Trucker teams often had sleeper tractors with a double bed, an under-counter refrigerator, and a microwave behind the cockpit, but they didn’t have a bathroom. On long hauls, they didn’t want to pay for a motel room just to take a quick shower.
After hanging the towel and the washcloth on the shower door and setting everything else on the counter beside the sink, I glanced in the mirror, decided I looked only slightly more buffoonish with the sunglasses atop my head, as if I had a second pair of eyes nestled in my hair, and then turned in place, studying the room.
Five isn’t my lucky number. I don’t actually have a lucky number any more than I have an official Odd Thomas tree or flower, or bird. Claiming to have a lucky number wasn’t a lie, at least not a serious one, because no one could possibly be harmed in any way by such a statement. It was instead a finesse. I finesse a lot.
I was drawn to Shower 5 by psychic magnetism. Considering that I was searching for the rhinestone cowboy and considering that this room was unoccupied, I’m not sure what I expected to find.
If he had been here earlier, perhaps I detected a residue of psychic energy much the way that a bloodhound can track an escaped convict by the scent of the man’s shed skin cells, drops of sweat, and other spoor.
Although the shower room smelled of a lemon-scented disinfectant and seemed to have been thoroughly cleaned between users, I sought paranormal evidence of my quarry by touching the chrome spigots on the sink, the flush handle on the toilet, and the pull on the shower door. None of them inspired a frisson of weirdness reminiscent of the trucker in the supermarket parking lot.
As I considered whether I should turn on the water and pretend to take a shower for the benefit of Zilla at the attendant’s desk or just leave without explanation, movement at the periphery of vision caused me to turn to my left in alarm. I remained alone. The activity seemed to be in the mirror, to which I stood at such a severe angle that I could not see what moved impossibly in the reflection of this stilled chamber.
When I stepped to the sink, the shower room in the mirror was not lined with white tiles. The walls were bare concrete. Instead of several flush-mounted lights in the ceiling, a single fixture with a cone-shaped metal shade dangled on a chain. Although I felt no
draft, the hanging lamp swung lazily, its swooning circle of light causing phantoms of shadow to glide around like dancers in a slow waltz.
Something spattered wetly against my right cheek, and I turned to find myself no longer in the Star Truck shower room but in a drab chamber, as grim as a dungeon, with concrete walls like those in the mirror. Maybe not concrete. It was more like … the
idea
of concrete. I don’t know what I mean by that. And now I felt the draft that swayed the hanging lamp. More startling than the sudden change of venue was the presence of the rhinestone cowboy, whose spittle slid down my face.
His materialization, like a summoned demon manifesting inside a pentagram, caused my breath to catch in my throat, and the big .45 Sig Sauer pistol with the silencer, aimed at my face, fully paralyzed me.
My only weapon was my wit, and though it could wound, it could not kill. In fact, at that moment, I couldn’t think of a cutting line and, disgusted by the gob of spit, I said only, “Yuck.”
In the gloom, the spiky white hair made him look like one of those troll dolls that, to me, have always appeared less cute than psychotic. His cyanide-blue eyes, which seemed to glow from within, matched the poisonous character of his words: “Are you all out of Granny Smiths and Red Delicious, Johnny Appleseed? I’d like it if you explained to me who and what you are, but I’d like it even better if you were just dead.”
Without giving me the courtesy of a brief reprieve to tell him what
I
would like, he pulled the trigger, and the flesh of my throat dissolved like glass, a thousand shards of pain shattering through me as blood fountained up my throat and drowning darkness pulled me down.
DEATH PROVED TO BE DREAMLESS, IF DEATH IT WAS, AND then I woke, lying on the white-tile floor.
The sunglasses had been flung off my head and broken at the bridge. They lay directly under the fluffy white towel and washcloth that hung from the bar on the door to the roomy shower stall.
I was on my side, in the fetal position, and I might have been crying for my mommy if Mother hadn’t been a deeply disturbed woman who, during my childhood, had often threatened me with a gun. I was raised not with the principles of Dr. Benjamin Spock in mind, but according to the even darker theories of Dr. Jekyll.
