What Dreams May Come (14 page)

“You said you’d keep an eye on her,” I reminded him.

“We did,” he said. “There was no way of knowing what she planned to do though.”

“Why was I told that she was scheduled to come across at the age of seventy-two?”

“Because she was,” he said. “In spite of what was scheduled though, she possessed the will to circumvent that scheduling. That’s the problem, don’t you see? There’s a natural time fixed for each of our deaths but—”

“Then why am / here?” I asked. “Was that accident the natural time for my death?”

“Presumably so,” he answered. “Maybe not. At any rate, you weren’t responsible for that death. Ann was responsible for hers. And to kill one’s self is to violate the law because it deprives that self of working out the needs of its life.”

He looked upset now, shaking his head. “If only people would realize,” he said. “They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it, Chris. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A continuation under circumstances so much more painful—“

“Where is she, Albert?” I interrupted.

“I have no idea,” he said. “When she killed herself, she merely discarded the denser part of her body. What remains is held magnetically by earth—but where on earth could be impossible to discover. The corridor between the physical and astral worlds is, to all intents and purposes, endless.”

“How long will she be there?”

He hesitated.

“Albert?”

His sigh was heavy. “Until her natural departure time arrives.”

“You mean—?” I stared at him in disbelieving shock. I couldn’t restrain my gasp. “Twenty-four years?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to; I knew the answer myself by then. Nearly a quarter of a century in the “lower realm”—that place I hadn’t dared to even think about before because it had evoked such apprehensions in me.

A sudden hope. I clutched at it. “Won’t her etheric body die as mine did?”

“Not for twenty-four years,” he said. “It will survive as long as she’s held in the etheric world.”

“It isn’t fair” I said. “To punish someone who was out of her mind.”

“Chris, it isn’t punishment” he said. “It’s law.”

“But she had to be out of her mind with grief,” I persisted.

He shook his head. “If she had been, she wouldn’t be where she is,” he answered. “It’s as simple as that. No one put her there. That she’s there is proof that she made a willful decision.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said. I stood and walked away from him.

Albert rose and followed me. When I stopped to lean against a tree, he stood beside me. “It can’t be all that awful where she is,” he tried to reassure me. “She always tried to live an honorable life, was a good wife and mother, a decent human being. Her plight certainly isn’t that of those who have lived basely. It’s just that she’s lost her faith and has to stay where she is until her time comes.”

“No,” I said, determinedly.

He didn’t reply. I sensed his confusion and looked at him.

He knew, then, what I had in mind and, for the first time since we’d come together, I saw a look of disquiet on his face. “Chris, you can’t,” he told me.

“Why?”

“Well… in the first place, I don’t believe it can be done,” he said. “I’ve never seen it done, never heard of anyone even attempting it.”

A cold dread seized me. “Never?”

“Not at this level,” he answered.

I gazed at him helplessly. Then resistance came again, restoring my determination. “Then I’ll be the first,” I said.

“Chris—” He regarded me with deep concern. “Don’t you understand? She’s there for a purpose. If you help, you distort that purpose, you—“

“I have to, Albert,” I said, desperately. “Don’t you understand? I can’t just leave her there for twenty-four years. I have to help her.”

“Chris—“

“I have to help her,” I repeated. I braced myself. “Will someone try to stop me?”

He avoided the question. “Chris, even if you found her, which is probably impossible, she’d look at your face and not recognize you. Hear your voice and not remember it at all. Your presence would be incomprehensible to her. Not only would she not accept your offers of help, she wouldn’t even listen to you.”

I asked again. “Will someone try to stop me?”

“That’s not the point, Chris,” he said. “You have no conception of the dangers in—“

“I-don’t-care!” I said. “I want to help her!”

“Chris, there’s nothing you can do.”

I struggled to control myself. “Albert, isn’t there the remotest possibility that my talking to her might make a difference? That she might, in some infinitesimal way, achieve some kind of understanding which might help to make her state a little more endurable?”

