Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [64]
“Some have called this astral projection. That, to me, implies mystical, magical places and other dimensions. Remote viewing is something that seems anything but magical to those who do it. Your consciousness roams. At first, it just rises up from your body, after meditation and relaxation of the body have been achieved. It remains near you, mainly because you fear this new ability. Then, as you get used to it, your mind—or mind’s eye as I like to think of it—moves outward, exploring. As you become more brave, it goes further. The view from this is like a wide-angle lens. Peripheral vision is out of focus, but the central vision is nearly normal, with some distortion. I liken it to being slightly drunk—you swing around a bit, you move in fits and starts. But it is simply consciousness, projected outward.”
7
In the night, Julie awoke—it was still dark—but she had the sense that someone else was in her room. She half expected it to be Matt, because she was sure it was a man.
After several minutes, she was wide awake enough to get out of bed. She flicked on the bedside lamp, as if to dispel the shadows. No one there.
She turned the lamp off. Pressed her hands into her forehead. A terrible headache had come on.
She rose to go to the connecting bathroom to get some aspirin and a glass of water. In the dark, she fumbled through the medicine cabinet for the aspirin, and when she shut the cabinet mirror, she saw Hut.
His face.
He stood there.
She was too terrified to turn.
Her throat went dry, and she dropped the aspirin bottle into the sink.
She leaned over clutching the rim of the sink, staring at him.
His eyes were not the milky white that they had been in her nightmares. They were normal. Even in the dark she could tell that.
He looked just as he had the morning before he’d died.
She raised a fist and slammed it into the bathroom mirror, cutting the edge of her hand. Don’t believe. Don’t. It’s a dream. It’s a nightmare. It’s your mind fucking with you because some part of you doesn’t want to look at his death. Some part of you is resisting the idea that he’s gone. Some part of you feels guilty because you didn’t love him enough. You didn’t make yourself available to him enough. You weren’t a good enough wife. You’re not a good enough mother. You are punishing yourself with this.
She felt a panic—a sense of insanity inside her mind, of hallucinations brought on by stress and grief, or else it was some trigger inside her that had been pulled tight and then released. For a moment, she felt as if she were dreaming, because that would seem all right.
But it was no dream.
She struggled to reach to the light switch by the door, sure that at any second, the dread she felt would somehow stop her heart from beating.
The light came up in the bathroom.
Behind her, the photo collage of their first few years together, with Matt and Livy at the tidal pool in La Jolla, with Livy with her gramma, and Matt’s sixthgrade class picture.
No one.
She was alone.
The mirror on the cabinet, cracked like a spider’s web.
The blood on the edge of her palm was real enough.
She opened the cabinet again and brought out the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She got a cotton swab and dipped it into a capful of the peroxide, and then pressed it lightly on her cut. She washed it off, then swabbed, then washed, and then pressed toilet paper against it to stop the slight flow of blood.
She couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. The following night, she stayed up reading more of Michael Diamond’s books, and re-reading sections she’d only skimmed of The Life Beyond.
8
“Mommy!” Livy called out.
Julie woke up, with a start. She had a feeling as if she’d been having a nightmare. Livy’s voice rang out, shrill.
When Julie got to her bedroom, Livy stood on her bed, in her jammies.
“Honey?” Julie asked, rushing to her.
Livy, trembling, tears pouring down her face. She pointed to a shadow along the wall. “Daddy was here.”
“Aw,” Julie sat down beside her and flicked on the lamp on the table. The shadow vanished. “See? Maybe you were