25 Apr Beyond the Walls of Death

I’ve known that Melissa has had a problem for some time now, and I’ll be the first to say that I told her she needed to get help. We tried therapy, tried rehabilitation, but inevitably, she became fixated on the idea.

And because I became part of the problem rather than the solution, a price is being paid.

It’ll be two years this March, since everything changed for us. Our little boy, Rylen, had just turned seven, searching for adventure everywhere he went.

We had decided to take a family trip to the beach, just a forty-five-minute drive from where we lived. It was the first time Rylen had ever even seen the ocean.

I still remember the smile on his face when his toes touched the sand. Melissa was eager for him to experience the water. Everything seemed so calm that day.

My wife is an experienced surfer and had brought her board with her in case the weather permitted her to take a few waves.

When he saw the board, Rylen immediately wanted to join her. At first, she said no—it wasn’t safe.

I was the one who convinced her it would be fine. I told myself he would be safe out there in the water as long as she was by his side.

I stood near the edge to get my camera out and film the whole thing.

It became a memento of disaster.

The two of them climbed onto the board, and she encouraged Rylen to feel the water as she paddled away from shore. The waves were starting to climb, and I kept a good angle to watch them move. Rylen was having so much fun. They both were.

It all ended so quickly. I still don’t know what went wrong. A strong north wind came out of nowhere and knocked her board back. At first, she had complete control of it.

Then the board shook. Rylen panicked. They fell backward into the water, and I lost sight of them. Immediately, I dropped the camera and shouted to them.

No response. My heart hammered as I ran toward the surf, dipping my head under the water to look for them. There was no sign they were nearby. I kept shouting, trying to find them. Other swimmers also saw my frantic attempts and came running to help.

Then I saw little Rylen, his body facedown in the water. He had struck a rock, and blood was gushing from his skull. Was he even conscious? I carefully turned him over and tried to do CPR, compressing his chest as I searched for signs of life.

His eyes were rolled back, and his skin was a polished white color. How much water had he taken into his lungs?

I kept pushing, trying to force him to breathe. His body jerked only from the action I was performing. I slapped at his cheeks and checked for a pulse. There was nothing.

Desperate, I tried again, pressing my lips to his cold body as others gathered around to see if he would make it. Each second that passed felt like an eternity.

I didn’t stop. Not until someone had to physically pry me from his body. I couldn’t stop. This was my child.

And he was gone.

Amid all of this, I heard others shouting that they had found another victim of the wave. I knew it had to be Melissa.

I stood over our son’s lifeless body in a daze as they pulled her from the water. Another surfer gave her mouth-to-mouth. I don’t know what I was thinking—maybe I was convinced I had lost both of them.

I didn’t even let hope enter my heart until I heard her gasping for air and saw water spurting from her mouth. The surfer turned her to the side, keeping her there as she coughed up more saltwater and bile.

I was still staring at Rylen, trying to come to terms with what had just happened. It had only been ten minutes since they went into the water. Ten minutes ago, he had been smiling, and now he was gone.

* * * * * *

Melissa became distant after the incident. Somehow, we made it through all the motions—preparing a funeral, burying our son—but I could tell each day was torture for her. A part of our soul had died that day, and she was especially affected.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I knew that things weren’t going to get better. But I never anticipated they would actually get worse.

It was only a month later when the first incident occurred. I had just come home from work and heard the bathwater running upstairs. At first, I thought nothing of it—I shed my coat and started walking up the steps. Any time she had to relax was time well spent, I thought.

Then I saw a trickle of water spreading across the floor from under the door.

I rushed to open it, calling out to Melissa as I pounded on the lock. When I didn’t get a response, I found whatever I could nearby and used it as a battering ram.

Three pushes later, I found her completely submerged in the tub.

My immediate reaction was to pull her out, shut off the water, and desperately perform chest compressions.

She choked and sputtered a few moments later, shaking from the pressure and looking at me with sadness and disappointment.

I wrapped her in blankets and gave her something to help her rest, trying to plan what to do next.

My first thought was that she needed professional help—help I couldn’t give.

I called the nearest hospitals, arranged for her to begin counseling, and told her things were going to get better. I probably said it out loud because I needed to hear it myself. I hoped I could speak it into existence.

