Doyle After Death

by John Shirley

  DOYLE AFTER DEATH

  A Novel

  JOHN SHIRLEY

  DEDICATION

  For My Mother, Ruth

  And for Rosie

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Michelina Shirley

  And to Paula Guran

  . . . and Emily Krump

  for editing input

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Part One: After All

  First

  Second

  Third

  Fourth

  Fifth

  Sixth

  Seventh

  Eighth

  Ninth

  Part Two: The Way to the Raining Lands

  Tenth

  Eleventh

  Twelfth

  Thirteenth

  Fourteenth

  Fifteenth

  Sixteenth

  Appendix

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The afterlife described in the present novel, especially at the level typified by the settlement of Garden Rest, has its own rules and peculiarities. I wish to assert that any conceivable afterlife would have consistent physics and biological principles, all its own. Some of these rules—­enough I think—­are explained in the course of Doyle After Death. But those who would like more answers may jump ahead, past the narrative, all the way to the Appendix. The Appendix explains a good deal more by means of expository conversations with Arthur Conan Doyle in the afterlife . . .

  The respectful first-­time reader will not, however, jump to the end of the story. Kindly consult only the Appendix.

  Part One

  AFTER ALL

  FIRST

  Before I ever met Doyle or Brummigen or the Lamplighter . . . I died.

  I was lying on the grungy orange carpet of my room in Las Vegas. I lay on my left side, on a floor in a tired, sad hotel on a side street just off the Strip. I hadn’t quite made it onto the bed. I was lying on the floor beside it, in the blue light coming through the window from the casino sign. I’d gone to sleep there, curled up fully dressed. I awoke for a whole minute, before the end—­choking, unable to get a breath, dizzy. I was drowning—­drowning in the oiliness of entropy itself.

  Everything seemed to get narrow. My vision, my feelings, were squeezed by the pressure in my chest, compressed to a narrow aperture, down to a little feebly glowing oval, which shrank to a piercing point of light . . . the light began to spin . . . churning the darkness around it. A roaring tunnel sucking me through it headfirst . . .

  I had exactly one thought: So this is dying.

  A silence. A feeling of infinite weight. Falling.

  Then—­a sudden, jolting stop.

  A moment later there was a sound.

  It was a rising susurration, a hissing . . . which I slowly recognized as the sound of waves on the beach . . .

  I opened my eyes. I was once more lying on my left side, but this time it was on pale sand in the gray light of dawn. The feeling of heaviness was still there; it dissipated as I sat slowly up on the edge of a deep purple sea. The sun had just edged up into the starless, Bible-­black sky edging the horizon with silvery gauze.

  I got to my feet and took stock.

  It was a little chilly but not cold. I had no idea where I was—­but I was calm. The calmness seemed to settle on me, with the faint mist from the sea.

  The sun . . . was that, in fact, a sun?

  Yes, it seemed to be a sun—­sort of. But the sun here looks as if you’re peering through a telescope at a distant star. It is a coruscating circle of blue-­white light without glare. I could look right at it and it didn’t hurt my eyes. And yet I could feel its warmth.

  I knew, somehow—­with a dead-­reckoned internal certainty—­that I was facing west, gazing out to sea, with the north on my right, and the sun was rising over the sea. So—­the sun was rising in the west. Which should be impossible.

  As I write this, now, long after, I wonder that I thought anything should be impossible. I’d died and had come to life somewhere else. As Bertram would say, all bets were off.

  I knew, even then, that it wasn’t a dream. I was too present, too self-­aware to be in a dream. And . . . I knew I had died. Something made that quite clear, quite firmly, and without words. I felt no distinct external metaphysical presence—­I saw no angels, no devils, no glowering, bearded God. No Jesus, no Prophet Muhammad, no Buddha waited in this afterlife for me—­at least not here. There was just the sound of waves, the strangely pristine smell of the sea and the sand under my feet. I’d always thought of death as a time when all mysteries are unlocked, and ultimately truths immediately revealed. But I was simply alone on a beach.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Anyone around? Can we skip the suspense and get on with the judgment? Or . . . whatever you do here.” I waited.

  No response except the faint, mocking echo of my own voice.

  I cleared my throat, called to the sky, shouting louder. “Look, if I’m gonna reincarnate—­let’s get ’er done! I could use a vacation in a warm uterus! What do you say?”

  No answer. Unless you want to count the wind rising a little, and subsiding, leaving only the sea’s endless respiration.

  In the distance the fog roiled, easing ponderously along. I heard the sigh of the sea and the squeak of my boots in the sand just as I would in life. The ocean itself made me think of that classical expression, “the wine-­dark sea.” But this one almost looked like it really was a blue-­red wine; almost the color of Concord grape juice with shades of burgundy and amethyst lights.

  “Nobody to talk to but myself,” I muttered. “That could be hell, right there.” I don’t care that much for my own company.

  I tried once more, cupping my hands as I shouted, “You sure? No choirs, nothing? I know this is the afterlife, here, damn . . .” I started to say “damn it” and decided it wouldn’t be politic to refer to damning. “Anybody . . . anything . . . going to clue me in?”

