Though I couldn’t remember my life and what I’d learned in it, I still had some vague recollections of religious dogma. The few tenets I remembered, however, certainly hadn’t accounted for this particular kind of afterlife. The wooded, dusty hills of southeastern Oklahoma weren’t my idea of heaven; nor were the constant, narcoleptic revisits to the scene of my drowning.
The word “purgatory” would come to mind after I woke from each nightmare. I would play out my horrific little scene and then I would wake up, gulping and sobbing tearlessly, in the exact same place each time. It wouldn’t matter where I’d been wandering when I went unconscious—an abandoned railroad track, a thick grove of pines, a half-empty diner—my destination was always the same. And each time the nightmare ended, I would wake in a field. It was always daylight, and I was always surrounded by row upon row of headstones. A cemetery. Probably mine.
I never waited around to find out.
I could have searched for my headstone maybe. Could have learned more about myself—about my death. Instead, I’d pull myself up from the weeds and dash for the iron gate enclosing the field, running as fast as my nonexistent legs would carry me.
And so it was with my existence: a montage of aimless wanderings; an occasional word spoken to an unhearing stranger; and then the nightmares and subsequent hasty escapes from my waking place.
Until this nightmare.
This nightmare had started the same. And, just as it always did, it ended with a terrified awakening. But this time when I finally opened my eyes, I didn’t see the sunlight of a neglected cemetery. I saw only black.
The unexpected darkness brought back the terror, the frantic gasping. Especially since, after what would have been only one beat of my still heart, I recognized my location.
I was floating in the river again.
My renewed gulps, however, didn’t drag in muddy water that surrounded me. My body was still as insubstantial as it had been before this nightmare. It floated, unaffected by the drag and pull of the angry water. This time things were different, although the dark, twisting scene looked almost the same as it did in each of my horrible dreams.
Almost.
Because this time I wasn’t the one drowning.
He was.
Chapter
TWO
My first impression of the scene was wrong. The water wasn’t entirely black. Faint light shimmered above the surface—moonlight, maybe; it was too grayish to be sunlight. Below me two muted yellow beams seemed to rise from the depths of the river.
No, not rise. The beams pointed upward, but they were retreating. I spared a quick glance at them. They came from a huge, dark shape just below me. The shape—a car, its headlights beaming into the darkness—floated downward with an eerie slowness.
I shook my head. I didn’t really care about the car; my attention was riveted on the boy illuminated in its headlights.
His body had shaped itself into a kind of X, arms floating limply upward and sneakered feet dangling. His head hung down, but I could tell his eyes were closed.
This boy didn’t flail or struggle, and I had a sudden, sickening realization. The boy was unconscious. Not the kind of unconsciousness that torments the dead, but the kind that kills the living.
If he didn’t wake up, this boy was going to drown.
Without another thought, I swam to him as fast as I could. When I reached him, I could see his face fully. He was young, no older than I was when I died. His face looked peaceful in its stillness. He was strikingly handsome. I could see that, even under the water. His dark hair floated above his head almost lazily, considering the current. An involuntary and silly image sprang to my mind: his outspread arms resembled wings. Useless wings, at that. I wondered, almost idly, whether my arms had resembled his when I died.
My thoughts, then, were as sudden as they were fierce. This boy couldn’t die. I couldn’t watch him die. Not here, not like this.
I began to grasp at him, frantically trying to pull at his clothes and his limbs. To drag him to the surface. I tugged at his long-sleeved shirt and his jeans, even at his dark hair.
I pulled and pulled, but of course nothing happened. My stupid, dead hands couldn’t touch him, couldn’t save him. It was like struggling in the water on the night of my death—not a damn thing that I did would have any effect on the outcome. I was impotent, ineffective, and never more aware of the fact that I was dead.
Soon I started weeping my tearless sobs and pressed both my hands against his chest. As we sank deeper into the river, I became acutely aware of something: the sound of his slowing heartbeat.
As far as I knew, I possessed no supernatural senses whatsoever. Although some of my human senses had survived my death—my sight and hearing, obviously—I could no longer smell, taste, or feel anything in the living world. My remaining senses hadn’t dulled, but they certainly hadn’t improved, either.
So the sound of his heartbeat shocked me. I shouldn’t have heard it so well, but I did. Even with a foot of water between us and with my no-better-than-human hearing, I could hear his heartbeat as clearly as if I’d pressed a stethoscope to his chest.
I wondered whether this had something to do with death. With being dead. Perhaps the dead could hear one of our own approaching, racing toward us. Or slowing toward us, in his case.
The boy and I continued to sink; and as we did so, his fragile heart beat unevenly toward its end. Each thud came slower than the one before it, until finally—
His heart stuttered once. Twice. And then I couldn’t hear it anymore. A tiny bubble escaped the corner of his lips and floated upward.
I screamed. I screamed as I did in the first flush of death, angry and humiliated at my own lack of power. I screamed and slapped my useless hands against his chest.
At that moment his eyes opened.
He looked to the left and the right, taking in his surroundings. Then he looked at me. He looked right into my eyes.
I froze. Could he … see me?
He smiled, and then suddenly reached out his hand to place it upon my cheek. I felt his skin, warm on mine. Without thinking, I put my hand over his. His smile widened when I touched him.
He did see me.
He saw me, he saw me, he saw me.
My still, unbeating heart soared. And then so did his.
His heart—the one I’d just heard dying—stuttered, and stuttered again. The renewed beat sounded slow and uneven at first, but quickly it began to steady itself.
He looked down at his chest and back up at me, eyebrows arched in surprise at the sound coming from within him.
Then he coughed. The motion shook his whole body and sent bubbles flying out of his mouth.
He began to kick and flail. As he flailed, I realized I could no longer hear his heart. It was silent, at least to me. Yet he was thrashing about, fighting against the dark water. He continued to cough violently as his lungs spasmed back to life. Through the churning water, I could see his expression. He looked angry, terrified, and desperate.
I recognized that look. I had once felt that look. This boy was