The Last Time I Saw Her (3 page)

Once her life was back to normal again, once her routines were reestablished, maybe the pain of missing Michael would start to go away.

“Who do you want a background check run on?” Tony asked. She could hear the sudden alertness in his voice.

Charlie told him about Rick Hughes showing up out of the blue with a court order to see her files and a request to interview her. She didn't feel good about lying to Tony, so she didn't. She simply didn't tell the whole truth. What she kept back was anything about her personal ties to Michael and the whole afterlife connection to the situation. In the version she shared, Michael was simply a convicted serial killer she'd been studying who'd been killed in prison, and now a lawyer who looked identical to him had arrived with a court order allowing access to her files. Framing it as the rampant speculation it was, Charlie also floated the possibility that Hughes might have committed the crimes for which Michael had been convicted.

“Wow,” Tony said when she finished. “Your life is nothing if not interesting.”

“Gee, thanks.” Her tone was dry. See there, she was fighting the darkness. She was fighting for normal. All was not lost in her bruised and battered psyche. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“An observation, is all.”

“So will you do it?”

“Anything for you, Dr. Stone.”

He was flirting with her. More normal. If she faked it long enough, would she really start to feel normal again? She gave it the old college try and responded with a light “Have I mentioned lately that you're my favorite FBI agent?”

“You keep that in mind next time we're in the same zip code.”

“I will.” She was smiling again. God, it felt good to smile!

“So first thing you want to do is confirm this Rick Hughes's bona fides?”

“Yes,” Charlie said, adding, “Anything you can find out about him will help. And, um, if you could get me a picture of him, that would be great.”

“A picture?”

“In case there actually is a Rick Hughes but this guy isn't him.”

“Good thought.” The silence that followed told Charlie that Tony guessed there was more to the story than she was telling him, but he didn't press her. His ability to take the off-the-wall things that happened around her in stride was one of the things she really liked about him. “You want me to come up there?”

He would, too. All she needed to do was say the word. She knew that.

“No. If it turns out that he's not who he says he is, then we'll see. But for now, you stay put and do what you're supposed to do to recuperate. Just get me that information.”

“If it turns out he's not legit, I'm on my way.” His tone made it a warning and a promise.

“Agreed.”

“Okay, then. I'll get somebody on it now. You should have the information no later than first thing in the morning.”

“Thanks.” She was smiling again as they finished the conversation and disconnected. It was good to have Tony as a friend, to know that he was there if she needed him. It made her feel less alone.

Because that was exactly how she felt. Alone and bereft. No matter how much she tried to pretend otherwise.

It wasn't until Charlie put the phone down that she realized that the last envelope in the mail pile, the heavy, cream-colored vellum one that she'd been vaguely aware of all along, was from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. Formerly known as NARSAD, the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders, it was the premier brain and behavior research foundation in the world. Its panel of experts in the field included Nobel Prize winners, present and former directors of NIMH, members of the National Academy of Sciences, and the chairs of the psychiatry and neuroscience departments of a number of leading medical schools. Each year they chose recipients of the annual NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Grants and on the last Saturday in October presented the awards with much pomp and ceremony at the foundation's big annual gathering in Washington, D.C. The NARSAD awards were sort of like MacArthur Genius Grants for brain researchers, and to be selected was a really big deal.

Each award also came with a hundred thousand dollars.

Charlie was suddenly breathless as she tore open the envelope and scanned the letter it contained.

Under a gleaming gold letterhead that included an embossed illustration of the NIMH headquarters, she read:

Dear Dr. Stone,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected as this year's recipient of the Goldman-Rakic Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Cognitive Neuroscience.

There was more after that, much more, details including previous winners and the time and place of the ceremony, but Charlie was so floored by what she was reading that the only thing that stuck was the fact that she had won.

Oh, my God.

The NARSAD awards were the most prestigious prizes in psychiatric research. To receive one at age thirty-two was—well, she was overwhelmed.

She hadn't even known that she was under consideration. She'd never dreamed that she was under consideration.

Coming on top of everything else that had happened, it was simply too much for her to process. Pulling out a chair from the table, she sat down abruptly and stared at the letter in her hand.

It was such spectacularly good news, such an honor and a validation of her work and career, that under different conditions she would have been over the moon. Even through all the grief and turmoil and upset she was experiencing, she felt a flare of excitement.

This is huge.

Her fingers tightened on the letter. She had to tell someone. She was bursting to tell someone.

I have to tell Michael.

The thought was instant and instinctive, and it brought her crashing back to earth like nothing else could have. News like this was meant to be shared with the people you loved. The most important people in your life, the ones you could count on to be forever in your corner, the ones you automatically turned to in good times and bad.

