneath the netherworld version of High Bridge. Then I pictured the black shadows—dead souls trapped there by Eli under order of his masters—as they shifted among the netherworld trees.
I wanted them to reappear so badly I could almost hear them whispering in the darkness. Begging, in hushed but urgent voices, to be set free. I kept my eyes shut for a few more moments, wishing, praying.
But when I opened my eyes, my heart sank. Nothing around me had changed—not the cold gray sky, not the icy grass, not the muddied river.
I sank to the ground, letting my dress puddle around me. I didn’t want to admit defeat, but I’d started to run out of excuses for myself. Every day I tried to reopen the netherworld, and every day I failed. Why should today be any different?
When I’d decided to pursue this task several months ago, Joshua thought I’d lost my mind. After all, I’d only narrowly escaped an eternity spent trapped in the netherworld. So he had no idea why I would want to waste even a second trying to get back into it.
Even now a small part of me wondered whether Joshua had a point: maybe what I’d spent months doing at this bridge was crazy or, at the very best, in total disregard for my own safety. Honestly, though, I didn’t care about my safety, and I certainly didn’t care about crazy. Not where my father was concerned.
It broke my heart when I learned that my father had died not long after I had. But not knowing what had happened to his ghost hurt far worse, mostly because I knew what waited for him after death.
If my experience as a ghost was any indication, my father was now spending his afterlife in one of two ways: either lost like I’d been or trapped by Eli in the darkness of the netherworld. Since I’d never run into my father during my years of wandering, I had to assume he’d fallen victim to Eli—a fate I obviously couldn’t allow him to suffer.
But none of my attempts to help him had worked.
At this point I couldn’t deny my strongest suspicion: that I’d lost whatever ghostly powers I had discovered the night I overcame Eli and his dark masters. Sure, I could still touch Joshua, and I could still (sometimes) control my materializations in the living world. But I could no longer create that supernatural glow upon my skin or feel its surge of power, and I couldn’t materialize into the netherworld.
Arguably, what I did at the river this afternoon was no more productive than what I’d done every few mornings for the last two months: sit on the front porch of my childhood home and watch, unseen, as my mother prepared for her day.