Chapter Fifteen: My Life HereAfter by Rosaline Saul

Mark suddenly puts both his arms up to stop us from walking any further.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Did you see anything?”

He is looking down, and I follow his gaze.

We are standing at the top of an enormously high cliff. The sheer height makes me feel dizzy and I take two steps back from the precipice. If we had carried on walking after it had got too dark to see our feet, we would have all plummeted down here to our deaths. Although we are already dead, would it have been a second death? Who knows?

Carly says what I am thinking, “What if it got dark and we carried on walking for just a few feet more, we would be… Down there.”

“What now?” I ask. “Do we turn back again and find another way.” I am one hundred percent sure we are lost, and we are going to be stuck here forever.

The little man in my head agrees: Shouldn’t have come with. You could have died, and for what? To help this rich, spoiled brat find his equally rotten brother. You had already escaped hell, but no, that was not enough, you had to go looking for it. Imagine if we trained as guardian angels, we could have done some good in the world instead, now you’ve gone missing not just from the living, but the dead as well.

I argue with him: Ha! Do good. Together, you and I have never done any good. You would have made me do awful things to good people, as always.

You loved it.

Never.

Yes. You did.

No, I didn’t.

He laughs evilly. The sound echoes in my head as well as in my heart.

Whatever.

You know as well as I do. We are as one, Sunel.

Carly interrupts my thoughts when she points her finger into the distance. “What’s that?”

I squint my eyes to look.

Mark says, “It’s buildings.”

“The same ones you saw from the other side?” I ask.

“Must be.”

“Cannot be. They are way down there, how would you have seen them from the hill? It seems impossible though they would be the same buildings, seeing as they are so far below us,” Carly disagrees.

“It’s like the cliff we saw yesterday jutting up into the sky so high we couldn’t even see the top; it doesn’t make sense. That cliff should be seen from miles away, and since we arrived here that’s the only time I’ve seen it.”

“I know it doesn’t make sense, you two, but it is what it is. We can stand here all day debating how it could be possible and never know the answers. Let’s just find a way down there. Let’s just do it and get it over and done with.” I urge them to get a move on. I did not want to spend another night in the creepy forest.

“How?” Carly asks.

“I still want to know what’s going to happen after we get there,” I cannot help voicing my concerns.

“Let’s not think about that now. Let’s just do this, one thing at a time.”

“Fine,” Carly and I both say in unison. “Lead the way,” I add.

He leans forward from the waist up, peering down the steep, vertical cliff. “Okay, there’s no getting down this way.” He turns to his right and we follow. “Let’s try this way first.”

At least we are out of the forest, even if I can still touch the trunks of the trees with my fingertips when I extend my hand to the right. We can see the path beneath our feet, narrow and gravelled. One misstep and we could go falling into the nothingness below.

I ask, “Could you see the bottom?”

He shakes his head.

Carefully we walk along the ledge until Mark stops again.

“Here,” he suggests. “This looks safe enough.”

I peer down the steep embankment. “Scary,” I say softly.

Carly agrees with a grunt.

“I’ll go down first, then the two of you can follow,” he says as he takes his first step.

“Be careful, if you slip there’s nothing to stop you from sliding all the way down,” I warn him.

He glances back at me across his shoulder with a little smile. “I’ll be okay. Just follow in my footsteps.”

Carly and I watch him step carefully down the steep hill. His arms are extended to his sides to help him keep his balance. When his foot slips on the gravel beneath his foot, I cannot help shrieking softly.

Carly gasps and her hands come up to rest on her chest.

On a little, barely-there ledge, he stops. Turning to look back up at us, he says, “Okay. Who’s first?”

“Me,” I say quickly.

“Just go slowly.”

Fear grips my entire body as I take the first step and my heel slips out from under me. If not for Carly standing behind me, I might have tumbled down headfirst.

She steadies me onto my feet again. “Okay?” She asks, worried.

“Yeah. I’ll try again.”

Mark calls up, “See if you can scoot down on your bottom rather. It would probably be safer.”

Carefully, I manoeuvre myself down and then I slip and slide down the hill, scraping my palm on a sharp outcrop of rocks. The small stones and pebbles under me roll around making me move along as if I am on a conveyor belt.

When I reach him, he helps me to stand up beside him and my hand comes up to my mouth to soothe the stinging in the soft, fleshy part of my hand.

“Let me see,” he insists as he reaches for my hand.

I let him take my hand in his, and carefully he inspects the red, angry scrapes across my flesh.

He looks at me sideways with a grin. “You’ll survive.”

“You sure?” I joke.

“Maybe.”

Carly calls from above us, “When you’re done goggling each other, I am on my way down.”

Embarrassed, I look away from him and up at Carly. The bright light of the sun is shining behind her and she is a sharp black shadow centred within the bright light. My hand comes up to shield my eyes. “Be careful,” I tell her.

Slowly she descends the side of the mountain until she reaches us.

Gently Mark pulls his hand from mine. I forgot I was holding onto him. “Little by little is how we’ll do it, and I predict we’ll reach the camp before nightfall.”

Continue reading Chapter 16/25

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