But life doesn’t work that way—it doesn’t just improve because you will it to.

* * * * * *

The second attempt was worse. This time, I found her unconscious in the tub and spent nearly twenty minutes resuscitating her. I remember crying, screaming to God in heaven that I couldn’t live without her, too.

When she woke up, I didn’t call the hospital. For some reason, I thought if I just sat down and talked to her, we could get through this.

“What you’re doing to yourself… it isn’t going to bring Rylen back,” I said, offering her a warm meal.

My wife gave me a hard, stony look. “You think I’m trying to kill myself.”

“How else am I supposed to interpret your recent behavior? Melissa, this has to stop,” I told her, reaching for her hand.

She pushed it away and stared vacantly out the window. “I don’t expect you to understand… it’s impossible to put into words.”

“Please try.”

She looked like she was about to cry as she sat up, and I held my breath, wondering what she might say.

It wasn’t the answer I anticipated.

“I’ve been stuck on that beach ever since that day… reliving it over and over. My baby… he was gone, taken from me. But would you believe me if I told you I knew he was gone before I ever woke up?”

I scooted closer to the bed and asked her what she meant.

“When I hit the wave, everything was black at first. I felt nothing, and I was nowhere. Except… I was somewhere. Not on that beach. It was… empty at first. But it felt warm. Then I felt grass between my fingers. It was a field of white tulips. I could smell the flowers, Daniel. I was there… and Rylen was there too. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel his presence. The voice I heard was muffled… but it was his. He was trying to tell me something. Trying to give me something to hold onto.”

She turned to me with bloodshot eyes and sobbed. “He was grasping for my hand, Daniel! We were right next to each other. And then I was snatched away—back on that beach, gasping for air. It was so… perfect and fragile. I still remember that soft light, those tulips. And I knew when I saw him on the beach what had happened. He’d crossed over, and I was stuck here.”

We sat there in silence for a long time as I tried to fathom what she was telling me. The two suicide attempts suddenly made sense.

“You’re trying to get back there… that’s why you’ve been doing this,” I realized.

“You think I’m crazy.”

I was struggling to find the right words as she pulled away from me and demanded I leave the room.

“Melissa, wait… I do believe you. It’s just… this is a lot to process. What you’re saying… it sounds impossible.”

“I didn’t believe it either at first. Not until I tried last month. I blacked out in the tub. I could start to feel that light… but I didn’t make it happen,” she whispered.

“I know you want to feel him in your arms again, even just one more time. And you’d give anything to experience that. But this… this isn’t the way,” I told her.

She said nothing. Her broken eyes wandered as she promised she wouldn’t try again.

But part of me knew she didn’t mean it. Rylen and Melissa were inseparable. And now that she had survived, she would be hollow until she found closure.

So how could I help her heal?

I resolved to try something different and thought I might help her in a new way by seeking a spiritual advisor.

I knew that she had occasionally looked at tarot cards, so this felt like the next logical step for someone trying to connect with the spirit realm.

“Maybe this is how you can reconnect with Rylen,” I suggested. She agreed, and we arranged for a séance the following night.

The psychic arranged to meet at a small motel outside of town—even paying for the room. I took that as a sure sign she wasn’t just a charlatan.

She told us to bring some of Rylen’s favorite items so she could get a sense of him, then ordered us to close the windows and doors. Not a drop of light or even a sound was supposed to interrupt us.

Once we were immersed in darkness, we sat cross-legged on the floor. I held Melissa’s hand and listened as the medium lit the candles.

“Tonight, we shall attempt to breach the veil and connect to Rylen. Close your eyes and listen to the universe around you.”

I did as I was told, wondering how soon Melissa might feel something. I had no idea how any of this was supposed to work. As the medium lit the second candle, my wife whispered, “I don’t… I’m not sure this is working.”

“It takes time… we can’t simply connect because we want it to be so. There must be a ritual performed. I’m going to attempt to place you into a hypnotic state. Listen to the sound of my voice—and only the sound of my voice…”

Melissa and I followed her instructions, but all I felt was the hard floor beneath us. I was starting to become frustrated too.

“I hear a voice… it sounds like childish laughter,” the psychic said softly.

Melissa scrunched up her face.

