Afterlife Crisis Read online

  “She took a leave of absence some time ago,” he said. “She said she was on a spiritual journey — something about ‘reconnecting with the universe.’ She didn’t say where she was going, but when she returned she wasn’t herself. There was an earnestness about her, a sense of urgency. And she had an incredible story. She told me she’d been involved with a group that she called the Church of O, and that she’d been witness to a supernatural duel. She claimed that the things she witnessed proved everything she’d been teaching in the Sharing Room all these years — that the universe can be changed through acts of will. You can see why I was concerned. She also said that she had seen proof of the beforelife, as well as someone or something called ‘the Great Omega.’ All delusions, of course. But she repeatedly insisted that a man named Rhinnick Feynman had been with her when she witnessed these events and that he could support her story. That’s why we sent word to you.”

  Well, I suppose at this point I could have assured the old ass that he’d been supplied with accurate data, but I didn’t. I was still a trifle shell-shocked to find that it was Oan who had been babbling about me in the hospice, rather than the Zeus for whom I’d budgeted, and I wasn’t entirely clear on how to proceed. At the moment of going to press, I had half a mind to make an immediate exit in the direction of the Hôtel de la Lune, hoping to reach the Detroit Riviera in time for the luau. On the other hand, I wondered whether remaining in statu quo mightn’t be the shrewder move, increasing the odds that I would divine the Author’s will. I mean to say, the Author might have penned this whole ‘return to the hospice’ sequence with some quest-furthering plot twists in mind, and I might louse the whole thing up by leaving early. Trapped in this equivocal state of whatdoyoucallit, I just sat there twiddling my thumbs and staring vacantly into space. A moment or two later, perceiving that Peericks was still hanging on my lips and awaiting speech, I finally filled the dead air with a mild “oh, ah.”

  “That’s why I asked you to come,” said Peericks, earnestly. “Oan insists you were involved in the events she describes. She says you’ll verify her story. That’s why we’d like you to speak to her. She holds you in very high regard. If you could convince her that the experiences she describes weren’t real, and that she imagined the whole thing, then she might accept that she’s experiencing delusions. I should explain that my own expertise lies in treating conditions that give rise to delusions, particularly BD, a disorder in which the patient believes in the beforelife and—”

  “I’m familiar with the condition,” I assured him. And as I did, I realized this sudden swerve in the conversation presented an unexpected chance to peg two birds with one stone, taking a stab at plumbing the depths of this fathead’s memory loss while also sniffing out some intel about my old pal Zeus.

  “Speaking of BD,” I said, striking a nonchalant tone, “I once knew a chap who had it. Went by the name ‘Zeus.’ He also thought he’d been a dog in the beforelife — some sort of terrier, I believe. I recall him mentioning something about once having cooled his heels here at the hospice — wearing the terry-cloth robe, eating the soft foods, and generally joining in the communal race toward mental health. I think he was here fairly recently. Tell me, Peericks, how does this square up with your data?”

  “A Mr. Zeus?” he said, surprised.

  “Just Zeus,” I said. “Big chap. You couldn’t have missed him. A grinning mass of beef and brawn who stands about eight-foot-six. Take a line through any shaved gorillas you’ve met, and adjust the scale upward. You’ll generally find him messing about by lifting heavy objects, burying bones, or chasing postmen. Ring any bells?”

  “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be proper for me to discuss a hospice patient,” said the ass.

  “So he is a patient?” I riposted.

  “I can’t confirm that, Mr. Feynman. I’m sorry. Our rules concerning patient information are strict—”

  “So if I were to inquire about this Zeus’s whereabouts?” I asked. “Say, with a view to passing along his correspondence?”

  “I’m sorry. Patient information is confidential.”

  “You told me about Oan,” I countered, shrewdly. And although I fully expected this rejoinder to catch him in the midriff and leave him gasping, it didn’t. Instead the dithering bungler tried to distinguish Oan’s case and suggest that it was different. Specious, of course, but that’s what the bungler did.

