Later

Later Plot Summary

Introduction

Nine-year-old Jamie Conklin possesses a terrible gift: he can see the dead. They linger for days after death, visible only to him, compelled to answer his questions with brutal honesty. What begins as an innocent encounter with a neighbor's ghost becomes something far darker when Detective Liz Dutton discovers Jamie's ability. She drags him into the hunt for a serial bomber known as Thumper, setting in motion events that will haunt Jamie for years to come. The dead, Jamie learns, are not always harmless remnants of the living. Some carry with them entities from beyond—ancient, malevolent forces that feed on death itself. When Jamie confronts one such creature inhabiting the corpse of the bomber Kenneth Therriault, he wins a pyrrhic victory through an occult ritual. But binding a demon comes with a price, and the darkness Jamie thought he'd banished may only be waiting for him to whistle its name.

Chapter 1: The Boy Who Saw the Dead

The turkey was supposed to be brown, but Jamie Conklin had colored it forest green because green was his favorite color. At six years old, he clutched his Thanksgiving artwork with pride as he walked home from school with his mother Tia, a literary agent struggling to keep her late brother's business afloat after the 2008 financial crisis. Their apartment building's elevator was broken again, so they climbed to the third floor where Professor Martin Burkett and his wife Mona lived next door. But something was wrong. Professor Burkett stood outside their apartment, smoking illegally indoors, his hair wild with grief. His wife Mona had died in her sleep, he explained through tears, found that morning on the couch under a comforter. That's when Jamie saw her—Mrs. Burkett standing right there in her thin nightgown, as solid as the living. She looked at his artwork with typical adult dismissiveness. "Turkeys aren't green, James," she said matter-of-factly. Only Jamie could hear her voice, growing fainter by the hour like a radio losing signal. The dead, Jamie was learning, had to tell the truth. When Professor Burkett wept over his wife's missing rings—her wedding band and a diamond engagement ring that had vanished from their usual places—Mrs. Burkett revealed their location without hesitation. "Top shelf of the hall closet, way in the back, behind the scrapbooks." She'd hidden them there during her stroke, her thoughts "drowning in blood" as her brain vessels burst. Jamie's mother found the rings exactly where her dead neighbor had indicated, claiming she'd prayed to Saint Anthony. But the look she gave Jamie afterward told him everything: Tia Conklin was beginning to understand that her son was different, touched by something that defied explanation. The green turkey suddenly seemed like the least of their concerns.

Chapter 2: Literary Ghosts and Financial Salvation

Three years passed before Jamie's gift became truly dangerous. By age nine, he'd learned to live with his ability, seeing the recently deceased fade away after a few days like morning mist. His mother's literary agency had recovered from near-bankruptcy thanks to a spectacular posthumous success—the final novel by bestselling author Regis Thomas, who'd died at his typewriter before completing his Roanoke series. The truth about that book's creation was a secret that could destroy them both. When Thomas died suddenly, Tia faced financial ruin. She still owed a massive advance for a book that existed only as thirty pages of manuscript. That's when Detective Liz Dutton, Tia's girlfriend and a fan of Thomas's work, drove them to the author's remote estate in Croton-on-Hudson. Jamie found Thomas's ghost standing near his writing studio, wearing the yellow sash and blue spelling bee ribbon he'd died in—his lucky writing talisman from sixth grade. The dead author appeared solid to Jamie but remained invisible to the adults, even as he began dictating the entire remaining plot of his final novel. For over an hour, Jamie served as a conduit between the living and the dead, repeating Thomas's words as his mother frantically recorded every detail. The supernatural encounter left Jamie drained, but it saved his family from poverty. Thomas's ghost revealed complex storylines involving dozens of characters, historical mysteries, and romantic entanglements spanning centuries. When published, "The Secret of Roanoke" became a massive bestseller, praised by critics for its unusually sharp prose and compelling narrative voice. But as Thomas's spirit began to fade like all the others, he performed one final act for the skeptical Detective Dutton. Drawing in a deep breath, he exhaled directly at her face. Liz recoiled as if struck by an invisible wind, suddenly understanding that something impossible had just occurred—something that would change how she saw Jamie Conklin forever.

