The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(33)

“You were a prisoner.”

“Yeah.”

“You escaped.”

“Eventually.”

“I saw this when you held my hands. You burned these huts.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I did.”

He trudged through the muck and found the remains of a primitive flamethrower, a long hose attached to a gasoline-tank backpack.

“I was afraid when I was captured. Scared outta my mind. When I got free, I let it out. We all did. We attacked. We destroyed. We burned this place to the ground. I thought I was justified. Maybe even brave. But I was doing something awful, something I never knew.”

He motioned towards a hut and Annie saw a shadow running through the flames.

“Wait … Was that a person?”

Eddie looked down, as if he could not watch. Slowly, from the blaze, a young girl emerged, with a cinnamon complexion and hair the color of plums. She was on fire, flames licking off her. She stepped next to Eddie and the flames sizzled out, leaving her face and skin terribly burned. She put her hand in his.

“This is Tala,” Eddie said, quietly. “She was hiding in that hut when I lit it up.”

He fixed his gaze on Annie.

“She’s in heaven,” Eddie said, “because of me.”



Annie stepped back. A shot of fear ran through her, as if she’d been wrong about this old man, that his aura of safety was a ruse.

“Mistakes,” Eddie declared. “That’s what I’m here to teach you about. You felt like you kept making them? You feel like maybe you made one now?”

Annie looked away.

“I used to think the same thing,” Eddie continued. “I thought my whole life was a mistake. Things kept happening to me, lousy things, until I finally gave up trying.”

He shrugged. “I never even knew the worst mistake I made.”

He turned to the little girl. He touched her hair, which hung in patches.

“Tala was hiding in that hut. I only learned that after I died. She met me in heaven. Said I burned her to death.”

He bit his lip.

“It damn near killed me all over again.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Annie asked.

Eddie walked Tala over to Annie, close enough to see the blisters on Tala’s burned skin.

“You’ve been haunted by something most of your life, right? Something you can’t remember, but it makes you feel bad about yourself?”

“How do you know that?” Annie asked, softly.

“Because my whole life, I did, too. I felt out of place. Like I was trapped at Ruby Pier and wasn’t supposed to be there. Fixing rides? Who wants a lousy job like that? It had to be a mistake to ever take it, I thought.

“Then I died. And Tala explained why I was there. To protect kids, the thing I didn’t do with her. She told me I was right where I was supposed to be.”

He put his hand on the little girl’s shoulder.

“And then she told me one more thing, something that took away my pain forever. My salvation, I guess, to use a fancy word.”

“What did she say?”

Eddie smiled.

“That I died saving you.”



Annie began to tremble. Eddie took her hands.

“Go on. You can see it now.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You do.”

She moaned softly. “I don’t want to.”

“I know. But it’s time.”

The sky went red, a fiery shade, and Annie felt her head jerk upwards, as if someone had yanked her hair; she was back to that day at Ruby Pier, looking up at her impending death. She saw a giant cart tilting at the top of Freddy’s Free Fall. She saw riders being frantically pulled to safety. She saw people pointing and covering their mouths. She saw Eddie pushing through them, yelling instructions to clear out, to run. She saw people pushing and shoving in one direction and she saw herself run the other way, to an empty platform, crawling onto it and curling into a ball. She saw her body shaking. She saw herself mumbling, “Ma … Ma … Ma …”

She saw Eddie running towards her, his face contorted. She saw the massive black cart dropping like a bomb. She saw Eddie lunging, arms out. His big hands impacted her chest, pushing her backwards. She fell off the ledge, her bottom first, then the back of her legs, then her heels. Just as she lost contact, she glimpsed Eddie’s body flat on the platform.

The cart crushed him like a boot crushing a bug.

Then something smaller came flying at Annie, so fast there wasn’t time to blink. It chopped her wrist and she screamed louder than she’d ever screamed and her eyes closed and all details vanished, as if that dropping bomb had blown up everything, Annie, Eddie, the day, life itself.



“Oh, God, that’s what happened,” Annie groaned, as if waking from a dream. “I remember now. You pushed me. You saved my life. That piece chopped off my hand and I blacked out.”

“Things get pretty clear up here,” Eddie said.

Annie’s mouth fell open and her eyes darted back and forth. She replayed the scene in her head.

“But …”

She let go of Eddie’s grip. Her voice dropped.