After all the terrorist stuff, most people were worried when it came to being around sick people. It might have worked out in a good way when I caught a cold the last week in November. It started like they all do, with an itchy throat and the sniffles, then went into fits of uncontrollable sneezing. By the next morning, I was running a fever.
I felt like shit, but I tried to show up for work.
I'd been at work maybe half an hour when Doug Jennings, my manager, called for me to come back to his office.
"Danny, take the rest of the day off," he said. "In fact, don't come back until you feel better."
"Uh," I replied. I wasn't at my best that morning. "Okay. Why?"
He sighed. He was a big guy, so sighing was done with his whole body. "Well, because you look like hell. And, you're scaring the staff."
"I don't understand."
He shook his head. "Ever since the anthrax scare, everybody's nervous." He made a clucking sound. "I'd rather do without you for a couple of days than have you get sicker and miss even more time, and maybe make the rest of us sick, too. If I don't send you home, I'll have half a dozen people call in tomorrow just so they don't have to work with you." He was panting by the time he'd finished speaking. He wiped his forehead with a hand.
"Oh," I replied. "I'll just go home then. Maybe make some soup and get some sleep."
* * *
So that's how I ended up being home for a few days right in the middle of the week. It felt good to be out of the grind, even temporarily.
Well, I felt bad that first day, and even worse the second. By the third, I was feeling like I might live, but all the sinus drainage had upset my stomach.
Around midnight, I think flushing myself out with lots of water was beginning to help, but I still didn't feel comfortable enough to try sleeping. I turned on the television and flipped channels.
I ended up on the Comedy Channel, and began to watch The Knightly Show. This particular program was a repeat, but I'd missed the original broadcast so it didn't matter. The guest was some stupid girl from some stupid television show, but host Brad Knight was in rare form.
I dozed off for a little while and woke up with a dry mouth. I sipped from a glass of tepid and slightly salty tap water and looked at the TV. Brad was introducing his "special guest" for the night. I perked up, because the program usually only had one guest per show.
It turned out to be Jack Gardner, whose own show Beyond the Boundary with Jack Gardner was incredibly popular. Gardner's claim was that, as a young child, he had shown the ability to tell details about a complete stranger's life and past. As a young man, he had worked as a psychic until a true "sensitive" had shown him the reason for his "powers," which was to speak to the dead. After that, he tried to help people with his "readings." Since that time, Jack had used his powers for the good of his clients.
All of which was just good entertainment, and I was just a wee bit skeptical.
"Yeah, it's crap, all right."
The voice had suddenly come as if from thin air. It might have been better had it come from thin air. In that case, the old man sitting beside me on the couch wouldn't have seemed to have just materialized there.
I jumped clear off the couch without bothering to put my feet down, which made it impossible to finish standing before gravity took hold and made me fall flat on my face. I did manage a passable scream, though. Maybe just a little too high-pitched to be manly, but I wasn't interested in perfection.
"Who the hell are you?" I stammered.
The old man glanced at me in a disinterested way, then shrugged. "Morty," he replied in a conversational tone. "My real name's Albert, but everybody called me Morty."
"What the hell are you doing in my house?" I asked, my voice going up an octave. "Did you come in while I was asleep?"
"I incorporated while you were snoring," he replied.
"You what?"
He sighed. "Incorporated. That's the opposite of discorporated. It means that I formed a tangible physical presence out of nothing." He began looking around the room.
I watched him in silence for a while, Morty ignoring me, until I felt sure he wasn't a figment of my fevered imagination nor a crazed killer out to chop me into little bits.
"I should tell you to leave," I said at last. "And if you don't, I'll call the police."
Morty shook his head. "That'd be a bad thing," he replied. "They'd never see me unless I wanted them to, and I wouldn't. That'd make you look crazy. You're curious about me, and I'd never forgive you enough to ever talk to you again."
"Why would I want to talk to you?" I asked.
"Everyone wants to talk to the dead and find out what it's like on the other side." He nodded toward the television set. "Just ask him."
I blinked, being unable to speak. "Excuse me?" I asked.
Morty looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. "For your information, you're talking to the dead right now. That means you don't know a thing about it. But you can learn."
"You mean you're dead? A ghost?"
"Bingo," replied Morty.
"Uh huh," I nodded. "How did you get here?"
"I thought we covered that," he replied. "I incorporated."
"So you said. And that means?"
Morty eyed me. "What do you know about quantum physics?"
"Not much."
"Ah," he nodded. "Well, you're going to know a lot more after you're dead. For right now let's say I can appear in solid form by manipulating electrically charged subatomic particles to form a field, and fill that field with tiny bits of matter."
"So you're real."
"I think so," he said, patting his hands over his face and chest.
"Uh huh," I said, sitting down. "Mind passing the potato chips?"
