But this time the air didn’t taste flat and metallic. A sugary scent, like I’d smelled out in the desert, lay heavy around me. I looked down and saw a pitch-black stain growing in the center of my floor.
It was like the ink flooding the ghost school, or the black rivers I’d seen in the desert—a pool of emptiness. It started no bigger than a spilled cup of coffee, but spread across the floor as I watched.
“Don’t let it touch you,” Mindy said.
I took a step back. “Yamaraj, I need you.”
His name suddenly sounded like “mirage,” and it seemed crazy to expect him to hear me. He could be a thousand miles away, or a thousand miles below. . . .
But he’d come the first time I called him.
“Yamaraj, please come to me.” As I spoke his name again, heat flickered across my lips.
The pool of nothingness was drawing closer to my feet. I took another step away from it, and felt the wall at my back.
“What is this stuff, Mindy?”
“It’s the river,” she squeaked. “The stuff between up here and down there.”
The bed was close enough for me to jump to, but the blackness had reached the toes of my sneakers, and suddenly my feet were ice-cold. The muscles of my calves felt too weak to move.
A moment later my sneakers were sinking into the floor.
“How do I get out of this stuff?”
Mindy was too scared to answer, and only watched with wide, terrified eyes. I could feel the blackness creep up to my knees, as cold as winter mud. I reached out, trying to grab the edge of my bed, but it was too far away.
The iciness crawled up my body as I sank, every inch sending fresh waves of shudders through me. The sweet smell filled my lungs, almost too thick to breathe.
Just as it passed my waist, the door to my bedroom opened. It was my mother in a white nightgown. She must have heard me arguing with Mindy before I’d crossed over.
“Lizzie?” she called softly, squinting at my empty bed.
“Mom!” I yelled, but of course she couldn’t hear me. I was on the flipside now, hidden from her. Suddenly, being invisible wasn’t such a great superpower.
The black goo passed my shoulders.
“Yamaraj, I need you,” I cried one last time, and felt heat kindle on my lips again.
I tried to scream, hoping that my panic would pop me back into the land of the living. But the cold ink slowed the pounding of my heart and pressed the air from my lungs. It covered my mouth, my eyes, my ears, like liquid midnight sliding over me.
A moment later I was down in the river.
* * *
It was cold down here, and dark.
The only sound was a low moan, a steady wind scouring a huge, empty space. The air felt almost solid, ruffling my hair and clothes and trying to push me off my feet. But I wasn’t drowning, and at least I was standing on something solid; my feet had settled on a surface in the formless dark.
A glimmer of white appeared, not too far away—a man’s face.
He looked older than his voice had sounded, as old as my grandfather, very pale with white hair. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the rest of him came into focus. He wore a long coat covered with patches, and his hands were plunged into its pockets. The hem of his coat rippled in the wind.
He was staring at me. “You’re alive.”
“No kidding.”
His hand emerged to stroke his chin, pallid fingers shining in the darkness. His skin was pale, but not quite gray. It had a sweaty glow, like the gloss of a marble statue.
“What the hell are you doing under my bedroom?” My voice sounded thin against the constant wind.
“I smelled a little girl.” He had the slightest accent. “Is she yours?”
“Mine?”
He raised one pale eyebrow. His eyes were colorless, almost transparent, like those pale fish that live in ocean trenches, too deep for light to reach.
“You don’t collect?”
“Collect ghosts?”
“You must be new.” The man’s smile appeared gradually, like something controlled by a dial. It made the basement colder.
Then I realized that his skin glowed softly in the dark, just as mine did.
“You’re like me,” I said. He wasn’t some monster of legend. He was another psychopomp.
“Well spotted.” He was smirking at me. “But do you really know what we are?”
“Yes. And I don’t collect ghosts.”
“I could teach you how,” he said, taking a step forward.
“Stay right where you are.”
He smiled again. “Do I frighten you?”
“Terrorists with machine guns frighten me. You’re just pissing me off. I was trying to sleep.”
“My apologies.” He made a little bow. “But sleep is not something you need anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sleep is a little slice of death. And you’ve already had a big slice, haven’t you? All the cake you’ll ever need.”
“You kind of suck at metaphors,” I said.
The old man’s eyes flashed in the darkness. “English may not be my first language, but I’m good at many other things, and I’ve always wanted an apprentice. I can show you my tricks. All it will cost you is that little girl.”
I wanted to scream at him then, but the anger I should have felt was missing. The cold had a firm grip on my muscles, and the constant wind seemed to strip my emotions away.
My lips were tingling, though, a flicker of heat in all that dark.
“No thanks,” I said.
The old man’s fingers tugged at the corners of his pockets, which opened wider and wider. Somehow they were darker than the basement itself, depthless and hungry.
“Don’t you want to see what’s in my pockets?”
Finally I felt a trickle of fear, and my muscles jolted to life. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the knife. “Not even slightly.”
He looked disappointed. “A knife? How absurd. There’s no need for violence, my dear. I have no interest in anyone as lively as you.”
“Then leave me and my friend alone.”
“That little ghost is not your friend. They aren’t really people, you know.”
I didn’t want to hear this, and yet I asked, “Then what are they?”
“They’re loose threads of memory, stories that tell themselves. And if you know how, you can weave the most beautiful things from them.” He stroked his pockets with his palms. “Are you sure you don’t want to see?”