The most important
person
in your life, the one you could count on to be forever in your corner, the one you automatically turned to in good times and bad.

When Michael had become that—well,
person
wasn't quite the word: entity, maybe?—for her she couldn't have said. But it seemed that he was.

How could I have let myself fall in love with him like this?

She'd done her best to keep it from happening. It had happened anyway.

She'd known the price all along. She'd known that it was going to be too steep to pay.

Yet here she was paying it.

Not being able to share the news with him dimmed the joy of it.

Not being able to share her life with him made the world feel like a cold, alien place.

Okay. Deep breath. Think about—

I won a NARSAD.
A tiny shoot of happiness bubbled up through the pain like the first spring crocus pushing through a crust of snow. But the pain remained, grim and unrelenting and as deadening as a layer of concrete hardening around her heart.

Sitting there with the letter in her hand, Charlie glanced at her phone, which lay on the table in front of her. She should be snatching it up by this time, should be busy sharing the news. There were others she could call, others who would be glad for her: Tony, Tam, her mother. More friends, more colleagues. For God's sake, she had people.
People,
not just a heart-stealing ghost.

Then her attention was caught by what she saw through the window, the one just beyond the table that provided her with a near panoramic view of her backyard: a pair of fat white hens scratched at the dirt beneath her sunflowers, unaware that Pumpkin, tail swishing, furry body low to the ground, was closing in on them.

Knowing the mayhem that was about to ensue, and maybe even secretly a little glad that she didn't have to immediately decide who to call first with her news, Charlie jumped up, ran for the door, and flung it open.

“Shoo,” she cried, flapping her hands at the hens as she sped down the back steps. “Pumpkin, stop that!”

The hens didn't shoo. They just kept calmly pecking away at the ground.

Pumpkin didn't stop what he was doing, either. Now within pouncing distance, he crouched, wriggling his rear end ominously, his eyes fixed on the hens.

Charlie scooped him up just in time.

“No, Pumpkin,” she scolded him. Imprisoned in her arms, he gave her a baleful look. She could feel his tail swishing unhappily against her side.

“Oh, was he after Mrs. Norman's chickens again?” Pumpkin's twelve-year-old owner, Glory Powell, who lived next door with her parents, appeared at the fence separating their yards. She was thin and boyish-looking in jeans and a blue sweatshirt that read
PROPERTY OF UNION HIGH SCHOOL
. Her medium brown hair hung in one long braid down her back and her medium brown eyes were almost overshadowed by thick, dark brows. A tendency to glance shyly away from whomever she was talking to made her easy to overlook until she smiled. Usually her smile made her whole face light up. Today that smile flashed silver. “I'm sorry.”

“You got braces,” Charlie said in surprise, carrying Pumpkin to the fence and handing him over.

“Yesterday.” From the suddenly self-conscious way Glory tried to keep her lips stretched over her teeth as she spoke, Charlie surmised that she had forgotten about the braces until Charlie had mentioned them. She was immediately sorry she had. “I hate them.”

“You'll be glad you had them when you're older,” Charlie told her. Glory grimaced, clearly unconvinced. Glory's mother, Melissa, who looked like a shorter-haired, late-thirties-ish version of her daughter minus the braces, stepped out of her house and onto her back porch. She waved at Charlie.

“Thanks for getting my mail,” Charlie called, waving back.

Melissa nodded. “Anytime.”

Glory followed Melissa inside, Pumpkin squirming unhappily in her arms. Charlie started to turn away from the fence, trying not to remember how Michael had laughed at her the last time she'd intervened in the cat-versus-chickens skirmishes that were a common occurrence in her backyard, when something—a feeling, a sixth sense, whatever—made her glance toward the street.

A car was parked across from her house.

Around here, people almost never parked on the street. They all had garages and driveways. Even guests parked in driveways. Anyway, unless something big was going on, like the Super Bowl or the Fourth of July or a funeral or a high school graduation, their street usually didn't get that many guests who needed to park.

It was a quiet residential street. The houses were older, some remodeled like hers, others not, most with large yards. Nothing fancy or expensive. The neighbors were people like Mrs. Norman, the owner of the chickens, a widow in her eighties who lived next door, and Glory's family, and Ken the deputy sheriff, who lived a little way down on the opposite side of the street with his family, and others like them. Charlie might not know them well, but she knew them all. She knew that none of them drove a car like the black Shelby GT Mustang at the curb across the street.

Looking at it, Charlie felt a frisson of unease.

A prickling at the back of her neck. A cold finger sliding down her spine.

All reactions telling her that something was wrong.

