Here After

By Sean Costello

Following the death of his ten-year-old son, physician Peter Croft embarks on a desperate, seemingly random search for a missing child, risking his sanity, even his life in a grief-induced quest. His journey propels him into the darkest reaches of human suffering and pits him squarely against an adversary whose own obsession defies all reason.

Here After is a story of love, loss, obsession and redemption, with gripping action sequences and a subtle paranormal underpinning. A compelling read from a seasoned storyteller, Costello's sixth novel will keep you reading deep into the night.

Here After has been optioned to film by David Hackl, director of Saw V.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean Costello
• Release date: Nov 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502280145

Sean Costello

Sean Costello is the author of eight novels and six screenplays, two of which are currently under option to film. Depending on the whims of his muse, Costello's novels alternate between two distinct genres: Horror and Thriller. His horror novels have drawn comparisons to the works of Stephen King, and his thrillers to those of Elmore Leonard. In the real world he's an anesthesiologist, but, if asked, he'd tell you he'd much rather be writing. Recently, all of his titles have been made available as ebooks, wherever ebooks are sold. Sean is currently hard at work on several new writing projects. Get a FREE COPY of one of Costello's paranormal thrillers by subscribing to his Newsletter, an occasional update that keeps you informed about upcoming projects and special deals on existing titles. Sign up here: http://eepurl.com/bc06Jv

Book preview

1

Thursday, February 8

---

Dad, I’m afraid.

I know, sweetheart, but I’m right here. I won’t let you go through this alone.

Dr. Peter Croft snuggled closer to his son on the stiff hospital bed, spooning the boy’s wasted body against his own. It would be only a matter of minutes now.

What if I fall asleep?

I won’t move from this spot, David. I swear.

Okay, Dad. ’Cause I’m really tired.

The boy drew a ragged breath, and Peter could hear the fluid that saturated his lungs, a wet crackle under the hiss of oxygen. Drowning him.

David adjusted the breathing mask on his face, rubbing the reddened furrows the rigid plastic had dug next to his nose. Peter watched his son’s movements, the effort it cost him to simply raise his arm, and the loathing he felt for God rose to his throat in a barely-suppressed roar.

He glanced at the door to the private room, locked now from the inside. The drugs he would need were in his hip pocket, mixed in a single syringe. He’d taken them from the operating room days ago, when he made his decision.

Dad?

Yeah, little buddy?

Can you tell me a story?

Peter said, Sure, and came up on one elbow, leaning over so he could see the boy’s face. Had a little doll, stuck it on the wall, and that’s all.

And there it was, the tiny smile he’d hoped for. It was a ‘story’ his grandfather had told him, a man Peter barely remembered. Peter had used it often on David when he was younger, grateful now for the many nights he’d lain next to the little guy, coaxing him off to sleep. Lie down with me, Dad? Just for two minutes?

David was almost ten now, two days from a birthday he’d never see. Peter had arranged a small party for him last weekend, right here in the room, inviting a few of his closest pals, telling David they were doing it early this year because his best friend Thomas couldn’t make it any other time. The kids came bearing gifts and good intentions, but when they saw David, how much he’d deteriorated in the weeks since they’d last seen him, things quickly turned awkward. With surprisingly adult grace, David let the boys off the hook, saying he was too tired to hang out for more than a few minutes. Two of the kids were in tears before they reached the hallway.

A real story, Dad. Something funny.

Okay, let me think. But his mind was a black pool of despondency, and when he reached in for something to say, he came up empty.

David said, Remember when I cut my head?

Peter leaned over his son’s shoulder to show him the index finger of his right hand. He said, How can I forget? and smiled.

David touched the tip of his father’s finger, stroking the unnaturally smooth skin, and Peter thought of how precious his son’s hands were, the instruments of his industry and curiosity, the parts of him Peter had most enjoyed when David was a baby.

That was pretty funny, eh, Dad?

It sure was. Though neither had thought so at the time. Four years ago, David had struck his head on the edge of the coffee table and opened a small gash. Typical of scalp lacerations, it had bled like crazy, and in a panic, David’s mother Dana had pleaded with Peter to rush him to the ER for stitches. To avoid the unpleasantness of the experience for his son, Peter decided to deal with the situation on his own.

You had that glue stuff in your first-aid box, David said. Remember?

Derma-Bond. Yeah, I remember.

You called it human glue.

Was I lying?

David gave an asthmatic chuckle. Nope.

