Chance somehow willed his vision to look down at himself.
He no longer had a body.
He saw that he was existing in a spherical pod of clear glass, about the size of a watermelon. He “looked” around the circular chamber and saw several other such pods. Each contained a faintly glowing gas swirling in the center.
“Your body has been returned to the approximate location of its habitat,” said the creature. “You will exist with us, now, and we will learn of your species.”
Chance Bellamy willed himself to scream, but only a petrified silence escaped his sorrowful mind as a vision of Earth slowly shrunk into the distance.
#
In his twenty-one years as San Bernardino County’s chief coroner, Bill Rexburg had seen a lot of really weird things.
But nothing compared to this: a SCUBA diver found dead in a treetop, a hundred miles inland.
A fingerprint analysis easily identified the man – a thirty-two year old named Chance Bellamy, from Springfield, Missouri. A call to Springfield P.D. indicated the man had been reported missing by his new bride three days ago – in Hawaii.
Given the odd circumstances, an autopsy was authorized, and Rexburg quickly got to work in his squeaky-clean examination room. The wetsuit had already been peeled off, and the body lay naked on the table. Rexburg let the Brahms continue to play on his iPod, choosing to dictate his findings later from his photographic memory.
The body had no signs of foul play, other than the bumps and knocks associated with having tumbled from a falling tree – injuries clearly sustained post mortem.
Some tests on his tissues placed his time of death at only nine hours ago – about an hour before Hal Cooper had first spotted him in the tree.
Weirder still, an analysis of the moisture in the wetsuit showed it to be seawater.
How could this man have got from Hawaii – or even from Long Beach - to the San Bernardino Mountains, still wet, in such a short time?
But the toughest question of all was the cause of death.
When Rexburg cut into Bellamy’s brain, he found no indications of asphyxiation, no trauma, no clues.
He also found no dendrites.
At a microscopic level, the catalysts of brain synaptic activity had somehow been completely wiped from this man’s brain matter.
Rexburg stepped back from the table, pulled the iPod buds from his ears and let them dangle at his side, his mouth slightly open and his hands trembling for the first time in two decades of slicing open corpses.
#
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bellamy,” said Sergeant Lilokalani, stepping around his desk to put a hand on the grieving woman’s shoulder.
Autumn looked up at him through a stream of tears, her shoulders shuddering with her sobs. “You’re sure it’s Chance? How – how can it be?”
“We don’t know yet how he got there – there will be a full investigation - but the fingerprints confirm it is him. Also, you may identify him from the images I was emailed – if you feel up to it.”
She didn’t want to, but something compelled her to nod her head. “Yes – let me see the pictures.”
Lilokalani turned his flat screen monitor around so she could see it. He clicked on an icon and with no further warning a sharp photo of Chance’s face filled the screen, his eyes closed, his skin pale.
Autumn covered her mouth with her hand and shut her eyes tight, nodding tersely.
Lilokalani quickly turned the monitor back around, then took a seat at his desk. “We will learn the truth of this matter,” he said quietly. “We will find out what happened, and why.”
Autumn looked into the officer’s eyes. “Why did I feel like he was still alive, when he wasn’t? Why?”
To that, Lilokalani had no answer.
#
Chance Bellamy - or what used to be Chance Bellamy – listened carefully to all that the creatures said – to him, to each other, to the other beings in the pods.
Time seemed to pass slowly as he grew accustomed to his new environment and his new existence as a collection of thoughts with no physical form.
He longed to be with Autumn – to let her know he was not really dead.
After what felt like a month, he got his opportunity.
The creatures were able to somehow manipulate matter, and would cause the pod spheres to disappear from time to time, eliminating the containment field and allowing the prisoners to float around the lab as the creatures performed experiments on them.
The next time it happened, Chance was ready.
When the barrier dropped, he willed himself toward the wall of the chamber with all his might, and found himself penetrating the wall. But part way through, he was blocked.
He turned and raced through the inside of the wall, following the path of least resistance.
Through conduits and wires, he sped through the ship at the speed of light, finally finding a weakness – an energy exhaust port that opened to space.
He was free!
He willed his thoughts toward Earth. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know the way – he just focused on the destination and allowed the universe to pull him there.
Some time later, the solar system came into view.
He zoomed past Jupiter on his way in, through the Asteroid Belt, and soon closed in on Earth.
Through the clouds he rushed.
To North America.
To Missouri.
To the city of Springfield.
Home.
He entered the bedroom where she lay awake in the summer heat, her thin silky night gown mingled with the sheets in their dimly-lit room.
He stopped centimeters from Autumn’s face.
She was older – much older now, with strands of gray clinging to the sides of her now-lined face. She looked about fifty. But still beautiful. And sad.
He wanted to touch her. He tried to speak, but could not.
He reached into her mind, and touched her thoughts with a gentle kiss “hello.”
He felt her catch her breath.
