After Life

by Andrew Neiderman

  “How?” Jessie asked.

  “Dr. Beezly developed an uncanny knack for knowing what our weaknesses were and finding ways to tempt us to damnation through those weaknesses. That’s what I meant when I told you I’ve had troubling feelings about him, especially during the past year.”

  Jessie still didn’t move.

  “You don’t trust me, I see. I can’t blame you. Under the circumstances, if I were you, I would probably be the same way. Is there anything I can do to convince you that I have reason to believe your story?”

  Jessie thought.

  “What was your weakness, the weakness Dr. Beezly appealed to and almost caused you to damn your soul?”

  Father Rush hesitated.

  “I should confess only to another ordained priest,” he said. And then, after a moment, in a low voice, he added, “There was…is…a married woman in town. I have always had strong romantic desires for her. Of course I told no one, least of all Dr. Beezly. But one night he invited me to his home for dinner. He hadn’t been coming to church and we hadn’t seen each other for so long that I readily accepted the invitation. She was there without her husband, and never did she look more beautiful, more enticing.

  “I drank some wine…too much wine, and suddenly she became amorous and Beezly left us alone. Only my faith gave me the strength to resist.”

  “If you hadn’t,” Jessie said, “you would probably have become a candidate for a deadly resurrection yourself and been a victim of an accident or some serious illness.”

  “Yes,” Father Rush said. “Now, because of you and the things you have told me, I believe that. Up to now my own failures, weaknesses, have prevented me from helping the people I should have helped. I was blinded by my own sinfulness. I have not been a good soldier of the Lord,” he lamented. “And for that I am most dearly sorry.”

  Jessie reached out and found his face. She moved the tips of her fingers over his cheeks and felt his tears.

  “We should hurry,” he whispered. “I have brought the holy water.”

  “Yes.” She turned herself out of the bed and he went to the doorway to stand guard until she got dressed.

  When she was ready, he took her hand and brought her to the door.

  “Wait,” he cautioned. One of the nurses at the station began to come their way. Fortunately she turned into another room about halfway down and all looked clear. Father Rush stepped forward and led Jessie down the corridor toward the elevator. When the doors opened, they stepped in and he pressed the button for the floor on which the intensive-care unit was located.

  “The head nurse will wonder what I’m doing back there,” Jessie cautioned.

  “There’s been a shift change by now. It will be a new head nurse.”

  They got out and went to the doors of intensive care. As Father Rush had predicted, there was a new head nurse on duty, and she knew him well.

  “Good evening, Laurie,” Father Rush began. “You have a Mr. Overstreet here?”

  “Yes, Father.” From the way Laurie Smith looked at Jessie and then quizzically at him, the priest knew she had been told about her.

  “Everything’s fine now,” he said quickly. “I’ve volunteered to escort Mrs. Overstreet here to see her husband. We want to pray at his bedside. If that’s all right with you,” he added diplomatically.

  “Oh. Of course, Father. Right this way.”

  “How is my husband?” Jessie asked. “Has there been any change?”

  “I’m sorry, no. But his vital signs remain good,” she added.

  “We can be thankful for that,” Father Rush said. “We’ll be all right,” he whispered when they arrived at Lee’s bedside. Laurie Smith looked at Jessie again and then nodded. As soon as she walked off, the priest took out his bottle of holy water.

  “I’m going to encircle your husband’s bed,” he told Jessie. She took Lee’s hand in hers and waited while the priest went around, offering a prayer in Latin as he sprinkled the holy water. Then he sprinkled some over Lee. After that, he joined with Jessie and they both bowed their heads to pray. But before they were finished, Jessie heard those now-all-too-familiar footsteps.

  “Michael, I should have known you would do something like this,” Dr. Beezly said as he came up behind them. Jessie and Father Rush stood up and turned his way, Jessie clinging tightly to the priest. “You’ve been a naughty little clergyman, Michael.” He waved his right forefinger as if he were talking to a bad little boy. “You have my nurses downstairs quite frantic. Really, Michael, stealing away a patient like this.” He clicked his lips and shook his head.

