After Life

by Andrew Neiderman

  These thoughts lifted the weight of guilt from his conscience. He promised himself it would never happen again. It served its purpose and it was over. The end justifies the means, right?

  There was a time-out and a beer commercial broke in. He would barely have listened or watched, only suddenly the girl at the pool table in the commercial looked just like Monica London. The close-up confirmed it. He shook his head and covered his eyes. When he looked at the set again, the girl was different.

  He laughed at the workings of his own imagination.

  “I’m getting as bad as Jessie,” he muttered, and sat back to watch the remainder of the game. It ended late because there were two overtimes and he couldn’t pull himself away from the set. Finally, a little after midnight, he turned off the TV. Just as he reached over to turn off the lamp, he thought he heard whispering. He spun around, expecting to see Jessie in the doorway, but the room was empty. He listened again and then turned slowly to look toward the front window. He nearly jumped out of his skin.

  It was Monica London.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, his heart pounding. She smiled and beckoned for him to come out. “Oh damn,” he said, and stepped into the hallway. He listened for a moment to see if Jessie had awakened, but it was deadly quiet. Then, as silently as he could, he slipped out of the house, closing the door gently behind him. When he stepped onto the porch, he saw no one and for a moment thought it had been his crazy imagination at work, just as it had been with the commercial. Then a shadow moved and became Monica.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered loudly. “Are you crazy?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, smiling. She was wearing a jacket over a sheer nightgown. In the yellow light of the porch fixture, he could see her legs and triangle of pubic hair clearly. “I kept thinking about you, about us,” she added.

  “You’ve got to get out of here. My wife…”

  “She’s asleep, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “So,” she said, giggling. She reached out and seized his hand firmly. “Come on,” she coaxed. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to do.” She tugged. He tried to resist, but it was as if his legs heard different messages. As she pulled him along he felt like his head and heart were merely passengers on a runaway body. All the avenues of communication between his brain and his limbs were shut off. The lines emanating from his conscience were down.

  It was a partly cloudy night with just enough moonlight filtering through and in between the clouds to provide a dimly lit pathway through the darkness. The trees that were silhouetted against the night sky looked like morbid observers, bent and twisted sentinels guarding a fortress of evil. Nothing moved except Monica and he. Even the bats seemed to have fed and gone contentedly to sleep. It was as if he were being dragged into a painting, a tableau created out of the nightmare of some brooding and macabre artist.

  Monica pulled him through the entrance of the cemetery. As if the moon followed orders, it broke free of the wispy clouds that had surrounded and trailed it. A wave of bone-white light washed the tombstones. Monica stopped before a large monument and a long marble slab.

  “Isn’t this kinky?” she whispered, and giggled. She sat on the slab and pulled him down with her. He wanted to resist. He kept telling himself this wasn’t really happening; this was a dream. He was back in the house, in the living room, asleep in his chair while the television played on. But Monica’s hands were all over him, unbuttoning, unfastening. And when he gazed down at her, he saw her beautiful body shining as softly as the marble slab. She was as smooth as polished stone. He couldn’t keep his hands away.

  He slithered out of his pants and underwear like a snake shedding its skin, and in moments he brought his erection to the mouth of her vagina. She wrapped her right hand around the back of his head and pulled him down until his lips met hers and then he entered her and they began to make love on this grave. Monica didn’t complain about the hard slab. In fact, it seemed to get softer and become as comfortable as a mattress. She moaned softly, her fingers digging into him and driving him to be more passionate. When he opened his eyes, he and Monica were drowning in a sea of moonlight.

  The lovemaking became more and more frenzied. It was more than erotic; it was as if his body was in turmoil, maddeningly pursuing some impossible orgasm. He felt as if his head would explode and fly off his neck. He envisioned his body turning into liquid and pouring down toward his loins until it did burst and flow through his erection, his entire being rushing into her. He thought she screamed, although he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t he who had screamed.