I felt no pain, but I was reluctant to raise a hand to my throat, for fear of finding torn flesh, a gaping wound. When I dared to swallow, however, I was able to do so, and I realized both that I could breathe and that the taste of blood didn’t foul my mouth.
Having lost my reason for existence when I lost Stormy Llewellyn nineteen months earlier, I lived a life I didn’t need. Although I had no fear of death, I hoped to avoid excruciating pain, long suffering, and concussion-induced blackouts from which I would awake with embarrassing tattoos. Now I was relieved to find myself mysteriously
alive, relieved largely because I had pledged to protect Annamaria from those who would kill her, because I felt compelled to save the three innocent children that the cowboy trucker intended to set afire, and because suddenly I had a fierce appetite for a platter of cheese meatloaf, steak fries, and coleslaw, which I hoped to satisfy before I died again and stayed dead.
One good thing about a condemned man’s last meal is that he doesn’t have to worry about acid reflux.
Getting to my feet, I realized that I wasn’t alone. I spun toward the other with less than balletic grace, as Baryshnikov might have moved if he had ever performed
Swan Lake
while drunk, my hands out in front of me as if to catch any bullets that might shortly be in flight.
On the tiled and built-in bench adjacent to the shower sat a famous portly man in a three-piece black suit, white shirt, black tie, and black wingtips polished to a high shine. His round face, full cheeks, and two chins had been less pronounced but evident even in photographs of him as a young child. Then as now, his lower lip protruded far past the upper; however, as both a boy and a man, he never appeared to be pouting, but seemed instead to be pondering some profound idea.
“Mr. Hitchcock,” I said, and he smiled.
So soon after being shot dead and finding myself miraculously alive again, I wasn’t ready for Alfred Hitchcock. Bewildered, I went to the sink, leaned toward the mirror, searched the reflection for the concrete walls and the single hanging light—for the dungeon or abattoir, or whatever the place had been—but saw only the clean, bright shower room.
I have never liked looking at myself in a mirror. I don’t know why exactly. I’m not movie-star handsome, but I’m not the Creature
from the Black Lagoon, either. I’m pretty much a face in the crowd, which is a blessing when, like me, you have a reason not to draw attention to yourself. There’s just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It’s not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it’s that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don’t see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren’t there.
At least my face was not splashed with blood, and my eyes were not dead-flat yet fevered like those of a zombie. I didn’t know what it felt like to be a lingering spirit unwilling to pass over to the Other Side, but I was certain that it didn’t feel like this. If the encounter with the rhinestone cowboy had not been a hallucination or a vision of a future confrontation, if I had in fact been shot in the throat and killed, I was nevertheless alive again by virtue of a miracle.
I didn’t try to puzzle through how such a thing could be. The world is filled with mysteries; and I have learned that every mystery will either explain itself—or it won’t. I can’t force Nature to draw back her curtains and reveal the hidden machinery that constitutes the true workings of the world.
When I turned once more to Mr. Hitchcock, the great director gave me two thumbs up.
I sat beside him on the bench. My hands were shaking. I clutched my knees to still the tremors.
“I saw you the other day,” I said, “walking on the shore, past the cottage we’ve been renting. You waved at me.”
He thrust out his lower lip even farther and nodded. Although his face was perhaps best suited for a dour expression, he smiled and seemed almost merry. Judging by the wry look in his eyes, I thought that he had something to say that would have made me
laugh. Having died in 1980, however, he was a spirit, and spirits never speak.
In previous volumes of these memoirs, I have written of other famous souls who have sought me out, hoping that I could help them find the courage to cross over. Mr. Elvis Presley was with me for a few years before I understood why he lingered in this world and could convince him to leave it. Mr. Frank Sinatra kept me company for a much shorter time, a more volatile spirit than the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, always exciting and perhaps more helpful to me than I was to him, though Old Blue Eyes eventually did cross over.
From those experiences, I wrongly concluded that if another famous person among the lingering dead came to me for counseling, he or she would be a legendary singer. Perhaps Bing Crosby or Bobby Darin, or John Lennon. On some bad days, I worried that it might be Sid Vicious or Kurt Cobain.
