Here After

by Sean Costello

“When I was a kid, I could sometimes see things other people couldn’t. Scary things, for a kid, anyway.” “Like what, ghosts?” “I prefer to think of them as spirits. The doctors called them hallucinations, and I spent some time in institutions, learning the joys of antipsychotics and electroshock therapy. And that taught me to keep what I saw—and felt—to myself.” “Jesus.” “Yeah. It started when I was thirteen. My best friend’s dog went missing, a beautiful Samoyed named Booker. Booker had slipped his collar one night and run off. He’d been gone a couple days, and Teri, my friend, was beside herself, carrying the dog’s collar everywhere. We were sitting on the steps at my house one morning and Teri started crying. She dropped the collar, and when I picked it for her up I saw Booker dead in a ditch—just a flash—the same way you might be able to close your eyes and picture it, but my eyes were open. The experience terrified me. I dropped that collar like a hot potato and threw up in my mother’s azaleas. I didn’t breath a word about it to Teri—to anyone—just said I had the flu and went to bed. They found Booker a few days later in a ditch about a mile from Teri’s house. Hit by a car.