by David Kempf
“When you get in contact with her, can she be a co-host again?”
I couldn’t deal with this. The stupidity of this audience was unbelievable. Their idiocy took away from the enjoyment of having my own TV show. The popularity of Jenny was a problem I could never solve. Even in death, she was someone people liked more than me.
“I’m no fool. I know that no one can really talk to the dead. If you would make talking to Jenny part of your act then your ratings will still be high. Can you do that?” asked my agent.
Now I hated my agent. If I had my way I could kill him also. That was a bad idea. I had to concentrate on the task at hand. That task was trying to pretend to talk to my dead wife. If I didn’t do that, my TV career was going to die with her. Then it happened.
“Why did you kill me, Edward? I loved you…”
She was standing back behind the very last row. Jenny was looking more like a zombie than a ghost. I could already see her decomposing. What did she want?
“I don’t want to hear about your visions, Ed. We want you to contact Jenny on every episode,” said my agent.
I tried to tell him my visions were of a disturbing nature, not a beautiful vision of contact with the other side. He didn’t care.
“Look, friend, this is the only format where someone can have a dead wife and she can still be the co-host.”
I hated him, but killing him would be too much. It would be too much even for a man like me who murdered his wife and actually saw dead people. I don’t mean seeing a vision of a dead person in a memory or dream. My visions were the real deal now. I actually did see dead people. This wasn’t some bad movie. I had visions that were absolutely terrifying. I was nothing more than a murderer and a con artist who just happened to be blessed…or maybe …cursed with this new supernatural gift of second sight.
Things were getting pretty strange for me. My grandfather and wife were appearing to me quite often. Grandfather used to appear pretty much the way I remembered him. Now he was like Jenny. He was rapidly decomposing. I could deal with that. I mean, dead people decompose. The problem was that he wasn’t even speaking a word to me. Why the hell was he appearing next to Jenny? He was the one who told me to kill her to begin with, and now he was hanging out with her in the afterlife. It was like some terrible old zombie movie from the 1970’s!
“You should never have killed me, Edward.”
I told her that I didn’t want to go to jail and Grandfather had said it was the right thing to do.
“He knows it was the wrong thing now.”
I asked her if that explained why he was always by her side in my visions.
“Yes. He has sworn an oath to stand by my side for all eternity.”
Grandfather is spending all eternity with you? I thought being a few years married to her was a living hell.
“I will never appear on your TV show, Edward.”
I guess not, you being dead and all, I told her.
“I won’t allow you to even pretend you can make contact with me.”
Wait a minute! I told Jenny that pretending to talk to the dead has been a career for me for many years. If anyone can pretend to talk to someone who is no longer with us, it’s me!
“You won’t be able to do it. We will intervene if you do.”
What did she mean by that?
“Your grandfather and I will simply not allow you to pretend to talk to the dead anymore.”
So the scam was over?
“You won’t be fooling anyone now. Not even yourself.”
I guess this means the next time I’m on TV it’s going to be the real deal!
“No one will want to see the reality of talking to the dead on your show. People want to believe romantic notions about death. The truth is quite the opposite. It’s unspeakably terrible to be dead.”
I had no doubt she was telling the truth. There were other things in life that were also unspeakable. One of them was going to prison for the rest of your life. Another horrible fate was being forced to watch your career go straight to hell. Perhaps the worst thing was having a dead wife who still controls your life and manipulates you.
“You’d better be talking to Jenny on the show today if you know what’s good for you,” said my agent.
I already knew the reason why he said this but I had to ask anyway.
“They’re threatening to cancel the show. The ratings are down because people want more Jenny, but now she’s gone.”
Gone? I don’t think this idiot knew what he was talking about. Jenny was…well…dead and well, I had a terrible feeling Jenny was going to be with me for a very long time. She might even be with me for all eternity.
“It’s your job to bring Jenny back! People have lots of questions about the afterlife and they want to ask her soon!”
If nothing else, my life’s situation proved that existence itself was an absurdity in almost every conceivable way! Have you ever heard of the expression “the show must go on?” This show was going to continue but not for very long. The last show was….well…to die for.
I can only imagine how high the ratings for this show were. The whole special episode was dedicated to talking to Jenny. The audience was going to ask questions and my late wife was going to provide answers. They just wouldn’t be the answers they wanted to hear.
“Jenny, was your death painful?” asked an old lady in the front row.
I lied and told the audience Jenny said her death was peaceful and painless.
“That’s a lie and you know it, Edward!”
She was standing right beside me.
“Does Jenny enjoy her afterlife?’ asked another audience member.
I told everyone that Jenny was very happy where she was right now.
“Tell them the truth!”
That’s something I didn’t want to do.
“Does Jenny still miss you?”
I told them that Jenny and I shared a love that could never die.
