15
WHEN GRAMPA TURNED, when Gramma finally saw his face, she started to cry. They weren’t real tears, of course, since we weren’t actually in our bodies. Still, you could tell she was crying by the way her mouth trembled and her shoulders shook.
As for Grampa, he looked . . . well, he looked odd. He had a lot of expressions moving across his face, things that looked like surprise, happiness, anger, joy, even fear. The really weird thing was that his face was no longer old, the way it had been the last time I’d seen him. But it wasn’t young, either. It was as if all the ages he had ever been, all the faces he had worn through the years, had combined somehow. His wrinkles were gone, but his eyes were old and wise.
He was also transparent. That didn’t seem all that odd, since we were, too. But unlike us, he had no silver cord leading back to his body, no thread connecting him to the world of the living.
He stared at us for a long time. “You’re not dead,” he said at last, his voice worried, puzzled, and relieved all at once.
“Well, of course not, Horace,” said Gramma matter-of-factly.
I was surprised that she could hear him, since he had barely spoken above a whisper and she was nearly deaf. Then I realized her deafness was part of her physical body, and we had left those behind when we entered the Land of the Dead.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “And with the children! You shouldn’t have come, Ethel!”
“We had to come, sir,” said Gaspar.
Grampa turned toward him. His eyes grew wide. “Gaspar?” he said slowly, and beneath the astonishment I could sense a hint of anger in his voice. “Gaspar Morley? And—can it be?—Melisande!” He said her name with something like a sob. “But you’re no older than when . . . but you’re not dead, either! How can . . . Ethel, what’s going on here? What are you doing here with them?”
“It’s a long story,” said Gaspar.
Grampa gestured to the misty void surrounding us. “If there’s one thing I’ve got, it’s time.”
“Actually, that may not be entirely true,” Gaspar replied. “The reason we dared this journey is to bring word to the dead that they are in danger.”
“Dead is dead,” said Grampa, sounding scornful.
“Really?” asked Gaspar. “It’s true that you are dead to the life you once knew. But though you no longer have your body, your self still exists. Now that is in danger as well.”
Grampa snorted. “You sound like Reverend van Dyke. But don’t worry, Gaspar. There’s not much temptation around here. I don’t think I’m in danger of any major sins at the moment.”
Gaspar’s handsome face darkened with a scowl of frustration. “The danger is from outside, you old—” He cut himself off and took a deep breath. Then he closed his eyes. I had a feeling he was counting to ten. Maybe higher. Finally he spoke again, sounding somewhat stiff and formal.
“There exists a great and powerful alien race, a group without pity or mercy. These people, the Flinduvians, have found a way to use the souls of Earth’s dead to power a weapon they have created. If they should take you, sir, the result would be a second death. A permanent one. A death not of the body, but of the soul itself. Or perhaps not. We don’t really know what happens when a soul is used in this weapon of theirs. It could be far worse than mere oblivion.”
Now Grampa did look frightened. “You’re joking,” he whispered.
“I did not travel all the way to the Land of the Dead for the sake of a prank,” said Gaspar sharply. “Now, is there someone you can take us to, a leader of any sort here?”
“I never thought I’d hear someone say ‘take me to your leader’ to a ghost,” whispered Sarah.
“I never thought I’d make a trip to the Land of the Dead,” I replied softly.
Grampa’s face twisted into a familiar scowl. I recognized it as his thinking look. “I don’t believe there’s really a leader in this place,” he said. “But I haven’t been here all that long, so maybe there’s something or someone I don’t know about. Some souls greeted me when I arrived, helped calm me, kept me from being afraid. But since then I’ve been pretty much on my own.”
“What have you been doing, Grampa?” Sarah asked.
“Waiting. Thinking. Trying to let go.” He glanced at my grandmother. “It’s hard, Ethel. I don’t want to let go.”
“Let go of what?” asked Sarah. We had both floated close to him, and now she reached out to take his hand. She couldn’t really touch him, of course. Touch is for the living.
“Of the world,” he said slowly. “Of life.” He turned to look at Gramma. “Mostly I didn’t want to let go of you, my dear. But that’s what I’m supposed to do, I guess. I’m not really supposed to be here. None of us is. We’re supposed to move on to . . . Well, I don’t know exactly what. To something else. But I couldn’t stop thinking about our life together.” He looked at Gaspar again, then added bitterly, “I didn’t expect you to show up here with my old rival.”
Gramma smiled. “Are you jealous, you old fool?” she asked, in her most loving voice.
“Jealous of the living,” said Grampa.
Gramma stretched her hand toward him, but she couldn’t touch him, any more than Sarah could. “I suspect that very jealousy would keep you here, if nothing else did, my love. You’ve got to let go, Horace. But not yet. Not until this nightmare is over.” She turned to me and said softly, “This is a nightmare, isn’t it, Anthony? I mean, I am only dreaming, right?”
I longed to be able to tell her that was the case. But Gramma was fierce about the truth and didn’t like even the tiniest lies. Besides, who knew what else we were going to have to deal with before this was all over? If she thought this was a dream, it might lull her, make her less sharp, less ready to act. And that was a luxury we couldn’t afford.
So I shook my head. “It’s no dream, Gramma.”
She sighed. “Oh, I knew that. I was just sort of hoping . . . Well, never mind. What do we do now, Gaspar?”
Gaspar looked uncertain, which was unusual for him. “I guess we try to deliver our warning. After that we go back to the world of the living, to see if the others have returned from Flinduvia.”
Gramma turned back to Grampa. “Well, there it is, Horace. You have to help us deliver our warning. I can’t take the children home until we do.”
She held out her arms and floated toward him.
Gaspar gestured to the rest of our group, and we turned to give the two old people, one living and one dead, a few minutes to themselves.
I used the time while Gramma and Grampa were whispering to each other to get a better look at the place we were in.
There wasn’t much to see, or so I thought at first. It was gray and misty, and seemed to roll on forever. Though it didn’t have anything you could call landscape or scenery, I did get a sense of up and down, which was sort of weird. But we were all floating the same way up, as were the occasional dead people who drifted past. So I figured my sense of up and down was genuine.
The ghosts—I guess that’s what you would call them—pretty much ignored us. That was fine as far as I was concerned. The only time they looked our way was when Bob growled at them.
I figure they weren’t used to seeing cocker spaniels in the Land of the Dead.
“Shush,” whispered Melisande. “You’re disturbing them.”
Bob whimpered, and floated against her side.
“I don’t like it here,” whispered Sarah, who was floating almost as close to my side as Bob was to Melisande’s. “It feels cold.”
Gaspar nodded. “It is not pleasant. But remember, this is not where you will spend eternity. This is a place for those who have not yet moved on.”
IT’S HARD TO HAVE a sense of time in the Land of the Dead, so I don’t really know how long it was before Gaspar made a noise in his throat to interrupt my grandparents.
Grampa looked startled, as if he had forgotten the rest of us were there.
His voice unusually gentle, Gaspar said, “What would you suggest we do next, Horace?”
Grampa looked at Gaspar for a long time. “I don’t know,” he said at last.
“Is there no one to contact?”
“Not that I can think of.”
They went back and forth like that a couple more times until I finally got sick of it. I don’t know what came over me. I had just had enough, I guess. Anyway, I threw my head back and yelled, “Hellllllp! We need to talk to someone! Who’s in charge here, anyway?”
The silence that followed my outburst was broken when Melisande started to laugh.
It was a rich, beautiful sound.
And it was like bait.