If only it were so simple.

  "Hey there, spider. Are you gifted with speech?" Ruth's eyes fixed on the creature.

  Silence. The gossamer tapestry continued to materialize.

  "It's an wonder, how stunning it is—your home." Ruth's words were full of wistfulness. "If only you were a flesh-and-blood neighbor. Just look at you—your body a lustrous obsidian. You'd have eyes that could tell stories."

  In her imagination, she saw her—her ideal neighbor, a harmonious blend of romance and gothic aura, sipping tea in the shadowed garden. But reality offered no such companionship. The spider remained suspended in her vaulted ceiling, diligently crafting her web.

  And Ruth knew that her garden, if she were to step out right now, would be home to only blooms and the stray fuchsia-scaled lizard.

  "Jeremiah is well aware of how lonely I am here," Ruth lamented. Perhaps the spider was not eloquent in conversation, but it served as an excellent listener. "His absences feel almost like a deliberate torment. A cosmic punishment, don't you think?"

  Her words seemed to dissolve into the room's silence.

  "In my previous life, all I ever desired was love, a sense of belonging. A family that reciprocated my affection." The words hung heavily in the air, like the Sabbath candles her abba used to light. "Could that yearning be the very reason why my afterlife is this hollow?"

  The spider offered no consolation, but Ruth knew it was not out of indifference—it was simply the creature's nature.

  The irony of her current desolation was not lost on her. In life, she had yearned for the warm embrace of community, perhaps even Shabbat dinners filled with voices and laughter. Now, her hellscape seemed tailored to deny her just that. But it didn't make the yearning any less potent.

  A soft thud resounded outside her room, almost like someone stumbling against a wall, regaining their balance at the last moment.

  "Jeremiah?" Ruth's voice lifted, cautious but hopeful. "Hold on, I'm not exactly presentable."

  In a flurry, she rose and darted to her closet, a surreal wardrobe containing nothing but identical bridal gowns. Ruth slipped into one; the fabric cascaded down her body as if longing to embrace her. An odd urgency swelled within her, an unexplained need to hasten.

  "I'm on my way!" Rushing, she threw open the door. "Is everything alright? You've never entered uninvited before—Jeremiah?"

  Her eyes scanned the void of the hallway before finally landing on him—not Jeremiah, but Asher, standing at the corridor's far end. A figure so achingly familiar, yet hauntingly out of place in this twisted version of her world.

  He stood there, a vision wrapped in the same palpable air she breathed—hauntingly beautiful, as though time itself dared not mar him.

  "Asher?" Ruth's voice broke the silence, a whispered invocation that curled into the air like incense lit long ago.

  He pivoted to face her, his countenance etched with a perplexing blend of familiarity and puzzlement. It was the look one gives a ghostly fragment of a half-forgotten dream.

  "Please," Ruth implored, extending her hand like an offering on an altar. "Don't forsake me to solitude again. Your soul was too pure for any realm but Heaven. I can't beg you to tarry here eternally—but could you linger just long enough for conversation?"

  Her voice splintered, suffused with a fervor as solemn as the Kaddish. She felt as though she were unspooling her very soul before him. It had always been Asher, the missing part of her, the sanctuary she had sought but never reached.

  "I tried to love you right, to prove my worth," Ruth continued, her hand still beseeching the void between them. "Perhaps Heaven is your abode now, but can't you haunt my Hell just a moment longer?"

  He met her gaze, unspeaking. He didn't flee as before; he simply existed there, a trembling figure shrouded in questions and shadow.

  Her entreaty was the gentle whisper one reserves for a skittish creature—a litany of pleas and promises woven together like the threads of a prayer shawl.

  "Stay," she murmured as his form wavered, as if melting into the gloom. "Please, Asher, stay."

  "Ruth?" His voice was tinged with an uncanny dissonance, as though the syllables were foreign, alien even to his own tongue. His hand brushed against his face in a tentative, bewildered gesture. "What's happening?"

  "It's me, Asher, it's me," she stammered through tears. "I'm searching for you, across these twisted realms. I'm anchored by love, reaching out through the darkness."

