by Mitch Albom
“I’m good,” Tess said.
“I’ll see you out there.”
Jack left the building, trying to flush his personal feelings and focus on the biggest logistical challenge he’d ever faced. He approached the giant stage, where he would be stationed for the entire broadcast. The crowd was streaming in, and people were already sitting on the hills behind the stands. In the snow? Jack thought. Thankfully, the storm had passed and the sun was actually poking through the clouds. He wondered what this town would be like tomorrow—better or worse?
As Jack neared the stage steps, his cell phone rang.
“Yeah, Chief Sellers,” he said.
“Dad . . . It’s Robbie.”
He froze.
“Son?”
“Tell them about me, Dad. . . . Tell them where I am.”
Sully had reached Liz and told her to meet him at the library, as fast as she could. He ran through snowdrifts, his car useless on the crammed Coldwater streets. His breath came in gasps, and the cold air made his lungs feel as if they were being scraped from the inside.
“What happened?” Liz said when he pushed through the library’s back door.
“I need an address.” He tried to catch his breath. “Have to find out . . . where Horace lives.”
“Who’s Horace?”
“From the funeral home.”
“OK, OK,” she said, moving to the computer. “There’s public records, mortgage stuff, but we’d have to have some basics.”
Sully bent at the knees, heaving in and out.
“Start with ‘Horace’ . . . What the hell is his last name? Put in the funeral home, see what comes up.”
She clicked the keys quickly.
“Bunch of stuff about Davidson and Sons . . . Davidson and Sons . . . Horace Belfin, director.”
“Look for a home address!”
“I don’t think . . . hang on. . . . No, nothing.”
Sully looked at his watch. It was nearly twelve thirty.
“How do we find out where someone lives in this town?”
Liz continued to type rapidly—then stopped and looked up.
“There might be a faster way,” she said.
Ten minutes later, they pushed through the chiming front door of the Coldwater Collection real estate agency. The receptionist’s area was empty, but there was one man sitting at a back desk.
“Can I help you guys?” Lew asked.
“Maybe,” Sully said, catching his breath. “It’s gonna sound strange.”
“What could be strange in Coldwater? Just don’t tell me you want a house where your dead relatives can call you. I’m fresh out.”
Sully looked at Liz.
“You’re skeptical?” he asked.
Lew glanced back and forth, as if someone might be listening.
“Well, I’m not supposed to contradict the great Katherine Yellin, our beloved sales partner, but yes, I’m—what did you say?—skeptical. This has been the worst thing to ever happen to us here. Actually, I don’t believe any of it, but don’t tell anyone.” He sniffed. “Anyhow, are you looking for a house?”
“Yeah,” Sully said. “One that might prove you’re right.”
Lew touched his chin.
“Keep talking.”
At five minutes to one, the host of the show emerged from a heated tent to massive applause from the crowd. She was dressed in a fuchsia coat, with a black turtleneck, a knee-length skirt, black tights, and knee-high boots. She took her seat on a stool. From the other side of the stage came Tess Rafferty, Anesh Barua, Eddie Doukens, and Jay James. They too sat on stools, arranged in a straight row.
Finally Katherine Yellin emerged, wearing a Persian blue pantsuit that Amy had helped her choose. She was holding the pink phone in her left hand. The crowd erupted into a cacophony of shrieks, applause, and excited conversation. She was guided to a chair, off to the side, flanked by—at Lance’s last-minute suggestion—the Coldwater police chief, Jack Sellers, who wore a stunned expression, having just spoken to his dead son.
“Thank you all for coming!” Mayor Jeff Jacoby bellowed into a microphone. “We’re about to get started. Remember, everyone, we will be live, beaming around the world. So please, no matter what happens, let’s make sure Coldwater looks good, right?”
He turned and motioned to the white-haired priest.
“Father Carroll, would you bless the crowd before we start?”
Sully bounced the Buick over snowy lawns, cutting around parked cars in an effort to reach Route 8. Every bump jerked him forward and back, some nearly slamming him into the dashboard. He went up curbs and down curbs, the chassis banging in protest. He had no choice; if he slowed down, the car might sink in the snow.
He had a street address and a hastily drawn map on a piece of stationery. According to real estate records, Horace had purchased a home on the outskirts of Moss Hill fifteen months ago, a large property with an old farmhouse and a barn. He’d paid cash. Because the transaction had been handled by their group, a copy of the deed was in the files at the Coldwater Collection offices. Lew had happily handed it over, noting, “I never believed Katherine, even when she got that call here.”
Sully spun the car off a lawn and onto a passable street, bouncing as it hit the flattened snow. He kept seeing Horace’s long, haggard face, and he mentally rifled through every conversation they’d had for some clue as to how he was involved.
It was a lovely ceremony. I imagine the family has told you.
I am the family.
Of course.
Sully’s stomach was churning. He careened onto Route 8, which was actually plowed, and the Buick’s tires gripped the road gratefully. Sully slammed the accelerator. On his left was creeping traffic, backed up for a mile coming into Coldwater. The road out of town was empty.
How are you doing, Mr. Harding?
Not so good.
