by C. K. Brooke
No idea what’s about to happen.
A blare of music interrupts my train of thought, and I glance up. Henry mutters an apology, lowering the volume with the remote control, but I place my hand over his before he can change stations. My mouth hangs ajar as whatever program is playing pans over brilliant green and golden fields, the sun glaring over them, each blade of grass and wheat swaying in the wind. The scene fades to black, and the next shot begins with a sunset over a lonely barn while the characters, two men walking with fishing poles, strike a conversation.
“Where is this?” I demand.
Henry shrugs.
“Mom,” I call like it’s suddenly urgent. She steps out from the kitchen, dishrag in hand. “Come here a sec.”
Henry hits the info button on the remote, but all it gives us is the title and release date of the film. Mom approaches the TV, and I ask her if she knows the location of the movie.
“Missouri,” Henry suddenly replies, before she can answer.
I stare at him. “How do you know?”
“I just recognize it. I dunno. I must’ve seen this movie before.”
“You’re right,” Mom says. “It’s been years since this came out, but I remember a scene where they go to the St. Louis fair, so he’s right, it’s got to be Missouri.”
I’m feeling emotional. Everything on the screen in front of me yanks ferociously at my chest cavity. I turn again to Henry, but he doesn’t seem interested in the film, docking the remote in preparation to change the station. I have no idea why, but I want to ask him, how are you not feeling this too?
Maybe I’m crazy, but I think I lived there.
And I think I died there.
I snap the dream journal shut and stare at the screen, almost as if I might reach out and touch it nostalgically.
Mom must sense something’s up. She lifts the throw pillow next to me and takes its place on the sofa. “Tell me about it, Wil,” she invites me gently.
“I…” My mouth is dry, and I swallow. “I think I’ve been there. It looks like the place in my dreams, and where I went in my regression. Missouri must be where…” I trail off, as Henry is watching us inquiringly.
“Willow’s been doing some research into her past lives,” Mom informs him levelly. For her tone, I might as well be researching the best time of year to plant peonies. I wonder if she realizes how not normal reincarnation sounds to most people—at least in Western society. I still don’t know how Henry feels about his father having married a witch. And I’ve never asked.
“Past lives?” His eyebrows shoot up, somewhat scathing, until something seems to register with him. “Wait. So is that why you’ve been hanging around that hypnotist? He’s telling you stories about your past lives?”
“Hypnotherapist,” I correct him. “And he’s not telling stories. He’s just helping me piece together what I’ve already uncovered on my own. Speaking of which…” I check the time on my phone. “He should be here any minute.”
Henry tenses like he wants to protest, but wouldn’t dare in front of my mom. Instead, he just changes TV stations, looking sour, until the doorbell rings. I kiss Mom on the cheek, hop to my feet, and give a stirring Greg a light pat on the shoulder as I pass.
I scoop up my coat and bag and shoot out the door.
“Hey,” Mason greets as I close the door behind me.
“I’m not inviting you inside,” I state, pulling on my coat and gloves, “for your own good.”
He lingers on the stoop, looking cold in his leather jacket. It’s nippy this evening. “I feel like I should at least say hi to your parents.” He hesitates. “I don’t want to be disrespectful.”
I groan and let him pull open the door. Mason sticks his head through the opening and calls, “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Hayes! I’ll have her back in a couple of hours.”
“Don’t bother,” my mom’s voice carries out. “Keep her overnight! She could use a little action.”
Zeus and Hera! I slap a glove-clad hand over my face.
“I have no idea what that means, Mrs. Hayes,” calls Mason, and closes the door again. He pulls his keys out of his jacket pocket. “You ready?”
“Gods, yes,” I mutter, casting one last dour glare at my front door, although I know Mom can’t see. I’m surprised I’m capable of feeling embarrassment anymore after living with her.
