After/Life_Bargaining Read online

  AFTER/LIFE

  B A R G A I N I N G

  Scarlett Whispers

  Chapter One

  Molly ran.

  She had no safe haven, no place these creatures could not reach. She had no idea what else she ought to do. She would never get tired. She needed to outrun them for one week, or until she knew they would stop following her.

  She ran across the pavement and into the street, turning to check her immediate vicinity. A car headed toward her, engine thrashed. Too late to do anything else, Molly threw up her arms.

  The car slammed into her… Time seemed to move in slow motion as the car passed through her body and eyes. First, there was the glass. It entered her eye. Glass looked like water when it passed through your eye like that.

  Then she passed into the mouth of a large fat man behind the wheel. He was roaring with laughter. Molly’s face was on par with his mouth. She didn’t have time to hold her breath. She caught the scent of cheese and onion flavored crisps before she struck his face. His flesh peeled back. Molly emerged out the back of his head. Then she passed through the raggedy blanket that concealed the back seat’s torn cushion, and out the other side.

  It all happened in the flash of an instant.

  Molly stood on the street, catching her breath. She wasn’t tired from her exertion, only shocked by her recent close encounter. The car’s wheels screeched as it took a corner and disappeared down an alley.

  There, behind the vehicle, was a guard.

  Its head snapped in Molly’s direction. It held up its arms and floated toward her. It wasn’t fast, but it would be unrelenting.

  If she wanted to escape these things, Molly would need a lot more than a few houses and backyards to lose herself in. She needed the distraction of the city.

  She took off at a run, heading for the subway station. It was less than a block away from here, located on an outstretched arm of the subway spider web system.

  Molly ran down the steps into the darkness of the city’s basement, dodging out from under the feet of the people coming in the opposite direction. It wasn’t with fear that she might run into them, only that she didn’t want a repeat of her earlier experience.

  She approached the turnstile and leaned forward to push against it. She felt no weight and passed right through it. She ran down a flight of stairs, got to the bottom and reached out to grab a handrail and throw herself toward the train. Her hand passed right through it too.

  It would take her some time to get used to being a ghost here. She had developed thirty-two years of habits and muscle memory.

  From her sprawled position on the floor, she grunted to herself and chanced to glance up the stairs.

  A dark shadowy figure like something from a nightmare floated down the stairs in her direction. Molly got her feet back under her and set off at a run again.

  She ran toward the escalator and turned to look back. The guard floated over the heads of the passengers, head moving left to right, searching for her.

  Molly ran down the escalator, a slalom course around the commuters. Some were listening to music, others groping each other, making out. She got to the bottom and ran toward the platform heading downtown. She ran along it, checking left and right in case more of the guards were down there.

  According to the sign, the next train was two minutes away. A lifetime.

  Molly got to the end of the platform and hid behind a wall. She crouched and poked her head around the column. If one of those things was going to come toward her, it was far better she be aware of it.

  It made eyes. It had descended the stairs and was now casting which way to go.

  Molly flattened her back against the wall and gave herself a prayer. She hugged her knees. She was terrified. If those things got hold of her…

  Well, she actually didn’t know what would happen. The very least she could expect was an extension to her sentence. Or they might put her somewhere else… The hell prison Ada had told her about…

  She couldn’t afford to stop, to get caught. Not now. She needed to escape, gather herself, and figure out what she was going to do. She turned back to look down the platform again.

  One minute until the train arrived.

  The demon floated toward her, and then turned and headed another way. Clearly, they had no sense of her other than their eyes and ears. Or whatever they had in the way of those senses. That was a relief, at least. They didn’t already know where she was, otherwise she would never lose them.

  Molly looked in the opposite direction, toward the platform. She caught sight of the unnatural flapping fabric of the guard’s cowl.

  Molly got up and moved away, around the column to the side facing the front platform. She would wait here until the train came.

  The seconds ticked by.

  Molly wanted to peer around the column where she knew the creature would be looking for her. She dare not in case she gave her location away. Her heart was in her throat.

  Then came the screeching rattle of the train on its unrelenting tracks. It hurtled through the tunnel toward her. Molly didn’t wait for it to come to a complete stop. She leaped through the wall and onto the train, even as it was still moving. The sooner she could get off that platform, the better.

  Molly peeked through the window, searching for the guard. She couldn’t make it out. It had been there a moment ago.

  A man came onto the train clutching a hat and umbrella to his chest. He stepped right through her. Molly felt sick again, losing her focus. She wouldn’t get off the train, not yet. She waited until there was a beeping noise, alerting the passengers they were about to set off.

  The doors hissed closed. The train jolted and began to move.

  It wasn’t until the carriage had left the platform that Molly allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. She was free of the guards. She allowed herself a small, relieved smile, laughing and shaking her head.

  That was close.

