What the Dead Fear
By: Lea Ryan
Copyright © Lea Ryan 2011
Cover art by Lea Ryan
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“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends, and where the other begins?”
--Edgar Allan Poe --
Part 1
Juniper Townsend died of carbon monoxide poisoning at the ripe, old age of twenty two. She went to bed one night after a dinner of wine and pizza and never woke up.
The first night, her spirit stood on the pond behind her mother’s house. She was dressed in the University of South Carolina t-shirt and shorts she wore to bed, her black hair secured in a ponytail.
"Hello?" She called into thick fog and cattails around her. There came no reply.
Bitter cold was her only companion in that loneliest of lonely. It pervaded her being until it was the only sensation she felt, apart from the numbing dread that held her in place.
"Is anyone there?"
And she couldn't for the life of her figure out why or how she stood on the surface of water. Shadows of what might have been fish swam and slithered beneath shimmering ripples.
She thought, This must be a dream.
Afraid to move, Juniper pondered how much colder she could get if submerged in the murky depths below her feet. She tried to will herself awake. When that didn't work, she chanced a step, and then another.
The spring air was heavy with the smell of leaves and blooming flowers. Toads and crickets sang in tune with the gentle lap of pond water at the bank.
Juniper walked onto grass. She remembered sleeping in the carriage house behind her mother’s house, so she headed in that direction.
No stars dotted the sky. No moon lit the way. The lawn up to the carriage house lay open in darkness. To her left, to her right, no lamps lit the windows, as if the world had shut her out in the gloom.
So much alone, inexplicable sadness filled her. The closer she came to the last place she remembered being, the more she feared what she might find. Something was oh so very wrong.
She came to the door, which opened with the slightest push. She moved quietly through dark rooms to stand over her lifeless body in the bed.
Juniper appeared to be sleeping; that was all. There was no visible trauma, only ashen skin and perhaps some darkness around her eyes.
“Wake up.” She commanded her mortal shell and concentrated as though she might control it from outside. She recalled reading about out of body experiences. Maybe that was the explanation.
She held on to denial for a while, contemplating the various possibilities for the cause of her predicament. Denial is a shade of hope, in a way.
"You're dead, you know." A voice like a small child said from the shadows behind her.
Juniper wheeled around.
"Who's there?"
A blond cherubic girl in jeans, a pink sweater and matching knitted hat stepped into the muted light streaming from the window.
"It's okay. We all die."
Those words, spoken with such ease from the rosebud lips of a child, shattered the final fragment of hope. Juniper’s dread gave way to bottomless despair.
From the first flutter of perception at the center of the pond, she had already known, deep down. Spirits always know.
There would be no return to college, no more dates, no more jogging wooded trails or afternoons spent in the library or the coffee shop. Normal had become a far away dream. Reality was a harsher place in which she had nothing, no heartbeat and no future.
She touched her face, her physical face, on the pillow.
"Gas from the furnace poisoned you."
"How?" Juniper asked, but the girl had vanished.
The rising sun flooded the room through the windows.
Fog seeped in through cracks and seals. A mass of it enveloped Juniper, pressed against her with a gauzy touch. She shut her eyes as it carried her from dawn.
Where do spirits hide during the day?
She found a barren wilderness shrouded in haze. Leafless limbs of charred trees pushed into a low hanging barrier of gray overhead. Tangled grass mottled with shadows covered the ground. Wide trenches split the earth in jagged lines. Everything smelled burnt and somehow wet at the same time.
Death is lonely. Death is dark.
Juniper moved along a path with no idea as to where she would go. She knew only that she desired company. Surely other souls existed in the hereafter. She didn’t have far to go before she found what she was looking for.
"Hi." The cherub child stepped into her path to grin up at her.
This was the company she needed.
Juniper bent down, put her hands on her knees, "What's your name?"
"Cricket."
"Well, that's sort of a dumb name. That can't be your real name."
"What's yours?"
"Juniper."
She scrunched up her face, "That's sort of a dumb name, too. At least I'm not named after a bush."
Juniper didn't argue.
"Alright, Cricket."
An icy wind gusted through the trees, bringing with it a faint sound like a pack of howling wolves. Branches around them creaked and groaned. The grass whispered.
"We should hide before the jackals come." Cricket took her by the hand and led her to a wildly twisted black oak. They climbed gnarled roots to branches well above the ground. The girl settled with her back against the trunk and hugged her knees to her chest.
"What jackals?" Juniper finally asked after several moments of searching the ground below.
The howling merged with the wind to become screams of anger, and the sound tore through the forest like a raging storm.
"The jackals are Gareth's minions. Be quiet or they'll find us."
Jackals came. Black, smoking shadows flew swiftly over the grass.
Juniper saw them first through the fog, a pack weaving around trees and rocks and leaping over the trenches in the ground. They didn't look solid until they were almost at the base of the tree in which the girls hid.
The pack sniffed the ground. They carved grooves into the dirt with their claws, and they paced among roots. They knew Juniper and Cricket were nearby but couldn't quite get a handle on exactly where.
Juniper turned to the mist again, perhaps to see if any more jackals were heading their direction, and found a man sitting next to her on the branch. She gasped.
"Where did you come from?" Juniper held the fear from her voice.
