What Dreams May Come (22 page)

“Shall I tell you what you said to Perry at the house?”

She tried to stand again but couldn’t. The filming of her gaze came and went. “Not interested,” she mumbled.

“You said ‘I don’t believe in survival after death. I believe that when we die we die and that’s the end of it.’ “

“That’s right!” she cried.

A leap of futile hope. “That is what you said?”

“Death is the end of it!”

I fought off momentary loss. “Then how do I know these things?” I asked.

“You made them up!”

“You know that isn’t true! You know that everything I’ve described is exactly the way it happened!”

She managed to stay on her feet this time. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but you’d better get out of here before it’s too late.”

“Too late for whom?” I asked. “You or me?”

“You!”

“No, Ann,” I said. “I know what’s happened. You’re the one who doesn’t understand.”

“And you’re my husband?” she asked.

“I am.”

“Mister,” she said; she almost spat the word at me. “I’m looking right at you and you’re not my husband.”

I felt a sudden, wrenching coldness in my chest.

She saw the depth of my reaction and took immediate advantage of it. “If you were my husband,” she said, “you wouldn’t say such things to me. Chris was kind. He loved me.”

“I love you too.” I felt depression rising. “I’m here because I love you.”

Her laugh was a cynical, chilling sound. “Love,” she said. “You don’t even know me.”

The ground was slipping out from under me. “I do!” I cried. “I’m Chris! Can’t you see that?! Chris!”

My loss was complete as she smiled in cold victory. “How can you be here then?” she asked. “He’s dead.”

It had all been in vain. There was no way of convincing her because she, literally, could not conceive of afterlife. No one can conceive of the impossible. And, to Ann, survival after death was an impossibility.

She turned and walked from the living room, followed by Ginger.

At first, the” shock of it failed to register. I sat watching her go as if it had no importance to me. Then it struck and I stood in dumbfounded shock. I’d done everything I could to convince her, thought I’d had her on the razor edge of belief only to discover I’d accomplished nothing.

Nothing.

I moved after her but, now, without hope. Each step seemed to bring another condensation to my mind and body—a curdling of thought, a clogging of flesh which grew increasingly worse.

For a ghastly moment, I thought I was home again, that this was where I belonged.

Stopping, I resisted the hideous process. I couldn’t bear to stay in that place. It was too horrible.

Ann’s cry of terror from our bedroom made me break into a run.

I say a run but it was more a hobble, my legs coated with lead. It was then that I knew what Ann had described. Like her, I could barely lift my feet. And it was worse for her.

I stopped in the bedroom doorway, Ginger whirling to face me. Ann was pressed against the wall, staring at our bed.

Across its dingy, faded spread, a tarantula the size of a man’s fist was crawling.

The moment was frozen. Ann against the wall. Ginger staring at me. Me in the doorway.

The only thing that moved, with bloated sluggishness, was the enormous, furry spider.

As it started up the pillow on Ann’s side, she made a gagging noise.

I wondered, for a dreadful moment, if she’d done this to herself; an unconscious punishment for not believing what I’d told her. Created an image of the most repugnant thing she could imagine—a huge tarantula walking on the place where she lay her head in sleep.

I don’t know why Ginger made no move as I entered the room. Was it because she, now, sensed that I was really there to help Ann? I have no answer. I only know that she let me walk by Ann and reach the bed.

Picking up the pillow gingerly, I started to turn. I gasped and flung it from me as the spider made a sudden, hitching movement toward my right hand. Ann cried out, sickened, as the tarantula thudded on the bedspread.

Hastily, I snatched up the pillow and dropped it on top of the spider. Then, as quickly as I could, I grabbed the spread at each corner and pulled it over the pillow. Picking up the bundle, I carried it to the door and slide it open. Tossing the spread outside, I shut the door again and locked it.

As I turned back, Ann was stumbling to the bed and falling on it, stonelike.

Motionless, I stared at her.

There were no movements left to make. I’d exhausted all possibilities.

The encounter was over, the battle ended.

Hell be our heaven

ANN LAY IMMOBILE on her left side, legs drawn up, hands clasped tightly underneath her chin. Her eyes stared sightlessly, still glistening with tears that no longer fell. She hadn’t even stirred when I’d sat down on the other side of the bed and, if she sensed my gaze on her masklike face, she gave no indication of it.

