Afterlife

by Douglas Clegg

  “I guess they got evicted,” Joe said. “Nobody home.”

  Then, he went to check in the bedroom. She waited, remembering seeing the man standing there. The man who had the same blurred face that she’d seen in Michael Diamond’s mirror.

  Julie’s imagination began to run wild. You’re a fool, you can’t have seen anything in the mirror. You can’t have seen a man with a blurred face anywhere. It’s the dreams you’ve been having. It’s Hut’s death. It has gotten to you and instead of dealing with it, you’ve been dancing around it. You saw the video with Mel. You saw that all you filmed was yourself, maybe dreaming of sex with Hut. Maybe dreaming of things because the raw deal you got with his murder was too much for you to handle. Hut was part of some psychic study as a kid. No wonder he never talked about it. But he did talk to Livy about her brain radio. He did try to tell her—she was sure of it—that something bad had happened in his childhood. Maybe when he talked about the Hutchinsons being horrible to him, he was confusing it. Maybe his memories had been like crossed wires. Or maybe Michael Diamond had been telling the truth: that the fire in the building took the memories. Blocked them. That’s nuts to think any of this is real. You don’t genuinely believe in…but the Streaming session with Diamond had seemed too real. She had never felt someone else’s consciousness, inside her like that. Am I going insane? Is this what it is? But she could answer her own question: it was as if someone was fucking with her. As if someone had already crawled inside her mind and was screwing with the way she saw things. The way she perceived. The video. The Streaming. It was all about her brain itself hitting short-circuits. It was not insanity. At best, it was shock and paranoia. Post-traumatic stress. Seeing her husband’s body on a metal table. Seeing how he’d been carved into. Seeing Matt’s arm, with its carvings. Seeing things. That’s all it was. Seeing things. It wasn’t that she herself was losing her mind. It was a problem of vision. It was a problem of how things are seen, and what happens when a shock occurs.

  She waited for Joe, and her mind spun until she just wanted to feel as if something made sense.

  Joe came out of the bedroom and said, “Nothing there, either.”

  She could see in his face the doubt. Even Joe, who believed in psychic phenomena wholeheartedly, thought she had gone off the deep end.

  “Look,” he said, anticipating her mood. “You’ve had some shocks. I’m not saying that none of this adds up to anything. But I think if we’re going to call the police, we need more. I’ll look up some stuff and call some friends who are more expert on this. I’ll find out more about Project Daylight. Don’t worry about this. Let me drive you home, okay?”

  7

  Joe drove her back in her Camry, and when they got near Rellingford, he offered to spend the night, but she could tell he wanted to get home. She insisted that she was all right. So, they drove to the train station and she saw him off. She enjoyed the ride back with all the windows down and the slight wind blowing through the car, giving her a nice chill. She felt better. She wasn’t sure what to make of Michael Diamond or what she’d seen—or hadn’t seen—at his place. But she’d handle it later.

  When Julie walked in the front door of her house, her sister was in the living room, covered with a blanket on the couch, with Livy, in her jammies, curled up around her.

  Mel opened her eyes. “How’d it go?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Thanks for coming over,” Julie whispered, lifting Livy up in her arms. Livy was so sound asleep that she barely stirred as her mother carried her to her bedroom.

  She was too tired to clear out the guest room for Mel, so she and her sister slept together up in the big king-sized bed in Julie’s room. When Julie got up in the morning, Mel already had coffee made. The kids had gone off to school. It was after eleven.

  Mel barely said a word, but hugged her. “I love you, Julie. You’re the best little sister in the whole world. But I don’t want you going in the city anymore. And I don’t even think your friend Joe was much help to you. And I certainly think that Michael Diamond was bad news from the start. I wish I’d told mom to go by herself to that stupid show.”