* * *
"There are a lot of things you'd probably like to know," began Morty. "I'd like to tell you everything, but I don't think I'm allowed to. But I'll tell you as much as I can.
"There are three levels of states that living people exist in at the same time. They don't have the senses to realize it, but they do.
"The first is the physical body. You're living in it.
"The second is the spirit, or soul. I can't explain what it is, but it has no personality of its own. It's a spark of energy. At death, it returns to its source and loses its individuality. Usually."
At his pause, I made a comment: "You say usually."
He nodded. "A strong personality can kind of live on. Think of a tablespoon of salt added to a glass of water. You add personality--like a drop of dye--and still it's a tablespoon of salt in a glass of water. Evaporate the water, and the salt left behind is colored. Mix it back with the bag of salt, and there's that drop of dye distributed. Every tablespoon of salt taken from the bag from then on has a bit of that dye mixed in."
"Your point?"
"You hear a lot of people claiming to be reincarnated. Ever noticed how they're all Benjamin Franklin, but never Ben's upstairs maid?
"The point is the soul gets recycled. There's a finite amount of this energy out there, and the soul returns to its source. There's a constant flow going out into the universe, and returning."
Again he paused, and again I felt obliged to prompt him. "You said there were three."
"The last is the personality, or maybe you might call it the intellect. Most people can't stand the knowledge of their death, and the intellect dies with the body. Other times, the intellect lives on not understanding it's dead. It wanders the earth, a shadow of its owner.
"In a few cases, a very few, the intellect understands the death of its body and moves on. We live on in a world we see as what we wanted most in life, or what we feared most."
"So that's heaven."
He shook his head. "Oh, no. Heaven is the home of God and Angels. I've never seen God, but I know about Angels. You don't ever want to see one of them." He gave a visible shudder. "No, it isn't heaven. It's just another part of life, beyond this."
I thought about what he'd said. "Then why leave it to come here?"
He smiled. "Well, I'm not really here. Or I'm both here and there. Time and space are both more elastic than you think. To answer your real question: We're all a little tired of shitheads like him." He pointed at the television with his chin. "We'd like to teach him a lesson."
"What's that got to do with me?" I asked, fearing the answer.
Morty waved a hand. "Aw, it's nothing. People who are going to make it through death and out the other side are a little different in life. You've got that."
"So, I'll be like you?"
He hesitated. "You can be, but nothing's guaranteed." He looked at me. "The most important thing is that you have what it takes to be able to see us. Not everybody can."
I nodded toward the television. "Like him?"
"Like him," agreed Morty. "He couldn't see us to save his ass. Much less be able to carry on a conversation."
"But you haven't explained why you're here," I said.
"It's boring out there," he sighed. "Nothing much happens. But it really pisses us off when someone we don't know tries to tell people about us."
I shrugged. "So tell him yourself."
Morty smiled. "Can't. It's against the rules. We can't even try to contact a person unless we have some connection to them."
"Uh huh. But we have no connection. I'm not related to you, and I've never met you before."
A pause. "I shouldn't say anything, but I've got permission from the others. The question is whether you want to take the step or not."
"Should I ask what that step is?"
"Well," Morty considered. "For us, it'd be teaching that bum what's what. For you, it'd be something a little more substantial. What if you could do for real what he claims he's able to do?"
* * *
And that's how I became famous.
Or, almost how I got famous. First I almost got arrested.
Morty said I had to get people's attention. What that meant was that I ended up dressed in a suit standing on the corner of a busy street at lunchtime.
Morty nodded toward a well-dressed woman who was walking our way. "Say hello to her, then tell her you got a message for her from Al."
I did that, and the woman stopped, looking at me down her nose. "Excuse me," she said with disdain. "But I don't know you."
"Al knows you," I said, repeating what Morty told me. "He says he died ten years ago. You don't know the truth about Lorraine. He didn't have an affair with her. She was his daughter. She has letters from him, and runs a business he helped start. She wants to talk to you."
"I--" the woman stuttered. "How do you know this? Why should I care- ?"
"Because Lorraine thinks you should have a share of the business. I know you've been having problems making ends meet. Call Lorraine." And Morty gave me the number.
And it started just like that. Like ripples in a pond, people started milling around me as I picked individuals out of the growing crowd and told them about loved ones that passed on and secrets they never knew.
The police came and tried to haul me away for being a public nuisance, but the crowd booed them. A camera crew from a local television station pulled up and began taping a segment, and the nice looking female reporter interviewed me. I sounded a little nuts, but people seemed to love it.
By the time I got home, there were ten messages on my answering machine. People at work had seen, people in my family had seen, and even old friends were calling up. There was a message from the local television station wanting me to appear on an afternoon talk show day after tomorrow. I was a celebrity.
"Welcome to the big time," smiled Morty.