“I live,” he whispered to her mind, the thought simple and clear. “I live.”
* * * * *
A Sense of Souls
Black.
That’s probably what you think of – when you think “blind.”
Well, no, I don’t see black. “Black” implies a visual experience. Black, the opposite of white.
A shade.
Darkness.
None of that means anything to me.
Maybe it would be different if I’d been born sighted.
But my vision – the sense that doesn’t make use of my useless empty sockets – defies descriptions that you would understand.
What I see, when I “look” at you – it’s like tasting the sun, smelling tomorrow, hearing the moment of conception. It’s like feeling the breeze of millennia.
No pictures, as you call them, fill my head. Instead, I am embraced by a non-visual image as I sense the true reality.
I call it the vibe.
Many say, “seeing is believing.”
I say, all you who rely on your eyes are deceived, and missing out on the fundamental haecceity of all things – that immutable truth which can only be perceived in what you call “the dark.”
The dark is where the real light is.
It’s where I see.
Where I vibe.
#
I heard it coming, so it didn’t surprise me.
I felt the molecular bonds stress as metal crunched against metal, heard the last gasp of life escape the unseatbelted child in the back seat, tasted the gasoline in the air, and smelled the fear in each individual – the driver of each car, the witnesses. Each with his or her own degree and peculiar quality of fear.
And I saw the little victim as he entered the realm of my vibe.
He was a sweet little soul. Confused at first, as they all are.
He walked right up to me and started talking
.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You – you were hurt,” I mumbled. Anyone watching would think I was crazy, talking to myself.
“No I wasn’t. I feel fine. See?”
He hopped from foot to foot, proving his wellness to me.
It was always hard to help people understand – but kids were the worst. It’s one thing to try to convince a grown person that they’re dead, and a whole other thing to try to convince a child when they don’t even have any grasp of what death means.
Not that adults really understood much better.
When it comes down to it, we’re all just babes in the woods when it comes to all this life and death stuff.
“Well,” I said, “you feel fine, because your hurt went away already.”
“Hey lady, why don’t you have any eyes?”
“I was born this way.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No, I feel fine.”
“Just like me!”
“Yes, just like you.” I heard the sirens approaching, though they were not yet audible to the distraught crowd that had formed around the wreck. “What’s your name?”
“Gavin. What’s yours?”
“I’m Brooke.” Beyond Gavin, I heard a moan come from his car. His mother was trapped. She realized her son was dead, was struggling to scream for him. The gasoline was about to ignite. Despite the best efforts of the bystanders to pull her out, she would be on fire by the time the rescue vehicles arrived.
Gavin turned around to look at the accident scene. “That’s my mommy,” he said, pointing at the crushed vehicle, his voice strained. “My mommy’s hurt!”
“The fire trucks are coming,” I said. “They’ll help.”
I started to walk away. “Come on,” I said to Gavin. “We’ll need to get out of their way so they can do their jobs.”
I just wanted to lead Gavin away from the scene. He really didn’t need to see his mother burning.
Since I couldn’t take him by the hand, I had to just hope he’d follow. Sure, I could perceive the dead, but I couldn’t touch someone who had no body.
“Come on!” I said once more. Gavin tore himself away and came with me, as one of the onlookers looked in my direction, wondering who I was talking to.
As we turned the corner, I heard the fuel ignite. No explosion, just a slow consuming of vinyl seats, carpeting, clothing, and flesh. The trapped woman, too weak to cry out, began to succumb to the flames.
Then the trucks arrived, and as crews worked to knock down the fire, a pair of firefighters implemented the “jaws of life” and extracted Gavin’s mom.
I could smell the scorched skin and hair on the wind.
She would live – but miserably so.
Since she wouldn’t be joining Gavin, it looked like I was going to have a companion for a while.
#
Gavin felt to be about six years old at the time of his death. He was a bright little boy, and he asked me lots of questions.
Some I simply answered, others I struggled to explain, still others I had no idea of the answer – and I told him as much.
After all, I wasn’t an expert in life after death – I was just a woman who could converse with those who’d crossed over.
“You said you’re waiting,” he said the next morning, after spending the night at my apartment. “What are you waiting for?”
I enjoyed being around Gavin. Dead people were so much more real than the living – they were less . . . contained. They were vivid to all my senses, unlike the living with their masks and pretenses and lies, their styles and perfumes and habits, their secrets and passions and motives. Their obsession with their bodies and their fixation with time.
The dead were straightforward and open. Honest. Patient.
And children were the best of all.
“Well,” I said, sitting down on the soft couch next to him, “you have some relatives who are going to come for you. They just need to find you. That’s what I’m waiting for.”
“Relatives? Who?”
“I don’t know – maybe your grandparents? Are your grandparents alive?”
“No – they died when I was little.”
“Then it’ll probably be them.”
“But they went to heaven.”
