The Ghosts of Altona (26 page)

‘Did you know you were having a heart attack?’ asked Lorentz.

‘No. I don’t know why but I always thought it was men that got heart attacks and women got strokes. But I knew there was something very wrong. Like I said, I didn’t make it to the chair: I was on the floor of the kitchen, on my hands and knees, struggling – and I mean really struggling – to breathe. Then I passed out. Michael, my husband, found me on the floor and dialled one-one-two. The ambulance team worked on me, but my heart had stopped.’

‘And that’s when you had your experience?’

She nodded. ‘It was wonderful. I’ve listened to you all and you all have had different experiences, and you know how difficult they are to describe. But for a lot of you, you felt the presence of God. I didn’t. Or maybe I experienced the same thing, but just see it as something different.’

‘What did you see, Hanne?’

‘Everything. The whole universe. I saw how things worked at the smallest level yet I could see into the depths of the universe, across galaxies. I saw the connection between the microscopic and the cosmic. Makes me sound like a hippy, doesn’t it? But it’s not like that.’

‘No one here makes any judgements about anyone else,’ said Lorentz. ‘Tell me, Hanne, if I say to you that what you saw wasn’t the universe, that you didn’t suddenly see across time and space, that everything you experienced was simply chemical and electrical activity in your brain as a result of being near death, would you find that difficult to accept?’

‘But don’t you see? It doesn’t matter. I
did
see across the universe, into it. I accept that it was perhaps all just generated in my brain, but the point is it was
in
my brain. It’s in all of us – this enormous knowledge and capacity to understand. The only difference between us and everyone else is that we have been given the gift of seeing it. Some of you call it heaven. Okay, maybe it is . . . for you. But the fact is that we all felt there was no time in the experience. That it lasted a second, or for ever. Whether it’s paranormal or just neurochemical it doesn’t matter.’

‘I know exactly what you mean.’ It was the ex-medical student, who now wore a patch over one eye, who spoke. A vague slur in his speech, along with the unquestioned eyepatch, indicated to the others that he had deteriorated since the last session. Lorentz’s group dynamic, thought Fabel, was going to be disrupted by an absence sooner or later. ‘The tendrils of my tumour stimulate different areas of the brain – that’s physiology – but the result is, well, spiritual.’

‘Exactly,’ said Hanne. ‘You could be right, Herr Doctor, that the basis of my NDE was all a neurological illusion. But the experience was real, valid. It unlocked a knowledge and an understanding I didn’t know I had. The mechanism is irrelevant.’

‘You clearly feel changed by the experience.’ Lorentz, the monastic scientist, cradled his crossed knee in his hands, leaning forward in his seat. ‘What has that change meant for you?’

‘I was never that bright. Or I never considered myself bright. And I was never really encouraged to have any kind of ambition by my parents. I think it was clear from a young age that I wasn’t academic. I scraped through my Abitur, but that was about as far as I was ever going to go, academically. But what I saw during my NDE . . . what I
understood
. . . it filled me with this deep curiosity. This need to understand more and better.’

‘So what did you do?’ asked Lorentz.

‘I started reading. Then I did some evening classes.’ Hanne paused, looking for a moment a little embarrassed. ‘And now I’m doing a full-time MSc in Mathematical Physics at Hamburg Uni. It’s taught in English, so I’ve had to improve my level in that too.’

‘And how’s that working out for you?’

‘Surprisingly well. I mean, it’s challenging, but mathematics is the language of the universe. I’m simply learning the vocabulary to express what I saw, the answers that opened up for me.’

There was more general discussion. It was one of Lorentz’s protocols that the rest of the group comment on the observations of the individual. Everyone had his or her own, very personal, perspective. But every contradiction came with agreement, every disagreement with consensus. Everyone agreed their experience was unique, but a uniqueness based on common elements and principles. And everyone agreed that the experience had been positive.

‘That, I’m afraid, is not always the case,’ said Lorentz, with a professionally troubled expression. ‘I agree with the Strassman hypothesis that the pineal gland, buried deep in the brain, is responsible for the natural production of dimethyltryptamine. This is better known as the psychedelic drug DMT. Its natural production, which tends to be linked to the amount of light around us, has a lot to do with states of consciousness, sleep patterns and the like. It also may be what causes us to dream. I think that dimethyltryptamine is released in massive doses at the point of death and this, combined with a lightning storm of electrical activity in the brain, is what causes such convincing hallucinations, as well as the illusion of greatly heightened senses.’

