“How about a vodka martini?” I joked.
“Not just yet,” he said with a smile. “You have a unique name. I have to say, I’ve never met anyone named Storyteller before.”
“Yes, I did have a go of it when I was younger but I survived to tell the story. Get it? As a matter of fact my friends call me ‘Teller’, and my close friends call me ‘Tell’.”
“Like William?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Come now. The man who shot the apple off his son’s head…?”
“Oh yeah… that would be me. I couldn’t shoot anything off a building, even if I had a cannon. And was standing right next to it.”
We talked a bit more and then got into my reason for being there. I was not at all uncomfortable discussing my heart attack but was less comfortable talking about the near death experience and the dreams.
“Anything happen when you died? Like did you see a bright light or float around the room?” He was serious with his question but I sensed a veiled meaning in it.
I didn’t answer directly, but rather asked him if he had ever died.
“Yes I did,” he said. “I did indeed. And I had quite an experience right after. That’s why I asked you what I asked you.”
“Did you see people from your distant past?” I asked.
“Did you?” He responded.
“Please answer me. I need to try to figure out what exactly happened to me… and is still happening,” I continued.
“I was asked a few questions by several people. They were interesting questions,” he said as he relaxed back in his chair.
I leaned forward and said in a whisper, “What the hell is going on here? Is this something that is happening to everyone or what? How is it that I come to you for help and you tell me you’re having the same experience?”
“There are no accidents, my friend. There is a pattern here and not only with you, but several other people with whom I have had one form or another of contact since my near death.” He looked up at the ceiling and laced his fingers behind his head. “I am supposed to come at things from a scientific perspective, not a metaphysical one… and, I am being totally out of line here.”
“This is beyond weird,” I said, the words involuntarily falling out of my mouth. “I was visited by a teacher I haven’t seen since I was in high school. Then he shows up in my hospital room, in the flesh after I saw him in the spirit.”
“Where did you go to school?” he asked.
“High School, or college?”
“Where your teacher was. The one you saw.”
“That was Sacred Heart High School in Brooklyn.”
“You saw him during the experience and then after they brought you back?” Doctor Keough was being drawn into my story and seemed focused on Brother Scheible.
“How would you describe him?” asked the good doctor.
“Oh, I guess about 5’10”or so. Stocky build. Germanic features. Light hair. Wagnerian.”
“Was he as old as he should have been?”
“No, he was exactly as I remembered him looking the last time I saw him, over 30 years ago. I thought he was a hallucination until he started popping up where he popped up. They gave me some heavy drugs I think. That could cause hallucinations, couldn’t it?” Keough just stared at me.
“After that long of a period of time, Jeremy, how is it that you have such a clear memory of him? Did that ever occur to you?” Keough asked after some hesitation.
“He was of a belief that I had the essence of being a great writer,” I stated with satisfaction. “I wrote a piece for the school newspaper that was about what was at the edge of the universe, and after reading it he told me that I should pursue a career in creative writing because he felt that I had a natural talent. So I did and although I never considered myself a great writer I did make money from my novels and short stories, enough money to raise a family and keep my wife happy.”
“What’s at the end of the universe?” Doctor Keough jumped on my statement with an odd curiosity, I thought.
“God… or another of His creations. Maybe another universe,” I shrugged.
“Does God have a name?” asked the doctor rapidly.
“Does He need one?” I replied. “The creator is the one who shouldn’t need any name but who He who is. Would you think He could answer to Charlie or Howard? We tend to paint Him in ways that we can understand Him to accommodate how we understand… not in any way knowing how He really is.”
“Did Brother Scheible really get hung up on this? What do you think of his reaction to your story? Did he push you for an answer? Tell me more about him.” Keough seemed on fire with curiosity.
“He was a very unique sort. He was naïve beyond belief and we played lots of practical jokes on him in class.”
“Tell me about some of the jokes.”
“Oh, one time we faked a two-way system call that ordered him to the principal’s office, ASAP. He got flustered, looking like he thought he was in trouble with the principal and ran out of the classroom. By the time he found out there was no call from the principal and got back to the class room, we had locked the door, pulled the shades, and thrown the erasers and chalk and some of the books out the window. (We were sophomores, after all.) He started knocking on the door and demanding we let him in. Of course, he was now caught between a rock and a hard place. He couldn’t let on that we had tricked him this way and he had to get control of the class room again.” I chuckled a bit.
“Hmm… very funny.” Doctor Keough was sounding like he wanted to hear more. “Was he as pissed about this as he should have been?”
“Sure, and another time we had this very fine black thread and everyone of us ran a piece of the thread through our ties earlier in the day, then at exactly 1 PM we ran the thread around and under our desks and began to pull on the threads in concert and all the ties appeared to rise at the same time. When he looked up from the Latin book he was reading and translating for us he went absolutely berserk. I mean nuts, he started shouting at us and waving his arms in the air like a maestro as we all sat with our ties standing straight out in front of us. Again, we were sophomores.”