  “You might be in a position to help us with Oan’s treatment,” he said.

  “I could help you with Zeus, too!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Feynman,” began this serial apologizer, but I checked him with a gesture.

  “Fine, fine,” I said. “I understand you have your rules, arbitrary though they might be. So you can tell me all about Oan but not about Zeus. Let’s take that as read. So answer me this, Dr. Peericks,” I continued, lining up a long shot. “Has Oan reported any recent run-ins with heavily muscled chaps who think they’re dogs and answer to names which rhyme with goose?”

  This seemed to give the doctor a headache. He pinched the bridge of his nose before marshalling his strength and soldiering on.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Feynman, we do need to discuss Oan’s treatment and drop this other matter.”

  “Say on, physician,” I said, indulgently.

  “All I ask is that you convince her that she’s imagining the events I told you about — these meetings with the Church of O; the cataclysmic battle.”

  “Convince her that she’s come a bit unglued, what?”

  “Well, broadly speaking, but—”

  “Gone off the deep end, I mean to say. Any number of screws loose—”

  “We prefer to say our patients are—”

  “A bit cuckoo? Potty as a whatsit?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Of unsound mind, man. Try to keep up. You want me to confer with this Oan, lend an ear to her story, inform her that the whole cataclysmic battle sequence which she’s been harping about can be written off as the babblings of a loony, and leave her persuaded that she is non compos mentis. This will allow you to flush the bats from her belfry and refill her bean with thoughts you find more pleasing.”

  I seemed to have said the wrong thing.

  “That’s not how we would describe the treatment process!” said the pedantic pill-pusher, huffing in an affronted sort of way. I silenced him with another one of my gestures. I further assured him that, whatever psychobabblish words he and his fellow mental health boosters might ascribe to the task before me, I had collared the gist and was happy to take the gig.

  “So you’ll help her?” he said.

  I said I would.

  “I’m so pleased,” said Dr. Peericks, and so profound was his relief at my willingness to pitch in that his whole aspect seemed to transmutate before me, if transmutate is the word to describe a quick switch from officious bleater to one of those soulful, dewy-eyed types you sometimes see in the second act of musical comedies. I mean to say, a word or two of assent from yours truly and this Peericks’s entire demeanour shifted. One moment he was a bureaucratic doctor, oozing professional detachment and medical whatdoyoucallit, and the next he had the aspect of a child of tender years who has recovered his long-lost dog. I had the distinct impression that if I didn’t tread carefully I would soon be dodging a hug.

  Peericks observed my gaze, and he must have noticed that I had raised a censorious brow at this unseemly show of emotion, for he now blushed prettily and twiddled with his tie, as though reluctant to unleash some slab of compromising data.

  “It’s just . . . you see . . . well, Oan’s happiness is very important to me,” he said, his voice growing husky as he gazed over my right ear. “She’s a wonderful colleague. She . . .”

  “Of course,” I interjected, having no time to sit through an employee evaluation. “I’m sure she’s a first-rate caring nurturer and top-notch purveyor of spiritual do
odads. Now point me in her direction and let’s have a peek under the hood.”

  “I do hope you succeed,” he said. “If she could be returned to me — or to us, I mean — if she could continue her work with the patients—”

  “Right ho,” I said, eager to get this show on the road.

  “The patients are lost without her. She has such a way with them. So kind. So nurturing. A thoroughly selfless woman. The sort that no hospice should be without. I hadn’t realized what she meant to me — or . . . to us — until she was gone. It has been so difficult without her, Mr. Feynman. For all of us, I mean. It has been like a cloud has settled over the hospice. Please,” he implored, still with the soppy, melting tone, “do your best to help her. It would mean so much to me. So much to the hospice.”

  Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty astute, and I now began to knit together a few threads from our recent exchange. Follow these clues: Not only had this pestilential blister called Oan “wonderful” and “selfless” without choking on his words, not only had he claimed, in a husky voice, that her happiness was very dear to him, but he’d also managed to describe Oan’s harebrained efforts in the Sharing Room as comforting and helpful. Helpful, forsooth! Add to this the fact he positively beamed at the thought of having Oan hauled out of storage, and then practically melted while musing about Oan’s real or imagined merits, and a picture begins to emerge. If this wasn’t a man whose senses had been dulled by smouldering passions, a fellow who, in other words, had been pierced by Cupid’s arrow, then I don’t know the symptoms. The man was besotted! And if the available evidence could be accepted as both admissible and credible, it seemed the object of this medical poop’s affections was Oan — the dottiest self-deluded guru to ever light a patchouli candle and project her astral self. They say there’s a broom for every corner, but I wouldn’t have thought a freak like Oan could ignite the divine fire in any self-respecting bosom.

  “Well, well, well!” I said, grinning.

  “Well, well, what?” said Peericks.

  My grin intensified.

  “You’re in love! You’re in love with the old disaster!”

  “What? Me? No. Don’t be absurd. That wouldn’t be . . . I mean, setting aside the fact that Oan is now my patient, and—”

  “Ah!” I said, seeing all, and sagely tapping the side of my nose. “Another one of those specious rules. You’re about to tell me that there is some official edict about the zookeeper fraternizing with the exhibits. Understood. But mark this. If Oan could be cured, if she could be certified as fit to mingle with the undeluded masses, then—”

  “Then she could return to her duties,” said the doctor, who seemed eager to move our discussion away from the theme of love’s young dream. This was fine by me, as I had now thoroughly reconnoitred the scene and scooped up all the useful intelligence. This doctor’s ghastly display of heart-on-sleeving had convinced me beyond all doubt that he had fallen base over apex for this Oan — something I wouldn’t have thought possible. And as unbelievable as this hot news was, it had the promise of coming in dashed handy. I mean, here was a psychiatrist who was, I deduced, in a position to spill the beans about Zeus’s coordinates, and here was I in a position to help that same psychiatrist pitch a bit of woo. If I could speed the blighter’s wooing — possibly put him in a position to saunter down the aisle with his inexplicable choice of bridal fauna — then I might be able to leverage this good deed into a bargaining chip for Rhinnick, by which I mean a method of convincing this prescription scribbler to unseal his lips with respect to Zeus’s whereabouts.

  It was, I could see, the Author’s plan.

  “I’ll be only too pleased to help,” I said, now chomping at the bit.

  And the doctor, little knowing that he had supplied me with state secrets which would allow me to dictate policies and tactics, led me out of the office and down the hall.

  Life in the hospice is, as you might imagine, plagued by interruptions and notoriously difficult to plan. We had taken only a few steps Oanwards when the hospice intercom issued an urgent summons to Dr. Peericks, bidding the old pot of poison to report to some sort of mental health kerfuffle. The physician, unleashing a muffled dammit, asked if I’d mind flying solo for a space and conferring with Oan in his abs. I assured him, not untruthfully, that nothing would please me more.

  And so within a couple of ticks he handed me off to a Hospice Goon, who led me up a staircase, through a doorway, and down a hallway or two before depositing me in Oan’s quarters, a cozy little apartment halfway along the second floor. Within this room I was surprised to find not one, but two loonies blinking back at me. One of these, as you might have guessed, was the aforementioned Oan. The second was a distinctly charbroiled woman covered head to toe in ointment and wrapped in gauze.

  Chapter 3

  Well, I don’t know if you’ve hobnobbed with a bird who has recently strolled through a fiery furnace or backstroked in a live volcano, but if you have you’ll understand how these encounters grip the senses. I mean to say, the eyes are arrested by the subject’s seared exterior, the ears by the intermittent crackling of charred skin, and the nose by a bouquet of cooked flesh and medical ointments — a mixture far too rich for the human nostril. And while the barbecued exhibit now confronting me was draped in a shroud of gauze, this shroud, though straining at every thread, failed altogether to shield yours truly from the affront.

