Doyle After Death (8 page)

Puzzled, I played along. The three of us turned to face the sun shining over the village.

“Gaze right at the sun,” Doyle said. “You must have noticed it does you no harm in this world to look right at it. Look deep into its light. Just keep looking at it . . .”

I did as he suggested and as I gazed I was increasingly fascinated by a subtle emanation of intelligence in this sun's soft, scintillating glow. The sunlight, looked at directly, had overlapping layers of emanation, constantly unfolding, like paintings I'd seen of mandalas.

“Now as you gaze at it, feel yourself open, like a blossom in the morning,” Doyle went on.

Major Brummigen growled at that simile. “Oh Christ, that's something you say to a damn little girl, Doyle. It's more like turning a radio antenna to the signal.”

“I don't have a blossom
or
an antenna,” I complained.

“You
do!”
Brummigen said. “Do you feel a peculiar emptiness, something like hunger, but not quite like the hunger for food?”

“I guess so. I thought it was just being bummed out. I mean, you know, depressed. Ending my life the way I did—­that's not conducive to a good mood.”

“Your life hasn't ended,” Doyle reminded me. “You've simply shed your old body and gotten a rather different sort. Now, keep gazing into the sun and sense that inner emptiness—­and just
open up
to the sunlight . . .”

“You guys are yanking my chain, here,” I said, giving Doyle a suspicious glance.

“We're what?”

“It's an expression, Doyle,” the major said. “No one's yanking your chain, Fogg, just do what ‘Sherlock' Doyle there tells you. This is for real.”

I shrugged. I looked once more at the sun. I felt that inner emptiness. I tried to feel . . . receptive.

Suddenly my mouth filled with the taste of ripe, sun-­warmed concord grapes. No, it wasn't grapes—­it was
honey,
the most flavorful honey I'd ever tasted. But then again, it was the taste of something savory, like meat, but not meat—­something textured like meat that melted in my mouth, becoming pure nutrient. Then there was another taste that is not quite describable—­it was the taste of dark-­green grass, of exquisitely pure water; of sunlight and salty minerals and evening breezes in jungle places.

“Ah,” Doyle said, watching my expression appreciatively. “
There
it is.”

My feasting went on for a full minute—­and I was aware, somehow, that while it was coming through the glow of the sun, it was sourced in the whole afterworld around me . . .

And then it simply reached its culmination. I suddenly felt entirely
full
—­recharged, strengthened, refreshed, sated. After a mild wave of disappointment that it was over for now, I looked at Doyle—­my eyes not even watering after staring into the sun, no blurring of my vision—­and I saw him fairly beaming at me. In fact, in an understated way, he was literally beaming: a shine was coming off him.

“Marvelous, isn't it?” he said. “It beats the vulgar process of eating—­and, Lord knows, the elimination that follows on eating.”

“I miss a real steak, right there on the plate in front of me.” The major sighed. “I miss the feeling of chewing it up.” But he was not very convincing.

“T
his seems good right here,” the major muttered. And then Brummigen dropped to his knees and plunged his hands into the soil.

Doyle did the same, falling to his knees on the grassy field across from Major Brummigen—­the width of a Garden Rest cottage away.

I stood behind them, in the cool shadow of a house nearby; beyond them the field stretched down to the edge of the swamp marked by a fringe of lilies. Waiting to my right was Mr. Gerald Peller, and Mrs. Singh, a ­couple who had, in the afterlife, taken up living together. They had lived in Mrs. Singh's small cottage, and now they wanted one big enough for the both of them. (She went by Mrs. Singh in public but soon she would become Mrs. Peller. ­People in the afterlife can be strangely old-­fashioned.) She was a small, beautiful woman from the Indian subcontinent, with large black eyes and raven-­wing hair; she wore a red sari, figured with golden lotuses; smiling beside her, holding her hand, Peller was a man of early middle age; he had a neatly clipped brown-­blond goatee, and he wore a tweedy gray suit, and loafers. He had a professorial look to me and I found out later, in life he was a professor of Asian history. He had died . . . aftered . . . two years earlier.

