A Guide to the Other Side (3 page)

“I didn't wet my bed, Kristina.”

“I'm not convinced.”

“You're dead. You can go back and relive that moment.”

“But it's so much more fun this way.”

I shook my head. “This isn't funny, you know. That thing could have sucked up my soul or unleashed demon spiders on me or something.” I shuddered at the thought of demon spiders descending from the ceiling and crawling all over me.

“Listen, Baylor, I know you're nervous, but it was a onetime thing. You'll have so much energy surrounding you today, it'll be like you're wearing a suit of armor.”

“Well, that sounds good, I guess.”

“Just try not to pee in it if you get a little nervous.”

  *  *  *  

I didn't learn a single thing at school that day. I just kept tossing around the possible intentions of the Sheet Man's visit.

Was he actually threatening me? Sure, his eyes were freaky, but other than that, was he really that scary? Physically, no. But the fact that his presence had obstructed Kristina from sharing the room was alarming at best, and a harbinger of my impending death at worst.

Maybe he was just keeping watch over me in a way Kristina couldn't? I had been building up my positive energy so much for Halloween that it was difficult for me to accept that any sort of bad spirit could have broken through. Who's to say that he wasn't merely a sentinel with a sheet?

It was also possible he was trying to send a message. What if he needed help? What if some corrupt company was selling a brand of sheets that would somehow strangle people in their sleep? What if a bunch of children overseas were locked in a factory and being forced to fabricate the sheets? What if it wasn't a sheet at all and he was just a fashionable ghost? Unlikely, but since I could talk to dead people, I didn't like to rule out unlikely things.

By the end of the day I had resolved to do a little investigating. Since I was fairly confident it had been a sheet and not some sort of ghostly burka, I decided to go straight to the source and take the bus to Bed Bath & Beyond. It was practically sheet heaven. I figured maybe I could find a similar white sheet, which might lead to a clue.

Riding a bus, or a plane or a train or, well, any kind of transportation where I'm trapped with strangers, can be a very unpredictable experience for me. Sometimes the passengers around me will be boring and, in turn, have boring loved ones who won't bother me.

Other times it's pure chaos.

The only thing I can compare it to is when you're walking along a street and a jackhammer is pounding into the pavement. That deafening, grating noise is all you can hear, and you can try to ignore it and talk over it, but it's just too loud.

Ghosts, especially the pesky ones, are my personal jackhammers pounding relentlessly into my brain. They will get in my face and yell at me until I deliver a message. Even when I try to tune them out, they'll scream from the other side, and eventually Kristina will get so annoyed with them that she'll force me to deliver the message just so she can break the connection and seal off the ghost.

It's really bad when there's more than one of these annoying ghosts, who always have the most inane messages. Stupid things like “She needs to remember to change the air conditioner filters more often” or “He needs to know that I'm okay with him throwing out all my socks.” I could understand the urgency if the ghosts died tragically and they wished to tell a loved one that they were now at peace, or maybe they knew of a dark secret the person was keeping and they wished to give that person comfort. In those kinds of situations I'm almost always happy to help.

But when I have a small Venezuelan woman yammering in my ear that her granddaughter is using the incorrect arepa recipe and, thus, embarrassing her family's legacy, I'm not so pleased to relay the message.

Kristina, who's learned a lot alongside me over the years, once told me my purpose was to deliver healing messages, and if I didn't think a message was healing, I didn't need to deliver it. That's also why I'm able to tune out certain spirits.

But sometimes the ghosts are so strong and persistent that it's easier to give in.

“My name is Baylor Bosco, and I can communicate with people who have crossed over,” I finally blurted out to the haggard-looking woman in the seat behind me. “I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but your grandma will not stop pestering me. She says you're using the wrong kind of cornmeal in your arepas and that you're tarnishing her reputation every time you serve them to people and tell them that you used her recipe.”

“Jor makin' me look bad,
chiquita
,” the grandma lamented.

The woman blinked at me.

“Did you understand me?” I said slowly.

“Yes, I understood you,” she said, shaking her head. “Shut up and turn around.”

Ugh. A doubter.

“I'm not kidding, Ana.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

“How'd you know my name?”

“Your grandma told me. She's standing right there.” I pointed to the space just over her shoulder, where her grandma hovered, clucking her tongue as she examined her hair.

Her eyes followed my finger, but she saw nothing, of course. She looked around the bus, this time with a slight grin on her face. “Did Armando put you up to this?” She chuckled. “I'm gonna be on YouTube, aren't I?” She waved to the nonexistent hidden cameras while sticking out her tongue.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It's just me, you, and your annoyed
abuela
.”

“Do me a favah,” the old woman said. “Tell Ana her hair looked bettah when it was dyed blue, not this nasty pink like it is now.”

I repeated the message, and Ana's face collapsed into a frown.

“Oh.” She looked out the window. “That sounds just like something she'd say. I got it done yesterday.”

“She needs to go get her money back!”

I looked at the old woman. “I'm not saying that.”

“What'd she say?” Ana asked, her head whipping back in my direction.

I sighed. “She said you should go get your money back.”

“I thought people were supposed to get nicer after they died.”

“Most of them do,” I said.

Still frowning, her voice a bit terse, she asked, “What's the right cornmeal, then?”

“She says it's Masarepa flour, not masa harina, because that has lime in it and makes the arepas taste
malas
.”

