VOYAGERS Page 3

  Greta watched Mr. Shane work his face. He would not look down, and she felt a surge of sympathy for him.

  Finally he confessed, "I'm afraid."

  "Yes, some call that kind of thing leftovers. You're between two places and you still have some habits to lose. Like fear. You're used to thinking you're afraid. You need to look, though, it's an important step in release. Greta already has, she's a little ahead of the game."

  Mr. Shane closed his eyes for a moment, then resolve and courage set the corners of his mouth. He opened his eyes and looked down. Greta did the same. His body lay in a square of patterned, yellow light cast from the window. Positively lifeless. A deep, precise wound encircled his throat, oozing fresh blood as the old coagulated in the cool night air. His clerical collar was soaked with it.

  "You're doing splendidly," said Aridite. "A lot of newcomers refuse the jolt, go about insisting it's all a nightmare."

  In a voice barely controlled, Mr. Shane said, "None of it even begun. Not even my apology to her. Everything I hoped for, all the things bigger than myself, vanished more utterly than I."

  "That is unfortunate," Aridite replied, with a lightness in voice Greta found galling. "Destiny being what it is, though, somebody will snatch up your flag, don't worry."

  "How can you be so flippant?" she said, offended. "He's dead. I'm dead, long before we should be. We've not even had our chance."

  Aridite looked at her. "You've got a flair for the dramatic, haven't you?"

  She was going to offer a retort, but a horrific thought rushed through her mind. "Tess! Oh, no, Tess. I can't leave her here, not like this."

  "I'm sure you won't," Aridite said. "You're very strong-willed. I can't imagine you running off, locked in refusal. That's what ghosts do, you know. You'll get through the passage and come forward safely, I'm sure."

  Mr. Shane recovered enough from his despair to ask, "Passage?"

  "That's where we are now," Aridite replied. "I think that phrase fits nicely, but I don't want either of you getting too attached to words. If you want to call this juncture something else, be my guests."

  "What are you talking about?" Greta demanded.

  "Well, you're theatrical about the point, Greta, but you're right. The two of you are dead too soon. You can't come forward, you're not prepared. Not to worry, though, this happens all the time. I just need to set you up with a goal to accomplish and then you can come forward."

  Greta's jaw set. "A goal?"

  "Yes, a goal."

  "You mean a test," Mr. Shane accused. "If we pass, we go to Heaven. If we fail?"

  Aridite looked pleasantly down at him. "No, I mean a goal. There's no pass or fail. A goal helps you focus. Sooner or later, you'll reach it and come forward."

  But Mr. Shane insisted. "We're in Purgatory, is that it? But the Church has rejected Purgatory."

  Aridite gazed at Mr. Shane sympathetically. "There's so much to learn, Aaron. If I explain too much too soon, you'll only get more confused." Greta smirked. Like father, like son; young Mr. Shane fretting the details, looking for the loopholes in Heaven and Hell. But Aridite turned his attention to her. "Careful. If you didn't have things to learn, too, you wouldn't be here with Aaron and me."

  Mr. Shane looked at Greta as if offended. "What did she say?"

  "She didn't actually say anything."

  "I don't need anyone explaining anything on my behalf," Greta snapped. "Would you like to hear my opinion, Mr. Shane?"

  "Just hush," Aridite said. "Stop fussing and look. Marshall's coming. This should be interesting." Marshall was hurrying around from the carriage entrance and heading toward them. Instinctively Greta tensed, but Aridite continued to talk as if he were enjoying a parlor visit. "How are you two feeling? Are you ready to try standing on your own for a while?"

  He urged them nearer to the side of the house, then released them. Marshall was standing over Mr. Shane's body, raking a hand through his oiled hair, heedless of the damage his fingers made. He looked gaunt, his face streaked where he must have tried to wipe away the gore.

  A smoldering anger lit his eyes as he hissed through clenched teeth, "Damn, damn, damn."

  He drew his foot back as if he was going to kick the corpse, and Mr. Shane gave a little cry. Greta moved, mashing her hand against his mouth as quickly as she could, but Aridite smiled at them indulgently and took her hand away.

