Aftersight

by Brian Mercer

  A circuit seemed to close between us the moment our hands fully connected. All at once, pictures, feelings, memories, and emotions too intense for me to take in spilled into and through me. It was more than remembering or knowing or being. There he was, Jean Paul but not Jean Paul. He was little Peter, five years old, holding my hand, walking on a sunlit Ukrainian hillside. There I was, Becky but not Becky. I was little Anna, five years old, throwing a ball to him. There we were, Anna and Peter, watching my father plow a field, the oxen straining for traction in the mud. There we were, children by the fireside, stealing innocent little kisses under the quilt. So much love! A universe of it! He was... I was... we were... images and information, one fragment on top of the next, flowing too rapidly and fleetingly for me to take in.

  Sir Alex's voice, faint, distant. "This is an exercise in connecting but remaining distinct. Keep your energy in your own space. Remain grounded. Remain distinct."

  But grounding seemed impossible; sharing was everything! My memories were his memories; our spirits intermingling; slippery answers rushing at me. Anna's death at age seven from Yellow Fever; Peter's inability to love fully after the loss; connecting again at Waltham Academy as Becky and Jean Paul; recognition; his cynicism, unconscious resentment; inability to give in to feelings that overwhelmed, overpowered, exceeded understanding. And through it all, this one spiraling thought: I have lived before!

  Sir Alex's voice again, remote, almost imperceptible. "Create your protection star. Imagine the star hovering between the two of you. Let the energy that you feel coming from your partner flow into the star instead of you. Let the star neutralize your partner's energy, keeping your body clean and protected."

  Stars? Stars. I thought, trying to pull myself back, pull myself away. So much love! So nice to stay!

  From some dim recess I remembered the technique. By visualizing a star floating in front of me, the bright white light would attract and defuse foreign energy, keeping my spirit wholly my own. With all my will, I conjured a star with my imagination, then a second, then a third. Gradually, I fought my way back to myself, back to my body. April twenty-ninth. Waltham Academy. Here. Now.

  Sir Alex instructed us to release hands and we spent the next half-hour using separation and cleansing techniques to clean out our spirit bodies. I spent a lot of that time sobbing quietly, trying to shrug off the brief but intensely intimate experience. I wasn't the only one. All around me, my classmates were snuffling in the aftermath of tears. Mrs. Apple wandered around the room, offering tissues to those who needed them. I took one gratefully, clearing my sinuses. In front of me sat Jean Paul, his eyes closed tightly now, trails of his own tears still marking his face.

  "People wonder why we're here on Earth," Sir Alex said in the quiet minutes that closed the meditation exercise. "You've heard the answer before: To let go of fear and learn to express unconditional love. It's kind of trite, isn't it? 'Love is the answer.' People forget that love needn't be an abstract concept. It is an energy. It is a frequency. We can hone in and tune to it like a radio receiving broadcasts.

  "In your careers you will encounter people and situations that are wrought with fear and all its derivatives: anger, hate, greed, jealousy, envy, insecurity. At times the list seems infinite. Fear is contagious. In the absence of focus, it will draw you in like a tire slipping into a rut in an old and worn-out road.

  "The question will arise, what do I do? What is the solution? I'm here to remind you, the answer is simple. The implementation of that answer..." He shrugged. "Well, that may require some creativity."

  The meditation was over. Jean Paul looked shaken up. His typical expression of smug satisfaction had been replaced by doubt. He looked at me with a kind of wide-eyed amazement. Amazement and maybe a little fear.

  "Did you see—" I stammered. "Did you feel what I felt?"

  "No," he said, a little too quickly for me to believe him. "I felt nothing. Saw nothing." But the residue of tears in his eyes said otherwise. He stood. "Please, to excuse me." He strode from the room.

  Nicole, Cali, and Sara moved tentatively up to me, apparently unfazed by the recent exercise but sensing that something happened to me.

  "What happened to you?" asked Cali.

