Dead Lines, A Novel of Life... After Death

by Greg Bear

  He would be here for her when she awoke in the morning. He would walk down to the market and get milk and cereal; no, he would just wait and they would walk down together.

  Mother left you here, he said.

  Yes.

  Well, thats okay. You're here and thats what matters. Ive missed you.

  Ive missed you, she said. It's been too long.

  Now you just sleep.

  She nodded a big up-and-down nod. He reluctantly got to his feet and watched her for a long, lovely moment, all the loneliness gone. Full again, to the top.

  Then he turned and looked to the left, at the broadly sketched suggestion of an empty bed in the lighter shadows on that side of the room. He seldom came into this room now, but somehow, with one bed filled, the empty one was tolerable.

  It was a condition of life everywhere that parents sometimes lost their babies; knowing that did not stop the pain, but with Lindsey here, he was all right. He could believe that life would go on.

  Sleep cozy, he whispered, and closed the door to a crack.

  PETER SAT IN the kitchen, wishing that he had just a single beer, for this moment. Just a wish.

  No beer, no liquor, no drugsnot that he had ever done much in the way of illicit drugs. Working as he did, under the sort of federal and state scrutiny it was all too easy to imagine, drugs had never seemed a smart move and had never appealed to him anyway.

  No, it was alcohol that had seemed a safe haven and then had turned around and slowly, blearily blotted out six months of his life. Phil had found him in this very house, alone, passed out in his pajamas in the bathtub. Days before, Helen had taken Lindsey and moved out. Phil had been both sympathetic and disgusted. Jesus, Peter, you still have a wife and kid.

  I had a wife. I had another kid.

  Well, shit. You still have a daughter, and thats all that matters.

  Other than the Scotch in Phils motor homeutterly excusablePeter had not taken another drink in eighteen months. He put a kettle on the burner to make tea. Spooned a small mound of Earl Grey into the wire filter sitting low in the cup. Poured the hot water.

  Christ, he missed those times, all of them in the house. It had all gone wrong in so many ways, his fault, Helens fault . . . neither of them to blame.

  He thought about returning to the bedroom to look at his daughter, decided not to bother her. Just sip the tea and linger on the moment, feel like somebody other than a wastrelsuch a word. A loser. A man who could not jump-start his life. But at least, and most important of all, a father.

  For now.

  Helen had gained custody by having her lawyer tell the judge what Peter had done for a living. Not that Peter would have contested. After all, look what he did for a living.

  He actually smiled around the first sip of tea. A ridiculous life, but it was his life. And it was ridiculous. After the marriage, he had locked up all his photo files in the basement, and Helen had considered it done with.

  In the late nineties, to supplement his earnings from the Benoliels, and to fill the spare time, Peter had fallen back on writing movie and TV novelizations, as fast as one or two a month. He had planned a mystery novel and they had talked about his writing full-time. Helen had gone back to construction, this time working in an office, and for a while, together, they had brought in more than enough money. They had started a nest egg, a college fund. A writing career had seemed possible.

  They had been a family. He had been happy, though restless. Always restless.

  What he would not give to go back for one hour.

  The boiling hurt was no more than a simmer now, cooler than the kettle as it's whistle subsided.

  Tomorrow I'llcall the tow service, he said. I'llget my life back in shape. No more stalls. No more weirdness. No more self-destruction.

  Peter finished his cup and thought about going to bed. Maybe he would descend to the basement office first and look at his notes, now that his head was clear and he was feeling good. It was the depression that had kept him down, kept him from thinking clearly and being inventive. With that lifted, surely he could move forward, if only a few steps.

  Happy.

  Jesus, he was actually happy.

  He marched barefoot down the steps into the basement and opened the door. Just as he switched on the lights, the phone rang upstairs. He jumped up the steps two by two to get to the phone before it woke Lindsey. Out of breath and face flushed with irritation, he lifted the receiver in the kitchen. Hello.

  Peter, this is Helen.

