The Next Thing I Knew (Heavenly) Read online

  I wanted to talk to him, to tell him that he wasn't alone. I was with him. So I started telling him everything about myself, and about what had happened to the rest of the world.

  Whenever anyone contacted me, I made sure to flit away before answering so nobody would know about Nick. I felt guilty, especially when Chris asked me what I'd been up to and I lied. It wasn't that my feelings for Chris had diminished with my discovery, but there was something magical about finding this living, breathing man against all odds and he was mine, in a creepy demented sort of way. I was greedy with his life, wanting to keep his living warmth and vigor all for myself.

  Kyle contacted me with an urgent plea so I went to him.

  "You're not gonna believe this." Kyle stood atop the spaceship and pointed at other pinpricks of light in Saturn's shadow. "More ships."

  "Why are they here?"

  "Could be hibernating armies in them for all we know. We really have no idea. The countdown will end in a month."

  "A month, tomorrow, whatever. I can't keep it straight anymore. I don't even know today's date. I don't know why it matters anyway."

  "Yeah, it sucks." He pulled his legs to his chest and floated a few feet above the ship.

  Although it was nearly pitch black, I could trace the contours of the ship far back into the planet's shadow. Kyle told me it was probably miles long. "Any idea how they killed us?"

  He shook his head. "Still no evidence of weapons onboard. No life forms either."

  And that was it. No war, no chance at a miraculous comeback against laser-beam-wielding space invaders. No presidential speech that inspired us to rise above ourselves and drive away our would-be conquerors. We had died before even knowing we were under attack. Little green men would land in a month and make Earth their own. A sudden wave of grief washed over me and I had to leave. I needed to see life. I went to the only person that brought me some measure of happiness. He was my drug, my addiction. If only it worked both ways.

  Nick was watching The Princess Bride on DVD when I arrived. He recited most of the lines from memory, inserting his own adlibs in melodramatic fashion. I laughed and played along with him. When he mimicked Westley's lines he sounded spot on and my heart fluttered each time he said, "As you wish."

  "Death cannot stop true love," Westley said, "all it can do is delay it for a while."

  Oh how I wished that were true.

  At the end of the movie he stared at the end credits while a tear rolled down his cheek. I reached my hand toward that jewel and took it on my finger. I felt the warmth of his tear for a few seconds before my reality realigned with his and it vanished from my finger and dropped off his cheek. I had to talk to him, to reach out to him and let him know he wasn't alone. I pressed my hands against his cheeks and put my forehead to his. His eyes widened and looked into mine. I felt the merge occur without realizing what was happening.

  Images scattered into my mind like wind-driven snow. Heart thumping, hot blood rushing, flesh, aches, weight, a stuffy nose, the intense need to pee—it hit me all at once and so soon that my consciousness faded for a split instant. Pent-up frustration pinched my chest and anger pounded against my ribs, looking for release.

  The torrent deluged my senses and I fought to stop it. Equilibrium stopped the onslaught. I was a full vessel. Nothing more could enter. I felt heavy. Warm. A dull jab of discomfort persisted in my bladder. I tried to move but could not. I was locked in a prison of flesh.

  Nick rushed to a mirror and stared into it. He put a hand to his forehead for a second then lowered it.

  "What's going on with me?" He looked closely at his right eye, gasped, and staggered back. "Bloody hell, I'm going mental."

  He walked down the hall to a bathroom, unzipped his pants and relieved himself. The discomfort in my—his groin vanished, replaced by an aching desire that only a woman could quench. Other aches and pains made themselves known. One of his wrists was sore, and his knee clicked when he walked. He'd hurt it while trying to escape this place. I felt his heart beating. Felt real air enter his lungs. I felt alive.

  I still couldn't move, couldn't think straight. A claustrophobic attack pressed in from all sides. I was losing myself, trapped in his skin. I panicked and flitted. Some period of time passed, maybe minutes, maybe hours before I realized I was looking down on the facility from above. I'd escaped, but parts of him lingered within me and I was incredibly drained. I looked at my hands and saw they were translucent. I could hardly think or move. For the first time as a ghost, I fell into something resembling sleep.