  I waited . . .

  Nothing. That phone line was dead; that number was disconnected. I had been transported, it seemed to the very heart of mystery.

  I shrugged and started walking along the beach, heading in the direction that felt like north. I don’t know why I picked that direction. The sky above me was mostly clear, except for a few parallel ribbons of cloud. I could see thunderheads edging along a few miles north, rumbling faintly, trailing a gray curtain of rain. I traipsed along the clean uncluttered white beach toward the rolling fog.

  As I slogged along toward the wall of haze, I was thinking that maybe this was all the passing vision of a dying man before complete and final blackness. I felt no distress, no fear—­so why not enjoy this hallucination?

  To my right the beach rose gently to meet chalky bluffs. The strands of clouds reaching to the west took on a dawn rosiness. The distance was layered in pallid mist, shading down to pearly gray, then the filmy dun of the beach. It was almost like walking into an art deco amphitheater.

  Some distance off to the north, a shape took form in the mist. Someone was walking along the beach toward me, and I wondered if I should be afraid.

  It was a woman’s shape—­the silhouette was quite definitely female—­and I watched with fascination as she approached me. She was in no hurry, her gait showing no indecision. When she got closer I saw a pallid, shapely woman with long, straight black hair, and bangs. Her long hair
spilled over her pale shoulders. She wore a wedding dress trimmed in white lace. The dress was spottily torn at the seams, discolored with age, and tattered about the ankles. Her pale, slender feet were bare. Her oval face was rueful and placid, her lips red and firm, but her dark green eyes seemed older than the rest of her face. A slight breeze fluttered the ends of her long hair.

  She waved once, as she walked up, and smiled like an airline hostess. This close, I saw that her fingernails were raggedly broken, though some of their dark red nail polish remained.

  I could see fine blue veins in her arms; in her throat and cleavage.

  “And here you are,” she said, coming to a stop a long stride away.

  “Yeah, well . . .” I shrugged. “I seem to be here, anyway,” I said. “I’m Nicholas Fogg . . .”

  She put her left hand on her hip, toyed with the ends of her hair with the other slender hand as she looked me over.

  A little uncomfortable under the frankness of her assessment, I said, “This is probably where you say, ‘I know who you are.’ ”

  “Why would I say that? I had no idea what your name was. I’m no more telepathic than anyone else, you know.”

  “Thought I was going to be alone on this beach forever. You hear me shouting?”

  “I heard something, but I couldn’t hear what you were saying. Too far off.”

  “Anyway—­you’re the one with the answers?”

  She arched her eyebrows in surprise. “Me? Not hardly! I have a few suggestions, and a fact or two, is all. I’m just a greeter. The town likes to have someone greet ­people.”

  “The town?”

  She nodded, and looked me up and down. “What’d you say your name was? Nicholas Fogg . . . ?”

  “Yeah. Or Nick.”

  “Really!” She shook her head in amusement. “Such a theatrical name! We usually get fellas with names like Joe Kowalsky or Tyrone Johnson or Kyu Kim or Schlomo Cohen or Larry Barbarosa. Once we had a Hamish Chung. He went forgetter, though.” She looked out to sea. “Nobody else this morning? We’re really getting fewer and fewer souls, lately. Could be we’re almost at some local population limit. The newcomers at Garden Rest are down to a trickle.”

  Maybe I should have been afraid of her. She was, after all, a mysterious figure in the afterlife. For all I knew, she might turn into a demon . . . if there were demons here. But she was pretty. And, more important, I felt no fear in her company. I instinctively trusted her.

  (Not that there’s nothing to fear in the afterlife. There is. But I didn’t know what it was, at the time.)

  “So few ­people arriving,” she said, stretching, making her hands into tidy little fists. “Maybe I can take some time off.”

  “What would you take time off from?” I asked.

  Her mouth twisted wryly. “Being a greeter, silly. And related stuff. I’d much rather be at home weaving. I’m making a mural out of creeper threads, in my place down in the rain. When I have time.”

  I was trying to place her accent. Maybe New England. “You know my name . . .”

  “Oh, I’m Fiona. My husband and I drowned—­in the 1940s. The cliff road collapsed on the way to the honeymoon. That’s the short version.” She seemed bored with the explanation. “I know you want to ask about the wedding dress.” She ran her hands over her hips, as if it were the first time she’d tried the dress on. “I could change the dress, if I wanted to. Most ­people eventually shift out of their death clothes, but—­I just feel it gives me a really appropriate costume for the job. And it’s good to have a sense of personal style.”

  “You and your husband drowned?” I looked down the beach, half expecting to see him strolling toward us. “He’s here?”

  “No . . . well, yes.” She frowned at the ground, dug a toe in the sand and made a little circle with it. “He’s . . . around. But he went a bit native in the swamps. I think he’s in another afterland, by now. He always was nutty. You can’t bring much with you, into the afterlife . . . except your nuttiness. Your state of mind.” She cleared her throat. “And a few things in your pockets, maybe.”