I can't speak Spanish, but that's a funny thing about communicating with ghosts. Even though I speak with them in English, whenever I relay a message to their loved ones, a part of their personality and soul can also come through.

I turned to Kristina and nodded. My work here was done, and a second later the woman had disappeared.

“Did she say anything else?” Ana asked. “Did she mention my fiancé? Does she like Armando?”

My lips pressed together awkwardly. “I'm not sure. She just left.”

“Typical,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “Do me a favor: Next time keep my grandma's messages to yourself.”

  *  *  *  

Inside Bed Bath & Beyond, I wandered around looking for the bedding department, bewildered by all the products I never knew existed. There were so many different kinds of pots and pans and baking sheets and knives and kitchen utensils. There was an entire wall of pillows, soaring up to the ceiling some twenty feet high. How were people supposed to see the pillows at the very top? Not everyone had a ghost sister who could drift up and give her opinion.

Once my shock wore away and I found the right section of the store, I realized it would be no easy task to find the correct white sheet, mostly because there were about two billion styles to choose from.

“Can you sense anything?” I asked Kristina. I was perusing the rows, one by one, touching every single package in the hope that some sort of message would be attached to one of them. Sometimes I can see a memory associated with an object. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be any real rhyme or reason to these visions, so I'll find myself randomly touching something and gasping in shock when a memory takes over. I've learned to avoid antique shops.

“Nothing,” she said. “We're on a wild-goose chase here, Baylor. That sheet could have been purchased from anywhere, and that's if the sheet matters at all, which I can almost guarantee you it doesn't.”

“There has to be something else that we're not getting, Kristina,” I said. “It doesn't make any sense that he'd stand in the corner and not say a single word.”

“He was probably trying to scare you,” she said. “It's Halloween. Spirits like to have fun too. Especially the evil ones.”

I shook my head. “I have a weird feeling about this. I don't know what the feeling is or why I think it's weird, I just know I have it.”

A woman with auburn hair, who'd been examining a white comforter with red flowers on it, was glancing at me, her eyes filled with concern. When I was younger, I used to blush whenever people caught me speaking to Kristina, since I knew they thought I was crazy and speaking out loud to myself. But time heals everything, and I nodded as I passed her.

“Happy Halloween,” I said. “Watch out for the evil spirits.”

  *  *  *  

When I got back home, my mom asked where I'd been.

“Just doing some shopping,” I said.

“For what? Are you actually going to dress up this year?” Her face had lit up from behind the counter, where she was dicing an onion. She was always so disappointed that I refused to participate in Halloween. All the other moms got cute pictures every year of their children dressed as ninjas and Bugs Bunny and clowns, and all she got was a kid who preferred to spend Halloween night wandering around a cemetery with his dead sister.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said, “but no.”

“Come on, Baylor!” she pleaded. “You're thirteen. This will probably be the last year you can get away with trick-or-treating. No one wants to give candy away to a guy who has to shave.”

I sighed. “I don't care about Halloween, Mom, you know that.”

“I know, I know,” she said. She threw the onions into the frying pan, and they hissed and smoked. “I just don't want you to regret anything when you're older.”

A part of me wondered if she was right. I hadn't dressed up for Halloween since I was at least eight, and I couldn't remember ever having gone trick-or-treating, mostly because I couldn't imagine being on the street and not knowing who was alive and who was a ghost . . . or worse.

“Maybe I'll text Aiden and ask what he's doing tomorrow,” I said. “If only so you can have one picture of me, Jack, and Ella dressed up for Halloween.”

My mom dropped the spoon she was using, and her eyes welled up.

“Would you really do that for me?”

Oh no. I hadn't really been serious, but now that the thought of a single photograph had made her cry, how could I backtrack?

“Uh, yeah, of course,” I said.

Sitting on the couch in the family room, I texted Aiden.

BAYLOR: Got any plans for tomorrow?

AIDEN: Me, bobby and j are gonna trick or treat around my neighborhood

BAYLOR: Care if I come?

AIDEN: You serious? I didn't tell you about it only cuz you reject me every year

BAYLOR: I changed my mind this year

AIDEN: YES. Meet at my house at 7

All I had to do was find a costume.

I KNEW IF I COULDN'T
avoid the masses on Halloween night, I'd need to pick a costume that increased my protection by its very nature. No bloody masks or devil horns for me. I racked my brain for ideas and even asked Kristina what she thought.

“An angel, of course,” she said.

“I can't go as an angel! I'll look ridiculous, and not in a good way!”

“No spirits would bother you, though.”

“I'm not dressing as an angel. Any other ideas?”

I rejected going as a priest, a nun, a Greek god (too cold for togas), a (friendly) clown, and a doctor before I finally settled on something that was both funny and positive: a baby.

The next day I went to Wal-Mart and found giant pink footed pajamas, which were perfect for the cold night ahead, as well as adult diapers to put over them.

But just walking through Wal-Mart gave me some second thoughts about trick-or-treating. Though I had lit all my candles that morning, it was clear the negative Halloween energy was starting to infringe on my positive energy, because I could see some dark spirits floating around me. They didn't disturb me, since they knew they couldn't touch me, but they stuck close to the people they'd attached themselves to. I asked Kristina to show me the auras of those people, one of her handy tricks.

“Brace yourself,” she said grimly.