“No… no, I feel wrong. I feel cold. And darkness…”

“Let yourself go to what you are sensing…” The psychic lit the third candle. There did seem to be an electric charge in the air.

Our host told Melissa to extend her hand. She began to trace the lines on her palm.

“There is a presence here… I feel… wait…”

The psychic stopped suddenly and pulled away, just as Melissa began to sob. I was confused, but Melissa didn’t want to continue.

“This isn’t working!” she stammered.

“Or maybe you don’t want to accept what you are seeing,” the psychic replied.

Now I was upset. Was this stranger going to berate us?

“You’re not going to sit here and scam us because of our grief. I need my wife to recover from this!” I shouted in her face.

The psychic flustered and gathered her tools, refusing to continue because of my outburst. I apologized to Melissa, but she told me it was fine.

“It wasn’t the same as when I went under the water. Just a hoax,” she muttered.

We drove back to our house in silence.

* * * * * *

I started to research everything I could find about near-death experiences, hoping to understand the unnatural desire Melissa had become obsessed with.

Most of the accounts were similar—people claimed they saw a bright light and heard the voice of a loved one calling to them, just like Rylen. Others described their life flashing before their eyes or feeling an out-of-body sensation. Astral projection and levitation were also mentioned, the way the subconscious mind acts during a lucid dream.

But it took me several days before I found people who had been doing the same thing Melissa had—attempting to recreate their brush with death.

They called themselves the Flatliners, after that movie from the ‘90s. It was about medical students trying to determine what lies beyond death, I recalled.

The group I found online was similar in nature. They had no desire to end their lives, but their curiosity had pushed them to boldly test the boundary between life and death.

“To get right there on the precipice and witness what’s on the other side… it’s the most enthralling sensation one can ever imagine,” one commenter wrote.

Several claimed they had succeeded.

“All it takes is practice and safety, and anyone can cross the veil. We need to get professionals involved so they can study our findings! The potential knowledge we’re tapping into is unlimited,” another posted.

According to the Flatliners, there were definitely methods of doing this safely—and that stuck out to me most of all.

I decided to begin corresponding with one of them who had reportedly completed two successful sessions. He called himself Joey. We met after work one evening.

He sized me up and commented, “You’re not the one who’s touched the veil, are you?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, as we ordered drinks.

“Your aura—it’s not broken or scattered. You’re still grounded in this realm. So who is it I’m supposed to be guiding?”

“My… wife. Last spring, she nearly drowned,” I told him.

“I see. And she was right there on the precipice, tasting nirvana,” he said, fascinated, as I recounted her experience in the field of tulips.

“So can you help her?”

“I can make it work. But you should know… what she’s going through now? One taste of the nectar won’t make the craving go away,” he said dryly.

“I’m not sure I follow.”

He looked at me with dark eyes. “You ever known a drug addict, Danny? You know how they’re always chasing that first high?”

“What your wife felt on that day at the beach is just like that. She tapped into another level of existence—one most of us can’t even comprehend. Don’t fool yourself into thinking this will fix anything. All I can do is try to stave off the craving. Lessen the damage.”

“But you’ve done it twice and found a way to control the urge… doesn’t that mean it’s possible to overcome?” I asked.

“The difference is, I wasn’t connected to anyone. No ties. No soul link. Your son is still tied to her. Ain’t no overcoming that,” he warned.

I weighed the options and realized I still wanted to try. Anything had to be safer than the way she’d been attempting it before.

That night, I told Melissa everything about the Flatliners.

“There are risks… but you already know that,” I said after explaining the session Joey had offered to set up for her. Melissa showed a spark of hope for the first time in ages when I handed her the contact information.

“Daniel… I want you there with me,” she said after she’d made contact.

I was still uneasy about the entire process, but I promised I would stay by her side. If I was there, maybe I could keep her from being taken from me entirely.

It would be like walking the edge of a razor. And I knew getting cut was almost inevitable.

* * * * * *

We met Joey at a downtown warehouse, where he was waiting with a bunch of equipment that looked like it belonged in a science fiction movie.

There was what resembled a submersion tank, along with several computers and power stations to monitor everything correctly.

