Afterlife (23 page)

Julie nodded. Their food came, and Julie picked at her French fries.

“But you don’t really believe,” he said. “Now.”

“I thought you said belief doesn’t matter. There are things I need to know.”

“About your husband.”

She nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but…” “You’ve seen his ghost,” Diamond said.

“I wish that’s what it felt like. I think I’m losing my mind, since he died. I think my mind is flashing on and off or something. A few nights ago, I thought I saw him. As close as you are. I thought I saw him, but then, when I turned on the light, he wasn’t there. And then, on a video I made. He is in it. But the video goes bad. All the videos went bad.”

“I have to tell you, Julie. I don’t believe in ghosts. Not like you’re saying. I don’t believe there are physical manifestations of spirits where you can see them.”

“So, I guess I’m halfway to the psych hospital,” she said, and tried not to imagine Amanda Hutchinson.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I meant, sometimes what happens is our brain gives access to projections— so what we see isn’t a ghost, so much as…well, a movie. A movie our mind creates, influenced by either our own psychic ability, or someone nearby who has that ability. Your daughter, for example.”

“Livy?”

“Well, you told me about her brain radio. She thinks she communicates with her dead father.”

“I didn’t tell you that.”

He grinned. “For all you know, you live in a psychic household. Let’s assume your daughter has some psychic ability. Anyone else in your family have this?”

“My mother thinks she does. But she doesn’t. Believe me, she doesn’t.”

“It’s usually genetic.”

“Ah.”

“I can tell by that ‘ah’ that you think this is one loony bin candidate talking to another. Think what you want, just stay with me on this. You’ve read my books. You know what remote viewing is. That’s why you’re here. You know about the Stream, don’t you?”

She nodded. “In your book. It’s what connects consciousness between people.”

“It’s fluid, and just because physics hasn’t yet described it, doesn’t mean it won’t eventually be mapped out just like DNA. I believe it’s the connection between entire species. Ants have it—and it’s obvious they do. Birds that migrate have it. As we go up the food chain, it seems to have been weeded out. Who knows why. And now, it just shows up as a genetic burp. That’s what I think I am: a burp.”

She laughed, and for just a moment forgot her headache—the one that hadn’t disappeared in days.

“I am here,” she said, “to find out if you know about something called Project Daylight.”

3

A strange look flickered across his face, as if he were deciding on something that might affect her.

“It was your father running that program. Am I correct?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“It was on the sixth floor of an apartment building on Rosetta Street.”

Again, he nodded. “It began as a sleep study for children with certain disorders. My father hired several medical people to oversee aspects of it, but this was a cover for what it was really about. He had received funding from the Army to find out if there was a key to turning on Ability X in people. Children with the ability seemed to have an easier time of it. My father was misguided. He assumed all children were good. But they are not. Some children…well, particularly children who had come from abuse and were angry and had the seed of something more in them…well, the place was badly ventilated, apparently, and when the fire broke out—caused by faulty wiring, ultimately—many people died. My father was burned. Forty percent of his body, mainly his legs. He lived a few years beyond this, but ended up taking his own life. Project Daylight was a disaster, it cost too much money, and the Army wanted to hide it once the fire happened. So, it got buried.”

“My husband was in Project Daylight.”

“Then, your husband was psychic. Or had some level of ability. As a child.”

“He never told me about his childhood,” she said.

“Given what happened in Project Daylight, I doubt he would,” Michael Diamond said.

4

Although she wanted to open up to him, Julie became worried as Diamond spoke to her that she would sound too crazy. She wanted to unleash everything, to ask a thousand questions. But it all came down to one question. The one question she had never known in Hut’s entire life. “Do you know who my husband was?”

Diamond put down his fork, and said, “I’m not sure. All of us in that program, Julie, lost memories.”

“You were in it?”

“My father had some psychic ability, and I inherited it. My mother, too. People with Ability X often seek each other out. I’m surprised you don’t have any.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“You don’t really believe in it, do you?”

“I believe that people believe. And maybe I want to know more,” she said. “Did you…did you know Hut? Well, his name was Jeff. I don’t know what his last name would’ve been. He was a ward of the state at the time.”

“Well, memories were lost, believe me,” he said.

She nodded. “A boy was burned.”

“He died,” Diamond said.

She remembered something that Detective McGuane had mentioned. “Died? I thought he lived. The cops think that man who killed my husband might have been that boy.”

