Everybody Lies in Hell excerpt
The split secondafter I died I found myself standing on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, butI knew I wasn’t really in Brooklyn. First off, I was murdered in Newark, NewJersey, and I remembered my death vividly, but even without that I would’veknown I wasn’t really in Brooklyn given how unnaturally quiet it was without anothersingle person in sight. And while Montague Street looked pretty much as Iremembered it, some of the buildings were wrong, and some of the stores liningthe street were from my childhood instead of the present day. I probablycouldn’t have articulated at that precise moment that I was in a version ofhell of my own making, but at some level I knew that was what had happened.
I started walkingwest on Montague Street so I could see whether the Manhattan skyline was stillthere, and it was, at least mostly as I remembered it. I’m sure some of thebuildings were wrong, but it still seemed very real to me even though I knew itwasn’t. After I stood gaping at the skyline for what seemed like an eternitybut was probably only minutes, I headed south toward Coney Island. I don’t knowwhy exactly but I guess I wanted to see how much of my version of Brooklynexisted. I knew many of the street signs I passed weren’t right—they were fromother neighborhoods, and some of them from other boroughs. And then there wereother street signs that were too blurry to make out. But none of that mattered,because by then I knew where I really was. Still, though, I kept walking. Atone point, I stopped to look at my reflection in a storefront window andrealized that I was wearing a cheap suit and a fedora. When I was alive I neverwore a hat, and almost never wore suits, and certainly never the fifty-ninedollar variety that I had on. At the time I was murdered I was wearing jeans,tennis sneakers, a polo shirt, and a leather jacket, which was what I usuallywore when I worked my job as an investigator. Still, on seeing my reflection inthat window, the suit, scuffed up shoes, and hat seemed right
I was somewherein Bay Ridge when this man who looked like he’d been dropped in from the eighteenthcentury wandered into view. I was never much of a history buff, but that was theway he looked given his blue satin waistcoat, frilly silk shirt, andknee-length breeches, as well as his overall shaggy appearance. As he shuffledtoward me, he looked almost like he could’ve been an extra from a zombie movie,although one set several hundred years in the past. His expression was a rictusof fear, and there was only deadness in his eyes. I gave him a wide berth as heambled past me and watched as he staggered to the front of an eight-storybrick building. He stood transfixed for a long moment, and then all at oncestarted clawing at the brick wall and violently smashing his face against it,and he did this quietly without ever uttering a sound.
I picked up mypace after that trying to put some distance between us, and it was only secondslater that I left Brooklyn and found myself someplace entirely different.Instead of the Brooklyn streets where I’d been walking for hours, behind me nowwere meadows and a mountain range that was of such lush greenness that itseemed more like a painting than anything real. The sky that had been a grayishwhite in my version of Brooklyn was now a deep blue, and the sun that hadearlier been missing behind New York smog and clouds was shining brightlyoverhead. Off in the distance were groves of a tall and thin variety of pinetree that I’d never seen before, as well as other types of trees, shrubs, andplants that were foreign to me, and up ahead past rolling meadows was asparkling ocean made up of different shades of blues and aquamarines that were verydifferent from anything I’d ever seen of the Atlantic Ocean from Coney Island.
I trekked acrossthe meadows toward the ocean, and as I got closer I could see palm and coconut treesalong a crescent-shaped beach, and in the middle of this a person lying on alounge chair.
I had to climbdown a steep incline of rocks to get to the beach, and as I did this, I couldsee that the person was a woman wearing a floral-patterned beach cover-up, herhair a perfect silver. There was an empty lounge chair next to her, and betweenher chair and the other was a small drink stand on which sat a glass containinga brownish-orange drink with a hibiscus flower floating in it.
She heard meapproaching and turned her head toward me. She was wearing sunglasses so Icouldn’t see her eyes, but her expression at first was one of disinterest. Thatchanged as she smiled thinly at me, and with a wave of her hand, invited me tosit next to her. She looked ageless yet not young with perfect, unwrinkled skinand a slender, attractive body. If it wasn’t for her well-coifed silver hair,she could’ve passed for being in her thirties. After I settled into the loungechair next to her she held out a manicured slender hand and introduced herselfas Olivia Danville, her accent sounding as if she came from England and wasfrom money.
“Mike Stone,” Isaid.
When I took herhand I expected to feel something cold and clammy. After all, we were bothdead. I was surprised to find how warm and dry her skin felt.
“Where am I?” Iasked.
That caused awan smile to form over her lips. “Where do you think you are, Mike?”
“I’m guessing Iwandered from my version of hell into yours. Yours isn’t bad. We’re on a tropicalisland in the Pacific?”
“Very good,Mike. Yes, my reality, or hell, ended up being Kapalua, Maui. We’re on probablythe nicest beach on the island. Not the biggest by any stretch, but the prettiest.”
As I looked outat the ocean I realized it wasn’t just the two of us out there. There wereothers in the water. I could make out several bodies that were floating facedown before they sank, and only a minute later an elderly woman’s face poppedup out of a wave before she disappeared for good. Olivia must’ve noticed mestaring at these drowning people, but she didn’t comment about them. Insteadshe asked me if I knew how I died.
“Yeah,” I said.“It would be hard to forget this soon. It only just happened.”
“What do youmean by that?”
“It was only afew hours ago that I was fatally shot, and then the next thing I knew I was inBrooklyn wearing different clothes than what I had on when I died and withoutmy chest ripped open by a .45 slug. Except it wasn’t really Brooklyn, only aversion of it that I somehow created. And now I’m in your version of hell,which lucky for you happens to be Hawaii.”
She shifted inher chair to get a better look at me. I couldn’t see her eyes because of her sunglassesbut I knew she was staring at me intently. She shifted again in her chair sothat she was back to gazing out at the ocean.
“Do you knowwhat you did to end up in hell?” she asked.
“Yeah, I knowexactly why I’m here.”
We sat quietlyafter that for several minutes. When she spoke next it was to ask me why Ithought I ended up in her version of hell. I told her it was probably becauseher version was stronger than mine. “Somehow I got sucked into yours, althoughI’m guessing if I walked back to where I came from I’d find myself again inBrooklyn.”
She picked upher drink and brushed the flower away from her mouth so she could take a sip.She carefully placed the glass back on the stand. “Your level of awareness isquite remarkable,” she said. “Out of the billions of souls here in hell only atiny percentage have any sense of awareness, and very few of those would knowwhat you already do this quickly after dying. Do you feel sick yet?”
“I feel fine.”
“Incredible. Youshould’ve been feeling quite ill by now.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s whathappens when you’re pulled into a stronger reality, at least for the first fewtimes in that same reality.”
A larger wavethan any of the others crashed onto the beach, and it washed a man’s crumpled bodyonto the shore. The suit he wore was badly torn and he was covered in seaweed, andfrom what I could tell it looked like the type of suit someone would’ve worn inthe early nineteen hundreds. His face was hidden from me, but from howunnaturally bloated and white his hands and exposed skin looked I would’veguessed he’d been in the water for months, if not much longer. It probablyshouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did when he pushed himself to hisknees and crawled back into the ocean, and he soon disappeared under anotherwave.
“Those souls outthere drowning,” I said. “What is it with them?”
“You should beable to explain that as well as I can.”
