What the Dead Can Do, page 12
Amanda wanted Tag to observe the appointment with her, and he did not ask for her reasons. Their son’s health and weight and height and dexterity or any other metric were sure to be par for the course, but Tag knew she was hoping to hear bad news.
He had agreed, but only on the condition that they let the exam happen in private—just Matthew, Ethan, and their doctor. He would accompany her to the location if they waited outside the doctor’s office or took a walk while the checkup happened. The results would be the same no matter when they learned of them, and the day before, Tag had overheard Matthew tell Lucinda that he’d be sure to call her with an update right after the exam. It’d be easy enough to hear the news from him—after the appointment was finished. Amanda’s acquiescence to his demands did not provide him with any comfort. And as their time walking together moved into a second hour, he remained surprised by her compliance to his ask.
She’d said little to him the whole walk and kept her eyes on the front door of the pediatrician’s office, craning her head 180 degrees when their backs were to it, which, real or not, was an unpleasant spectacle to behold.
The silence between them left his mind open to obsessing over the conversation he’d had with Martha about his wife. He needed to be smart about this and assume the worst.
Amanda was seeking an answer to a question no good resident would ever answer: How can I bring my son here? If possession were possible—and it was in Ethan’s best interest for Tag to start believing that it was—then she already knew that.
They both knew people in Prior Plane who were on edge, sad, and even desperate, but she couldn’t ever know just how dark it was inside their heads.
What would her deadline be for trying to retrieve Ethan?
She wouldn’t give up without a good reason.
And he couldn’t hope for Ethan’s aging to slow Amanda down.
Still, trying to inhabit the bodies that belonged to souls that were sad or even clinically depressed—but didn’t quite exist in that black space of just shy of dead—didn’t strike him as something his wife would bother with. It was a guessing game. He doubted Amanda would fully commit to taking over a body unless she was certain that body was going to work. It had to be the right time and right place as it pertained to their desperation—a black space in one’s thinking that made possession a possibility, that was how Martha had described it.
Tag wasn’t a psychologist, but he wanted to believe that type of deep melancholy wasn’t a constant for most of the living, not with all the prescription drugs everyone was on these days.
At best, possession would be a moving window of opportunity for his wife.
He shook his head. That was exactly the type of naivety he was trying to buck. Because if she succeeded at possession—even for only a short time—she would never quit trying. She might be capable of hurting Ethan once she had firm control of a body … No. Stop it.
He’d come into this observation with a plan, but the heavy intentional silence Amanda had insisted upon suggested that no matter how eloquently he spoke about Nicole’s progress in rehab, that plan would fail.
Begging wouldn’t work—it never had with his wife.
And innuendo about what might happen if she didn’t practice the suggestions from The Text wasn’t going to cut it either.
He thought about how Martha had ended their connection days ago, perhaps sensing his unease with the task.
* * *
“You have to be blunt about it,” Martha had said. “For her, for Ethan. Do you know about Third Plane, Taggart?”
He did. He’d read The Text cover-to-cover, after all.
Unlike Prior Plane, here can be “it,” the last stop, if a resident adheres to best practices.
He’d enjoyed the poem, too, but he hadn’t thought too much about Third Plane, because surely it wouldn’t apply to him. He took the suggestions very seriously. “Yes,” he said, “I know about Third Plane.”
“Does Amanda?”
He had no idea what Amanda did or didn’t know. “I imagine she’s already read and heard about Third—”
“Not from you, she hasn’t. You have to warn her. If she keeps this up, nothing good will come of it.”
Nothing good. He realized right then that what Donovan had told him about Third Plane had been just as vague as The Text. But knowing more wouldn’t necessarily make it matter.
He scoffed at Martha. “I’m flattered you think she’d still listen to me, but I don’t agree.”
“So, what then? You’ll just hang back and hope for the best for your son?”
Martha, the soul or the woman, was still invisible, but her anger was not. As she spoke, huge chunks of his pristine white sweep opened up into dark gaping holes, ragged at their edges.
“Isn’t that basically what The Text wants of us?” he asked.
After a pause, she replied, “I’ve underestimated you.”
“Perhaps twice,” he admitted.
By now, there was more darkness than light. And though it made little sense, it felt as though the blackness she was wielding might be able to tear through him. “Those caught possessing a soul in Prior Plane will be punished by the council!”
Tag was still there, floating in the absolute darkness that she’d created, awkwardly unable to alter his space or add anything to it, no matter how hard he tried. He no longer wished to know what Martha looked like. Her last shout had rattled him, and when it finally rang out, he spoke.
“Punished how, though? I need to know what the punishment is. Help me.”
“A life in Third Plane is no life at all. No observation. No residency. No community.”
“I don’t think that’s going to sway her. She hasn’t exactly loved—”
“It means it won’t matter if Ethan is dead or alive, in Prior Plane or a resident here—once Amanda is in Third Plane, she will never have an opportunity to see him again. Or you. Even if you both eventually ended up there yourselves. And well, I’m hoping that still matters, too.”
