Afterlife

by Douglas Clegg

  Julie felt as if her consciousness were shot out of the barrel of a gun—it hurt to open her eyes. She had to force them open, feeling as if heavy weights kept them closed, kept her in the darkness of her own mind.

  Open. She saw the others there. The watchers. The audience.

  She flushed with embarrassment. She felt shame the likes of which she hadn’t felt since she’d been a child, caught naked with a little boy, playing doctor. She felt as if all her secrets had been announced on loudspeakers, and the people in the audience had used what was in her mind as entertainment, something for their amusement: her shame.

  Her breathing felt labored. It was as if she’d been running and had suddenly stopped, unable to catch her breath.

  She was in the television studio. On the sofa.

  Michael Diamond’s palm was warm and moist against her forehead, and he was whispering something to her…no, not to her. To the others. The audience. To the world.

  Some secret about her. Something she had harbored.

  “You want him to be alive,” Diamond said. “You feel guilty because you stopped loving him. And then, when he was killed, you wanted more than anything for him to be alive because…because it meant that you could leave him. But now, you are stuck remembering only love. You’ve forgotten the winter that settled between you both. The fighting. The arguments. The dislike. The indifference. The lack of trust. You were in love with him for two years, and then you caught him in too many lies. You stopped trusting him. You were planning on leaving him. One day. One day soon.”

  Michael Diamond’s face shone with sweat. His eyes had gone from a beautiful deep blue to gray, and the whites seemed bloodshot. It looked as if—in the few minutes he’d been doing the reading of her, that he’d been up for nights. “I’m sorry,” he said, under his breath. Then, more loudly, “Love and Death are strange companions. Those whom we were conflicted about in Life, we now are tied to in Death.”

  Julie felt as if she had been invaded. As if someone had crawled inside her, and taken, forcibly, things from her. She felt icy inside, and burning on the surface of her skin. “What the hell did you just do to me?”

  She pushed herself up from the sofa, but felt the room—the watchers—the cameras—spin around her.

  Her knees buckled beneath her, and she collapsed.

  6

  Julie lay on the couch in the Green Room—which was not green at all, she noticed, glancing around at the pale walls—and finally took a sip of the orange juice that had been offered by the assistant who had rushed in after they’d helped her out of the studio’s auditorium.

  She looked up at her mother, who stood nearby. “Why did you set this up?”

  “Honey, I didn’t. I really didn’t. I’m sorry,” Toni said. Her mother’s eyes were red from crying.

  Julie closed her eyes and tried to push away the conscious world. She had to force herself to breathe more slowly. Counting to four seconds in, four seconds out. For the first time in her life, she understood what a panic attack might be.

  7

  After her mother left to go sit in the car, Mel sat with her awhile, once Julie felt strong enough to sit up in a chair. They brought some sandwiches in, and Mel cajoled her sister into taking a bit, “for energy.”

  “I can’t believe he’d…he’d lie like that,” Julie said. “That’s show biz,” Mel said. “Don’t worry. I don’t believe a word of it. He’s a con-artist. Cute, but still a con-artist.”

  “Did mom set this all up?” Julie asked. “Did she?”

  Mel shot her a harsh, unforgiving look, as if Julie had just said something terrible.

  8

  When she was feeling better, she demanded to see Michael Diamond, and Diamond’s assistant rushed her into his office, which was a suite of rooms down the long corridor.

  He looked different to her than he had in the studio. He seemed older, and perhaps exhausted, as if he’d been up for several nights in a row. His hair was slicked back and his forehead had speckles of sweat. Something about his face reminded her of a hawk. She remembered the cover of his book, where his face seemed geeky-sexy. Now, it just seemed tired. He sat on the edge of his desk, his arm extended for her to shake.

  She kept her arms crossed.

  “If you’re so psychic, tell me what I’m thinking,” she said.