  "Don't be silly, you're working on leftovers again."

  Clearly, Marshall neither saw nor heard them. But he was thinking better of his intent. He lowered his foot and looked around for witnesses. His expression hardened a moment before an idea reflected in his face.

  Aridite said, "Oh, very clever," as Marshall rounded to the body's head, bent over and grasped it under the arms. Still on guard for witnesses, Marshall began dragging the body, but then hesitated. He moved to the side, swallowed deeply--as though struggling to control nausea--then heaved the body into his arms. He headed to the front porch, his legs wobbly under the weight. "Nicely done, don't you think?" was Aridite's comment. "Especially for a man under pressure. He considered the drag marks that would run along the side of the house. Come on."

  He took Greta and Mr. Shane by an arm and pulled them along. Marshall deposited the body before the front door, then stood back, winded and upset by his grisly trek. Soon enough, though, his resolve returned. He backed up, then charged the door, landing on it with a mighty kick. Though Marshall was a large man, he was not a burly one, and it took four blows with all the force he could muster before the door splintered near the knob and burst open. He rushed over the threshold. After a moment, Greta saw the top of his head low in the door. Directly east of Marshall's home, a light moved within a neighbor's house, as though someone had been awakened by the commotion.

  Greta heard Marshall crying out, "Help! In the name of God, someone help!"

  The house and grounds were teeming with police, Greta's and Mr. Shane's bodies were draped with bed sheets, dappled with the rusty brown of blood. Marshall's statement was being taken as he played the role of poor Mr. Fielding, distraught, ringing the damp, crimson-streaked towel with which he had wiped his face.

  "I don't know what happened. I was upstairs beginning to undress when I heard a crash and then a shot. When I rushed down my cousin lay horribly dead. I couldn't believe my eyes. I cried out, I lifted her and shook her, but of course, I have no idea how long I cradled her, screaming for aid. The last of the help had left for their homes not 30 minutes before. Dear God, this is all too horrible."

  The fellow interviewing Marshall offered no solace. Crider was his name, Greta had overheard, and was the chief of police. It wasn't every day two murders so gruesome occurred in St. Louis, let alone in a fashionable district like Marshall's. Clearly something of this magnitude wouldn't be left to his lieutenants.

  "What about the dead clergyman at your door?" the police chief asked. His tone was flat, as though he either didn't like what he was hearing or didn't believe it.

  "God knows, God knows," Marshall replied, unruffled by Mr. Crider's scrutiny. "He was here at the party, the poor young man, but had left earlier with his father. Perhaps he'd forgotten something and returned, I honestly don't know. Clearly, he unwittingly put himself in the way of trouble."

  Mr. Shane leaned toward Greta's ear, and whispered, "That, at least, is the truth."

  "You really don't need to whisper," Aridite said. "The sooner you break old habits the better."

  "I doubt it," Crider was saying to Marshall's last comment.

  Marshall looked at the man as if he was truly surprised to hear such skepticism. "I don't understand. What other proof could you need of the tragedy? There the man lies."

  "Oh, I don't doubt the tragedy. I doubt where he 'put himself' in order to be in the way of it. The priest's throat is too deeply severed for so little blood. The porch should be awash in it."

  Marshall thrust the stained towel to his lips. "Stop," he said, his voice muffled by the cloth. "You may be accu
stomed to carnage like this, but I'm not."

  Crider didn't seem appeased. "I'm hardly used to it, Mr. Fielding. But we have gotten away from the subject, haven't we?"

  Marshall shook his head as if heavy with grief and neatly folded the soiled towel in his lap. "There's nothing more I can tell you."

  "Then let's start again at the beginning."

  Marshall clutched his forehead. If Greta hadn't known him so well, she would have been tempted to believe he was sincere when he said, "I can't. Good Lord, I'm wracked with grief, are you blind? I'm sick, I'm sick.

  He stood quickly, snatching the towel before it fell, and mashed it against his mouth. Marshall fled, bounding up the staircase, passing so close to Greta she could smell the perspiration. She watched him until he disappeared into the west hallway, toward his rooms, but then her gaze lured her thoughts toward the east hall. Toward the staircase that led to Tess' small chamber.