  “You’re the one who’s been stealing people away,” Father Rush replied.

  “Oh no. Don’t tell me you’re listening to anything this woman says, Michael.” Dr. Beezly grimaced and shook his head. “She’s in the midst of a serious nervous breakdown,” he said as Laurie Smith came up beside him.

  “Is anything wrong, Doctor?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid Father Rush has gone beyond the call of duty, Laurie. He has taken Mrs. Overstreet out of her room where she had been restrained for her own good, and brought her up here without the nurses on the floor knowing.”

  “Oh dear,” the nurse said. “I had no idea.”

  “Of course you didn’t. Who would think our good Father Rush capable of anything evil?” Dr. Beezly smiled.

  “You would certainly,” Father Rush said sharply. Dr. Beezly’s smile faded quickly. His eyes became cold, sharp, and his lips tightened into a pencil-thin line. Then his smile returned, only this time it was chilling, more like the grimace drawn on the face of a corpse by the hand of death itself.

  “You will be so good as to take Mrs. Overstreet back to her room please, Father Rush,” he commanded.

  “Mrs. Overstreet doesn’t want to go back to that room. She doesn’t need any of your treatments, Doctor.”

  “I can’t force her to listen,” Dr. Beezly said. “But you’re making a mistake and doing her a terrible disservice by encouraging her hallucinations. In any case I have to examine my patient.”

  “Of course,” Father Rush replied, and pulled Jessie gently to the side. She tightened her grip on his hand. Her heart began to pound in anticipation.

  “Father…”

  “It’s all right,” he whispered.

  Dr. Beezly watched them suspiciously for a moment and then started toward the bed. He stopped abruptly a foot away and brought his hands to his face as if he had gotten too close to a blazing fire. Then he moaned.

  “Are you all right, Doctor?” Laurie Smith asked quickly.

  “Yes, are you all right?” Father Rush chorused.

  “What’s happening?” Jessie demanded.

  “Dr. Beezly isn’t feeling well himself,” Father Rush said.

  Beezly lowered his hands from his face and backed away. His skin looked sunburned. His mouth twisted up into his cheek and his eyes blazed in rage.

  “Doctor?” Laurie Smith said. She pressed her hand against her bosom and stepped away from him.

  “You’ve made a tragic mistake interfering with me, Michael,” the doctor said in a loud whisper.

  “I think not, Dr. Beezly. In fact, I think it would have been a tragic mistake had I not,” Father Rush replied.

  Beezly glared at him a moment and then made a second attempt to approach Lee. This time he pulled his hand back as if he had touched an inferno. He groaned in fury.

  “Doctor?” Laurie Smith said, coming to his side.

  “It’s all right,” Beezly muttered, rubbing his hand. “I’ve forgotten something. I’ll return,” he added, and quickly turned to walk out of the intensive-care unit. They watched him pound his way down the floor and out the double doors.

  “He’s gone.” Father Rush released the air he held in his lungs. “The Lord be praised.”

  “But he will return,” Jessie warned. “We must get to the cemetery.”

  “The cemetery? Why?” Father Rush asked.

  “To lock the door.
Please, take me there and bring your holy water,” Jessie pleaded.

  “What’s going on here?” Laurie Smith asked, her face twisted with confusion. “Cemetery? Holy water? What happened to Dr. Beezly? I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to understand. Just don’t move my husband from this bed,” Jessie commanded, “or you will bring about his death for sure. No matter what Dr. Beezly asks. Please. Anyway, he’s not my doctor.”

  Laurie looked at Father Rush.

  “Not her doctor?”

  “That’s correct. I’m asking on Mrs. Overstreet’s behalf, too, Laurie. There is nothing wrong with this woman other than that she suffers from blindness. She doesn’t want Dr. Beezly treating her husband. Is that clear?”

  “Well…I…what should we do in case—”

  “Call Dr. Ross. Tell him Mrs. Overstreet would like him to take over her husband’s case. I’ll vouch for everything that’s been said here.”

  “Okay.” Laurie Smith shrugged. “I certainly don’t want to get involved in any doctor-patient spats.”

  “Thank you,” Father Rush said.