Peter had reassured Dana, telling her stitches were overkill, he’d have the kid fixed up in no time. The look she gave him should’ve been enough, but by now he was on a mission.

So with Dana standing over him, fidgeting and huffing, and David sitting stock-still on a kitchen stool, he’d gone to work.

Now David coughed, a wracking wet hack, and Peter held him and felt tears scald his eyes. They were huddled on a cliff-edge, hanging on for dear life, trying not to look down.

The cough subsided and David said, "It was a pretty cool idea, though."

I suppose.

Peter had squeezed a dab of the stuff on the wound edges, coaxed them together with the tip of his finger, and smiled—a little smugly—at Dana.

David was chuckling again. You glued your finger to my head.

Peter laughed now too, a tear tracking down one cheek. David wasn’t kidding. He had glued himself to his son’s head. For keeps. Like Krazy Glue, only worse. No matter how hard he tried, he could not free his finger. Dana’s renewed efforts to get them to the ER were met with even more resistance from Peter, who could only imagine the ribbing he’d suffer at the hands of his colleagues if he turned up glued to his son’s head.

David said, Get a razor blade, hon, mimicking his dad's voice, his desperate solution on that ridiculous day. Cut us apart.

You’re never going to let me live that down, are you.

Dana got a razor all right, and she did cut them apart—but the first time David even squeaked, the blade began to err on the side of Peter’s flesh, Dana’s gaze warning him if he made so much as a peep, she’d separate them at the first knuckle.

David caressed his Dad’s finger, his weak chuckles fading. Your fingerprint never grew back, he said.

Don’t imagine it ever will.

David fell silent now, and Peter could feel the light mood slipping away as irretrievably as his son’s life.

Leukemia. A cold bullet of a word born of a nose bleed that wouldn’t stop. A month of aggressive chemo. A brief remission and then relapse. A fucking nose bleed in a kid who only six months ago could do fifteen chin-ups and run like the wind.

So much suffering. But it would be over soon.

Will I see Mom? David said. When I die?

I don’t know, sweetheart. I hope so.

At the urging of a counselor, they’d discussed death openly in the weeks leading up to this day, but this was the first time David had asked about his mom. Dana had died a month to the day following the bio-glue fiasco, slamming face first into a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table, an aneurysm in her brain choosing that comic moment to claim her life. Peter had almost roared with laughter before he realized she wasn’t kidding. Thankfully, David had slept over at his cousin’s the night before. Telling him had been the toughest thing he’d ever done. Until now.

Oddly, he recalled something he’d overheard an OR nurse say when she thought he was out of earshot. His son had been diagnosed the week before.

How much misery can one man endure?

Peter thought: No more.

I love you, Dad, David said. And don’t worry. I’m not afraid anymore.

Then he stopped breathing.

Without hesitation, Peter took the syringe from his pocket, poked the needle into a vein in the crook of his arm, and injected a lethal mix of morphine and muscle relaxant into himself. Now he tightened his grip on David’s limp body, and in seconds he stopped breathing, too.

Wherever his son was going, Peter was going with him.

Peter Croft awoke in a dark room, groggy and disoriented. David was spooned against his chest, trembling in cotton pjs matted with sweat. They were on a narrow bed—the top half of a child’s bunk bed, Peter realized—and as he lifted his head to speak to his son, David’s clammy hand tightened around his encircling arm.

Shh, David hissed, and Peter realized the boy was terrified. The terror burned in his flesh like a malignant fever and now Peter was terrified, too. The feeling was pure and elemental, but without focus, coursing into Peter as if they shared the same skin, the same racing heartbeat.

Now David pointed at the door and Peter tried to get up, to defend his boy from whatever was coming. But he was paralyzed, only his eyes moving in concert with David’s to focus on the dull brass gleam of the doorknob across the room.

The door opened on silent hinges and the air left Peter’s lungs. Now a figure appeared in the doorway, its shadow long and bulking in the chancy light, and Peter smelled something primal infect the homey scent of this room—the musty reek of pelt, wet with the blood of a recent kill.

Now the shape moved, dense and faceless, gliding silently toward them. Peter felt David’s fingernails dig stinging crescents into the skin of his forearm. He tried again to move, to protect his son, but he was unable. His nerves had come unstrung.

He blinked sweat from his eyes and now the figure was right there and Peter felt his son wrenched away, replaced by twin impacts around his heart like the hooves of a raging stallion. He opened his mouth to scream David’s name and something snaked into his throat, muting him. Far off, he heard a single frantic word—Clear—then there was nothing.