He looked at me in silence for what seemed an endless time before replying. “I wish I could say yes,” he said, “but I can’t.”

I felt myself slump. Willfully, I stood erect again. “Well, I have to try,” I told him. “I will try, Albert. I don’t care how dangerous it is.”

“Chris, please don’t speak so thoughtlessly about those dangers,” he said. Another first. I’d never heard the faintest tinge of criticism in his voice before. I’d heard it now.

We stood in silence, looking at each other. Finally, I spoke. “Will you help me find her, Albert?” I asked. He began to speak but I cut him off. “Will you help me, Albert? Please?”

Silence again. At last, he replied. “I’ll try,” he said. “I don’t believe it’s possible but—” He raised a hand to keep me from speaking. “I’ll try, Chris,” he said.

Time with its multiple torments had returned to my existence.

I was waiting outside a building in the city, pacing anxiously. Albert was inside, trying to arrange a mental link with Ann. He’d warned me more than once that I would probably be disappointed. He’d never seen a link successfully made to anyone in the lower realm. Certain people could travel there, Albert among them. They could not locate specific individuals in advance, however, since all those in the lower realm were barred from communication by their own particular insularity.

Only if they asked for help—

I had to slump down on a bench as weariness—a sense of inner weight—returned to me as well. I closed my eyes and prayed that Albert would locate her somehow.

My Ann.

As I thought her name, a vision filled my consciousness: night time; she and I sitting in bed together, my arm around her shoulders as we watched television.

She’d fallen asleep again. She always seemed to fall asleep when I held her with her head resting on my chest. I never woke her and did not this time. As always, I sat motionless, the television set forgotten as I gazed at her face. As always, tears welled slowly in my eyes. No matter the threading of gray in her hair, the lines of time on her face. She always had that trusting child’s expression in her sleep.

At least when I was holding her.

She was clutching my hand as she often did, her fingers twitching now and then. My hand ached from her grip but I didn’t stir. Better that my hand ached than I woke her. So I sat immobile, gazing at her face as she slept, thinking how much I loved this dear, sweet child-woman pressed against me.

“Chris?”

I started, opening my eyes. Albert stood before me. Rising hastily, I looked at him.

He shook his head.

At first, I refused to believe. “There has to be a way,” I insisted.

“She’s cut off,” he said. “Not asking for help because she doesn’t believe that such a thing exists.”

“But—“

“They couldn’t find her, Chris,” he said. “They tried every possible way. I’m sorry.”

Walking to a nearby brook, I sat on its bank and stared into the crystal, moving water.

Albert sat beside me, patting my back. “I’m truly sorry,” he said.

“Thank you for trying,” I murmured.

“I did discover one thing,” he told me.

I looked at him quickly.

“You feel so strongly about each other because you’re soul mates.”

I didn’t know how to take that, how to react. I’d heard the phrase, of course, but only in the most banal of ways, within the context of trivial ballads and poetry.

“What it means, literally,” Albert said, “is that you both possess the same wave length, your auras a vibratory unison.”

Reaction failed me still. What good was knowing this if it didn’t help Ann?

“That’s why you fell in love with her so quickly when you met her on the beach that day,” Albert had continued. “Your soul was celebrating a reunion with her.”

I could only stare at him. Somehow, the news did not surprise me. I’d never been superstitious in life. Yet I’d always insisted, to Ann, that we hadn’t met by accident.

Still, of what value was it to know this?

“That’s why you felt so strongly about being with her after your death,” Albert said. “Why you never stopped—”

“Then it’s why she felt so strongly,” I broke in. “She had to kill herself. To join me; achieve that unison again.”

“No.” Albert shook his head. “She didn’t do it to join you. How could she have when she didn’t believe that was possible?” He shook his head again. “No, she killed herself to terminate her existence, Chris. As she believes your existence was terminated.”

“To terminate her pain, Albert.”

“All right, her pain,” he said. “It wasn’t her decision to make though. Can’t you see that?”

“I know she was suffering, that’s all I know.”