  "I need to go to her," she said to Aridite.

  "I don't advise that right now."

  "I don't care."

  "All right."

  By now the lethargy was easing, and she and Mr. Shane were able to move without aid. Up to the third floor the three went, through the open door of the ballroom, across its intricate parquet floor to a little door on the north wall. Greta began to reach for the handle, then clenched her fist in frustration.

  "Drat, I forgot to fetch the key."

  Smiling like an amused father, Aridite took Greta's hand and walked through the solid wood, pulling her along. Greta gasped. There was a second of total darkness, a feeling as if she was being pulled through gelatin, and then she was standing in Tess' room. The little hurricane lamp glowed, Tess was looking anxiously out the window. She was trembling and weeping, and Greta did not have to wonder if Marshall had had the decency to tell her what had happened.

  "Oh, Tess." Greta moved toward her.

  Aridite grasped her shoulder, and warned, "Don't touch her."

  "Leave me alone, she's in pain."

  "I know she is, and so are you. But to touch loved ones after death is to risk not breaking the connection. And you must break, Greta. What you're feeling is ghosthood. It's very close. The Passage is a precarious place to be, you can choose the wrong corridor at any time. You're risking that now by being here with her."

  "Then I'll risk it."

  Aridite removed his hand. "All right."

  Greta approached her sister. "Darling, I'm here," she said to Tess' back. "Really, I'm here. And no matter how it seems to you, I'm well. Well as can be expected, all things considered. When you get the news, try to feel, somehow, what I've said. I swear to you, I'm just fine."

  She had to stop. The grief in her throat left no room for voice, and she laid her hands on Tess' back, pressing her forehead against her sister's hair. She felt Tess' subtle movements, but there seemed to be a film between them, something that stymied any real sensation of touch; smooth, cool, like a thin membrane.

  Greta backed up in frustration, anger burning, and shouted at Tess, "Fight him! Don't let him do this anymore. Father would want you to fight him. And Mother…Mother, especially." She rushed to Tess' ear, and screamed, "Listen to me! Tess."

  But Tess moved away from the window and went to curl up on her bed. "What's happening? Please, Greta, come up and tell me what's happening."

  Greta looked at Aridite. "I've got to get through to her."

  "You can't."

  "There's got to be a way."

  "Let's leave."

  "No, I've got to…"

  "Leave with me now, and I'll tell you what you can do."

  "Tell me here. Tell me now."

  "Telling you here will ruin every chance you have to help her, do you understand?" Aridite held his thumb and finger in a near pinch. "You are this far from ghosthood, and if you follow that path then you won't be able to help her one whit. You'll only drive yourself mad."

  Greta whirled in a circle and tried to pick up the hurricane lamp to throw it at the wall or the window or Aridite or anything. But her hands slipped off it as if it were smeared with macassar.

  "Damn it! Goddamn it." She turned on Aridite and beat his chest, the only thing she seemed able to strike.

  He stroked her back paternally, and when she leaned against him in exhaustion, he said gently, "That damning idea. It's just a leftover."

  Chapter Four

  Voyagers

  Aaron sent up a prayer to God, raised his fist, took a breath and struck the door. It sank into the wood up to his wrist, feeling cool and enveloped in something gelatinous. He pulled his hand back quickly, expecting to see a jellied sheen covering the skin, but it was as dry as before. All right, then. Aaron lowered his head, raised a protective arm and rushed the door. A moment of blackness, then he was inside the room. Only Aridite seemed aware of his presence. A girl of perhaps 14 years stood weeping at the window, and Miss Roscoe stood behind her, her head leaned tenderly against the girl. It was the furious moments afterward that told Aaron the girl was Miss Roscoe's sister.

  "Let's go now," Aridite said, when it was all over, and pulled Miss Roscoe back through the solid door.

  Aaron hesitated. He went to the girl's bed and sat next to her, laying his hand on her shoulder. He felt the coolness of an invisible barrier between them.