There’s an orchard in town, only five minutes from my neighborhood, and that’s where we head. Mason pulls his sedan into the dirt parking lot. Across the street is a pumpkin patch where families with small children are picking out pumpkins and taking hay rides. I have a vague memory of my dad taking Heather and me on one.
As I walk alongside Mason, our breaths visible in the air before us, I examine the early childhood memory, hold it up to the way I felt not fifteen minutes ago, when I’d caught the landscape of Missouri on television. I tried to analyze: were there differences, similarities, between the quality of the memories?
The pumpkin patch memory felt soft around the edges and hazy, like a sepia photograph, but felt very much modern and me. Missouri, on the other hand, felt heavy and mysterious, like a latched box. A latched box with my heart locked up inside, pounding against the walls to escape its longing and the grief.
“You’re quiet,” observes Mason as we crest the hill.
“You look freezing,” is all I can respond. “Are you sure that jacket’s warm enough?”
“No.” He smiles. “Guess I should’ve brought a scarf.”
“Guess you should’ve.” I bump his elbow a little as we walk, already short of breath. Exercise has never really been my thing.
We enter the warmth of the little barn-shaped building. Picnic tables are scattered throughout the room over rustic, wood paneled floors, and a few teenage girls in aprons and hairnets stand behind the counter. Two are gossiping in hushed voices, while a girl with a long blond braid leans against the cash register, reading a popular vampire romance novel. A giant chalkboard covers the wall behind them, listing the available fare.
The gossiping girls quickly break apart and greet us when we approach the counter, and Mason orders a dozen apple cinnamon donuts and two cups of hot cider.
“A dozen? Isn’t that a little ambitious for two people?”
“Nah, those things are tiny,” he says, and pays the girls.
When we sit down at one of the picnic tables with our giant white box, Mason opens the lid to reveal a dozen full-sized, fluffy-looking donuts, glazed in tan maple frosting and drowning in powdered cinnamon sugar.
My stomach gurgles. “Holy Gaia, these smell incredible.” I look up at Mason. “Tiny, eh?”
He lifts one from the box, and powdered cinnamon rains down on its remaining companions. “I swear, the last few orchards I’ve been to only served mini-donuts.”
I selected one of for myself and set it down on my napkin. I needed a good, long draught of warm cider to warm me up beforehand. “Do you take every girl out to the orchards, then?”
He finishes chewing and brushes cinnamon powder from his goatee. “Only witches. Who listen to goth rock.”
I grin, although I’m already feeling foolish for asking the question. It sounded so jealous.
“So, are you gonna tell me why you called me yesterday to ask if my brakes worked?”
I take a sip of cider, letting it flow down my throat and warm my chest. I consider before speaking, then decide just to tell him. I relay the whole story of yesterday, what Henry had said to me in his sleep, and why it had spurred my reaction.
“Willow.” Mason drops his donut to the napkin, laying his hand in the center of the picnic table to get my attention. “Are you making the connection?”
“I…” As soon as he says it, I see the red car from my dreams and the regression, bouncing downhill, unable to stop.
He cut the brakes.
I don’t realize what I’m doing. My hand flings out to steady myself against the table at the realization, and I accidentally knock over my Styrofoam c
up. Mason throws a wad of napkins at the puddle. I hurriedly scoot off the bench before cider gets all over my coat, and wipe it up with my napkin.
Mason comes to kneel beside me, helping me mop it off the floor. When we’ve finished, we stuff the dirty napkins into my empty cup, but we don’t get up.
“Mason,” I whisper, my heart thumping like a rabbit. The words come with conviction, sinking like a stone to the pit of my stomach. “I was murdered.” I waver on my heels, but Mason holds my elbow, steadying me. “Henry knows who did it,” I whisper. “Somewhere in his subconscious.”
Mason nods, his blue eyes searching mine.
“I need to find out who, and why. I’m telling you, I won’t rest until—”
“Hey,” comes a timid voice. “I saw your drink spilled, so I got you another.” The blonde with the braid sets a full cup atop the table. Up close, I notice bubble letters on her apron in sparkly purple Sharpie spelling out JESSI. “No charge,” she adds.