Dr. Lisa Black felt her own heart race even as Peter Croft’s stubbornly approached death on the pediatric bed in front of her. He'd progressed from V-tach to V-fib in spite of a series of shocks and two boluses of adrenaline, and that surprised her. When security unlocked the door five minutes ago, Peter’s color had still been good, his pulse irregular but strong. She should’ve been able to get him back with the first shock—he was as healthy as a horse, a runner, lean and muscular—but his heart was behaving like that of a much older man. The exhaustion he’d suffered through the ordeal with his son, though severe, wasn’t enough to explain it. It was more likely whatever he’d given himself. As an anesthesiologist hellbent on self-destruction, his choices of lethal cocktail were many. From his flaccid state, Lisa was betting he’d used a combination of a long-acting muscle relaxant and a narcotic or hypnotic. That would’ve led to an abrupt respiratory arrest followed by the arrhythmia she was now attempting to reverse. Every instinct told her she’d reached him before irreversible harm could be done, yet he was completely unresponsive. It was as if his desire to die with his son had instilled itself in his physical heart too, as if his body were simply refusing to go on.

Three hundred of Amiodarone, Lisa said to the resident, then recharged the defib paddles and positioned them on Peter’s chest. "Clear," she said, and discharged the paddles. Peter’s body arched up, froze briefly, then fell flaccid.

Lisa checked the monitor. Still in V-fib.

Come on, Croft, she whispered. Don’t do this.

Lidocaine? the resident said.

Do it.

As the resident injected the drug, Lisa glanced at David’s wasted frame, lifeless on a gurney where they’d lain it, the morgue crew attending to it now. Then she returned her attention to Peter, his shirt torn open to expose his chest, dark blood tricking from the injection site in his arm, the empty syringe lying next to him on the bed. She should’ve seen this coming. Should’ve acted sooner. Peter had asked for some time alone with his son after the remote monitors went flat. As David’s physician, she had the power to grant that wish, not an uncommon one, but her instincts had twitched at Peter’s resolute expression when she agreed. She’d known him since med school, had dated him briefly during their respective residencies. And though they’d decided they were a better fit as friends, she knew the man well. Knew how much his son meant to him. She’d been charting at the nursing station when David’s vitals faltered then flat-lined, and had lingered at least two minutes, torn between her promise to her friend and the growing certainty something terrible was going on in that room. Then a porter approached her on another matter, breaking the spell, and she sprang to her feet saying, "Get security up here now," then dashed down the hall to David’s door, David’s locked door, and she’d known it and had only sat on her backside.

She checked the monitor. Still in V-fib.

Okay, she said, recharging the paddles, "I’m going to shock him again. Clear."

Peter’s body bucked, the muscles of his chest clenching into tortured striations.

And the resident said, Good job, Doctor Black. You got a rhythm.

All right, Lisa said, watching the morgue guys wheel David’s sheeted form out of the room. Let’s get him to the unit.

Consciousness came all at once, a dash of cold water in the face, and Peter sat bolt upright in an ICU bed. In that first instant he knew only terror, the details of his life erased by it, and he lashed out, ripping the IV from his arm, plucking the tube from his throat to give voice to a scream. His first awareness was of hands pressing him down, and overlapping voices, and though his eyes were open, he could discern only shape and shadow.

David? he rasped, his eyes wild now, leaking pain.

Peter, it’s Lisa Black.

A familiar voice, silencing the others.

Please, try to stay calm.

The restraining hands relaxed and Peter leaned back on his elbows, focusing on Lisa now. She was a touchstone in the midst of his confusion, and he let her words guide him the rest of the way back into the world. His last recollection was of trying to think of a story to tell David. The rest was a swirl of muddy water.

You’re in ICU, Lisa was saying, and now he could see that he was. He sagged back against the pillows. You’re going to be fine.

What happened? Where’s David?

Lisa turned to the others—staff, Peter realized, concerned faces resolving into familiarity—and said, Leave us.

When they were alone, she took his hand. In this merciful fog of bewilderment, Peter managed a wan smile. He said, Did I have an accident? There’s no pain.

Lisa squeezed his hand. Peter, David’s gone. He passed over an hour ago.

That can’t be. He was up on his elbows again, eyes flashing red. They promised to call me. I wanted to be with him.

You were with him, Peter.