He sighed. “It is the law, Chris, take my word for it. No one has the right—“

“What good is knowing all this if it can’t help me find her?” I interrupted, miserably.

“Because,” he said, “since you are soul mates, I’ve been authorized to continue helping you in spite of my reservations.”

I gazed at him, confused. “If she can’t be found—” I broke off haplessly, a sudden vision jarring me: the two of

us, like Flying Dutchmen of the spirit, wandering eternally in search of Ann. Is that what he meant?

“There’s one way left,” he said. He put a hand on my shoulder. “One harrowing possibility.”

Losing Ann forever

DEJA vu CAN be a ghastly term depending on the moment one relives. And it was with a sense of cold, devouring oppression that I moved through mist toward the building ahead. Release me from this black, unending nightmare. I recalled that plea in my mind.

It was recurring now.

I have been here before, the further thought assailed me. It didn’t help that Albert walked beside me this time. Despite his presence, I was isolated with my private fears as I walked into the church.

As before, the pews were filled with people. As before, their forms were gray and faceless. As before, I drifted down the middle aisle, trying to understand why I was there. I didn’t know what church it was. I only knew that, this time, I could not hear Ann’s weeping because Ann was dead.

They were in the front row, sitting close together. The sight of them made me cry out in despairing recognition. I could see their faces clearly, paled and drawn by sorrow, tears in their eyes and trickling down their cheeks.

Emotion brought forgetfulness. Without thinking, I moved to them and tried to put my arms around them. Instantly, I knew they were oblivious to me, staring toward the front of the church. The agony I’d felt at my own funeral returned, doubled now because I knew the funeral was Ann’s.

I looked around suddenly, a thought occurring to me. I’d been an observer at my own funeral. Was it conceivable—?

“No, Chris,” Albert said. “She isn’t here.”

I avoided the sight of my children, unable to bear the expressions on their faces, the knowledge that they were alone now.

“This woman was beloved in many ways,” I heard a voice intone.

I looked toward the altar and saw the vague form of the minister delivering his eulogy. Who was he? I wondered. I didn’t know him. He didn’t know Ann. How could he speak of her as though he did? “As wife and mother, friend and companion. Loved by her late husband, Christopher, and by her children, Louise and Marie, Richard and Ian.”

I turned away from him in distress. What right did he have to say—?

The thought evaporated as I saw what Albert was doing.

He was standing in front of Richard, his right hand on Richard’s head as though he were bestowing a wordless benediction on my son.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He raised his left hand, saying nothing, and I knew he wanted silence. I stared at him. In several moments, he left Richard and moved in front of Marie, placing his hand on her head in the same way. For a moment, the sight of her staring directly at his solid (to me) body without seeing it struck me as bizarre. I wondered, once more, what Albert was doing.

Then I turned away again, too agonized to face the sight of Marie.

How had I failed to notice it before? A sense of sick despair enveloped me as I walked to the casket. Thank God it was closed, I thought. At least the children were spared that

Another thought came suddenly. I remembered Albert telling me, at my funeral, that I could look inside the casket if I tried. Was that, also, true now? The despair grew deeper. No, I thought. I didn’t want to see her that way. Her real self was elsewhere. Why look at the shell?

I forced myself to turn from the casket. Closing my eyes, I began, instead, to pray for Ann. Help her to find peace, please help her to be comforted.

I found my gaze returning to the children. Once more, the pain of seeing them became intense. Please be done, I thought to Albert. I couldn’t bear this any longer. Staring at the stricken faces of my children, helpless to comfort them, unable to reach them in any way.

Albert had his hand on Ian’s head. Suddenly, he turned, a quick smile on his lips. “Be thankful for your Ian,” he said.

“I’m thankful for them all,” I answered, not understanding.

“Of course,” he said. “The thing is, though, that lan’s prayer may help us find your wife.”

We were walking toward the border of Summerland now. We could have traveled there by thought but—Albert had told me—the stress of leaving so abruptly might have caused me discomfort.