Doyle had told me that Peller and Mrs. Singh had known each other in life, that she'd been Peller's “I.T. person.” He'd found a great many excuses to have her unnecessarily upgrade his computer. But she'd been married and he'd never made a move. She'd died first; he'd died four years later. She'd been surprised when her husband, killed in the same car accident, refused to acknowledge their marriage in the afterlife. But then, the vows do say till death. When Peller appeared, he declared his undying love within minutes of discovering her here.

Undying love, Doyle had said. That phrase made me think of someone
. Nothing's undying, Nick,
Bettie told me
. Not love, not anything.

As I watched Brummigen and Doyle, both men looking quite odd kneeling with their hands stuck in the soil across from one another in a vacant lot, I wondered how Bettie was, back on Earth—­in the Before. One of these days she'd die, and I hoped her afterlife plans didn't include Garden Rest. I didn't particularly want to see her again. No, let's be more definite:
I really don't want to see her.

But judging by what I've seen of the afterlife—­I probably will see her.

The soil trembled around Conan Doyle's fingers; it shuddered around Brummigen's hands. Then it erupted upward like a dark fountain, at first—­a slow-­motion fountain of light-­brown soil near Doyle, and juts of gray stone close to Major Brummigen. The two flows combined and whirled, seemed to pour into an invisible mold shaped like the foundation of a house, the foundation rumbling gently as it formed.

It was as if stone softened and became a cool, thick gray liquid as it flowed upward and to the side—­the stone was as liquid as lava but put out no heat. I expected the ground under the rising material to sink down as resources were drawn from the fundament, but it didn't. The ground beneath was constantly renewed from deeper places, farther down.

I wondered, as I watched the house “formulate,” what
was
farther down, under our feet, in a world like this? Were there burning caverns somewhere beneath the surface? Was there some hellish underworld?

I shook my head. Hell didn't seem like this afterlife's style. Still—­if some of us unconsciously chose places like Garden Rest, perhaps others, darkly obsessed, chose an underworld where they might act out the suffering they felt they deserved. ­People created their own hells on Earth, after all—­or rather, before all.

The stone base of the house had finished formulating, the soft flowing stone hardening with
crick-­crick
sounds as it settled in place. I remembered being a kid building up a house with little plump strands of Play-­Doh, one atop the next, log-­cabin fashion, till I'd gotten the walls done. Then I'd smooth all the logs together. This house built up almost that way for a while, but accreting to house sized, and each layer was perfectly formed. Once the basic walls were done, they smoothed out a bit—­from within, with the same mind-­over-­matter methodology. Then supportive structures erupted up from the ground at the corners, rising to harden into vertical framing that appeared to be wood. It flowed upward, looking like a liquid wood, then hardened into something indistinguishable from wood cut from a tree, wood grain and all. Frames formed for windows, minerals flowed from beneath, hardened into glass with a crackling and sputtering; the glass rose into its place in the window frames like car windows electrically closing . . .

Peller and the former Mrs. Singh strolled around the house, holding hands, smiling as it rose up before them, their eyes shining. They stopped by me and we exchanged grins. I'm not a guy to grin much, but this had touched me.

“Like the old barn raisings,” I said, “but easier and faster and . . . just damn amazing.”

“It is, at that.” Peller chuckled. “I'll make the door myself, out of the local wood and metal. And I'll touch it up with paint. That's traditional. I was a pretty good amateur carpenter . . .”

We watched the house seem to organize itself, in increasing detail, the
idea
of a house materializing a house—­and I was amazed at how well the major and Doyle worked together, each with his own specialty. They must've done this together before.

When it was finally roofed, complete with chimney, the rumbling stopped; Brummigen pointed out a certain crookedness on the south side. Doyle agreed, and they once more plunged their hands into the soil. The house seemed to shudder, then, and shrug, before suddenly straightening up, dropping a few errant bits away to the side.

And then the house formulation was complete but for the door and furnishings.

