The Book of Names

by Jill Gregory

  “What do you mean?” Dillon tilted his head.

  David shrugged. “He had this blue stone—very smooth. An agate about the size of a grape. When he was daring Abby and me to go up on the roof, he waved it in the air and bragged that it had magical powers and would keep us from falling. Some magic, huh?” he said grimly.

  “And you still have it?”

  “I went back to where we fell after the snow melted, just poking around, and I spotted it in the grass. I’d forgotten all about it. I picked it up and kept it—a little reminder about the price of impulsivity.”

  Dillon was regarding him with interest. “Do you know what’s written on the stone?”

  David snorted. “Probably the words of the sages. Something like, ‘Gravity sucks.’”

  The priest’s eyes grew thoughtful as David closed the door behind him. He went to the bookshelf and reached for the volume on Jewish magic. Pursing his lips, he checked the index and flipped to the page.

  Half an hour later, he snapped the book closed and reached for the phone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  On Friday morning David pulled onto D Street and headed toward Pennsylvania Avenue. He circled around the Capitol until he picked up Pennsylvania again, deliberately driving in silence through the brilliant August day—no radio, no CD. He wanted to clear his head before the session.

  When he found a parking spot, he turned off the ignition and eyed the tall brick office building with a combination of anticipation and dread. The place didn’t look the least bit threatening, so why did he have a knot in his chest?

  Come on, man, you’ve scaled mountains, for God’s sake. You can handle an hour of hypnosis. What are you afraid of?

  And then it dawned on him. He was afraid this wasn’t going to work, that hypnosis wasn’t going to reveal a thing. That the names were never going to go away and would always remain a mystery.

  Fear was something David had lived with intimately those first few years after the fall. Initially it had paralyzed him, making him terrified of escalators, open staircases, amusement park rides—any kind of height.

  His parents had dragged him to one therapist after another, but in the end, it was David himself who found a way to conquer his fears. At sixteen, he got tired of always being afraid, disgusted with himself and with the panic kicking through his gut.

  The previous year there had been a series of death threats against a number of senators, including his father. Robert Shepherd immediately hired a security detail for himself and his family. Karl Hutchinson, the bodyguard assigned to protect David, was a former Navy Seal, smart, agile, and unshakable. The two quickly struck up a friendship, and instead of resenting the man shadowing him, David found himself looking forward to his time with Hutch.

  Hutch taught him how to lift weights and box, and as David’s adolescent body took on a muscled definition, an inner confidence took shape as well. When the threats against the group of senators ceased, Hutch and the other guards were reassigned, but he and David continued to keep in touch. And when David finally decided to conquer his fear of heights, it was Hutch he asked to help him.

  His parents agreed to send him to Hutch’s family cabin in Arizona for two weeks. And there, David had faced his terror.

  He’d asked Hutch to take him into the mountains. At first they’d merely hiked up rocky trails thick with brush and tumbleweed. Then David had decided to push his own limits and insisted Hutch drive him to Prescott to tackle the six-thousand-foot craggy face of Granite Mountain.

  Hutch, to his credit, hadn’t laughed at him. And though David only managed to climb a thousand feet on his first try, it was enough. He was hooked.

  By the end of the most grueling, exhilarating two weeks of David’s life, he returned to Connecticut wind-burned and covered with scratches and scrapes, but determined to keep climbing until he could conquer Granite Mountain. And that was the beginning.

  He’d mastered his fear of heights, and now he knew he had to master his fear of the names.

  He was just stepping out of his car when his cell phone rang. “Over the Rainbow,” pealed out—Stacy’s special ring. The two of them had watched The Wizard of Oz so many times together, he could still recite all the dialogue.

  “Hey there, Munchkin.” He smiled, glancing at his watch. It was just before eleven in Santa Monica. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “Lunch break,” his stepdaughter answered, and David felt a pang. Her voice was no longer the little-girl voice he remembered. At thirteen, she sounded like a typical teenager.