“Sophomores In high school… or would that be second grade in elementary school?” He paused for effect. “No wonder he’s haunting you.”
“You think he’s dead and has come back to wreak havoc on me?”
“I would,” he said.
“I’m serious.”
“You should be,” he countered. “Brother Scheible could be just a suppressed guilt memory that for some reason has come to the fore due to your trauma of dying. That would serve you right… imagine, you little shits, pulling that stuff on a poor vulnerable teacher. But it does sound hilarious when one stops to think about it.”
The session ended uneventfully, but then a few days later Doctor Keough called me asking if I’d be interested in trying regression hypnosis. He said it might help me get at the root of what was going on with myself, and help him find a way to deal with all this for me… and him.
I told him I preferred to put it off for a bit, but wanted to keep going with the regular sessions. What I didn’t tell him was that I wanted to hear more about his own experiences with near death so that I could frame out what was going on with me. I also didn’t tell him that I wasn’t sure of how much faith I had in psychiatry and psychiatrists.
We agreed on a date for the next session as being one week later.
That session began with a request from my shrink, “Please tell me everything you can recall of the first near death experience. That is all we should be working on until we get to the bottom of how this began. We’re going to do a little mind traveling.”
I relaxed into the great chair, putting my feet on the ottoman in front. “I am beginning to believe that what I saw in death, is sitting just on the other side of reality,” I said.
“Explain please.”
“You know, sort of like when you lose focus or that moment right be
fore you fall asleep. That place that you know is there, but you don’t really know it. Make sense?” I questioned.
He took a moment before saying, “Does it make sense to you?”
“In a strange way… it does.”
Doctor Keough stared at me intently, and then lightened his gaze suddenly, as if realizing he was allowing his emotions to show. “What does the word ‘strange’ mean to you… in this context?”
“I can’t answer that. You know, you hear words like ‘that’s strange,’ or ‘I had a strange feeling,’ but the expression is used so frequently it loses its meaning. Or better said, it is one of the numb words in our language.” I responded.
“What’s a ‘numb’ word”? he asked.
“Something I made up, to describe words so over used that they have no meaning. Like ‘How are you?’… or ‘What do you think?’ Words or phrases that are usually spoken by people who really don’t care about what they mean.”
“Okay. So if you were asked to describe the feeling in another way, could you?” he questioned.
“Doc, I am into the meditative arts — and as such, I meditate every day. Where I go is what could be described as strange or different if I were to try to explain it to someone who doesn’t meditate. That be you?”
He shook his head. “Well. As I see it, meditation is something everyone does on a daily and continuing basis. Daydreaming, praying, or listening to music, are all forms of meditation. Was your feeling on the other side at all similar to the feeling you get when you meditate?”
“Sort of, I guess. It was similar but had an added dimension. Now that I look back on it I think why would I see just Brother Scheible, why not my mother or my father?”
“That’s what we are trying to ascertain here. You know, I always thought that the first person I would meet when I died would be Mozart. I am a big fan.” He said it almost as if he were embarrassed. He was very different.
We found a path when he suggested I tell the story of what happened from the moment my wife and I sat down in the restaurant I died in.
I remembered ordering us some Merlot and looking at the menu. It was an Italian restaurant and the smell of it was comforting and made me feel quite hungry — a dangerous thing for someone who watches his weight very closely. As I told him this he sat with a pen and pad, seeming to not be looking at me. I closed my eyes as I went on. “I get some strange things, there’s that word again, when I meditate.”
“Elaborate, please.” He moved a bit in his chair as he peered more closely at me.
“Well, for one, I often think of what would happen if I dialed my old telephone number. The one I had growing up, way back when there were words or names of places and things in combination with 5 numbers. I remember that number, over all the other numbers I have had in my life.” My words came slowly as I continued to relax. “I have had that thought reoccur several times.”
“Since the near death?” he asked.
“Yes. But it didn’t begin then. It just pops up once in a while… and memories of my first dog, Terri. Then there’s the park I used to play in as a child.”
“We’re off course… back to the near death,” he suggested.
“I was looking at the menu and deciding between lasagna and pasta with pesto sauce when it felt like I got hit in the chest with an iron fist and with the breath leaving my body everything went black, like the lens on a camera which was in the process of closing. I remember the feeling of falling forward, probably ending up with my face on the table, before tumbling down to the floor.”
Keough said nothing, but jotted something on his pad. I continued.
“I was floating and feeling like all of the things that were troubling me at that time were just gone. I heard incredible music, like nothing I had ever heard before. It wasn’t classical, opera, choir or even rock.”
“Was it Hip Hop?”
I stared at him. “You’re giving me shit, and you want me to be serious?” I sat up forward and confronted him — albeit, jokingly. For some reason I felt like I had known him for a long time, even though he was probably 20 years younger than me and the areas of common interest wouldn’t be there but at the same time I had a cautious feeling about him, for some reason.