I understand.
He glanced at his watch.
It was ten after one.
The broadcast had begun.
Upon royal request, Alexander Graham Bell agreed to an event of worldwide significance: a demonstration of the telephone for Queen Victoria. It took place at her personal palace on the Isle of Wight, January 14, 1878, less than two years after the emperor of Brazil had exclaimed, “My God! It talks!” Already the phone was much improved, and the Queen would receive the most elaborate show yet. Four locations were to be connected, so that Her Majesty would hear, through the receiver, all of the following: a spoken voice from a nearby cottage; four singers in the town of Cowes; a bugle player in the town of Southampton; and an organ player in London.
Reporters from newspapers would chronicle the event. Everyone knew that if the Queen was impressed, the phone would be assured a rich future throughout the British Empire. But moments before the scheduled start time, Bell discovered that three of the four lines were not functioning. With no time to address the issue, he looked up to see the regal party entering the room. He bowed slightly as he was introduced to Her Majesty Queen Victoria; her son, the Duke of Connaught; and her daughter, Princess Beatrice.
The Queen asked, through her gentleman-in-waiting, if the professor would be kind enough to explain “the device he calls the telephone.”
Bell picked up the receiver, took a breath, and privately prayed that the one remaining connection was there.
At the county hospital, with the television softly playing, Elias Rowe placed his hand on Pastor Warren’s slender wrist.
“It’s started, Pastor,” Elias said, softly.
Warren opened his eyes.
“Mmm . . . all right.”
Elias glanced down the hospital corridor. It was nearly empty, owing to the many missing staffers who were attending the broadcast, some of whom had declared the day a religiously excused absence. Throughout Coldwater—and much of the country—there was a palpable feeling that this date in history, three days before Christmas, might bring a change to life as we knew it, like the morning of a major ele
ction, or the night man walked on the moon.
Elias had come to visit Pastor Warren because, after last night’s craziness with Sully and Elwood, he needed to clear his head. The two men prayed together. Now Elias sat in a cushioned chair next to Warren’s bed, and they watched the culmination of the strangest four months of their lives as the TV host introduced the “chosen ones” and Katherine Yellin. The cameras kept cutting to people in the crowd, many of whom were holding hands or had their eyes closed in prayer.
“Katherine,” the host asked, “you have asked your sister Diane to contact us today, is that right?”
“Yes,” Katherine said.
She looks nervous, Elias thought.
“Did you explain to her why?”
“Yes.”
“How did you explain it?”
“I told her—I asked her—if the Lord wanted the whole world to know that heaven was real, could she prove it to . . . I guess, the whole world.”
“And she said she would?”
Katherine nodded, glancing at her flip phone.
“You have a list of questions that people around the world have voted on—the questions about heaven they most want answered?”
Katherine fingered the clipboard they had given her.
“Yes.”
“And everyone else here,” the host said, turning to the others, “you have all brought your phones, I understand. Can you show them to us?”
They all took out their phones, and held them in their laps or in front of their chests. The camera closed in on them, one at a time.
“Now, the phenomenon of voices from the other side is not new,” the host said, turning as she read a teleprompter. “We want to bring in an expert, Dr. Salome Depawzna, who specializes in paranormal communications. She joins us from Houston, via satellite. Dr. Depawzna, thank you.”
On the giant screens appeared the image of a middle-aged woman with streaky gray hair, sitting before a backdrop of the Houston skyline.
“I’m happy to be here,” she began.
“Can you tell us, Doctor—in the past, have other people been able to make contact with—”
Drrrnnnng.
The host stopped. The guests turned left and right.
Drrrrnnng.
On the stage, Tess looked down.
Her new phone was ringing.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
Drrrrnnng.
Then . . . Bddllleeep. . .
Then . . . Ole-ole . . .
First one, then the next, each phone in each of the chosen ones’ hands was going off. They looked to each other, paralyzed.
“Hello?” Dr. Depawzna said on the screen. “Did I lose you?”
The audience, realizing what was happening, began to yell. “Talk to them!” “Answer them!” Tess looked to Anesh, who looked to Jay, who looked to Eddie. Across the way, Jack Sellers, standing by Katherine, saw a shocked look on her face, then saw it turned on him.
Because his phone was ringing, too.
Sully found the house at the end of an unpaved, unplowed road. He stepped from the car. There was a high chain-link fence around the exterior, and the farmhouse was set deep on the property. The barn was even farther behind it. Sully saw a front gate, but he did not intend to announce his arrival. He took a breath, then charged the fence and leaped onto it, curling his fingers around the links. A decade of military training had taught him to scale barriers; years away from duty left him gasping at the effort. He managed to reach the top, flop a leg over the protruding wires, then whip himself up and over, letting go as he braced to break his fall.
Do you remember me?
Mr. Harding.
Call me Sully.
All right.
Sully trudged ahead, anticipating the encounter. The snow was high, and every step he took was like lifting weights with his knees. His eyes watered. His nose ran. As he approached the farmhouse, he saw a large, boxlike structure next to the barn. A tall pole protruded at least sixty feet up from it, with what looked like broken steel candelabras attached. Branches and green leaves hung near the top, as if someone had tried to make it look like a tree. But the other trees around it were bare, and these leaves were brighter than those of the nearby evergreen pines.
