Chapter TEN
The next four days flashed by in snapshots. There was wedding planning. There was work. There was wondering what Cole was talking about.
And there was the constant glancing over my shoulder.
I couldn’t tell Alex what was wrong. Something big was going to happen. Something was coming, or maybe I was running blindly towards it. But I didn’t know if it was going to be a good or a bad thing. Until I knew what I was doing I had to keep Alex in the dark. I had to keep him safe.
I could see the fear in Alex’s eyes with each passing day. The way his hands would quiver as he stood with them braced on the countertop told me just how hard the afterlife was trying to pull him back. His breath would catch in his throat, his eyes would squeeze shut.
And something felt different in me. There was something inside of me that felt like it was constantly shifting. Like the parts of me that were still alive were battling with the parts of me that had changed into something else.
A part of me wanted to go back.
Alone in the bookstore, I sank to my knees as my breath caught in my throat. Black spots filled my vision as my brain tried to focus. It felt like all of my insides were trying to break free or disappear, I couldn’t make my brain function enough to be sure.
As I flopped forward, catching myself on my palms before I collapsed on my face, I looked up. Trying to focus on something, anything to keep me where I was supposed to be, I searched the bookshelves before me, on the books on the very bottom shelf.
Then I saw it. A title long dusty and forgotten about.
Death, Sleep, and the Traveler by John Hawkes.
The world suddenly solidified and my entire being came into focus.
I didn’t even pull the book off the shelf to see what it was about as I stood. I had my answer.
Come see me when you’re closest to death, Cole had said.
It was so simple.
I counted backward from twenty as I lay on my bed alone that night. My palms were sweaty and my nerves threatened to eat me up from the inside out.
Closing my eyes I went over it again in my head, already feeling the buzz of sleep the two pills I had taken were starting to give me.
I couldn’t die. I was stuck.
But the body slows down when it sleeps. The heart slows, the blood slows, the brain slows.
Sleep was as close to death as I could get.
I’m coming, Cole, I thought to myself as my brain started to blur.
The space around me was dark, the kind of black that swallows everything whole. I felt around me but reached nothing but air.
“Cole?” I said cautiously.
No answer came.
I felt panic and anger surge in my system as I felt around again in the dark. I didn’t have time to wait. Cole had told me to come and here I was.
So where was he?
“Cole!” I shouted.
And suddenly I felt a presence behind me, felt the air become warmer on the back of my neck.
“You figured it out,” his honey smooth voice filled the darkness.
“You could have been a bit more specific,” I tried to sound confident.
“We were being watched,” Cole said as I sensed him walk around me. “I had to be careful.”
“Where are we?” I asked, hugging my arms around me.
“In an in between place,” he said quietly as he came to stand before me. “Not quite the world of the living, not quite the world of the dead.”
“Like Limbo?”
“I suppose it has been called that before.”
“Are we alone?”
“For now,” Cole said. “You never know when a proxy will send a soul here to wait.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. Proxy. That was what I had been.
“Where do you think the people you stood trial for went while you experienced their judgment?”
I didn’t answer. I had honestly never considered that before.
“In being granted your life back for a period of time, you traded experiencing death over and over again, just not your own. The people you stood trial for died at the same moment you fell asleep. And they came here as you stood their trial. They waited, until the final judgment was made and you returned to the world of the living.”
“That hardly seems fair punishment for wanting to live,” I said in a cold voice.
I sensed Cole shrug. “Life is a precious gift to be given. It comes with a heavy price.”
“It’s not right.”
“Those people you stood trial for owe you a great debt. They never had to experience their actual judgment.”
I just shook my head, fighting back the knots that were forming in my stomach.
“I need help, Cole,” I started, feeing the panic rising in my blood again. It was time to move on to the reason I had come. “I don’t know how to fight the council. I’m being followed. A woman was killed because of him, because of all of this. What is going on?”
“I told you before that they know something is wrong. Five times now you should have died, should have been ready for your own judgment, and yet you are still walking among the living, still have a heart that beats, albeit it differently than most, in your chest.
“They want to know why, and there are some that are not happy about your condition. Like Jeremiah.”
“The one who’s been following me?”
“Yes.”
I heard Cole sigh, heard him rub his hands together. “Things are changing in my world, Jessica. The afterlife is in chaos. The council changes. Every few centuries it shifts. Members are replaced, new ones are established.
“The man who has been following you is the man who held my position while I pursued you. My place had to be filled and Jeremiah was… promoted, if you will. And then I returned and was reinstated to my leadership of the condemned. He wasn’t happy about my return. He set the change into motion. He wants my position back when the shift happens. He believes if he brings you back, if he can figure out what has happened to you, that he can gain it. I believe he is also trying to provoke me into acting, into doing something that will make me lose my position.”
“He tried to kill me, Cole,” I breathed. “He caused an explosion. I lost some hair but I wasn’t injured. Another person was killed.”
“He’s a branded angel, Jessica,” Cole said as he took a step closer to me in the dark. “We will stop at nothing to get what we want.”
“I have to stop this,” I said as my jaw tightened. “This must end.”
The air started to warm around me. The ground at my feet started to shift. I was waking up.
“You’re running out of time,” Cole said through the blackness.
“Cole!” I shouted as everything pulsed and throbbed. I reached out for him but only found air.