Afterlife

by Douglas Clegg

  Julie felt an overwhelming desire to explode at her sister, but instead turned around and walked back up the hill toward her house.

  13

  She went up to her bedroom, shut and locked the door. She called the phone number she’d found in Hut’s jacket so many months before she couldn’t remember which month it had been. It felt disloyal to his memory to call it, but she reasoned that if he had been having an affair—which, with the distance of his death and the perspective she’d gained from becoming a widow, suddenly, in a violent circumstance—maybe it was partly her fault, too, maybe she was too involved with the kids and the ER and the idea of them as a couple instead of what he needed with all the stress he had at the clinic. Maybe it was just the nature of men. “All men cheat,” her mother had warned her before she’d married. Perhaps it was true.

  Mel’s wrong. It won’t make it easier. I don’t want Hut gone. I don’t want to believe he’s gone. I just want to know something. Something true about him. Even if it was that he wasn’t in love with me anymore. Even if it’s bad news.

  She whispered it aloud, as she thought it, “I don’t want to lose him yet.”

  She gasped. She hadn’t realized how overpowering the unspoken feeling had been.

  Maybe no one will pick up.

  She would tell the red-headed woman—whether real or imaginary—that Hut had died. That they’d both loved him. Blah blah blah, she’d say, being a wonderful and generous and forgiving widow.

  Hang up, Julie. Just hang up the phone. You don’t need to know who she is. You don’t need to find out.

  Someone picked up the phone on the other end.

  Julie felt herself choke up. She couldn’t even say, “Hello.”

  On the phone, the person who had picked up said nothing, but Julie heard breathing.

  Julie waited a few seconds, glancing out to the golden afternoon beyond her window.

  The breathing quieted, and then she heard a woman’s voice whisper, “It’s her.”

  Then, the dial tone.

  Julie tried calling back again, but the line was busy.

  Then, she tried again. This time, again she heard the breathing.

  “Who are you? Did you know my husband? Did you?” she asked. She heard a faint echo, as sometimes happened, and it pained her to listen to her own stressedout voice coming back at her, “Who are you? Did you know my husband? Did you?”

  She closed the phone, and set it down and began weeping.

  Chapter Ten

  1

  The next day, she tried the number again, but it was disconnected.

  2

  Julie got an email from her mother:

  Dear Juliet,

  Melanie told me about the cops and the psychic stuff, and I don’t know if you knew this, but there were programs, sponsored by our own government, for special schools and testing projects for children who showed psychic ability. Maybe Hut was one of those? There was a fire at one, in Chelsea, in 1977. Seven children died. Four instructors. It was an off-shoot of the Manhattan Psychical Research Institute, but was funded by tax dollars. I found all kinds of stuff online about it. What are the odds? Also, if Livy keeps having nightmares, you might want to get her another nightlight. That might help. Tell her that Gramma loves her.

  Love, momma.

  Julie sent an email to Mel:

  Mel—

  Please don’t encourage Mom with anything you hear from me about Hut and the murder. She now is Googling search engines to find out every psychic program in existence to prove her point that Hut was psychic. The Horror Show that is our mother is set loose upon me and I want it to stop. SOS.

  Then, from Mel, she got this:

  Julie—

  I didn’t know any of this was off-limits. I’ll call mom off you. But do you think she’s right? She told me once that Hut told her that she needed to get her brakes fixed, and how would he have known that? Maybe he was psychic.

  Love, Mel

  Julie shot off another email to Mel:

  Mel—

  Stop it. It’s upsetting me. Yes, he had those little intuitions, but he was an intelligent, welleducated man, and many people could guess that a woman who drove a twenty-year-old car and never took it into the shop might want to get her brakes checked.

  Between you and McGuane and mom, you’d have Hut involved in some conspiracy theory with UFOs. You don’t believe in psychics, do you?

  Jules.

  Mel wrote back:

  Julie—

  Sometimes, I believe in just about everything.

  Open mind, sez me.

  Mel

  Then, one from her mother that sent her over the edge:

  Dear Juliet,

  I found this online. Did you know that between 1970 and 1995, the U.S. government spent more than $20 million on research about psychics? They called it “remote viewing,” and it was to find weapons and bunkers in wartime, during the Cold War and after. They set up testing programs here. New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and Chicago. I can send you a link to the article if you want. Why don’t you ask his parents if he had any psychic aptitude? Or maybe I can research some more. You know, I belong to a group that meets sometimes. They know about psychic stuff more than I do. I could call Alice in New York. She worked on that psychic hotline. I bet she’d know something. Let me know. I always knew Hut had more to him than met the eye.

  Julie deleted the email before she read the rest. Then, she just blocked her mother’s email address so that she’d get no more emails from her.

  3

  In early August, Julie Hutchinson got a call from Shakespeare & Company, the bookstore in the city. She had forgotten all about the book—time had both stood still to some extent and had flown, and between the legal wrangle she’d been dealing with, and getting the kids to settle in to a normal day without their father, then out of school for the summer, and balancing her work with her therapy sessions, the last thing she’d been thinking about was a book she’d ordered in some kind of fugue state after Hut’s death.

