Doneengrinned at him as he was eaten alive. He saw her through the pain, through the faces, through the blood, and if he had one last wish that could be granted, it would be to see her killed.
But he was granted no last wish.
He felt his body die, felt the life within him stop as his heart ceased pumping and his brain functions ended, but beyond the shock and pain there was a lightening, a lessening of weight as his spirit pulled free of its heavy fleshy host and emerged unburdened into the open air.
It was not a transformation, this transition from life to death; there were no disruptions in his thoughts, no change in his self. It was more like kicking off a pair of shoes and going barefoot. Or stripping off clothes and walking naked. The difference was all external, the loss one of accoutrements, not essence.
He saw his body beneath him, saw the jacketed creatures eating his remains, sawDoneen staring at him with victorious glee. She could still see him, and she waved mockingly as he felt a tug on his form, a power drawing him like a magnet. He thought of Margot and was immediately in her bedroom, in her bed, next to her. There was no longer a barrier between them, and for a brief fraction of a second, he smelled her skin, touched her face, felt the smoothness of her breasts.
And then he was yanked back, pulled into and through the House into a House on the Other Side.
It happened in an instant. There was no flight through space, no view of the Eastern Seaboard beneath him, no surrounding blackness through which he passed, simply a sensation ofvacuumlike suction and what looked like a split-section transformation of their bedroom into the House, before he was flat on the floor on the Other Side.
He jumped up. The House in which he found himself was identical to the one he'd entered via the den door, the one in which he'd seen his mother. There were no walls or rooms, only that big open space in that color he did not recognize. Above him were the wispy spirits he had seen before, but though they now looked like individual beings to him rather than clouds, apparently he was not yet one of them. He could neither fly nor float, and he had to run across the floor to the corner, where his mother, still bald, was once again sitting on an egg in a nest.
She smiled at him as he approached.
"I'm dead!" he cried.
She nodded.
He fell into the nest, hugged her, and she felt solid to him, real, and there was something comforting in that.
"Margot's a widow! Tony has no father!"
"Time passes quickly here," his mother said. "They'll be with you soon enough."
The sticks of the nest were hard and uncomfortable against his side, but his mother's arms were soft and warm, her smile welcoming. There were a million questions swirling in his mind. He wanted to know where his father was, where the centuries' worth of other dead people were, whether there was a God or a heaven or a hell, whether he was going to be reincarnated or live here or move on to someplace else, but overpowering everything was the desire for revenge, the burning need to get back atDoneen and punish her, make her pay for what she'd done. He might be dead, but he had not lost his capacity for human emotions. He had not been filled with peace and love and a warm sense of contentment.
He hated the bitch.
He wanted her dead.
"Why am I here?" he asked his mother. "Is this where I'm supposed to spend my ... afterlife?"
She picked up a rose from somewhere in the nest to the right of her and chewed on it thoughtfully.
"You're still in the House," she said. "It doesn't seem to want to let you go."
"Is that good or bad?"
"It's . . . interesting."
"What happened to you?"
"After I was killed?"
He nodded.
"I was freed instantly."
"Did you go ... here?"
She shook her head, laughing, and her laugh was like music. "I am not here even now."
"Where are you?"
"I am on the Other Side."
"Where is this, then? I thought this was the Other Side."
"The border. The Other Side of the border, but the border nevertheless. Until you are fully on the Other Side, you can still go back. You may be dead, but you are not yet completely free from . . . that world. That's what makes it interesting."
"I thought the Houses were charged up again. I
thought the barrier was in place and you ... we ...
couldn't go back and forth."
"You're still part of the House." She looked at him.
"You're not bound by the border. Apparently, the House still needs you."
"But the barrier is up, right? Things aren't. .leakm out anymore, are they?"
"No." She stroked his hair.
"What about those . . . things thatkiliied me?"
"They must've been trapped out there when the border closed."
He blinked. "Jesus, Margot and Tony!"
She placed a calming hand on his. "Those creatures probably burnt themselves out fighting you. They're like fish out of water there. They don't last long. The worlds . . . aren't really compatible." She smiled at him.
"Good."
She nodded. "Yes."
"So where's Billings?"
His mother's face fell, and for the first time, she looked worried. "He's gone."
"I know he's dead. I mean, where's his ghost or his spirit or--"
"He's gone," she said. "There's nothing left of him."
"He--"
"They're not like us, the butler and the girl."
Understanding dawned on him. "Then if he can be killed, she can be killed."
His mother nodded.
"Is that why I'm still part of the House?"
"Perhaps," she mused. She thought for a moment.
"You can capture her, you know."
"Can I kill her?"
She shook her head. "No. Not anymore. You could have if you were alive. But dead you can only hold her, restrain her. You can still bring her back, though. You can return her to the House and keep her here, keep her away from your wife and son." She looked at him as though she'd just thought of it for the first time.
"Your son," she said wonderingly. "My grandson."
He smiled at her. "Tony."
"Tony."
"I think you'd like him, Mom."
"I'm sure I will."
The egg shook, rumbled, and Daniel leaped to his feet, tottering on the unstable branches of the nest. His mother moved off the egg, and helped him out of the nest.
It shook again, vibrated, jerked.
Suddenly the egg cracked open, and from it emerged ... nothing.
A beatific smile crossed his mother's face, and she started to fade. As she grew slowly insubstantial, her hair seemed to return, and she looked more like the mother he remembered. He reached out to her, but their hands passed through each other.
"I love you," his mother said. "We all love you."
"I love you, too."
"I'll see you in--" she began.
And she was gone.
The House darkened, the interior dimming as if a light had been switched off, the blank world outside growing indistinct. He felt panicky, didn't know what he was supposed to do, but he thought of Margot, thought of Tony and he was back home, in their bedroom, standing at If the foot of the bed and staring down at a sleeping Margot.
He felt lost, confused. He supposed, in the back of hisli mind, despite all of the surface layers of skepticism mod- fern life had heaped on him, he had assumed that all would be revealed after death, that the answers to the cosmic questions and metaphysical concerns that had bedeviled mankind since the beginning of history and provided the impetus for every religion would be instantly supplied to him and he would become some sort of wise, enlightened, loving being, far different and far superior to the ordinary average guy he'd been.
But he was the same person as before, no different, if no smarter, no more enlightened.