“What does Jenny want to say to us?”
This was getting to be too much.
“You know what I want them to hear. If you don’t tell them you murdered me, I will make you pay!”
Make me pay? She was haunting and tormenting me now.
“Watch what I do to Grandfather.”
He was back and he was still silent.
“Watch right now!”
She ripped his face right off. Grandfather was nothing more than a skull. His mouth opened wide and it made a strange sound like an eerie wind.
I couldn’t take it anymore and I confessed. An audience of millions of TV viewers saw my entire confession. I screamed at the top of my lungs that I killed her. Every detail of my plan was explained, including the type of rat poison used.
“Thank you, Edward. Now it’s time for all of us to say goodbye.”
I was surrounded by everyone I had ever known, or known of, who had died. All the people who I had ever pretended to talk to were there. The widows and the widowers, the accident victims and the murdered were all there.
Everything went black. I lost consciousness due to the stress of seeing that many of the dead (or undead?) at once. My life had become a true ghost story. I really could see dead people and communicate with them.
“Oh, you’re awake. Good. The entire world has seen what you’ve done now.”
It was a detective. His name was Martin Wesley.
“I guess you know you’ll be lucky to just get life imprisonment. Too bad that terrible show wasn’t broadcast in Massachusetts instead of California. You wouldn’t be at risk for capital punishment if convicted.”
I was beginning to realize that I was in jail. The surroundings were making me feel claustrophobic. I also began to realize I had seen Wesley and his partner, Jack Smith, before. They had been investigating me for months. I told him I was sorry I killed Jenny. The feelings that accompanied the fact I’d killed my own wife were unbearable.
“You’re wife? What are you talking about? Mr. Cleo, you’re not
hing more than a common stalker. Ms. Goodstar was a celebrity you stalked. You were never married to her.”
Things were starting to come together and yet made no sense all at once. Was I really insane?
“You killed two security guards and hacked her to pieces with a knife on national TV today.”
I tried to explain about my book and how we shared the TV show before I murdered her with rat poison.
“Mr. Cleo, it sounds like you’re working on your defense even before your court-appointed lawyer gets here. Ms. Goodstar was married to someone else. Her widower’s name is Justin Ironside. You were never on TV and you never had a book published. I highly doubt that you have an agent.”
Don’t have an agent? I protested, of course I do, I’m in bloody show business!
“Sir, you’ve worked as a high school janitor at Saint John’s school downtown for twenty years. You live with your mother.”
The detective left me alone to ponder my fate.
“Your lawyer should be here soon, Cleo.”
So I was all alone and waiting for my legal representation. I had no idea that I was crazy. I mean, I really thought that I was a psychic and had a TV show. Surely any reasonable jury would spare the life of someone insane like me. I should be considered the definition of delusional. Any psychiatrist worth his salt should be able to show that I’m crazy. The insanity defense should be an easy case to make. I couldn’t predict what the outcome of my trial would be. You would have to be psychic to do that.
Chapter 9
Whatever happened to Christopher Wisdom? He was just a small town kid with big dreams. Now he was showing off his beloved fiction to one of his idols. The author of one of his favorite horror books was now a mentor. How often had he dreamed of escaping the mundane life of the small town? All the time! Most of the time, he didn’t appreciate living there. It wasn’t that he craved city life; it was that he was annoyed by the narrow minded stupidity of the people with whom he grew up. It was insane. The people all loved sports, having one night stands and getting drunk. Some people who got out would come back and haunt the locals with arrogant, grand tales of their success. How wonderful was this that Dr. Henry David Wells was now a close friend and ready to teach him the art of writing? That’s not the end of the story, of course; there is more to it.
Henry was a David and he worked for the masters. Actually, he was a corpse-eating fiend and not really human at all. The ghastly truth was that Christopher himself would, in time, become a living horror tale. If his old gal pal Sarah was a walking piece of erotic art, then he was about to turn into something from the midnight movie creature feature. Still, there was some good news in Christopher’s life. David seemed to like his stories.
“I sense that you are getting much better at this now,” said David.
“What do you mean, David?” Christopher asked.
“You’re beginning to accept this new life offered to you. The life we live is very, very long. The masters we serve are very, very cruel.”
“Yes, but they have great taste in literature,” he answered.
“Now, that was genuinely funny,” said David.
“I want to talk about how you were turned and the era you grew up in. I’m not here to joke about this. There is nothing funny here,” Christopher said.
“Wrong!” said David.
“What?”
“You need to work on your gallows humor, my boy. It’s a must for anyone interested in writing great dark fiction. It’s simply a must and it’s not open to debate. Gallows humor is required for excellent work.”
“I see,” said David.
“It’s a must,” emphasized David.
“I think I understand, David.”
“Now, before we go any further with discussing the humor of good stories, we need to briefly talk about the last two stories.”