  Julie said very little, certainly didn’t want to add to her sister’s sense that she was losing it by telling her about Project Daylight and Michael Diamond and seeing blurred faces and burnt bodies. As the thoughts spun through her head, Julie giggled a little and then noticed Mel’s unforgiving look. She knew what Mel was thinking. You’re thinking that I am a terrible Mommy and I need to somehow be strong and pull through and just focus on Mommydom and forget that I had a husband, forget that even though you saw your little sister masturbating on videotape that I saw a man who might’ve been a dead man molesting me in my sleep and you think that I need meds and a good long rest and you’re probably even thinking of taking Matt and Livy away for a while until I get a good doctor and end up like the Numbah One Wife, Amanda Hutchinson, who thought I had big hairy balls. Absurdities encircled her thoughts, and nothing made sense, and she knew that the longer Mel watched her, the worse she would feel, the more she would go whirling into an oblivion of fear and belief and shadow.

  Julie thanked her for the coffee and for cleaning the house. She thanked her for taking care of Matt and Livy. She told her that the rest had done her good last night, and that she knew she’d been experiencing crazy thoughts. “Eleanor called it post-traumatic stress disorder,” Julie said. “But I’m getting good care. Honest. I am.”

  8

  “You went to see this con man again?” Eleanor asked, on the phone. “Julie, you have been through a trauma. Your husband was murdered. Do you think your mind is going to work right, at this point in time? Do you think you’re not going to hallucinate now and then? See things? Wish you could see him? Wish you could hear him? When soldiers come back from war, they often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Why? They’ve witnessed atrocities. You have experienced a personal atrocity. Your husband, the father of your child, was murdered, in a terrible way. Psychics like this man are preying on people like you. They may be worse for you than anything else. He may be giving your subconscious mind permission to break down.”

  “Can I see you?”

  “Immediately,” Eleanor said. “I’ll be at my office in twenty minutes. I consider this an emergency.”

  9

  A bald man in a gray, expensive suit sat in the overstuffed chair that Julie normally occupied during her sessions with Eleanor Freeman.

  He rose up, as Julie entered the room. She had the feeling that he had too much of a good sense of himself. He must be a doctor.

  “This is Dr. Glennon, from Hillside,” Eleanor said. Julie shook his hand, and went to sit on the couch next to Eleanor.

  “I’ve brought Dr. Glennon in, Julie, because I thought you two might talk more openly. I feel I’m a little too close to the situation to be of much help.” “But…” Julie began. Then, “The situation?” Eleanor smiled. “What you’re going through. Your sister called last night. She was worried about you.” “She called you?”

  “Now, don’t be angry with her,” Eleanor said. “She’s thinking of your well-being. You’ve been through a lot, Julie, and my fear is that I haven’t been as much help as I should’ve been."

  Julie picked at the hem of her skirt. “All right.” Then, to the doctor. “You’re a psychiatrist?”

  Dr. Glennon nodded.

  Eleanor patted Julie on the knee, and then got up and walked over to the doorway. She stepped out of her office, shutting the door behind her.

  Julie glanced back, toward the door, feeling like a little girl being left behind by her mother on the first day of school.

  10

  An hour later, she stopped by the pharmacy to fill her prescriptions for Xalax, and some drug she’d never heard of called Darmien. She had seen them advertised on TV commercials constantly—the green pill was Darmien, and it ensured “a restful vacation in one night,” according to the advertising. Less familiar with Xalax, she had rememb
ered Dr. Glennon mentioning something about how it was a mild sedative. She wanted whatever would be necessary to somehow help her mind clear up. Glennon had told her, “You can take them together, and they’ll act fairly quickly. Take them when you’re feeling run down, or when your mind seems to be doing that thing you called letting off sparks.” He seemed like a good man, and he told her that the drugs had few side effects and would just be for the short term.

  She took the Xalax and Darmien with some Snapple when she got home, and then she went to lie down in the bedroom and let the supposed relaxing benefits of the new miracle drugs take her over.

