“And you remember them, too?”
“I remember five, not including my life today.”
“And the other?”
“My second life,” she said sadly. “I have few moments or images from it and I know only that I lived.”
“Hold on a second,” I said as the confusion wormed its way back inside my thoughts. “If you can’t remember, or there aren’t any more of these moments and images, how do you know you lived at all?”
She took in a deep breath as she waited to speak, and I felt instant regret at having asked. Was there something more she couldn’t tell me, I wondered?
“I can see enough in the moments to know.”
“Okay, if it took you fifteen centuries to live seven lives…”
“With each life, I was born when I was born. It was random and I don’t know how or why.”
My head was swimming, just trying to process all she told me as a concept, let alone the unworkable math it presented, but she heard it in my thoughts and moved close.
“I’m very sorry if this collides with your comfortable belief systems, Evan, but I can’t change any of it and I wouldn’t if I could!”
The frustration and building anger were clear in her voice.
“Look at it from my perspective!” I said in desperation. “After the episode in my living room, and all the shit you can do with just a thought, how do I know what I saw in that moment wasn’t a projection you sent to me from your own imagination?”
“It’s not the same thing!” she protested. “I wasn’t sending images to you; I let you inside so you could see them through me.”
“I want to understand, Aline, but you have to admit how impossible it sounds! Never mind what I think, how do you know it’s real? All these things that seem like memories or moments, whatever the hell you call them, might be something else—something made up in…”
“Made up inside a lost, insane mind?” she said curtly, finishing my sentence with her own words.
“That’s not what I was going to say!”
“Yes, it is, and you should know better than to think I wouldn’t hear it in your thoughts.”
I felt myself go red, grateful she couldn’t see it in the dark, but an argument was building. Again, I had blundered out my doubts and fears, but before I could qualify them, or even apologize, Aline was moving.
“Get dressed,” she said with a noticeably impatient tone, and I thought for a sudden, surprising moment she was going to throw me out.
“Where are we going?”
“I can’t go on while you’re held back by your doubts. We may as well get it done and over with now so you won’t continue to look at me as if I was a fucking looney!”
“What does ‘get it over with’ mean?” I asked at once, but she either didn’t hear the fear in my voice, or she didn’t care.
“Come along downstairs,” she answered. “I’ll show you so we can finish this once and for all.”
A flood of apprehension swept through me with swirling images of my own death. I tried to mask it as I pulled on my socks, but she felt it and spun around quickly.
“For God’s sake, Evan!” she shouted. “Do you ever stop to consider how it feels to me when you have those stupid thoughts?”
“I’m terribly sorry, Aline,” I said much too loudly, “but ‘finish it once and for all’ sounds like a bad deal!”
“Oh, come on,” she said, turning for the stairs in frustration. I followed without a word, wishing she wouldn’t rummage around in my brain so often, and when we stopped in her dining room, she nodded toward an antique sideboard and it was clear she wanted it moved.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“Just give it a bit of a shove,” she replied.
I braced my knee against one side and it glided surprisingly well across the plank floor on hidden rollers I’d never noticed before.
“More,” she said, and I pushed again until it revealed a framed wooden panel set flush into the wall.
“What’s this?” I asked as she handed me a cordless drill aiming at eight screws holding the panel in place. When I finished, it tilted outward, and she lifted it free to reveal a hidden space and within a few cardboard boxes and small, plastic tubs stacked one on top of the other. She knelt to pull one of the tubs out and onto her dining table. With her hands on its lid, Aline looked at me for a moment.
“I’m going to show you what you need to see.”
“What do you think I need to see?” I demanded.
“Proof,” she replied quickly. “Your precious, goddamn evidence, all right?”
For the first time I heard impatience becoming a “last straw” in her tone, but I knew she was right: a life lived scoffing at the things we call “impossible” kept me on the fringes of belief because everyone knows better—you are born, you live out your life and then you die. Only those who have died can know with certainty what, if anything, happens after.
I wanted to believe because I felt and knew all too well the extent of Aline’s power; there was nothing else to explain the shock and pain that day. But this was different, and the idea of dancing from one life into another across fifteen centuries was more than I could accept. Despite the perceived images from a child’s mind in a distant, ancient past where I had wandered in breathtaking realism, no one can be who Aline claimed she was and nothing I could do would release me from my doubts. She knew it and a moment that should never have happened was finally upon us.
She laid several papers on the table and pointed to one: a summary document written on Cardiff University letterhead from the office of Dr. Monica Williams. Beneath it, printed e-mails and letters between Professor Williams and Aline that looked like questionnaires or tabulated surveys. She stood and led me to her garage where a small wooden crate made of half-inch boards within a 4x4 frame was nestled in a corner and surrounded by garden tools, a bicycle and her lawn mower.
“That’s it,” she said softly, but her voice was cautious and only just above a whisper, the way kids speak taking shortcuts through a creepy cemetery with imaginations running high.