  I dreamt of Nick.

  He thinks of his parents, dead over a year and pain clenches his stomach. But the pain isn't as bad now, not like it was. Jenny is gone and nothing holds him in London.

  He wonders about the gap in time after his parents died. He speaks to a therapist who tells him how people handle grief differently from each other. Therapy doesn't help. The pain follows him everywhere. A dead uncle leaves him money, so he travels the world and ends up in the United States where he meets his father's side of the family.

  He speaks to his cousin, Tim, and accepts an offer to come to Antarctica with him as copilot and fly sorties as the researchers leave for the winter. He loves the terrain, the snow, the mountains, the isolation. He thinks it might be a good place to stay for a while. Away from people. Far away from the pain.

  A generator fails, and 30 people preparing for a winter stay abandon their plans. His cousin tells him of a winter storm on approach. Nick gives up his seat on the plane so more researchers can be flown to the coast for evacuation. Nick waits by the radio when the plane is overdue. He hopes his cousin is okay. He tries to contact other bases. He tries the satellite phone. No answer. He doesn't know the truth.

  Everyone is dead.

  When I returned to consciousness, or awoke, or whatever the ghostly equivalent, I felt closer to Nick than ever. Dreaming of someone in a positive light, even someone you don't know, seems to instill a sense of fondness that wasn't there before. Having merged with Nick, though, I knew something more was at work.

  I flitted to the coast and found two planes sitting on a small landing strip. A moored ship waited in the makeshift harbor, now imprisoned by solid ice. Frozen bodies lay inside. Ice and frost coated the airplanes.

  Nick would die in this frozen desert and join the rest of us. He might as well since there was no hope of reviving the human race. I wondered if I would feel the same about him in his ghostly form. I might not even be able to find him in Heavenly.

  Immense sadness pressed against my chest. I couldn't lose him. Humanity couldn't lose him. He was our most precious resource and a relic.

  No.

  Somehow I'd find a way to keep him alive. The facility had plenty of food. One of the generators was still running although I had no clue how long it would run or what sort of fuel it needed.

  I looked back in on Nick. He was drinking shots of bourbon and playing a video game. I watched him until he drank himself to sleep. He mumbled while he dreamed. I put my ear to his lips and felt his warm breath on my cheek. I brushed my lips against his.

  "Lucy," he said.

  I jerked away. He mumbled my name again and I knew that part of me had stayed with him. My ghost form had returned to its usual opaqueness by now and I no longer felt faint. I wanted to merge with him again and see what he was dreaming, but fear stopped me. What if I couldn't escape the next time? I might merge forever into part of his living memory. Or I might die. Permanently.

  I contented myself by curling next to his sleeping form and wishing that I could sleep. So I did.

  Nick was microwaving bacon and powdered eggs for breakfast when I woke up. I hovered in the air, insubstantial to him as a wisp of smoke. He ate and walked to another room. A video camera on a tripod sat in the center of the room. Nick turned it on and took a seat on a metal foldout chair. He paused for a moment, staring off into space, reached forward then, and pressed a button. The camera beeped.

  "Yest
erday was probably my worst day so far," he said. "I was not only seeing things and imagining things, but feeling this sensation on my skin, like cold fingers pressing on me. But nothing was there." He shuddered. "Funny thing is, I dreamed about this girl. She's beautiful."

  "He thinks I'm beautiful," I said and did a twirl in front of the camera. He looked straight through me and into the lens, but it felt like he was talking to me.

  "It's like one of those dreams where you see someone you don't really know but by the time you wake up, you really like them and miss them."

  My mouth opened in surprise. He'd felt exactly what I had.