Chapter 3: The Bomber's Secret and the Deadlight

Detective Liz Dutton's career was crumbling. Internal Affairs circled like vultures, investigating her involvement in drug trafficking, and she desperately needed a career-saving case. When serial bomber Kenneth Therriault killed himself in Central Park after seventeen years of terror, he left behind a chilling final note: "There's one more, and it is a big one." Liz knew exactly who could help her find that final bomb. She intercepted thirteen-year-old Jamie after school, exploiting his mother's absence to coerce him into joining the hunt. Despite Jamie's protests, she drove him to Therriault's last known locations—the hospital where he worked, his apartment building swarming with police and reporters, and finally to a small grocery store in Queens. Jamie found Therriault sitting on a bench outside the shop, a grotesque figure with the right side of his head relatively intact but the left side blown open like a crater. Brain matter had dried on his cheek, and his remaining eye stared with malevolent intelligence. The sight triggered Jamie's violent nausea, but Liz forced him to continue. When Jamie demanded to know the bomb's location, something unprecedented happened. Unlike other spirits who answered immediately, Therriault resisted. His face twisted in apparent pain as he struggled against some invisible force compelling him to respond. "I don't want to tell you," he gasped, but the supernatural imperative proved stronger than his will. "King Kullen," he finally revealed. "The King Kullen Supermarket in Eastport. Seemed right to finish where I started." The bomber's first attack had been at that same store seventeen years earlier. But as Jamie pressed for more information, Therriault's answer to why he'd planted bombs at all chilled the boy to his core: "Because I felt like it." Liz's anonymous tip led to the bomb's discovery—sixteen sticks of dynamite that would have killed dozens. But as they prepared to leave, Jamie saw Therriault one final time, standing by Liz's car. The dead bomber's grin had become something inhuman as he delivered a promise that would haunt Jamie for years: "I'll be seeing you, Champ."

Chapter 4: A Ritual of Power and Binding

Therriault's ghost should have faded like all the others, but months passed and the dead bomber continued haunting Jamie. Unlike normal spirits, this entity grew stronger, appearing at school, in elevators, even outside Jamie's bedroom window. It whispered lies about Jamie's mother having cancer, tormented him during exams, and seemed to feed on his fear and confusion. Desperate for guidance, Jamie confided in Professor Burkett, the elderly academic who'd become a friend after his wife's death. The professor listened with scholarly fascination, then revealed an ancient solution: the Ritual of Chüd, supposedly practiced by Tibetan Buddhists to combat supernatural entities. According to Burkett's research, the ritual required physical contact with the demon, a battle of wills that would determine who possessed whom. The confrontation came unexpectedly in Jamie's apartment building lobby. Therriault materialized as the elevator doors opened, but instead of fleeing, Jamie followed an impulse that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than conscious thought. He rushed forward and embraced the dead bomber in a supernatural bear hug that trapped them both in place. Reality itself began to vibrate around them. The overhead light shattered, mailboxes burst open, and the building's electrical system overloaded as two opposing forces—life and death, mortal will and demonic hunger—wrestled for dominance. Through the supernatural contact, Jamie could see into Therriault's rotting form, perceiving the brilliant deadlight that animated the corpse like a malevolent star burning in empty space. The entity tried to bargain, promising to leave Jamie alone if released, but the boy had been well-coached by Professor Burkett. Instead of accepting, Jamie reversed the terms of their relationship. "Now I'll haunt you," he declared, invoking the ritual's final phase. "Oh whistle and I'll come to you, my lad." The deadlight shrieked its acceptance of these new terms, bound by supernatural law to obey. Only then did Jamie release his grip, watching as Therriault's form fled through the building's front door, leaving behind a wake of electrical destruction and one triumphant thirteen-year-old boy.