Beneath a blue tarp, an object roughly twice the dimensions of a bowling pin lay in a cradle made of diagonal blocks of wood. I knelt to get a better look and found it was made of incredibly thick glass—two inches at the least—and open at one end in a wide, yawning space big enough to accept my hand with ease. It seemed to be a gigantic, amber Mason jar, and Aline reached for a circular piece of tin the size of a big saucer. It was slightly corroded but otherwise wearing only surface tarnish that matched the diameter of the opening. She handed it to me, explaining it had been set into beeswax as a seal and then wrapped in thick cloth soaked in a sticky resin for good measure. All of it had been removed during cleaning after the contents were emptied out, she continued, leaving only the big jar and its metal lid.
“What am I looking at?”
“It is a time capsule,” she answered.
“It looks like an overgrown medicine bottle. Who buried it?”
“A family in Aberystwyth put inside ordinary things from their life so others would find it one day and understand who they were; it was sealed up and buried under a field one hundred and twenty-two years ago.”
“Interesting,” I replied, “but what does it have to do with your big secret?”
“It has everything to do with it,” she said evenly. “I wasn’t certain this would ever become necessary but it has. It’s time for you to see, and when you do, you’ll understand.”
“You dug this up?” I asked.
“Come with me.”
When we sat again at her table, I looked at printed e-mails and process documents. Professor Williams, Aline said, had made a name for herself at Oxford teaching historical anthropology. Her work at Cardiff expanded into applied archaeology, and Aline asked for her help finding the capsule’s precise location. I thought of Damon with a sad smile, knowing he would certainly have been in his element had Aline approached him. I read
further to find a fee amount was settled, and Williams noted the search and excavation would be an invaluable teaching opportunity. Not long after, a project for undergrad students was organized. I felt lost in a swirl of confusion.
“Okay, I’ll bite; how did they know where it was buried?”
“They didn’t,” she answered.
“Somebody had to know,” I countered, “or it wouldn’t be sitting out in your garage right now.”
Aline went to the counter to boot her laptop.
“Before we met, you were in the business of examining evidence and drawing conclusions,” she began. “Now, I’m going to show you what no one else ever could, and when you understand what it means there will be no more doubt or worry—you’ll have the proof you need to know I’m not insane and the moments you experienced tonight are real.”
“You don’t have to prove anything,” I said, but she waved me away.
“Yes, I do. It’s understandable, and this is the only way. Keep reading.”
The communications with Monica Williams resumed three months later when Aline sent a note declaring the capsule’s general location was known, and it was time to place it precisely in order to begin the process of bringing it up. Professor Williams was excited at the news, and she replied a few weeks afterward that all the preparations for excavating it were complete. I wondered why she didn’t ask how Aline had found the capsule, but the professor ended the note by expressing her joy knowing their work would reunite a family from the past with their descendants in the present. When I asked her what it meant, Aline deflected the question and pointed to a conversation with the owner of a field south of Aberystwyth kept as a pasture for grazing sheep.
In the northwest corner of the plot near a medieval church where the Ystwyth River flows, the capsule waited under four or five feet of dirt. She asked for and received the landowner’s permission to mount a search so long as the activity “didn’t frighten” his sheep. Professor Williams and her team arrived a week later to set up their awnings and tables as the dig site took shape.
Aline motioned me beside her and selected from her computer videos made by the students to chronicle their project and use as a teaching aid. I looked as they began with a wheeled ground-penetrating radar unit following an invisible path laid out on a grid inside one of their laptops. The machine looked like an anemic, engineless lawn mower, but it didn’t take long before a strong return fixed the spot twenty yards from where the road makes an abrupt turn to form a sharp right angle.
Since no other meaningful targets were revealed, it was obvious they had found the capsule where Aline predicted it would be, and the unearthing process began with stakes in the ground to establish a perimeter. Layer by layer, the grass was shaved away and soil removed in a precise, deliberate order until the first scrape of an ordinary garden trowel clacked along the capsule’s glass body. In their video I saw Aline waiting at the edge of the excavation, looking on as the surrounding soil was shoveled aside, but her reaction seemed muted and far less than the students’ grins of satisfaction as they isolated the big jar and dug around until it rested on a narrow pedestal of dirt.
Lots of measurements followed more photographs to indicate depth and relative position as part of their instructional video until finally it was lifted gently up. They placed it carefully on a makeshift bed constructed of crosshatched boards while a fiberglass transportation case was prepared. When it was ready, they laid the capsule into foam padding to secure and protect it on the journey back to Cardiff for cleaning and the all-important opening to reveal its contents.
I read on and watched more footage as the capsule, now in Professor Williams’ lab, was rinsed of dirt. They even brought in champagne for the event and toasted a successful recovery when student technicians began the slow and precise task of unwrapping a ribbon of hardened cloth from the capsule’s amber-tinted glass.