  Sorry I wasnt here to meet you, he said quickly. Shes

  Helen interrupted, I was going to call earlier. The bastard stood me up. To hell with them all, right, Peter? To hell with men. Thats the story of my life. I'm not the raving, enchanting beauty I once was, am I?

  Well, I'm glad you

  Helen broke in again, her tone still bitter, but she was trying to hold it back. Lindsey was sorry not to see you, but I'm a nervous wreck, and I'm certainly in no mood to drive. She's watching TV. She's mad at me. Well, maybe I'llbring her over this weekend. Maybe we can all go for a drive. Have a picnic. That would be nice. Are you available?

  Peter?

  Peter?

  Damn it, it's not my fault, Peter.

  She hung up.

  Peter had left the receiver dangling by it's cord. He was walking stiffly and deliberately down the hall to the girls bedroom. The weirdness had not gone away. It had lain in wait for him to drop his guard.

  Lindsey always slept in the left-hand bed. How could he have forgotten?

  Daniella had always slept on the right.

  CHAPTER 24

  SOMETHING STOPPED HIM in the hall. He did not dare to turn on the light to see what it was. He could feel it watching him, part of the general darkness. It almost had a shape, almost had a smella dry coil of eels, a nest of long smooth lizards, all joined together and smelling of charcoal and damp earth.

  Many shaped into one.

  It was very old and yet it had been born in this house, or reborn. It was hungry but patient. He did not dare move or go back into the bedroom for fear of rousing it and exposing his daughterhis dead daughter, he reminded himselfto whatever danger it represented.

  Sweat broke out all over his body. He felt something in his hand and realized he had picked up the two-foot-long piece of steel rebar he kept in the corner of the kitchen, hidden by the stove, ready to hand in case of burglars. What did he expect to have to defend himself against? Not burglars, not this time.

  What could he protect his daughter against now?

  They swarmed and fed. They ate the image of Lydia. Predators.

  No.

  Scavengers. Scavengers go after the dead and all they leave behind.

  Peters thinking was sharp and chilly. He took a soundless step forward and felt the darkness at the end of the hall contract reflexively. The charcoal scent became more like mud, like damp, moldy wallboard. Whatever was waiting in the far corner was imitating the odors found in an old house, as camouflage. Peter could tell the difference, like seeing the colors of a jaguar trying to hide in the jungle.

  He cleared his constricted throat. I know you're down there, he said. Go away. Get out of here. He could almost see the coils tighten, the scavenger press back into the corner. How can a shadow twitch? How can a shadow know I'm here? It was not happy that Peter was watching for it, addressing it. For once, Peter felt some power. The rebar would do no good, but so long as he was here, the predator could not attack.

  Could not go after his daughter.

  His dead daughter.

  Somewhere in the house, anotheror the samestud or beam let out a sharp crack, like a gun going off. A pause, and then the furniture replied.

  As if a door had slammed, everything changed. The hall was suddenly empty; no coiled thing waited in the darkness. The smell of mud and charcoal and mold returned to the dry, familiar smell of an old house nestled on a dead-end street in the Glendale hills. Peter dabbed at his face with the back of his hand.
Anger and fear flashed in his head like lightning. His fingers reached out and touched the light switch, then, with a jerk, he pushed the switch up. It rose in apparent slow motion, thudded into the on position, and light moved out in an oily wave from the milky glass ceiling fixture, washing up against the corners, flooding the walls, and splashing out to fill the hall. Brightness lay over everything like a thick coat of paint, but he was not reassured; paint could cover things up, but they might still be there. So he waited for a while until he could smell only the house and had stopped sweating.

  The girls bedroom door was still nearly closed.

  Peter opened it and walked in.

  Honey? Sweetie?

  Both beds, revealed by the spill of light from the hallway, were prim and neatly made. The matching Harry Potter coverlets and neatly folded counterpanes had not been disturbed. They were just as Helen had left them two years ago, with a few wrinkles made by Peters dusting every now and then.

