“For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity. Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death unto the world.”

                                                  -The Holy Bible, Apocrypha, 2:23-24

 She became aware of the darkness before anything else.

Like the universe before God was inspired to create, Reese thought. Good. She could think. Whether God was real or not was another story, but at least she could think. Then she became aware of the silence. If she was home and in bed, there would be traffic sounds even in the dead of night. She waited for anything familiar - a smell, light, shadows. Any clue as to where she was. She wanted to move but had no idea if she was standing, sitting, or lying. She felt like she was floating. No, not floating. More like detached from all physical essence.

"Hello?" Reese called in a low voice. She tried to remember how she got to the dark place, but no memory surfaced. On instinct she called out, "Luke!"

Once his name registered in her mind, the pieces began to fall into place. She was looking for Luke, wasn't she? He was lost and she was going to find him. "Luke!" She called out again, this time louder.

"Reese?" A voice floated by her and all around her. She couldn’t tell from which direction it had come. The boy sounded young, too young to be Luke. But then Reese remembered he had only been twelve when he died.

"Luke? Is that you?" She wanted to move but could not feel her body. She wanted to reach out and willed a phantom arm to move. "What happened to me?" She mumbled to herself.

"Reese? Where are you?" The child’s voice was closer and seemed to be coming from just in front of her.

"I'm here. Can you see me?" Reese wondered if her eyes were open or closed because she couldn't tell. She imagined moving her fingers to her face and was startled when she blinked in response to poking herself in the eye.

A childish laugh rang out so close to her that she thought she could find the source if only she knew which direction it was coming from.

"Of course I can't see you, silly," the child's voice giggled as he spoke. "You have to come out first. Look for the knob."

"The knob?” Reese asked quietly. She recalled Luke having said something about a dark room when he first died. Was she in one of those rooms now? Did that mean she was dead? Oddly the thought did not frighten her.

“Let me see if I can find it. Don’t go anywhere, okay?” Reese called out as she began groping the air in front of her. Air? Was there air all around her? Was she breathing?

Another giggle so close that Reese was certain she could reach out just another couple of inches and feel the child’s head. “I won’t leave you, Reese,” the boy said tenderly.

“How do you know my name?” Reese said in the direction she thought his voice was coming from as she continued patting the nothingness all around her.

“Because you’re Reese. You’re Luke’s sister.” He said it like it was a universal truth and everyone knew who she and Luke were.

She stopped grasping for the unseen knob for a split second. “You know Luke?”

“Of course. Everyone knows Luke.” He sounded proud of the fact.

“Can you take me to him?” She frantically fingered the air. Where the hell were the walls? If she could find a wall she could move along it until she found the door.

“Reese, you’re funny. Luke told me to bring you to him.”

Reese grabbed at her chest with a heave of relief. “Oh my God. Thank you so much. Can you turn the knob for me?”

“No,” the child said elongating the word. “There’s not a knob on this side until you come out. You have to find it.”

“But there’s no door!” Reese said exasperated. She felt her muscles grow tense from her annoyance at the situation. If this was life after death, it sucked.

“You just have to find it.”

“How? How do I find a knob that isn’t there?” She swatted at the air. There was nothing around her. Not a single thing. It was like she was in a black hole. Logic told her that if she was standing, there was a floor under her feet. She squatted and touched … nothing. There was nothing. What was holding her up?

“You have to hurry Reese. He’s coming. I don’t want to be here when he gets here.” The giggly tone fell way to a frighten voice.

Reese stopped her frantic slinging and groping and stood straight up.  She became still. Very still. This wasn’t the physical world so why would there be a physical door? Like some kind of awakening, she knew she would have to create the door, the knob.

“Reese? Did you hear me?” The boy asked.

“What’s your name?” Reese said in the calmest voice she could muster. She took a deep, cleansing breath. She hated meditation. It always made her too aware of her own thoughts. She liked the certainty of physical objects, like the pavement underneath her feet when she ran or the butt of gun in the palm of her hand. Gun? Gregory shot her! That’s how she got there. She was dead. And when she saw Gregory again, she was going to kill him, even if she had to strangle him with her cold spirited hands.

