“And if I do not wish?”
“You mean you want to be executed?”
“I do.”
“So, you regret your actions? Does your conscience bother you?”
“I did what I had a duty to do. And if I regret anything, it’s that I didn’t have time to do more.”
Well, it looks like psychiatrists really missed the obvious. The duty, the mission, “voices in my head ordered me…” There are countless instances in criminal cases where a murderer feigned madness to escape punishment. But here, seemingly, the madman feigns (and successfully!) mental health in order to be executed. I haven’t heard about such precedents before. How did he manage to deceive doctors, I wonder? Probably because forensic psychiatrists got too accustomed to dealing with the opposite situation…
And if all this is true, it not only gives me a chance to win a hopeless case, but also converts me from a person obliged to protect a bloody bastard into the savior of a sick man who, of course, cannot be blamed for becoming ill.
“Could you please explain what your duty consisted of, Mr. Jackson? And who imposed it on you?”
But he preferred to close up again, like a mollusk on a seabed to which a hand was stretched.
“What are all these conversations for? I’ve told you already, I don’t need your help. If the law requires you to fulfill any formalities for my protection, do it, but without me.”
“Yes, of course,” I pretended that I turned off my laptop and was going to leave."That only reduces my workload and I’ll do as you say if you insist. Just, you know, I had a thought—not as a lawyer but as a human being—that you will be executed… quite a nasty procedure, by the way. It is officially considered that death by an electric chair is immediate, but it is not always so. It sometimes happens that they have to turn the current on a second and even a third time… skin bursts and smokes, eyes literally jump out of the sockets, severe spasms break bones…”
“I know all this. If you want to frighten me…”
“No, no. I only want you to realize clearly what awaits you. But OK, maybe all this doesn’t disturb you. However… you still know something very important, don’t you? And your secret will die with you. Isn’t that deplorable?”
“Tell me also that if I explain everything to you, you will fulfill my duty,” he sneered.
“Certainly not. I won’t tell you that.”
“And you are right, as I wouldn’t believe you. However… the secret… everyone should indeed know this secret. But it’s useless even to try to explain. Nobody will believe me. Not even because they can’t, but because they won’t want to believe.”
“Well… but can’t you try? At least tell me only. Perhaps, I won’t believe, either, but in any case, what do you lose?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Kept silent. Then suddenly he resolved to speak.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked, looking somewhere aside.
Certainly not. I am not a superstitious idiot. But aloud I, of course, said differently:
“Well… as there is a lot of unknown in the world, I don’t exclude the possibility of their existence. And you? Do you believe in them?”
“No,” he dumbfounded me. And then added: “It is possible to believe only in what you do not know. And I saw them and communicated with them. Moreover—I was one of them.”
Yes, yes. My diagnosis is proving to be true.
“You, in general, got everything right,” he continued. “Everything really did begin with that accident. And I was indeed brought back from the next world. Only not by doctors.”
“By whom then? Angels?” I probably managed to dispel any sign of irony from my intonation."Or maybe demons?”
“No, not at all. By people. Dead people.”
“Zombies, you mean?”
He looked at me as at a fool, and then sighed and asked:
“What do you know about ghosts?”
“Well… it is considered that ghosts are souls of people who died a cruel death. And as a result, they got stuck between the two worlds, ours and… next one. Thirst for revenge, the need to fulfill an unfinished duty and so on can hold them here…”
“Well, well. And in your opinion, are ghosts unhappy?”
“It seems, yes. They are troubled by this unfinished business. Therefore they wander and groan at nights…” I couldn’t restrain myself and said the last phrase with a theatrical howl. Jackson frowned in annoyance and asked the next question:
“And what is, as it is considered, the main desire of any ghost?”
“To go to eternal rest,” I answered immediately.
“Indeed, I heard that since my childhood, too,” he nodded. “And haven’t you ever reflected, why?”
“Why what?”
“Why should ghosts so aspire to this rest? What’s so bad in having an active afterlife? Why are all people so sure that ghosts want to replace it with… with what? With the final death, the non-existence—which the same people fear so much during their lifetime?”
“Probably, not after all,” I assumed; it never came to my mind before to think about such things. “As far as I understand, the rest is a transition to a better world…”
“Who told you that it is better?”
“Well,” I shrugged my shoulders, “it’s just an expression…”
“And you didn’t reflect where it came from?”
“Probably from people’s hope for a better life at least after death. Though from the Christian point of view… and not only Christian… in the afterlife there can be either paradise or hell. But, probably, existence in a ghost form is some kind of purgatory… that is, when a soul stuck between worlds gets the opportunity to move on, it means that its sins are forgiven, and it is awaited in paradise…”
“Yes, paradise. Eternal pleasure, huh? Well, in some sense it really is… but it depends on for whom. In your opinion, what does the soul do in paradise?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I shrugged. “All these descriptions from the Middle Ages… such as walking in a garden and playing harps… always seemed to me too naive and primitive. In my opinion, such ‘pleasure’ will make you howl from boredom in just a week—let alone all eternity… Modern theologians, as far as I know, put it more vaguely, like paradise is the place where the soul reunites with its Creator… In any case, I am not an expert in this matter. I am, in fact, an agnostic.”
“Agnostic”, nodded Jackson. “A very apt word. It means—one who does not know. And those whom you call ‘experts’ should be called the same. Though they imagine that they know something, naive idiots…”
“And you?” I asked directly. “Do you know?”
“I know. I was there.”
“In paradise? Ah, yes, the clinical death… Well, not only you…”
“Yes, certainly. Even books are written about it. Flight through a tunnel and so on… But don’t forget, I was there for eleven minutes. I moved further down the tunnel than others, further than those who could return, certainly. And I saw what is there.”
“And what is that?” I became interested.
I saw, how Jackson’s face—which, according to the press, remained passionless when he told the court about his brutal murders and listened to his own death sentence—suddenly was distorted and turned pale, even gray, in just an instant. I have read about such things in fiction books and I always thought it was just a literary cliche, but now I saw it happen in reality. And it was not simply such a horror which can’t be feigned, which can be produced only by reminiscence of real events (and what might those events be if only a single memory of them turns the face into a terrible mask of a corpse?!)—no, this grimace demonstrated also an insuperable disgust risen as a lump in the throat.