  I betrayed no sign of aversion. Whatever the provocation, Rhinnick Feynman does not recoil in horror when presented with members of the gentler sex. He stifles his revulsion, bears up, and chips in with all the suavity of the parfit gentil knight. Or rather he tries to. In fact, I was on the point of charming my two hostesses with a few well-chosen civilities when Oan, selecting this moment to press the larynx into service, beat me to the punch.

  “Mr. Feynman!” she chirruped, beaming freely and looking as though she’d won a sweepstake or two. And while it is always gratifying to reap the public’s adulation, in this instance I was less gratified than surprised. I mean to say, it wasn’t Oan’s welcoming spirit which sparked my interest, but the fact that someone in this Abe-forsaken place had ID’d me at first sight, instead of treating me like a mystery man known only in song and legend.

  “Mistress Oan,” I said, inclining the bean. And turning my gaze toward her flame-broiled compatriot, I topped this off with, “And your friend, err, Miss . . .?”

  “We do not know her name, Mr. Feynman,” said Oan, in that dreamy, droopy voice she always deployed in sharing sessions. “She rarely speaks. It’s so very tragic. Dr. Peericks says she has lost all of her memories.”

  “Two chairs,” said the exhibit under discussion.

  “Two chairs?” I asked.

  “It’s very curious,” said Oan. “She keeps repeating that same phrase. She started this morning. And when she utters those words she stares off into space, as though she hopes to focus her energies upon the Laws of Attraction — you know all about the Laws of Attraction, don’t you, Mr. Feynman?”

  “Yes, yes, of course, of course,” I said, staving off a refresher course on Sharing Room philosophy. “And if she’s appealing to those laws, she seems to be doing a dashed fine job. She wants two chairs, you have two chairs. Also a pair of beds and tables. Everything seems in order, what?”

  “Two chairs,” repeated the charbroiled roommate, bringing her knees up to her chest and rocking gently where she sat. It was at this point in the proceedings that my hamster, Fenny, apparently sought a change of scenery, for he climbed out of my jacket pocket and ran down my leg, staking his claim next to the overcooked popsy and grrnmphing amiably.

  As Fenny inspected his surroundings — no doubt finding them familiar, as he’d lived with me in the hospice for many a long day — I found myself wondering why the Author had thought it wise to include so many variations on the theme of memory loss in the course of these first few chapter
s. He must have had some reason, but what it might have been eluded me. Personal obsession, perhaps, or maybe an upcoming theme for a book-of-the-month club. But for now I filed this puzzle away for future consideration. Returning to matters of present interest, I spoke as follows: “Has Dr. Peericks any notion of why this crispy exhibit’s memory has gone phut?”

  “Two chairs,” ventured the crispy e., while Fenny sniffed around her ankles.

  “We haven’t a clue,” said Oan. “Doctor Peericks is doing his best. He’s quite marvellous, you know. He has made a study of memory disorders. He’s told me all about it. He has been reading about an ancient practice once performed on BD patients, a practice called—”

  “Mindwiping!” I interjected, dredging up a term I’d learned during my last sojourn at the hospice.

  “That’s right!” said Oan. “It’s terribly cruel. Dr. Peericks says it’s inhumane, destroying a person’s memory — all of their thoughts, all of their dreams . . . Oh, I do hope the doctor is able to help her.”

  “Talking of memories,” I said, redirecting the conv., “tell me, Oan: what do you remember of me?”

  “You ask the strangest questions, Mr. Feynman.”

  “Pray, indulge me.”

  “Of course, Mr. Feynman. I’d do anything to help you. I remember you very well. We met in the grotto, when you brought the Intercessor into the sacred caverns, among the adherents of the Church of O. You assisted the Intercessor in his work. You were a great help to him. A central figure in his ministry.”

  This was not the response for which I’d budgeted. Indeed, it isn’t going too far to say that her answer left me fogged. Let me explain.