As she stared at it, the Mustang started up, pulled away from the curb, and drove off.

It was too dark to see who was driving.

What she was feeling added up to—a sense of foreboding.

If she had learned nothing else in her life, it was to pay attention to her instincts.

It was only as her view of the Mustang's progress down the street was blocked by her own house that she realized dusk had fallen.

The fading light had a purple cast. A faint line of orange on the horizon was all that remained of the sun. Trees and houses stood in black silhouette against the darkening sky. The air felt heavier.

All was quiet. Unnaturally so. No noise at all, not even the whisper of the wind or the chirping of insects or the barking of a dog.

As if everything had stilled.

Liminal:
that was the word she wanted.

It meant threshold, and in that moment it felt like the world paused on the threshold between day and night.

As Charlie frowned at the place where the Mustang had been, the last bit of orange glow on the horizon began to fade away and the purple shadows that lay over everything deepened.

Then something—a quiver in the air, a kind of heat shimmer—riveted her attention to one spot.

A shadow among the many shadows creeping over the yard across the street, just beyond the place where the Mustang had been parked, seemed to take on form and substance in the shimmer's center. As she watched, the shadow resolved itself into the shape of a man.

A tall man, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped. Standing unmoving at the edge of the neatly cut yard.

It was already too dark for her to get a good look at his face, but she thought she could make out a white tee and jeans. And his eyes staring fixedly at her house, where light blazed from the windows.

The orange glow on the horizon began to disappear. As it did, a last ray of light streamed out to touch his hair.

It was the color of burnished gold.

Charlie's heart thumped. Her breath caught. Forget the threshold between day and night. What she was seeing—was it the threshold between life and death?

Then the orange glow on the horizon was swallowed up by darkness, and the ray of light disappeared.

So did the man.

Gone just like that.

“Michael!” The cry tore out of her throat, and she found herself running, flying through the gate toward the place where the man had been. “Michael! Michael!”

But of course he wasn't there.

No one was there. Nothing was there.

Cooling fall air with no hint of a shimmer. Deepening shadows with no substance to them. Chirping insects, whispering wind, ordinary outdoor sounds. Looking wildly around, Charlie saw the dark lines and angles of her own house, the lit windows with the curtains as yet undrawn that provided glimpses of the interior, and the homely, should-have-been-comforting sights of the neighborhood getting tucked in for the night.

Inside she was screaming.

It was a clear night. One by one, stars began popping into view overhead. Lights were coming on in all the houses, not just hers.

Charlie had never felt so alone in her life.

What just happened? What did I see?

If Michael had been there, he was gone.

If she had imagined him, she was in even worse psychological shape than she had thought.

If the man she had seen was Rick Hughes, where was he?

The Mustang had pulled away before the figure appeared, and there was no place where a solid, flesh-and-blood man could have gotten away to that fast.

Charlie had no answers. All she knew for sure was that the night was growing cold, and standing out there alone in the dark was starting to feel like a really bad idea.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she went inside…

Where her knees gave out, and she collapsed in a shivering heap on her kitchen floor.

If he was in hell, then all the preachers and all the sermons and all the holy books that had come at him over the years had gotten it only half right. Hell burned sure enough, but with a cold so intense that every second passed in it was pure agony.

But Michael was pretty sure he wasn't in hell.

He was somewhere worse.

Imprisoned by bonds he couldn't see or feel, but that surrounded him and held him fast. Trapped in darkness, suspended in a vaporous fog that smelled of sulfur and burned like dry ice, his existence an endless torment. An eternity's worth of suffering compressed into a single instant, with every torturous instant the same.

His sense of self remained. The purple twilight nightmare of Spookville was a Disney theme park compared to this icy, stinking blackness. He could see shapes, hear the screams of others who, like him, were slated for annihilation.

The monsters—he caught only glimpses, but he thought of them as hunters on steroids—that controlled this place executed souls.

He'd been brought here to be snuffed out of existence.

If he'd been in any state to find anything amusing, he would have had to at least crack a smile at the idea that he'd wound up on the afterlife's version of death row.

The more things change…

Too bad he was way past finding any of this funny.

He didn't know how long he'd been here. Longer than any of the others. The drill was: souls arrived, something was done to them that made them shriek like they'd been doused with gasoline and set on fire, and then they turned into what looked like a pillar of ash and vanished, blown away by the frigid, unceasing wind, to exist no more.

He watched it happening around him, again and again and again, terrible, ruthless exterminations carried out with pitiless precision, the details imperfectly concealed by gloom. Sooner or later, it was going to happen to him.

Sometimes he almost thought it would be a relief.

Just get it over with. Boom. Done.