“Frankie. My mommy calls me Frankenstein. She says I’m her little monster. But she’s only kidding.” Reese snapped from her homicidal fantasy when she heard the boy crying. “I miss her,” he said quietly.

“Frankie? Why are you here and not in heaven?” She wasn’t sure about the whole heaven and hell thing, but if this place existed, there was a possibility of the other two being real. Reese closed her eyes and forced herself to have calming thoughts. If she was to create a door, she had to imagine it with every ounce of her ethereal being. She tried to remember how Luke got out of his dark room. Did he ever tell her how he did it? Did he imagine his way out of it?

“I don’t know,” Frankie said.

“Did someone hurt you?” Maybe his situation was similar to that of Luke’s Maybe he was stuck like Luke had been because he was murdered and his killer was still on the loose. Reese shot her eyes open, expecting to see light, the door, her escape. But she was still swallowed up by complete and utter darkness.

“No. I had a bad cancer. Mommy’s a doctor and she promised she would find a cure. But she didn’t. But I’m not mad at her, but I think she’s mad at me for dying.”

Reese’s skin exploded with goose bumps. She couldn’t be dead is she was experiencing physiological symptoms, could she? “Oh honey, I doubt you’re mommy is mad at you. She might be mad that you died, but she’s not mad at you.”

“Then why won’t she bring me Charlie? I told her when I died I wanted Charlie with me.”

Reese stepped forward on instinct - a deeply buried maternal nature craving to embrace this poor little lost soul. “Who’s Charlie?” She asked as her hands grazed a wall. No. A door. She calmly ran her fingers down and to the left. She gripped the knob and slowly twisted it. Suddenly she was standing before a beautiful boy, only five or six, with fine shoulder-length hair so blond it was nearly white.

“Reese! You found the knob!” He smiled widely and grabbed her hand. He started to pull her, but Reese knelt down in front of him and brought him closer so he was standing in front of her.

“Frankie? Who’s Charlie?”

Frankie looked down at the wood planks below their feet. He sniffled. “My teddy bear. Mommy bought him for me the day she found out she was going to have me.”

“Oh Frankie,” Reese said and pulled him into a hug. “I’m so sorry.”

He wrapped his little arms around her neck and rested his cheek on her shoulder. “I miss Mommy and Charlie.”

“I know,” she cooed and patted his silken hair.

Frankie pushed out of the hug and looked at Reese. His eyes were shockingly pale blue and he had a smattering of light reddish freckles across the bridge of his nose. “When you go back, will you tell Mommy to bring Charlie to me? That way I know she’s not mad at me?”

“Honey, I’m not going back,” Reese answered.

“Yes you are. Just like he does.”

“Who’s he? Luke? Luke is dead.”

“Not Luke. The preacher man.”

Reese shook her head to let Frankie know she was confused.

“Come on. I’ll bring you to Luke. He’s stuck in the bad place.”

“The bad place?” Reese stood from her kneeling position and tried not to think about what Frankie had said about her going back. Was it possible she wasn’t dead?

Frankie tugged at her hand. “We have to hurry. He’s almost here and you’re leaving soon. You’ve got to help Luke out.” Frankie started to run but his short legs made it possible for Reese to barely trot to keep up with him. She looked around a little as they ran down a long platform. Sure enough it looked like a train depot with the station going along for endless miles, just like Luke had described.

“Come on,” Frankie called as his hand slipped from hers. He picked up speed and Reese followed but her chest erupted in pain like it was on fire. She tried to ignore it and kept going. She pushed a fist against the burning and had to stop for a second.

“No!” Frankie called out. “Not yet. You have to help Luke!”

She looked up at the pleading child’s face. “I’m coming,” she moaned through gritted teeth.

She took several more steps when she was zapped with the bolt of lightning through her chest again. “What the hell?” She growled.

“Come on, Reese! We’re almost there!” Frankie called from several yards ahead of her.

She dropped to one knee clutching at her heart. She couldn’t be having a heart attack. That was preposterous. 