  “I need to tell you something but I don’t want to talk when Mom’s around.”

  “Sounds serious.” He turned his back on the building and leaned against the car. “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything.”

  He heard Stacy take a deep, trembling breath. He couldn’t imagine what was coming next.

  “Mom got married again this weekend. I have a new stepdad.” She spit the last word out as if it was a piece of sour candy. “He’s nothing like you.”

  “Hey, Munchkin, who is?” He kept his voice light, but he was shocked. He and Meredith had talked only a few weeks ago and she hadn’t even mentioned dating anyone.

  “Don’t you like him? Maybe you just need to give him a chance.”

  “Len’s fine, I guess. He did get Mom to quit smoking again. But he tries too hard. I barely know him, but Mom already let him adopt me, and it’s so wrong. They didn’t even tell me ahead of time—I didn’t know until the wedding.”

  Adopt? David was flabbergasted.

  Stacy’s voice thickened with tears. “If any one of Mom’s husbands had to adopt me, I’d want it to be you.” Her voice grew smaller. “And if it can’t be you, I just want to keep my birth father’s name and stay who I am.”

  David cursed Meredith for her impulsiveness. She never stopped to think how her actions impacted anyone else, most of all her daughter. He had to bite back his anger.

  “Oh, Stace, this is tough. I wish I could change it.”

  “Oh, it gets worse. She and Len said they’re taking me on a ‘family’ honeymoon. How gross is that? Len even bought me one of those world global cell phones like yours so I could call you from Italy.”

  David checked his watch. 2:02 P.M. His appointment had started without him.

  “I feel for you, honey, but I know your mom only wants what’s best for you. How about I call and talk to her later? Maybe I can convince her to let you come visit me instead of going on the honeymoon.”

  “Fat chance. She and Len are really into this family thing. But you’re my family, David. I don’t know why you and Mom got divorced anyway.”

  David grimaced. It was probably mostly his fault that things hadn’t worked out with Meredith. She said he hadn’t let her in, that she was tired of his moods, his introspection, even the headaches he’d never seen a doctor about. Though she’d never verbalized it, he knew she craved the easy affection he’d so effortlessly shared with her daughter. With Meredith—gorgeous, flighty Meredith—the connection, the communication, had been mainly sexual. Outside of the bedroom, he hadn’t been able to give her what she wanted: attention, adoration, heart-to-heart talks about their innermost private feelings. The marriage had been a mistake, his mistake. And Stacy was the one suffering most for it. “Sometimes grownups don’t have all the answers, Stace. But I can tell you this. Your mom and I might be divorced, but you and I aren’t. You got that?”

  “Then will you talk to my mom, and tell her I don’t want to be Stacy Lachman?”

  Stacy Lachman. David froze. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, much less speak.

  Stacy Lachman.

  “David? You still there?”

  “Yeah . . .” It was no more than a croak. He cleared his throat. “I’m here, sweetie. I’ll give it my best shot, ok? Stace, I gotta go. Now do me a favor—go eat some lunch.”

  David shoved the phone in his pocket and hurried across the street. Cold dread filled every par
t of him. Stacy Lachman was a name he knew all too well. It was a name he’d been compelled to write in his journal over and over again.

  His heart was pumping as he ran for the elevator. Stacy was the only good thing to have come out of his seven years with Meredith. Incredibly, the two of them had bonded the very first night they met, when Meredith had dragged him to Stacy’s nursery school play. The three-year-old pixie had barely reached his knees. He’d laughed when Meredith told him that for weeks her daughter had been standing in front of the hall mirror, hour after hour, reciting her two simple lines.

  David was all set to clap loudly for her, but then, just before her big moment, Stacy’s little friend Emily had forgotten her lines, burst into wails and fled the stage.

  Stacy had hesitated only a moment before dashing after her. At intermission, he and Meredith had found her backstage holding Emily’s hand, both girls singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” along with Emily’s mother.