Chapter 5: The Kidnapping and Final Confrontation

Two years later, Detective Liz Dutton had lost everything. Fired from the NYPD for drug trafficking, she'd become a hollow-eyed addict whose noble facade had crumbled completely. But she had one final card to play—the recording she'd secretly made of Jamie dictating Thomas's novel, proof that could destroy the Conklin family's carefully constructed lie about the bestselling book's origins. Using this blackmail material, Liz forced fifteen-year-old Jamie into her car after tennis practice, driving him north toward the Catskill Mountains. Her plan was simple: rob a massive stash of OxyContin from Donald "Donnie Bigs" Marsden, a drug kingpin who'd recently died of a stroke. Liz knew about the pills from underworld contacts, and she believed Jamie could interrogate Marsden's ghost to learn their hiding place. Marsden's remote mansion perched on a mountainside like a glass palace, its windows reflecting the dying light. But as they approached, Jamie spotted the first sign of Liz's true nature—Teddy, the gatekeeper, standing motionless by the garage with a gaping hole where his mouth should have been. The dead man's wounds told their own story of Liz's violent preparations. Inside the house, they found Marsden's enormous corpse handcuffed to his bed, beaten and tortured but still alive when Liz had left to collect Jamie. The kingpin's 400-pound frame bore dozens of shallow cuts, and a ball gag filled his mouth. When Jamie confirmed that no ghost was present, Liz solved the problem with brutal efficiency—she shot Marsden in the head, spattering blood and brains across the bedroom wall. But Marsden's spirit revealed only a pathetic collection of prescription pills hidden in his panic room, not the fortune Liz had expected. Worse, Jamie discovered the room's true purpose when he opened a folder of photographs showing Marsden and an accomplice torturing a bound woman to death—the drug lord's missing wife, whom everyone believed had run away. The images were unspeakably violent, documenting hours of sadistic abuse that ended in murder. Realizing her plan had collapsed, Liz's drug-fueled paranoia exploded into rage. Jamie bolted from the panic room, racing toward the mansion's sweeping staircase as Liz pursued him with murderous intent. In desperation, he screamed the one name that might save him—Therriault.

Chapter 6: Revelations of Blood and Legacy

Light erupted from the mansion's mirrors like nuclear fire, a blazing deadlight that poured into the physical world with terrible intensity. Liz found herself facing whatever lived inside Therriault's corpse, and the encounter shattered her sanity instantly. She began laughing with maniacal glee as she stumbled down the stairs, too fast and careless, bouncing off the glass railings as she stared back at the supernatural radiance. Her laughter cut off abruptly when she fell, tumbling down the remaining steps with sickening thuds until she lay still at the bottom, her neck bent at an impossible angle and her eyes staring sightlessly into the growing darkness. The mansion's lights had failed completely, leaving Jamie alone with two corpses and their lingering spirits in the gloom. But he wasn't truly alone. Therriault descended the stairs like a walking bonfire, his body now charred black with cracks of brilliant light shining through the burned skin. The deadlight blazed from his eyes, mouth, and nose as he approached Jamie with arms outstretched, ready to claim his prize. The rescue had come with a price, and the demon expected payment in the form of another supernatural embrace—one that would enslave Jamie forever. "Let's try the ritual again," the thing wearing Therriault's face suggested with malevolent glee. But Jamie had learned something important during their first encounter. Standing his ground despite every instinct screaming at him to flee, he simply commanded the entity to leave. Their previous binding still held—Jamie remained the master of their relationship, not the other way around. The charred horror departed reluctantly, burning handprints into the door as it grasped the handle with supernatural fury. Jamie waited until morning before calling 911, then endured police questioning that couldn't possibly encompass the truth of what had occurred. The official story painted Liz as a corrupted cop who'd died while attempting to rob a drug dealer—close enough to reality to satisfy investigators. Only later, in the psychiatric ward where Professor Burkett lay dying of a heart attack, did Jamie learn the final piece of his family's puzzle. His mentor's spirit revealed the truth about Jamie's parentage—his "uncle" Harry was actually his father, the product of a grief-stricken encounter between siblings after their parents' funeral. The revelation explained much about his mother's protective secrecy and perhaps even the source of his supernatural abilities, though some gifts come from nowhere, unexplained by genetics or circumstance.

