by H. G. Nadel
He strides over to the previously discarded knapsack and sits down next to it. “I have something for you.” He reaches for her hand and gently pulls her down next to him. His hands quiver as he opens the knapsack. He rummages through the books within until his hand withdraws a small linen bag. He fumbles with the drawstring and removes a finely crafted gold chain, at the end of which hangs a pendant in the shape of a golden heart, encrusted with rubies and sapphires.
“Oh, Pierre!” she gasps, “It’s breathtaking.”
“The heart opens,” he says.
She opens the locket carefully. A tiny piece of parchment is folded inside. She unfolds the paper and reads the words, written in beautiful calligraphy: “Love is two hearts living in the same soul.”
“Never has the Philosopher written truer words,” he says.
She swallows and tries to blink back the tears in her eyes before she looks up. She cries so easily. She reaches for his hand, presses it open-palmed against her chest, and whispers, “My heart is yours forever.”
She sees both relief and joy lightening the countenance of the nobleman who faces her. Though he’s ten years her senior, his eyes at this moment have the innocent look of a schoolboy. “Until I met you, I thought love was for the weak,” he says. “Though I studied the Philosopher’s words intently, I questioned the entire idea of a soulmate. I found pleasure only in learning. But now I know what I was missing. Now I am a disciple of Aristotle in every sense of the word. My soul is yours, now and forever. Nothing on heaven or earth—not even the very jaws of hell—can sever our bond.”
His words stir in her a passion she has never before experienced, a desire that rises from a place so deep within that she never before knew it existed. She thinks the fiery ache running through her might consume her if she doesn’t answer it somehow. So she gives the only answer she can: a kiss. A kiss that lingers, devours, and envelops all her senses. His lips begin to search beyond her lips, to the tingling lobes of her ears, the throbbing pulse at her neck, the warm heartbeat that thrums under her chest. Soon, she loses track of the world around them.
She grows aware of a sudden storm descending on the forest. She feels her beloved’s lithe body press more tightly against hers, as if to shield her from the storm or something lurking within it. Wind tears at their clothes. Rain bursts from the darkening sky and cascades in sheets, soaking them to the skin. A sudden flash of lightning and simultaneous clap of thunder shock her into opening her eyes. Then another flash illuminates the shadows among the trees. For a split second, she thinks she sees a face in those shadows, a familiar face contorted with jealousy and rage.
The forest goes dark again, and she realizes that it isn’t just rain dampening her face, but tears. Tears of joy blended with tears of fear and … sorrow. She smells something burning. Like ozone. Like electricity. Where is she? When is she?
“Pierre!” Julia’s own shouting woke her. Her face was drenched in tears, and her clothes were soaked in cold sweat that felt almost like rain. Waking up wasn’t exactly comforting. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw in the misty, early-morning light was a tombstone looming over her head, a trickle of dried blood drawing a crooked line down its center like a crack. Am I dead? she wondered. Then she remembered that she had gone to her mother’s grave.
Julia’s dream was still fresh in her mind—it was unlike any other dream she’d ever had. She remembered every moment vividly, as if it had all happened somewhere in her distant past. She recalled the scents from her dream: the dying stink of fall leaves and the living musk of a man—a mix of sweat, exotic oils, and herbs. She ran her tongue over her lips. The taste of his mouth was still on them. A chill shook her body as she recalled the dark, somehow familiar figure she’d seen at the end of her dream.
But it couldn’t be real. She couldn’t imagine Austin prancing around in that medieval garb. And she had no idea where she’d picked up the name, “Pierre.” Weird.
Weirder still, why was she still here when it was almost morning? Where had the past few hours gone? Her head started pounding, sending a wave of nausea through her body. She reached up and touched something sticky next to her eye. Blood.
The events of last night came flooding back. She’d had an exceptionally vivid dream. Right after she had been attacked by a shadowy stranger. Right after she had asked her mother if it was possible to come back from the grave.
Julia stood up and rubbed at the bandaged scratches on her arms where Dr. Bertel had grabbed her the night before. She rolled her neck, which hurt from sleeping on the ground, and massaged it with her hand. She started to walk away from the grave and was surprised when a bolt of pain shot up her ankle, reminding her of the jump from the top of the gate. She reached down to roll up her pant leg and see if it was swollen. As she did, she smeared blood on her ankle, the blood she’d wiped from the gash in her head. “Girl, you are a mess!” she said aloud, trying to lighten the mood and distract herself from a growing panic.
She stumbled back to her mother’s grave and fell forward onto her knees. She stared at her mother’s name etched into the tombstone along with the years of her birth and death—just 44 years between the two. The epitaph below read: “Though her body lies beneath, her soul is borne aloft.” Is that what happened last night? Was my soul borne aloft?
As she limped back toward the gate, she turned on her cell phone. An alarming text from Nadia appeared: “Intern friend from hospital says Dr. Hottie disappeared from room. Call me.”
SEVEN
Julia’s hands shook as she read Nadia’s text. First the graveyard, now this. Were they being targeted I because of their research? Did her attacker get to Dr. Bertel first? Although Bertel warned that their research could be dangerous in the wrong hands, Julia had always approached it with naive optimism and had never feared its potential consequences—until now.
