Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [87]
And then, operation after operation while the boy recovered, a teenager, nearly a man, and learning to test himself, test his abilities, but still too weak. Not recovered. And then, she went further, and felt as if she were going into the whorls of a dark shell. She was inside him, behind his eyes, seeing what he saw. And it was as if he were directing her back in time to look out through him. She saw the clippings on the wall—the murders. She saw things that he could Stream—and there was Hut, somehow he’d Streamed to Hut, Hut when he was in his late twenties, with Amanda, who looked more beautiful than Julie imagined she had been, more beautiful and radiant than any woman Julie had ever seen, and Amanda had Matty, a two-year-old then, and they were in Tompkins Square Park in the city. They were talking, but Julie couldn’t hear their words. But she saw Hut’s face. She saw a level of darkness there—as if there were an aura of ravens around him—and he was arguing with Michael, he was angry, and then laughing at him, and some of the words came through, “you idiot,” “wasting your life,” “you can’t see what we’re trying to do,” and Amanda looking as if Hut had frightened her as he picked Matt up and took her hand, tugging her away from Michael Diamond.
Michael turned around on the street, and there was Hut again, only it was the Hut that Julie remembered. It was the Hut that she’d seen their last morning together. Again, she couldn’t hear the words. Not clearly. The volume was too low on what she experienced, but she felt what Michael Diamond felt, and she saw the anger in Hut, and then the two men went to the curb, and Hut told him to get in. Hut had a small knife. He was threatening Diamond. But Diamond got into the Audi, and they drove. The consciousness crashed in a wave, and Julie felt herself being pulled into an undertow, deeper into Diamond’s mind.
And then, she was at the clearing, and it was Hut with the knife. Diamond argued, and Hut jabbed the air in front of him. Julie understood. Hut had wanted to kill Diamond. In her mind, Michael Diamond said, “I had been the instrument that allowed him, and the others, to discover about resurrection.”
She shot out of his mind, just as sure as if she’d been catapulted.
Again in the dark, but she opened her eyes, and it had begun to be light out. It was already morning. She was soaked with sweat, as was Diamond. “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”
“Try to stay calm,” Michael Diamond told her. “Please. It’s something that they discovered when they tried to kill me.”
“What is it?”
“There is no death, Julie.”
6
“At least, not how we think of it. Death is like a train station. You leave one train and get on another,” he said. “Only some people—with Ability X—can alter the process. I don’t completely understand it, nor do I care to. I experienced death briefly. They were testing me, Julie. They’ve tested others. Most fail. Even with Ability X, the failure rate is high. They’ve killed some people. Some of their own children.”
“Who are they?”
“There are at least five of them, but I’m sure there are more by now. I’ve been trying for the past seven years to locate them, but they…well, they block me. They can do that.” He must have read the shadowy expression on her face. “I know it’s hard for you to believe. You’ve just come to this.”
“But if Hut…if Hut were really…”
“You saw inside me. You experienced it.”
“You carved into his body,” she said. “And others. I saw them.”
“I only killed your husband, Julie. They killed the others. And more that still have not been found. They kill their own children, Julie. Just as they tested me, they’ve been