After Life

by Andrew Neiderman

  “I think it’s because of the darkness. I have to turn into myself to see things now, and there are many things to discover about yourself when you do that, things you’ve inherited, things below the surface, things we can’t see because we are usually distracted. Does that make any sense?”

  “No,” he said. “But I know what you’re doing—you’re trying to make me feel better, which is just like you, Jess. No matter what you say, and no matter what you do, I’ll never forget that I was driving that day and that—”

  She put her fingers on his lips so quickly and so accurately, it was as if she did see.

  “Please, Lee, don’t,” she said.

  He kissed her fingers and then her lips.

  “Okay,” he said. She felt him lighten up and knew he was smiling.

  “Are you trying to tell me you’re not that tired?” she asked. He laughed.

  “How did you guess?”

  He helped her to her feet and they started out of the living room toward their bedroom, he putting the lights out as they went.

  When he looked back, it seemed as if the darkness was closing in around them. He shuddered, thinking this was Jessie’s world now. No wonder she had so many strange thoughts and ideas. He vowed to be more loving and to stop bringing home his own problems.

  But something instinctive told him that this might be harder than he thought.

  3

  The defiant-looking shadows just out of the reach of the streetlights retreated before the dim headlights of a ’72 Ford pickup whose red exterior had faded into a pale shale color. It was quite rusted, especially around the wheel wells. The truck crept down Main Street, Gardner Town, passing by the darkened windows of the closed stores, windows that reflected the emptiness and solitude of the sleeping hamlet. The only sound came from some metal signs above the garage at the west end of Main Street. They groaned and complained about the wind that lifted and dropped them with a monotonous regularity. The subsequent screech sounded like the cry of some metallic cat agonizing about its loneliness under a sky devoid of moon and stars.

  The truck came to a slow stop at the blinking traffic light and then turned to the right, picking up some speed as it moved through a residential neighborhood with its quaint homes and neatly manicured lawns and hedges. Only the bright lights above front doors and gates to discourage prowlers and burglars provided any illumination on the side street. The man sitting in the cab of the truck was barely visible. Most of the time he appeared a dark phantom. He looked like a ghost who, together with his decrepit vehicle, had emerged from some car dump on a ghoulish mission, perhaps to get revenge on the vehicle and driver who had plowed him off the highway years and years before.

  The truck snaked around another turn and headed out toward the cemetery. The homes began to become few and far between until the street was bordered on both sides by long fields and forests, the trees now standing like mute and belligerent sentinels guarding the secrets within their pockets of darkness. When the truck reached the Gardner Town cemetery, the driver turned off his headlights.

  Becoming one with the night, the truck passed the gray stone archway of the cemetery with its high reliefs of trees and flowers. The vehicle stopped about a hundred yards from the house in which old man Carter and the Overstreets lived. For a moment the driver focused on the lighted windows upstairs. Then the truck inched forward as if on its own.

  A startled owl flew off a nearby tree limb and sailed across the truck’s path before disappearing into the night. The driver didn’t seem to notice. Nothing took his concentration off the windows. Not more than fifty feet from the house, he stopped the truck again and just stared. Finally he lit a cigarette. Its glowing ash looked like the single eye of a terrified alley cat reflecting the stray glitter from garbage cans. The driver rolled down his window, but the escaping smoke was barely visible. After a few more moments he flipped the cigarette into the night. It landed with an explosion of sparks and remained a tiny, red-orange bead against the blackness.

  A shadow crossed the first lit window.

  Reaching over to the dashboard, the driver of the truck opened the glove compartment and took out a pint bottle of rye whiskey. He unscrewed the top carefully and took a long swallow. He shuddered as the whiskey burned down his throat and warmed his chest. Then he screwed on the bottle cap and put the bottle back in the glove compartment, catching a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror.

  Only he didn’t see himself; he didn’t see a drawn, unshaven man with sunken cheeks and a pronounced jawbone. He didn’t see his own bloodshot eyes or his disheveled, thin brown hair. Instead he saw the face of a teenage boy, round and full of health, a face of smiles and optimism.

  The driver paused to smile back.

  “Just a little while longer now, Paulie boy,” he muttered. “Just a little while longer. You’re gonna know it, too, boy. I can feel it. It’s gonna wake you up, bring you back to the way you was. Just a little while longer.”

  The dark silhouette in the house moved across a second window. The driver reached behind his seat and brought out a rifle.

  “Oh yeah, Paulie boy,” he muttered. “Oh yeah.”

  He started to open the truck door, but the handle didn’t turn. He pressed down on it again and again. It didn’t move. He leaned on it with all his weight, but the handle did not budge.

  “What the hell…”

  He slid across the seat impatiently and reached for the handle on the passenger-side door, but that, too, did not budge. He banged on it with his closed fist until his hand screamed with pain and then he raised his rifle and slammed the handle with the rifle butt. Nothing happened.

  Except the windows rolled up.

  The driver sat back in shock. They were certainly not power windows.

  “Huh?” he said to an invisible passenger.

  He kicked at the door, but it was like kicking at a cement wall.