We thank her, and Jessi smiles shyly at Mason before resuming her spot by the register, novel in hand.
“Get out your phone,” Mason advises me. “We’re going to list everything we know so far.”
I open a note-taking app on my phone. For the next twenty minutes, over donuts and cider, we discuss everything as I type, from my stepdad’s video of me talking in a strange voice about my ‘secret,’ and the images I’d written in my dream journal of a teen girl primping in the mirror, to Henry’s exact words yesterday while he slept.
We finish it out with the movie that took place in Missouri, and the emotions that had emerged with it—desperation, regret, grief.
“Okay.” I rise and begin to pace, because movement usually helps me think. “This is what I’m piecing together. There was a girl, not much older than them.” I indicate the teens behind the counter, who are now helping a middle-aged couple. “She lived in Missouri.”
In my mind’s eye, there’s the car again, crashing through the guardrail off the bridge. “Someone wanted her dead.” Why? “They messed with her car.” I know without a doubt she was the driver in my memories, my visions. “She died in the accident. Mission accomplished.”
Mason’s hands are steepled over the half-empty donut box. “We have to talk to Henry,” he says.
I try to run a hand through my hair, but it gets tangled an inch past my ear. “How? He doesn’t believe in any of this stuff. And I’m pretty sure he hates you.”
“Ya think?” Mason polishes off another donut. “Call him. Tell him to meet us at my office. We can be there in ten.”
“He’s never going to agree,” I warn, but even so, pick up my phone and find his name. I listen to the ringer until it goes to voicemail. “He’s not answering.”
Just as I pull the phone away to end the call, I see Henry’s trying me on call-waiting. I select the “end and accept” option and press the phone to my ear. “Henry?”
“Hey.”
“You busy?”
“Studying.”
“Mason and I want to know if you can meet us at his office.”
There’s a brief pause. “Now?”
“Yes,” I say, shooting Mason a dubious look.
Mason reaches out. “Give me the phone.”
I cover the speaker. “What? No.”
“Just let me talk to him,” Mason insists.
I relent and hand over my phone, even as I hear Henry’s voice through the receiver asking me something.
“Hey, man,” Mason says easily. “Yeah. Uh-huh. It’s for research. I’ll pay you.”
“What?” I hiss. “Mason—”
“Yep.” He holds up a hand to quiet me and gets up from the picnic table. “Okay, I understand. Ten, fifteen minutes? Great, thanks.” He disconnects the call and hands me the phone. “See? Simple.”
“How did you…?”
He closes the lid of the donut box and lifts it off the table. We dispose of our cups and napkins on the way out, and perfect timing, for several families with a gaggle of noisy kids are entering as we leave.
It’s darker and more frigid outside than when we first came in, and I rebutton my coat, shivering. Multicolored maple leaves cake the ground where we tread, shifting beneath our steps in the dusk. “You shouldn’t pay him,” I say.
“Willow, Willow,” he teases me. “Don’t you know, the way to a man’s heart is through his wallet?”
“If that’s so, then I’m SOL,” I grumble.
“I don’t mean it in a romantic sense.” He treads downhill beside me. “It’s just that money’s a guy’s best motivator, right?”
He probably is right. Isn’t that why Henry’s becoming an M.D. and seems to think that’s such a great selling-point for him as boyfriend material? While it could be true, it sounds so…shallow. And I feel sure, somehow, that there’s more to Henry than that.
Mason’s laughing now. “I’m just joshing you.” He opens the passenger door for me. “He didn’t actually agree to be paid. You think any amount of money could convince him to hang out with me?” He gives me a level look as I slide into the seat. “He’s only coming because of you.”
#
“This will never work.”
I blow a huff of air into my palm as I wait by the door. Mason taps away at his keyboard while Henry stands, arms folded, next to the red recliner.