But then he suspected that thoughts like those were part of the process of wearing him down. The monsters' whispers lodging wormlike inside his consciousness.

The searing pain that felt like it was devouring him from the inside out was excruciating. Indescribable. Never-ending. Worse than anything he had ever experienced in life, or afterward. It would have had him screaming for mercy to the heavens if he'd had a voice left with which to scream. But his outer voice was gone now, stripped away by overuse within either moments or centuries or eons (he could no longer accurately judge time) of his arrival in this place.

We can end your torment. We can make the pain stop. Your suffering is needless.

He heard the monsters talking in his head. They spoke to him constantly, in deceptively soft, gentle voices, coaxing him to give in to the inevitable, to let them wipe out his agony by ending his existence.

When he'd been alive, he would have sworn that there was nothing left in heaven or hell that could scare him. But that was before he knew that there really was a heaven and a hell, and there were things betwixt and between that could make dying seem like a day at the beach.

The thought of ceasing to exist—of having his consciousness obliterated—had disturbed him once upon a time. It still did on some level, but he rarely connected with that level of himself anymore. He recognized that the brutishness building up inside him was part of what was happening to him, was a function of this place. The knowledge didn't make him feel any less savage. If anything, it made the savagery worse, because it fed his anger exponentially. It felt like the basest, most beastly and damnable part of himself was growing like a cancer, swallowing up the last shreds of his humanity, eating away at any small pockets of decency that remained to him.

It had gradually dawned on him that the reason the monsters had not yet terminated him was because they couldn't.

The whisper that had followed him here was the constant to which he clung. It was his shield, his lifeline. The words—he had to force them into his consciousness now through the rising tide of ferocity that was slowly blocking them out—burned inside him, keeping the hellish cold from freezing him through. One day, he thought, he would no longer be able to remember the words, and that would be the day that it ended. That
he
ended.

I love you.

She'd said that to him. Charlie.

Those words were what held him to an existence.
She
was what held him to an existence. He wasn't ready to let go of them, of her, of what was between them.

What he had done while he was alive might have damned him to hell for all eternity. He might even be carrying so much darkness inside him that he deserved to cease to exist. He wouldn't argue with that. But he wasn't ready to go.

He couldn't leave her. He didn't want to leave her.

Not yet.
Somewhere along the way, he'd lost the ability to pray, but that was the plea that beat fiercely inside him.
I need a little more time.

Part of the torture he suffered was that he could feel her pain.

She cried out to him, and he knew it, and each time she called his name was like a whip lashing his soul. She ached because he was gone, and a thousand billy clubs beating him unmercifully couldn't have injured him more.

He'd never meant to hurt her.

She'd said,
I love you.

The words were killing him and saving him at the same time. When he was snatched away, her whisper had flown after him into the dark. It had wrapped itself around what passed for his heart, and it held him fast now, like a string anchoring a kite to earth. Sometimes his consciousness flashed along the path of the string and he could see things. Not her—but things she could see.

Lightning glimpses of a hospital room, the interior of an airplane, her house.

So tantalizingly brief. So meaningless and yet—

Each one sharper than a thousand knives.

He had little doubt that he was deliberately being shown her life in snapshots as it was happening, as she continued on without him. The glimpses were a means of softening him up.

One day he wouldn't be able to take the pain.

Holding on to her hurts.

His life had never been about love. He'd never really believed in it. He'd had bedmates, buddies, fellow Marines who for a time had become the closest thing he'd had to family. The men in his small unit—he'd cared about them. Band of brothers and all that.

But love was something deeper, something more profound. Other men seemed to experience it, but not him. He supposed it sprang from an openness and vulnerability that he didn't possess. At its core his heart had remained a cold and distant place that allowed no one in.

He could have gone his whole life like that. But then he'd gone and died.

She's better off without you. Let her go.

More insidious voices in his head, more attempts by the monsters to fuck with him. If he did what they wanted him to, if he closed his mind to her, if he let the words she'd sent winging after him into the dark fade from his consciousness, there would be nothing left to hold the monsters off.

The thing about it was, though, he was starting to feel like the voices might be right.

She was better off without him.

He wanted her to be happy.

Alive, he thought he could make her happy, but that airship had gone the way of the Hindenburg.

Dead, he got in the way of her living her life. He was always going to get in the way of her living her life.

She was grieving for him. He could feel it. Her grief was torture to him.

But people got over grief. She would get over him.

Maybe they'd both be better off if he just gave up and let go.

Took what was coming to him.

Let the darkness win.

We can take away your pain. You can set her free.

For her sake even more than his own, he was tempted.

But then he thought,
No: I'll never stop fighting. They'll have to destroy me to win.