  I wanted to tell them what had happened but the information had come so fast I hadn't yet been able to process and make sense of it myself. The past-life memories, which seemed so real during meditation, were already fading like so many dreams. Yet the feelings left behind lingered like a pungent perfume.

  "I had an, an... an Experience," I said, more to myself than to them. "I'm not sure I can... form complete sentences right now."

  "Is it bad?" Sara demanded. "Is it about the old man in black?"

  "Come on," Nicole said, putting her arms around Sara and Cali's shoulders. "Let's give Becky a little breathin' room. She can tell us later."

  "But what if it's about the old man?" Sara went on as they walked away. "If she knows something—"

  "I'm sure it will all be okay," Nicole insisted.

  I sat weakly on a reading chair as my classmates wandered out. For a full minute I sat there just… breathing. When I finally stood, the classroom was nearly empty. I was drifting toward the exit, still dazed and disconnected, when Sir Alex called me over to where he was standing with Nigel and Mrs. Apple at the meditation room's wide entrance.

  "Becky, are you all right?"

  "Sure," I said. "I'm fine."

  His repressed smile hinted that he knew differently. "Are you certain?"

  "No. I mean, yes. I'm good."

  "Well, all right, then. I just wanted to tell you that you have a visitor arriving this afternoon."

  That cleared my head a little. "A visitor? Who?"

  "You remember Catalina Romero, the medium at Mrs. Hawkley's house the night we met in Bridgeport?"

  "Of course."

  "She was in London this week and I've coaxed her into paying us a visit."

  "Oh, yay!" I felt relief flood through me, though I didn't quite know why. I'd only met Catalina once, after all. Why should the thought of seeing her again make me feel so at ease?

  "I hope you don't mind," Sir Alex continued, "but I've taken the liberty of arranging a private dinner party for you, your roommates and her in your sitting room this evening."

  "Sir Alex," I said, finally gathering my senses, "I couldn't imagine anything better."

  ****

  I ran my index finger over the lip of my water glass, savoring the silvery crystal resonance. No one else seemed to notice it. The conversation — and after-dinner sherry — continued to flow. The leftovers of dessert, puff pastries stuffed with creamy chocolate mousse, had just been cleared, along with our used china and flatware. Except for our napkins, water glasses, and thimble-sized tumblers of amber dessert wine, the table was empty of everything but crumbs.

  "I'm afraid I'm corrupting you young girls with alcohol," Catalina tittered. "There's no drinking age here in Great Britain, is there? A small after-dinner drink is a perfectly acceptable way to conclude a meal."

  I sighed contentedly. Sipping sherry after a gourmet meal made me feel grown-up and independent. It wasn't beer and sorority parties, but for now it would do for an away-college experience. Catalina's visit had been exactly what I'd imagined when Sir Alex told me about it. An evening of pleasant conversation with a woman I was more and more thinking of as a big sister. How nice to visit with someone who'd been through what I had and not only survived but prospered.

  It made me think of the last time we'd all eaten dinner here, the night of our arrival at Waltham. What a different person I'd been then, frail and uncertain. Not that I was all that self-assured now, but at least I was following a path, even if I didn't know exactly where it was leading me.

  I thought back to my first impressions of the girls. It had been like reuniting with old friends. Despite the lingering hostility with Cali — even it seemed rooted in friendship somehow — I realized that what was happening was bigger tha
n each of us individually. We shared a mutual destiny, a destiny that, for good or bad, included an old man who seemed to have haunted each of us long before we'd met.

  I still couldn't shake the memories of my morning meditation session. By now I was certain that I'd glimpsed a shared past life with Jean Paul, when he'd been a little boy named Peter and I a little girl named Anna, living somewhere in the hills of Ukraine. I was pretty sure that Jean Paul had had the same experience, even if he hadn’t admitted it. Was Jean Paul a part of my destiny, too?

  "I must say," Catalina continued, "it feels good to be back in these rooms."

  "Did they look like this when you went to school here?" Sara asked.

  "Pretty much. The same furniture and basic décor. And, of course, the same pleasant energy."