Ginger slept, exhausted, at the foot of the bed. I turned to look at her and felt a rush of pitying love. She was so unquestioning in her devotion. If only there was some way she could understand what was happening.

I looked back at Ann. My body felt cold and aching and I knew that, as I sat there, that dark, terrible magnetism was waiting to draw me to the void where she existed. I had only to allow it and the atmosphere would totally absorb me, making me as she was, a prisoner forgetting everything that had gone before.

I knew, with dreadful clarity, how foolish and misplaced my hopes had been. Albert had tried to warn me but I hadn’t listened. Now I understood at last.

There was no way to reach Ann.

Still, words came. Words I wanted her to hear, now when I could speak them to her, face to face. Words which I knew could not affect her but words that filled my mind and heart.

“You remember how you used to write thank-you notes to people all the time?” I asked. “For dinners, presents, favors? I used to tease you because you wrote so many of them. But they were lovely gestures, Ann. I always knew that.”

No sound from her. Completely inanimate on the bed. I reached out and took her right hand. It was cold and limp. I held it in both of mine and continued speaking.

“I want to give you thanks in words now,” I told her. “I don’t know what will happen to us. I pray we’ll be together somewhere, sometime, but, at the moment, I have no idea if that’s possible.

“That’s why I’m going to thank you now for everything you’ve done for me, everything you’ve meant to me. Some-one you never met told me that thoughts are real and eternal. So, even if you don’t understand my words now, I know the time will come when what I say will reach you.”

I pressed her hand between my palms to warm it and I told her what I felt.

“Thank you, Ann, for all the things you did for me in life, from the smallest to the largest. Everything you did had meaning and I want you to know my gratitude for them.

“Thank you for keeping my clothes clean, our homes clean, yourself clean. For always being fresh and sweet smelling, always being well groomed.

“Thank you for feeding me. For the preparation of so many lovely meals. For baking for me at a time when so few women bother anymore.

“Thank you for worrying about me when I was having difficulties of any kind. For sympathizing with me when I was depressed.

“Thank you for your sense of humor. For making me laugh when I needed it. For making me laugh when I neither needed nor expected it but enjoyed the extra savor of it in my life. Thank you for your wry perception of our life together and the world we lived in.

“Thank you for caring for me when I was ill. For seeing to it, always, that bed and pajamas were clean, that I was well fed and had fresh juice or water to drink. That I had something to read or that the television set or radio was on or that the house was kept quiet so I could sleep. All this in addition to your other work.

“Thank you for sharing my love of music and for sharing your love of music with me. For the sharing of each other’s love of beauty and nature.

“Thank you for helping us to find the lovely way of life we had. For the furnishing and decorating and enjoying of our different homes, the opening of them to the people we knew.

“Thank you for being affectionate with my friends and loving to my family. Thank you for helping us to build so many mutual friendships.

“Thank you for being someone I was proud to be with no matter where I was or who I saw.

“Thank you for our physical relationship. For sharing your female being with me. For making the bodily part of our life so satisfying and exciting. For keeping my sexual ego intact. For enjoying my body as much as I enjoyed yours. For the warmth of your flesh on cold nights and the warmth of your love always.

“Thank you for having faith in my work and in my ultimate success. I know it wasn’t easy when there were children and bills and pressures of every kind. But you never wavered in your trust that I’d succeed and I thank you for that.

“Thank you for the memories of things we did together and with the children. Thank you for suggesting that we buy a camper for the family, for helping to bring the joys of outdoor living to me and the children. I know it will be part of their lives now as it was a part of ours. Thank you for all the lovely national parks we saw together. For Sequoia and Yosemite, Lassen and Shasta, Olympic and Mount Ranier, Glacier and Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Bryce. For Canada and all the states we camped through from coast to coast.

“Thank you for helping us to find, and for sharing with us, the pleasures of traveling to Hawaii and the South Seas, to Europe and throughout the United States.