‘When I had my NDE, which involved a full out-of-body experience, I heard one of the nurses say something I didn’t understand,’ said Fabel. ‘But I remembered the word –
kahretsin
. I found out later that the nurse was Turkish-German, and
kahretsin
means “shit”. She remembered saying it because she knocked a tray of stuff over when they were working on me. That wasn’t a hallucination. It happened.’

‘I’m sure it did. And you weren’t dead. You were
near
death and all of your senses were still functioning. Perhaps at a different level of consciousness, but you would still process sounds, sensations, et cetera.’

Others in the group began to chime in. They, like Fabel, protested the authenticity of their experiences. Several offered similar verifications. Fabel listened, nodded, voiced agreement, but deep inside knew that his experience had been some kind of neurological, not spiritual, episode. It was just so difficult to let it go. And maybe, as the bourgeoise Blankenese housewife-turned-quantum physicist had asserted, it didn’t really matter.

Lorentz held up his hand to halt the crosstalk. ‘Anyway, whether you accept it or not, there is growing evidence that NDEs are effectively psychedelic experiences generated by a massive release of DMT and other neurochemicals and hormones. You all have had positive experiences because you launched into your DMT psychedelic state with a rush of euphoria-producing endorphins being released into your system. But sometimes the mix is different. Sometimes the DMT interacts with a rush of cortisol, the stress hormone, before endorphins are released. Any recreational user of DMT or ayahuasca or even psilocybin mushrooms will tell you that you have to be in a positive and relaxed mood before taking a hit. Mostly the experience is positive, but if you have a bad trip, it can be truly horrifying.’

‘So you can have a near-death experience “bad trip”?’ asked Fabel.

‘I have – or had – a patient whom I wanted to take part in this group, but he refused. He refused further treatment, for that matter, despite him being a professional therapist himself. His near-death experience – following an attack in which he was stabbed – was actually, like yours, a mainly positive experience, but towards the end it took a very, very dark turn. He found himself in some kind of hell filled with demons. The damage was lasting, too. I’m afraid I was treating him for Cotard’s Delusion when he stopped coming to see me.’

‘Cotard’s Delusion?’ The young ex-medical student frowned, forcing him to adjust his eyepatch, and Fabel realized it was the first time he’d seen him look troubled. ‘That’s bad . . .’

‘Cotard’s Delusion,’ Lorentz addressed the rest of them, ‘is a tragic personality disorder, also called Delusion of Death. It is, like in the case of my ex-patient, often caused by trauma. Sufferers believe themselves to be dead. A common characteristic is for them to turn up at graveyards and demand to be buried. Some believe they are ghosts, others that they are animate corpses, moving about but rotting away. It’s tragic, but thankfully it’s rare. I’ve only come across this case and one other in my whole career. Anyway, my point is that what you experienced at the point of death is no more or less than the same kind of psychedelic trip that an ayahuasca or DMT user experiences.’

‘Unless,’ said Sepp, the unexceptional business-type, ‘what ayahuasca causes is also a genuine spiritual experience.’

43

Hübner had found it odd how, from their first encounter, he had opened up to Zombie. It had been like that even in the prison. Herr Mensing, as Zombie was known there, had been Frankenstein’s social therapist and counsellor. There had been something in the way Zombie had looked at him – or more correctly something missing in the way he looked at him: fear. There had never been the slightest hint of it in the way Herr Mensing had dealt with Frankenstein during their sessions. No fear, no apprehension or mistrust or revulsion. He had even insisted at the first session that the guard leave them alone, which he did only reluctantly. The other thing that had set Herr Mensing apart was that he treated Hübner with respect; he was interested in what the giant of a man across the table had to say about himself, the world and his place in it.