“Do they? They think a dead boy killed someone?” He let the question hang in the air. Then he said, “I can show you the few memories I have of it. But they’re vague. They’re out of focus.”

“Show me?”

“Whether or not you believe in Ability X, Julie,” he said, “doesn’t matter. I can bring you inside myself. I can show you what I remember. At least fragments.”

“How?”

“If you really want that, I need total access,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, I need to delve into you—into your psyche. I need to unblock, and open doors in your mind. I need to let things out that you don’t want to get out. It’s not selective. I can’t pick and choose which door to open. I’m just the locksmith. I can unlock the door, but I can’t prevent things from spilling out. Do you understand?”

She squinted as she looked at him. “I guess I’m still skeptical. But, when you touched me in the studio that day…”

“Ah. The laying on of hands. In religious mysticism, it’s the most important way to Stream. To move from my consciousness into yours. Once you’ve let me inside you, you can slip into me.” He took a sip of wine, and grinned like a teenage boy who just shot off a bottle rocket. “It’s like I feel everything the other person has felt. It’s like unleashing impulses. It’s like…well, pardon me for saying so, like an orgasm. And it’s scary.” He touched the tip of her fingers as she reached for her water glass. She withdrew her hand.

Maybe he’s just nuts,
she thought.
Maybe you need to get out of this lunch. Maybe whatever little bullshit ability he has isn’t going to be what you want. You’re smart, Julie, Eleanor told you that you might hallucinate and see Hut. That it was the normal grief and stress and longing. That it’s not some supernatural event. It’s just the human mind with a few cracks in it.

“Maybe I
am
nuts,” he said, too easily.

“You read my expression,” she said. “You wrote that in your book, about the con artists. They know how to read people from body language and even the looks on their faces. My therapist said it, too. Things most of us don’t even notice, but you’ve trained yourself to do.”

“But you don’t believe that, do you?” he said. “Not after recent experiences. You didn’t seek me out because of lack of belief. When I viewed you, Julie, I was there, with you,
inside
you, Julie. The birth of your little girl. Making love to your husband. I was there, with you, in your memory. As creepy as it sounds, it’s not. It’s a beautiful experience. It’s a connection of souls. It’s like a spider web inside each of us, and each strand of that web is a different world within us, and each strand shoots out and connects with strands of others, outside of us. A few of us are lucky enough to go inside. We need permission to do it. We can’t just slip into someone else. They have to want me inside them.”

His words made her shiver, slightly. Reminding her of words the dark figure had whispered to her in her dreams:
Do you want me inside you?

She closed her eyes, made a brief wish, opened them. His face seemed open and warm and unassuming.

It was like stepping off a cliff, stepping into his world of psychic “reading.”

A world of illogic and mystical crap and all the things she’d fought her whole life never to believe.

“Can I trust you?” she asked. “I mean, really trust you?”

He nodded, without hesitation.

“I saw his wounds when he died. I was at the morgue. He is dead. But I see him. I think…I think I’m being haunted by him. Look, I’ll pay you whatever it takes just to find out if I’m sane or not.”

“I don’t want your money,” he said.

5

His apartment was less impressive than she’d expected. It was a three-flight walk-up on Perry Street, in the Village. When he opened the door, she saw a place that looked like it had only been lived in for a few weeks.

“Most of my money goes to organizations I believe in,” he said, noticing her raised eyebrows. “It’s the main reason I write the books and do the show. That’s the carnival aspect of Ability X. My income mostly goes to nonprofits that deal with, oh, the usual.”

“Animal rescue groups and homes for wayward girls?”

“Something like that. When you live mainly in your mind, you have modest needs.”

6

“On the table,” he said, directing her to what looked like a massage table near the window.

He drew the shades. He stood over her. For a moment, in the shadows, he reminded her of someone else.

Then, he sat down in a chair beside her.

“This’ll seem awkward. Just try to relax. All right? This is called body work. Just think of it like a massage. I need you to loosen your shirt. Would you mind taking it off?”

“Why?”

“Trust me or don’t trust me. You’ve had massages, I assume.”

“Yes. But usually…in a spa.”

“Tell you what, keep your cell phone on autodial for 911 if you’re afraid of me.”