“Do you remember all our Christmases together, Ann? How we used to go out, all of us, in the camper, drive to the Y.M.C.A. lot in Reseda and pick out a tree? How we walked through aisles of bushy, pungent-smelling pine and spruce trees and chose one, laughing, voting and contending until we found one everybody liked? How we took it home and set it up and put the lights on, then the decorations and the tinsel? How we sat together, looking at it, the only sound our Christmas records playing? How we always said, each year, that that tree was the best we ever got and it was always true for us? I remember all those lovely moments and I thank you for them.

“Thank you for the memories of you and me alone together. Taking weekend trips or drives to interesting places. Shopping together. Walking. Sitting on the bench and looking at the hills at sunset. I’d put my arm around your shoulders and you’d lean against me and we’d watch the sun go down. That was contentment, Ann.

“Do you remember the sheep that used to graze on those hills? How we watched them, smiling at their constant baaing and the delicate clank of the bells around their necks? Do you remember the herds of cattle that were out there sometimes? Sweet recollections, Ann. I thank you for them.

“Thank you for the memories of watching you with birds. Watching you take care of them and heal them, give them your loving attention, year after year. Those birds are waiting for you, Ann. They love you.

“Thank you for giving me the example of your courage and tenacity in recovering from your nervous breakdown. It was a dreadful time in your life, in both our lives. The sleepless nights, the fears and uncertainties, the painful reliving of your past. The years of trying, struggling, hoping.

“Thank you for never letting those years make you surrender. For never letting the scars of your childhood make you give up your efforts to grow and strengthen yourself. And, even though I never wanted you to, thank you for doing all you could to keep me from being exposed to what you suffered during that time.

“Thank you for valuing your marriage and family so highly yet still expanding as an individual. For your desire to grow and your success at doing it.

“Do you remember going back to school? First, taking an isolated course or two, then, later, going at it more intensely until you’d earned your Associate of Arts degree, then your Bachelor’s, then started working toward a profession as an adult counselor? I was so proud of you, Ann. I wish you were still doing it. You would have made a wonderful counselor—full of empathy and love.

“Thank you for our children. Thank you for providing the clean and lovely vessel of your body for the creation of their physical lives. Do you know I still remember the exact moment each of them was born? Louise at 3:07 p.m. on January 22, 1951, Richard at 7:02 a.m. on October 14, 1953, Marie at 9:04 p.m. on July 5, 1956 and Ian at 8:07 a.m. on February 25, 1959. Thank you for the joy I felt at seeing each of them for the first time—and for the joys that each has brought to my life. Thank you for teaching me to be considerate of them and respect their separate identities. Thank you for being such a fine example to our daughters and sons, showing them what’s possible in a wife and mother.

“Thank you for letting me be myself. For dealing with me as I was, not as you imagined me to be or wanted me to be. Thank you for being so compatible with my mind and my emotions. For helping me to keep my airy thoughts on earth, for being neither dominant nor passive but each as the occasion demanded. For being female and accepting what I had to offer as a male. For making me feel, always, like a man.

“Thank you for being tolerant of my failings. For neither crushing my ego nor allowing it to grow beyond the bounds of sense. For keeping, in my mind, the realization that I was a human being with responsibilities. Thank you for remaking me without ever doing it deliberately. For helping me to understand myself better. For helping me accomplish more with you than I could ever have accomplished alone.

“Thank you for encouraging me to talk about our problems, especially as the years went by. Our increasing ability to talk to each other made our marriage better and better. Thank you for helping me combine my ideas and feelings and communicate with you as a total being. Thank you for liking me as well as loving me, for being not only my wife and lover but my friend.

“Thank you for your imagination in our life. For helping me to grow in appreciation of new activities and new ideas. For making my tastes more adventuresome in all things from the least to the greatest.

“Thank you for reminding me in acts, not words, of the right things to do where others were concerned. For teaching me, by example, that sacrifice can be a positive and loving gesture. Thank you for the opportunity to mature.

“Thank you for your dependability. For always being there when I needed you. Thank you for your honesty, your values, your morality and compassion. Thank you even for the bad times between us because, in those as well, I learned to grow.

“I apologize for every time I failed you, every time I lacked the understanding you deserved. I apologize for not being patient and kind when I should have been. I apologize for all the times I was selfish and failed to see your needs. I always loved you, Ann, but, often, let you down. I apologize for all those times and thank you for making me feel stronger than I was, wiser than I was, more capable than I was. Thank you, Ann, for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence.