  Nick chuckled. "Somehow alien spaceships and ghosts worked themselves into the dream too. It was bizarre." His face turned serious, then sad. "I think I'm losing it. I thought I was tougher than this, that the isolation wouldn't get to me, but it is. Even if my food and power last until rescue comes in the summer, I'll be pants-on-head crazy by then. They'll have to stick me in the bloody loony bin."

  I knelt before him and place my hands on his knees. "No you won't. I'll save you, Nick."

  He looked at his knees and shivered. "I'm feeling it again."

  I touched his face. His hands flew out and I floated away from him like dandelion seeds in a breeze.

  "What's wrong with me?" He shut off the camera and rubbed his face.

  I knew I had to merge with him again. I had to tell him who I was and what had happened to everyone. Most of all, I had to give him hope even though I really had none to give.

  I studied the maps in the facility until I understood the lay of the land or could at least guess which way Nick would have to go to reach safety. The base facility lay a hundred miles from the harbor on the Antarctic Peninsula. Determining the distance frustrated me more than anything since I couldn't hold up a ruler and mark the scales, but it looked to be a thousand or so miles from there to Argentina. I had no idea if the planes could make that trip but Nick would know.

  One of the hangars held a tractor-type vehicle with bulldozer treads that looked like it could make the journey to the harbor. I searched Heavenly for pilots or anyone with experience in cold weather flying. I didn't know a thing about this sort of travel, and there I was, your friendly survivalist travel agent. After asking a lot of people a lot of questions and being elusive about every aspect of exactly why I wanted to know this stuff, I felt reasonably confident Nick could escape and make his way to some semblance of safety. That, of course, didn't account for alien death rays or capture by little green men.

  So now I had a workable plan. Part A accomplished. Part B: How in the world could I tell him about my brilliant escape plan? Escape from Antarctica. It sounded like a really bad movie title. A merge was the obvious answer, but could I simply think the plan to him? If only Harb had been there to help out, but he didn't answer my calls and Kyle hadn't seen him for a while. I worried about the kid. He'd been excited about working on the spaceship and helpful but I sensed a dark center lurking underneath his innocent exterior.

  I figured I was worrying over nothing. Nothing could possibly harm us. More than likely Harb was off hiding from the afterworld like I was. Hiding from the other ghosts. I needed to tell someone what I was doing in case I couldn't get back out of Nick. I couldn't tell Chris, and Kyle might blab the news out of sheer excitement.

  In other words, I was on my own. Somehow I had to pull this off without permanently merging myself with Nick and driving him insane in the process. Simple. Yeah, right.

  Chapter 7

  Before I could do anything rash, Chris pulled me back into the alien crisis that was sweeping Heavenly. Two factions existed: the apathetic faction that figured we couldn't do anything about this alien invasion and besides, being dead wasn't so bad after all; and Chris's faction which desperately wanted to fight back in any way possible but didn't have a clue how. Unfortunately for them, their faction was in the minority. I was in their camp mainly because I was dating one of their leaders. Cronyism rocks.

  Chris tried to garner more support in the hopes that someone out of billions of ghosts might come up with a workable solution or some way for us to actually affect the real world, aka Earth. Kyle in his usual nerd-erific fashion gave me the situation in a nutshell.

  Scientists theorized our ghosts were quantum energy echoes left by our dead bodies. We existed in a slightly off-phase dimension from our earthly reality that prevented us from directly affecting anything within, but close enough to interact with it in a limited manner. I wondered if our quantum echoes would last forever or if we'd eventually spark out like a dying light bulb.

  "Theoretically," Kyle said, "we'll last as long as the universe is around. But who knows?"

  I didn't bring up my tale of possessing Nick, or the things that Harb had shown me. Harb had made me promise to keep it a secret. I was glad he had. After merging with Nick, I understood the dangers.

  Kyle continued to explain things to me and bring me up to speed. He didn't sound hopeful that we would figure this out. In the grand scheme of things, humans had clawed their way to the top of the food chain in a relatively short period of time. Despite my romantic notions that anything could be conquered, death seemed all too permanent.