  Finally it ended and he turned over, his back against the cold slab. He lay there, struggling to catch his breath, his eyes closed. When he felt her rise, he opened his eyes. She gazed down at him, her body seemingly gigantic, statuesque, carved from granite.

  “It was wonderful,” she said. “Wonderful.” Then she laughed softly and fled into the night, her nightgown flying up behind her, making her look like a fugitive ghost.

  He closed his eyes again; his heart was pounding so hard, he was sure he would have a heart attack and be found dead on this gravestone with his pants still down. He struggled to pull up his garments. Finally his heart slowed and he was able to sit up.

  Where was she? He heard a car engine start and then saw the headlights go on. Moments later she was driving away. This wasn’t a dream; it had happened, he thought, and scrubbed his face with the palms of his hands. Leaning against the tombstone, he pulled himself to a standing position. Still in the moonlight, he was able to read the monument. It was the grave of someone named Frederick Hardenburg, but it was the birth and death dates that brought a shudder to him. The man was his age when he died. Just coincidence?

  He stumbled away. The moon, behaving once again like a stage light, slipped behind a heavy cloud and the darkness grew thick once more. Just as he stepped onto the road and turned toward the house, he heard a strange sound and paused.

  Christ, there it was. Jessie hadn’t imagined it after all. Someone was digging out there, digging in the graveyard. The sound seemed to grow louder and draw closer. He stepped back, tripped, and fell on his rear end. He scurried to his feet and ran all the way back to the porch steps. There, he paused to catch his breath. Can’t go bursting into the house, he thought. He was sure to wake Jessie.

  Calmly and as quietly as he could, he tiptoed up the steps, aware that they as well as the porch floorboards squeaked. The hinges of the damn front door squeaked, too. It was as if the house was determined to expose him. He reentered the apartment and stopped in the hallway to listen for signs that Jessie had awakened. All was quiet. He returned to the living room and turned off the lamp. Then he hurried down the corridor and slipped into the bathroom as quickly and as quietly as he could.

  His face was a sight—all red and streaked with mud. He washed quickly and then just stood there with a cold cloth on his neck. Finally he made his way to the bed. There was just a little moonlight coming through the window, but it was enough to reveal that Jessie had embraced his pillow in her arms, twisting and turning it as if she had been in some struggle with it and finally had subdued it.

  He didn’t want to wake her, so he left the pillow in her arms and tried sleeping without it. In the morning the alarm clock jerked him out of a deep sleep. When he turned around, he saw that Jessie was already up and his pillow had been placed under his head. He sat up and threaded his fingers through his hair. Last night seemed so much like a dream now that he thought he could tell himself it had been.

  What was he thinking of? How could he let her pull him off like that? And to make love on a tombstone…let it be a dream, let it be a nightmare…anything. He rose from bed and went to the bathroom to shower. Hot water, a good breakfast, the prospects renewed his optimism. Sometime today, he would put an end to this Monica London business. He’d go to see her and tell her in no uncertain terms to stay away from him. Sure, he thought, that’s w
hat he was going to do.

  The problem was he felt like a smoker who had stopped a thousand times, deluding himself each time that he could stop anytime he wanted to stop.

  Maybe it was because of this house, he thought. There’s a curse on it; it puts a spell on its inhabitants. It makes me sin, he rationalized. Sure. What was that story Monica London told him—the story about the DeGroot ancestor who killed her adulterous husband and cut his body up to spread over the cemetery. Wasn’t it ironic, though, how it was Monica who told him the story and then tempted him into adultery?

  In the bathroom, he paused before the mirror and studied his face. God, his eyes were so bloodshot. In a way he was lucky Jessie couldn’t see him this morning. He was about to turn away and start the shower when something on his body caught his eye. He paused and then brought his hand to the spot on his chest.

  It was where Monica had touched him that first time in his office. He had thought she had jabbed him with a fingernail, but this blemish…it looked more like the scar from a burn, and it seemed to be growing larger even as he stared at it.