  She wagered she could almost smell the beast…

  Something moved out the corner of her eye.

  She turned so as not to get anyone—or any thing’s—attention. She caught the unrelenting flapping movement of a guard’s cowl.

  A guard was looking directly at her.

  It was on the train with her.

  Chapter Two

  Molly turned and ran through the carriage. She passed the tired passengers at the back, who dozed, head lolling on their shoulders. She skipped over the extended legs of those who read their dog-eared novels and newspapers.

  A secret shadow world at their fingertips, unreachable as the stars. Blithely unaware of its existence.

  Molly stopped only when she got to the end of the carriage. There was nowhere else for her to run.

  The creature was still coming, drawing near. It made contact with a man’s newspaper, tugging it from his grip.

  The man leaned forward, peering at his newspaper, looking for what might have caught it. There was nothing there, so far as he could see.

  These creatures could move through the glass-like material in the Halfway House with ease, but they could not move through objects on Earth. It was a small, but salient piece of information. Still, it didn’t help much with Molly’s current predicament.

  Or did it?

  There was one more room on the train carriage she could get to. The control room.

  She turned and stepped through the dividing wall and into the tiny space. Here was the solo driver. She was a pretty woman, far too pretty to be a train driver. She was looking out the window, pulling and pushing on the controls and knobs without much enthusiasm. She was looking at the monitors and blinking lights.

  Something grabbed the door handle and shook it.

  The
driver’s eyes flicked to the monitor, attached to a camera located inside the carriage. It was not a good view, and would not have revealed a child if he was tugging on the handle. Molly could see exactly what was tugging on the handle.

  The guard.

  Evidently, it could manipulate objects in this world as well as touch them. Molly only wished she had the same ability.

  The driver shook her head and picked up a handset.

  “Please do not touch the door handle,” she said. “It comes with a fine of up to two thousand dollars.”

  There was a pause, the driver holding the handset to her lips. No one got up nor moved toward the door.

  The driver waited, and then turned up her bottom lip and replaced the handset.

  The handle rattled again.

  The driver sighed, stood up, and moved toward the door.

  “No!” Molly said. “Don’t open the door! Don’t open it!”

  The driver couldn’t hear her and opened the door. Finding no one there, the driver stepped out into the carriage to investigate. She created enough space for the guard to squeeze past her and enter the control booth.

  Molly was consumed with terror. The creature was going to get her. It was going to get her! And she would return to the Halfway House, or somewhere worse, and be a prisoner forever.

  The guard filled the entire room, glaring down at her through its shadowed hood.

  Molly was doomed.

  Hoooonk!

  A loud rattle as Molly’s entire carriage leaned over to one side. Another train rushed past in the opposite direction.

  Molly seized her courage and came to a decision. A flash of lunacy perhaps, but she didn’t have time to reconsider.

  She threw herself through the wall and sailed across the open space in the direction of the other train.

  She floated, staying airborne far longer than she had anticipated. She thought she might overshoot and sail through to the other side. She passed through the opposite train’s wall and fell to the floor in a heap.

  An instant later, and the first train was gone.

  She made it.

  This train jerked to one side as it took another line, heading into the heart of the city. She would end up in a different part of the city than she expected, but it was still the right vicinity.

  Perhaps now, finally, she could get some peace and quiet, and take a minute to figure out what she was going to do.

  “Get off my train!” a deep rumbling voice above her said.

  She turned to find a man at the opposite end of the carriage, standing bolt upright. He was big, tall, dressed in a long black coat. His eyes were large and bulbous.

  “I said, get off my train!” the man said.

  Molly looked behind herself to see who the man was looking at.

  But there was no one. And no one else was paying attention to him.

  Because they couldn’t see him. Couldn’t hear him.

  He was looking at Molly. He stomped up the center of the carriage, waving his fists. He knocked a comic book from a child’s hands.

  “Get out!” the man said.

  Another thrust and he knocked groceries from a black woman’s hands.

  “Get off!” the man said.

  He stood over Molly, glaring down at her.

  “Are you deaf?” he said. “I said get off my train!”

  “You can see me?” Molly said.

  The man raised his fists high above his head. Molly felt the electric charge an instant before he thumped her on the chest, knocking her back. The man raised his fists again and brought them down.

  Molly stumbled back under the force. His blows were powerful, strong. Still, Molly was not injured by them. The man shouted in her face.

  “Get off my train!” the man said. “And never come back!”

  The train screeched to a stop. Molly got to her feet and ran off the train. She turned back once and saw the tall man standing, glaring at her as the train left the platform.

  Molly didn’t stop running until she had climbed the stairs, gone up the escalator, and emerged into the noisy heart of the city.

  It was turning into quite a day.

  Chapter Three

  Molly stood in the middle of the city on a street corner. Here she was, in a place she had missed, desperately wanted to return back to, only to find herself unable to communicate with anyone.

