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.
Mr. Hitchcock stopped patting my shoulder, rose from the tiled bench, and crossed the room. He beckoned with one finger, and as I rose to my feet, he walked through the closed door, into the hallway.
Apparently, travel is much easier when you’re dead. No need to concern yourself with doors, tollbooths, or airport security agents who want to probe your butt.
When I opened the door and stepped into the hall, Zilla was at her workstation, folding freshly laundered towels.
Mr. Hitchcock stood a hundred feet away, at the intersection of this corridor with one serving the TV lounge and the chiropractor’s office. He raised his right arm high and waved, as if we were in a crowded train station and he needed to attract my attention through the bustling throng.
The attendant couldn’t see him, of course. She said to me, “Is something wrong?”
“I decided I didn’t need a shower, after all, ma’am. The idea of a shower was refreshing enough.”
“I can only give you a partial refund,” she said apologetically.
Eager to follow Mr. Hitchcock, who seemed to intend to lead me somewhere, I said, “That’s all right. I don’t need a refund.”
As I turned away, she stepped out from behind her station and approached me. “Wait a minute, sir, please. It’s just, you see, whether you used the towel or not, we still have to wash it, and clean the room.”
She was earnest and clearly wanted to treat me fairly.
“I understand,” I assured her. “No problem.”
“But I can return half your money.”
“No, ma’am, really, it’s fine. It was only the idea of a shower, but I paid for it with paper money, which is only the idea of money, so it was a totally fair exchange.”
My attitude perplexed her into silence as I hurried toward Mr. Hitchcock.
He led me along the intersecting hallway to the very back of the building, where he phased through a fire door labeled STAIRS. I opened the door and entered the stairwell in a more traditional manner, in time to see him floating down the first flight, his feet a few inches above the treads.
As I followed, looking down on him, I decided he had manifested not as he had been late in life but as he had been in his early fifties, hair still dark but receding, the beginning of a bald spot at the crown of his head. He was born in 1899, so his fifties were the 1950s, a decade in which he made Rear Window, Dial M for Murder, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, The Wrong Man, and Vertigo, more classic films than most directors produce in a lifetime. Rebecca, the first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Notorious, Spellbound, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, and so many other great works were already in his past. Psycho, The Birds, and others were in his future.
We descended four flights, which put us in the basement. With the aplomb that he exhibited routinely in life, the director floated through another closed door, and I discovered that beyond it lay the mechanical heart of the truck stop, a chamber that perhaps seemed more vast than it was, housing huge boilers, chillers, a maze of big PVC pipes serving the heating-cooling system, and banks of circuit breakers. There was also much equipment that I could not identify, in fact so much that I might very well have been in the engine room of a starship.
Cold harsh light fell from the fluorescent fixtures. Shadows had sharp edges, and the stainless-steel housings of the various