  At first, she watched the ceiling with its swirls of patterns, and then she felt as if she were moving into the patterns. She felt quite wonderful and rested and only vaguely sleepy. The sex dream came, of course, and in the dream she had no fear at all. Hut parted her legs, his mouth pressing into her, his hands reaching up and around to grasp her breast and stroke her. It wasn’t like the nightmares of sex and lust, this was lovemaking, thank God, she thought, thank God for drugs and psychiatrists, this wasn’t post-traumatic stress, this was love, this was love that never died, this was no ghost making love to her, but a man of flesh and blood, and the world was fuzzy—she remembered Hut’s first wife’s phrase, “the warm fuzzies,”—that’s what this was, the warm fuzzies had her in their thrall. She felt taken care of again, secure in his arms, his ministrations, and she realized he had never done this before, when they were married, he had never taken her like this in real life, this pounding and battering and swirling and lifting, but with the warm fuzzies, he transformed into this sexual dynamo who wanted her, and her alone, wanted to be within her, wanted to find her pleasure and press into it, delight her, awaken her, but the warm fuzzies pulled her back, ah, she could not be awakened. She could not. The warm fuzzies drew her down into a rich comforter of Hut, his body, wrapping around her as he moved upward, kissing her navel and flicking his tongue within it. She didn’t care that several cameras were filming them—it was a porno movie, she saw people filming them as he took her again and again and she gave herself to him. Then, moving to her breasts and taking each nipple in his mouth, like he was a baby, like he drew strength and comfort from her, like she was his mother and his lover and his wife and his whore and his savior.

  And when he came up to her face, when she looked in his eyes, his eyes were normal, his face was normal. Not milky white. Not a nightmare at all.

  His body was covered with strange markings, whirligig drawings and little sunbursts etched into his skin, but it was him. It was Hut.

  She was sure.

  He pressed himself into her, inside her, and she opened, she blossomed—ah, the warm fuzzies made it easy. That Darmien sure could get a girl in trouble, she giggled softly. Had she said it aloud? Ah, but it was her warm fuzzy-maker, that Darmien, and she didn’t even have to move or struggle or embrace him. Her arms and legs felt as if they couldn’t move, but it didn’t bother her. She liked that he had taken control. She liked that Hut was there, taking her. Taking her the way men took women in fantasies. She loved this fantasy.

  She awoke several hours later. In the dark. God, another insane dream, she thought.

  Someone had screamed.

  As the seconds passed, she was sure of it. But the house was silent. No, not a scream. It was as if the silence itself had made her wake up.

  The scream, or cry, or quiet, she wasn’t sure whether it was that or even a little shriek—it must have been what had snapped her out of sleep. Or it was in a dream? she couldn’t quite remember—like a spider web of a dream that she’d somehow broken through.

  11

  The headache from hell battered at her, but she managed to dress. Had she undressed herself? She couldn’t remember. She went into the hall, and flicked the light on, but it didn’t come up. Have to change the bulb. Damn it. She went down to Livy’s room. It was dark, but everything was in place. She looked in at shadow upon shadow—the toys, the doll collection, and then the small, perfect bed, piled high with pillows, which was how Livy liked to sleep. Hokey Pokey Elmo sat square on the bed as if watching her. She saw a bit of Livy’s hair over the pillow. Livy liked to scrunch down under the blanket at night, “like an oyster in a shell,” Hut used to joke. She stood in the doorway, feeling a bit of relief. But when she passed Matt’s room, she stopped. Then, she turned the knob. It was locked. She had allowed him his privacy like that, ever since she’d walked in on him masturbating the year before. She had felt more embarrassed than he had, and she didn’t blame him for locking up now and then. She could easily unlock it with a credit card or even the front door key, so she wasn’t worried. Matt was fine. In fact, she thought she heard him snoring a little through the door.

  She felt a chill from the hallway, and went down the stairs to the living room to check to see if a window had been left open.

  Instead, the front door was open wide. She glanced at the small plastic box that housed the burglar alarm system. It no longer had its little green lights flickering. Damn it. Damn it. She’d forgotten to turn it on. Had she even left the front door open? Had the damn Darmien and Xalax made her too groggy even to be sensible?