  It felt hot to his touch. It even felt as if it were burning into his body as well as around his chest. He stepped into the shower as quickly as he could and ran a stream of ice-cold water over it. It appeared to help. The burning sensation ended, and when he gazed at himself in the mirror again, the spot was nearly gone. After he dressed, he opened his shirt and checked once more. It was barely visible.

  Relieved, he went to start his day, but the memory of that scar was so vivid that he had to check periodically to be sure it hadn’t reappeared. Sometimes it looked as if it were returning, and sometimes it looked like it had completely gone. It was as if it had a mind of its own and was determined to tease and torment him.

  He felt sure that the moment he cut Monica London out of his life it would all end. If it didn’t, he might have to pay a visit to Dr. Beezly himself. He didn’t know how he would explain it, but something told him he wouldn’t have to. Dr. Beezly would know.

  11

  Jessie sensed Lee was very different this morning. He had been aloof, kissing her quickly when he entered the kitchen and then moving away as if he were afraid of her touch. He wasn’t as talkative either, and when he did speak, he sounded tired. She wasn’t sure when he had finally come to bed last night. All she knew was she had awakened sometime during the night, realized she was clutching his pillow in her arms, and returned it to him without waking him.

  She had had such horrible nightmares. Once again she heard those strange footsteps, only this time in her dream she was able to picture something making those sounds. She had to refer to it as something; it wasn’t a person and it wasn’t an animal. Not exactly an animal. It was more like a giant insect, something with a hard shell instead of a back, something that stood on two feet, if you could call them feet. They were scaly, fishlike appendages, slabs of meat, and they left this trail of slime as the creature moved through the hallway and up the stairs to old man Carter’s apartment.

  In her dream she had opened the door just as it was halfway up, and it turned. It had no head, just a swollen lump with two slits that housed pale yellow orbs, each dripping a green, syrupy liquid that flowed down the black sides. Suddenly, what she thought was solid softened to form a sort of toothless mouth, and instead of a tongue, a triple-headed snake emerged, each head spitting and hissing. Her gaze dropped quickly as an enormous phallus sprang out from the creature’s crotch. The tip of it was as red as a hot coal.

  The first thing that was odd about her dream was the fact that she could see the horrible thing. For a short period, when she had opened the apartment door to see what was making the sounds, her sight had returned. The second was that she didn’t appear to be surprised. It was as if she knew, as if she were merely confirming her suspicion. The creature seemed to understand. It smiled and then continued up the stairway, moving with what looked to be a limp.

  At breakfast she wanted to tell Lee about the dream; it had been so vivid. But she knew he would simply chastise her for indulging these horrible images and thoughts. He would blame it on her wild imagination or simply on the wine. He certainly wouldn’t see any significance in the dreams, nor would her relating them to him change his plans in any way.

  In fact, she concluded that his standoffish behavior this morning was the result of her complaints and sometimes hysterical behavior. Maybe she had been unfair and unrealistic to expect him to understand and appreciate her second sight, if she could call it that. Maybe he had been right all along—maybe her accident and the trauma of becoming blind had left her mentally unbalanced, her thoughts often distorted, her imagination unhinged.

  Apparently no one else had complained about late-night digging in the cemetery. Lee never heard the strange footsteps, and he certainly never heard the voices. As far as he was concerned, she had permitted Marjorie Young, a woman who had suffered a nervous breakdown, to spook her, to feed her frenzied imaginings and nurture her distortions. No one else heard strange tones in people’s voices or felt their bones through the flesh when shaking hands. No one else heard skeletons crumbling in the night or laughter in the wind.

  If you took away those things, what did you really have? One night a man got drunk and fell out of his truck in front of their house? The police had come promptly to take him away, and apparently he had done things like this before. Lee’s team got into a free-for-all and the school and community had become excited over it? Well, as Tracy had said, these were small towns with traditional rivalries. People don’t have all that much to entertain and distract them up here. Marjorie Young had nearly electrocuted herself and as a result had a radical change of personality. Well, maybe she was a schizophrenic. Maybe everyone was right—she was a nervous, hysterical woman.

