Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER
Jobe nodded and wiped away tears.
Dennison tilted her head and looked up sideways
into his brown eyes. “Jobe, is there anything you want
to say? Anything left you want to do? Anything you
need to understand?”
He just shook his head.
“Good,” Dennison said. “Then go.”
This time, rather than the ubiquitous pink glow, an
electric blue luminosity—Blue for boys? Shutty wondered—scratched
itself along the room’s naked brick
wall in a vaguely lightning-shaped pattern. The shape
widened, pulling itself apart, revealing behind it a
brightly lit tunnel trailing off into forever, the proverbial
light throbbing at its unseen end.
Jobe, needing no further encouragement, stepped
in. The severe wounds his form had taken from the
unfriendly faded. With them went his world-weary
exhaustion, which was replaced by a huge, shit-eating
grin. A happier face she’d not seen on him, even when
he was laughing at his own bad jokes. As he walked off,
he said something. Shutty swore it was along the lines
of, “Oh, wow! What hot babes!” but by the time the
sentence was complete, his silhouette had been absorbed
into the great calming blue.
Then it and he, like Bilka, were gone.
“Was all that gaudy crap for real?” Shutty said in a
half-whisper. It was intended for herself. She didn’t
realize how closely Dennison was standing.
“As much as anything,” Dennison said. “The things
that tethered them here—their feelings that they should
be here—became nonissues when they realized they
were dead, and found out that their killer died too. So
they were free to go. Where? I haven’t got a clue. As far
as Orpheus can tell, what comes next looks like whatever
you want it to be.”
“You mean it could be, like, all Elvis Presley impersonators?”
Shutty asked, a little worried at the shapes
some heavens might take.
“So they tell me,” Dennison said, nodding. “So
what about you?”
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HAUNTING THE DEAD
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