“I thank you, love, for everything.”

She was looking at me now, with such a suffering expression that, for an instant, I regretted having spoken as I had.

Immediately, that vanished.

There was something in her eyes.

Vague and formless, struggling for existence. Like a candle flame in wind.

But definitely there.

How she tried. God in heaven, Robert, how she tried. I saw each moment of it on her face. Something in my words had ignited a tiny flame in her mind and now she strained to keep it burning. Not even knowing what had sparked it into life. Not even knowing it was lit but only sensing that it was. Aware of something. Something different. Something other than the wretchedness she’d been existing with.

I didn’t know what to do.

Should I speak, attempting to nourish the flame? Or remain silent, giving her the time to nurture it herself? I didn’t know. In that most urgent moment in our entire relationship, I was mentally adrift.

So I did nothing. Staring at her face. Her face so like a child’s, striving to understand some vast, remote mystery.

Try, I thought.

It was the only word my mind could summon. Try. I think I nodded in encouragement. Try. I think I smiled. Try. I held her hand so tightly. Try. I felt us both begin to tremble. Try, Ann. Try. Every second of our long affinity—from the moment we’d met to this incredible instant—was in climax now. Try, Ann try. Try. Please try.

The flame went out.

I saw it die. One second it was there, barely alive. Then it was gone, the faint illumination of it vanished from her mind. And the falling off of her expression—anxious hope to dull oblivion—was, to me, the most hideous sight I’d seen since my death.

“Ann!” I cried.

No response. In word or facial recognition.

The cause was lost.

I stared at her in silence, moments passing.

Until the one remaining answer came to me.

I couldn’t leave her there alone.

Strange how the most horrific decision I had ever made in my existence should impart a sense of peace to me.

Instantly, I let the waiting magnetism start to envelop me.

There was no stopping it now. I felt an icy curdling in my flesh, a horrible, clotting, chilling condensation of my entire body.

I almost tried to fight it off as mindless terror swept across my mind.

I stopped that.

This was the one thing I could do for her.

I’d lose the knowledge of it soon; not even have the solace of recognizing my own gesture. But, now, for these limited moments, I knew exactly what I was doing. The only thing left to do.

Forswear heaven to be with her.

Show my love by choosing to remain beside her for the twenty-four years she had to remain there.

I prayed that my companionship—whatever it might prove to be when I had lost awareness—might ease, in some small way, her pain at living in this awful place.

But stay I would, no matter what.

I started, looking around.

Ginger was licking my other hand.

As I stared at her, incredulous, I heard what was, to me, the most beautiful sound in the universe.

Ann’s voice speaking my name.

I turned to her in wonder. There were tears in her eyes.

“Is it really you?” she murmured.

“Yes, Ann. Really.” I saw her through a shimmering haze of tears.

“You did this … for me?”

I nodded. “Yes, Ann, yes. Yes.” Already, I could feel awareness fading. How soon would it be gone? How soon would desolation triumph?

It didn’t matter.

For those few seconds, we were reunited.

I drew her up and put my arms around her, felt her arms around me. We wept in each other’s embrace.

Suddenly, she pulled back, her expression one of dread. “Now you can’t leave,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter.” I laughed and cried at once. “It doesn’t matter, Ann. Heaven would never be heaven without you.”

And, just before the darkness crept across my consciousness, I spoke, for the last time to my wife, my life, my precious Ann. My last words, whispered to her.

“Let this hell be our heaven.”

India

THE SENSATION OF awakening was peculiar; as though I were emerging from a thick, heavy chrysalis. I opened my eyes and stared up at a ceiling. It was pale blue, softly tinted. I heard nothing but the most profound of silence.

Attempting to turn my head, I found, to my surprise, that I was too weak to move it. For several moments, I felt with a sense of dread that I was paralyzed.

Then I realized it was exhaustion and closed my eyes again.

How long I slept, I cannot say. The next thing I recall was opening my eyes again. The same blue ceiling, pale, irradiant. I looked down at my body. I was lying on a couch, wearing a white robe.

Was I back in Summerland?

Using my right elbow, I raised myself slowly and looked around.