We’re in Mason’s office. It feels strange being here at night, with the waiting room all dark, no sunlight streaming in. Mason’s firing up his modem and gathering notes for another regression.
“I’m sorry, but I really think you’re wasting your time. You can’t hypnotize me,” insists Henry. “I’m a Type A personality.”
“No kidding,” Mason mutters as his monitors flash on.
“Henry, for the last time, sit.” I point to the chair.
With a sigh, he reluctantly lowers himself onto the seat, but doesn’t lean back or put up his feet. As he fiddles with his phone, switching it to silent mode like I asked, I lean down to whisper to Mason.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Clients say all the time that they can’t be hypnotized,” Mason whispers back. “They’re usually the easiest ones to put under.”
I straighten. Mason is obviously confident, even if Henry’s making a face like he’s landed in a cactus patch.
“I need your full consent before we start.” Mason has him sign a few papers and answer a couple of health-related questions, to which Henry rolls his eyes. From my corner, I watch them.
Mason gets up and holds out a hand, indicating his empty chair to me. “Willow, have a seat.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Once your brother is in a relaxed state, you’ll be the one asking the questions.”
“Uh…” I take a seat in his chair, and grab a blank sheet of paper out of the printer. “Okay?” Thinking there’s no way I can adlib this, I pick up a pencil and begin writing a list of questions as Mason briefly goes over the process with an impatient Henry. Each question I want to ask sounds more accusing than the last, and I have to erase them and start over.
When everyone’s ready, Mason dims the lights and begins his relaxation technique. Hardly to my surprise, exhausted Henry’s asleep and snoring before Mason’s even finished the preliminary meditation.
The chair creaks a little as I turn in it. “Mason,” I breathe. “He’s sleeping. Why bother to continue?”
“He can still hear us,” murmurs Mason. In his regular voice, he sends Henry down, through his past memories, reading the same script he’d used on me. I recognize it. But this time, there are no responses from his client, only snores.
I watch my stepbrother’s shadow and feel a pang of pity. He’s only asleep, not because the hypnosis is so powerful, but because he’s so damn tired, his existence nothing but school and studying, studying and school, day and night. He pushes himself so hard. He is a perfectionist, a Type A, although at least he knows it.
We’ve never discussed it, but I can read it in his eyes
when his dad comes home after a double shift at the plant, or when we drive past the deserted strip malls and foreclosed homes of Middling. As a doctor, Henry can go someplace like Columbus or Cincinnati, work for a big hospital, climb out of the working-class life our parents have managed to scrounge together. I’m sure Henry dreams of things like three-car garages, country clubs, and international travel. At the rate he’s going, he’ll probably get there.
I’ve been so lost in my thoughts, I’m jarred when Mason taps me on the shoulder. “He’s ready. Ask him anything you want to know.”
Abandoning the paper on the desk with my half-erased list, I wheel the computer chair a few paces closer to the sleeping student in the recliner. I watch as his chest rises and falls beneath his polo, in the same rhythm as yesterday, when we found ourselves in this same position, him asleep, me awake…
“What’s your name?” I ask him, almost bored.
Steady breathing is all I get. Time passes, thirty seconds, a whole minute. I’m about to look at Mason with a shrug, when a slow, thick drawl emits from my stepbrother’s mouth.
“Ray…Sanderson.”
My heart gives a pound. I turn and fumble as quietly as I can on the desk for the paper and pencil. Once I have them in hand, I shakily jot down the name.
Whoa. Totally not expecting that.
“Where are you, Ray?” I ask him.
“Home,” he says curtly, in a crisp, direct tone I’ve never heard him use before.
“Where’s home?”
No answer.
“Who do you live with?”
“My wife.”
I have no idea why, but this pinches me. “What’s her name?” is all I can think to ask, even though doing so makes me feel all kinds of tense.
In the low light, I can see his brow scrunching up, as if he’s struggling to remember.
