Chapter Sixteen: My Life HereAfter by Rosaline Saul

“You!”

I turn to look in the direction of the accusation. Whoever it is, cannot be talking to us. Surely.

“David?” Mark asks disbelievingly.

“What are you doing here?” His dark hair is messy and his hazel gold eyes look dark brown as he glares at us with unconcealed anger.

He glares at me. “And you! The very last person I ever wanted to see again.”

I take a step back from him. The look on his face scares me. The way he is glaring at me is even worse than the way he used to dismiss me when he walked past me in the halls at school. When he never even acknowledged he could see me when all I ever wanted was for him to notice me.

Mark’s hands come up to my shoulders to steady me when I knock back into him. “Calm down, David. What’s going on?” Mark says from behind me.

David hisses through his teeth, “No. What are you doing here, I asked first.” He is leaning closer to me.

“We came to find you,” Mark tells him.

From the corner of my eye, I see Carly move closer to Mark and she stops to stand a little behind him. This leaves me as the first line of defence. Typical.

“What for? Not happy up there with all the angels and the good things in life?”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“This is exactly where I belong.”

“And, what is this place?” Mark lifts his one hand from my shoulder to sweep the area in front of us.

Seven long, elongated buildings are positioned in front of us. Four straight ahead and then three further behind, in the gaps between the buildings in the front. They look as if they are made of corrugated iron, with a semi-circle slab of corrugated iron slapped over the top to form a roof. They are each about the size of a regular sized barn but look like a mad scientist’s mix-up between a chicken coop and an aeroplane hangar.

David looks at us with a grin. It is not friendly, or even the sexy grin I used to see permanently on his face whenever he walked past me in the school halls. When he used to stroll past us in a James Dean kind of swagger in his signature faded white T-shirts and black jeans. “You want to know what this place is? It’s your worst nightmare come to life.”

“What do you mean?” Mark asks.

“Come,” David demands.

Mark, Carly, and I walk closely beside each other as we follow him. Glancing up at the tall grey buildings beside us, I look up and see etched onto a plaque of wood above each entrance there are words. They are written in a language I do not understand. Luxuria. Gula. Avaritia.

We follow David around the last building toward a large bonfire. About half of the kids who were separated from us are gathered around the flames. One of them breaks away from the group and comes running to us.

For a moment I think he is only running closer until he shoulders past David and is running straight at me. I flinch when he stops inches away from me. He pushes his face close to mine and I gag a little when his sour, foul breath washes over me. “You! What are you doing here?”

David laughs loudly. The sound is not happy and carefree.

I shrink away from him and inch closer to Mark, grabbing onto his arm with both my hands.

“What do you mean?” Mark steps in between me and the boy whose name, I think, is Dean.

“She’s the reason we’re here!” He screams loudly, then he turns away from Mark. “Come look-see who paid us a visit, boys.”

Panic settles in the pit of my stomach when the entire group of almost twenty kids turns to look in our direction.

Mark pushes his hand against Dean’s chest. “Leave her alone. To get to her, you need to get through me first.”

“Why are you protecting her?” Dean asks Mark with disgust in his voice.

“She was brave enough to come with me to look for David.”

David glances at me, but it is so quick it might just have been a flicker in the way the light from the weak sun is shining down on him.

“Who are you to judge anyway?” Mark nudges Dean against the chest.

“She killed us.”

“No, she didn’t. She was the catalyst, but she is not the reason you are here on this side. That’s all you.”

David steps closer. “So, what’s it like on the other side?”

Mark shifts his attention away from Dean to David. “Very near to perfect.”

“Only near perfect?” David’s one eyebrow arches a little.

“It wasn’t like Heaven or anything. It’s like a halfway station between Earth and Heaven. We split up again after we got there.”

“So, what were you grouped into this time?” His eyes glance in my direction again.

“Rehab,” Mark replies.

Mark laughs loudly, and this time he sounds the same as he did so long ago, even though it is only a few days ago. “You? In rehab? Now, that’s funny.”

Carly says sarcastically, “It’s not that funny. If you were there, you’d know we weren’t good enough to go back to Earth or even to go onward to Heaven. We have to somehow restore ourselves to our original created states.”