  “I’m sorry that was so harsh,” Michael said. “I know you’re in pain. Look, we’ll cut the segment. Don’t worry. It won’t be televised.”

  She said, “What did you do to me in there?”

  “You don’t believe in psychic ability, Julie. I’m not here to change your mind. I’m sorry what I said hurt you in some way. I can’t take it back. It happened. It’s what I picked up from you,” he said. “You know, sometimes, I feel things that are terrible. I pick up images and words from someone—on the show—that I couldn’t possibly verbalize. It would be too awful. It would be too painful for the person to hear. But something inside you wanted it to come out. What I said, what I saw inside you, Julie, wanted to come out.”

  While he’d been speaking, she felt as if she were being drawn to him. As if he had a level of charisma that went beyond normal charm or attraction. She felt she trusted him the way she trusted her therapist. When she took a deep breath, she tried to analyze the feeling, but could not.

  “What was inside me?” Julie asked. “What did you see?”

  “Just a glimpse,” he said. “Of something terrible. I…I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “If you’re psychic, read my mind.”

  “It’s not like that,” he said. “Mrs. Hutchinson, you’ve got an aura of death around you. I’m sorry to say this. You’ve been touched by someone who died.”

  “That’s easy enough to figure out,” she said, feeling a bit harsh but happy to throw it back at him. “My husband died in April. That’s what you were so glib about in front of your audience.”

  “No, this is a woman,” he said. “Somehow, she’s connected to you. She had answers for you but couldn’t let them out.”

  9

  She went out and got in the car. Mel was in the front seat, her mother in the back. “Don’t talk to me,” she said. “Just drive. I want to go home.”

  She could feel them making concerned faces to each other, but she was pissed off at everybody. Fighting back the urge to cry like a baby. I am not a two-year-old. This is all bullshit. Hut was not part of some psychic program. Michael Diamond is a grifter with a camera in his face and probably six ghostwriters writing his bullshit books. It was all a guessing game. He had seen Hut’s obituary. He might’ve even heard about the murder. He had exposed himself already: in his book, hadn’t he said about how, if a show had a waiting list, the psychic could research the people in the audience? He’d have their names, a phone number, an address. How hard was it to find Hut’s obituary?

  10

  At home, Julie had another argument with her mother on the phone and accused her mother of setting her up for Michael Diamond’s show at a particularly vulnerable time in her life. As soon as she’d hung up the phone, it rang again. Thinking it was her mother, she picked up and said, “I am not changing my mind.” “Hello?” A woman said on the other end. “I’m sorry,” Julie laughed. “I thought you were my mother.”

  “Mrs. Hutchinson?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m calling about Amanda Hutchinson,” the woman said. Julie placed the voice: it was Gigi Kaufman, the social worker with the owl eyeglasses. “I’m afraid something tragic has happened.”

  Julie held her breath, waiting.

  “She died late last night. It was…well, she left a note. For you. Once the certificate is signed and everything has been put in order, we’ll send it on to you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  1

  A week later, after she got home, she checked the mail. Bills, mainly, for Comcast cable, and Sprint, and there was some invitation to a Health Care Forum in Montclair, and then a letter, with the name Kaufm
an on the return address.

  She opened it up. It was a photocopy of the note that Amanda Hutchinson had written the night she had killed herself.

  “Dear Wife Number Two Julie Hutchinson,

  If you’re reading this, it’s because my plan to somehow jump out of this body worked. It’s the warm fuzzies. They fucked my brain up too much. They made me think different. They made me remember things wrong. Say things I don’t always mean.

  You knew Hut. But you didn’t know him. You thought he loved you. But I knew he didn’t. It was all because of the hand. Five fingers, all separate, but they are all part of the hand. You can put your hand down a garbage disposal and turn it on, and it can tear into you and make your blood spurt up out of the sink. But when you pull your arm out, the hand is still there. Do you understand?