I was in an immense hall which was ceilinged but not walled, tall Ionic columns serving as side supports. There were hundreds of couches in the room, almost all with people on them. Men and women, dressed in robes the color of the ceiling, moved among the couches, leaning over now and then to speak to reclining figures, stroking their heads. I was back in Summerland.

But where was Ann?

“Are you all right?”

I looked around at the sound of the woman’s voice. She was standing behind me.

“Am I in Summerland?” I asked.

“Yes.” She leaned over and stroked my hair. “You’re safe. Rest.”

“My wife …”

Something flowed from her fingertips into my mind; something soothing. I lay down again.

“Don’t worry about anything now,” she said. “Just rest.”

I felt sleep drifting over me again; warm, soft, silken sleep. I closed my eyes and heard the woman say, “That’s right. Close your eyes and sleep. You’re perfectly safe.”

I thought about Ann.

Then was asleep once more.

Again, I cannot tell how long I slept. I only know I woke again to see the blue, effulgent ceiling overhead.

This time I thought of Albert, speaking his name in my mind.

When he failed to appear, I felt alarmed and pushed up on my elbow.

The hall was still the same—peacefully still. The floor was thickly carpeted, I saw, and, here and there, handsome tapestries hung down from above. All the floor space, as I’ve said, was spaced with couches. I looked to my right and saw one six or seven feet away, a woman sleeping on it. To my left, another couch, an old man on it, also asleep.

I forced myself to sit up. I had to find out where Ann was. Again, I thought of Albert but to no avail. What was wrong? He’d always come to me before. Hadn’t he returned to Summerland? Was he still in that terrible place?

I struggled to my feet. I felt incredibly heavy, Robert. As though, despite the shedding of that chrysalis, my flesh was still encased in stone. I could hardly move across the hall, past endless ranks of sleeping people, male and female, old and young.

I stopped in the entrance to an adjoining hall.

Here, there was no scene of rest. People thrashed in frantic sleep or, partially conscious, tried to sit up, had no strength to do so and fell back heavily or struggled to rise, restrained by men and women in blue.

Nor was it silent like the hall I’d left. This one was discordant with sobs and cries, embittered and dissentient voices.

Nearby, I saw a man in blue talking to a woman on a couch. She looked confused and angry and kept trying to sit up but couldn’t. The man patted her on the shoulder and spoke to her reassuringly.

I looked across the hall in startlement as a man began to shout. “I’m a Christian and a follower of my Saviour! I demand to be taken to my Lord! You have no right to keep me here! No right!”

I saw a man in blue gesture to several of his associates and they gathered around the furious man to touch him. In seconds, he was heavily asleep.

“You should be resting,” said a voice.

I looked around and saw a young man in a blue robe smiling at me. I tried to answer but my tongue felt thick and weighted. All I could do was stare at him.

“Come,” he said. I felt his hand on my arm and, with the touch, that sense of silken comfort once again. Everything began to blur around me. I knew that he was walking me but couldn’t see. What was this subtle narcotic in their touch? I wondered “as I felt the soft couch under me once more and sank into a deep sleep.

When I woke up, Albert was sitting on the edge of the couch, smiling at me.

“You’re better now,” he said.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Hall of Rest.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Quite a while,” he told me.

“Those people in the next—” I pointed.

“Those who’ve died suddenly and violently, waking for the first time,” he said. “Refusing to believe that their bodies are gone but they still exist.”

“That man …”

“One of many who expect to sit at the right hand of God and believe that those who fail to share their ideas are doomed to eternal torment. In many ways, these are the most backward souls of all.”

“You didn’t come before,” I said.

“I couldn’t until you were adequately rested,” he replied. “I received your calls but wasn’t permitted to answer them.”

“I thought you were still—” I broke off, reaching out to grip his arm. “Albert, where is she?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“She’s not still in that awful place.”

He shook his head. “No,” he told me. “You spared her that.”

“Thank God!” I felt a burst of joy.

“By going there and staying with her of your own free will, you gave her just enough awareness to escape.”

“Then she’s here,” I said.

“You were with her for some time,” he told me. “That’s why you’ve been here, regaining your strength.” He put a hand on my arm and squeezed it. “I really didn’t think it could be done, Chris,” he said. “I never foresaw what you were able to do for her. I thought in terms of logic. I should have realized that only love could reach her.”