I Couldn't Believe It

I couldn't believe she'd done it to me. She'd told me that she'd liked having me around. She'd said so the night before, when she was so afraid I would leave. And I'd thought--for one heart pounding moment, if I'd had a heart, that is--that she was going to tell me that she'd felt the same way I did: the feeling I'd had that made me grab her up from her brother's bed and hold her in my arms to protect her from the indomitable Maria and her husband--that awful man--Diego. The feeling I hate to admit--that I love her. I love Susannah.

I don't know how it happened. I thought I had been careful. I thought I had sworn to myself not to fall for her…because she was alive and I was not.

And stupidly, I'd thought when she told me that she liked having me around, that maybe she felt the same way about me as I'd felt about her.

But apparently Susannah did not have the feelings I'd hoped she had. If she had, she would not have sent me away, away to that…place. That place that is neither heaven nor Earth, but a way station in between--purgatory.

I realized as soon as I was suddenly ripped from Susannah's room--where I had been reading Bridges of Madison County, a romantic novel of Susannah's that I'd found highly amusing because it told the story of a love that could never be, so much like my love for Susannah--and tendrils of fog curled around me as a young boy muttered some incantation while holding the miniature portrait I'd given Maria that Susannah could not have possibly felt the same way about me. That boy, he was the one Susannah had met, the other mediator. She'd apparently been waiting for an opportunity to be rid of me. Why else would she have had the young boy exorcise me?

And if Susannah wanted me gone, that could only mean one thing: she did not return my feelings. How could she? I was dead. Anything more than friendship between us would be out of the question.

But apparently Susannah did not even wish for friendship. Why would she? She was young, vibrant, alive, and I was dead…dead as that way station between worlds.

I could feel my heart--if I'd had one--breaking. I'd never cared for someone so much as I'd cared for her, and look at what had happened.

How could I have been so foolish--so stupid--to have fallen for a woman I could never have--and that she was a woman would never love me in return? I should have known better.

But instead, I had acted as a living man would: I had fallen in love, and I had fallen hard.

I continued damning myself for my stupidity as I walked through the thick fog. Purgatory was silent and dead.

Just like me.

"You should not be here," a man dressed in ancient Roman clothing said, appearing from seemingly nowhere.

"I am in the right place. Purgatory, correct?" I asked.

"Yes. This is Purgatory. But you should not be here," he stated.

"Who are you?" I asked him.

"I am the Gatekeeper, and you should not be here," he said.

"Where should I be?" I asked.

"Not here."

Could he be any more cryptic? I was getting impatient. "I understand that," I said, "But where exactly should I be?"

"With the girl. She needs you. Go down that hallway. Do not open any doors. Do not go into the light. You will be taken to an area where you are to wait for her. The only way you can go back is if she comes for you. Otherwise, you will wait there until she dies," he said, disappearing as quickly as he'd come.

I walked down that seemingly endless hallway of doors, thinking about what he'd said. There were doors of every kind imaginable--plain doors, fancy doors, wooden doors, glass doors, new doors, old doors. I knew who he was talking about. Susannah, of course. He'd said she needed me. Needed me. What did that mean, anyway? Did she need my help? Well then, she shouldn't have sent me here. I couldn't exactly help her from there.

But wasn't needing someone synonymous for loving them these days? If Susannah needed me, the way young people described loving someone, didn't that mean she loved me? My heart--if I'd had one--would have given a happy lurch if I had not remembered that she was the one who sent me there.

I walked along the corridor, confused and more than a little broken-hearted. True it was my foolishness that had caused me to fall in love with her, but if she had not wanted me around, why hadn't she done anything to get rid of me--such as an exorcism--sooner? Why had she waited until now, now when Maria and her husband were after her, to be rid of me, when I could possibly protect her from their treachery?

I had promised Susannah I would not leave--not even if her stepfather did find my decaying corpse in his backyard--and she had been relieved. It made no sense that she would not want me to leave, then have a young boy exorcise me.

Unless she realized how I felt about her…and did not return my feelings and was embarrassed that I felt the way I did about her, because I was dead, and no one she knew, except Father Dominic and the boy Jack, would ever be able to see me.

I wound up in another fog-enshrouded area, much like the place I had started out in. I was met by another mysterious person who told me to wait there.

And I waited for what seemed like years, but it was actually only a day until she came for me. The person who had told me to wait in the second place came back to me and told me to walk down the hallway, that Susannah was coming to meet me.

I was confused. First she tells me she doesn't want me to leave, then she sends me away, and now she's come to get me.

Which could only mean one thing: Susannah had died. How else could she have been there?

Then I saw her, and I was shocked. She was dressed in a black dress, and she had a gigantic bruise on her forehead.

"Oh, hi," she said, nervously. She reached up and covered the bruise on her forehead with her hair.

"Susannah," I said. "What are you doing here?" Then I couldn't help adding, "Are you--you're not--" but I couldn't quite say it. I was trying to ask her if she was dead.

"Dead?" she said. She'd known what I was trying to say. "Me? No, no, no. No. I just, um, came up here because I wanted to, um, you know, see if you were all right." She looked a little nervous. But I swear her name should not be Susannah; it should be Cassandra--the confuser of men. "Um, see, the thing is, I wanted to make sure you were here because you wanted to be. Because if you don't want to be, well, Father Dom and thought maybe it would be possible for you to come back. To, um, finish whatever it is, you know, that was keeping you down there. In my world, I mean. Our world. Our world, I mean."

I was very, very confused now. Why would she ask me if I wanted to be there if she was the one who had sent me there? Why did she care? I was dead, after all. She didn't love me, so she had no reason to care if I was happy.

"Susannah, weren't you the one who sent me here?" I asked.

"What? What are you talking about?"

I couldn't believe it. She was denying it. You know, it is one thing for her not to return my feelings. That I can understand. But to lie to me, then send me away and pretend to have nothing to do with it? That hurt, it really did.

"Didn't you have me exorcised?"

"Me? Me? Jesse, of course not! That kid Jack did it! Maria made him do it!" she said, her voice getting shrill. Then she launched into a long stream of babbling, most of which I could not understand because of how fast she was talking. I've noticed that she has a tendency to do this whenever she is nervous, upset, or does not wish to explain her actions. "And I was just thinking, you know, if you wanted to come back, you could, because that's why I've got this rope, so we can find our way back. That is, if you want to come back. I could see why you'd want to stay here. I mean, after a hundred and fifty years and all, it's probably a relief." Then she started babbling again. When she finished, she looked at the watch on her wrist, which I recognized as Father Dominic's. Then she said, "The only thing is, I can be separated from my body for half an hour before I wind up permanently detached, and we only have fifteen minutes left, so you have to hurry up and decide. What's it going to be?"

I made my decision quickly. She, I now knew, hadn't sent me away. Jack had done it under Maria's direction, and Susannah had missed me, so she came to see if I wanted to return to the world where she lived. Only she did it at the risk of her life. Realization dawned on me. She did care about me. Maybe she didn't love me as I loved her, but she cared about me. And it was possible that she did love me, if she cared enough to die for me. I felt immensely relieved, but I could not show her that. I had to be angry with her and scold her for her foolishness, as I had scolded myself over the last day.

"Susannah," I said angrily. "Are you saying you died for me?"

"Um, well, not technically, yet. But if we hang around much longer--"

That was enough of an answer for me. "Let's go," I said.

She started babbling again, this time about how I shouldn't walk her back to her hole, and that she was friends with the gatekeeper, who would help her out. There was something she was not telling me.

But I all ready knew what it was. She didn't have to tell me.