  “Stacy, you messed up the play!” Meredith had chided an hour later at Ben & Jerry’s. “Why didn’t you wait and say your lines?”

  “Emily was crying,” she said between licks of her ice cream cone.

  “But her mommy was there.”

  “I was closer,” Stacy had insisted in a small firm voice.

  Meredith had looked exasperated, but David had understood. There’d been something so pure in that three-year-old’s eyes as she spoke those words. Something he couldn’t quite name. He’d knelt down and gravely shaken her hand. “Emily’s lucky to have a friend like you, Stacy. Maybe you and I can be friends, too.”

  Alex Dorset’s receptionist knocked lightly on the hypnotherapist’s door and pushed it open. David brushed quickly past her into a sunlit, paneled office.

  Alex Dorset sat scribbling at his desk. He was an overweight balding black man with a walrus mustache and large sunken brown eyes. His office was cluttered and smelled of lemon polish. David counted four candy dishes overflowing with Good & Plenty and Reese’s Pieces, all set within arm’s reach of every chair in the room.

  “Please.” With a pudgy hand Dorset motioned David to a padded black recliner facing his desk. “Have a seat, Professor Shepherd, and try to relax. You look a bit rattled.”

  “I want you to hypnotize me.” David placed his palms on Dorset’s desk. His jaw was rigid. “Right now.”

  “I need some background first. What you told me on the phone was very sketchy. Why don’t you start by telling me about those headaches you mentioned?”

  “I don’t give a damn about the headaches right now.” He slammed his hand on the desk in frustration as tension throbbed in his neck. “I need to find out about the names.”

  Dorset’s brows lifted. “You need to calm down before I can hypnotize you. Please, sit down and tell me about this obsession.”

  David forced himself to sit and to bite out a Cliffs Notes version of what he’d told Dillon. What did Stacy have to do with this? Why was her new name in his journal? He had to find out.

  “From what you said on the phone, I knew this would be complicated.” The hypnotherapist tapped a pencil on the desk.

  “Damn straight it’s complicated. Can we start now?”

  “We can try.”

  David took a ragged breath and forced his eyes to close as Dorset lumbered around the desk to take the chair beside him. He settled back into the recliner and heard the click of a tape recorder. Dorset told him he would wake up refreshed, that he would remember everything he recalled under hypnosis. He directed David to focus on his voice.

  The hypnotherapist’s tone was soothing, his words low-timbered and rich, like a radio announcer’s.

  “Counting downward . . . five . . . now four . . .”

  David soon found himself engulfed in liquid darkness. He was drifting . . . drifting past the tension throbbing in his shoulders . . . drifting past anxiety . . . past thought.

  He followed the voice, that reassuring, even voice, followed it back to the winter of his thirteenth year, to the snow-packed roof of the tall handsome house where Crispin Mueller ran easily ahead of him.

  “Abby! Grab my hand—Abby!”

  “Abby’s fine, David,” Dorset said. “You’re in the hospital now. The doctors are there. Can you see them?”

  “I see myself. My chest—it’s bloody. The doctors are bent over me.”

  “Do you feel any pain?”

  “No, no pain, I’m just floating. Now Crispin’s here—the doctors are gone. What’s that light?”

  “Find out. Go toward it, David. You’re perfectly safe. Tell me what you see.”

  Light, beautiful silken light. He saw people within the light, shapes, faces. So many faces. They shouted to him, arms outstretched from within the shimmering rainbow. He was mesmerized by their faces—transparent, tortured, pleading faces.

  Their shouts nearly drowned out the light, pounding at his head, roaring like thunder. Their names. They were shrieking their names. He heard hundreds of names, thousands, over and over. Then, in one voice, the tortured faces chanted a single word.

  Zakhor.

  Suddenly, the light went out.

  When David opened his eyes, the dim light in Dorset’s office seemed to burn his skull.