  She had taken it for granted she would be able to speak with Sam, to tell him everything he needed to know. Instead, she found him blind and mute to her warning. There was no way she could communicate with him, and worse still, no way for her to help him even if he got in danger. What was the point of her being there?

  Molly was alone.

  At least in the Halfway House, there were other prisoners. Here, she was by herself. The guards would chase her for seven days, or forever, who knew. And that would have been fine if she could have lived with Sam, could have watched him live out his life.

  He would date other women, and though she would be jealous as hell, she would learn to overcome it. She could have lived her life vicariously through him. She could have maintained a vigil over his children, his grandchildren. But that was all gone now.

  Sam’s house, their former home, would be the first place the guards would keep an eye on. Molly could never return there, no matter how much she wanted to. She had come so far, and yet she may as well have been on the Moon.

  A pair of men were talking over her shoulder. A glance told Molly everything she needed to know about them. They were doing some kind of dodgy deal. She was used to seeing their type. Rough, a dangerous glint in their eye, a giant chip on their shoulder.

  It was the kind of sense a police officer developed over their career, to know when people were up to no good. Amateurs like these made spotting them easy. They tried hard to make it look like they were doing nothing wrong, inversely making it all the more obvious of their actions.

  Molly recognized one of them. A regular by the name of Jesse who often broke the law. One of Wayne Lopez’s chief handlers. The two men made the exchange; a swift fist tap. Merchandise had been exchanged for money.

  Molly followed Jesse. At least it gave her something to do. As a ghost, she did not need to eat nor sleep. She didn’t even need to breathe. She was the perfect watchdog. Now, she had a purpose. She needed a purpose. She would learn everything she could, perhaps even Wayne Lopez’s location, something they had failed to discover after months of hard work. Later, she could figure out a way of giving that information to Casey.

  Molly followed Jesse down the street. She found herself slipping into a police officer’s training when following a suspect. Each time he doubled back on himself or checked over his shoulder, Molly pretended to be interested in something at a stall or shop window. Then she began to realize this was no longer necessary.

  As a ghost, she could follow hot on his heels and he wouldn’t know it. She picked up her pace and ran alongside him. He was moving quickly as if he had a place to be, or perhaps it was his way of throwing off any tails he might have picked up.

  Jesse made a series of turns, heading down alleys, before turning and backing up on himself. He was checking to make sure he wasn’t being followed. It would take him three times longer to get to where he was going, but he would arrive alone.

  Finally, Jesse came to a large building on the dive side of town. It was three stories tall, rough, with rain spillage marks that gave the appearance the building was weeping. It warped the brickwork, making it smooth.

  Outside, crouched in the bowels of a basement apartment, was a young man Molly recognized as Mickey O’Dell. In the past, he had been a near-permanent fixture at her precinct. She had known him since he was a child, not that he was much older than a child right now.

  She hadn’t seen him for some months and hoped he had hit the straight and narrow, but clearly, that wasn’t the case. He sat with a pile of tarot cards in front of him on a makeshift crate table. His friends circled the street looki
ng for customers or, rather, their next mark.

  Molly ignored them and headed up the steps and into the building. The wallpaper peeled off the walls in long strips. In most places, the undercoating was visible.

  Jesse headed upstairs, each step creaking under his weight. It wouldn’t be long before they gave way completely. They didn’t make so much as a squeak upon Molly’s ascent.

  Jesse headed up the second flight of stairs. Molly passed the apartments on the second floor. Women wearing very little stood in doorways, cigarettes pursed between their lips, dressing gowns open, everything on show. Too early to get much foot traffic.

  The furnishings of the third floor were of a much higher quality, sophisticated. This was where the pimps spent their time. Modern hip-hop music played over an antique record player. Sat on matching leather sofas were half a dozen large men. They greeted Jesse with indecipherable hand gestures.

  “I need to see Wayne,” Jesse said.

  “You’ll have to wait,” a deep-throated man said. “Wayne’s seeing to his willy.”

  He laughed at the back of his throat, a wheezing gasp, and slapped his own knee. The others said nothing and stared into space. They had heard the same joke a million times already.

  Molly had no intention of waiting. She approached each room, ducking her head through locked doors to peer inside. She was lucky that the first room she came to was the correct one. She found Wayne inside, and he wasn’t alone. She grimaced and wished she’d waited.

  It turned out Wayne had a penchant for small young men. Not illegally young, but still, it was not what she had expected from a person such as him. She turned back to the living room. There was little else of interest she could get from this place. She turned around and headed back down the stairs.

  After years of trying to find Wayne Lopez’s base of operations, they had come up dry. Here, Molly had discovered it in twenty pain-free minutes. There were some benefits to being the way she was.

  Still, it would not help her nor Sam or Casey if she could not figure out a way to tell them about it.