  “What’s it called?” she asked on the phone. “The Life Beyond. It’s by the TV psychic. Michael Diamond,” the clerk told her. “It’s been hard to get in stock because the publisher went under, plus he’s pretty popular with his cult audience.”

  The call about the book somehow pulled her back.

  4

  Before she drove into the city, she took the manila envelope out again, pouring its contents onto her bed. She lay next to them—wallet, watch, keys. Flipped through each key and could name them all—but two.

  Two keys, one to a doorknob, one to a deadbolt. Two keys, one with the name of a building in

  Manhattan engraved lightly into it.

  The other, with a number: 66S.

  Sixty-Six-S. Sixty-Success. Sixty-Sex-ess.

  She had not ventured into New York City since her

  third visit to the precinct where McGuane had met her. Not for at least two months.

  5

  “Are you a fan?” the clerk asked, as she passed the package over the counter to Julie.

  “I’ve never heard of him. My mother recommended I read it.”

  “Oh,” the clerk said. “I thought you might believe in that kind of stuff.”

  Julie glanced at the bag, then looked inside at the book. “He’s a psychic?”

  The clerk nodded. “I can’t tell if he’s real or it’s all bullshit. He does readings with people on TV. Sort of like John Edward or James Van Praagh, or—what’s that woman’s name? Sybil something. When I was a little kid it was Jeanne Dixon. Like them. Only not quite the same. His books never really go over big, but he’s got that loyal following. His show’s on really late at night— maybe at one in the morning, on cable. I guess he’s not that popular. I saw the show maybe once. Usually the people who buy his books always look a little sad to me. But you don’t.”

  “My mother,” Julie grinned, shaking her head lightly. “Now she’s the gullible one. She believes in pr
actically everything.”

  Then, she glanced at the display of books near the cash register. One seemed to jump out at her. “Oops, there’s another one I want to get.” She leaned over, and pulled the book off the shelf. Then, she slid it onto the register’s counter.

  “Oh, I love his books,” the clerk said. “He’s very funny.”

  “I’m an old friend of his,” Julie said, smiling. “And this one, too,” she added, grabbing a trade paperback off the counter. “I might as well buy up the whole store.”

  “Be my guest,” the clerk said as she rang up the purchases.

  6

  It was a blisteringly hot, humid day, and she wore a skirt that felt too revealing, but without hose and wearing sandals and a light top, she felt less as if she were going to melt on the sidewalk. She strolled over to Washington Square Park, and went to one of the green benches along its outer rim, brushed off the dirt with the edge of her hand, and sat down. The place was nearly empty, and there was something comforting about it. She opened the bag, and drew the books out.

  The first one was by Joe Perrin, her old pal, and she turned to the back to see his picture. He had used one from his late 20s—he had an ordinary niceness to him, and hair that was a little too long and fell over his left eye in a Veronica Lake send-up. She grinned, thinking of him laughing at using the picture. The credit for the photo was Alicia Caniglia. Julie wasn’t certain, but she thought she might’ve been there when Alicia snapped the picture. She recalled a day down in Battery Park, along the waterfront, and Joe saying he wanted to capture his youth while he had it so that when he became a famous writer, strangers would lust after him.

  She missed him a lot, just looking at the picture, remembering days like that, of dreams of the future. Dreams of what was around the corner, of what could change in their lives, in the twinkling of an eye. She read the bio:

  Joe Perrin is a thirtysomething writer who lives in

  New York City with his life partner, Rick Girardo, and a German Shepherd named Dutch. His first novel, A Perry Street Affair, was nominated for a Lambda Award, and his second novel, View from the Pier, was optioned for the movies. He is currently at work on his fourth novel.

  She read the first line from Joe’s book, aloud but quietly, as if she could conjure his voice from it. “In 1873, a surgeon named Edward Whistler walked away from his family and children and his successful practice of medicine in London’s Regent’s Row, and caught a ship sailing for a small island in the South Pacific, and there, fell in love with a man named after a turbulent volcano.”

  She could hear Joe’s voice in the words.

  She savored the moment, and then closed the book, putting it back in the bag. She brought the second book out. This was a novel by one of her favorite writers, M.J. Rose, but she quickly put that one back in the bag, making a mental note to loan it to Mel first, who devoured her novels.

  Then, the third book.

  A white cover, and a man’s face. Michael Diamond looked like he had been a geeky kid who had grown up to put one over on a population of Americans who wanted to believe in anything, so long as someone made it all sound true. He was not cute, and he was not attractive in the least, to her, but there was something in his eyes—in the photograph—that intrigued her. She opened the book, skimmed the table of contents, Who I Am, The Spiritual Side of Life, Death Is A Gift, Cases of Speaking With The Beyond…

  She flipped to the opening chapter: Exposing Lies, Seeking Truth.

  7

  From The Life Beyond:

  I want to add a note here about phonies and grifters and con men who get involved in the schemes of the psychic world. I do not mean the well-meaning ones who believe they have ability. I’m talking about the ones who are getting rich by spreading a lie about the afterlife that they themselves know is false. Or at best, that they can’t possibly know. They are too good at their jobs, frankly. They’ll be on television or in front of an audience at some seminar, and they’ll be so good at what they do that one is hard-pressed to discover the trickery involved.