  He shook his head, a blur of confusion and disbelief. "Why hunt for me when I'm right in front of you? I've been here, Ruth. Always here."

  "Then you must be lost in this labyrinth, just as I am," she reasoned, emboldened with desperate hope. "Perhaps we each dwell in fractured replicas of our home. I can't unravel it all, Asher, but my love for you is the one constant."

  "You love me?" He sounded almost incredulous.

  Her heart sank at the query. Why would he question her love? It was the bedrock of her existence, as fundamental as the teachings she had grown up with. She had loved him from their first stolen glance, and she would love him past the cessation of his mortal heartbeat.

  It was then that Ruth noticed his form blurring, as if the air around him refused to hold his shape. He wasn't just emotionally unstable—he was physically destabilizing. Like a treasured memory slipping away, forever beyond her grasp.

  Even as Asher wavered in and out of her world—his outline blurring, corners of him dissipating like smoke—he seemed gripped by confusion, as if perplexity alone were pinning him to this liminal space between realms.

  Desperation clawed its way up Ruth's throat. "Asher, listen to me!" she cried out, her voice infused with a raw urgency. "I'm drowning in this solitude. You have to tell me where you are, so maybe, just maybe, I can get to you!"

  "I'm at the synagogue," he replied in bewilderment. "We're supposed to get married, Ruth."

  Gasping, she lunged forward, arms open wide, yearning to envelop him in a long-awaited embrace. But she met only the cold void. She passed through him, crashing onto the floor with bruising force, her knees and elbows smarting from the impact. Her clenched fist pounded the floor, an outburst so fierce it shattered the light bulbs around her, plunging her into an even deeper darkness.

  Her wails filled the void, resonating through the hallways until her voice grew hoarse and her soul felt scraped raw. Finally, she bowed her head to the floor, weeping uncontrollably, her sobs a mournful litany.

  When the flood of her tears finally ebbed, she rose, returning to her master bedroom without bothering to close the door behind her. An epiphany crystallized in her mind: Asher was not of this realm because he didn’t understand his state—likely, he was unaware that he had crossed the veil of life and death. That's why he spoke of their wedding at the synagogue as if it were still a forthcoming event.

  A renewed resolve hardened within her. She would navigate this infernal landscape, decipher its rules. Her Asher deserved to know the truth—of death, of his eternal dwelling. If Heaven couldn't provide him that simple, harrowing clarity, then she would.

  Asher was lost, either bereft of a reaper's guidance or misled by one. Ruth felt a surge of purpose. That, at least, was something she could rectify.

  As she finger-combed her tangled hair, trying to compose herself, her thoughts turned to that elusive light within her—the one Jeremiah always alluded to. It felt like the flickering flame of a Shabbat candle, its soft glow not quite able to fully illuminate the room. Brief in its incandescence and weak in its reach, it was nonetheless hers.

  Yet even a meager flame could spark a wildfire, given the right conditions.

  Ruth's eyes steeled, her resolve unyielding. She would stoke that inner fire, nurture it into a blazing inferno if that's what it took to guide her to Asher. She would learn to illuminate even the murkiest corners of this confounding realm, not just for her sake, but for the soul of the man who still waited for her, unknowingly, in a sacred place between this world and the next.

  19

  Loneliness Echoes

  Each syllable of Ruth's plea seemed to haunt Asher, reverberating in the air of his paradisiacal setting. Here he was, on bended knee, enveloped by ivory marble that seemed to breathe life into his vision of utopia. This was the dream home he was meant to share with Ruth, but it was a sanctuary devoid of her presence.

  He rose, his palm cupping the contours of his temple as if trying to contain the overflowing words that had infiltrated his celestial sanctuary. "That's fine," he uttered into the profound silence, "let her search for me. It can only be to my advantage, can't it?"

  His words rippled through the still air, unmet by any echo or response. His world, though meticulously crafted to mimic perfection, hummed with an eerie tranquility. Someone was showering behind the closed door of a bathroom—faceless, nameless, and indistinct. A shadow in the realm of his quietude. And Asher had no inclination to discover who it was.

