Phoning the Dead

“You don’t have enough credits,” the message reads.

This is bullshit.

My HereAfter account used to be able to book a call with the Great Bambino—or even Stan Lee—for the cost of an Uber Eats order. Inflation is a son-of-a-bitch, even in the afterlife.

The real problem is the damn agents and all the Screaming Services hosting calls now. There’s SoulLink, SpiriTalk, EtherNal, and BooChirp. With all the exclusive contracts and the growing demand for even a brief chat with a popular Spector, it’s a wonder anyone puts up with it. The entire thing has turned into OnlyFans for dead people.

I know what you’re thinking.

Jesus doesn’t accept incoming calls.

Let’s get that out of the way from the rip. He doesn’t have a verified profile on any of the major services. The blue-check Christs are impersonators, televangelists, and one Mexican magician who died during a water-tank escape in 1998.

But you’ve got the biggies: Cleopatra, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, and Stan Lee. The really famous ones and the tortured artists—Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison.

Babe Ruth—the Sultan of Swat, the Colossus of Clout, the Great Bambino—is exclusive to SoulLink. Mickey Mantle is on HereAfter but only takes calls during baseball season. Yogi Berra accepts almost everyone, although nobody is ever sure whether his answers are coming through garbled or if that’s just Yogi.

And no, before you ask, you cannot call Hitler. Big time shadowban in effect on that one. Doesn’t stop people from trying though. That’s for damn sure.

You can leave him a BooChirp, but it costs fifty credits and is automatically forwarded to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

I refresh the page.

GRACE DONNELLY

Status: Unavailable

My wife has been unavailable for thirteen months. Not that I’m surprised.

HereAfter says every registered Spector retains complete discretion over whether to accept a call. It’s right there in the terms of service, Section 19, Subsection D: Death does not extinguish the right to privacy.

Grace always did need her space.

The clock in the upper-right corner changes to 3:13 a.m. I’ve been checking since midnight. Refreshing her profile every thirty seconds. Sometimes more often.

I refresh again.

Unavailable.

“It’s probably nothing,” I say.

I don’t know why I say it aloud. There is no one here to reassure except me, and I’m not buying it. If I were her, I wouldn’t want to talk to me either.

HereAfter offers me a premium upgrade.

Want to know the moment Grace becomes available? Enable Spector Alerts for only $14.99 per month.

“I already enabled them.”

The screen does not respond. I refresh again. The gray circle beside Grace’s photograph turns green. My whole body goes cold.

GRACE DONNELLY

Status: Accepting Calls

A red button appears.

CONNECT NOW — 24 CREDITS

I have seven.

There are moments in life when a man must exercise fiscal responsibility. Three in the morning, half-drunk, trying to telephone his dead wife is not one of them.

I buy fifty credits.

The call rings. Over and over.

The call connects.

At first, all I hear is breathing.

“Grace?”

“Who’s there?”

It’s her voice. But different.

“It’s me.”

The breathing stops.

“Danny?”

“Yes.”

“You have to stop calling.”

“I’ve never reached you before.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Let me explain myself.”

“Every time you check, it rings here.”

“Where’s here?”

Something scrapes across her end of the connection. A chair, perhaps. Or fingernails dragging over a floor. Spectors never tell us about their surroundings. They can only tell us about the afterlife in the vaguest of terms. Divine will or some such thing. No matter how hard they try, it is simply impossible to relate the information or for us to understand it. However permeable or thin it may have become, no living being can see beyond the veil.

“Grace?”

“He hears it too. He’s coming.”

“Who does?”

“Close the account. Don’t call again.”

The call disconnects.

Her green status light vanishes. My credit balance drops to zero. Twenty-four to connect, twenty-six for the conversation. I didn’t even get to apologize. Maybe that’s a premium feature.

I stare at the whiskey. A square block of ice in the center of a circular glass.

Then a BooChirp notification appears.

You have received a message from an unverified Spector.

The profile picture shows the image of an angel with a halo. My eyes feel swollen and my temple throbs with the enormity of what has just happened.

The message reads:

You told them you saw Owen leaving the house.

I sit very still.

I said exactly that under oath this afternoon. Owen Mercer came out of our front door at 10:17 p.m. His shirt was untucked. There was blood on his cuff. He got into his car and drove away. I found Grace at the bottom of the basement stairs six minutes later.

Owen’s lawyer spent nearly an hour asking whether I might have mistaken somebody else for his client. She had a photograph of his car, a map of our street, and the patience of a woman being paid by the question.

Then Owen helped me out.

“You’re lying,” he said from the defense table.

The judge told him to be quiet. The jurors stared. People tend to remember a man losing his temper at his own murder trial.

Owen had been sending Grace messages for weeks. At first they were all private jokes and plans to see each other. Then she told him she wouldn’t leave me.

You can’t keep doing this to both of us.

Tell him, or I will.

His last message, sent the night she died, said: I’m coming over. We need to talk.

He did come over. His phone put him on our street. He admitted that much. But he told the police he stayed in his car and drove away when Grace didn’t answer the door.