  Calmer minds had to rule the day, Jessie reluctantly concluded. Lee wasn’t all wrong about that. Where were they running to? What would he do? If he thought he could turn things around and was willing to give it another try, why shouldn’t she support him and give it another try herself? They were moving out of this spooky place; things had to get better.

  Feeling guilty now, she tried to cheer Lee up before he left for work.

  “How about my making chicken Kiev tonight?” she asked him at the door. It was his favorite dish. “I’ll call the grocer and have everything I need delivered.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “And I might just make a chocolate cream pie for dessert,” she added.

  “Fantastic. You feel up to it?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m in the mood to drown myself in domestic duties today,” she replied, smiling. “We won’t have any wine at dinner, though,” she added. He laughed. “I don’t care if I ever have wine again.”

  “Okay, Jess. Oh, what time is Dr. Beezly coming to see you?”

  “Two o’clock,” she said, and laughed. “I nearly forgot.”

  “I’ll call you in the afternoon to see how it went.” He leaned over to kiss her on the lips. Once again she sensed his kiss was perfunctory, which left question marks dangling in her mind. She stood there listening to him depart. The quickness in his footsteps made it seem as if he were fleeing. Moments later she heard him drive off and all was quiet. She shook herself out of the pensive mood before it could settle over her and return her to her previous state of depression, and then she went off to make a list of groceries and plan the dinner.

  She wanted it to be something special, romantic. It had been a while since they had made passionate love, or since they had simply been truly loving to each other. Most of their time had been spent mulling over these problems, real and imaginary. It was time to turn things around, and nothing did that better than a gourmet meal, soft music, and fervent lovemaking. She longed for it and for the moments of satisfactory, sweet fatigue that would follow. Tonight, for sure, she would have an easeful, trouble-free sleep. She was determined.

  She was surprised to receive a phone call from Marjorie Young later that morning
.

  “Tracy and I were just talking about you,” she said, “and I thought I would call to see if you were doing all right.”

  “Yes, I’m fine, thank you. I’m sorry about yesterday, about the way the wine went to my head, but—”

  “Oh, don’t think anything of that. It was my fault, really. I shouldn’t have pushed so much of it on you. It’s just that I so enjoy watching people enjoy what I make. Aren’t you a little like that?”

  “Sometimes, yes,” Jessie admitted, but she couldn’t help wondering why Henry permitted Marjorie to make elderberry wine if she had been having trouble with alcohol.

  “Anyway, I wanted to be sure you weren’t nervous about Dr. Beezly coming to see you. You seemed anxious about it, but you won’t find a sweeter, more gentle doctor anywhere,” Marjorie insisted.

  “I’m not nervous; I’m just not very optimistic,” Jessie confessed.

  “Well Dr. Beezly will change that attitude,” Marjorie replied quickly. She sounded like a grade-school teacher reprimanding an insolent child.

  “I hope so.”

  “He did it for me,” Marjorie emphasized. “And he did it for Henry and he did it for Bob, and he will do it for you,” she predicted firmly.

  Jessie didn’t know what to say. If the woman could step physically through the telephone to drive that conclusion into her, she would, Jessie thought. One moment she had been apathetic, depressed, even fearful of everything and everyone, and now she was a major cheerleader. The way she and some of the others spoke about Dr. Beezly, they sounded more like disciples than patients.

  “I’m willing to give him a chance,” she finally said.

  “That’s all he asks for, a chance,” Marjorie sang. “If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call. We’re all a happy little family here.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She was tempted to bring up the frightening comments Marjorie had made to her when they were leaving the Bakers’ dinner party. She just wanted to see what the woman would say now, but she was also afraid it might do some psychological damage, set Marjorie back, and then everyone would blame her.