Afterlife

by Douglas Clegg

  That was it.

  “It doesn’t mean it’s his father,” Joe Perrin told her when she called him up. “Even if it is…”

  “If it is, he might know about Hut. If Hut was there. If any of this matters,” she said. “Joe, you told me you believe in this kind of thing. I’ve experienced something recently.”

  “A ghost?” His voice carried with it a half-joke in the word, as if he were uneasy mentioning it.

  “I don’t know. A phenomenon of some kind that would make any sane person start drinking and any insane person start jumping out windows,” she said, completing his joke to keep it light.

  “I believe in ghosts,” Joe said. “And I know our government backed programs for remote viewing. I’ve read too many articles about it not to believe it. It’s tough thinking they might’ve used kids, but if it was a sleep study, maybe.”

  “I’m going to ask him.”

  “You got balls,” Joe laughed, but she didn’t. His comment reminded her too much of something Amanda Hutchinson said to her.

  “Well, if it’s not his father, he’ll laugh. He told me that I should come talk to him. Maybe he’s psychic. I just am beginning to push to that side of things.”

  “Belief?”

  “Belief. Or being open to this. Now. Given everything. And if Alan Diamant, well, maybe he knows something. Maybe he was there. If your dad runs a parapsychological foundation, it’s pretty likely that you may grow up to be a psychic,” she said. “Right?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But Diamant is a different name than Diamond.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not so different,” she said. “Maybe he’s ashamed of his father. Or maybe the name Diamond is just more…”

  “Hollywood,” Joe completed her thought. “He’s cubic zirconia. Diamonds are not always a girl’s best friend.”

  “Ha,” she said.

  “Don’t forget me when you’re in the city,” Joe said before they hung up on each other. “I’ll do some snooping around in all these books and magazines I’ve got piled up. Do you want a psychic reading? I can ask my friend Lauren. She’s excellent.”

  6

  She decided to tape one more night. She went to Matt and asked about his camcorder. Could it be set up with a timer? Yes. Could he set it up so that it could shoot reasonably decent video in the dark? Yes. Could she then take the DVD and put it right into the computer without him seeing it? Yes. This time she intended to be drugged out of her mind with whatever substance could knock her out. She had an old bottle of whiskey in the liquor cabinet that she and Hut never drank, but she knew it was the good stuff. She took a few swigs before going to bed, very late, and then lay down on her bed. This time she kept her clothes on—her shirt and jeans and a sweater.

  She drank three small glasses of whiskey and sat up too late, and then sleep came and it was deep.

  In the morning, she took the NannyCam tapes and watched them, and there was nothing. Same for the camcorder’s tape. She tried it three more nights. Nothing. Nothing.

  And then, the fourth night was a charm.

  7

  Although the visuals were too shadowy in the NannyCam tapes, Matt’s camcorder had night vision technology, and she saw the dark of her room with greenish glows. The green-black figure of a man. His face so much like Hut’s it made her gasp.

  And then, as she watched, she had the strangest feeling she’d ever experienced. It was as if he was looking at her, watching him. Knowing that she would watch him hours later. Knowing that she would see this videotape.

  He went to where the camcorder was set on the tripod, and looked directly into the camera. It was Hut. The video was dark and glowing green and grainy, but there was no doubt about it. He seemed to be trying to say something, but there was no sound on the video. Then, he fumbled with the camera. He lifted it up, and now, he had it in his hands and was filming the bedroom. Filming her. With one hand, he unbuttoned her sweater, and then, beneath this, unbuttoned her shirt. He spread the material apart, and pressed his hand in the brief gap between her breasts. Then he kept the camera focused on where his hand went. He delicately drew back each side of her shirt, exposing her breasts, and then put his fingers around the nipple of her right breast, and twisted it slightly. He cupped her breast in his hand, then drew the camera back.

  He continued to undress her with some dexterity, filming each movement he made.

  When he had her completely naked, he put his hand between her knees and pushed them apart. Then, he put the camera there, close enough that she could see herself—and he began stroking her there, between her legs, all the while keeping the camera focused where his fingers played.

  She couldn’t watch it anymore. She shut it off. Covered her face in her hands. She couldn’t even conjure tears.

  8

  “I’d like to speak with Eleanor Swanson,” Julie said, holding the cell phone close to her face.

  Eleanor’s assistant told her that she was out for a few days. “Just a brief holiday,” he said. “If it’s an emergency, I can make sure she has your message before the end of the day.”

  Julie paused, and then said, “No, it’s all right. I’ll call her when she gets back.”

