Afterlife

by Douglas Clegg

  “I know,” Eleanor said. “Hut’s been careless.”

  Dr. Glennon nodded to Julie. “Mrs. Hutchinson, please, just think for a minute. I know you’ve gotten some mumbo-jumbo from that Diamant character. But he’s taken care of.”

  “Did you give him some Xalax? Or Darmien? Something to make him sleep? Is that what you gave Matty, too?”

  Dr. Glennon held up his hands, slightly defensively. “I know what that man told you, Mrs. Hutchinson. But there’s more to it. Believe me.”

  Eleanor said, “Julie, we had to do it this way. We had to wait until Hut was fully himself again. He’s better than he was. He really is.”

  “You people brought him back from the dead.”

  “I would’ve thought you loved him enough,” Eleanor said, “to want him back. He has Ability X stronger than anyone we’ve known. You loved him. He loves you. He loves you, Julie. Surely, you’d want to be with him.”

  “Not like this,” Julie said. “You’re a pack of fucking psychic vampires.”

  Eleanor shot a look at Dr. Glennon, who went to sit down on the stairs to the second floor. He looked exhausted. Julie noticed sweat on his forehead. She was scaring them. Just a little. She didn’t know how they’d be scared. “You’re nothing but zombies.”

  “Oh, Julie,” Eleanor tsked as if she were a child. “This is the human brain. It’s not mystical crap like Diamant believed. Project Daylight was a scam. They were trying to find out things to justify war. To justify invasion. To milk little children of their abilities. But we all learned, together. We learned. And we’ve put it into action.”

  “You kill. You kill each other. You kill your own children. I didn’t even know you had children, Eleanor.”

  Eleanor began to look at the revolver as if she wanted to grab it. Julie grinned. She was happy to feel that she had power in this situation.

  “You’ve been in the Stream, Julie,” Eleanor said. “You know how life and death are definitions of the imperfect human brain. There is no death, Julie. There doesn’t need to be. Those of us with this ability can change how human beings exist. We can alter the course of the future.”

  “Not all of you come back. Are you dead yet Eleanor?”

  “I guess there’s no reasoning with you,” Eleanor said.

  And then, Hut came around the corner, with others behind him. People she didn’t know—three or four of them. The red-headed woman from the video was there. Gina? Was that her name? She stood back with a middle-aged man who had tortoise-shell glasses on and thinning hair.

  “Zombies,” she said.

  “Baby,” Hut said, moving toward her too rapidly. He looked well rested. He looked healthy. He wore one of his favorite T-shirts, and blue jeans, and didn’t look like he was in his forties at all. He looked better than she remembered him looking. Life was in him.

  “No, Hut,” she said. She raised the revolver. “I saw you shoot Michael Diamond.”

  “He’s not dead, though,” Hut said. “He’s somewhere safe now. He won’t harm you again. And he won’t harm us.”

  “You shot him. And he fell. If I shoot you, maybe I’ll feel good. Maybe it’s enough.”

  “If you shoot me, will you shoot all of them?” Hut asked. “Will that get you what you want, Julie?

  “Where’s Livy?”

  Eleanor cleared her throat.

  “Matt’s resting, upstairs,” Hut said. “You can go see him if you want.”

  “You drugged him. You…you killed him…when he was practically a baby…you tested him,” Julie said.

  “What is it you want, baby?” Hut asked. His eyes seemed kind. He didn’t look like the undead. He didn’t look like a vampire. He didn’t look as if he meant to hurt her. She hated him most for that. She tried to remember Michael Diamond’s words. Things he’d said. She tried to remember the feeling of Michael Diamond inside her and being inside him. The safety of it. The warmth. The complete connection between the two of them. “What is it you want?”

  “I want my children.”

  “Yes,” Hut said. Dr. Glennon looked up at him as if this were the wrong answer.

  “Julie, you’ve been through an enormous shock,” Eleanor said, taking a step toward her.

  Julie turned the gun on her. “Back, Eleanor.”

  “Nell, please,” Hut said. He stood still, his arms outstretched. “Julie. You’re the love of my life. I hated being separated from you.”