  His hand let the rebar drop. It landed on end, then toppled onto the patchwork rug between the beds with a heavy, ringing thump. He took a shuddering breath and squatted. I'm here, he told the room. Please, Daniella, give me another chance.

  Of course, there was no answer.

  The world had become real again.

  CHAPTER 25

  SOMETIMES, THE ONLY thing that saves us is a fantasy, a memory, something stolen from the library of the past and long past it's due date, but we keep it anyway, grateful and not in the least guilty.

  Peter took a morning shower and dressed and thought, when he thought much at all, I'm okay. I'm all right.

  What could have, should have shattered him did nothing of the kind. He was not seeing things and he was not crazy. He would not give himself that kind of artistic credit; for a fact, in all the months he had wished he could once again clearly visualize Daniella in his memory, or in his dreamssee her without looking at her pictureshe had failed.

  It was not imagination that had brought his daughter back to him. Daniella was in the house. She was in some sort of trouble and she had come to him. With him around, she would be all right; he provided protection. It was all vaguevague, nebulous, and unconvincingbut it was enough to keep Peter moving through the morning. He called the tow company and then his favorite Porsche garage. He would walk down to the car during the daylight; nothing would go wrong during the daytime. Perhaps day here was night on that other side of the world and everything there slept or hid out. It was beginning to make sense. Perhaps Phils death, or Lydias phone call, had started it all, pushed him over the line.

  As a teenager, he had loved The Twilight Zone, reveled in the thrill of half believing there was something more than this ordinary life. Well, now here it was. He had proof to tip his own balance scales. Skeptical Peter Russell had swung back to credulity, but this time he had real, if entirely subjective, evidence; he was no longer desperately reaching for straws but forced to acknowledge the tree trunks floating by.

  Peter went about his necessary business in a thick daze, waiting for evening and another chance to spend a few moments with Daniella. To protect her as he had not protected her before.

  He walked down the hill and saw the Porsche, undisturbed where he had parked ita small miracle in itselfand noted the striped police tape and crayoned impound date and number on the back window.

  In the late-morning sun, he leaned against the roof of the Porsche, waiting for the tow truck. Today was very like the day he had received Lydias call, waking him to a larger reality. He visualized sunshine pouring through the house, even into the hall corners, keeping the scavengers at bay.

  Keeping his daughter safely hidden.

  The tow truck arrived on time, and Peter spent a few minutes thumbing through the battered, greasy 356C manual to remember how and where to arrange the hooks.

  CHAPTER 26

  AFTER AN EARLY supper, Peter took one of the smaller rattan chairs from the backyard and placed it at the end of the hall. He sat there with his length of rebar, waiting.

  He had left the door to the twins bedroom cracked open, but not too far. Perhaps those on the other side were as skittish as deer, like fawns afraid to break cover. He would trust their instincts. He would trust his daughter to know what was best.

  Whenever you're ready, sweetheart, he murmured. I'm here for you.

  Around ten oclock, he fell asleep in the chair. He awoke at dawn, stiff but refreshed. He was not alarmed or unhappy; had anything happened, he knew he would have awakened, would have jerked to complete alertness had anyoneor anythingarrived.

  The house had been quiet.

  He could not expect miracles every night.

  Peter stretched and showered, then descended into the basement and began sketching, automatically it seemed. Floodgates opened. The ideas looked pretty good to him.

  At eleven he took the phone call from the repair shop. Tried to wrap himself around a two-thousand, four-hundred dollar estimate and a long list of parts and necessary services.

  Peter could not abandon anything in distress, not now. He had to preserve his past, any part of it. Peter told the mechanic to go ahead, get her fixed, he had money coming in and would pay them next week. He had used the same shop for twenty years, they had done his last engine rebuild, they knew him well. He had never welshed on a bill. One good relationship left in his life, thank God.