And even as she said it, he remembered David’s last little smile, his breathless reassurance that he was no longer afraid. Then the sting of the needle and his unspoken promise to his son, to follow him into the unknown, to protect him if he could. After that, there was nothing.

He searched Lisa’s eyes. You said you’d leave me alone with him.

Peter, I—

"You promised. You fucking promised, and now he’s out there all alone . . ."

Lisa tugged her hand free of his grip.

How dare you, he said, struggling now to get off the bed. "You had no right."

Then he was over the edge, crashing to the floor, an IV pole laden with med pumps tipping into the monitors. He continued to rail against Lisa even as the staff lifted him up, restrained him, and drugged him into oblivion.

When he was quiet, Lisa fled the unit in tears. It would be months before Peter spoke to her again.

2

Wednesday, May 30

---

Good morning, Peter, it’s Wendell.

Peter hit the pause button on the DVD remote. He knew he should’ve ignored the phone. He breathed and said, Hi, Wen.

Wendell Smith was head of the anesthesia department. He’d been calling twice a week for the past month, trying to get Peter to commit to a date for a return to work.

Sorry to bother you about this again, Wendell said, but we need a decision here, manpower being what it is.

Peter’s initial impulse was to tell him to forget it, he was done with the whole damned rat race. He was only forty-two, but he’d been smart with his money. He could retire today if he chose to, not lavishly, but comfortably. And comfortable would be a welcome sensation right about now.

But the department had been good to him, giving him plenty of time to get his act together—it had been almost four months since David’s funeral—and like most people in the medical community, for Peter the pull of duty was a powerful one.

He glanced at the room around him: the bed unmade; curtains drawn against the daylight; every available surface littered with pop cans and empty fast-food containers. Since his son’s death, he’d spent the majority of his time in here, the bedroom he’d shared with Dana.

And just down the hall, David’s room.

He said, I’m not ready yet, Wen. I can’t even tell you when I will be. Then he was saying it. If ever. To be honest, if you need to fill the slot, I’d say go ahead and do it. You’ve got some promising recruits, I know that. He felt an unexpected lightness. Maybe you should just go ahead.

Silence. Then: Do you know what you’re saying here, Peter?

I believe I do.

Tell you what. Take a couple more weeks. We’d hate to lose you. If it’s time you need, you should have it. We’ll get by. I’ll check back around the middle of June, okay?

Okay, Wen. Thanks. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.

I’d appreciate that. Talk to you soon. And take care.

Shall do. Bye for now.

He replaced the handset and returned his attention to the TV. He’d been half-watching an episode of I Love Lucy on DVD, one of many gifts friends had given him in the months since David’s death, all of it designed to lift his spirits. Looking now at the screen—Lucy frozen in the midst of stomping around in a tub of grapes—Peter understood that since his son’s death, what he’d been desperately trying to avoid was the pauses, the lulls in the stream of input he’d been exposing himself to through every waking moment, sleep coming only when his eyes could no longer endure the light, his mind the ceaseless chatter. He’d jacked into the tube and let it zombify him. He could lose himself in it, ride it downstream, forever if need be. The pauses were the hard part.

He thumbed the play button and the chatter resumed, numbing him.

Hunger. That gnaw. There was the animal part of him—bladder, bowel, hunger, thirst—and the rest was emptiness, the absence of drive or enthusiasm, the baseline energy required to power a life. His friends had been after him to seek counseling, doing their best to snap him out of it, set him back on the path. But the path to where? What was left after family? Dana and David had been his engine, the center from which all things flowed and into which all of his energies were directed. What was he supposed to do now, pick up and start over? He just couldn’t see it. A family wasn’t a car or a lawnmower, something you replaced if it got trashed. It was over and he could see no path.

His kid brother Colin, a marine biologist with the University of British Columbia, had spent the week after the funeral here at the house, helping box up David’s things. Colin had pressed Peter to get rid of it all. The last thing you need is stuff like this jumping out at you, breaking your heart all over again. He’d been thorough, brutally so, moving furniture, running a hand around every seat cushion, peering under beds, even touring the grounds for lost balls or toys. Peter had to argue and finally insist on keeping the family photos in place. I managed after Dana died, he told Colin. I’ll manage now. They stored some of it in boxes in the attic, things Peter wasn’t ready to let go of yet. The rest, clothes and toys mostly, Colin drove to the nearest Salvation Army drop station.

Like most people who cared about Peter, what concerned Colin most was his apparent suicide attempt. Peter could read the question in his eyes: If left to his own devices, was he at risk of trying it again?

