“That wasn’t nice,” Suze commiserated, but Bern was struck by the thought that a grandfather would make an eight-year-old child drown kittens.
“I don’t care.” But there was a note in the childish voice that said Chad cared very much about what his sister had said. “It’s getting hot out here,” Livie said. “I wish Hadden would come. I got mud on my shorts and Mama’s gonna be mad on accounta everyone’s coming over this afternoon.”
Suze didn’t pursue that line of questioning and moved on to the reason they were here. “All right, Chad. I want you to move to the time the snakes scared you. Can you tell me about the snakes?”
Livie began rubbing her feet together, her fists clenching and unclenching. “I don’t like them. Too many swimming all round me. I think they’re biting me, but I can’t feel anything. Where’s Hadden?” She sucked in a sob, her lower lip trembling.
“You can’t take your legs out of the water?” Suze prodded.
“I’m trying.” Panicked, she gasped for breath. “Can’t do it. Sissy did it on purpose. She knew they’d come.” She twisted on the sofa, looking over her shoulder at something only she could see. “Why don’t she come get me?” Livie bit her lip. “She hates me, and she wants them bad cottonmouths to get me. She’s screaming and running away, leaving me.” She squirmed on the couch, her feet rubbing, rubbing. “I hate cottonmouths. I hate ’em.”
Cottonmouths. He’d also heard them called water moccasins. And if there were as many as Livie said, they were definitely lethal.
“Make them go away.” Then she screamed, not full-throated but muted. Her pain tore through him.
“Hadden,” she cried out. “Why don’t Hadden come?” she whispered, then sniffled.
He couldn’t stand it another moment and laid his hand on her again.
Where previously she’d been wrapped in a tight ball, Livie’s body began to relax. She rolled onto her back, one arm flopping down by her side, the other hanging off the couch.
“I’m tired,” she said in her soft, childish voice. “I’m all tired now.” Then she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. “The sky’s so pretty, don’t ya think?” Her voice became sluggish. “And look at that light. See that light? Look, I see Papa in the light. He’s holding out his hand to me.” She closed her eyes. “Mama said he died in the big war.”
The big war? Civil war? First World War? Second?
“The little boy is dying,” Suze said unnecessarily.
That was obvious. “Aren’t you going to stop it?”
Suze gave him a look. “It’s already happened.”
“I mean the pain.” It was cruel to make her go through her own death again.
Suze leaned closer to Livie. “Are you in pain, Chad?”
“It don’t hurt,” Livie whispered. “It’s like I see everything from way above. Look, there’s Hadden. He’s pulling me out.” She leaned over the edge of the couch as if straining to see something far below. “I knew he’d come. He always comes. Can I go now?”
“First, can you tell us if any of the people in that life are with you in this life?”
“My sister Sissy. She’s always with me. And Hadden, too. I saw Grandpa once while I was out walking. He wasn’t very nice to me. Papa says I gotta go now.” She rolled to her side and curled into the ball again.
Bern’s insides were in knots. He didn’t know exactly what he’d just witnessed, or what to make of it.
Finally, when he thought it was all over, her eyes snapped open and she held her hand out. To him. “I knew you’d come, Hadden. You always come when I need you.”
Then her eyelids fell closed once more, and she tucked her hands beneath her head, like a child ready to sleep.
Chapter Seventeen
“I’ll count to three, Livie, and you’ll wake feeling rested and relaxed. One, two, three.”
Livie lay there a moment, her eyes closed. It had been the oddest feeling. She’d heard Susan’s voice and could answer all her questions. She’d felt Bern’s touch, his closeness. Yet she’d been somewhere else entirely. She was that little boy dressed in neatly pressed red shorts with mud splatters on them, the hot summer sun on her bare arms. She wondered how, since she couldn’t walk, she’d gotten mud on them. She hadn’t even questioned that when she was in the dream. Only it wasn’t like a dream at all. It had been intensely real. The snakes swarming around her legs, the sense that they were biting even though she couldn’t feel it. She’d been screaming for Hadden…
Livie opened her eyes. “I know you,” she said, staring straight at Bern. She saw beyond his arresting face, saw deeper, to the essence of that young boy racing down the dock, dragging the lifeless little body out of the water, holding tightly, crying. “Where were you?”
A muscle tightened, rippling along his jaw. “I don’t know.”
His sister Susan broke in, and the sense of absolute knowing washed away. “You’re a very good subject.”
Livie sat up, pulling herself into the corner of the couch and curling her legs beneath her. “How long was I hypnotized?”
Bern glanced at his watch. “An hour and a half.”
She felt her mouth drop open. It hadn’t felt that long at all.
Susan crossed her legs and leaned forward. “I’m sure you’ve heard of reincarnation and regression hypnosis.”
“Yes.” She answered Susan, but kept her eyes on Bern. She couldn’t tear herself away from the sight of his face. He was so familiar, in a completely different way than he had been before. She knew him.
“I believe that’s what happened with you,” his sister explained. “The first episode occurred when you were a child, but obviously the second was a previous lifetime.”
A past life? Livie wasn’t sure she could take it all in. Yet it had all been so real.