Chapter 7: Living with the Whistle's Burden

The years passed quietly for Jamie Conklin. He graduated high school, attended Princeton, and learned to live with the weight of his secrets. The dead still appeared to him occasionally, but none carried the malevolent intelligence that had made Therriault so dangerous. Most spirits simply wanted to finish their earthly business before fading into whatever lay beyond the veil. His mother built her literary agency into a modest success, never knowing the full extent of the supernatural forces that had shaped their lives. She dated occasionally but never remarried, perhaps sensing that some truths were too dangerous to share with outsiders. Jamie kept his own romantic relationships carefully shallow, unwilling to burden anyone else with the knowledge of what lurked at the edges of the living world. But the binding with Therriault's possessor remained, a psychic chain that connected Jamie to something vast and hungry in the darkness beyond death. He could feel it waiting sometimes, patient as stone but eternally watchful. The ritual had made Jamie its master, but mastery over such entities was a double-edged gift that could become a curse at any moment. Professor Burkett's final warning echoed in Jamie's memory: never trust a demon, no matter how thoroughly bound. The creature that had claimed Therriault's corpse belonged to realms where human concepts of honor and contract meant nothing. It would wait for weakness, for a moment of distraction, for any opportunity to reverse their supernatural relationship and claim Jamie's soul.

Summary

At twenty-two, Jamie Conklin has learned to carry his terrible gift with something approaching grace. The ability to see and speak with the dead has brought him wisdom beyond his years, but also isolation that no normal person could understand. He's witnessed the worst of human nature through the eyes of murder victims, been used as a weapon by those who would exploit his powers, and bound himself to forces that exist beyond the edges of reality itself. The whistle remains unblown, the demon contained but never destroyed. Jamie knows that someday he may need to call upon that deadlight entity again, perhaps to face an even greater threat or to protect someone he loves. But each use of such power risks corruption, and the thing that wears Therriault's face grows stronger with every passing year, fed by the violent deaths that occur around the world daily. Yet there is hope in Jamie's story, a testament to the power of human will over supernatural malevolence. He survived his childhood encounters with the darkness not through strength or wisdom, but through the simple refusal to surrender his humanity to inhuman forces. The dead may whisper their secrets to him forever, but the choice of how to use that knowledge remains his alone—the one freedom that even demons cannot steal from the living.

About Author

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Stephen King

King interrogates the boundaries between the supernatural and the ordinary, using his writing to delve into the dark recesses of human nature. His early life experiences in Maine, marked by familial challenges and economic instability, deeply influenced his narrative style and thematic focus. These experiences led him to explore themes of isolation and fear in works like "Carrie" and "The Shining". His storytelling often revolves around small-town settings infused with supernatural elements, where the horror of the unknown mirrors the inner turmoil of his characters.\n\nStephen King's career, notably marked by his ability to blend horror with elements of suspense and psychological depth, has made a profound impact on literature and popular culture. While his breakthrough book, "Carrie", allowed him to transition from teaching to full-time writing, his subsequent works, such as "Salem's Lot" and "The Dead Zone", further cemented his status as a master of modern horror. Beyond his books, King’s contribution to literature has been recognized through numerous awards, highlighting his influence in transforming horror into a respected literary genre. \n\nFor readers and aspiring writers, King's bio serves as a testament to the power of perseverance and the importance of grounding fantastical narratives in relatable human experiences. His work not only entertains but also offers a lens through which to examine societal fears and personal anxieties. The author’s profound impact on horror and beyond demonstrates the enduring relevance of his storytelling methods, which continue to inspire and captivate audiences worldwide.

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