“Near death,” he guided.
“The darkness rapidly turned to light… a light that was so refreshing I felt almost reborn but without the bodily frailties. There was this fabulous aroma that I cannot describe. How would you describe smells without comparing it to something? This was something so incredible yet new. Something that did not have a place on this Earth.”
He said nothing but was writing furiously. Then I noticed that he was writing like he was in some kind of a trance. His face was expressionless as he stared straight ahead looking at nothing as his fingers and pen moved rapidly across the paper, automatically.
“Doc… Doc… are you okay?”
“Of course I’m okay… why do you ask?”
“Because you’re acting weird.”
“I think that comment might be best reserved for you,” he said as he regained his composure. “But of course my professional self won’t allow my real self to say that, but ooops, I just did. How ‘bout that”? He shook his head and chuckled a bit before saying, “We are getting comfortably off course again.” He returned to his weird doctor state.
“And now, let us get back to what happened,” Keough insisted. I was happy to oblige; I was needing to get into this so that I could start putting together what had happened in death and what was happening after death in my dreams.
“I found myself wandering in a strange place (that word again) without agenda or purpose. Then I was whooshed back to life on the table in the hospital and the stark reality of a hospital ER.”
“How long were you gone?”
“Gone?”
“Dead?”
“About 7 minutes they tell me.” I continued. “The first time.”
“Let’s stay with the first time for now. When did you see this Brother Scheible for the first time?”
“I think it was actually not until during the second near death.”
“Okay, stay with the first one… is that it for that one?” He asked putting his pad aside as I nodded yes.
The session ended with that.
CHAPTER FOUR
That evening my wife and I went to a movie about a magical land where there was a bridge between reality and fantasy and on that bridge one could experience true existence. This made me feel a certain kinship to the concept, for that was where I lived these days.
During the movie I went to get us some popcorn. On the way back to my seat I waited for a moment in the darkness while my eyes adjusted and in so doing I looked at the row where we sat and saw something that rattled me to the core, for there just three rows above our seats was Brother Scheible.
I moved toward him, and as I stepped up I stumbled, which caused me to look down; when I looked up again I expected him to be gone… but he was still there.
I sat down in the empty seat right next to him and by this time my wife had noticed me passing by her and she followed me to where I sat. “Honey, did you forget where we were sitting?”
“No, of course not, I just wanted to speak with this guy here.” As I turned to speak to Brother Scheible I found someone else in the seat: Doctor Keough.
I jumped back in my seat as he stared at me with a puzzled look on his face.
I said, “You weren’t just sitting here. I know that wasn’t you.”
He replied with a question, “And who did you think you saw? Oh, and by the way, what the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m thinking the same thing, Doc.”
“What is going on, Jeremy?” Kate whispered. “Why are you sitting here talking to yourself?”
“Huh??? I’m talking with Doctor Keough,” I said as I turned from her to what was now an empty seat. I was amazed. What was going on? Was I losing it? What the hell was going on?
“Let�
��s get out of here,” I said as we started our way down the steps in the dark with people in the audience staring at us.
“If I live a million years I will never be able to explain what just happened,” I said resignedly to my wife who was holding back tears.
“Did you think you saw the doctor you’ve been seeing these past few weeks?” she asked me.
“I don’t know what that was, but whatever is going on is completely beyond me.”
* * *
That night the wind was blowing the leaves around our house and we slept with the windows open, trying to capture the refreshing autumn breeze in our second story bedroom. My wife was snuggled next to me in a deep sleep and I lay looking out the window waiting for sleep to come as my mind wandered back to the theater, and the tricks it might have played on me in the darkness. How could that have happened and what did it mean? Had my near death experience changed me more than I realized?
Unable to fall asleep, I slipped out of bed, deciding to head to the kitchen for something to munch on; and while on the stairs my eye caught the shadow of something moving rapidly through the moonlight that shone through the living room window and onto the floor.
“Who’s there?!” I stopped in my tracks wondering if I should retreat back up the stairs to where I kept a small handgun. I heard something in the kitchen that sounded like the doggy door flapping. Since our dog had passed away a month before, I couldn’t imagine what was doing that.
I went back up the stairs and into the bedroom and found my gun and when I turned to go back out the door my blood ran cold, for there, standing in the doorway, was a dog staring at me. It was tan and medium sized and looked exactly like what I remember my first dog, Terri, looking like.
“How’d you get in here?” I asked the dog.
“What did you say?” came the reply; not from the dog, but from Kate, who rose sleepily in the bed rubbing her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Honey. Didn’t mean to wake you, but we have a dog in the house.” As I pointed at the doorway I could see it was now empty.
‘What… what dog are you talking about?” she said as she put her feet on the floor and started for the doorway. Then she saw the gun in my hand and she let out a little “Oh.”
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