One night near the end of his stay, Colin had posed that very question. And Peter had explained it hadn’t been a suicide attempt, not in the accepted sense—ending his life had not been the point. He’d been trying to accompany his son on his journey into eternity or oblivion or whatever waited on the other side. Misguided, perhaps, but he told Colin he felt certain it would’ve worked had Lisa Black not intervened. Colin, a realist who believed once you were dead you were dead and that was the end of it, said he understood and they left it at that.

Peter swung his legs off the bed now, the hunger grinding on him, provoking a familiar throb in his temples. The trigger levels for his biological imperatives had ramped way up. To eat he had to be starving, to relieve himself required a bladder full to bursting. Otherwise, he couldn’t be bothered.

He was starving now.

He padded into the kitchen in his skivvies. He’d made a survivalist run a month back, stocking up on canned soups and stews, cereals, snack foods. Empty calories to fill a hole that couldn’t be filled.

He popped a bowl of lentil soup into the microwave. When the oven beeped, he retrieved the steaming bowl, scalding his fingers as he hustled it toward the nearest countertop. The pain made him lurch, the action slopping more soup onto his fingers and now his bare legs. Peter screamed and the bowl slipped his grasp, shattering on the ceramic tiles, hot soup spattering his ankles. He cursed and something malign rose up in him, shattering its restraints in a single, savage pull. By reflex, he danced away from the blistering spatters and skidded in the puddled liquid, falling backward into the space between the microwave and the cook island. His left buttock came down on a shard of bowl and now the fury was loose in him, rampant, and he cursed and thrashed in a slick of cooked lentils and fresh blood, cursed and roared and wished for death. Now he rolled onto his side, away from the pain in his butt, and pummeled the metal drawer beneath the oven without pause, blow after senseless blow until blood flowed from his knuckles too.

And when it seemed the rage could not be tamed and he would thrash and wail until his head exploded, he noticed something under the fridge, cocooned in dust kitties. He retrieved it and sat up against the fridge, plucking it free of its shroud. The smile it brought felt pleasant on

Reviews for Here After

[kash s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great book, had a good time reading it. The author definitely may have overexcited the extent of a crazy old lady’s strength to kill and injure several men, though lol

[Ronald j stanard · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well written. Good plot. But , some of the books characters reaction where not believable.

[Louise Watson-Carver · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The book is shallow, facile and a deeply disappointing read. The characters are flimsy and barely developed; the plot is unlikely to the point of absurdity. And the two heroes... not so much unconvincing as undeveloped. They both suffer narratively from the author's insistence on *telling* the readers about them rather than *showing* us their lives and thoughts. They're sketches of characters; paper dolls, rather than people. It's very difficult to identify with them, as they seem to lack any substance... and the hero's dead son? Just a featureless, sanctified blob of light; this "perfect" kid who never had a pimple, a bed-wetting episode or said a rude word. Not a character, a *caricature*! Think Stephen King lite; all of King's bombastic rhetoric and improbable situations, but none of his deeply-developed, complex and plausible characters. (Of course, by somewhere around 'Misery', King *himself* seems to have lost that ability to create convincing, three-dimensional characters...)

[RG · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. Just enough supernatural to make it fun. Loved the ending.

[Erika Grobb · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book blended the supernatural with reality perfectly. The emotional trama of the men was believable.

[Nida Ellis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Easy to follow the story and suspense was very good

[Leslie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is my first Sean Costello novel but it won't be my last. I am thrilled to learn he has eight more already out.

Here After is a book about two men and a woman who loved, and lost, their sons.

It's also about how and how much loss changes us.

With the exception of one element, anything in this book not only could but does happen every day. Maybe that single element does, too.

Thank you, Mr. Costello, for a rousing read during the pandemic. Type fast.

[Lily Lee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed reading your book. I read enthusiastically and understood the story. ... If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to [e-mail] or [e-mail]

[Mike Meiners · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So good, could not put it down. I'm a very slow reader and finished this book in 3 days.

[Leslie Hibbard · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a great story! When I read the summary, I didn't think I would like it, but I got a pleasant surprise. I couldn't put it down until I finished it.

[Joyh · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent read, and hard to put down. Would recommend !

[Arushi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The most beautiful and satisfying ending. I absolutely loved it!

[Natalea Dahling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent story that I thoroughly enjoyed! The story blurb wasn't very inspiring but I'm so glad I gave it a chance!