On the Other Side Read online

  ‘Look at them, Evie. Take it all in, and make sure you don’t turn out the same.’ He spoke sternly, looking more serious than she’d ever seen him – a completely different person for a moment – but then his face softened, he loosened his grip and together they walked swiftly back to the lift. Evie pressed number 7 continuously and fast until the doors closed and the lift began to rise. Then she leaned against the wall and let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

  ‘I can’t be one of them.’ She shook her head fiercely, hammering home the point to herself as much as to the little Dutchman.

  ‘We call them The Hopeless. And I’m glad to hear you say that.’ The relief was clear on Dr Lieffe’s face.

  ‘No, I won’t be hopeless. I am full of hope. I’m a Hopeful.’ Evie spoke fast, convincing herself that the words were true. ‘But I don’t know what it is that’s weighing down my soul. I don’t know how to fix this.’ A lump had formed in her throat.

  The lift doors opened and they both stepped out immediately, wanting to be rid of the memory of the second floor, though they didn’t yet move towards Apartment 72.

  ‘Evie, I’ve heard every single person who’s come back to this building say exactly that, and not once has it been true.’ Evie looked down at her carpet bag shoes sheepishly. ‘Remember, I was the gatekeeper to this building, and everyone within it told me their business. You and I both know what it is that’s keeping you here. You just need to admit it to yourself first.’ He started walking towards her door.

  Evie understood what he was saying, but something else now puzzled her. ‘Dr Lieffe, if this is the afterlife’s waiting room, and people get stuck here because they can’t move on to the actual afterlife, and if you know exactly what it is that lets people pass on, why are you still here?’

  Dr Lieffe stopped halfway down the corridor. He looked her right in the eyes as his own filled with tears. She felt embarrassed and gazed down at her shoes, letting him have a moment to himself.

  ‘Well,’ he said, after what seemed like an everlasting moment, ‘I’ve never had anyone ask me that before.’ She glanced up as he wiped a tear from his cheek with his thumb. ‘Evie, this building, these corridors, they are your waiting room. Just like everyone’s heaven is different, everyone’s purgatory is too. My own life was so miserable that I found my happiness through other people, through getting to know their stories and occasionally being part of them. When I arrived here after I died, the entrance doors to the building wouldn’t open. Not until I forgave my ex-wife for divorcing me. I knew deep down that it wasn’t her fault; she just wasn’t in love with me any more. But I’d blamed her for years. My waiting room was in front of this building, and once I’d let that grudge go, the doors opened for me and I got to be in my own personal heaven.’ He gestured around him at his happy place, his little piece of paradise. ‘Talking to the people in this building and offering my services where I could was my entire life. So it makes sense that my heaven is back here, helping people like you find their way into their apartments.’

  In that moment, Evie couldn’t think of anyone she’d met who had a bigger, more selfless heart than Dr Lieffe. Then she remembered another man she’d known, once upon a time, and a weight in her own heart tugged her downwards. Dr Lieffe saw the pain flicker across her face.

  ‘Evie. You know what it is that’s keeping you here. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she sniffed. ‘I do.’ She didn’t realise she was crying until Dr Lieffe moved to her and tentatively rubbed a tear from her jawline with the same thumb he’d used to wipe away his own. ‘It’s … it’s my secrets.’

  ‘Secrets, Evie? You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. Positive. There are certain things I kept from my family. Partly because nobody needed to know, and partly because I couldn’t bear to relive them. There wasn’t a day that went by when they didn’t catch me off guard. I’d be walking up the stairs in my own home and think there was an extra step, only to find there wasn’t. I’d be in the garden, tending to flowers, and my breath would catch. If you threw my heart into the air, it would fall to the ground twice as fast with the weight of those secrets, I’m certain.’

  The idea of sharing the things she’d forced herself to keep hidden for so many years felt all wrong, but at the same time oddly right. There was a chance she could feel light again. A chance to dance without her feet being nailed to the floor. A chance to put her unlived past to rest.