Instead, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, surely one of the five greatest directors in the history of Hollywood—maker of
Psycho
but also of the sparkling comedy
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
and numerous masterpieces in between—had come to me for help, decades after his death. I already knew much about him. Later I would learn much more. But at that moment in the Star Truck shower room, I felt intellectually inadequate to counsel a man of such accomplishment.
Still shocked from being murdered and resurrected, if in fact such a thing had happened, I found myself speechless. I stared at him for a long moment, and then looked around the white room as if what I ought to say to him might be printed boldly on the walls. It wasn’t. Consequently, more embarrassed by my loss for words
than by any stupid thing that I might say, I babbled in search of substance.
“Sorry, I’m a little shaken. The walls were concrete. The cowboy was just suddenly there. Or maybe he wasn’t. He shot me point-blank in the throat. Or maybe he didn’t. I’m sorry. You don’t know about the cowboy. He’s not a cowboy, really. He drives a big truck, not a horse. Nobody
drives
a horse, of course, it doesn’t have wheels, but you know what I mean. The creep called me Johnny Appleseed. Not that the name Johnny Appleseed is an insult. Johnny was really a great guy. It was the way he said it. Scornfully. With contempt. He’s a nasty piece of work. I mean the cowboy guy, not Johnny Appleseed. I don’t have anything against Johnny Appleseed. If he hadn’t planted all those trees a couple hundred years ago, I wouldn’t have had any ammunition in that supermarket and I’d probably be dead now in the produce section.”
Mr. Hitchcock raised one hand to rest his chin on it, and he regarded me with keen interest, as if I were Sherlock to his Watson, although I was more likely Larry-Curly-Moe to his Einstein.
After several deep breaths, I regained my composure. “Sir, I’ll do what I can for you. I’m honored that you’ve come to me. But since you weren’t murdered, then you must be reluctant to cross over for personal reasons. Psychological reasons. Maybe a sense of guilt. Maybe remorse for something done in life.”
He raised one eyebrow.
“Mr. Presley and Mr. Sinatra,” I said, “were almost as public about their private lives as they were about their careers, so I was able to puzzle out the reasons why their spirits lingered here. I think you kept your family and your personal life private, and since you can’t talk, this is probably going to be a difficult case for me, so I just hope you’ll be patient.”
He removed his hand from under his chin and used it to pat me on the shoulder in a kindly manner, as if to reassure me that, having lingered in this world so many years, he did not expect to be led directly to a celestial escalator.
The spirits of the lingering dead feel as warm and solid to me as does any living person. They could comfort me with a pat, as Mr. Hitchcock had just done, or accept comfort from me, but they could not punch, claw, strangle, or otherwise mutilate me. If they struck out in anger, their fists passed through me without effect.
The only human spirit that can be dangerous to the living is one that goes poltergeist. This condition results from frustration and rage. The furious ghost draws energy from some dark place and pumps it into this world, flinging everything from books to furniture, to storms of cutlery.
Generally speaking, spirits capable of going poltergeist were unredeemed if not malevolent. If they ever finally departed this world, they would most likely wind up in the Dark Side of the Other Side, where you never get cookies or hot chocolate. There were exceptions, poltergeists of good intent, of which Mr. Sinatra had been one, when he came to my rescue in a desperate moment in Magic Beach, little more than a month earlier.
I am aware that this part of my experience has started to sound like shameless name-dropping and calls into question my veracity. In my defense, I can only say that the spirits of famous people are a tiny fraction of the lingering dead whom I have helped to cross over. And if you think I’ve imagined them in order to sell more copies of my books, you are proved wrong by the fact that these memoirs will not be published while I’m alive, to ensure that I will never be imprisoned in a secret government facility and studied like a lab rat.
Besides, regardless of where I might be going on the Other Side, whether into the Light or the Dark, I won’t have a use for royalties after I’m dead. If I’ve got my theology right: In the Light, all that I could ever need or want will be free; and in the Dark, no currency ever minted can buy my way out.