There’s always a later, I know that now. At least until we die. Then I guess it’s all before that.
Jamie Conklin is a little boy who can see dead people. And let’s just deal with the comparisons to the Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osmet movie right now, because really, this story is nothing like that. Narrated by Jamie, this is Stephen King doing what he does best: taking ordinary people, putting them into a mix of mundane and extraordinary circumstances, and then seeing how many of them deal with it by going insane.
Seeing someone that’s recently died isn’t exactly a normal thing for Jamie, but it’s not like it’s traumatizing either. Sure, one of the first ones he saw was upsetting (think the cyclist at the end of The Sixth Sense, which oddly enough is when he first tells his plucky single mother about his talent…look I promise this book is completely different from that movie). But for the most part dead people just calmly hang around the place they died, wearing the clothes they died in, speaking if spoken to for the most part, and after a few days they fade away and are never seen again.
And as an already wise-for-his-age Jamie realizes when he’s twelve, you really can get used to anything.
“it must be so strange, what you can do. So weird. Doesn’t it freak you out?”
I thought of asking her if it freaked her out to look up at night and see the stars and know they go on forever and ever, but didn’t bother. I just said no. You get used to marvelous things. You take them for granted. You can try not to, but you do. There’s too much wonder, that’s all. It’s everywhere.
Oh, and if you ask a dead person a question, they have to tell the truth. Always. Once Jamie’s mother Tia actually starts believing what he’s telling her, that more than the fear of getting labeled crazy is why she makes him promise to never tell anyone about his gift.
“People die with secrets, Jamie, and there are always people who want to know those secrets.”
Surprisingly savvy, Jamie’s mom. This being a Stephen King story though, it doesn’t take long for people to start doing the things they already know might be a really bad idea.
Another hallmark of Stephen King’s writing is hinted at in the title of the book itself. King has always been able to ramp up the tension with some well-timed foreshadowing. He’ll come right out and tell you that something horrible is coming up, and then you get to sit there biting your fingernails waiting for it to happen. King lampshades this habit here by having Jamie apologize for the repeated use of the word “later” (hence the title). Things were a lot more complicated, as I found out later. Someone did eventually die, but I’ll get to that later. I thought everything was fine, but then it all went wrong later. Maybe I’ll understand why the world is like this later, but I kind of doubt it.
It’s sometimes about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but I have to admit it’s damn effective.
Having Jamie tell tell the story from the lofty position of a 22-year-old also works well. He’s far enough removed from the action that he has the benefit of hindsight, and access to information that younger Jamie wouldn’t have had. He’s also still close enough to the events that it’s believable he would still remember what it felt to bring home to your mom the best hand-print turkey drawing ever, or to see a person standing around with part of their head missing, or to take an involuntary step backward for years whenever the elevator doors open because you’re used to…something being inside.
Or to slowly learn all the hard truths about the universe, like the idea that love always overcomes hate is usually just wishful thinking.
I don’t like to tell you this, but hate stays stronger and lasts longer. I think when people see ghosts (as opposed to dead people), it’s because they’re hateful. People think ghosts are scary because they are.
The very short chapters (sometimes just a couple pages long) were part of what made this book fly by for me in less than a couple of days. There’s also a lot of the stuff that I really enjoy about King’s writing here. With his love for character studies, he takes almost a third of the book to set the scene for life with Jamie and Tia. The two of them have an easy, often joking relationship, with Jamie always aware of the hard work his mother puts in to try to dig themselves out of a pretty rotten situation. (The ins and outs of the rotten situation are heavily detailed and of course fascinating, showing just how quickly and with only a few wrong moves someone can go from a fairly comfortable life to being thousands in debt and just inches from having the power in your sad little apartment being shut off).
Things pick up considerably when we suddenly switch from slice-of-life with a boy who sees dead people, to a more standard Stephen King oh-no-the-monster-noticed-me-what-do-I-do-now?
There are all kinds of monsters here, and all kinds of rationalizations for the actions that create the monsters, and for why we stick with them anyway. It was entirely believable, Jamie’s desperation to cling to tiny moments of kindness to try and outweigh all of the awful things that are happening. Not easy to do, when you’re dealing with the terrible combination of a) crappy things that can happen to anyone, b) substance abuse (another Stephen King favorite) and c) the unshakable belief that the universe owes them.
And of course there’s the unique Stephen King imagery, whether it’s a monster wearing a human skin, with cracks in the facade glowing like lava, or the quiet but powerful image of a little dead boy, sitting down on a curb and waiting until he inevitably fades away.
I don’t know if this is the start of a new series featuring Jamie Conklin. I kind of hope so, he’s surprisingly resourceful. There’s a reveal at one point in the story that, I don’t want to oversell it, but it hit me right between the eyes, BAM! Out of friggin nowhere. I thought at first it was out of place, but thinking back it fits with the whole theme of what his gift actually costs. You got what you wanted, you have the outcome you needed, you got the answer to the question you asked. You have to ask yourself if it was worth it. Worth everything you’re going to have to deal with. Worth all the lies you’re going to have to tell, for the rest of your life. Forever.