“Yes,” said Christopher.
“You showed your skepticism well in them. It flourished and shined but now you know better. Christopher, you may, of course, still write about people who don’t believe in the supernatural but I don’t think you will ever write them with such conviction like you previously did.”
“I see,” said David.
“You now know there is much more to heaven and earth than was previously dreamed in your philosophy,” David said.
“Indeed,” Christopher agreed.
“The serial killer was sympathetic because he was you.”
“Yes,” said Christopher.
“Excellent.”
Only the macabre genre of horror fiction would allow for such comments, Christopher thought. His mentor invited him into a different world where one could have sympathy for the devil and yet still remain heroic. It was noble to understand all your characters, and that even included the darkest ones. There were no misfits in this fictitious world. All were welcomed and needed, even. Christopher had always strived to be the kind of writer who understood the dreams and nightmares of his characters.
“Everyone hates someone who won’t take a position. That’s true when it comes to both politics and religion. The agnostic is on the fence, so naturally I made him the villain,” said Christopher.
“He’s a very human villain, Chris,” said David.
“Yes.”
“I liked the story. It had the moral ambiguity that I love in good tales of detection and terror,” said David.
“No,” Christopher disagreed.
“What?”
“No, David. He was still the villain, and killing people to make a point is evil. Even if you are angry that God is very shy about proving his existence.”
“I see,” said David.
“What did you think of the other story?” Christopher asked.
“Very nice, I think,” David replied.
“That’s all you have to say about it?” Christopher asked.
This was one of those times when David was amazing. Christopher knew he was a world famous novelist. Christopher knew that he worked for those unspeakable fiends, the masters. Still, David occasionally spoke with such plain and ordinary language. Christopher didn’t expect every sentence to be Shakespeare, but understatements were unwelcome here among people who wrote fiction.
“It was an enjoyable tale but I didn’t like the title,” David said.
“Why is that?” Christopher asked.
“I think ‘Bad Psychic’ would be a better title, but that’s just me,” said David.
“Okay,” Christopher said.
“I think it’s a catchy title. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes. What grades would I have received for these stories if you were a human writing professor and I wasn’t in training to live forever?” asked Christopher.
“My dear boy, what great questions you ask.”
“Well?” Christopher urged.
“You would have gotten A’s on both stories, of course. What a ridiculous question. Your stories are good enough for the masters to want to grant you eternal life, and you have to ask what grades you would receive for them? How marvelously unpretentious you are. Truly, you are someone who is honest and genuine.”
“I try,” said Christopher.
“Well, you succeed, Chris,” said David.
“Thanks.”
“You still have a lot of work to do.”
“I know,” Christopher agreed.
“Let us start with the gallows humor. Hilarity and terror are not as incompatible as many writers and critics seem to think they are.”
“When it comes to you, I can’t believe what my own eyes and ears tell me,” said Christopher.
“I can understand that,” David replied.
“You don’t seem English to me in the least.”
“That’s it,” said David.
“It is?” asked Christopher.
“Yes, that’s the kind of wicked humor I love.”
David may be someone with a great sense of humor, Christopher thought. The masters, however, didn’t give the impression tha
t joy and laughter were very high on their agenda. They didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor, even though the joke was ultimately on humanity itself. Despite the fact that David was a monster, a creature far scarier than those featured in most horror stories, he never lost his sense of humor. Even though he was forced to eat corpses in a graveyard and lived a life of unspeakable loneliness, his sense of humor remained intact.
“You would go mad without your sense of humor.” said Christopher. “I feel that in my gut. I’m right. Aren’t I?” he asked.
“It’s an awfully long life we lead,” David answered.
“Yes.”
“It wouldn’t be the same if we couldn’t have a few laughs along the way,” David continued.
“Yes.”
“Sometimes when I’m feeling brave, the jokes are……”
“I know,” said Christopher.
“You do?” David asked.
“Yes. The jokes are at the expense of the masters.”
“Yes, and that takes tremendous courage,” said David.
“Well,” said Christopher laughing. “I would imagine so!”
“So, you don’t do funny?” David asked.
“No. I do,” said Christopher.
“Do you really?”
“Yes. I have a couple of stories that might surprise you about my sense of humor. They’re not light hearted sitcom material, but they’re fairly humorous in nature.”
“Excellent,” said David.
“I didn’t notice too many of your tales of terror having gallows humor, David,” Christopher said.
“You haven’t read them all.”
“Oh.”
“Well, you’re still basically right. Humor was never my greatest literary strength. I do have some funny tales,” David said.
“I would love to read them.”
“Don’t worry, Chris. Read them, you shall.”
“You know, it’s really true,” said Christopher.
“What is?” David asked.
“Truth is stranger than fiction. It’s much, much stranger than fiction,” Christopher said.