  "The energy isn't always so pleasant," Sara admitted. "At least not in these rooms."

  "Oh? What do you mean?"

  I was surprised it had taken us this long to tell Catalina the story of our poltergeist and our connection to the old man in black, but now, our tongues loosened with sherry, we revealed everything. I even related my sighting of Cali on the roadside in upstate New York, wondering out loud if it wasn't somehow all connected.

  "I must have been out-of-body at the time," Cali explained. "That was the time period when my sleep issues were going on. I don't remember going out of body but that must have been what was happening.

  "When the memories started coming back, I remembered out-of-body experiences that included Sir Alex, as well as the other students here at Waltham. Do you think I was projecting into the future?"

  Catalina shook her head. "Probably not. You were probably projecting into Waltham's astral counterpart. Don't look so surprised. What, did you think the learning stops when the lights go out? How do you think Sir Alex found you in the first place? He does most of his recruiting on the astral planes. You were attending his school long before you physically arrived here at Waltham Academy."

  "Are you saying that we're all projecting into an astral school at nighttime?" Sara asked. "Not fair to have school when we're supposed to be sleeping."

  "That would explain the feelin' of familiarity I had when I first met y'all," Nicole observed. "Maybe we're all contactin' each other in the astral planes and just don't remember."

  "You guys really don't know?" Catalina asked, her forehead frowning as if she saw something we had all missed. "You don't feel it? Why is it we can pull the most obscure details from perfect strangers and yet be unable to read the answers for ourselves? You guys have all known each other before. You've all had past lives together. More than one, in fact. I'm seeing, oh, maybe as many as four or five."

  We looked at each other but said nothing. It made me think of the past life memories I'd relived with Jean Paul that morning. What forgotten threads of destiny had brought us all together? It made me shiver.

  "Catalina, what's happening to us?" I asked. "Any light you can shed on what's going on? Even a little?"

  Catalina set her feet flat on the floor, took a deep breath and gazed down into the center of the table. Her eyes drifted closed. "I'm seeing a shared past life. Mmm. Four young women. Looks like late Middle Ages, early Renaissance, maybe. Germanic lifetime." She took another deep breath. "I see these women as natural healers, specialists in herbal medicine. This sort of thing. It feels like two of them are sisters or cousins. Related somehow."

  "What about the old man in black?" asked Cali. "Is there a connection?"

  Catalina nodded; her awareness seemed far away. "You say 'old man' but I'm actually seeing two men. Brothers of some means who resemble each other. One is like a holy man. A priest, I think. The other has something to do with the law. Like a judge or magistrate."

  She tilted her head to the side and opened and closed her hands in a beckoning gesture, as if asking the universe for more. "It looks like one of these men is in love with one of the four girls. Ah. Okay. But he's married to someone else whom he doesn't love. It looks like an arranged sort of thing. But this love he feels for the young healer, it's a true love. That's what's real. Mmm. Yeah.

  "Okay. I'm getting that the affair is discovered and as this one brother, the magistrate, has a great deal of standing in the community, he's in a lot of conflict about what to do. His wife is very upset and in the process of reconciling it looks like he convinces himself that the young woman, this healer, has bewitched him. He thinks, how can he feel so possessed and beset unless she's used some sort of supernatural means to bewitch him into being this way.

  "It looks like he and his brother accuse the young woman of witchcraft and, in the hysteria that follows, all four girls are implicated."

  Innocence Accused, I thought. "My painting!" I said, telling to Catalina what the girls knew already.

  "Just memories," Catalina explained. "Your Higher Self remembers."

  "Were we burned at the stake?" Sara asked with a grisly sort of glee that made even Catalina smile.

  "Give me a second." Another deep breath. "No, it doesn't look like it. I do see some sort of trial but it looks more like hysteria than any sort of attempt to follow the rule of law.