* * *
It wouldn’t be long before Ethan’s appointment was done. Tag would tell Amanda what Martha had told him to and then also make his final farewell to their son. If the threat of Third Plane didn’t work, he held out hope that seeing him deliver the goodbye might be the tipping point she needed to come to her senses. With luck, it would be the last observation for them both.
He moved himself in front of her to stop her and make eye contact—if that kind of thing even mattered anymore—but she moved right through him. When he tried again, she turned away from him and headed back toward the pediatrician’s office. And so, he didn’t tell her. Because it occurred to him at that moment that doing so would have meant he’d also be saying, “Yes, dear, possession of the living is possible. You can do exactly what you have wanted to do … so long as you don’t give up.” To have faith in the punishment that Martha laid out was the same as having faith in the action of possession itself. One truth could not exist without the other, could it? And that was only if Martha was to be believed.
All of a sudden, it felt as if he was part of a conspiracy against his wife.
He was spiraling out. Exhaustion was kicking in, and soon he’d be returned to Second Plane no matter how hard he fought to stay.
Why in the hell was Ethan’s appointment taking so long anyway?
Tag found a digital marquee in the foyer of a bank ahead. Even accounting for the routine delays of being seen there or in any city, Matthew and his son should have been out by now.
He studied Amanda.
If possession was possible, it was also possible The Text was wrong about a resident’s ability to move things in Prior Plane.
He threw himself in front of Amanda again. “This is my last observation,” he told her. “I’m going to say my final goodbye to Ethan. It’s what’s best for him.”
She stopped and for the first time since their arrival on Fourteenth Street, looked back at Tag instead of at the office door that his son and Matthew had still not exited from.
There was dark swelling around her eyes, and the irises framing her pupils were no longer colored. If he held her stare long enough, the whole of everything between her eyelids went black. Tears were thought to be an impossibility, at least according to some parts of the literature, and she was shedding none now, but Amanda’s face looked as if it’d had no break from crying for days. An authentic sadness, imprinted, and impossibly hard to believe she’d have conjured any of it intentionally when she could look any way that she wanted.
“I’m as far gone as I look, Tag. Do with that what you will.”
“You chose to look this way?”
“Does it matter?”
It did matter.
Though their time away from each other had been short relative to the decades they’d lived as a couple in Prior Plane, Tag suddenly realized it’d been far too easy to stop holding empathy for what his wife was going through. And easier still to let his own grief turn into a vile malice, almost like he’d been wishing something bad would happen to her before she could make something bad happen to their son. She might have chosen to look the way she did to manipulate him, he knew that—she’d always been capable of it—but that didn’t matter.
“How many times have you come here without me?” he asked.
Amanda started walking back toward the pediatrician’s office as she answered. “I’m always here,” she said. “Except when I’m not.”
He imagined Second Plane, the power it wielded over the dead, having to fight to drag his wife away from their son. Her essence, molecules or atoms or space dust, all trying to hang together for as long as possible until it could completely defy the pull back into residency.
For a moment, he felt a beaming sense of pride for Amanda’s newfound resistance to authority. She had always been the rule-follower: no deviations from recipes, no using shortcuts, a real by-the-bookism she had prided herself upon. She didn’t bend the rules to her advantage, and she wasn’t comfortable calling on favors, even when favors were due. She had never cheated at games or worked the system, at least not intentionally. She’d never been unfaithful or sinister or hell-bent on revenge. Tag certainly couldn’t say the same. All this was moot now.
They were both fighting for their son. Just in very different ways.
As he caught up to her, she made a sudden movement to the left to get out of the way of a living pedestrian walking in front of them. It was odd.
According to Donovan, ethereality was not invisibility—they were seeing the street projected into their consciousness, but weren’t physically there on Fourteenth Avenue, inhabiting the space in some cloaked way. They couldn’t impede the living’s momentum.
Yet Amanda flinched like she could bump into the living if she wasn’t careful. The concern for her that had rekindled in Tag extinguished. She wasn’t worried about hitting someone; she was a raptor testing the fences, hoping the right move at the right time would have some effect. She still thought she had something to do with that fucking cereal bowl.
“Is this really your last observation?” she asked. She stopped walking but kept her attention on the clinic door. The sweetness in her voice, one she often deployed to get her way while living, left Tag briefly believing she was reconsidering her plan. “If you are truly done visiting, I hope you know I won’t find you to report back on Ethan’s adventures.”
He reached for her hand, and she allowed the union. “This isn’t the best way forward, Amanda.”
“Spare me,” she said. She cast his hand back to him hard enough for it to cease existing momentarily. “Hearing you, of all people, use new-age babble like that is the pinnacle of cringe.”
“So where does it end for you?” he asked, hating that his tone had sounded desperate.
“We’re already dead, Tag. Newsflash: It ended.”
“Exactly,” he said. He held off on sharing what he’d learned about Third Plane. “We’re dead. Ethan is not.”
“Not yet.”
“Do you even hear yourself? Jesus Christ.” His anger at her was so intense it pushed the edges of his face in all directions—a true conniption—but he managed to recover his façade before it popped.