  The truck started. He jumped back as if the steering wheel were on fire. The engine raced.

  “What the hell’s going on?” He turned the ignition key, but it was already on off. The truck shook and rumbled as the engine raced harder and harder.

  Panic set in. The driver slammed the windows with his rifle, but they didn’t as much as crack. He felt as if he were choking, as if all air were cut off. Then he realized…the faulty exhaust system, the carbon monoxide…

  He flailed about like a man going down in quicksand, but nothing helped. Nothing.

  Finally, seeing no other way, he pointed the rifle at the side window and pulled the trigger. The report was ear shattering, and he thought, as crazy as it seemed, that he actually saw the bullet bounce off the window and turn around. It seemed to hesitate for a moment as if it, too, didn’t believe what was happening, or didn’t want what was happening to happen. But neither he nor the bullet had any say in the matter.

  It continued its ricochet and crashed through his forehead, lifting him slightly off the seat and throwing him back against his door, the rifle flying out of his hands and landing on the seat.

  The engine stopped. The door handle went down and the door opened. The driver fell back, but his legs got caught under the steering wheel and he dangled there, his body swaying in the wind.

  Jessie woke with a start. Her body was comfortably curled in the pocket of Lee’s embrace, his right arm lying lightly over her shoulder. They had fallen asleep almost immediately after making love, both enjoying that gentle and welcome fatigue that followed. Jessie recognized that through their lovemaking they both rid their bodies of the day’s anxiety. Sex was an antidote for tension, for loneliness, and especially for fear. With every kiss, with each touch, they reinforced their alliance and assured each other that no matter how cold and dark the world seemed to be around them, they were in a warm, protective cocoon.

  Lee would tease her about their sexual relations now. It was the only time he inserted any humor into a discussion of her blindness.

  “Wait a minute,” he said after t
hey had made love one night, “if the doctors are right about you and your other senses have become sharper, you’re probably getting more out of this than I am now.”

  “So practice keeping your eyes closed when we make love,” she replied, and they laughed.

  But it was true. Often, when they made love, she felt something beyond what she had felt before the accident: she reached a higher plateau. Right at the point of orgasm, she seemed to leave the confines of her body and become part of some ongoing stream, a flow of souls, a greater, higher form of life. It was an altogether different sort of ecstasy, not sensual, not pleasurable in the common sense; her body didn’t tingle and feel filled with electricity. This ecstasy came from a sense of completion, as if…as if she had a taste of what would come in the hereafter.

  Of course, she didn’t mention a word about it to Lee. He would just lay the blame on her overworked imagination again, and she instinctively sensed he might not appreciate knowing she wasn’t thinking of him per se when they made great love.

  They had made great love tonight, both of them driven by a need to comfort themselves as well as each other. Lee had taken his time, titillating her with what he playfully called his mystery kiss. It was their closest thing to kinky sex. She would lie nude, her arms up over her head. He would begin by kissing her feet or her stomach, and then she had to anticipate where he would put his lips next. In her perpetual darkness, his kisses felt like drops of warm rain, one falling on her breasts, another on her lips, and then another just inside her thighs.

  Sometimes he lingered between kisses, making the anticipation that much greater, drawing out the exquisite torment until she cried out and reached up for him. He would laugh and come to her and they would cling to each other with a delicious desperation. It had been like that tonight. And they had drifted into a gentle repose.

  Until the noise shattered her peace.

  “What was that?” she cried, sitting up. Lee’s arm fell away from her shoulders and he groaned. “Lee?”

  “Huh?” He fought opening his eyes. It was too sweet, too comfortable. She poked him. “What?” he said, and groaned as he turned over on his back.

  “Didn’t you hear that bang?”

  “What bang?” He wiped his eyes and reluctantly lifted his head from the pillow to listen. “I don’t hear anything,” he said.

  “Not now.” She threw her legs over the bed and found her slippers.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I heard something…something terrible,” she said, and started for the doorway.

  “Oh Jessie, Jesus.” He wiped his cheeks vigorously and sat up himself. By the time he found his own slippers, she was down the corridor and entering the living room. He was nude, but he didn’t pause to get a robe. He flipped on the hallway light and found her with her ear pressed against the front window. For a moment he almost burst out laughing. She looked like someone eavesdropping on the neighbors in the next-door apartment.

  “Jessie?”

  “Someone’s out there,” she said. “I hear an engine running.”

  “Oh boy,” he said, and joined her at the window. It took a moment for him to see the truck silhouetted in the darkness. Without its headlights on, it had blended in with the other shadows and forms in the night. “What the…”

  “There’s someone there?”

  “A truck,” he said. “No lights. I can’t tell if anyone’s sitting in it or not.”

  “The engine’s running,” she insisted. He couldn’t hear it through the closed window, so he opened it and knelt down to place his ear close to the screen.

  “Yeah,” he said, “it is.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I heard a terrible, loud sound before, Lee. It sounded…like a gunshot.”

  “Huh?” An icy finger of fear traced the length of his spine from his neck to his waist. He shook his body like a bird shaking off rain. “Shit,” he said. “I’m standing here naked. And,” he realized, “so are you.”