  I looked at the beach behind her, thinking I’d see no footprints, since she was a spirit. But her footprints were there.

  She looked sharply up at me as if a thought suddenly struck her. “Oh—­do you have a cigarette?”

  “I . . . doubt it.” I made a show of patting my pockets. I had cut back on smoking for health reasons. I know—­it’s ironic. “Sorry. ­People bring cigarettes . . . here? I thought you couldn’t ‘take it with you.’ Whatever . . . ‘it’ might be.”

  “Told you, you can bring what’s in your pockets. Even money. But money from the Before is worthless here. Some things from there are useful.” She pointed at my shirt. “If you can bring your clothes, why not your cigarettes?” She was pouting a little, disappointed I hadn’t brought any smokes. “Some ­people are what they’re wearing. Anyway, ­people bring what’s in their pockets.” She glanced at my pockets, as if trying to see the bulge of a cigarette pack. “It’s not the actual object you had in pre-­death, though, it’s a—­what would you say—­a reproduction out of afterlife stuff. But you can’t tell the difference. And you can fabricate things here, too—­some things. Mr. Doyle calls that formulation. But”—­she blew out a long breath, as if exhaling imaginary cigarette smoke—­“no one’s managed making cigarettes here yet. Haven’t found any tobacco.” She looked toward the sea, adding wistfully, “I used to smoke Chesterfields. I smoked a cigarette, right here, almost on this spot, about seven years ago. A really nice jazz musician gave it to me when he got here. It was one of those funny ‘light’ cigarettes the ­people back on Earth have, now. Marlboro Light, I think it was called.”

  “Seven years ago?” I was about to ask her if time really flowed the same way here as before we died, but she made a dismissive motion, anticipating a question that was too much trouble to answer. (I’ve since found that ­people do that a lot in the afterlife. They figure you’ll work it out for yourself.)

  “Never mind, just come on,” she said. “I have some things I have to do. So—­be welcome, and all that, and, you know, just . . . make yourself at home. I can’t answer any questions about God and afterlife and judgment, if there is any of that stuff, because I don’t have a fucking clue, excuse my French. And I’m supposed to tell you . . .” She ticked the things she had to tell me on her fingers. “ . . . that this is the afterlife, or the afterworld as most of us call it. It’s the afterworld for ­people from the planet Earth, anyway. You chose this particular locale of the afterlife, in some way, just before you got here. Without knowing you chose it. And, it’ll be your home for a pretty long time. And if you wander a long ways out of it, then you have a greater risk of encountering predators. And yes you have died but that doesn’t mean you’ve passed beyond all danger. There is danger here. Especially from ­people. But—­most ­people I’ve met here are friendly. You may or may not meet ­people you know. Oh and there’s no real disease here, no senility; ­people are restored to good function. But you will need rest from time to time. Less than on the . . . less than back on Earth. There, that’s my main job, saying welcome and telling you all that—­and to point you toward the trail that goes to town.”

  “I’m supposed to go to a town?”

  “Yup. I mean, only if you want to. The town of Garden Rest”—­she smiled wryly, and nodded toward the ocean—­“on the scenic Purple Sea.”

  “Suppose I want to be a beach bum—­or take a long, long, long swim out to sea.”

  She smiled. “You can do that! But it’s more comfortable in town. You may as well look it over. Come on . . .”

  She started toward the bluff, headed to a narrow path threading between two stony prominences, and I followed.

  I found myself watching the sway of her walk—­and I felt desire. So that was part of the afterlife, too. How far did that go? Was
there physical copulation? Did ­people get pregnant? Did they have babies? Biological birth seemed unlikely.

  This was the afterlife . . . but it was also a real, physical place. I could even feel the awkwardness of trudging in cowboy boots on beach sand. We went at a good pace and I never got really out of breath, though I hadn’t been in good shape my last year of life.

  Mostly I’d spent that year sitting in crappy used cars and watching splintery motel-­room doors, or following ­people on disability to photograph them playing tennis. When I wasn’t trying to scratch out a living as a detective, I’d lie about in my studio apartment, watching old movies on TV and drinking. Thinking about how I’d failed at being a poet, a serious novelist, had a BA in literature but couldn’t get through the teaching degree part, couldn’t make a living even teaching English. That had been my plan: day job teaching, make my name writing.

  I tried. For a while. Couldn’t write anything I wanted to even try to publish; couldn’t get the degree.

  I liked to read Hammett and Chandler and James M. Cain and Richard Stark and John D. MacDonald and Robert B. Parker and, going back, Arthur Conan Doyle. So I thought, why not get a private investigator’s license?

  So I did, in Las Vegas. I almost made a living at it. Sometimes. But pretty much—­my short career as a detective was just another failure.

  And that last year I sat in the bars or in front of my flickering television, and contemplated my failure. Every so often I seemed to hear my old man’s voice: “You can’t make it on your own, there’s always the Marines. Worked for me. I needed help and they gave it to me.”

  The Marines. Me? Right.