  By four oclock, he had thirty sheets of breakdown paper and twenty pages of script. Just like old times. Preserving the past had reawakened another, younger Peter Russell, more flexible and confident. With satisfaction, he stacked and tamped the sheets and slipped them into a black folio binder. Really, was being haunted any different from dropping into another world while he was writing? Briefly living in another space or time? Perhaps art and writing were like seeing another kind of reality.

  Sure, he said with a chuckle. Canine Planet. Dogs driving motorbikes and hunting women in fur bikinis.

  There, see, he told himself. You have perspective. You can tell silly ideas from those that make sense.

  My daughter coming back makes sense.

  My dead daughter.

  He worked through most of the night, slept briefly, and resumed on Sunday morning, producing dozens of drawings, sheets of script, scribbled scenarios. A flood of ideas.

  Only for a moment did he feel lost and desperately fragile.

  This is too good. It can't go on.

  CHAPTER 27

  AT FIVE-THIRTY ON Sunday evening, as he had predicted, the strange, private sanctuary of Peter Russell came crashing down.

  He had been here before, full of desperate hope that the past could be reclaimed, or at least a shred of it. One night eighteen months ago he had drunk himself into a near-stupor and persuaded Phil to drive him into Sherman Oaks to visit a psychic. The evening had cost him five hundred dollars and had ended up a complete disaster.

  Phil had brought him back to this house, a basket case, weeping uncontrollably. He had brewed Peter coffee and sat up with him all night and into the morning.

  Peter could not let that happen again.

  As the sky darkened and the phones and Trans did not ring, as Sunday passed with no call from Helen, Peter sat in the backyard slouched in the solitary rattan chairthe other was still in the hallwith his hands folded on his stomach. The sky declined from robins-egg blue through a series of dusty shades to brown-tinted darkness.

  Wind chimes tinkled behind the house, not ten feet away.

  All the rationales had worn thin. What did you see? he asked himself in leaden tones. Maybe you didnt see her. You made up what you wanted to see.

  But he had mistaken her for Lindsey. Lindsey was a close approximation, but not exact. Lindsey and Daniella had not been identical twins. After their birthswithin three minutes of each otherthe doctors had told him, and later, Helen, coming out of her general for the Caesarean, about a third type of twin, neither fraternal nor identical; the upshot was that both he and Helen (and Phil and a lot of their friends) had al
ways been able to tell Lindsey from Daniella, even as babies, even when they had been dressed alike.

  Wasnt it possible, then, that a wraith of Lindsey had appeareda leftover image of Lindseys emotions from years past, from just after the funeral?

  Peter nodded at the grim logic of that. Even if he was sane, he had yet to see a full-fledged ghost, a haunt, someone dead. But what about the sandblasted old man and the children near Point Reyes?

  Yet in Peters memory, the dim face he saw so clearly above the shadowed counterpane in the girls bedroom was indisputably Daniella. His expectations of Lindsey had colored what he had seen.

  Even a wraith of Lindsey would never have slept in Daniellas bed.

  His misery and confusion deepened.

  AT SEVEN OCLOCK, he climbed the short flight of steps to the porch and walked through the rear door into the kitchen. He listened for a moment to the pops and cracks of settling timbers, all soft. No starting pistols announcing a leave-taking of his senses or the world changing into something new.

  He was not hungry, so he walked to his bedroom and searched the shelves for The Doors of Perception. He found Huxleys book, a slender volume, blue board covers and black cloth spine, minus it's dust wrapper. The pages were well thumbedhe had bought it from an alternative bookstore in Laguna Beach back in 1969 and had read it once, but the previous owner had read it almost to tatters. He sat on the corner of the bed and leafed through the pages until he found the reference to philosopher Henri Bergsons valve that kept the brain from being flooded by the minutiae of the real. The valve that kept us free of metaphysical persiflage, kept us sane and focused on what was really important in life. Focused on what could actually kill you, not just distract you.

  Huxley had died on the same day as JFKs assassination, November 22, 1963, leaving behind a slip of paper on which he had scrawled just three letters: LSD. Perhaps Huxley had taken LSD just to keep exploring. To jam that old Bergson valve wide open even after death.