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I fight a frown from taking hold. Bernie had never paid me much care, which is a major improvement over how the rest of the townies treated me; whether he believed the rumors about me being a spawn of the devil or all that nastiness, he never treated me differently from others. I figured being a gravedigger turns its fair share of heads, too, despite being a necessary job. Maybe I was wrong. “What is true?”
“What you said about ghosts when you were a wee thing.” He pauses, waving a hand over his head. “I died, didn’t I?”
I nod and he sighs. “Bound to happen at some point.”
“Is there a reason you’re here?” I ask.
He looks around. “My house is up the cliff. I always liked coming to the beach in the morning.”
“No, Bernie, I mean…” I chew my lip. How do you ask a ghost this without being offensive? “You know you can move on, right? You don’t have to stay in this world.”
“Oh,” he says, blinking furiously. “Yeah, I see the door, or whatever it is.”
“And you don’t want to cross it?”
He runs a hand through the scruff on his temple. “That’s not it, I…”
There really is no reason for me to be pushing it; if Bernie wants to stay a ghost, that’s his prerogative. It’s just this thing inside me, this instinct I’ve buried for so long, tells me I should be helping him. In a very odd way, I feel bound to that duty like a doctor to their socratic oath, as if I left Bernie’s spirit to wander the Earth aimlessly I would be causing him intentional harm.
“Walk with me?” I ask.
We fall in comfortable silence as we slowly make our way to the other side of the beach. Bernie looks at the damp sand, where my feet leave an imprint, but his don’t.
“I tried to go through,” he says after a minute of quiet. A shiver shakes his entire body like a leaf. “There’s… things on the other side of the door.”
“What kind of things?”
“They’re… creatures… monsters…”
My eyes widen. I have a pretty good idea of what kind of monsters he’s talking about. I halt, and Bernie follows suit, turning toward me. “Describe these creatures to me.”
He looks off in the distance. “I… I only took a quick look, to be honest. They’re massive, at least seven-foot tall. They have long claws, and their eye glow.”
That sounds familiar, all right.
“And their horns look like they could kill you, and they’ve got big, scary wings.” He shakes his head. “What if they decide I’m not worthy of what’s on the other side? What if they send me to Hell?”
I reach a hand for him before catching myself and stopping mid-air. Touch is still out of the question. “That’s not how it works. The Beyond is nothing like what they told you Heaven and Hell look like. It’s a beautiful world, with cliffs taller than anything you’ve seen on the coast, and many moons lighting the sky, and golden cities.”
To be fair, I’m not certain the Beyond looks like the pictures drawn in the book, but as I speak the words, they feel true. “You’ve always been a good man. You treated everyone with fairness and equality. Even the dead.” I point a finger to myself. “Even a freak like me. What makes you think you’re not worthy of a life in the Beyond?”
Bernie sighs heavily, looking down at his feet. “I never believed in… you know, religion and stuff. People always told me I’d be damned for it. That I touched death too much to be blessed.”
Fury clamps my stomach like a vice grip, and I tighten my fists so hard my fingernails leave crescent moons on my palms. I hate this town and its people, the bigotry of their beliefs. “That’s ridiculous. I promise you’ve got nothing to fear in that regard.”
He looks down, huffing, and doesn’t answer me.
So I try a different approach. “Is there anything in the Beyond you’re looking forward to?”
That does bring a smile to his face. “Gwen.”
Oh, I had no idea old Bernie had a lady in his life. “Is that a crush of yours?”
“My wife. We got married right out of high school… she died of cancer when she was twenty-three.”
I blink the stupor away. Bernie looks no younger than eighty. He lost his wife nearly sixty years ago, and remained committed to her all this time? Tears sting the back of my eyes, and I force them down. To find that kind of devotion, that level of belonging… I can only imagine what being loved like that feels like.
“And you don’t want to see her?”