  “You came to me at night,” she said. “You Streamed or you broke in or you did something. And you raped me while I was sleeping.”

  “In your dreams, you told me you wanted me inside you,” he said. “I asked, and you said yes.”

  “Because I thought it was a dream,” she said. “Where’s Livy. I want to see her.”

  “You can’t right now,” the red-haired young woman said from the back of the hall. “She can’t,” she added, turning to the middle-aged thinning-haired man. “Can she?”

  “Oh my God,” Julie gasped, nearly losing her balance. “You killed her. You already killed her.”

  Everyone remained still in the room. No one spoke.

  “She’s only sleeping,” Hut finally said, gently. “You have to believe that.”

  He motioned to Dr. Glennon on the stairs to move out of the way. “It’s all right,” he said. “Julie, let’s go upstairs. She’s upstairs now. You can be with her.”

  5

  At the open door to what she had assumed would be a bedroom, Julie glanced back at Hut, who was close behind her. She kept the revolver ready, because she was determined that somehow, some way, she would see Livy and Matt through this. Her life didn’t really matter anymore. Her children were all that mattered. She could shoot at least two of them if she had to, and it might buy enough time to get Livy out to the car, and get her cell phone in the glove compartment and call the police as she drove away. If she believed in what they were doing, they wouldn’t really hurt Matt. They couldn’t, if it was true. If it was true, Matt was already resurrected from the dead. Once the police came back—and she’d tell them that they had kidnapped her children, she wouldn’t tell the police about psychics and resurrections and Ability X Y or Z. She would be sane. She would stop this, somehow.

  She glanced back to Hut, but he wasn’t threatening her at all. She had a pang in her gut—as if the bond of their marriage still existed and was causing her pain. Fuck that. Fuck it. He’s a murderer. He’s insane. He’s a zombie. He’s a psychic vampire. He’s not even real. He can’t be. But even if he is, he believes everything he says.

  Hut said, “Let me tell you about life after death. The only way to overcome it is to have the talent and knowledge, and 99.999 percent of human beings don’t have it and never will. And many of those who have it never use it. I suppose a few have, and have been elevated to the level of gods. But there’s no God, Julie. No matter what Diamant told you about the human soul. There’s no soul except for life in the flesh. The brain is the seat of power.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar. You and your doctors from Hell.” She glanced into the room, but could not yet bring herself to go in.

  “Every obstacle, baby, contains the seed of its own destruction. Within my being is something more powerful than the horizon we call death. It’s not any goony theory of magic or miracles. It’s simply a process that can most likely be described scientifically. My only understanding of it is that I have it. That my brain did not die when my body did, and that there is something that comes from my mind and manages to overcome what you and others call death. I was not really dead. Perhaps no one is, but the poor bastards don’t have the ability to summon themselves back to the world of the living. And so, they rot and putrefy. But my mind communicates life, back into me. Back into my bones. Into my flesh. Not from magic, not from the spirit world. But from an Ability that others have. Others have and don’t always even know they have it. It’s like a vacuum. Sucking at you. Drawing you away. Drawing you out. It’s passing from one state of co
nsciousness into another. It’s the body that rots. Consciousness can move molecules. Consciousness can raise the dead. I’ve done it. But I’m still not sure how it happens. I resist death. Three days is all I need. Three days to remain dead, for my consciousness to grow strong again after the point of weakness of the physical death.”

  “You’re talking but I hear nothing but bullshit,” she said.

  She stepped into the bedroom.

  6

  Julie stepped into the room, feeling as if she were entering a dark cave. Yet, it was just a small bedroom, with the narrow bed pressed up against the far wall. Candles were lit around the child’s bed, and some of the Inner Sanctum’s members were there—a man of about thirty with thick blond hair sitting on a barcalounger near the shuttered window, and a teenaged girl who had a Sony Walkman in her hand and earphones in a halo over her head. She drew them off, looked at Julie, then at the blond man, and then at Hut.

  “Christ,” Julie said. She had lost the nervous feeling, knowing she had a purpose here that was not about herself. That was not about weakness. But she saw her daughter’s hair, from under the covers, and the lump of her body under the covers.