“Since your experience involved drowning, we’ll use this sensory deprivation chamber. You’ll be submerged and monitored the entire time. If, for any reason, it gets too risky, there’s a failsafe,” Joey explained, showing off the console.

“This little needle prick will save your life,” he added, slipping it next to her palm. “It’s one of the few objects that’s proven capable of crossing back and forth between the two planes of existence. Although, to be honest, it only works if you’re the one to use it over there…”

The way he talked made it sound like nonsense. A supernatural needle that jolts someone back to life? But Melissa didn’t question it, so I kept quiet while Joey finished the prep.

“So what do you say? Ready for your life to change forever?”

Melissa said yes before I could even process the question. Joey hooked her up to several heart monitors and medical leads.

She stripped to her underwear and placed the electrodes on her body as Joey prepped the syringe, which was supposed to stop her heart for exactly three minutes.

“Is that going to be enough time?” I asked as we sealed the tank. I kissed her one last time before the lid was closed.

“You lost your son in only a few minutes. I think anything’s possible,” Joey replied.

I sat beside him, watching the monitors as Melissa’s heart rate slowed. It dropped lower and lower until, at last, it stopped completely. At the same time, my own heart was hammering in my chest.

“Brain activity is still good… detecting signs of REM sleep activity, possibly subconscious hallucinations,” Joey muttered into a small recorder. He was treating this like a study—maybe that was the only way he could cope with what we were doing.

A minute passed. Then another. I looked at the screen and frowned.

“Something’s wrong,” I said. The readings were spiking and dropping in rapid succession.

Joey jumped up and stood in front of the deprivation chamber.

“I know you think you have to save her, but she wants this,” he told me.

“You saw those readings! We’re losing her! Get out of the way!” I shouted.

When he refused, I punched him in the nose and shoved him aside. I forced the chamber open and pulled her up from the water.

Melissa began to shake violently, seizing as she vomited blood and saltwater. I moved to comfort her as she squeezed her palms together and screamed in my face.

“I was so CLOSE. He was right there!!”

She shoved me back and scratched at my face, wailing and clawing at the ground. I pushed her gently and tried to calm her as Joey nursed his nose, still cursing.

Melissa demanded that we try again.

“Sorry, doll. Ain’t happening—not after your prince charming decided to clock me,” he snapped.

I noticed something caught between my fingers—something Melissa had left behind when she scratched me.

A petal.

A single white tulip petal.

I stared at it, mesmerized by its softness and the impossible implications of what it meant. The two of them were still arguing when I slipped it into my pocket, unsure whether to show it to her at all.

Joey demanded we leave immediately, and later that night, I found out we had been blacklisted from their little experiments altogether.

“This is your fault,” Melissa snarled. But I wasn’t going to let her berate me after I’d saved her life again.

“My fault? Do you realize how hard it is watching you try to kill yourself—over and over and over again? When will it be enough, Melissa? What if this is too much for me? What if I can’t take it anymore?”

“You don’t understand,” she whispered.

“You’re right. I don’t. Rylen is gone, and I’m still here.”

“You don’t believe that. I can hear it in your voice. You want this to be real as much as I do!” she insisted.

“I just want you to be happy.”

I tried to hold myself together and excused myself to the bathroom. There, I took the white petal out of my pocket and stared at it again.

Such a simple thing. So small. But it shook me to my core.

Could it really be possible?

I recalled the way Melissa had described the afterlife—the field of tulips, the soft light, Rylen’s voice.

Had she reached over and brought something back?

Part of me wanted it to be true. And that part of me started to grow.

She stopped talking about it after that. But the thought of what was waiting beyond the veil—it was always fresh in my mind. I needed to know more.

Eventually, the anniversary drew near. I found myself researching again.

Sometime during that period, I even reached out to the psychic—hoping she might help me make sense of the petal.

Her response wasn’t what I expected.

She called a few times and left strange voicemails, each one more frantic than the last. All of them sounded frightened—like she wanted nothing more to do with us.

“Listen… I’ve been thinking about the two of you lately. Ever since… look, yeah, I’m a con artist, but what we experienced together that night was real. More real than anything I’ve ever felt. I think there was a presence with us… just not what we expected…”

She rambled on after that, but I stopped listening. I deleted the message and went back to reading posts on the Flatliner message board.