  Sometimes, she thought, we reach a fork in the road and choose to go one way, then wonder what would have happened had we chosen the other path. Even more so when the path we end up on was chosen for us and the other path is so far away, there’s no chance of ever turning back. Evie had once reached a fork in the road and had had no choice but to take the wrong path.

  Dr Lieffe sighed heavily and gave a small smile of relief. ‘Well then. That’s the hard part over. The next bit is comparatively easy, you’ll be glad to hear.’ He started leading her back down the corridor to the lift, past Mr Autumn, who was now curled up fast asleep outside his door, still sucking his thumb.

  ‘But how do I even begin to fix this? I’m dead. I can’t go back to the …’ she paused, trying to think of what to call the world she’d left behind, ‘the land of the living and seek out all the people I’d need to talk to in order to open my door.’

  Lieffe took her hand in his and squeezed it, whether to calm himself down or to comfort her, she couldn’t tell. Then he led her back into the lift, which Evie was already sick of seeing. This time, he pressed the button marked 0.

  ‘There’s always a way, Evie.’

  The doors closed.

  3

  the wall

  The lift sank down to the ground floor. Lieffe then led her through the foyer, behind his desk – where he stopped to pick up a cigarette and light it – through a kitchenette and down a flight of stairs that seemed only to lead to darkness. Lieffe flicked a switch and a dim, yellow light revealed a disappointing basement. A floor that Evie had never had cause to visit all those years ago. She’d guessed it was just storage space for the things previous residents had left behind, or where lost property lived. She herself had lost a few things while living here: a red and white polka-dot umbrella, three pairs of sunglasses that she’d bought in progressively bigger sizes in the hope they’d be too big to lose, and a pair of flip-flops that she’d kicked off in the lobby while chatting to Lieffe one warm summer’s evening after having been out at a party in a park where she’d got a little tipsy. Each time she’d noticed something missing, Lieffe would disappear down to the basement and reappear a few minutes later holding the ever-overflowing Lost and Found box.

  ‘It should just be the Lost Box,’ Evie had once said. ‘Even if someone finds something and places it in the box, it’s still lost until it’s found by its owner. And once it’s found, it no longer has a place in the box!’ With that, Dr Lieffe had taken his marker pen and scribbled out the words ‘and Found’ on the side of the box.

  Evie’s eyes adjusted to the light. The Lost Box sat in the corner on the concrete floor; no green carpets like upstairs. Lieffe flipped a switch that provided a weak yellowy light, just enough so he could make his way across the room to the very back wall. It was a pale cream colour, but Evie could see that it had once been covered in blue-and-pink-striped wallpaper, which had since been torn away in uneven strips, leaving scraps around the edges, giving the wall a jagged border. The large cream patch in the middle shimmered gently in the faint light, and Evie could swear there was a hum in the air, like the sound of an electrical storm on its way.

  Dr Lieffe stood facing her in front of the wall and gestured to it with a hint of a smile, as if presenting it to her. She stared back blankly.

  ‘The wall, Evie!’ he growled, excited now, and slightly annoyed at her lack of understanding. ‘The wall is the way back that you’re looking for.’

  She stepped closer. The hum was now a little louder, and she could hear that, much in the way
that the second floor’s cacophony was made up of voices, this sound was made up of chatter too, although much less aggressive, far calmer. Like soft whispers to a secret love, hearts spilling over with champagne, or that gentle, hushed tone mothers use when tucking in their children.

  ‘What is it? Why can I hear the whole world at once? Everyone’s so …’ Evie’s eyelids felt heavy, and she let her forehead rest gently against the wall’s oddly warm surface, ‘content.’

  ‘Is that what you hear? Contentedness?’ Lieffe had pulled a desk chair to the centre of the room and was sitting now, watching Evie.

  ‘Isn’t that what you hear?’ Evie let herself sink to the floor and settled on the concrete, her back pressed firmly against the wall, unwilling to be parted from it. She turned her head to the side so she could keep one ear to the hum.

  ‘Everyone hears something different, depending on what sort of life they lived and who they’ve left behind. I hear laughing. Lots of it.’ Through her half-closed eyelids, Evie could see Lieffe smiling.