  The blond man’s face betrayed nothing but caution. He had half risen up in the chair, and then, seeing Hut, sat back down.

  Eleanor’s voice behind her. “Now, Julie, you must be exhausted. Why don’t you just…”

  “I’m not your patient anymore,” Julie said. “Talk to your Great God Hut.”

  “He’s not a—” the blond man began, and then silenced himself.

  Julie said to herself: don’t be afraid. You don’t matter anymore. They don’t matter. All that matters is Livy. All that matters is my little girl.

  “You’re ghouls, aren’t you?” Julie whispered. “I’m not even sure if you’re human.”

  “Good grief,” Eleanor said. “Julie, this isn’t mysticism. It’s pure science. It’s just a science we didn’t know about.”

  “I don’t need to hear about this death cult anymore,” Julie said. She had that one thing left in her. She had hope. Maybe Livy was alive. They’d only had her one day, after all. Not even a full day.

  “It’s reality. Objective reality,” Eleanor said. “It’s not a cult.”

  “It’s not therapy, either,” Julie spat back. She pointed the gun at the teenaged girl. “Get away from my daughter.”

  If you just ignore them, they’ll feel your will. Will is everything. They’re weak people who believe in nonsense. They think Hut is a God.

  “Julie,” Hut began, but silenced himself.

  If you’re psychic, guess what I’m thinking. Guess what my plan is. Guess.

  She fought to keep her eyes from welling with tears. She moved to the bed, and sat at the edge of it.

  “Livy,” she whispered softly. “Livy.”

  “She can’t hear you,” Eleanor said, nearly as softly. “The auditory nerve is—”

  “Shut up, Eleanor,” Julie said. “Just shut up.”

  Julie felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Eleanor. Old friend. Comforter. Therapist. Monster.

  Julie shrugged her away.

  “My God.” Julie barely was able to get the words out.

  Minutes seemed to pass, as she turned the words over in her mind.

  She’s dead. They did it. They killed her.

  They tested her.

  The way they killed Matty. They used her for their test.

  Her own father…

  She hadn’t really believed it would happen. She hadn’t believed in her heart that it wasn’t all fantasy. That it wasn’t all mumbo-jumbo. PSI. Ability X. Resurrection. Death Cult. Project Daylight. Then, her voice returned. “My God. She’s dead. She’s dead. You already killed her, you really killed…” Julie murmured, covering her face, the tears breaking from within her, a dam burst, and she could not see when she had brought her hands away from her eyes, for the tears had nearly blinded her. “Monsters! Monsters!”

  Hut’s voice, “She’s not dead. I know she’s not. Death is a state of consciousness. It’s not what you think.”

  “You sick perverted bastard,” Julie thought she said, but wasn’t sure, because she felt knocked out, wiped clean, somehow destroyed by the knowledge of her daughter’s death.

  “Three days,” her husband said. “You can’t believe the lies Diamant told. You can’t, Julie. Matty wasn’t right. Mandy and I were too much to produce a child that worked. Two Ability X’s don’t work right in bringing children into the world. Livy will work, because in you, like most people, the gene’s recessive. I know it will work.”

  “I don’t listen to dead people,” Julie said. “I don’t listen to mumbo-jumbo.”

  She reached out to touch the edge of Livy’s hand.

  “It’s not some religion,” Eleanor said. But it was as if she were off in some fog at the edge of the room. “It’s not something as silly as faith.”

  “It’s science,” the blond man said. “Pure and simple. It’s a truth that’s been locked away.”

  “Locked away by crap mysticism and Christian hogwash,” Eleanor added. “And just plain ignorance. There is no God. There’s no Devil. No heaven. No hell. There is nothing but animal life. We are animals. But we have developed the ability to take this beyond our lifetimes, Julie. Our single lifetimes. To wipe away thousands of years of ignorant mysticism, of this ridiculous Christian magical thinking about life and death.”