  "She's all right," he said, whispering near her ear. "And you will be, too. I'm sure of it."

  He heard Aridite's voice, laced with impatience, as if he were standing next to him. "Aaron." He looked up, expecting to see Aridite, shrugged against his own surprise when he saw no one, and rose to charge the door. On the other side Miss Roscoe had collected her reserve and Aridite seemed in a hurry. "Everyone ready now? We've got a lot of ground to cover before you can begin." He headed toward the ballroom doorway.

  Aaron and Miss Roscoe followed in his wake. "Miss Roscoe's sister," Aaron said. "Is she going to be all right?"

  "She'll be fine."

  "But she…"

  "I'll tell you what I've told Greta. You have some things to learn before you can be of any help at all. Try to do anything now and you'll just drive yourself to ghosthood."

  "What do you mean by that? Several times now you've talked about ghosts as if they're different creatures from us."

  "You mean, you and Greta? Well, they are. And different from my kind, too."

  "Well, then, what are we; Miss Roscoe and I?"

  "How about 'voyagers'? Doesn't that sound adventurous? Voyagers. You're in the Passage, in transition, and that's a great adventure." He stopped to let Aaron and Miss Roscoe catch up, then began walking again. "Sometimes I feel envious of your ilk. Everything about voyaging's so new to you."

  "Everyone does this?"

  "Certainly, but in different degrees. The ghosts derail immediately. And if you die at a ripe old age the Passage is usually shorter. Usually."

  "And what about you? What are you?"

  "Oh, we're many things to many people. But you and Greta know us best as angels."

  "What do you call yourselves?"

  "Nothing. We don't call ourselves anything."

  "I don't understand," Aaron said.

  "You will. Right now, your thinking is very mortal and when one's thoughts are mortal, labels matter." Aridite shook his head. "That's particularly true in your case. Sometimes religion gets in the way of faith. Don't misunderstand me, though. Leaders of the world's deep traditions; they're marvelous, for the most part. The majority of you move through the Passage like fish through water. Zip. You were looking very good yourself, you know. Your idea for the economic poor; very thrilling. You had great potential to grasp the basics by the time you had grown old. I really am very excited about working with you."

  Gads, every time the angel answered one of Aaron's questions, the reply provoked two more. And Aaron's head already ached, stuffed as it was with so many unasked. But he was afraid to ask most of them. He had tried so hard to live a Christian life. Why was he in Purgatory? Could he petition? When
might he see God? He wanted so badly to know. He was disgusted with his fear. A man of faith shouldn't feel such fear. But being dead was so new, so confusing, and just when he thought he might drum up his courage, he became lost in the shock of being 'no more'.

  Aridite caught that thought, and scolded him. "Learn to expand your expectations. Nothing is ever 'no more', not even the body you've left behind. It simply converts."

  They stopped at the top of the staircase and poised above the pandemonium. The news reporters had arrived, bargaining with Mr. Crider, trying to coax as many facts out of him as possible. Through the open door Aaron could see an artist for the Globe Democrat standing over his sheet-draped remains, sketching the scene. There was even a photographer there, setting up his boxy, tripodal apparatus over Miss Roscoe's shrouded body, which was the gorier of the two. This would be a major scandal, well worth the newspaper's expense of such sophisticated equipment.

  Aridite said, "I think we should go to the flat to continue. You'll feel more comfortable there."

  "To the flat!" Miss Roscoe exclaimed. "Angels have apartments?"

  "Not exactly," replied Aridite. "I'll explain when we get there."

  Aaron could detect no movement, no shifting of what he had known as his world. They were all simply there, as if the conversation alone were enough to transport them to the flat. Miss Roscoe gasped and she lost her balance a bit, grasping his arm for support. The flat was utterly normal. They were in a tasteful comfortable den, the walls papered in a maroon damask pattern, the furnishings balanced to the color. Across the room a gas fireplace burned its iron logs; the wall sconces' flames flickered pleasantly within their etched glass shades. But there were no portraits hung, as if this place were brand new, as if the family pictures were yet waiting to be unpacked. Aridite walked over to an ornate oaken cabinet.