  9

  She remembered Matt’s video that had struck her as odder than odd: the one where he’d videotaped her sleeping. She went to the desktop computer in the den and pulled up his videos. They were numbered, but not otherwise labeled. She knew there was one of her sleeping, and then the very strange one of the girl that was probably from his school. It had been in the back of her mind to ask him about them, but she hated to push him on anything after what he’d gone through. Eleanor had told her to expect that he’d be like stone about his mother’s death for at least a few months until he got through a protective layer inside him. “And then expect Niagara Falls and some yelling and maybe some well-placed anger,” Eleanor had said, suggesting several therapists he could see if he still didn’t want to talk to her again.

  Julie tried to open some of the videos, but none of them would open, and she wasn’t technologically advanced enough to figure it out.

  Then she made a call to Michael Diamond’s office. They gave her the runaround and put her on hold (twice). She made sure all the doors were locked, windows closed and locked, checked the burglar alarm and got in the Camry and drove to the city.

  In the backseat of the car, she’d tossed copies of The Mind’s Journey and The Life Beyond.

  Chapter Nineteen

  1

  “I’m sorry,” the woman at the front guard desk said, looking at her with what Julie assumed was the kind of sizing up a security guard needed to do if they smelled a stalker. “His show tapes Mondays and Tuesdays. If you’d like to get tickets, the ticket window is—”

  “I’m not here to get tickets,” she said, and then left abruptly. She got a bagel and bad coffee from a street vendor, and stood on the corner of 53rd and Sixth Avenue, wondering when she had transitioned from a widow to a stalker.

  On her cell phone, she dialed the studio, got a recording, and on the recording was an eight-hundred number for buying Michael Diamond’s books and tapes. She called it, and got an operator.

  “I need to reach him,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. We’re a warehouse fulfillment service,” the man said on the phone.

  She hung up.

  Then she opened the book, and looked at the last few pages. Diamond was shilling his tapes and books and seminars and…consultations.

  She called the number listed for the consultations. “I’d like a consultation. But I want it immediately.”

  “I’m sorry,” the young woman said, her voice practically a chirp. “Mr. Diamond has a waiting list. The consultation price is $2,000 for one hour, and I can put you down for…how’s October 12th?”

  “Listen. I don’t care about his schedule. You tell him—or his handlers—that this is Julie Hutchinson. The woman he had on the show recently. The one who he told that someone would die
. That person died. You tell him that if I don’t see him, and fast, I’m bringing a lawsuit down on his head that will ruin him forever.”

  2

  He agreed to meet her at a restaurant called Pastis that was just outside the Village, toward Chelsea, in the meat-packing district. They sat outside, the restaurant’s awning shielding them from the sun. She ordered steak frites, and he ordered beans on toast and a glass of white wine.

  “So, you’re threatening me,” he said.

  “I had to see you.”

  “I know.”

  “What…what was that all about?”

  “In the studio? It’s what I do. I viewed you.”

  “Viewed?”

  “I go inside people, sometimes. It’s like possession, I guess, only I’m not a ghost. It’s my mind—it’s not magic. It’s a genetic mutation, I think. My grandmother had this, too. One percent of the population has it. You know, I thought you hated my guts after our session.”

  “I did. But…you said things that…well, they were accurate. I had buried them, but they were true. I’ve never admitted them to anyone. Not my mother, my sister, not my kids.”

  “I know.”

  “You know all?”

  “No, I don’t. I know very little, in fact. What you consider normal intuition—I’ve got zero. Truthfully, if I didn’t have this ability—we call it Ability X—I’d be a bum in the street. In fact, I was, for several years. It goes in and out, depending on a host of factors. But it’s come on strong in the past six years, so…well, I’ve had to make hay while the sun shines. So, you need my help with something you don’t really understand. Is that right?”

  Julie nodded. Their food came, and Julie picked at her French fries.

  “But you don’t really believe,” he said. “Now.”

  “I thought you said belief doesn’t matter. There are things I need to know.”

  “About your husband.”

  She nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but…” “You’ve seen his ghost,” Diamond said.

  “I wish that’s what it felt like. I think I’m losing my mind, since he died. I think my mind is flashing on and off or something. A few nights ago, I thought I saw him. As close as you are. I thought I saw him, but then, when I turned on the light, he wasn’t there. And then, on a video I made. He is in it. But the video goes bad. All the videos went bad.”

  “I have to tell you, Julie. I don’t believe in ghosts. Not like you’re saying. I don’t believe there are physical manifestations of spirits where you can see them.”

  “So, I guess I’m halfway to the psych hospital,” she said, and tried not to imagine Amanda Hutchinson.

  “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I meant, sometimes what happens is our brain gives access to projections— so what we see isn’t a ghost, so much as…well, a movie. A movie our mind creates, influenced by either our own psychic ability, or someone nearby who has that ability. Your daughter, for example.”

  “Livy?”

  “Well, you told me about her brain radio. She thinks she communicates with her dead father.”

  “I didn’t tell you that.”