One article suggested that in order to truly obtain transcendence, you needed more than just the right death—you needed the right location.

“We should do something special, for his memory,” I told Melissa one day after work. She had just finished an online project and told me she wasn’t sure she could handle something like that.

“I want to go back to the beach… where everything changed forever,” I said.

I think she wanted to say no.

I thought of what Joey had warned me about—what I was offering her was the equivalent of a shot of cocaine to an addict. It would be right there in front of her, impossible to ignore.

Still, we drove down early in the morning, when it was just the two of us.

She stepped out into the ocean breeze and sank her toes into the sand, letting out a long sigh as the waves crashed gently against the shore.

I had brought some of Rylen’s favorite things to make a small memorial for him. According to the online community, creating a memorial could increase spiritual connection.

Melissa stood watching the water, a single thought in her head.

“I want to take one ride on the waves,” she told me.

I couldn’t think of a reason to say no—even though there had to be dozens.

“Please, Daniel. I need to do this. For Rylen,” she insisted.

I don’t know why I agreed. Something was compelling both of us to find the answer.

All of this had been leading to something—a revelation. I could feel it.

She pulled out her board and stood near the shore without saying a word. Then she paddled out, heading into the surf.

I watched, just like I had a year before. I even took my phone out to record it. Everything was lining up with how it had happened that day.

I kept scanning the water, searching for something—some sign that this was real.

I thought I saw a second silhouette there, just for a moment. Then Melissa’s body jerked forward. She pushed herself into a wave and vanished beneath the water.

I held my breath.

The board surfaced first, floating gently in the shallows. The seconds crawled.

She was under for eight minutes.

And then she returned.

The moment she surfaced, I knew she had seen something. I saw it in her face. She was different. Her eyes were filled with hope.

“Tell me. Tell me what you saw,” I said as she gasped for breath and spat out seawater.

“He sent something back,” she whispered, holding out her hand.

A handful of petals.

“What did he say?” I asked, trembling.

“I think he was trying to tell me… there’s a way for both of us to communicate with him.”

“Both of us? But how?”

“I’m not sure. But do you realize what this means, Daniel? We can reconnect with our son!” she cried through her tears.

And just like that, we weren’t on opposite sides anymore.

We were in this together.

* * * * * *

Over the next few months, we shared everything—ideas, theories, rituals. We studied near-death experiences. We mapped out every element of Melissa’s visions.

There were methods out there, Melissa said, that people in the Flatliner community claimed could extend the experience—dangerous methods.

The kind most didn’t come back from.

“It’s called the crossover list. Meaning… they never returned,” she explained, showing me a thread. There had to be hundreds of names.

She was convinced that if we were going to succeed, we’d have to try one of the advanced methods.

There was a drug on the streets the Flatliners called “N.” It was designed to stop your heart for nearly thirty minutes.

“If we could do that… and place our bodies in the water… just think of what we might accomplish,” she told me.

We had a plan. Everything was building toward a single goal. And nothing was going to get in our way.

I managed to convince Joey to help us again—just so there would be someone to pull us back from the brink.

He gave us that special needle too. “For good luck,” he claimed.

And so, it was time to begin.

We had the beach to ourselves again, paddling out from shore side by side. The waves were rougher that day, crashing with strange urgency. Melissa gave me a brave smile and nodded.

Then she plunged the syringe into her chest.

I did the same.

We laced our fingers together as the surf pulled us into its cold embrace.

It felt like lightning striking my body. The water closed over my head, and I was gasping for breath.

My instincts screamed at me to fight, but I was numb. Paralyzed.

Then the numbness gave way to weightlessness—and I began to sink.

My limbs disappeared. My vision blurred. Light faded.

I could see my own face.

And then I was gone.

* * * * * *

I felt myself pulled into the depths.

But the ocean wasn’t there anymore.

The world dissolved and reassembled into something else—something warmer.

I opened my eyes and found myself standing in a field.

It stretched out endlessly, waves of white tulips swaying in a gentle breeze. The scent was sweet and crisp. The light was soft and golden.

I stood in stunned silence, overwhelmed by the serenity.

Then something touched my hand.

I turned—and Melissa was standing beside me.