The sound of Frankie’s feet slapping the wood platform ceased suddenly. Reese flipped her head up and saw a tall man with a closely shaven black beard and moustache standing in front of Frankie. One of his hands gently rested on the child’s shoulder. “Run along,” the man said with a flick of his head and a twisted smile across his dark lips, so dark they might have been stained. Frankie glanced back at Reese with an apologetic expression and then darted to his right. He disappeared into the station like it swallowed him. One second he was there the next he was vanished.

The man was dressed in an elaborately detailed long robe of dark material, not quite black, perhaps deep purple or crimson, like blood. Did they have Halloween in this place? The sleeves were long and wide and stretched beyond his already lanky arms, but when he raised his hands and placed them together like in prayer, they fell away exposing a taupe colored suit jacket . Reese looked down at his feet and they were dressed in expensive tool-cut leather shoes. She could tell a lot by the shoes a man wore. All her years of closely observing human behavior, she had learned that the average man typically wore shoes for comfort. This fella was dressing for show.

“Reese,” he said and approached her in precise, even steps. His hands were still clasp. “I am Father Montgomery.” How did he know her name?

He didn’t look like any preacher she knew, not that she had many occasion to fraternize with men of the cloth.

“How did you get here?” He asked, sounding rather inquisitive, even cocking his head slightly like a curious dog.

Reese shuddered as her chest seared with electrical pain again.

“Quick, tell me, before you go. How did you get here?”

“I died. Same as you. Right?” She managed to say through the increasing throbs.

He smiled faintly, that same crooked smile he had shown Frankie before he ran off.

Reese focused on his lips. They were purple just inside his mouth and discolored to black along the fleshy lips. They didn’t look natural. “I have things to do,” she said, summoning the energy to force out the words. “So either help me up, or get out of my way,” Reese snarled the last sentence.

Father Montgomery offered a hand without hesitation. “Are you looking for Luke?” He asked innocently.

“You know Luke?” She asked as she slapped her hand into his, allowing him to help her to her feet.

“This is very curious. I’d like you to look me up when you return. And of course, when you’re feeling better and all.”

“Why would I do that?” Reese’s skin felt charged and she suddenly had the very strong sensation that she was being watched. She glanced around expecting to see Frankie, but the eyes she saw through a dusty window at the depot station were black. She couldn’t think about how nonsensical it was that she could make out details like eye color from ten feet away through a layer of grime. But she knew with every ounce of her being that there were black eyes watching her with an intensity so powerful they couldn’t possibly be human eyes.

“I can help you find your brother. He is your brother, right?” The preacher man continued apparently oblivious to their observer.

Another jolt, a flash of light and Reese felt as if she was clamoring out of a long sleep. A deep sleep. One filled with nightmares.

Unfamiliar sounds attacked her ears. Bright lights burned her eyes. The depot was gone as if it had never been there, but rather a figment of a sleep induced hallucination.

“Clear!” A strange man’s voice echoed so close to her that she wanted to scream at him to stop yelling.

“Wait a minute! She’s got a pulse,” another voice called out.

“No!” Reese screamed. “Not yet,” she wailed, as she gobbled air into her burning lungs.

She fluttered her eyelids and just beyond a paramedic leaning over her, she saw Paul gawking down at the scene before him. A look of relief flooded his face and his eyes filled with tears.

“You’re okay,” Paul whispered, although she couldn’t hear him, but she could read his lips.

The paramedics fussed over her, obstructing her view to Paul but as she was jostled to an ambulance, he kept pace with the gurney, one hand placed on her shoulder on the uninjured side.

“Paul, I almost had him. I almost had Luke,” she said, but her voice was raspy and by the look on his face, she didn’t think Paul understood her. The ambulance doors slammed closed and she stared up at the vehicle’s ceiling. She was back. She was alive. All the medical supplies around her proved that. She squeezed her eyes tight willing her body to die, commanding her soul to return and find Luke. This couldn’t be it. He couldn’t be lost, not when she had been so close. She imagined her heart seizing and ceasing to pump blood to her vital organs. But oddly, despite the bullet which had seared her rib muscles, she felt more alive than she did even after a particularly great run.  Death was not going to find her again that day, but she made up her mind that she’d find a way back to death.