To start with, Frankenstein had suspected their empathy had something to do with the way Mensing looked himself. His thick dark hair emphasized the sickly paleness of his complexion and his face was all skull angles, his hands skeletal, long fingers almost fleshless under the skin. At times, Hübner had felt that Mensing was only partly there in the room with him, as if some other fragment of his being was absent, or occupying some distant place. Eventually Frankenstein decided it was simply that they had recognized each other as outsiders, shunned by the world and sharing the same dark corner.

Jochen Hübner had never had friends, never had time for or wanted friends. When, from the age of thirteen, he had slowly turned monstrous, he had settled himself to a life alone, but one where he set the agenda for his rejection from society. For whatever reason, Herr Mensing – Zombie – was the only person he had trusted. The only person who had not treated him as a monster; the only person who had talked to him, tried to understand him, who had shown him kindness.

It was as if Zombie had been blind to Hübner’s appearance. And that here, in this misleadingly remote house hidden in a swathe of woodland in the heart of Germany’s second biggest city, Jochen Hübner had come to know friendship and had become blind to his own monstrosity.

Zombie came once a day, usually at the same time, around lunchtime. He would let himself into the house and the cellar, deliver the fresh provisions he had brought and sit for a while, talking to Hübner and sometimes sharing lunch. Today he chose to talk about the mission he had set the giant.

‘What I want to know,’ Frankenstein said, ‘is why? You know that I’ll do exactly what you’ve asked me to do whether you explain it to me or not. But I’d like to know why.’

‘That’s reasonable,’ the pale wraith in the corner said. ‘I’ll explain . . .’

And he did. He talked for over an hour, explaining what had happened, about a night fifteen years before, a nightmare, who had to pay for it, why they had to pay for it, when and how.

When Zombie had finished, Frankenstein sat quiet, nodding. There was more than one kind of monster, he realized. And the real monsters were the ones you couldn’t recognize by looking at them. The ones disguised behind a mask of normality.

‘I saw things,’ said Frankenstein, emboldened by Zombie’s openness. ‘When my heart stopped, I mean.’

‘What kind of things?’ Zombie leaned forward, a slow folding of cloth and bone.

‘Memories, but memories I could watch. I saw who I used to be. I remembered what it was like not to be a monster.’ The huge shoulders sagged. ‘It was nice. Beautiful. It made me happy then, but sad now. Now that I can’t go back to it.’

‘Yes you can.’ Zombie smiled. ‘I can take you back there. Without the risk. Would you like to go?’

Frankenstein nodded.

*

‘It isn’t working,’ said Hübner. ‘Nothing is happening.’ It had been five minutes, at least, since Zombie had injected the DMT.

‘Yes it is,’ said Zombie. ‘Just wait.’

Hübner felt the impatience rise in him, but noticed that it was a cool, rageless impatience, unlike the restless fury he usually felt. ‘I’m telling you, nothing’s happening . . .’

‘Just wait . . .’ The voice that said it wasn’t Zombie’s. Zombie’s mouth hadn’t moved. Hübner looked around the cellar. Something else, someone else had spoken to him, but he knew it wasn’t a voice in his head, it was a voice from outside his head. It was the strangest feeling: he felt completely normal, felt totally in control, yet everything was beginning to operate on a different level. He looked down at the floor of the cellar. He couldn’t see through the flagstones, through the dense clay and soil beneath, yet he knew there were roots beneath him, a spider web of tendrils from the trees around the house, alive, feeding, drawing moisture and nourishment, holding the house like cupped fingers beneath it. He could suddenly smell the soil, smell the life and death in the soil, the cycle of decay and renewal; he became aware of the forest beyond the walls of the cellar: a vast, living, breathing thing. The air around him began to change: it became viscous, palpable.

Frankenstein started to fade away; his body became a concept, not a solid reality. He left his monstrousness behind.

He collapsed into himself. He remembered things he thought he had long ago forgotten and they played out in front of him. Not once did he lose his bearings: he knew he was still in the cellar, but he was also everywhere else, every time else he had been.

He was a small boy again. He was playing with his toy cars and trucks in the garden of his parents’ home, creating his own imagined world, contented and unaware of the genetic predestiny within him, of the malevolent endocrinology already conspiring to turn him into a monster.

He lay down on the cellar floor, not because he needed to, but because he wanted to be closer to the roots beneath him, around him, through him; the endless web of consciousness that linked every place, every time he had ever been.