Dean asks her, “What do you mean, go back to Earth. We never got that option.”

“Yeah, you can like go back and do it all again and hopefully get it right so you can eventually go to Heaven.”

“Like reincarnation?” He asks with a dubious look on his face.

“Yeah, but we did not get the chance to start over, we have to train as guardian angels and then once we complete the training, we can go back to Earth and help other people in need.”

“So, you’ll never, ever get the chance to go to Heaven, then. You’ll forever be helping others.” David interrupts Carly’s reply, “Sounds just like Hell to me.”

“What would you know, anyway. You were sent to this hell-hole right from the beginning.”

I take a deep gulp of breath and say bravely, “Here there is no redemption or deliverance from sin and freedom from captivity. At least on the other side, we had a chance.”

David glares at me with a look of hurt in his eyes. “Do you know how we were whittled down from forty to thirteen?” He pulls his lips into a snarl. “No? Let me tell you, then. When we arrived, we were herded into a big black cave and we only had the luxury of two doors, marked: Purgatory and Damned. Guess which one you are in now.”

I shake my head as I inch even closer to Mark.

Dean sneers, “This is the land of Purgatory, my sweet dear. And you might not think so yet, but tonight in the dark, you’ll wish you were sent to a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth where the wicked are punished.”

I ask softly, “So when all your sins are forgiven you don’t need to go to Purgatory?” Is this the reason I did not end up here from the beginning? Were my sins forgiven?

I wait to hear a snarky comment from the little man on my shoulder, but he is silent. He has nothing to add to this momentous revelation.

Mark turns his head to me, and whispers softly, “Told you, so. Someone forgave all your sins and gave you a second chance. Someone who knows the real you and your heart and your every thought. It was not because of anything you’ve done, but according to His mercy.”

The sense of relief within me is so great, I feel tears sting the rims of my eyes. Pinching my eyes closed, I force the tears away. This is not the place to show weakness, not in front of these kids, anyway.

“There’s Rudi,” Carly says suddenly.

I look to where her finger is pointing, and I recognise his small and skinny frame.

Carly calls out to him, “Hey, Rudi.”

He smiles, his teeth are glaringly white against his dirty cheeks.

“Come here,” she says loudly.

Rudi lifts his hand and motions we should rather join him by the fire.

Unsure I look up at Mark.

David says, “You might as well join us, now you’re here. There’s no way you’ll get back up that cliff again, we’ve tried. So, let me be the first to welcome you to Purgatory.”

“Have you tried going up the way we came down?” Mark looks back across his shoulder to the narrow, death-defying pathway we slid down earlier on.

David laughs again. This time, there is a cynical tone to it. “You’ll have to wait and see. In the morning, that path will be gone.”

We reach the large fire, and then the eleven boys and girls huddled around it shuffle around to make space for us to sit down with them.

I sit down on a long wooden log, while Carly and David sit down beside me, one on each side. I look at the faces around us and remember each one of them from my carefree days at school. We smile in greeting to each other. They look tired and exhausted. I do not see Oscar in the group, so he must have been sent on. It’s quite warm, so I cannot understand why they are all huddled around the fire, all hunched up as if they are frozen on the inside.

Sam, a girl I have known since first grade, asks with a curious look on her face, “How did you get here?”

Harry, sitting next to her, adds, “You didn’t come through the forest, did you?”

Carly says, “We did. Why?”

The kids look at each other before they return their gaze back at us.

“Why?” Mark asks.

Some faces around us shake their heads in apparent fear.

Sam says bravely, “That’s where they come from.”

“Who?” Mark and Carly ask together.

Sam opens her mouth, but David interrupts her, “Don’t, Sam.”

Mark looks up at David, where he is still standing to the side of us. “You’ll find out soon enough. It’s best we do not talk about it, the whole damned to hell thing. Every time someone mentions them, they are the missing ones the next day.”

“What?” I ask panicked.

“Maybe they’ll take you tonight,” David says as his eyes connect with mine.

I narrow my eyes as I glare back at him.

Where is the little man on my shoulder when I need him? Had he actually abandoned me? The worst timing ever.

Mark asks the group, “What do those words on the buildings mean?”

Continue reading Chapter 17/25

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