She took my hand. Together, we walked into the field. It felt like hours. Neither of us spoke.

At last, we saw him.

Rylen stood in the middle of the grove, his back to us.

“Rylen!” Melissa cried, squealing with joy.

He turned and smiled at us—that same perfect smile we hadn’t seen in almost two years.

I wanted to cry. I could hear his voice in my mind—calm, warm, loving.

He stretched out his hand to us.

We took a few steps forward, tears streaming down our faces.

Our son touched our hands, smiling with the same love and adoration he’d always shown us.

It was like he was telling us he was glad we were there—that he never wanted us to leave.

He squeezed our hands gently and gestured for us to come closer.

“My beautiful baby boy… God, you’re so perfect,” Melissa whispered, falling to her knees and kissing his face.

She stroked his cheek. “Look, Daniel… even his scar is gone.”

I leaned in. She was right. The small scar under his eye—the one he’d gotten when he was five—had vanished.

Perfect.

Too perfect.

Melissa touched his palm, growing suddenly quiet.

His eyes looked at me again, asking me to hold him.

I reached out.

Melissa grabbed my wrist.

“Something’s wrong,” she said, her voice cracking.

“This… isn’t our Rylen.”

I froze.

The tulips around her feet began to close in, snaking up her legs.

I stood up and stepped back.

A blinding light exploded across the grove.

Vines erupted from the ground and wrapped around our limbs, yanking us down toward Rylen.

“Daniel! We have to fight it!” Melissa screamed.

I looked at him—or what he had become.

His perfect blue eyes widened unnaturally, and his mouth began to split. His body twisted backward, and bones cracked as tendrils burst from his spine.

His chest caved in, separating into four gaping mouths filled with teeth. They shrieked and hissed.

The ground around us split open, a chasm of flesh and bone swallowing the field.

Rylen’s neck elongated and gushed a thick black ooze. It struck Melissa and me, pinning us down as the monster’s jaws loomed.

Below us, I saw bodies—thousands of them—writhing, screaming, trapped in the pit.

A million souls, caught in eternal torment.

“Daniel!” Melissa screamed, clawing at the earth.

The ooze reached my face. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see.

But I remembered the failsafe.

I clutched my wife, wrapped my arms around her, and drove the needle between us.

The last thing I saw was Rylen’s face collapsing into a worm-like mass, its eyes like pits, its mouth unhinging as it tried to swallow us whole.

* * * * * *

Closing my eyes, I felt the jolt surge through my chest.

It was like I’d rocketed up from the depths of hell itself.

I coughed violently, choking on saltwater as the wind returned to my lungs. I gasped and clawed at the sand, crawling to my knees.

When I looked up, Joey was standing there—surprised I had come back.

I turned to search the water. Melissa surfaced not far away, still screaming, still disoriented. She clung to me, sobbing uncontrollably, trying to make sense of the nightmare we had just endured.

The warning the psychic had tried to give us—it all made sense now.

A presence had been there on the other side… just not the one we expected.

I played back her voicemails. I listened to every word.

And I shuddered.

“It’s calling to you now, like the ancient mythical siren did to sailors. It sings a song so sweet that you simply can’t resist.
Your wife heard it first, on that beach, when she was pulled under. Now it’s set the bait.
Those petals you found… that’s what will lure you in…”

We had never seen Rylen.

Not really.

The visions we shared—the tulips, the warmth, his perfect face—were not a gift from our son. They were illusions. A trap.

The siren’s web.

The love of a parent had been twisted into a lure. The field had been the maw of something ancient and hungry. A cosmic spider.

And we had fallen straight into its mouth.

As I sit here now, staring at the calendar, thinking about our future… about Rylen… I realize the most harrowing and awful truth.

We have become addicted to its song.

I can close my eyes and still hear my boy’s voice—calling to me from beyond the veil. Whispering sweet nothings that tangle around my soul. It knows how to find us now.

How long, I wonder, will we be able to resist before it overwhelms every part of our lives?

How long before we dip back into its unnatural maw again?

I know it’s still there—just past the edge of perception—reaching into my mind with its tendrils and pulling.

And yet… I know eventually there will be no fighting it.

There will be no coming back.

We’ve passed the point of no return.

Now, we sink together.