“What did you think of it?” Susan grabbed a notepad off the table and held a pen poised. “I hope you don’t mind if I document.” Behind the wire-rimmed glasses, her eyes were bright and excited. She perched on the edge of her seat as if afraid she’d miss something.
“You can write down whatever you want.”
Next to his sister, Bern was totally unreadable. He hadn’t said a word. She wondered what that meant. Had she totally freaked him out?
“Let me explain,” Susan was saying. “Souls travel together. And it certainly sounds like you were with your sister. Do you recall what you said about your baby sister? That she’d always hated you?” She waited for Livie to nod. “That was most likely an emotion flowing from your previous life together.”
Livie recalled the intensity of that emotion. Yes, when she’d said it, she’d thoroughly believed it.
“You also mentioned your grandfather.” She pointed her pen at Bern. “And my brother.”
As far-fetched as it sounded, it explained why she’d become so attached in such a short time. Even more, it explained her nightmares.
Livie just started talking, telling Susan everything. “The dreams. They’re exactly like—” She stopped, brought the image of the dock to mind, recalled the feelings. “It was so peaceful. And I felt so good. That’s how the nightmares always start. I could see my sister over by the willow tree. She was pretending I didn’t exist.” Livie paused for a deep breath. “The dreams always start with a tranquil feeling, my sister close by. Then all of a sudden she throws a snake or a lizard or some horrible reptile at me.” Livie didn’t even know if a lizard was a reptile, but it was the image of creepy-crawly things that was the same. “I can’t get them off me. All I can do is scream.”
For a moment, she’d been completely in the dreams again. But she looked up to find Bern regarding her with a dark gaze. Susan eyes beamed with an avid light.
“I know it doesn’t sound the same at all. But it is.” Livie pursed her lips. “The emotions are the same.”
Susan nodded eagerly. “It’s what we call bleed-through memories. A small sliver of a past life comes through, especially with children. But yours don’t seem t
o have faded completely.”
Livie regarded her a moment. “You do this stuff all the time?”
“Of course.”
She glanced at Bern, starting to feel a bit miffed that he said absolutely nothing. “I thought you just did hypnosis for bad habits people want to quit.”
“I do that, too, but reincarnation fascinates me. Your dreams are also a metaphor for your relationship with your sister. In the past life, you were in competition for your mother’s affection, and probably for the boy Hadden’s as well. Do you have the same kind of rivalry in your current life?”
Okay, that sounded completely crazy—past life, current life.
“Yes, she does.” It was the first thing Bern had added to the conversation.
Susan’s hands flew excitedly. “So you see how that life is a metaphor, the rivalry between the two of you and your total immobility against it.”
“So maybe that was just another dream.”
“Nonono. It was real. Unfortunately I couldn’t get enough facts to verify anything because you weren’t old enough to give the pertinent details.” She fluttered the pen in her fingers. “Do you remember anything about that childhood incident with the snakes in your bed? Three is young, but some children retain memories, especially with a traumatic event.”
Bern, after that initial entry into the conversation, had gone back to studying her like a bug. Where had he gone? She knew he’d touched her during the hypnosis. It had made everything easier. Yet now she felt abandoned.
“I’m not sure I remember versus having heard my mother tell the story so many times.”
“That can happen. That’s why I didn’t want to direct too much. It’s possible for hypnosis to confuse memory. False memories, you’ve probably heard of them.” Susan tapped the pen against her lips. “Still, the fact that your mother talked about it is corroborative evidence.”
“It’s late, Suze,” Bern interrupted.
“Oh yeah, sure.” His sister seemed caught up in her own excitement. “Thanks for doing this. I rarely get someone as detailed as you. And going into the light, even seeing your father. Fascinating. If you ever want to do it again, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you.” The truth was Livie felt a bit overwhelmed. And she didn’t have a clue what Bern was thinking. She was sure jumping into past lives wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he brought her here. All she was supposed to do was explain away her bad dreams.
Yet that life as a little boy had been so utterly real. It fit her nightmares perfectly, explaining everything. But how was she supposed to tell Bern that she’d suddenly decided she’d known him in a past life?
* * * * *
The drive from Palo Alto back to Bern’s house seemed interminable, though it wasn’t more than half an hour. Bern asked whether she wanted to go home or to his place, then lapsed into silence. What’s up with that? Of course she was going home with him. She’d apologized for what happened the night before with Toni. She’s apologized for walking out on him. She’d thought everything was fine. Until she’d gone into a trance and said she knew him in a past life.
“Are you mad at me?” Honestly, she wanted to laugh because it sounded just like the way a typical argument started with a typical couple. Were they a couple? Everything had happened so fast, she didn’t know.
He glanced at her quickly before turning back to the road. “Of course not.”
“Well, you haven’t said anything.”
“I thought you’d want to absorb it all before having to talk about it.”
He sounded so reasonable. That actually pissed her off. Yet again she wanted to laugh because that was so typical, too. They were a couple, even if it had been only a week.
“Don’t you think it was crazy, what your sister said about past lives?”
He was silent overly long, letting her hang there until finally he said, “No.”