She fumbled for the car keys that were miraculously still in her pocket and opened her car door. Moving as quickly as she could in her battered condition, she locked the door, dug through her purse, and found the card that Austin had given her only a few hours before. She placed the call, shaking from the effects of too much adrenaline. When he didn’t answer, she left a message: “Austin, this is Julia Jones. I—I’ve just been attacked. In the graveyard. I am going over to the hospital right now. Could you … could you give me a call?”
She took a few deep breaths and finally felt calm enough to start the car. She was bruised from head to toe, and her entire body hurt. She could tell that her body was beginning to go into shock. As she drove toward the hospital, she called her dad, but he didn’t pick up. Neither did Tyler. She tried to remain calm as she left them messages but couldn’t hide the panic in her voice. I guess I’ll have to handle this one on my own, she thought. The events of the previous night weighed upon her mind, and she began to sob from fear, relief, and utter exhaustion. She was a wreck, inside and out.
Her thoughts shifted toward Dr. Bertel. After all the work they’d done together, Julia and Bertel had become something akin to friends. It was both more and less than that. It was a meeting of two scientific minds—the first intellectual connection she’d felt with any man besides her father. Bertel shared her excitement in odd research milestones, like the sudden factor that balanced an equation, the discovery of a new use for a chemical byproduct, or the plotting of unexpected points of symmetry between science and religion.
As she drove, she thought about the strange change that had come over Bertel yesterday when he’d grabbed her by the arms. It was such a contradiction to his usual nature, which was gentle and soft-spoken to the point of being withdrawn. Yet he had become much more animated in recent weeks, ever since their breakthrough.
A few weeks earlier, she and Bertel had shared a moment that no two people before them had ever known when they’d produced a momentary chemical change in the pineal gland of a cadaver brain. It had been so faint and so brief, it was barely recordable. Still, they’d both exclaimed at t
he same moment, “Oh!” and turned to each other with looks of such dumb wonder, that Julia had blushed. The excitement was like nothing she had ever experienced.
“Julia, do you know what this could mean?”
“That maybe someday we can bring back people who are brain dead?”
He nodded. “And it all starts where I thought, in the pineal gland: the seat of the soul, the third eye chakra, the house of the Holy Spirit.”
The stubborn scientist in Julia wouldn’t die that easily, and she still remained skeptical about the spiritual connotations of Dr. Bertel’s work. As much as she missed her mother, most of the time she found herself believing the experiments would fail—or that something in their research would prove that the human personality was nothing more than a series of chemical and electrical impulses, with no soul required. “How do we know the chemical activity is from the guy who used to inhabit this brain? It might just be the drug itself, or some sort of residual nerve impulses, some final reflex.”
“The longer we can keep it going, the better chance we have to find out,” he said.
“But really the only way we can find out is if we can get a brain to talk to us.”
He nodded and looked directly into her eyes. His usually sad gray irises were bright with excitement. “And I think we can do it! We’re an amazing team. Science superheroes!” As goofy as he sounded, she hoped he was right.
But right now he was in terrible danger. After her close encounter, she was convinced that Dr. Bertel was also the victim of an attack. For all she knew, the reason Bertel wasn’t in his hospital room was because he was dead. She pulled into the parking lot next to the emergency room just as her cell phone rang.
“Hello?” she answered expectantly. “Austin?”
Instead, a thin, raspy voice spoke to her in French.
“Heloise, did you miss me, dearest? I’m coming back for you.”
She hesitated, heart thumping. “I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number.”
“No, I’m quite sure this is exactly the right number.”
“Who is this?” she demanded, though it seemed as if the answer were on the tip of her tongue.
Then the other end of the line went dead.
EIGHT
Julia staggered into the emergency room, bruised I and bloodied. The hospital was exceptionally busy, at least compared to her visit the night before. Strange, she would have thought nights would be busiest, what with gunshot wounds, brawling drunks, muggings, drug overdoses, and the like. But it was a Saturday, and the place was overflowing with the bloody, broken, itching results of summer fun: a screaming boy with a severed fingertip, two teenage girls in bathing suits scratching arms covered in red splotches, and a group of young men who had clearly been hiking in poison ivy.
Medics rushed a young man on a stretcher moaning unintelligibly through the admitting doors. His torn riding pants and motorcycle jacket were covered in blood. Julia’s dad had always forbidden her to ride Tyler’s motorcycle, though she supposed she could if she wanted, now that she was an adult living on her own. But her dad had scared the desire right out of her, repeating so many times: “Have you ever seen a road-killed squirrel? That’s what motorcycle accident victims look like, only with more bloody gore strewn all over the road.” She took one last look and shuddered.
Julia was slowly making her way up to the admitting desk when, from behind the double doors, she heard someone shout, “Get the crash cart!”
They’re going to get the defibrillator, Julia said to herself. The thought played over and over in her mind. Her brain fuzzy from the recent trauma, Julia wandered through the double doors. The nurse was busy explaining a form to someone, and every other spare medical professional had rushed in ahead of Julia, so no one stopped her as she limped toward the chaos surrounding the biker. She heard someone shout, “Clear,” heard the familiar surge of electricity, saw the chest rise, and heard the electronic beeping. She turned to look at the monitor.
