Doyle After Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

was possible, Bertram had said.
    And Arthur Conan Doyle was the unofficial constable here . . .
    Bertram pointed. “Well, here’s the town square.”
    Main Street had run straight to the sun-­washed town square. Treeless sidewalks edged the cobblestone commons. The road continued on the other side of the square, twisting crookedly, wending amongst the taller, older houses on the east end of town.
    We paused here to look over the square. A few ­people ambled through. I glanced at an Asian ­couple in 1970s American clothing, smiling, hand in hand, passing a willowy brown-­eyed teenager in a sundress. Anyway, she seemed to be a teenage girl. For all I knew she might’ve been here a hundred years. Was she still a teenager, in some sense, if she’d died in her teens?
    A ­couple of leering young men called out to the girl from across the square.
    â€œHey baby!”
    â€œWhat’s up, girl, you wanna drink?”
    The young men, one black and one white, were both wearing sloppy hanging pants that showed their boxers. They wore Nike sneakers, too, and long white T-­shirts. She thumbed her nose at them and went on. Thumbing her nose, and her hairstyle, seemed to place her chronological origins in the mid-­twentieth century.
    A man in breeches, buckled shoes, half glasses and long gray hair came out of a haberdashery. He was wearing a white Stetson that didn’t go with the rest of his costume, which was more suited for Ben Franklin. Could it be Ben Franklin? I looked closer, and felt some disappointment. It wasn’t him. My father had made me read Franklin’s autobiography. I’d seen lots of woodcuts of him.
    My father. Was he here? My mother had outlived me. But my dad . . . lung cancer, dead at fifty-­seven. Crusty ex-­Marine begging for morphine at the end . . .
    I glanced at my companion. “Say Bertram—­you run into any relatives here?”
    Bertram nodded, but sort of tentatively. “My ma, yeah. But it wasn’t a happy reunion. She was a suicide and . . . she was just passing through. We had a nice talk. But she just sorta wandered off one day. Sometimes ­people wander off, and sometimes they got someplace to wander to .” He scratched his head. ­“People aren’t particularly likely to find their dead parents here. Most don’t. But if you’re persistent and wander around this here world, keep them in your mind, eventually you can find them, and other ­people close to you. If they haven’t melted into the ocean or turned forgetter, or feral . . . any of the other stuff that can happen.”
    I could tell he didn’t like the subject, so I dropped it. I was disappointed and relieved, both, to hear I probably wouldn’t run into my dad in Garden Rest. He always had that air of calm disapproval . . .
    The town square was enclosed by good-­sized brick buildings that seemed to contain small businesses. One of the shops across from us caught my eye with a neon sign, lit even now as the shadows shortened in gathering daylight. Brummigen’s Bar and Grill , it said. The neon glow worked its way along the handwriting-­style name, from the B to the s at signature speed, as if the name was being signed over and over. Unsigned—­and then signed again.
    Next door to it was the Avalon Coffee Shop. “I see there’s coffee in the afterlife,” I said.
    â€œIt’d be hell for sure without it. Good coffee, too. Just like the real stuff. Mostly. ­People need to have a place like that, to sit around together and bullshit, or just, you know, stir their coffee, and not say anything but . . . just being around other ­people, someplace public, like on Earth.”
    â€œI know what you mean.” The coffee-­shop windows looked agreeably steamy. I could see blurred human figures inside, the misted windows making them look like ghosts, and