  "What about Einstein? I'll bet he could help," I said. Einstein could probably figure out anything.

  "Nobody I know has met him here. One thing we've noticed is that all the ghosts here are relatively new. We did meet some people from the Victorian Era, and a guy who claimed to be a duke or something in the Middle Ages, but nobody famous."

  "I think Einstein would be a lot more useful than a duke."

  "Duh. I think we would've found him by now though."

  "Well if a duke from the Middle Ages is still running around Heavenly that probably means we've got a few hundred years of life here. That is if he and the others aren't big fat liars."

  "I guess. According to the old ghosts, there are those who take great interest in the living and those who grow bored with it and move into Beyond."

  "There's something after Heavenly?"

  "Apparently, but you can't just go there. Someday you just know how to."

  Maybe that was the real Heaven, I thought.

  Kyle and I joined Chris later and discussed a campaign to increase alien awareness among our dead brethren along with a plea to help. Maybe word would reach brilliant minds that had until now been lurking in the shadows. Instead, we found increasing apathy and depression. Most people blew us off, didn't want to hear anything more because the afterlife was supposed to be a happy place.

  After a time it became clear that the people who cared the most about battling alien scum were in our age range, somewhere between fourteen and the mid-twenties. The number of concerned individuals diminished greatly in the older age groups. It was ironic, really, when I remembered most of my friends being so ADD about everything. Even with my own attention deficit mind almost constantly on Nick, I forced myself to the matter at hand. If the aliens landed, they'd be sure to find Nick and kill him.

  Chris obsessed about finding an answer. My feelings for him hadn't changed since Nick but I was incredibly conflicted about the two of them. When it boiled down to the essentials, I had a better chance of making things work with the dead guy, not the living one.

  "Has something changed?" Chris asked me as we flitted to Earth for some quiet time away from the ships orbiting Saturn.

  "No, of course not." My voice trembled with the lie but I couldn't let him know.

  "You vanished for a while and now you seem different."

  "I wasn't all that interested in the space ship stuff. You know that. I took some time to explore."

  "Where'd you go?"

  "Just around Earth. Looked at the touristy places."

  "You seem distant. Emotionally, I mean."

  We arrived in Egypt and landed atop the Sphinx. I hugged him. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be."

  He kissed me and the warmth I remembered rushed back into me, flooding from my lips t
o my feet. His hands pressed up my back and to my neck. He gripped a handful of hair at the back of my head and gave a gentle tug. A tingle ran down my back. I felt alive again. I could smell him. I could feel the stubble on his chin. Even feel his breath on my face.

  "I want you, Luce," he whispered in my ear.

  I stiffened and some of the pleasure drained out of me. Chris cursed and backed away, turning from me and looking at the rising sun.

  "I'm sorry," I said, and pressed myself to his back. "Let's just do it and get it over with."

  "It's so appealing when you put it that way," he said. "You should want to by now. Even if we were still alive you should still want to. Don't you want to experience something new?"

  "Part of me desperately wants to. Another part is scared stiff. I can't help it."

  "Does that part of you feel that being a virgin is special?"

  "Probably. I think it still clings to the memory of life." I took his hand and made him face me. "Let's do it right now. Maybe after I try it once, I'll be fine."

  "Are you sure?"

  I nodded. My lower lip trembled so I bit it. What if we did it and I didn't feel anything? What if my lack of experience in life prevented me from feeling anything sexual in death? A tear rolled down my cheek. I brushed it away quick as I could.

  "You're scared to death. Does this have anything to do with our conversation about sex a couple of months ago?"

  "Forget it. I'm tired of wondering if I'll feel anything or not. Let's get it over with."

  He shook his head. "No, you're not ready. That'll just make it worse, believe me."

  "And you know this from screwing a girl who wasn't ready? Is that it?" I was amazed at the anger in my voice. From zero to drama queen in two seconds. Forget it. I didn't want to be there anymore. I wanted to be with Nick, the living man who didn't want to screw me because he didn't even know I existed.