* * *
I'd just finished the interview at the television station for the program they called After Lunch with Louie when the gentleman from the Jack Gardner show introduced himself. The local guys sort of faded back when Mister John Webber shook my hand, like they couldn't stand to be that close to the real thing.
"Jack's heard a lot about you," said Mister Webber. "It's like you just appeared out of nowhere."
"I guess I sort of did," I replied. "It's only been the last couple of days that I--found out about my gift."
"That's just fine," said Mister Webber. "Here's the thing: Jack wants you on the show. People want to see you on the show. My job is to get you on the show. How's that sound?"
I shrugged. "I'd like nothing better."
"Good. Great. We pay a set fee for a guest shot. That's what you'd be first time out. If it works okay, Jack's prepared to make you an offer to be a part of the team."
He's heard about you and he's scared. He doesn't want the competition, so he's bringing you in close. Morty whispered in my head.
"We can do that," I replied. "How soon--?"
"Uh," Mister Webber interrupted, consulting his watch. "We'll be leaving for New York in about three hours. Is that enough time to pack?"
* * *
I met Jack Gardner for a late dinner in the hotel restaurant. He was taller than I expected, and spoke a lot with his hands.
"What we've got here," he told Webber. "Is the genuine article."
Which he's not, said Morty in my head. If he could do what he says, he'd be able to hear me now.
"With a little time," Gardner was continuing. "I could train him and he'd be able to do as much as me."
"From what I hear," replied Webber, examining a fingernail. "He already can."
"Well," mused Gardner. "Maybe he can, but he doesn't know how to make it into a real show. I can do that."
It turned out that Gardner was as good as his word. He really was able to make the whole thing into a show. That was good for ratings, and it was good for making money. It wasn't good for what this was really all about, though. He was supposed to be speaking to the dead, for chrissakes, and somehow that seemed to be kind of a quiet and serious thing.
He made it into a circus, complete with baboons riding unicycles. The more I grew to respect how much of a showman Gardner was, the less I liked him as a person.
Which made it a lot easier planning to ruin him.
* * *
I did it on the second show.
We'd done the first show straight, with me as a guest. Gardner mostly did his thing, and only let me "read" one person in the audience. I did my reading, Morty helping, and the people in the studio ate it up. It was the single most popular show they'd done, so Webber got with me and cut a deal for me to do another guest spot the next show.
This one had me sharing the spotlight with Gardner and we were working with celebrity guests. Randall Black, the famous skeptic, was there. So were the new pop singer Misty Red, and horror author Anthony Chilton. Black had volunteered at the last minute, saying it wouldn't give us enough time to prepare so we wouldn't dare do a reading on him. Ha.
When my time came, Gardner introduced me and asked if I'd like to do a reading. I agreed, and began to work the audience and guests a little. I told a white haired lady her dog was doing fine in the afterlife, which was pure hockey puck since most animals couldn't live on as ghosts. Then I moved on to Black, prompted by Morty.
Once you've convinced him or made him doubt, anything you do to Gardner will hold that much more weight, said Morty.
I did all the stage stuff Gardner had shown me, which made Black cross his arms and look amused. Then I dropped it on him.
"Mister Black, you realize I've been pulling your leg with all this stage stuff."
He nodded. "You've got a knack for it, but you're not the best I've seen," he replied.
"Well then, it's time I show you what I can really do," I said. I caught the surprised look on Gardner's face and the panicked waving motions Webber made. "You became a professional skeptic after your mother was misled for years by a medium. She wanted desperately to contact your deceased father."
He uncrossed his arms. "You could've read that in a dozen places," Black said.
"Yes, but what no one knows is that you made it your personal crusade to ruin this medium. You crushed her career and she ended up committing suicide." I looked him right in the eyes the entire time. "She was your own sister."
Black went pale with shock, and I continued: "After that, your mother suffered a breakdown and was placed in an institution. She died three years later. Your real reason behind sniffing out the fakes is because you're hoping to find the real thing. You want to prove that, in spite of all the bad that came of it, your mother wasn't a loon." I looked away. "Sorry, those were your sister's words."
Black looked like he was going to fall out of his chair. He tried to stand, but his knees buckled under him. An intern helped him off stage.
That was too easy, said Morty. He should've doubted you a lot more.
Applause rippled through the audience. Gardner looked pissed, but Webber was smiling. Our two remaining guests looked at me warily, as if they expected me to grow horns and pounce on them.
With Morty's prodding, I turned to Gardner. "Mister Gardner, I seem to be getting a message for you."
Gardner frowned, and it was Webber's turn to look pale.
Morty fed me the information, and I read it back off to Gardner. "It's something from your father. He says you should be more honest and go with your given name." I frowned theatrically. "Jack is your nickname. Your real name's John. No, Johann. He says it'd be better for your career."