Sully knew camouflage when he saw it.
It was a telephone tower.
“Anesh? What did your daughter say?”
“ ‘We are here.’ ”
“Tess? Your mother?”
“ ‘We are here.’ ”
“Jay? Your partner?”
“ ‘We are here.’ ”
“Eddie? Your ex-wife?”
“Same thing.”
“And Police Chief Sellers?” The host looked at Jack as he stood awkwardly, midstage, between Katherine and the chosen ones, like someone pulled out of line. “What did the voice tell you?”
“It was my son.” Jack heard his amplified voice echo over the crowd, as if he had yelled into a canyon.
“What is your son’s name?”
Jack hesitated.
“Robbie.”
“When did he die?”
“Two years ago. He was a soldier.”
“Has he called you before?”
Jack lifted his chin. He wondered where Doreen was, how she would take all this. He wanted to apologize. He looked across the stage at Tess, who nodded slightly.
“Yes. He’s been calling me all along.”
An audible gasp went through the crowd.
“And what did he say just now?”
Jack swallowed. “‘The end is not the end.’”
The host looked into the main camera and crossed her hands on her lap, flushed with the glow of having just broadcast history. All the phones ringing at once? Each of the heavenly voices passing on one brief remark, then going silent? The end is not the end? She tried to maintain the gravitas of the moment, believing this tape would be seen by generations to come.
“So, let’s review what we’ve witnessed here—”
“WE DIDN’T HEAR ANYTHING!”
The voice bellowed from the stands. The host tried to locate it. She put a hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the bright lights.
“WE DIDN’T HEAR ANYTHING! HOW DO WE KNOW?”
People turned, craning their necks. A camera operator spun and zoomed in on the man standing by the front row of bleachers, white-haired, in a long coat, wearing a jacket and tie. His image appeared on the giant screens.
“THEY COULD ALL BE LYING!” Elwood Jupes yelled.
He looked both ways, his hands out, imploring the townspeople.
“WE DIDN’T HEAR ANYTHING, DID WE?”
Sully placed his gloved hands on the wooden barn exterior and pressed his ear against it. He heard muffled sounds, nothing he could make out. The large front door was twenty feet away, but Sully thought better of banging on it. If Horace was really behind all that was happening, nothing would suffice but catching him in the act.
The base of the barn was stone, the roof tin, the sides cedar planks. There were no windows. Sully moved from the south end around to the back. He was shivering, exhausted; his lungs were burning. Only when he envisioned Jules, his little boy, picking up a phone and hearing a make-believe call from Horace, creepy Horace, emotionless Horace, ghostlike, too-thin Horace, did he find the strength to push on, slogging into and out of snowdrifts until he came around the north side, where he saw a metal rail about ten feet high.
And beneath it, a sliding access door.
“So what are you saying?” the host asked now, standing on the edge of the stage. “That all these people are making it up?”
“For all we know, yes,” Elwood said, speaking into a microphone that had been handed to him. His challenge had disquieted the crowd. They had come to witness a voice from heaven, he reminded them, yet all they had seen was five people answering their phones and telling them what they’d heard.
“Do you live here?” the host asked.
“My whole lif
e, eh?”
“And what do you do?”
“I’m a reporter for the local paper.”
The host glanced at her director.
“Why aren’t you with the rest of the media?” she asked.
“Because before I had a job here, I was a resident here. I went to school here. I got married here. I raised my little girl here.”
He paused. “And she died here.”
A mumble from the crowd. Elwood’s voice choked.
“Folks here know it. She took her life on a bridge. She was a good kid with a bad disease, and she didn’t want to live anymore.”
The host gathered herself. “I’m very sorry for your—”
“No need to be. You didn’t know her, and you don’t know me. But a few months ago, I got one of these phone calls, eh?”
“Wait. You got a phone call from your dead daughter?”
“It was her voice.”
The crowd gasped again.
“What did you do?”
“I told whoever it was not to play around, that next time I’d tape it and go to the police.”
“And?”
He looked down.
“And she never called again.”
He wiped his face with a handkerchief. “So I want to hear it, that’s all. I want to hear another real voice talking about heaven and let everybody here be the judge. Let them decide. Then I’ll know. . . .”
His voice trailed off.
“You’ll know what?” the host asked.
Elwood looked away.
“If I made a mistake.”
He wiped his face again. He handed back the microphone. The crowd had fallen silent.
“Well, we’re here for just that,” the host said, walking back to her chair. “And Katherine Yellin—”
She turned to where Katherine was seated, a designated cameraman hovering just a few feet away.
“We’re counting on you for that.”
Katherine squeezed her sister’s pink phone. She felt as if the eyes of the entire planet were on her.
Sully held the edge of the door. Everything he had, he summoned to his grip. He knew he’d get one chance to surprise Horace, and he needed to do it fast. He exhaled three puffs of air, then, without hesitation—just as he’d pulled the ejector handle—he yanked the door hard and came charging in.