Electricity!
That’s what had caused the chemical impulses in the cadaver brain, and that’s what had brought Dr. Bertel back. Electricity. This is important, she recognized. But how?
Ignoring the chaos, Julia stood there for several minutes, staring into space, still thinking about electricity, energy, matter, and what made life … life. She wished she could discuss her half-formed thoughts with Dr. Bertel. He had been dead for several minutes. Maybe he now knew something about the connection between energy and life that she had missed. Maybe whatever he experienced when he died freaked him out, and he ran away. Julia wanted to find him and ask. But she had no idea where to start.
“What are you doing in here?” a nurse demanded.
“Excuse me?” Julia said, suddenly aware of her surroundings.
“Are you a patient? Who let you in here?”
“I’m sorry, I just …” What was she doing in here? “I’ll leave.”
The nurse shot her a glare, but then her jaw dropped when she noticed Julia’s condition. “Orderly! Get this girl into a hospital bed, now!” Julia obediently followed the orderly into the nearest examination room.
The doctor was putting the final stitch in her forehead when Austin burst through the door.
“Julia, are you all right? I was on an assignment and didn’t hear my phone ring. I just got the voicemail message. What happened?” The concern in Austin’s voice was comforting.
“We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” she said with a smirk. “Or you won’t recognize me at a party without all the blood and gore.”
“Wait, you don’t normally look like this?” Austin quipped. Then he became serious. “Tell me what happened.”
“Well, I went to visit my mother’s grave site, and someone followed me. I tried to run, but he grabbed my leg and started pulling me into the bushes, so I took a rock and hit him on the head with it, and he disappeared, and then I passed out—” Julia’s explanation rushed out in a breath, making her head spin. Austin put his hand on her shoulder to steady her on the exam table, and she immediately relaxed. “Julia,” he said, bending down and looking into her large green eyes, “do you know anyone who would want to do this to you?”
Suddenly, the exam door flew open a second time. Morton Jones rushed in with Tyler following close behind.
“Julia! Are you alright?” Morton pushed Austin out of the way to envelop her in a hug. Julia’s father wasn’t much for sentimentality, so she knew that her voicemail message had struck a nerve. “What happened?”
“I—I went to visit Mom last night. And someone attacked me right at her grave site—”She felt considerably calmer telling it the second time. Tyler, eyeing Austin suspiciously, kissed the top of her head and began to rub her shoulders.
Austin surveyed the scene with a blank expression. Finally, he said, “Thank you, Miss Jones. I’ll write up my report and get back to you soon. I may have some more questions. And please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.” He took her hand to shake it and held it, instead. Julia looked up into his intense blue eyes, which were now unreadable.
“Thank you, Detective Moore,” she said, “for everything.” She felt an inexplicable pull at her heartstrings as he turned and left the room.
“I’m so sorry, babe,” Tyler cooed. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here to protect you.” Julia found his words both comforting and slightly annoying. While she knew Tyler cared about her, he didn’t know what was really going on in her life. Whenever she mentioned anything science-related, his eyes glazed over. He nodded politely, but it was impossible to have a real conversation about it or make him understand how important it was to her. Finally, she had stopped mentioning Research Building Three—and he never asked. Their conversations centered around his basketball team, their high school friends, the latest band that was playing at Shakes, stuff like that. Tyler had no idea what she was up against. And until now, neither did she.
Julia spent the next twelve hours in a dreamless slumbe
r. Her father had driven her back to the apartment and pleaded with her to come home with him. But she had resisted. The air was still too thick with her mother’s memory, and Morton wallowed in it. She couldn’t bear to see her dad that way.
When Julia woke, the sun was already starting to go down behind the hills that surrounded her apartment. She could barely move her stiff arms, legs, and neck, and her entire body ached. She turned on the shower faucet and let the warm water sluice over her battered body. She knew the best thing she could do for herself was to get some more rest. After all, rest was what the ER doctor had ordered. But she was worried about Dr. Bertel; and after her attack last night, she was convinced that something terrible had happened to him. She needed to find some answers, or more precisely, some questions—there was something her brain was trying to figure out, and she didn’t know what it was. She had the feeling that both the questions and the answers were somewhere in the research she and Dr. Bertel had been doing.
Julia drove to Research Building Three and took the elevator to the basement. She was heading to the lab when she saw crime scene tape strung across the door to Bertel’s office. Overwhelmed with curiosity, she bit her lip as she considered climbing under the police tape. She of all people would recognize a clue—she worked with him side by side and knew his office as well as her own apartment. She decided to take a look.
Just as she started to duck under the yellow tape, she saw someone sitting at Dr. Bertel’s desk, scribbling in a small notebook. “Oh!” she yelped and snapped upright.
Austin dropped the notebook, snatched his gun from the desk, and aimed it at Julia. His face brightened when he recognized her, and he lowered the gun. “Julia,” he smiled. “What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be resting?”