I sighed. “I’m sure they’ll explain everything to you when they come.”
“Well, can’t you just call them?”
“No. It doesn’t work that way.”
To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure how it did work. But I knew they would come – it was just a matter of time.
The dead occupy our world – at least, they are located in the same space, albeit their existence is . . . shifted. To my senses, this world is a lot more crowded than it appears to most people.
But I don’t know how to contact specific dead people. Most of them ignore me, as they’ve become accustomed to ignoring most living people. Some watch over the loved ones they left behind. Others struggle in vain to influence the world of the living. Some sit around like mental patients clawing at their own reality, rejecting their circumstance, dancing with denial. Some seem to have it together, others seem desperately lost.
I’ve never met any leaders or organizers among the dead – they seem to mostly be independent beings – except some do gather into families.
And that was my hope here – that some dead relative would come for Gavin.
“So we just sit around and wait?”
“Yeah.”
“Wanna play a game?”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. D’ya like checkers?”
Checkers would not work. We needed to play something that did not involve Gavin having to manipulate the physical world. It would be a very long time – if ever – before he learned how to do that.
We needed a no-touch game.
“Nah,” I said. “How about I Spy?”
“Okay. But wait – you don’t have any eyes – how can we play I Spy?”
“You’ll see,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll go first.” Gavin slowly turned around, examining the room. My vibe perceived his eyes resting on several items before he finally said, his voice taking on a sing-song quality, “I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with . . . R.”
“Hmm,” I said, absorbing the room’s contents, sifting through the inventory like I was digging through a sock drawer. “Radio.”
“Aww, how did you know?”
I shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.”
Actually, I knew the moment he chose the radio. I felt it inside. The radio was my best friend – my link to the world. As soon as Gavin focused on it, I felt a little tickle in my gut, and recognized it as my precious radio.
Besides – there were only three things in the room that started with R.
“Okay, your turn,” he said, sounding a little disappointed at how quickly his turn had ended.
“I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with – oh!”
I was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a man and woman, standing inside my front door. I could perceive they were elderly – and kind.
“Gavin!” said the woman, smiling. “What are you doing here? We’ve been looking for you.”
“We thought you’d be at the accident,” said the man, glancing around, looking right through me.
“I was. But Brooke brought me here to wait. Is Mommy okay?”
“You mother is going to, uh, she will be fine. In time,” said the woman.
“Who’s Brooke?” asked the man.
“She’s my new friend,” said Gavin. He turned to me. “Brooke, this is my Gramma and my Grampa.”
Gramma and Grampa looked my way, seemed to see nothing, then squinted and concentrated. “Oh! Well, hello, Brooke,” said Grampa. “Didn’t see you there.”
“I understand,” I said. “That’s because I’m living.”
Gramma looked
shocked. “You’re living? And you – you can see us?”
Grampa stepped toward me, staring at my face. “But – you don’t even have any eyes.”
“I’m sure that’s why I do perceive you,” I said.
“Hmmph.” Grampa shrugged. “I’ve heard of your type, but never met one. Certainly never heard of a blind one, though.”
“There are others?” I asked. “Others like me – who can see the dead?”
“Sure,” said Gramma. “I know people who’ve been seen by the living. It’s uncommon, but it happens.”
“Well, I’m glad you found Gavin,” I said. “He’s a wonderful boy, but I think he was starting to get a little bored here.”
“You do this a lot – lead little boys away to your apartment?” asked Grampa.
“No, no, of course not. I just – well, I didn’t want him to, uh – to see what was happening at the accident scene. You know.”
Gramma nodded in understanding. “Ah. Thank you, dear.”
“Anything we can do for you?” asked Grampa, taking Gavin’s hand and shuffling back toward the door with his other arm around Gramma.
“No, thank you,” I said.
“All right.” They kept walking.
“No, wait! Actually,” I said, “Is there any way you could put me in touch with other people like me – people who can see the dead?”
Grampa smiled. “I think you misunderstood, Sweetheart. There are those who have seen the dead, but not those who see the dead. It’s a one-off phenomenon. Folks who are close to death themselves, people in traumatic situations – even some crazy people. The occasional little tyke. But it’s always temporary for people. Nobody sees the dead all the time.”
“I do.”
“You do? Oh. Well. As far as I know, you’re the first.”
“But it’s possible, right? There might be others – others like me?”
“Anything’s possible,” said Grampa.
And then they left – walked right out through my closed door, hand in hand.
#
My conversation with Gavin’s Grampa pushed me into an emotional corner for a while.
Being born with no eyes had always made me an outsider – subject to the judgments of others. Some considered me a freak, and chose not to hide their ignorant fear and distaste. Others unsuccessfully tried to hide their revulsion, their good intentions unable to cover their unkind thoughts. None of them realized that I could see right through them – that I could perceive their souls in all their dark swirling illness or bright happy glory.