Gardner opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. The audience was enthralled, and he was too good a showman to let the opportunity pass him by. He watched and waited.
"Johann," I continued. "And not Gardner. Your grandfather tended gardens for a living, back in Poland before the war. Your name is Epstein. It's such a good Jewish name. Why are you ashamed of it?"
Gardner stepped closer and hissed: "What are you doing?"
I ignored his remark. "Ah, because the boys at school teased you and beat you up. You began scaring them by acting very different from everyone else. They began to think you were a little insane." I smiled. "Then you went off to college. You changed your name. You became John Gardner, and attended acting school. You learned stage magic and how to play the audience. You turned a stage act into all this, and became Jack Gardner."
"You're getting a bad reading," said Gardner with a venomous look at me. "That's not true."
"But it is," I replied. "Just ask Mister Black how accurate I was about his sister. I'm getting the same good information now from your father. You're a fake."
The word echoed through the audience again and again. I had them, and they were convinced I was the real thing. Whether they'd believed in Jack Gardner before that instant or not, they believed in me now.
"You're ruining me!" accused Gardner, stepping even closer to me. "Why are you doing this? Who told you about me?"
"I told you I was for real," I replied. "The dead are upset you've been making money and hurting people with your lies about what they say. Your father is disappointed in you." I paused for a heartbeat, shocked by what Morty had just said in my mind. "Your father says so. Albert--Morty--is right here with me."
* * *
That's all I wrote in my journal.
Jack Gardner was ruined. No one would even admit to ever having believed in him before. As far as the people were concerned, he'd always been a hack. The press even ran a story the next morning showing how often he'd been wrong. I never got the chance to read it.
The only person who seemed happy was Webber. He took credit for finding me, and was already spinning a story about how I'd come to have my powers. I let him. I was done for the time being, and sick of it all. Morty had left as soon as he told me about being Gardner's father, and I didn't know whether I'd even have powers any more.
I left the set with a small detail of security guards, making the promise to Webber I'd talk to him in the morning. The crowd pressed too close, and I just wanted to get away.
That's when the son of a bitch shot me.
His name was Ed Hauer, and he'd been a fan of Gardner for years. He was a little bit of a flake, bouncing between the Atlantean Society, the UFOlogists and Gardner for the last couple of years since he'd been released from the hospital. He was no longer taking his medications and he was a kettle waiting to boil over. Nobody knows where he got a gun.
In the movies you see people getting shot and slapping a hand to the wounded part and saying "ow." It's not like that. Hauer only had a .38 Special, but the bullet caught me in the side and felt like a baseball bat. It spun me around and dropped me in a heap, and all I could do was lie there and try to wrap myself around the hurt.
The last thing I remember was trying to catch my breath while someone used his shirt to try to stop the bleeding.
* * *
Until I woke up in a bright room, looking at Morty.
"How do you feel, Kid?" he asked.
"I didn't think I'd see you again," I replied.
He nodded, and I remembered what had happened at the studio. "Why didn't you tell me you were Gardner's father?"
He looked ashamed. "I didn't think you'd help," he said. "I didn't lie to you about how we felt and why we wanted to shut him down. I just didn't tell you about how he and I were related. I wasn't able to talk to him directly, so I used you."
"Aren't you sorry you ruined his career?"
Morty raised an eyebrow. "That was a career? No, I'm not. I figure in a month or two, once the money runs low, he'll get a real job. Maybe even a job he can be proud of. For what it's worth, he's coming around to realizing how what he hurt people."
"So what about us?" I asked.
"Us?"
"Yeah. Don't act dumb, Morty. I don't know if I like the idea of helping people out by speaking to the dead, but I kind of was getting used to you being around."
He looked off in the distance. "Well, about that. I can say that we can keep on having our talks, if you want. Like I told you before, you've got that something different."
"What's going on, Morty?" I began looking around the pleasant room.
"You might've noticed you're not in a hospital," he replied. "I don't know how much you remember, but you got shot. It wasn't a scratch, either." He gestured to the entire room. "You're here, now."
It dawned on me. After all, I'm not completely dumb.
"I'm dead?"
"Yep. As a doornail. Passed on and out the other side." He smiled. "Welcome to the afterlife."
I pondered on it. I didn't feel any different. And I'd seen that Morty seemed to be happy. Maybe it wasn't so bad. I'd probably lost my old job when I never showed back up to work, anyway. Most certainly, I had after the people there saw their crazy co-worker claiming he could talk to the dead. And I hadn't been comfortable with Webber's plans to make me another Jack Gardner.
Yeah, it looked okay from my point of view. Not that there was anything I could do about it.
"Okay, Morty," I said. "What's on the agenda?"
He smiled again. "With you gone, I think we might recruit someone else to take up where you left off," he replied. "There's this writer I've heard about..."
Copyright © 2003 by S. J. Hinton