"Everywhere and nowhere." He looked around forty years old and had a sweep of unkempt, dark hair and an eight o'clock shadow. His eyes were palest grey, the same shade as the fog around them. He wore a midnight blue trench coat with a hood.
The jackals on the ground heard the voices above them and raised howls into the sky. Then the pack settled among the thick roots. Some sat at attention. Some lay down.
She glanced at Cricket. The girl was no longer there.
There was something fearsome about the stranger – those eyes – so full of intelligence and devoid of compassion. The way he looked at her, as though reading her mind, brought a terrible unease.
"Those are your dogs?" She asked him.
"Jackals." He corrected her. "They are mine. They find things for me, people I mean, but sometimes they do take measures to enforce the rules. They're good boys and girls."
"Are you a ghost too?"
He laughed.
Juniper liked his smile, even if there was something a bit off-kilter about it.
"My name is Gareth." He put his hand out for her to shake it.
That's when she saw the claws. He had overgrown fingernails, the color of which matched his eyes. They h
ad dirt jammed underneath.
Juniper swallowed at the sight of them, but shook his hand nonetheless.
"I'm Juniper." She tried to ignore the clamminess of his skin against hers and held her gaze to his face. He was nice enough looking (apart from the soulless quality of his eyes) that she could get past his hands.
"Nice to meet you, Juniper." Gareth released the handshake. "I'm sorry to inform you that my visit is more business than pleasure."
She worried the strange man would cause her harm, though she wasn’t sure what harm could befall a person who had already died. He wasn’t an angel, obviously. And Cricket, she was scared enough to take flight when he appeared.
Juniper scooted away from him, closer to the trunk of the tree.
"Do you know where you are right now?"
She shook her head no.
"This is Limbo, specifically we are in Day Limbo. This is where wandering spirits come during sunny hours. Night Limbo is where you stood on the pond and saw your mortal remains."
"You were watching me?"
"I don't need to watch to know." He tapped on his forehead with a claw. "Limbo may look wild, but let me assure you that order is present."
"I don't see much of anything with the exception of you and the dogs."
"Jackals," he corrected, "as in relatives of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead."
"Sorry. I knew they were jackals. Calling them dogs is just so much easier, don't you think? Less intimidating?"
"No." Gareth did not look amused. "They are keepers of order in Limbo, as am I.” He paused, “The state of Night Limbo is so very close to the world of the living. You'll be able to see everything. You may even be able to touch it. But never affect anything on that mortal plane of existence. If you must haunt, please do so in the stealthiest of manners. Only observation is permitted."
"What can the dead do to the living?"
"Nothing. That is the point. You've seen ghost stories, films about poltergeists and such, I trust?"
"Yes."
"Good. Don't cause any trouble like that. No slamming cabinets, no light flickers or broken picture frames, and certainly do not ever possess a mortal body...for any reason."
"What if I do? Are you going to hunt me down?" Juniper smirked.
Gareth did not.
"Yes." He turned gravely serious. "My jackals and I hunt offenders. I condemn their souls to eternity in Limbo’s prison."
She asked, "Is that what Hell is?"
"Some people might say so, but no, Voldrin Prison is not officially Hell. However, much like Hell, it is a place from which no one is paroled. There is there, and that is that. There are bars and chains and misery. There is penance, as well, in the form of pain I am tasked with inflicting. I couldn't bear to see anyone as beautiful as you there, Juniper. Please heed my warning. You should cross to the other side as soon as you have the opportunity. Limbo is no place for anyone." Gareth gave a pained smile.
She blinked, and he and the jackals were gone. She was alone in the tree.
Apparently abrupt exits were the norm in the spirit realm.
She waited for her companion to return.
"Cricket?" Her voice echoed.
No response came.
Juniper climbed down. A dirt path took her through a grove of yet more of the black and bare trees. She heard nothing from the wilds surrounding her. No birds called. No breeze stirred.
The path crossed into rocky terrain. Pebbles, rocks and boulders lined the sides of the trail. Those turned into larger mounds, which led to hills. When she grew tired, she took a seat on a low, flat slice of rock. She lay on her back to stare into the endless gray on gray above her. The place had no sky, she was sure.
This is what the dead do. She thought. They lie around being worthless and feeling sorry for themselves. Fantastic.
Minutes passed. Hours marched.
She imagined a future with no purpose. What good is an eternal soul with no meaningful way to pass the time? Forever can be an empty place when spent on nothing more than roaming a desolate borderland.
Gareth advised her to cross over - to some place better, she assumed, but she had no idea how to do so.
Juniper closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She eventually gave up with an exasperated huff and rolled onto her belly.
She noticed a bit of pink among the grayscale - Cricket's hat in the middle of the trail.
Juniper called out for the girl. She hopped to her feet and hurried to the hat, picked it up. She searched the rocks around her.
"Are you here?"
She discovered Cricket behind her.
In life, Juniper was never one to hug people she didn't know well, but in the forlorn mist of Limbo, she took the strange child into her arms without hesitation. Cricket hugged her back and then withdrew.
“Where did you go off to?”
"Gareth is a very dangerous person. If you see him, you should run." Cricket took Juniper's hands into her own. "You must be careful."
"I will."
"Good. Are you ready to head into Night Limbo?"
"I think so."
The child held onto Juniper as the rocks around them darkened to fade from view. Then mortal night, illuminated by electric lamps, appeared around them.