Peller and Mrs. Singh thanked the major and Doyle, the lady adding hugs; I added my congratulations. I was genuinely impressed. Both the house raisers looked quite pleased with themselves.

“Could you teach me to do that?” I asked Brummigen. “To formulate? Build something that way?”

The major pretended to look doubtful—­then he cracked a grudging smile. “We'll give it a try. But I'll be standing back from your first attempt. Not a pleasant thing to have a house fall over on you. I've had that experience. I don't recommend it.”

“Do you know,” Doyle said, dusting his hands, “
formulating
here is rather like what we used to call
apportment
. The most curious items would materialize in séances—­would
apport
right there and then. Of course, Houdini caught some of the more misguided mediums using sleight of hand to make things
seem
to appear . . . but there were some remarkable instances where interesting objects genuinely
apported.
I remember a bird's nest, from a foreign land, appearing in the very midst of the table . . .”

Brummigen snorted skeptically but said nothing.

I ran my hand along the outer wall of the new house. It felt solid, looked like it had been there forever. “You just . . . made it happen!”

“Oh, we're mere amateurs, really,” Doyle said, with a modesty I didn't really buy into.

“How do you do it without . . . stepping on each other's toes? I mean . . . did you plan the house out in advance?”

“We did,” Brummigen said. “And you get a feel for another man's formulation style, over time. That's a fact! Might be psychic. But it's not like telepathy. Hard to describe.”

“It's wonderful!” Mrs. Singh told them. “You're both so gifted!”

“There's a ­couple of chaps who could do it better,” Doyle allowed. “But they charge money. No reason you should have to spend your
Fi
's needlessly.”

The major grunted. “That Charlie Long does a helluva job of it, for sure. However you want it!”

Long.
I remembered the name. “Long works for Garrett Merchant?”

Doyle looked at me with his eyebrows raised. “You're certainly getting your bearings quickly. I was myself thinking that since Morgan Harris had spent some time out there, we should ask Merchant if he observed anything of interest.”

“Can we go out to see Merchant's place? Appreciate the architecture . . . maybe ask a few questions?”

“Merchant doesn't like questions,” the major said. “Unless it's in the form of praise. Like, ‘How'd you ever do anything so great, Mr. Merchant?' ”

Doyle laughed heartily at that. “You see, if by some miracle you get Brummigen in a good mood, the man becomes a humorist. Doesn't happen often. Certainly I'll take you out to see Merchant, Fogg. Maybe Brummigen'll even condescend to come along.”

Brummigen was smiling, pleased to have amused Doyle. “Today—­sorry, can't come along this time. Got to get back to the bar.”

Doyle sniffed. “I do have to report to a lady for luncheon, and a spot of gardening. I dare not defy her.” He winked at me. “But after lunch, which is more ceremonious than nutritious, we shall talk with Mr. Merchant. And along the way, perhaps with your dear old chum Mr. ‘Bull' Moore.”

Brummigen cleared his throat. “Doyle—­how
is
. . . Touie?”

“My wife is very well,” Doyle said, looking abstractedly into the forest. After a moment he added, “Well enough.”

The major glanced at Doyle, seemed to be about to say something more. The subject of “Lady Doyle” seemed to make the air between them tighten with tension.

But after a moment Major Brummigen shrugged and turned back to the house. “What do you say, let's see if we need to make any more corrections in the structure. Maybe . . .” He broke off, staring at a man who was striding toward us. “Shit. Here comes Bolliver.”

Doyle grunted and hooded his eyes as he turned to watch Bolliver. Clearly, neither Conan Doyle nor the major liked the man, which wasn't surprising, given what Winn Chauncey had said.

Bolliver was a pale goopy man of medium height, shoulders always hunched, his posture almost S-­shaped. He had scraggly sandy brown hair, surprisingly red lips, small blue-­gray eyes. His clothing made me think of an old school geek, complete with pocket protector and high-­water pants. “Fellows,” he said. “How do you hang?”

“They haven't hung me yet,” I said. “That I remember.”

Bolliver looked at me. “I didn't mean you.” He looked me up and down—­literally starting at my head. “You one of the new ones?”