  "Okay, I'm seeing a large hole. A hole in the ground. While the trial is taking place, the four women are held there. I'm getting pictures of a crowd. A mob. It looks like, before the trial is even over, the town's people are whipped up into such a fury by the oratory of one of the brothers — the priest, is what I'm getting — that the crowd goes out to the hole where the women are being held and throws dirt and stones into it. It's like," Catalina put her hand over her chest and grimaced as if she herself was in pain. "It's like they're buried alive."

  The four us had all been leaning into the table as if we could coax the information from Catalina through will alone. Now we sat back in our chairs, horrified expressions twisting our faces.

  "I'm getting that these four girls had unfinished business from that lifetime," she went on, "and have been reborn now to complete what they started. It looks like whatever it is, it's very important to their evolution as spirits. Part of their path, so to speak."

  "What path?" I asked. "What are we supposed to do?"

  "That, my dear," Catalina said, opening her eyes, "is something you're going to have to discover for yourself. Ah, this is one of the lessons you girls have yet to learn at Waltham," she explained. "Never tell a person their life purpose. First of all, that sort of information usually isn't passed to us unless it's extremely important. And even then, what if we're wrong? Who are we to rob another soul of finding their true purpose? And who says that that purpose is set in stone?"

  "What does the old man want with us now?" Sara asked. "I mean, if he saw to it that we were killed back then, what can it be now?"

  "Old man or old men?" Cali asked. "If they're brothers and they look alike, maybe there're two of 'em."

  "What I was getting," Catalina said, "was like this spirit — or spirits — didn't progress normally into the afterlife when he or they died. And whatever destiny you were trying to fulfill then, well, it looks like he's bent on making sure you don't fulfill it now."

  "It's like Ravi said," I reminded them. "This is something we're going to have to face. But how? How do we find him?"

  Catalina picked up her glass of sherry and took another sip. "Oh, I'm quite certain that when the time comes to face him, that he will find you."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Tyson

  East Barnet, Northern London

  May 1

  I surveyed the layout of Emily's bedroom, noting the location and placement of each item, big and small. I'd check again throughout the night to see if anything was out of place. If something moved for no reason, I wanted to document it.

  Normally I'd just photograph or video the room — the mind could play tricks on you; a picture was the only way to be sure you didn't imagine that something had moved — but Lord Humphreys wouldn't let us bring in cameras and Tommy didn't want to risk smuggling anything in.

>   I inspected Emily's bed. It was full of stuffed animals. She had quite the collection. Bears and bunnies supplemented with a giraffe, a turtle, a crocodile, and two cats. One bear in particular — a polar bear with slightly pigeon-toed paws — reminded me of my brother Jake's teddy bear, the one Jake used to sleep with after our parents split.

  I still vividly recalled the sight of it laying on Jake's bedroom floor, its head in one spot, its body in another, its stuffing sprinkled liberally in-between. But it wasn't Jake's mangled bear that still horrified and infuriated me, even now, almost ten years later. It was the high-pitched wail of my seven-year-old little brother witnessing the destruction of what he probably considered at the time to be his only friend. The fact that I hadn't been able to exact my revenge on whoever or whatever done it still haunted me.

  "Okay, we're pretty much all set," Tommy said as he reached the second floor landing.

  "What did Humphreys say?" I asked.

  Tommy shook his head. "He doesn't want either of us to set foot in Emily's bedroom while she's sleeping. The best he'll do is to let us sit in the hallway opposite her open door and peek in."

  "What if somethin' happens and she cries out?"

  "We are not to enter her bedroom unless at least one of her parents is present. Lord Humphreys wasn't too happy when he learned that we’d interviewed Emily in her bedroom without her mum there."

  "But Emily said—"

  "I think Lord Humphreys concedes that it wasn't our doing, but nonetheless, he doesn't want it to happen again."

  I shrugged, sliding my hand down over my chin. "I guess he's just tryin' to protect her. I can respect that. But if she's screamin'..."

  "I know. If that happens, we'll just have to improvise."

  "Still no luck with the cameras?"

  "No. He was very adamant. No cameras."