One of the students noted immediately a raised inscription on the jar’s bottom as the manufacturer’s mark, showing the molten glass had been blown into and around a two-piece metal die by “R.F. Hamilton & Co.” and beneath the name was “1891.” Behind the students, Aline stood with folded arms, and when she wiped away tears, no one noticed. I did, however, and the meaning of so simple a gesture is far greater today than it was when those students gathered around to watch.
A wrap of cloth roughly two inches wide and infused with resin formed a layer of protection around the vessel’s uppermost third, Williams said, to add an extra measure of seal integrity. The students unraveled the wrap inch by inch until a mildly tarnished tin cap emerged where it was set deep into a trough of pale, stiffened beeswax. Individual strips of resin cloth were laid over the metal cap in crossed layers, and then the wrap became a last, thorough step. The resin had hardened and aged over time, but it was intact and unbroken.
After removing the wrap carefully and in pieces, Williams and her team used small probes and dental spades to work the metal cap free of its wax bed, and with an odd sucking sound, the capsule opened to the air for the first time in over a century. Aline only watched, and I could see the process was not as compelling to her as it was for Williams and her team until the first item—a gray paper envelope—was carefully withdrawn and placed onto a long table. Aline moved closer when they held up a photograph, and its clarity brought smiles and approving nods as they looked at history before them.
Aline skipped ahead in the video presentation because, she said, the items inside the capsule were packaged and given to her after Williams and her team made detailed studies of condition and durability against the passage of time. A secondary inspection was conducted to analyze materials used to create the container and its elaborate system of watertight seals. She pointed to one of the folios, and in it was the full set of documents and verifying attestations as to age and authenticity, but also results of soil analysis confirming the surrounding dirt was uniform and undisturbed.
I did my best to focus my attention, but Aline offered no clues and I sat it out until she stopped the video and turned to me.
“I have the items in a secure lockbox,” she said, “but you need to finish reading Doctor Williams’ letter.”
With a shrug I leaned forward and resumed the professor’s narrative where she laid out the details of their agreement and Aline’s stated goals. After removing the artifacts, her team followed a precise and carefully prescribed regimen aimed at isolating otherwise innocuous bits and pieces. I didn’t understand why until the text noted transport of certain samples to a colleague at Oxford who specializes in forensic examinations conducted for British law enforcement agencies. It made me uneasy, at first, but the intent became clear when the results detailed a painstaking effort made to answer Aline’s questions.
Dr. Williams’ colleague had used microscopy techniques to map the exact placement of cloth in order to identify a distinct pattern he called a “fingerprint” in the resin so that any irregularities or deviations created by movement of the cloth afterward would show immediately. When none were revealed, analysis resumed with a focus on chemical composition of the resin. I wondered why they went to such lengths, but the notes showed an interesting detail and one I would never have considered: there were four layers of cloth wrap and tests conducted on them discovered the effects of exposure to moisture and oxygen, typically resulting in a breakdown of the once-sticky resin, diminished the deeper they went. It meant the outer layers, exposed to the soil, fared worse than the inner wrap where it hugged the capsule’s glass directly.
At last, fiber analysis confirmed what they already knew—the wrap had gone untouched since the day it was applied in 1891. Professor Williams compiled the forensic findings into a summary to answer Aline’s most pressing request, declaring “a near zero probability of compound perturbation across ten disparate samples of resin and wax.” In simple terms, it meant the glass capsule had stayed exactly where it was buried a century before, but more importantly, it hadn’t been opened.
I fig
ured the effort (and considerable expense) Aline had gone to was simply an exercise in confirming historical authenticity against the day she would look to sell it off to a museum or collector, but her true purpose was something altogether different.
“Okay, you know it’s the genuine article,” I said at last, “but what was the point of it all?”
“That,” Aline replied, “is the last, most important part.”
ALINE grabbed a folding step stool from its place beside her refrigerator and walked slowly to a coat closet near the front door. I’ve put my own there more times than I could count, and I thought we were off on another leg in her wandering scavenger hunt. Instead, she opened and positioned the stool inside the closet, reaching up toward an unseen space above the door’s casing.
I leaned in and saw a small panel on hinges that gave access to something within, and it became clear a modest safe was the lockbox she mentioned earlier and she pulled from it an ordinary manila envelope. It was another piece from a strange puzzle but it was also, she said, the most crucial of them all.
“As it was on that day when I first showed you,” she began, “this will seem ridiculous and impossible, but you have to see and understand or none of it will matter.”
I remembered the foul taste of copper.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass on more of the invisible mind-beatings.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I felt a sudden rush of cold, and it made me hunch my shoulders in reflex. Aline’s thoughts carried collateral effect as she pulled me through another moment—another brush with her abilities—to remind me of the hidden power and how easily it can be delivered.
“I knew what was inside the capsule before it was dug up,” she began.
“How?” I asked. “Did you find a list somewhere?”
“No list or location notes were ever made,” she replied. “It would spoil the surprise.”
“That you know of,” I replied gently. “Somebody could have found it and memorized the words before burning it and no one would be able to dispute a claim.”
The Seventh Life of Aline Lloyd Page 25