  He grinned. “For all you know, you live in a psychic household. Let’s assume your daughter has some psychic ability. Anyone else in your family have this?”

  “My mother thinks she does. But she doesn’t. Believe me, she doesn’t.”

  “It’s usually genetic.”

  “Ah.”

  “I can tell by that ‘ah’ that you think this is one loony bin candidate talking to another. Think what you want, just stay with me on this. You’ve read my books. You know what remote viewing is. That’s why you’re here. You know about the Stream, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “In your book. It’s what connects consciousness between people.”

  “It’s fluid, and just because physics hasn’t yet described it, doesn’t mean it won’t eventually be mapped out just like DNA. I believe it’s the connection between entire species. Ants have it—and it’s obvious they do. Birds that migrate have it. As we go up the food chain, it seems to have been weeded out. Who knows why. And now, it just shows up as a genetic burp. That’s what I think I am: a burp.”

  She laughed, and for just a moment forgot her headache—the one that hadn’t disappeared in days.

  “I am here,” she said, “to find out if you know about something called Project Daylight.”

  3

  A strange look flickered across his face, as if he were deciding on something that might affect her.

  “It was your father running that program. Am I correct?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “It was on the sixth floor of an apartment building on Rosetta Street.”

  Again, he nodded. “It began as a sleep study for children with certain disorders. My father hired several medical people to oversee aspects of it, but this was a cover for what it was really about. He had received funding from the Army to find out if there was a key to turning on Ability X in people. Children with the ability seemed to have an easier time of it. My father was misguided. He assumed all children were good. But they are not. Some children…well, particularly children who had come from abuse and were angry and had the seed of something more in them…well, the place was badly ventilated, apparently, and when the fire broke out—caused by faulty wiring, ultimately—many people died. My father was burned. Forty percent of his body, mainly his legs. He lived a few years beyond this, but ended up taking his own life. Project Daylight was a disaster, it cost too much money, and the Army wanted to hide it once the fire happened. So, it got buried.”

  “My husband was in Project Daylight.”

  “Then, your husband was psychic. Or had some level of ability. As a child.”

  “He never told me about his childhood,” she said.

  “Given what happened in Project Daylight, I doubt he would,” Michael Diamond said.

  4

  Although she wanted to open up to him, Julie became worried as Diamond spoke to her that she would sound too crazy. She wanted to unleash everything, to ask a thousand questions. But it all came down to one question. The one question she had never known in Hut’s entire life. “Do you know who my husband was?”

  Diamond put down his fork, and said, “I’m not sure. All of us in that program, Julie, lost memories.”

  “You were in it?”

  “My father had some psychic ability, and I inherited it. My mother, too. People with Ability X often seek each other out. I’m surprised you don’t have any.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “You don’t really believe in it, do you?”

  “I believe that people believe. And maybe I want to know more,” she said. “Did you…did you know Hut? Well, his name was Jeff. I don’t know what his last name would’ve been. He was a ward of the state at the time.”

  “Well, memories were lost, believe me,” he said.

  She nodded. “A boy was burned.”

  “He died,” Diamond said.

  She remembered something that Detective McGuane had mentioned. “Died? I thought he lived. The cops think that man who killed my husband might have been that boy.”

  “Do they? They think a dead boy killed someone?” He let the question hang in the air. Then he said, “I can show you the few memories I have of it. But they’re vague. They’re out of focus.”

  “Show me?”

  “Whether or not you believe in Ability X, Julie,” he said, “doesn’t matter. I can bring you inside myself. I can show you what I remember. At least fragments.”

  “How?”

  “If you really want that, I need total access,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, I need to delve into you—into your psyche. I need to unblock, and open doors in your mind. I need to let things out that you don’t want to get out. It’s not selective. I can’t pick and choose which door to open. I’m just the locksmith. I can unlock the door, but I can’t prevent things f
rom spilling out. Do you understand?”

  She squinted as she looked at him. “I guess I’m still skeptical. But, when you touched me in the studio that day…”

  “Ah. The laying on of hands. In religious mysticism, it’s the most important way to Stream. To move from my consciousness into yours. Once you’ve let me inside you, you can slip into me.” He took a sip of wine, and grinned like a teenage boy who just shot off a bottle rocket. “It’s like I feel everything the other person has felt. It’s like unleashing impulses. It’s like…well, pardon me for saying so, like an orgasm. And it’s scary.” He touched the tip of her fingers as she reached for her water glass. She withdrew her hand.

  Maybe he’s just nuts, she thought. Maybe you need to get out of this lunch. Maybe whatever little bullshit ability he has isn’t going to be what you want. You’re smart, Julie, Eleanor told you that you might hallucinate and see Hut. That it was the normal grief and stress and longing. That it’s not some supernatural event. It’s just the human mind with a few cracks in it.