Beyond by Graham McNamee Page A

to meet up.
    “Sorry,” she says. “Okay, seriously. Don’t panic. Maybe it was one of those waking dreams, that hypnagogia thing I told you about. You’re stressed, zapped with migraines, going on no sleep and full of pharmaceuticals. That’s a monster mess screwing with your brain. So maybe when you closed your eyes for a second, you snapped right into a nightmare. Doesn’t make you a nutcase.”
    I gulp my coffee, trying to warm up, and trying to believe her explanation. I’m drinking decaf, since my nerves are already fried.
    We’re sitting by the windows, leaning on the old counter with all those initials and hearts carved into it—the love log. Outside the wind is buffeting the glass. Thecafé is filled, and it’s good to be in a crowd, safer. The jazzy music and the general noise insulate us so nobody can overhear.
    “What about that sick guy in the waiting room?” I ask.
    “You sure you’ve never seen him before?”
    “A total stranger. I’d remember those eyes.”
    “Maybe your brain just spliced him into your scanner nightmare. He was fresh in your mind.”
    That sounds kind of weak. But I’ll grab onto anything to keep from going under. Because I’m starting to think it was more than just some bones that got unearthed in the landslide. Like something else was uncovered with them and set free to haunt me.
    “But I wasn’t dreaming the voice. I was wide awake in the waiting room when I heard it.”
    She shrugs. “I don’t know. This has gone way past weird.”
    We stare out at the rain. January is the grayest month here.
    Lexi sips her coffee. “I found something on those near-death-experience websites that might fit in with what you went through when you were flatlining. When your shadow took you away. There are these things called Grim Enders .”
    “What’re they?”
    “Souls who don’t cross over into the light.”
    I hug my arms close, trying to get warm. “Why don’t they?”
    “Some say that they just can’t see the light. Likethey’re blind to it. Some think they’re scared of the light, or they’re sure it won’t take them. So they get trapped in The Divide .”
    “The what?”
    “The Divide. It’s this dark nothing kind of place that separates the living world from the other side —the afterlife. It’s where you end up if you can’t, or won’t, go to the light.”
    “I never knew there was this whole geography to the afterlife.”
    I can tell Lexi’s been chatting online with those Second Chance people. Death tourists, who were “just visiting” the other side.
    “There are a lot of different descriptions of the Divide. They say for most departing souls who cross over, the Divide is just a borderline that’s as thin as a thread. But for some it’s like the Grand Canyon, darkness stretching to infinity, the end of everything. And it swallows them up.”
    “Grim Enders.” The wind rattles the window, trying to find a way in.
    “They’re condemned to the dark because they can’t face the light. No afterlife for them. No nothing. Just this sad and lonely sort of hell. That’s their eternity.” Lexi digs in her pocket and hands over a folded sheet of paper. “I got this off one of the sites.”
    I smooth it out on the counter.
    It’s an illustration, with a caption that says Grim Enders at the Gate . It shows a glowing moonlike “gate” to the other side, surrounded by darkness, and a ghostly woman in a nightgown with long hair about to step through it. But allaround the edges of this gate black creatures are hanging there like gargoyles. The light dies on these things, leaving them as faceless shadows. They reach out, dark fingers brushing over the woman’s hair and tugging at her gown.
    “Has anyone had a close encounter with these Enders?”
    Lexi nods. “It’s pretty rare, but there are reports of them lurking in the Divide to spy on the souls crossing into the light. And when the near-death people are brought back to life, on their return trip