  First, let me say, if there were a hell, they’d all burn there, in my opinion. Why? Because they’re giving false hope to people, they’re adding to the delusions people have, and they’re intentionally doing it. I won’t name names here, but you can guess who the culprits are. They can speak in front of an audience of a hundred or more people, and somehow, they manage to know family names, and seemingly secret things, about these families. The truth is, they usually have done their homework.

  First, most people coming to see a psychic to talk to a recently passed loved one—or even someone who died years ago—are put on a waiting list to see the psychic. Why? Because the supposed psychic or his research team needs to find out about the people on his or her list. If you have a relative who died in the past, chances are there’s an obituary that can be tracked down. My own father died several years ago, and if you looked up his name online or through public records, you’d eventually find out that he was a Colonel in the Army, that he served in Viet Nam, that he worked in military intelligence and then as a liaison in Bosnia even in retirement. You’d know the name of his brothers, of his parents, of his children and even how he died, because contributions were made to the American Cancer Society. You’d know his date and place of birth. You’d perhaps have a handful of names to research further, too. The internet today is such that people can trace entire family trees going back centuries if they want to. How easy is that for a psychic? All the psychic has to do is spend thirty minutes or so researching one or two families who are showing up for his audience, and then he gets up in front of the audience and says, “I’m talking to someone who says he has a son here. He’s showing me something about—a helicopter? Or a plane? Some kind of military plane? I’m getting the sense that he was a soldier of some kind. An officer? But there’s something about Bosnia, too. Does this sound like anyone here?” And sheep that I am, I’d raise my hand and gasp and say, “It’s my dad!”

  When in fact, it’s simply research on or off the internet, which anyone can access if they know how.

  Why would I want to expose fake psychics? After all, there will be those who believe I’m a fake as well.

  Here’s why: I believe it is the greatest human evil to delude a single human being with an idea that is known to be untrue. To play into another’s delusion is equally evil. But to make a profit from that, well, some might say it’s the American way, but I’d say it’s the antiAmerican way, and no one should give people like that their business.

  When I was a boy, I was poked and prodded by wellmeaning people trying to understand why a kid of seven could predict the outcome of a card game ten times out of ten. Or how that same kid would be able to locate missing objects at a great distance. Or why that kid managed to understand what someone in contact with him had been thinking.

  All I can tell you is: it wasn’t through practice. It wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t a fancy way of cheating people out of their money.

  It was a genuine talent, and based on my research, it’s an inherited ability. On my television show, I don’t pretend to talk to the ghosts of the dead. I don’t pretend to call up spirits and get them to tell Aunt Mildred that she needs to move on with her life.

  I am not a mystic. If you want a mystic, go get another book. Find a guru to follow. Or a priest. I am not here to tell you about God. Or gods. Or Goddess. Or the Hereafter. The life beyond is about the life beyond the borders that you impose on your mind. It is about learning to tap into talent you may already have that has not been developed. The brain is the most underused muscle in the body, in my opinion. We lift weights, we do aerobics, we go for jogs, or we swim, but we do not take our mind and exercise it, stretch it, allow it to grow.

  I was born with an ability. It may be like an ability you have—only you don’t know how to switch it on. It is not magical. It is not a religious experience. It is an aspect to human life that has been untapped for centuries because the very thing I
most believe in—Reason—has decreed that anything that does not make immediate sense is impossible. Yet we know now, via science, of the sub-quantum realm of existence—of being able to divide molecular structures to the left, and find that similar structures to the right respond at the same time, though they are untouched. Is this magic? At one time, it was considered such. Soon, I suspect, it will be part of scientific inquiry.

  The human mind is an untouchable realm. We can test it, zap it, watch it disintegrate, observe those who suffer from its disorders, recognize a first-rate mind, but the one thing that we have never been able to do is define its limits.

  Well, my friends, there are no limits to the human mind. It is a frontier of infinite proportions. And it’s time we began exploration of it.

  I mind hunt. And what that means is: I sit with people, I get to know them as quickly as possible, and I delve into their thoughts, briefly. Perhaps this is a molecular occurrence. Perhaps it’s simply a strong intuition. For me, it’s a talent. I would guess that 5% of the U.S. population has this talent. Perhaps it’s as low as 3%. I suspect a thousand years ago, it was a stronger talent in the population. I suspect that despite the cloud of superstition over the ancient world, one of the reasons for the miracle-makers, the professional fortune-tellers and witches, may have been that this talent existed in gene pools and among families, and predetermined a certain unusual life for the bearer of the talent.

  I have known others with similar talents. I have worked beside them. To us, it is simply ordinary. It is not supernatural. It is no more remarkable than if one of us were left-handed, or red-headed, or had one eye flecked with blue and the other with green.

  But I’ve yet to encounter a talent that could genuinely speak with the dead and the dearly departed. I believe, truly, that these are the phonies of the psychic world. I wish I could deliver kinder, gentler news than that.