  ‘To me the world sounds warm and hushed,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel the same way I felt once when I was a teenager, and I came home from a wonderful evening out with a friend and tiptoed upstairs, trying not to giggle and wake my parents.’ Images danced in her mind, and she smiled, drunk from the wall’s warmth.

  ‘The sound of a happy life, no doubt.’

  Lieffe seemed far away to Evie now. She let herself sink further into the wall, feeling it wrap around her, hugging her and rocking her to sleep.

  ‘Alley-oop!’ Lieffe had taken her hands and was tugging her upwards to a standing position. Taken by surprise, she toppled on to him slightly but managed to regain her balance after a few deep breaths. ‘Seems like you and the wall will get along just fine.’

  ‘Get along? You make it sound like a person.’ Evie brushed down her skirt and undid her coat, a little warm and flustered now.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure what it is, Evie, but it’s definitely more like a person than a wall.’ Lieffe ran a hand across it and his brow creased. ‘It’s sort of … sentimental. It has an understanding of who we are, but it’s like a child. If you’re nice, it’ll play with you. If you’re not, it won’t. I had no doubt it would like you, Evie, but it’s nice to see the effect you have on each other.’

  ‘On each other? It made me feel wonderful, but I’m not sure I had any sort of effect on …’ She turned to where she had been pressed against the wall, and saw that that feeling of being hugged had, in fact, been literal. The wall had sunk in on itself, moulded itself around her, and the imprint of her body was embedded in its surface. Now it was shifting and shimmering, remoulding itself back to its former flatness.

  ‘Come, let me explain.’ Lieffe wheeled the chair around behind Evie, scooped her up in its seat then guided her over to a desk in the corner. He picked up a pen and drew a notebook towards him, then started to draw on the faded blue lines. He marked five parallel horizontal lines. Between the top two he wrote HEAVEN. In the next space, between the second and third lines, he wrote AFTERLIFE’S WAITING ROOM, in the next gap LIFE and in the space below that HELL. He took his pen to the line between HEAVEN and AFTERLIFE’S WAITING ROOM and darkened it considerably, then did the same to the line between LIFE and HELL. The middle line, between AFTERLIFE’S WAITING ROOM and LIFE, he scribbled over, making it jagged and messy.

  ‘The gateways to heaven and hell are very well protected. You’ve seen for yourself that the doors to heaven are securely locked.’ Dr Lieffe used the tip of the pen as a pointer, guiding Evie through his diagram.

  ‘And what about the doorway to hell?’ She swivelled the notebook towards her so she could get a better look.

  ‘If you knew you were going to hell, would you be keen to knock on the devil’s door? No. If you’re going there, you get collected. I pray you never have to witness that.’ Dr Lieffe’s eyes glazed over and he shook a little as he looked down at his drawing. His pen drifted to the thick black line between LIFE and HELL and he added to its darkness a bit more. Evie wondered what had made him shudder. Lieffe had always proved to be a brave, bold man; if something made him quiet, you knew it was bad.

  ‘What about this line here?’ She pointed to the jagged line in the centre; the gateway between where she was now and where she needed to go. ‘It’s not the same as the others.’

  Lieffe leaned against the edge of the desk and looked towards the wall. He took the cigarette from between his lips and flicked it to the floor, squashing the dying embers under one of his brogues.

  ‘No, it’s not the same, Evie. This place,’ he held up his hands, gesturing to the room around them, ‘is not like heaven or hell. It’s not as solid or as sure.’ Evie raised an eyebrow, trying desperately to follow. Lieffe changed tack, hoping to make it easier for her to understand. ‘If life is a full-colour drawing, a beautiful animation, then this place, the afterlife’s waiting room, is the tracing paper over the top of that animation. It’s close to the original, but not quite the same. It’s faded and translucent, like looking at the world through a frosted window. Everyone in this world is neither here nor there. We’re certainly not alive, but we’re also not entirely dead yet either.’

  Evie looked at the wall, shimmering under the weak light. The flat surface appeared to wobble, almost like it was waving at them, trying to get their attention. It really is like a child, she thought.