  In this heaven, the water never ran cold; the showers were ceaseless torrents of warmth, as if crafted from the essence of comfort itself. Every nuance here was fine-tuned to serve Asher's specific longings, but still, there was a void.

  Descending a marble staircase as if carved from moonlight, he moved into the living room. A glimpse of raven-haired beauty darted around a corner, a fleeting moment of mystery in his well-ordered world. But he wasn't interested in playing any games tonight.

  Asher made his way to the front door and stepped out onto a lawn that was nothing short of an Edenic dream. Each blade of grass was a little soldier of perfection, standing upright as though saluting him. The sky above seemed painted with a divine brush, and somewhere, his favorite song played like a soft lullaby in the distance.

  A grin unfurled across his face. Although he had discovered that he could peer into other realms from anywhere in his own, he had a favorite spot—a crystalline lake at the heart of a neighboring park. The water had become a sort of scrying glass, a limpid canvas upon which he could project the transient visions of other worlds, of Ruth's world.

  "I'll be back," he announced, speaking more to the architecture and the meticulously curated atmosphere than to any being in particular. "No need to wait up."

  A few whispered goodbyes murmured through the air, but the overwhelming majority heeded his preference for silence. Asher reveled in the hush; he found solace in a world that observed more than it interacted, a world that was almost, but not quite, enough.

  The walk to the park unfolded like a series of quiet, unhurried heartbeats—mere steps and he had crossed the expansive block. Asher was adept at molding his universe to his whims; the reaper who'd escorted him here had departed, but not before commenting on his uncanny knack for shaping his heavenly realm.

  He'd always had a way with stories, an affinity for molding narratives out of ephemeral thoughts. So to construct a paradise from the essence of perfection? A task as effortless as breathing.

  The lake before him was an expanse of crystalline serenity, its surface undisturbed despite the whispering embrace of a temperate breeze. A lone duck floated in the water, a solitary figure etched against the liquid glass. Animals proved to be a more intricate tapestry for Asher to weave than humans, and this duck—existing but not living—was an uncanny testament to that.

  Its form was slightly distorted, an abstract sculpture with a head too minute and a neck too elongated, its eyes orbs of vacant emptiness.

  "No sense in perpetuating your flawed existence," Asher muttered, a note of resignation tinting his voice. With a flick of his wrist, the duck disintegrated, vanishing into a wisp of ethereal mist. Gone, as if it had never been.

  Then Ruth's voice enveloped him again, drifting through the ancient trees that fringed the lake, like a haunting refrain.

  Don't leave me again, Asher. I can't take all this loneliness for much longer! I need to know—I need to know where you are. If you tell me, maybe I can come to you instead!

  And then, a new incantation, tinged with an edge of raw desperation.

  "I'll find you, Asher. I swear it. Against all odds and despite any obstacles, I will find you."

  Ah, that was novel. Asher's head inclined slightly, absorbing the weight of her words. Ruth's voice often permeated his reality—never merely an echo in his mind but rather a vocal presence that suffused his very environment. A prayer spoken not to an absentee deity but to a tangible angel.

  That enigmatic phenomenon was something the reaper hadn't bothered to elucidate before his abrupt departure. A rather glaring oversight.

  It left Asher contemplating: could Ruth hear him, sense him in her own realm, the way he sensed her? Did his presence seep into her dreams, a shadow that strayed between wakefulness and sleep? Did she even suspect that he had devised a method to witness her world among countless others?

  Unanswered questions—they had become his reluctant companions since his transition to this realm.

  "I can find some answers, though," Asher mused, seating himself before the serene mirror of the lake. "I just need to know where to direct my gaze."

  And what more captivating focal point could there be than the ebony-haired girl who haunted his thoughts and dominated his unearthly realm? The very axis upon which his afterlife spun.

  The object of his desire.

  20

  Demanding the Dead

  "You heard me," Ruth retorted, one hand settled firmly on her hip. "He visited me last night. He was there—in my room. We spoke, and he told me we were in the synagogue, as if we were about to recite the Sheva Brachot. He doesn't know he's departed from the world of the living, does he? That's why he keeps disappearing. I'm certain of it."