  “Maybe you should phone the police, Lee,” she said, unconcerned with her own exposure in the window.

  “And tell them what? There’s a truck parked on the street with its engine running.”

  “It’s very late. And whoever it is has the lights off. That’s peculiar, Lee.”

  “Oh Jesus,” he groaned. “I’ll get some clothes on and see what the hell it is.”

  She grabbed his arm.

  “No, Lee. Just phone the police. I’m afraid.”

  “They won’t come up here if I just tell them there’s a truck outside with its engine running, honey. There’s no law against that. I’ll see if there’s anything wrong and then I’ll phone.” He patted her hand and returned to the bedroom.

  Jessie turned her attention back to the window and continued to listen. There was the distinct sound of those shuffling footsteps again. The cool night air came in through the opened window, but it wasn’t the chill that made her step back; it was the odor, a whiff of that horrible stench. She brought the window down sharply and stepped back, her heart pounding. A moment later she heard Lee coming down the hallway toward the front door.

  “Wait,” she cried.

  “What?”

  “There’s something out there, Lee.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, but it’s something…horrible.”

  “Oh Jessie,” he groaned. “I have a flashlight with me. I’ll check it out first before I go too far, okay?”

  “Don’t go off the porch,” she advised.

  “Right,” he said. He opened the door and went out.

  “Lee!” she cried when he closed the door behind him. She rushed to it and opened it again just in time to hear him walking down the steps. “Lee?”

  “It’s all right,” he called back. “I’m okay. Get back inside, you exhibitionist,” he said, and she finally realized she was standing naked in the doorway.

  “What do you see?” she asked, covering her bosom with her arms.

  “A truck with its door opened,” he said as nonchalantly as he could, for he had seen more.

  He walked over the flagstones and directed the beam at the truck cab where the driver’s door was open. He ran the light down and saw the man dangling.

  “Should I phone the police?” Jessie called from the doorway. For a moment Lee didn’t respond. He stepped closer.

  “Yeah,” he called back, “I guess you should.”

  He directed the beam of light over the driver. The man moaned.

  “What the hell…” Lee knelt down beside him and shook his arm. The man groaned and then started to vomit profusely. Lee jumped up and stepped back to avoid the splatter. The foul odor of whiskey mixed with whatever the man had put into his stomach during the last few hours came up at Lee in undulating waves. Lee fanned the air around him and stepped to the side, directing his flashlight at the cab. He saw the man’s feet were caught in the steering wheel and he saw the emptied pint bottle of rye on the seat with a rifle beside it.

  The man moaned and began his struggle to right himself, but he had no support and simply flapped about like a fish on land. Reluctantly, holding his breath as he did so, Lee came to his assistance and lifted him so that he could free his feet from the steering wheel. Then he scooped his arms under the man’s arms to pull him from the truck as if he were pulling him from a vehicle on fire. He wanted to get as far away from the rancid odors as quickly as he could. He dropped the man gently on the shoulder of the road and ran the beam of light over his face.

  The gaunt-looking, unshaven man waved his hand at the light the way he would chase away flies. Lee shook his head in disgust and directed the light back to the truck. That was when he saw the blood, large ruby stains on the street where the man had been hanging upside down.

  “Jesus,” Lee muttered. He turned back to the drunk and searched his body and face for signs of his wounds, but he found none. He knelt beside him again. The man had turne
d over and already was snoring. Lee ran the light over his neck and head, but he saw nothing. “What the hell…”

  He turned back to the stains to be sure they weren’t in his imagination. Confirming them, he began to wonder if there was someone else. He got up and walked around the truck, directing his light every which way, but there was no sign of anyone else. Finally he reached in and shut off the truck engine.

  “Hey,” he said, shaking the drunken man with his foot. “Hey, who the hell are you? Was there anyone with you? Hey?” He shook him again, but the man only groaned.

  “Lee,” Jessie called from the doorway. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. It’s only some drunk,” he replied.

  “I called the police; they’re on their way.”

  “Good.” He scratched his head and looked around again. There was some other smell here, some horrible odor that didn’t seem to be a part of this revolting scene. It trailed off behind him toward the cemetery. He lifted the flashlight in its direction and his light illuminated some of the bone-white tombstones that were close to the road.

  Suddenly he thought he saw something moving: a tall, dark shadow. He chased it with his light, but the flashlight was too weak to illuminate at any great distance and the shadowy figure was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  Probably my imagination, he thought. Even so, the image chased him back and he retreated quickly to the house. Jessie had put on her robe and was waiting for him in the doorway.

  “What is it?”

  “Some guy was drinking booze. He stopped, probably because he didn’t know where the hell he was, and somehow he opened his door on the driver’s side and fell out, only his feet got caught under the steering wheel, so he was just dangling there. He did me the honor of throwing up most of what he had drunk and eaten during the last few hours.”

  “Well, where is he?”

  “He’s sleeping comfortably on the side of the road,” Lee said. “I hate to disturb him, much less touch him,” he added. He didn’t mention the bloodstains.