Revival

It could have been, except for the revolver in his hand.

I stared at it for a long time, frowning, trying to recall. I couldn’t then, and I have refused Ed Braithwaite’s offer to hypnotize me in an effort to recover my blocked memories. Partly this is because I’m afraid of what hypnosis might release from the darker regions of my mind. Mostly it’s because I know what must have happened.

I turned from Charlie’s body (that expression of horror was still stamped on his face) to look at Mary Fay. I had fired the revolver five times, I was sure of that, but only four bullets had gone into her. One had gone wild, not surprising when you consider my state of mind. But when I lifted my eyes to the wall, I saw two bullet holes there.

Had I gone back to the resort, then returned the previous evening? I supposed it was possible, but I didn’t think I could have brought myself to do that, even in a blackout. No, I had fixed this scene before I left. Then I went back, crashed the golf cart, staggered up the steps, and fell asleep in the lobby.

Charlie hadn’t dragged himself across the room; I was the one who did the dragging. I propped him against the bureau, put the gun in his right hand, and fired it into the wall. The cops who would eventually discover this bizarre scene might not test Charlie’s hand for gunshot residue, but if they did, they would find it.

I wanted to cover Mary Fay’s face, but everything had to be left exactly as it was, and what I wanted most of all was to escape that room of shadows. I took a moment longer, though. I knelt beside my old fifth business and touched one of his thin wrists.

“You should have stopped, Charlie,” I said. “You should have stopped a long time ago.”

But could he have done that? It would be easy to say yes, because that would allow me to lay blame. Only I’d have to blame myself as well, because I hadn’t stopped, either. Curiosity is a terrible thing, but it’s human.

So human.

 • • •

“I hadn’t been there at all,” I told Dr. Braithwaite. “That’s what I decided, and there was only one person who could testify that I had been.”

“The nurse,” Ed said. “Je

“I thought she’d have no choice but to help me. We had to help each other, and the way to do it would be to say we’d left Goat Mountain together, when Jacobs started raving about turning off Mary Fay’s life support. I was sure Je

“And also got voicemail.”

“Yes.” I put my hands over my face. Astrid’s days of answering her phone had been all over by then. “Yes, that’s right.”

 • • •

Here’s what happened. Je

 • • •

Not all of Jacobs’s cures killed themselves, but over the next two years, a great many did. Not all of them took loved ones with them, but over fifty did; this I know from my research, which I shared with Ed Braithwaite. He would like to write it off as coincidence. He can’t quite do it, although he is happy to dispute my own conclusion from this parade of madness, suicide, and murder: Mother demands sacrifices.

Patricia Farmingdale, the lady who poured salt in her eyes, recovered enough of her vision to smother her elderly father in his bed before blowing her brains out with her husband’s Ruger. Emil Klein, the dirt-eater, shot his wife and son, then went out to his garage, poured lawnmower gas over himself, and struck a match. Alice Adams—cured of cancer at a Cleveland revival—went into a convenience store with her boyfriend’s AR-15 and unloaded, killing three random people. When the clip was empty, she pulled a snub-nose .38 from her pocket and fired it into the roof of her mouth. Margaret Tremayne, one of Pastor Da

Then there was Al Stamper. You probably know about him; how could you have missed the screaming headlines on the supermarket tabloids? He invited both of his ex-wives to di

I’m sure I didn’t find all the cases, scattered across the country as they were, and buried in the outbreaks of senseless violence that seem more and more to be a part of daily life in America. Bree could have found others, but she wouldn’t have helped me even if she had still been single and living in Colorado. Bree Donlin-Hughes wants nothing to do with me these days, and I totally get that.

Shortly before Christmas last year, Hugh phoned Bree’s mother and asked her to come up to his office at the big house. He said he had a surprise for her, and he certainly did. He strangled his old lover with a lamp cord, carried her body into the garage, and slipped her into the passenger seat of his vintage Lincoln Continental. Then he got behind the wheel, started the engine, got some rock on the radio, and sucked exhaust.

Bree knows I promised to steer clear of Jacobs . . . and Bree knows I lied.

 • • •

“Let us suppose it’s all true,” Ed Braithwaite said during one of our recent sessions.

“How daring of you,” I said.

He smiled, but stayed on point. “It still wouldn’t follow that the vision you saw of that hellish afterlife was a true vision. I know it still haunts you, Jamie, but consider all the people—not excluding John of Patmos, author of the Book of Revelation—who’ve had visions of heaven and hell. Old men . . . old women . . . even children claim to have peeked beyond the veil. Heaven Is for Real is basically the afterlife vision of a kid who almost died when he was four—”

“Colton Burpo,” I said. “I read it. He talks about a horsie only Jesus can ride.”

“Make fun all you want,” Braithwaite said, shrugging. “Lord knows it’s an easy account to make fun of . . . but Burpo also met a miscarried sister whom he knew nothing about. That’s verifiable information. Like all those murder-suicides.”

“Many murder-suicides, but Colton only met one sister,” I said. “The difference is one of quantity. I never took a course in statistics, but I know that.”

“I’m happy to assume the kid’s vision of the afterlife was false, because it supports my thesis that your vision of it—the sterile city, the ant-things, the black-paper sky—was equally false. You see what I’m driving at, don’t you?”