  You will see Hut. He will haunt you. He haunts me. Even in the warm fuzzies I see him. He has come back now and he will never let you or your daughter alone. Do you understand? Do I make myself clear? Don’t hate the one who killed him. Sometimes, death is not the worst thing.

  It’s not that you can ever bury someone. Julie, there is no death. There is no death.

  I am going to try to die. If I don’t, you’ll never see this note. If I do, you’ll read it. Consider this my warning to you.

  Worse than seeing Hut, Julie. You may see the other ones, too. The fingers. They may be all around you, grasping. Because from you, something has come out. I knew when you visited me. Something is inside you and it’s coming out, and they want that. It’s something they can’t have because of who they are. They are not dreams, Julie. They are real.

  We kill our children so they can wake up, only they wake up somewhere else. And they shouldn’t wake up. I should’ve killed Matt the night I tried to. I wish I had. He was already dead to me.

  If I wake up from this, you’ll know. But if I don’t, thank God.

  Love,

  Amanda, Wife Number One.”

  2

  Julie put the note down, folding it over. She had the urge to throw it out. It seemed obscene—insane and evil in a way she had never thought the written word could be. She felt a lump in her throat, thinking about Matt’s mother. And now, how she was going to tell Matt. She had to do it.

  She knew that if she didn’t do it now, she’d lose her courage.

  She found him at the kitchen table, with a microwaveable macaroni and cheese snack bowl. A carton of Jersey Farms Milk next to his half-empty glass, and a jar of Ovaltine beside it.

  She sat down next him.

  “Yeah?” he asked, looking at her suspiciously.

  “Matt, I’ve got some bad news.” She felt her eyes tearing up.

  “It’s my mom,” he said. “I know.” He took up a forkful of mac and cheese, slipping it between his lips. “They called here earlier.”

  “I want you to know—” she began.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “She’s been dead for years as far as I’m concerned. She tried to kill me. That’s something you don’t forget. She tried to set me on fire, Julie. She poured gasoline all over my body and tried to light me up. Do you think I’ll ever forget that? Or how I was crying and asking her not to do it, and she just kept telling me I was from the Devil and needed to go to Hell. Do you think I care if she finally died?”

  Julie couldn’t control herself. She reached out and slapped him on the cheek as hard as she could. It knocked him back slightly. “It’s your mother,” she said.

  Her red handprint on his face. It remained too long. Seconds passed. He stared at her, his mouth a small o.

  “I hate you, Julie. I hate you. Hate you. Hate you,” he spat. And then he began weeping, his shoulders heaving, and she drew close and held him tight, and no matter how he struggled, she wouldn’t let go. She whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and finally, he stopped crying and kissed her on the cheek and told her he prayed every night that she would be his mother but was afraid that she’d leave him now that his dad was dead.

  “You’re my son,” Julie whispered. “You and Livy are my children. Don’t ever be afraid that I’ll leave you.”

  3

  Julie got in the Camry and just drove off. She knew she shouldn’t leave Livy and Matt home like that. She knew that she should turn around, ten minutes into the drive, and go back home. What if something happened? Something unexpected? What if there was a gas leak? What if she’d forgotten to turn off the stove? What if…

  Didn’t matter. Drive. Just drive. Drive and be free. She sped along the winding roads of Rellingford, down into the darkness alongside the lake, taking the curves too fast, unconcerned about pedestrians (though the street was empty), windows down, her hair blowing back, feeling as if she were sixteen again, sixteen and free of every obligation, every weight, every care.

  She parked near the gap in the woods that was the beach. She first took off her shoes in the car, and walked barefoot out onto the grassy dirt patches that became fine sand, and then, her bare feet felt the welcome chill of the lake as she waded in. Across the lake, the lights of houses. The richer people of Rellingford lived on that side of the lake, with houses that cost a fortune. It was like seeing a string of pearls along the throat of night.

  She unbuttoned her shirt, and took it off, and then unzipped her dress, slipping out of it, getting it wet in the process.