  “We should hurry,” Jessie whispered. Father Rush started to lead her away. “Wait,” she said, turning back toward Lee. She made her way to the bed and found his hand. She held it to her lips and then placed it gently at his side, stroking his hair as she did so. Father Rush came up beside her.

  “He’ll be all right,” he said.

  “Yes. Soon. As soon as we get to the cemetery and make sure Beezly can’t have his way,” Jessie replied, and they left the intensive-care unit as quickly as they could.

  No one interfered with their leaving the hospital. Father Rush led Jessie to his car in the parking lot. Then they drove off into the night.

  “About four months ago,” Father Rush said as they drove toward the cemetery, “a man in town came to me to complain about how his son had changed. The boy had been in a motorcycle accident and had nearly died.”

  “Dr. Beezly had treated him?”

  “Yes. The man wasn’t a regular churchgoer. He was raising the boy on his own ever since his wife had died. Up to that time he hadn’t had serious problems with his son. Oh, he was a bit of a Huckleberry Finn, just like the rest of the boys his age in this town, but he began to degenerate rapidly—stealing, drinking, smoking dope, staying out until all hours of the night. That sort of thing. He became a serious discipline problem in school, too, and the former basketball coach, Kurt Andersen, was going to boot him off his team.”

  “His name was Benson,” Jessie said quickly.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  She described the incident with the truck.

  “I should have taken him and the things he had said more seriously,” Father Rush said with regret. “He insisted his son was not his son, but Benson was drinking heavily and I attributed it to that. If I had listened…”

  “Let’s hope we’re not too late,” Jessie said.

  They were both silent for a while, each saying his private prayer. When they arrived at the cemetery, Father Rush drove through the gate slowly. Jessie asked him to stop.

  “I need to get out to listen,” she said.

  “Okay. I have a flashlight in the glove compartment.”

  “What are we looking for exactly?” he asked after they had both gotten out.

  “An open grave,” Jessie said. She held his hand and signaled him to be quiet for a moment as she focused her concentration on the dark and gloomy surroundings. Soon she heard the whispering. It grew louder, some of the voices warning her, some of them urging her forward.

  “They know they have been violated,” she suddenly said. “That’s what I’ve heard them complaining about ever since I arrived.”

  “Who?”

  “The dead. Let’s go forward, to the right.”

  She and Father Rush began to walk down one of the paths. An overcast sky had shut out the moonlight and stars. To Father Rush the darkness around them seemed more like fog filled with soot—grimy, thick, all-encompassing. The thin ray of light emanating from his small flashlight barely penetrated the dense shroud of night. It sliced the darkness, but once they moved through it, the sheet of black fell behind and around them with the finality of a stage curtain at the end of a play.

  Jessie hesitated and tilted her head. Someone, some decrepit soul of the damned was wailing and scratching at the inside of its decomposing coffin. The sound of its nails grinding along the walls of its death cell sent chills down her back, chills that turned into slithering snakes of ice. She squeezed Father Rush’s hand tighter and stopped again.

  “What is it?” he asked, his own heart now pounding so hard he could barely get up enough breath to be heard.

  “Directly ahead,” Jessie whispered.

  He lifted the flashlight and aimed its beam. Twenty yards or so in front of them an old tombstone leaned precariously, its pale white surface now glimmering under his light like a giant old tooth. He lowered the beam slowly and saw the gaping hole before it.

  “Yes,” he said in a whisper, too. “The grave has been dug up.”

  “Take us there. Quickly,” Jessie ordered.

  The priest moved himself and her forward, stumbling over some rocks. When they reached the foot of the grave, he stopped and pointed his light down. The uncovered coffin was gray with decomposition. Through the holes that had formed like cancers in its surface, he could see the gleaming dust of bones.

  “The coffin is uncovered,” he said.

  “Is the lid still down?” Jessie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’re not too late. The holy water,” Jessie said. “Quickly. Cast it over the coffin and you will surely shut the door on this soul from hell and keep Beezly from resurrecting it.”