  “Can’t blame Christianity alone,” the blond man said. “You just can’t. Other religions, too. They just…”

  But their voices receded into the dark background of her mind. They babbled on, she knew, but she leaned forward toward her daughter, her beautiful Livy, and remembered the first moment she had known Livy was in her body, and the first moment Livy had cried out at birth, and how, as a baby, Hut had helped change diapers, and how Julie had somehow believed that her family was wonderful and that she and Hut were a team, and that Livy was going to grow up to be a doctor like her daddy or a nurse like mommy or to be an actress like Livy wanted to, or grow into a teenager who would go to her prom, fall in love, go to college, experience the world, travel, and she, her mother, would have all those years with her, would watch her as she grew and changed and became the wonder that Julie knew she would become.

  Julie lay down on the bed, cradling her daughter’s lifeless body.

  Around her, she saw others draw together in the shadows. She ignored them. All that mattered was Livy.

  She is all that remains.

  Let them burn away, let the world burn away for all I care, she thought.

  She kissed the edge of her daughter’s fragrant hair: chrysanthemums and lilacs, musky and sweet mixed together. She didn’t want to think about how they’d killed her. About how they needed to create fear before death to make their ritual work right. She didn’t want to think about her baby crying out for her Mommy while they did something awful and monstrous to her in her last minutes of life.

  Julie closed her eyes, blocked out the others in the room, and held her child tightly.

  Perhaps minutes had passed, or hours. Perhaps she drank the chai they brought her, and perhaps she nibbled on some cheddar crackers that Eleanor set down on a plate with some cream cheese. Perhaps it was a day that passed. She slept, she woke, she clutched the gun, but no one bothered her. No one tried to move her or take her weapon away. She got up once or twice to use the bathroom in the hall, and when she did, she felt them watching her but she refused to look them in the eyes. She had blocked the others out, and only knew her child’s body, pressed against her own. She lay on the bed, slept, woke, tried to feel that inside feeling with her daughter that she’d felt with Michael Diamond.

  Then, she felt life stirring in Livy’s body.

  Eleanor’s voice, beyond the darkness of Julie’s mind, “Look. Look.”

  It’s not real. It’s not real.

  Julie felt the warmth and the pulsing heartbeat along her daughter’s side, and even the sm
ell of life emanated from her.

  The slight heat of her daughter’s breath against her cheek. Had she imagined it? The warmth? The trickle of air?

  Eleanor whispered something that almost sounded like a prayer.

  Julie opened her eyes and gazed at her daughter’s face.

  Remembering what Michael Diamond had told her.

  “There’s always hope,” he said. “That’s the last thing to go in life. It’s a blessing and a curse. But sometimes, it’s all we have. Yet, when faced with this, there is no hope. There can be no hope. Do not let hope cloud your resolve.”

  “But what hope?” she wanted to ask him now. “What hope?”

  And then, his voice was in her head again. Not imagined. Real. Inside her. His connection to her remained, somehow, even among these monsters.

  “The human soul is inviolate, Julie. There is always hope because of that. The human soul is inviolate.”

  She tried not to think of Matt. Of how Diamond had said he’d died. Maybe it wasn’t completely true. Maybe there was truth on both sides. I must put those things out of my mind. Only Livy matters. Only Livy.

  The human soul is inviolate.

  Her soul was somewhere in her body. It could not die. There was no death except for the flesh. But the soul had its journey. Michael Diamond had moved elsewhere when he was burned at Project Daylight. Opened another door. Passed into a passageway that had remained unseen. And then, came back. And he wasn’t dead, was he? Not even now? Maybe they’d done something to him. Maybe they’d buried him alive. Or subdued him in some way, but if she could somehow get him to help again… But even as she thought this, she felt that she was doing the kind of magical thinking that had never gotten her anywhere.

  But Livy did not have to go through that passage. Not yet.

  She may not even come back bad. She may not be spoiled, the way Diamond had told her. She might be the same. She might even be better. Michael Diamond had been better, after all. Maybe Hut wasn’t. Maybe Matt had come back with slight problems. But it didn’t mean they all did. She believed it. She believed it with a ferocity of emotion. There was no more reason in her life. She had to cling to belief. She had to remember that the world was not all murky darkness. It had benevolence. It had love. It had stronger elements than this Death Cult imagined.