Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

going off in my head, the explosions bright. They hurt. By the time my vision
cleared, they were gone. I tried to tell myself I’d imagined it all, but then
someone knocked on the door ten minutes later, and I knew it wasn’t only in
my head because the police were there, saying things I didn’t want to hear. I
told them it was a mistake, it had to be a mistake. I screamed at them to get
the hell away from me. Grandad showed up shortly after, and I begged him to
tell me the truth. He did.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-five,” Hugo said.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. It was … a lot. And then the Manager came to see me.” His voice
hardened slightly. “Three days after their funeral. One moment I was going
through things in the house I thought could be donated to Goodwill, and the
next he was standing in front of me. He … told me things. About life and
death. How it’s a cycle that never ends and never would. Grief, he said, is a
catalyst. A transformation. And then he offered me a job.”
“And you took it? You believed him?”
Hugo nodded. “The Manager is many things, most of which I can’t even
begin to describe. But he’s not a liar. He speaks only in truths, even if we
don’t want to hear what he has to say. I didn’t trust him right away. I don’t
know if I do even now. But he showed me things, things that should have
been impossible. Death has a beauty to it. We don’t see it because we don’t
want to. And that makes sense. Why would we want to focus on something
that takes us away from everything we know? How do we even begin to
understand that there’s more than what we see?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Wallace admitted. “To any of it.” That
troubled him, because he felt like he should know, like the answer was on the
tip of his tongue.
“Faith,” Hugo said, and Wallace groaned. “Oh, stop it. I’m not talking
about religion or God or whatever else you might be thinking. Faith isn’t
always … it’s not just about those things. It’s not something I can force upon
you, even if you think that’s what I’m doing.”
“Aren’t you?” Wallace asked, trying to keep his voice even. “You’re
trying to make me believe in something I don’t want.”
“Why is that, do you think?”
Wallace didn’t know.