  She looked out into the night, and the stars seemed to have dimmed above the trees, against moonlit sky.

  12

  Julie shut the door, locking it. She flicked up the living room light switch. It was dead. Then she went to the kitchen, and got a flashlight from under the sink. She went out the backdoor, and checked the switches. She toggled them back and forth, unsure as to what she was really trying to accomplish. No light came on in the house.

  She went back inside with the flashlight, and as she walked from the kitchen down the main hall, and the flashlight’s beam hit the back of a mirror, it illuminated the room.

  She was sure that someone stood behind her. She turned around quickly, shining the light.

  The beam of light hit Michael Diamond’s face.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  1

  “Julie,” he said, his hands going up. She kept the flashlight on his face. She thought about the gun. Upstairs in the bedroom. She thought about how fast she could run there. Could she get there fast enough? Could she lock the bedroom door behind her? Could she get the key out—in the dark—and open the metal box—and get the revolver and get back out to make sure her children were safe from the man who she was now sure had murdered her husband?

  “Julie,” he said. “I’m not trying to scare you.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “What…you broke into my house?”

  “No,” he said. “The door was open. The lights were off. Please. Let me explain.”

  “What in hell are you doing here?” she asked, and then wondered how long it would take for her to find the cell phone and call the police.

  2

  “Please. I can understand every single thought you’re thinking of. I was the boy who was burned.”

  “You said he died.”

  Michael didn’t respond to this. “But my memories are like flashes of lightning, Julie. I can’t see everything. You know what I did with you. You know where I took you, where you showed me what was inside you. You were there. You aren’t crazy. This makes sense if you believe, Julie. If you believe. You resisted me. I could feel it when I went into you. You had fear, and fear is the thing that has power over you now. But you’ve got to let it go. Somehow. You know how I Streamed into you. How you went to doors in your mind. You saw things. You relived things. But there’s something important now. Something more important than that. There’s a door in you that needs opening, but they’ve blocked it.”

  “They?”

  “If I told you who, you would not believe me,” he said.

  “Try me.”

  “Your husband,” he said.

  “My husband is dead.”

  “There is no death, Julie,” Michael Diamond said. “Let me show you.”

  He moved toward her, and she stepped backward, and f
elt fear clutch at her. She was sure he was going to kill her, she stepped back, and felt for the door knob to the front door. She turned it. But it was still locked. The chain was on, as well. She pressed her back against the door. Her mind flashed on things—on what she could grab to protect herself. Where she could run. Her heart beat a mile a minute as she began hyperventilating.

  He came nearer, and she kept the flashlight beam on him. He unbuttoned his shirt.

  The light shone on his skin. It was scarred and layered. “They set fire to me. They wanted me to burn, Julie. They stood by and watched me die. But I can show you. Just as you showed me what was inside you. I want you inside me. I want you to see this,” he said, and reached out and took her trembling hand while she kept the flashlight on his chest. He drew her hand to the middle of his chest and she felt a surge of energy, and she knew it was the Stream because she felt herself—not her body, but her true self, something in her mind—flow into him, sucked along as if she were liquid and were being poured into a dark lake.

  3

  The first thing she felt was that gradual warmth and a sense of safety, and then pleasure sensations ran through her. She heard his voice, with her, guiding her. “Julie, this is the Stream, I’ve brought you into it,” and she tried to resist moving along with his voice, but she didn’t feel the same fear as she had seconds before. She saw memory screens inside the darkness: his father holding his hand as he led the little boy toward the doctor who took him through several doors, into a room with a series of beds. Two boys and three girls, of varying ages, lay on the beds, their eyes closed, small wires attached to what looked like polka dots on their foreheads and just beneath their left nipples—for they were in their underwear, sheets drawn up just to their stomachs. He cried when he was told to take his clothes off and get onto one of the beds, and watched in terror as the polka dots and wires were attached to the top of his head, making a slurping sound as they suctioned his forehead.