  "If you're so certain, why consult me?" Jeremiah shifted, his eyes alight with a different agenda. "I have something to show you, Ruth. Will you accompany me?"

  "You intend to lead me to more of those malevolent entities?" She eyed him with apprehension.

  "No." He shook his head solemnly. "I want to take you to the epicenter of your personal hellscape. What you'll discover there might shed light on things."

  "Will you answer my questions about Asher if I go with you?"

  "If you come." He slid his tongue over his teeth in a momentarily unsettling gesture. "I think you'll find your questions will answer themselves."

  A flicker of anticipation danced in Ruth's mind, a thought that she might be dragged into the chaotic jungles on the periphery, rife with their lurid hues and labyrinthine flora. But Jeremiah guided her deeper into the bowels of her haunting landscape, down a sinuous, untraveled path. In the distance, her eyes caught the skeletal structure of the rusted roller coaster. For a moment, it looked as if a figure occupied one of the carts.

  Asher? No, it couldn't be.

  She blinked, and the shape dissipated, leaving her in a state of uneasy solitude.

  Even with Jeremiah's presence, comfort remained elusive. When he'd been injured, she'd feared for him—the closest semblance to a friend in this forsaken place, harmed! Worse still, harmed because of her. Yet, in the days that followed, doubts seeped into her thoughts. If he'd been transparent, maybe none of this would have happened.

  How could he plunge her into this enigmatic abyss and expect her to navigate it? It was absurd. Was it fair to throw her amidst lurking dangers, assuming she'd know how to counter them?

  Beneath his acts of kindness lay an impenetrable shroud of mystery. Ruth had never been drawn to the cryptic allure of mystery novels, and she wasn't adept at unraveling people's hidden agendas. This trait was part of what had endeared her to Asher. She had always favored the transparent, the unambiguous, a choice grounded perhaps in the teachings she’d absorbed in her years of synagogue schooling. In a place shrouded in questions, she longed for an answer, and more than anything, she longed for Asher to be that answer.

  In a world veiled in riddles and shadows, Asher had always been her unwavering constant. A man sculpted from the marrow of honesty, he never danced with deception, nor did he cloud truths with cryptic subterfuge. He was straightforward, his love as palpable as the world she used to live in. Jeremiah, however, was a different tale—a labyrinth of secrets, a tapestry woven with enigmatic threads. How could she possibly trust a man who seemed to revel in her bewilderment?

  The path they walked tapered into a narrow trail of oleander, slicing through the relentless dark like a silver knife through black velvet. Gardens that once flourished were swallowed whole, leaving only this shadowy corridor.

  "This," Jeremiah paused, turning toward her with a solemn gaze, "is the epicenter of your space. The very core of your metaphysical realm."

  Ruth expelled an incredulous noise. "And what, pray tell, should that mean to me?"

  "Was there something—some solitary pursuit—that once grounded you?" Jeremiah probed, as if navigating a hidden facet of her soul.

  "Being with Asher," she replied without hesitation. In her lived reality, he had been her sanctuary, the ark in her storm.

  Jeremiah's lips contracted into a disapproving line. "No, Ruth. I mean a refuge you found alone—a sanctuary that made you feel more alive, more protected. A place, an action?"

  A swarm of memories rushed forth, each tempting yet incomplete. Seeking the presence of Asher or her sister, Tovah, chewing her hair, tracing whimsical circles on the back of her sister's hand. Yet none of these lent her the solace she craved. Every remembered act, each cherished habit, felt incongruous, as if her consciousness rejected them as unsuitable havens.

  "You need to find your locus of comfort, a sacred space within yourself," Jeremiah urged.

  Ruth's brows knit together. "This is about the merry-go-round, isn't it?"

  A gratified spark ignited in Jeremiah's eyes. "Ah, yes! Speak your thoughts, Ruth. Let them manifest!"

  Ruth clasped her hands together, as if trying to seize an elusive truth. "I've conjured elements of my world before. A teapot magically appearing in the kitchen; the garden, an echo of the nature park I used to frequent. The derelict amusement park and its dormant fountain were torn from the pages of my own life. So, they are mine, extensions of my own being, correct?"