“Apparently, the son of God is no such thing.”
“Seriously, Amanda. I get it—I can try to get it—but there are rules.”
“So now we’re calling them rules?”
“Suggestions. Whatever.”
“Tell me you know we made a grave fucking mistake,” she said.
He had no pulse that could race, but the energy within whatever he’d become would have passed easily for such a thing. He’d never hit her, and couldn’t technically now—still wouldn’t even if he could—but thought about it nonetheless. She had gone fucking mad.
“Admit it, and maybe I’ll move on.”
“I’m not going to tell you that,” he said.
“Why not?”
He managed to dial his frustrations back and took a chance on a tone more logical. “Because where you see failure, I see progress. I see friends fighting with all they have to make sure he is cared for. They fucked up. We fucked up. Everyone fucks up. The key is owning the fuck-ups you make. That’s how you move forward. Matthew and Nicole are moving forward the best they can. And Emily is a delight. She loves Ethan—surely, you’ve seen it.”
“I need to hear you say you know you fucked up.” If not for the forthcoming report on Ethan’s health, he’d have left right then. “You left our son with an addict!” Her voice boomed like the God many people die expecting. Perhaps she sensed she was pushing her luck and was at risk of having him flee because, for a moment, she caged her ire. “And who can blame her, right?” Her question was sarcastically sweet. “She’s married to a loser, her daughter’s a twat—everything about them was and is phony as fuck. They weren’t poor actors, I guess I can say that.”
Tag chose to keep quiet until he was certain she was done.
“Say you fucked up, and I’ll leave you alone. You can pop off and go full kumbaya with the other residents. You. Fucked. Up. And now our son’s life is a tragedy. Just say it!”
Dozens of pedestrians had come and gone and were still passing them by, but none stopped to butt in. Tag wondered if they would have even while living.
“We made the decision together,” he said, almost too quiet to be heard.
“Bullshit. My parents were my first choice, but no. Too old, too risky, you said.” She was grasping at straws now.
“You need to talk to Rebecca.”
“Not happening.”
“Fine. Find someone else—”
“Not happening!” she repeated.
“Even if you could bring Ethan to Second Plane, he won’t be the little boy you love. He’ll be our son, sure, but older, age-accelerated. It’s all in The Text.”
“It’s not true.” She shook her head.
She walked briskly toward the pediatrician’s office, directly to the front door, as if she intended to dishonor their original agreement to stay outside. Even so, he didn’t follow her.
“What part of your childhood was so entirely fucked up that you would deny Ethan his own?” He instantly regretted shouting at her. Shouting had never worked before.
She turned back to look at Tag, her face tight with anger. “There are children in Second Plane.”
Tag rolled his eyes. “You’ve seen kids, have you?”
Just then, the door swung open. By reflex, Tag thought himself between Amanda and the clinic door. He didn’t really believe she could do anything, did he? But he couldn’t afford to take any chances.
“No, but I know they’re there,” she said with a certainty that made Tag shiver.
Ethan emerged, bouncing on his feet. He licked a shiny red lollipop in one hand and held a green one in the other, still wrapped.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice edging toward panic as he walked backward to stay in front of her, not that it would make any difference. The dead could be anywhere they wanted to be while observing. Just think herself there, and poof. Still, it felt better to present himself as an obstacle. “What are you doing, Amanda?”
Matthew stepped out of the clinic and collared the boy gently by the shoulder.
Amanda’s momentum hadn’t slowed.
Nothing physical can be done, felt, or made to happen.
Donovan’s assurances meant even less now.
“I can feel the children there, Tag. I can hear them.”
“You’re delusional.” Tag said. He wanted to hit her where it hurt. Always composed Amanda in Prior Plane wilted at any thought of being ungrounded—Tag knew this, knew her well enough to push her buttons. He wanted, more than anything, to throw her off course. “My question is,” Tag said, practically spitting the words, “were you always?”
Matthew and Ethan turned to head in the other direction, their backs to them now.
“Some residents have their children with them, as children, not as some bullshit accelerated version of their children. I can hear them. If I can prove it, what does it matter?” she asked.
She stopped her approach. He was afraid to know why.
Behind him, Matthew walked Ethan by the hand, his phone to his ear. Tag and Amanda were missing the call to Lucinda—missing the results of the check-up.
He stepped into Amanda’s form and let weeks’ worth of building frustration explode, hoping like hell that the energy of his anger might short-circuit her back to Second Plane.
“Talk to a mentor. Talk to the residents. Fucking read The Text. You can’t prove it. There aren’t any children in Second Plane. I’m not having this conversation. I’m done.”
But he wasn’t done.
In light of what Martha had told him regarding possession and the existence of Third Plane, a life after their current life after death—a life worse than death—The Text might be all lies. But he feared investigating any further. He’d already faced so much uncertainty in Second Plane, dealing with any more threatened to break him. He knew it. It was easier to put blind faith in The Text, listen to Donovan, and move forward from the life he knew. He wanted to process his grief and stop clinging to the pain of wanting to hug his son one last time.
