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Bringing Back the Dead
When she was alone in the room, Joanna
took Lionel's cold hand in hers. She closed her eyes and stepped into
the glom, the twilight world of disembodied souls. In the glom was a
path, a trail in the sand. Using her wand to light the way, Joanna saw
that Lionel had made it only to the second level; he was climbing the
mountain toward the gate, and once he crossed the gate it would be much
harder to bring him back. For beyond the Kingdom of the Dead lay Hell's
frontier.
There was something different about the
glom, a sense of malice and despair that she had never felt before.
"Lionel! Lionel!" she called. She wanted to get out of there as soon as
possible.
Lionel Horning turned around. He was bald
and severe-looking, dressed in his usual attire of paint-splattered
clothing. When he saw her he smiled. "Mrs. Beauchamp, what are you doing
here?"
Joanna climbed up next to him so that
they were both looking over the view. "Taking you home."
"I'm dead, aren't I?" he asked.
"Only in human terms. Your heart has
stopped beating," Joanna said.
"Did I drown? I seem to remember being
all wet."
"You did."
"Emily always said that the ocean would
get the better of me one day."
Joanna analyzed his spirit. There were
traces of a silver spiderweb around his soul; she had never seen that
before and it worried her. "Would you prefer to stay here?" she asked
Lionel.
He looked around. "Not really. What is
this place?"
"Think of it as the halfway station. See
that gate up there? Once you reach it, it'll be harder to get you to the
surface."
"How's Emily?"
"Not good. She's about to get thrown out
of your house."
"My parents!" he groaned. "I know I
should have forced her to marry me. She's stubborn, you know." He
sighed. "I can't leave her."
He stared at the glimmering path, at the
mountain trail that reached toward the silver gate. She knew how hard
this decision was. He had been in the underlayer, in the glom, for a
week now. He had forgotten about hardship and fear; he was beginning to
transition to the spirit world. Perhaps this wasn't such a great idea.
Perhaps she should never have agreed to do this.
He looked at the faraway gate, shining in
the distance. "Right. Let's go, then."
Joanna took his hand and led him back
down the way he had come. He started to walk back but suddenly stopped.
"I can't move," he grunted. "My feet are stuck."
"Try harder," she ordered. She felt the
hard tugging on the other side; that would be her sister, Helda, holding
on to his spirit.
"Do not test me, sister!" Joanna called,
waving her wand in the air so that it flashed with a hot white light.
"Remember you agreed to keep to the Covenant! It is not his time yet!"
She kept her hand on Lionel's arm and pulled. The wind howled, the
oceans crashed, lightning flashed. The Kingdom of the Dead did not give
up its souls that easily.
But Joanna's magic was stronger; this was
the power that was rooted in her, older than the earth, older than the
Dead, and her ferocious will held on to Lionel and pulled him up and out
of the trail . . . There was a mighty flash . . .
Joanna was sitting by Lionel's bedside,
holding his hand in a tight grip. The dead man blinked his eyes. He
coughed and looked around. "Where's Emily?"
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