Doyle After Death Read Free

living even teaching English. That had been my plan: day job teaching, make my name writing.
    I tried. For a while. Couldn’t write anything I wanted to even try to publish; couldn’t get the degree.
    I liked to read Hammett and Chandler and James M. Cain and Richard Stark and John D. MacDonald and Robert B. Parker and, going back, Arthur Conan Doyle. So I thought, why not get a private investigator’s license?
    So I did, in Las Vegas. I almost made a living at it. Sometimes. But pretty much—­my short career as a detective was just another failure.
    And that last year I sat in the bars or in front of my flickering television, and contemplated my failure. Every so often I seemed to hear my old man’s voice: “ You can’t make it on your own, there’s always the Marines. Worked for me. I needed help and they gave it to me. ”
    The Marines. Me? Right.
    Come to think of it I did do something else, that last year: I listened to music. Okay, so it was in a bar. I sat on a bar stool at Jinky Jake’s, in southwest Vegas, and listened to their antiquated jukebox. Not one of those modern systems that take music off the internet—­but a real old jukebox with old vinyl records in it. It played scratchy old 1940s music. I loved bebop and big band and New Orleans trad jazz and western swing. I’d sit on that bar stool, trying to decide if I would spend my last three dollars on juke music or on their cheapest beer.
    It hadn’t been a good year.
    And now I was dead, walking on a sandy path in the afterlife.
    Fiona and I got to the top of the trail, slowly ascending into brighter daylight. We paused and I looked over the prospect inland. A notch in the bluff led to a shallow valley enfolded by a mix of darkly lush maples and oaks. A body of clear water lay mirrorlike to the south; to the north, curtains of rain rippled softly. In between, a small town was spread out below us. Most of the houses were old-­fashioned colonial-­style cottages, some of them oddly proportioned. It reminded me of woodcuts I’d seen of early villages in western Massachusetts, some little burg Ben Franklin and his cronies would visit.
    â€œThat’s Main Street, right there,” Fiona said. “Follow that to the downtown area. There’s a boardinghouse, a two-­story brick place with ivy on it—­you can’t miss it. You can stay in that for now, if you want. I’d stay out of the swamp to the south, if I was you—­at least don’t go there alone. And if you go north”—­she pointed north, where the hills rose steeply to a series of ridges cloaked in low cloud—­“keep your eyes open. Some up there are good ­people, but some . . .” She shrugged with one shoulder. “We have some crazies here, too.”
    I had a lot of questions and opened my mouth—­but she shook her head and raised a hand. “Enough for now.”
    I chuckled. “Okay, Fiona. I hope I’ll be seeing you around.”
    â€œYou will. I’m a sort of mascot here.”
    â€œListen—­can I ask . . . couldn’t all this—­I mean what I’m experiencing—­couldn’t it be one of those hallucinations from . . . like when the brain’s running out of oxygen? Next there’ll be a tunnel and then a light and then . . . light’s out.”
    â€œNo. Didn’t you already pass through a tunnel?” she asked.
    â€œNow that you mention it—­yeah.”
    â€œBelieve in this place, Nick. ’Cause it’s real and it’s solid. I mean, some of us call the Earth the ‘dirt world,’ but the afterworld has its own dirt.” She stomped once on the ground for emphasis. “Solid, too. You’ll see. I’ve been here about sixty-­five years. And the light’s never gone out yet. I mean, it gets dark , but not like you would think.” She turned her