  His head was splitting, his breath coming quick and shallow.

  “Are you all right, David?”

  “You tell me, Doctor.” Shakily, he sat up.

  Dorset handed him a glass of water. “So, do you remember everything you just told me?”

  “Every word.” David’s face was pale. He was having a hard time digesting what he’d just revisited. Now, instead of answers, he had a lot more questions.

  “I always remembered being pulled toward a brilliant light, but I had no memory of seeing all those faces. Of hearing their shouts.” David’s brow furrowed. “Who’s Zakhor?” he said, almost to himself. “They all said it. Zakhor.”

  The other man regarded him intently. “Perhaps you should check your journal. And perhaps we should make another appointment for next week. You traveled a remarkable distance on your first try. Next time we may be able to probe on to another level.”

  “Can’t you take me back down again now? I need to find out what these names mean.”

  “I can’t do that. It would be counterproductive. Reliving such experiences drains the psyche. Give your subconscious some time to assimilate what you saw. Believe me, this is best.”

  David left the office, his chest tight with worry. He punched in Dillon McGrath’s number as he crossed the street to his car.

  “Dillon. Stacy’s name is written in my journal. And I have no idea why. Some of these people have died, Dillon.” The words tumbled out in a rush. “And what’s Zakhor? They told me Zakhor.”

  “Who told you ‘Zakhor’?”

  “The people. The people at the end of the tunnel.” David took a deep breath. “There were thousands of them. Shouting at me. Shouting their names. And then they all said ‘Zakhor.’ ”

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “I may know someone who can help you figure this out,” Dillon said finally. “I think you must consult a rabbi, David. I know you have no affinity for religion,” he said quickly, before David could interrupt. “And that you haven’t seen the inside of a synagogue since your bar mitzvah. But those voices spoke to you in Hebrew.”

  “Hebrew?” David stopped in his tracks, two feet from his car. “Zakhor is Hebrew?”

  “It means ‘remember.’ Those people you saw in the light, in the tunnel. They want you to remember.”

  “Remember what?” David scraped a hand through his hair and squinted up at the sky.

  Dillon’s voice came low and patient. “It’s obvious, David. They want you to remember their names. And so you have.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “You’re the metaphysics genius,” David said into his cell phone. He swung the car onto 18th Street. “You tell me what this means.”

  “That I can’t do,�
� Dillon said promptly. “The fact that they spoke to you in Hebrew suggests to me that a rabbi is your best guide. The reason they want you to remember must be inside of you, David, just like their names. I have a colleague I believe can help you. Rabbi Eliezer ben Moshe is a revered Kabbalist, a teacher of the Jewish mystical tradition. You’ve had a mystical experience, David. Now if you needed an exorcism,” he said, “that might be more in my league.”

  Kabbalah? All David knew about Kabbalah was that some movie stars had made it a cause célèbre, tying red strings to their wrists and adopting Hebrew names.

  As if reading his thoughts, Dillon said, “No, it’s not the Madonna version of Kabbalah. And yes, I’ve already called him. He’s very interested not only in your journal, but in that gemstone you’ve saved since your accident. Bring both of them with you when you go to Brooklyn. In the meantime, he asked that you fax him several pages of the journal so he can study them before you arrive.”

  David’s brow creased as he made a sharp right. His mind was spinning as Dillon continued.

  “Ben Moshe comes from a long line of learned rabbis who have made the study of Kabbalah, and the unraveling of universal mysteries, their lifelong purpose.”

  Learned rabbis. The words triggered vague memories from his childhood—his mother telling him stories about her ancestor, Reb Zalman of Kiev, a famous mystic. Supposedly he could teach students in two different cities, three hundred miles apart, on the same evening. He’d always thought she’d made the stories up.

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “David, there are things in life you can’t measure with science and empirical data. Try to be open-minded.”

  David drew a deep breath. “I’m not convinced. . . .”

  “You have a better idea?” Dillon countered.