Thirteen months later, he’s on trial for her murder. The prosecution rests tomorrow.

I look back at BooChirp.

Grace?

Three dots appear beneath the angel.

You told them there was blood on his cuff.

There was.

No.

There’s an option to report an unverified Spector for impersonation. I hover over it. Some ghoul with a police blotter and a voice changer could have a pleasant evening at my expense.

Then another message arrives.

You came home before Owen did.

My hand comes off the mouse.

That’s true. Grace was sitting at the kitchen counter when I got home. She looked up at me with her phone facedown beside her, as though putting it that way had erased everything on it.

There’s no reason a dead woman wouldn’t remember that.

How would you know when I got home? I type.

I was there.

Fair point.

Then why are you asking me about Owen?

Because you watched his car from the garage. You never saw him come inside.

I glance toward the front window. The blinds are closed.

He came inside.

Did he?

Grace could get more out of me with two words than most people managed in an hour.

You wouldn’t know what happened after you died, I type.

The three dots appear. Vanish. Appear again.

You’re right. Tell me.

I close the chat window.

BooChirp asks whether I’d like to block this Spector. Blocking an unverified account, it warns, may prevent future contact from someone I know. One last attempt to keep the customer engaged. I’d admire it more if I weren’t the customer.

I open the chat again.

What did you mean when you said he was coming? Owen?

You’re worried about Owen.

He’s on trial for killing you.

And you testified against him.

I told them what I saw.

You saw his car.

I pick up my glass, though there’s almost nothing left in it.

Grace and I shared a tablet. Her messages were still syncing to it, although neither of us knew that until I picked it up on the afternoon she died. I sat on the edge of our bed and read six months of her life in reverse.

I read Owen’s promise to tell me.

I read Grace’s answer: You don’t know Danny. Please don’t come here.

That sentence bothered me more than the photographs. I’d never given Grace reason to be afraid of me.

You read the messages before you came home, she writes.

Yes.

You knew Owen was on his way.

I came home to talk to you.

Then tell me what happened.

For thirteen months, I’ve imagined getting the chance to explain. Grace could be unreasonable about a thing for a day or two, but once she heard the whole story she generally saw my side.

I type slowly.

I asked you about Owen. You said there was nothing to tell. I showed you the messages.

And then?

You said it was over.

It was.

He was on his way to our house.

I told you not to believe him.

She did. She told me she’d ended it and Owen wouldn’t accept that. She reached for her phone to show me his answer, and I knocked it out of her hand. It went under the refrigerator. I spent half an hour on the floor looking for it later.

You could have told me yourself, I write.

I was trying to.

The typing indicator hangs there. It reminds me of the green circle beside her photograph, except this time she’s here and making me wait.

What happened when I tried to get past you?

I shut my eyes.

She put a hand against my chest. I caught her wrist. It happened quickly after that, too quickly for either of us to make a different choice.

I didn’t mean for you to die.

There’s no response.

I’d meant to start with the texts, to remind her that Owen was threatening to come to our house. Without that part, what I’ve written looks terrible.

Grace?

Tell me the rest.

I set down the glass and put both hands on the keyboard.

I shoved you. You hit your head on the counter.

I was still alive.

For a moment I can’t see the screen clearly.

She was alive. She tried to speak while I stood there, deciding whether to call an ambulance. I knelt beside her. I couldn’t make out the words.

Yes, I type.

Why did they find me on the stairs?

Outside, a car goes past without slowing. The headlights move across the ceiling and disappear.

Grace’s phone was still under the refrigerator when I carried her to the basement door. Afterward I went back for it. I cleaned the kitchen. At 10:17, Owen’s car stopped across the street. I watched from the garage while he sat there, looking at the house. He drove off without getting out.

I waited six minutes before calling 911.

I thought they’d know we fought if they found you in the kitchen.

So you moved me.

Yes.

Did Owen ever come inside?

No.

Was there blood on his cuff?

No.

I look toward the front door. No one has knocked. I wish she would say something about what I’ve told her. I could take anger better than those neat little questions.

I heard you on the stand today, she writes. Do you still want him convicted?

He had an affair with my wife. Then he drove to my house the night she died. What did he expect them to think?

Danny. Did Owen kill me?

I press my fingers against my temples.

No. I killed you.

My phone rings. It’s an ordinary call, from a number I don’t recognize. I let it go to voicemail.

A knock comes at the front door.

I look from the door to the screen. The angel disappears. A new profile photograph takes its place: a woman in a dark jacket beside a patrol car.

Detective Mara Velez. The woman on the call was my partner. You’ve been chatting with me.

The front door crashes inward.

Three officers come through it. One shouts for my hands. Another heads for the kitchen. Behind them, Detective Velez steps into the room with a phone against her ear. I can hear my regular ringtone faintly through it.

I look at the laptop. My confession fills the chat window, each answer right where I left it.

The detective hangs up. I’d ask whether HereAfter gives refunds, but she looks busy.