  “Yes, yes,” Father Rush said, and shifted the flashlight to his other hand so he could dig into his pocket to produce the bottle of holy water; but as he raised his head to begin a prayer, they suddenly heard a gruff voice behind them.

  They both turned and Father Rush directed the beam of light before them. It fell on old man Carter, who stood with his pickax in hand. It was as if he had been born of night itself, just instantly appearing.

  To Father Rush the old man looked like a corpse that had crawled out of an open grave. His face seemed emaciated with its sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes now two yellowish orbs sucked back into the sockets of his skull. The bones of his jaw and his forehead looked like they would burst out of the thin layer of skin that covered them. His lips were dark purple and writhing like worms on a sidewalk.

  Jessie inhaled the putrescent stench she had smelled in the hallway of the DeGroot house before.

  “It’s Mr. Carter, isn’t it?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Yes,” Father Rush replied quickly.

  “What are ya doin’ here, Father?” old man Carter demanded in a voice that sounded like a death rattle.

  “Did you dig up this grave, Mr. Carter?” Father Rush asked.

  “It’s no business of yours what’s done in this cemetery. This ain’t the church’s cemetery no more,” Carter said.

  “You’ve been doing the bidding of the devil himself,” Father Rush said. “We’re here to put an end to it.”

  Old man Carter threw his head back so sharply it looked like it might roll off his neck. His Adam’s apple thumped against the wall of skin as he released a bone-chilling, thin laugh that reverberated through the cemetery. Jessie pressed her hands to her ears quickly. All the voices around her cried in a chorus of pain.

  “Put an end to it? You?” Carter laughed again. “A man who is a sinner himself, whose heart is rotten with lust?”

  Father Rush held his ground. Sternly, his eyes fixed on the decrepit old man before him, he raised his bottle of holy water and declared, “You shall not open the portals of hell.”

  And then, in a loud voice, he cried, “SATAN, GET THEE BEHIND ME!”

  He brought his arm back to cast the water over old man Carte
r, but the aged cemetery caretaker suddenly moved with the speed of a man a quarter of his age. He raised his pickax and stepped forward just as Father Rush began to sprinkle the water. Jessie sensed the confrontation and cried out as she retreated a few steps.

  Some drops splashed on the old man’s face. He yowled like a wolf whose leg had been clamped in the teeth of an iron trap, but his forward motion brought the pickax down sharply, striking the priest in his chest, just over his heart, the sharp end of the iron tool ripping into the organ. Father Rush turned in agony and fell against the retreating Jessie, his body knocking her back. His weight was too much and she fell, along with him, down into the open grave, both of them landing on the crumbling coffin, smashing through the rotted wood.

  Above them, old man Carter writhed in agony as the drops of holy water singed and burned. The fire it created spread rapidly through his face and drew a line of flame down his chest, tearing it apart. He fell to his knees and quickly choked on his thickening, blackened tongue. Instantly his body fell prey to the degeneration held back by the evil soul that had been housed within. It turned to dust, smoking.

  In moments the tiny cloud was swallowed by the darkness, and then an air of funeral quiet was restored to this small village of the dead.

  16

  Jessie moaned. She wasn’t in pain so much as she was twisted awkwardly, her body half in and half out of the rotting coffin. Father Rush lay beside her on his back, his left arm draped over her waist. The stench of damp earth, rotting bones, and newly spilled blood enveloped her and caused her to choke and gag on her own breath. Her right shoulder had taken the full brunt of the fall, and a dull ache began to radiate down her arm and up her neck. She moaned again and tried to turn away from the priest, whose deadly stillness and silence filled her with renewed terror.

  Slowly she was able to twist herself around and then began to disengage her body from his. She lifted his arm away and struggled into a sitting position.

  “Father?”

  There was no response. Gradually, with the caution of a munitions expert attempting to disarm a bomb, she inched her fingers forward over the clergyman’s body. The handle of the pickax stopped her. She gasped and then followed it down to where the head of it joined with the priest’s body. The tips of her fingers tapped around his opened chest like a giant spider dancing over a hot stove. Still lodged in his breast, the iron tool felt warm and wet. She realized she was gliding her fingers through Father Rush’s trickling blood and screamed.