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was inclined towards Weal’s ear, and it was indeed whispering to him but,
now dying, Jordan heard the whispering, too.
    It said,
Wake me
.
    In the end, dying proved different than anything Jordan had ever
imagined it might be.
    For one thing, it seemed to go on forever, long past the point where
the pain had stopped. Past even the point where his heart stopped
pumping and his brain died. As Jordan drifted above his body, he looked
down at himself, bleeding out on the dirty floor of the bus, and felt the
truest compassion he’d known. He saw himself as he’d never seen himself
in any mirror while he’d been alive. He saw the fragility of his body and
he realized how tenuously human life was contained by such brittle shells
of flesh and bone under the best of circumstances.
    Dimensions of brilliance exploded outward as he continued to rise.
    Past, present, and future fused together in a continuum. There were no more secrets. Every truth of the world was laid bare to the dead.
    Jordan knew, for instance—and not without satisfaction—that
his father would die of pancreatic cancer two years from now, in 1974.
He would go quickly, but not without terrible pain. He knew that his
mother would remarry, this time to a man who would cherish and care
for her. He also knew that, late at night, as she lay in bed with her gentle,
loving husband sleeping beside her, she’d think of Jordan’s father and
his cruelty and wonder if that wasn’t, in its own way, real love. In those
moments, she’d glance over at her sleeping husband and hate herself for
wishing he wasn’t just a bit harder, just a bit rougher, the way a man
ought to be. Then she’d remember the terror, and she’d forgive herself
for those treacherous thoughts. She’d lay her head on his chest while he
gathered her in his arms till she, too, slept, dreaming of Jordan, telling
herself over and over again that he was somewhere safe, living his life,
and knowing in her mother’s heart that he was gone.
    He drew comfort from the knowledge that Fleur would leave Don
before the baby was born and that the violence that had marked Jordan’s
life would never mark that of Fleur’s son.
    Jordan continued to rise.
    He saw that the dead were everywhere, masses of them, like a vast
eldritch ocean that stretched in every direction. Men, women, children—
even animals. He laughed with revenant delight. The sound of his
laughter fell in a shower of ectoplasmic blue sparks in the ether of this
strange new in-between dimension where everything and nothing was
the same as it was in life.
    When Jordan was alive he’d once asked a priest about whether or not
dogs had souls. His own dog, Prince, had died from eating poisoned bait
in the woods the previous week, and Jordan had been inconsolable. The
priest assured him that animals had no immortal souls and reprimanded
him for being stupid enough to believe they did. Jordan had cried, but he
suspected the priest was wrong—or lying. For years afterwards, he’d felt
Prince’s presence constantly when he was alone, especially at night in his
room where the dog had always slept.
    Here the dead crowded the desolate country road where Weal had
awkwardly parked the bus, peering curiously through the windows,
tapping noiselessly on the glass in an endless, one-sided attempted
dialogue with the living. Finding none inside the bus, they scampered
along the roof and launched themselves into the night like spectral
fireflies in search of living receivers who could hear their voices. They
looked as they did in life, and in death seemed neither overjoyed to be
free of their mortal bodies nor particularly tormented. No wings, no
harps, no robes. They just . . .
were
.
    Jordan felt the warm press of millions of souls caressing his own as
they passed through him. He realized now, as he never had when he was
alive, how
not alone
he had always been. W
hat a comfort it might have been
to know that,
he