“That’s all? Just no?” She mimicked his deep voice.
He wrapped both hands around the top of the wheel. “No, I don’t think it’s crazy.” He shot out a breath, puffing out the words on the end of it. “I realized the first day I saw you that I’d known you before.”
She could only stare. He was so down to earth, she would never have thought it of him.
He took the overpass from 101 to Highway 92, and they were silent until he’d merged.
“Doesn’t it make sense?” he asked. “You, me, and your sister? It’s got to be more than coincidence.”
Livie had never jumped into a relationship the way she had with him. She’d felt something immediately. About Toni, though, it was harder to judge. She fell head over heels for any man who paid attention to her.
“Whether it was a fantasy or a dream or whatever,” she said cautiously, “it’s an exact match with the way Toni craves attention. If you’d felt like nobody ever saw you, that your brother got all the attention, wouldn’t you go through life always seeking it? Could I actually have made up something that fits Toni and I so perfectly?”
He glanced at her, the lights of a passing car flashing across his face. “In the past, I thought it was craziness. Suze is into the whole reincarnation thing. So is my younger brother Jake. They believe, but I’ve always thought it was—” He stopped.
“What?”
“An excuse not to move on, not to change. Like blaming all your problems on what happened to you when you were a kid. Or what happened in a past life.” His face was strained, as if he didn’t like the thoughts he’d had.
“But you don’t think so anymore?”
They exited the freeway, and once he’d made the turn, he laid his hand on hers. “I saw you, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“That’s lust.”
Shaking his head, he went back to two hands on the wheel. “No. I knew you the first instant I saw you. There was even a name in my mind.”
“Chad?” She said with a trace of humor.
Bern laughed. Finally. “No. A woman’s name. My sister says we go through lots of lives together, different genders, different relationships, husband, mother, sibling, friend. But when I saw you, I was not thinking of some five-year-old boy.”
“You knew your sister was going to try to regress me.”
“She and I didn’t talk about it specifically. I only mentioned the bad dreams and asked her to help you with that.”
“But you suspected.”
He was silent again as they turned onto his street. Livie scanned the road for Toni’s car. There was actually a hiccup of fear in her throat for what her sister was capable of.
“Yes,” he finally said. “I did.”
“You should have told me.”
“You’d have thought I was crazy.”
“Instead I was afraid you’d think I was crazy because of what I said under hypnosis. That wasn’t fair.”
Bern pulled into his driveway. Then he shut off the engine and turned in his seat. “I don’t know how to explain that I’m in love with you when you’ve only known me a week. I don’t know how to explain that your sister scares the crap out of me. I haven’t been thinking anything through. I’ve just been reacting.”
The only part she really heard was that he was in love with her. God help her, she felt the same thing. But she was practical, no-nonsense, and this was too much all at once. She wasn’t ready to say the words.
“Maybe you were right about not making me talk about it all until I got used to it.”
He put a hand to her cheek. “Stay with me tonight. We’ll worry about the rest later.”
Meaning they’d worry about Toni later. She was so tired of worrying about Toni. “Deal,” she whispered. “For tonight.”
That night, she didn’t dream, at least not about Toni or snakes. She woke only once, to find Bern gone from the bed, but he returned a few moments later. She burrowed into him and fell into sweet dreamless sleep.
Maybe the dreams were gone for good. Maybe the hypnosis, whether it was real or imagined, had c
ured her.
* * * * *
He woke in the deepest part of the night, a scream on his lips and his hands curled into fists he’d used to beat on the walls of his prison. But Livie was there, and he shut it down.
He climbed from the bed until his heart could stop racing. That’s when he’d heard it, a noise, a car door slamming, probably a neighbor arriving home late. Yet his hackles rose.
Dressed in sweats, he padded to the front hall. He thought he heard the fading drone of an engine. Opening the door, he found the night was once again quiet. Then he looked down.
A bloody mass of mangled flesh lay on the doorstep. Bern recoiled, the scent of decaying meat raising bile in his throat. The thing was a rodent, or a squirrel, half its body flattened, entrails leaking from its belly. A single fly buzzed around its hind end.
Jesus. It was better if Livie didn’t know about this.
In the kitchen, he grabbed a trash bag, then, returning to the porch, he used the plastic to scoop up the mess and the doormat along with it. After he’d disposed of the corpse, he closed and bolted his front door. He checked the other doors, too, even the windows.
He knew who had left the dead animal. Toni had fed Livie to the snakes in a previous life. Now she was after them both.
Chapter Eighteen
Livie slept better than she had in weeks. She’d woken in Bern’s bed feeling positively luxurious. No nightmares. If only it would last. In the morning, Bern had taken her to her place for a change of clothes, then driven them to work. It was utterly domestic. She’d even been bold enough to put a few things in a bag so she didn’t have to rush home over the weekend.
With her mind clear, she’d found the sales error within half an hour. One wrong calculation in the pricing of a component part had, when rolled up, distorted the sales for several products. It wasn’t something she could fix since the system had been closed for the month, so it meant credit memos, correcting invoices, and an accounting accrual for the quarter. Still, she felt victorious.
Twisted By Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 1 Page 14