  Then, her bra, and finally, her underwear.

  She tossed them back to the shore.

  The mugginess of the evening clung to her naked

  form. She felt alive in a way she hadn’t in months. She stepped forward into the water.

  Another step.

  Another.

  She put out of her mind the snapping turtles and the freshwater eels and snakes and any of what Livy would call the squirmies, and went further into the water until she was up to her neck. It was so dark that she felt as if there were no separation between the water and the woods and the sky, and she dipped her head beneath the surface of the water.

  Coolness.

  Up again, to breathe, to gasp.

  The lights across the water.

  The dark sky above, but now, she saw the faint prickles of stars, and as she kept watch on the sky, they seemed to come out by the hundreds and thousands.

  It had been years since she’d looked up at the stars. Years, even, since she’d gotten into the lake that was less than a quarter mile from her house.

  Years since she’d felt young.

  And she remembered:

  She and Hut had been talking divorce. Well, she had been—he had ignored her. He had told her she needed therapy. He had told her that she needed to start taking anti-depressants. He had told her she needed to quit the job at the ER and be a better mother.

  They had been fighting.

  The last three years had felt like hell to her, but she’d put up with it, for Livy. For Livy and Matt both, and for the shred of memory of love she still carried.

  Somehow, it had all been wiped away in the murder.

  Somehow, her mind had changed the bad memories to good.

  Somehow, she’d turned Hut into a saint after his death.

  He was a difficult, complex man, perhaps. And she’d loved him as much as she could, until he had turned mean, and cold, and unfeeling.

  And the day she saw him strike his own son, she had been planning on how to leave him and somehow get Matt away from him.

  All pushed aside, blocked, when he’d been murdered.

  And the touch of one man had opened it, like an old Christmas present at the back of a closet, forgotten, hidden, pushed aside, and then, drawn out into the light of day, its wrapper torn back. Michael Diamond. He was bullshit. But he knew things. How had he known? How had he been able to know about Amanda Hutchinson’s death?

  She walked back to shore, dressed, and hurried back to her car.

  At home, in bed, she stayed up later, reading Diamond’s book, The Life Beyond.

  4

  She had an eleven a.m.
with Eleanor Swanson, who wanted to meet at Julie’s house. “My office is being redecorated by the group.”

  “The group?”

  “The Seven Arts Medical Association. Every five years they decide they need a different look, redo the offices, and suddenly, I’m paying more in rent.”

  “Oh,” Julie smiled, and set a cup of coffee down on the table in front of her.

  “Thank you, dear,” Eleanor said. “I’m glad we could meet here. I’d have suggested my house, but it’s a mess right now.”

  “It’s nice to do this here,” Julie said. They talked a bit about the heat and vacations, and then Julie said, “I have to talk to you about these sexual dreams.”

  “Still going on?”

  “They’ve intensified, Eleanor. I mean, they’re full of perversions and things that I’d never do.”

  “Hut’s in them?”

  “Sometimes it’s Hut. Sometimes, not.”

  “Well, what’s disturbing about them?”

  “It’s like I close my eyes. And suddenly, they just begin. It’s a rollercoaster.”

  Eleanor nodded. “Maybe you need a little something to help you sleep.”

  “I’ve tried sleeping pills. I have a prescription. But it doesn’t take them away.”

  “I’m not much of a conventional therapist. I’m no good at just sitting and listening. If I think I can help, I’ll try and bring my insights to this. You’re in your mid-thirties, you lost your husband. By your own account, you had a less-than-satisfactory sex life with him. Now, I think your subconscious is making up for lost time. Sure, there might be disturbing or—as you put it—perverted elements to the dreams. But all of us have them. All of us have pent-up fantasies that now and then become unleashed in our dream life. Women peak after thirty. You’re right on schedule. Part of this is, you’re horny. The way all adult human beings get, particularly when they’re lonely.”