She was about to pull out her cell phone. Everything had begun to frighten her, but she’d begun feeling a certain numbness inside. She remembered the video of watching Hut looking at the camera, saying something, and then filming her in the most obscene way.
Is this what insanity is? Is this what Amanda Hutchinson felt like? Is this how it crawls inside you?
Finally, she said, “I’m not afraid of you.”

The look on his face was of utter seriousness.

“Clothing interrupts the Stream.” He said it so matter-of-factly that she felt as if any threat had been removed.

He wasn’t even interested in her, in that way. She could sense it.

“If I were a doctor, you’d have no problem removing your clothes. If I were a masseur, you’d be naked before I could say, ‘get on the table.’ Think of me like that.”

She fought an internal battle, wondering if she had gone off the deep end. But finally, she unbuttoned her shirt, and drew it off.

“I’ll get you a towel,” he said. “For modesty.”

He got up and went toward the bathroom. When he returned, he tossed a large white fluffy towel at her. It smelled fresh, as if he’d just done his laundry.

“I’ll go make some tea,” he gestured toward the boxcar kitchen.

After he’d gone over to the sink, she slipped out of her skirt, but kept her underwear on. She wrapped the towel around herself, and it managed to cover most of her, breasts included. She had an awful feeling that she was stepping into a trap. That she had let a dream rape her, and now she was setting herself up for a man who was a virtual stranger to do the same. And yet, she had to see where this went. She had to know what was in his mind, his memories. She had to know more.

After he poured himself some tea, he returned to the living room, and sat down beside the table.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked.

“Mmm.” She stared straight ahead: her view was the bathroom door, with its mirror. She saw her face, and Michael Diamond as he sat down in a chair beside the massage table.

“I want you to know that you are safe. I won’t be touching you, but your mind will think I am. Have you ever gone to a Reiki therapist? They hold their hands just so, above certain points of the body. They believe they’re directing their healing life energy to the subject. This is somewhat similar. My hands will be this far from you the entire time. I want you to be aware of it, because there will come a point when it feels as if I’m touching you. Do not break the Stream. I Stream into you. I want you to close your eyes. Now. All right. Think back to a time when you first remember seeing a flower. Yes, a flower,” he said the words slowly, carefully, and she felt his hand on the back of her scalp. As he kept his hand there—barely touching her hair—she began to feel an intense heat, as if his hand emanated an aura of warmth. He guided her through looking at the first flower, then the first friend, then the look on her mother’s face when it was Christmas, and each time he took her mind somewhere new, she felt the presence of his hand again—not his hand itself, but the warmth beneath it as it hovered at the back of her neck, between her shoulder blades, down her spine, as he parted the towel, to the base of her spine, and then, slowly back up again.

She remembered other things from her childhood, remembered a fight her parents had, remembered when she and Mel had dressed up their pet schnauzer in baby clothes, and then the memories came forward as if, by touching her, he had begun opening doors in her mind that she’d been shutting behind her.

Soon, she had lost even the sound of his voice, but felt him there, his hand no longer moving just above the surface of her skin, but inside her in some impossible way—beneath the surface of consciousness, and his hand guided her along through memory, through doors that opened, one after the other, and behind them, memories. Then, more than memories—fantasies began coming to her—of flying in the air, of swimming like a fish through the water, and then she felt as if she were butting up against some door that wouldn’t open, but his hand was there, with her, and finally it flew apart as if smashed, and behind it was a blood-red room, and she was there, and a man without a face, and he caressed her and touched her, parting her legs as he parted her mouth with his tongue, and in this red room, she felt no shame and had no care that they were being watched by the outsider, by the psychic who chaperoned her journey into her subconscious. The faceless man against whom she twisted and bucked in a sexual fantasy of frenzy and animal lust, now took on the form of Michael Diamond himself—for a flickering moment—but then, as if propelled by pathways of the pulse, she was ejected from her inner fantasy, and moved again to memory—to a row of iron doors that looked as if they were locked, bolted, and bound by some kind of interconnecting bloodroots, but she heard a distant sound of a series of pops, and the doors opened, all of them, and it was as if she were spying on herself, spying on her life with Hut, on the life they’d built, only she watched it like it was one of Matt’s movies, she watched their life, and as she watched, she saw Hut for who he really was, not the man of her fantasies and not the man of her illusions, but a man who was cold with her, and brusque, a man who was selfish with his time and displayed little love even for his son—a handsome, vain man who watched her at times as if she were not entirely human to him…