  ‘The wall between this world and the land of the living has always been more permeable than the walls to heaven and hell. Over the years, hundreds of tortured souls have tried to force their way through, trying to get back home, unable to accept their death. It has made the wall even weaker in certain places. It’s sad for those still alive but quite helpful for you, Evie.’

  ‘Sad for those still alive?’ she asked. ‘What do you mean?’

  Lieffe sighed, worry creasing his already wrinkly brow. ‘There aren’t supposed to be ghosts on earth. Not the kind people can see and be tormented by, anyway. When you cross over, you will do so with good intent. For the sole purpose of completing your … your unfinished business, as it were, which means you’ll be completely invisible to those still alive. You won’t even cast a shadow. Those who force their way back with the intention of staying are not peaceful, and aggressive souls upset the nature of things. Living people catch glimpses of them when those souls are in their most aggressive, frustrated state. Their energy can also knock things off shelves, slam doors, shatter glass … No, that’s not supposed to happen. Ghosts are not supposed to exist. But they’ve made it easier to get you back home.’

  Evie walked back to the wall, partly because she liked the feeling it gave her but also because she needed to inspect it. If she was going to … befriend it, so that it let her cross through it, she needed to get up close and personal.

  ‘And you’ve done this before?’ She eyed Lieffe, hoping she wasn’t his first experiment.

  ‘Myself.’ He nodded with a faint smile. ‘When I went back home to forgive my wife.’

  ‘Is it easy?’ Evie was stroking the wall with the back of her index finger, and she swore she heard it purr like a satisfied kitten.

  ‘It’s … simple enough. It just requires a few things.’ Lieffe walked across to where the Lost Box sat. He picked it up and brought it over, placing it in front of Evie’s feet.

  Inside the box was a pink sock and a child’s yellow rain hat. Evie balanced the hat lightly on her own head, although it was far too small for her. Lieffe laughed at her serious expression underneath such a daft hat.

  ‘You never changed, Evie, did you?’ he asked, still chortling. She took the hat from her head and looked down at it, rubbing her thumbs over its plastic edges.

  ‘Oh, I did, Lieffe. Quite a bit, actually. But it’s so nice to be back.’ She looked up and noticed the little man’s soft expression. ‘Why have you brought me this box?’

  4

  the lost box

  ‘Evie, do you remember how things used to tu
rn up in this box that seemingly belonged to no one?’ Lieffe asked. ‘Items used to sit in there for weeks, months even, with no apparent owner, then all of a sudden, one day, someone would come to claim something. It was a victory worth buying a cake and streamers for.’

  Evie laughed. She remembered how they’d sit and make up stories about the people who owned each item, and how they came to lose it. When someone turned up to claim something, they’d interrogate them to see how right (or, more often than not, wrong) they were.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, settling back into the chair, ‘I remember.’

  ‘Well, this box has a sort of magic to it here.’ He picked it up and placed it in Evie’s lap. She stared at its very plain and ordinary – parcel-paper brown – cardboard interior.

  ‘Magic?’ She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Evie, you died at eighty-two, but now you look twenty-seven, you’re back in a building you haven’t visited in over fifty years with a man who died long before you did, and you just had a hug from a wall. Surely we’re well past questioning the supernatural?’

  He had a point. Evie shrugged and put her palms flat against the sides of the box. She lifted it above her head so she could look at its underside.

  ‘Is it like pulling a rabbit from a hat?’

  Lieffe’s face scrunched as though he was ready to scold her again, but then the wrinkles softened. ‘Actually, I suppose it is.’ He took the box out of her hands and placed it back in her lap, gesturing with his index finger for it to stay there, as if it was an obedient dog. Evie tucked her eager, fidgety hands underneath her thighs. ‘In order to get to where you need to go, you have to give the wall something to go on. Something to tell it exactly where it should take you.’

  Evie’s head cocked to the right.

  Lieffe smiled inwardly. He was reminded of his daughter when she was young, trying to understand her maths homework while he attempted to explain it to her with his own very limited knowledge.