The First Time I Died

by Joanne Macgregor

  “So, he’s just gone on murdering young men all this time?”

  “Nope. The murders stopped the year after Colby’s death.”

  “Could it have been someone in this town who quit when the heat got too much?”

  Ryan looked unconvinced by my theory. “There would have been other — probably more likely — reasons.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugged. “A bunch of things. Maybe the perp got arrested for auto theft or assault or rape, got sent to prison, but never confessed to his other crimes. Or he dropped dead of a heart attack, or moved to Mexico, or hit his late fifties — that’s like the male menopause for serial killers.”

  I knew that from my psychopathology courses. Increasing age brings infirmity and a drop in testosterone levels, leading to decreased aggression. Violent assaults and murders tend not to be an old man’s crimes.

  I swept the scattered bits of beer label up into a small mound while I thought back to my experience at the pond that afternoon.

  More than one.

  “Just to double check, Colby’s attack — could it have been more than one person?”

  “The medical examiner said the marks on his body were ‘not inconsistent’ with him being restrained by one person and beaten by another, so, yeah, we considered that as a possibility at the time. What makes you ask that, though?”

  “Just a feeling,” I said.

  20

  NOW

  Tuesday December 19, 2017

  By the time my parents and I sat down to dinner that night, I was utterly exhausted. I wanted sleep much more than I wanted my mother’s honey-baked chicken, and had little patience for her rambling explanation of how she thought she’d rather not close Crystals, Candles and Curiosities after all.

  Seeing me roll my eyes and take a breath to argue, my father quickly asked about my day. I updated them on my sad visit to the Beaumonts.

  “I feel for that poor woman,” said Dad.

  “I’ll light a candle and say a quick novena to St. Raphael. He’s the patron saint of healing,” my mother said.

  I shoved chicken into my mouth and refrained from pointing out that Raphael was not a saint, that Mom wasn’t a Catholic, and that as far as I understood, novenas took nine days.

  “Bridget has invited us to dinner on Christmas Eve.”

  “How lovely! I’ll call her later and tell her we’re coming.”

  “Where were you this afternoon?” Dad asked.

  “I had a drink with Ryan Jackson in the Tuppenny.” I had no intention of expanding on the nature of our conversation, or what had happened before, at the pond, while Mom was present.

  “Some folk complained that he was too young to be police chief, but he’s good. Better than Frank Turner ever was,” Dad said.

  “And he’s handsome and single,” Mom added.

  I dropped my knife and fork onto my plate. “I think I’m ready for bed.”

  I packed the dishwasher while Dad made three cups of chamomile tea at Mom’s instruction. Then she shooed us out of the kitchen, saying she had some cleaning to do, though how she planned to do it while on crutches, I didn’t know and didn’t ask. In the living room, I flopped onto the couch with a deep sigh.

  Dad placed the tray of tea cups on the low table in front of me. “You look tired, kiddo.”

  “It’s been a long day. And a strange one.”

  “How so?”

  “A bunch of things. My eyes are getting more and more different. I needed to throw up this morning, but as soon as I ran to the bathroom, the nausea vanished. I keep—” I’d been about to say, “hearing words in my mind,” but stopped myself. That sounded simply too crazy. Besides, I didn’t precisely hear them. It was more like I felt them. They were just there — present and intense, like pebbles dropped into a pond.

  “I have words coming to mind over and over again,” I said. Electing not to mention the assorted strangenesses at the Beaumont house, I added, “And at the pond this afternoon, I felt … compelled to walk down to the water. And then I saw these violent flashes. It felt like I was drowning. Ryan Jackson found me lying near the water, twitching and groaning.”

  “I’m no shrink — that’s your bailiwick — but it sounds like flashbacks to me,” Dad said.

  I picked up my cup and took a sip of the hot, fragrant tea. “Okay, yes. Only …” I hesitated, but I needed to tell someone. Needed to hear a reassurance that I wasn’t losing my mind. “The thing is, Dad, they weren’t my flashbacks. I mean, the images and sensations weren’t of me, of when I drowned. I think … I think they were Colby’s — of the attack on him, and his death.”

  A gasp from the doorway let me know that my mother had overheard me. Crap.

  My father merely stared at me, a worried expression on his face, but my mother, crutches wedged under her arms, clapped her hands like a delighted child presented with a gift-wrapped birthday present.

  “You’re getting messages from the other side of the veil, because you’ve been there now,” she said, eyes round with excitement as my father helped her into a chair and handed her a cup of tea.

  I rolled my eyes. “The other side of the veil, really?”

  “This happens, you know! People who have NDEs often suddenly develop their psychic powers,” she continued, undeterred. “Or is it mediumship you’ve been gifted with?”

  “I’m certain I have neither — because they don’t ex-iissst!” I almost sang the last word, and then, in spite of myself, asked, “What’s an NDE?”

  “A near-death experience! Haven’t you studied the phenomenon in your courses?”

  “No.”

  “What else have you noticed?” she continued, undeterred. “Electrical disturbances? Strange reactions from animals? Heightened emotions, sensitivity to light and sound, a drop in temperature or cool breeze in a closed room?”

  I forced myself to keep a blank face, but my staying silent must have tipped Mom off, because she exclaimed, “You have, haven’t you?”

  “I think maybe I have a concussion,” I said, and began running the edge of a fingernail over my lower incisors, searching for a rough edge I could tear off. Pity I hadn’t lost this habit in the pond.

  “Well, I think you’re finally in contact with your Gift.” She said it like that, as though the word took a capital letter. “You’re developing your psychic abilities.”

  “That’s bullshit. I don’t have psychic abilities.” What was I saying? “Nobody has psychic abilities.”

  “Garnet,” my father said, a pleading note in his voice. He must be as tired of these arguments as I was.

  My mother smiled at me in an infuriatingly smug way. “The truth exists whether you believe in it or not, Garnet. The world isn’t limited to what you can see and measure. People once thought x-rays and infrared light and auras didn’t exist, but they do!”

  My dad groaned. “Not this debate, again.”

  “You watch. I predict we’ll see a full blooming of your latent abilities,” Mom said.

  I snorted. “What latent abilities?”

  “You were born in the caul,” she said, with the air of someone delivering an argument-clincher.

  “Born in the caul? What the hell is that?”

  “It’s when the baby comes out with the membrane covering its face.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sure that’s perfectly normal. It probably happens all the time.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Caul-bearers are very rare, and very lucky. I knew from the moment I saw you with that membrane that you’d have supernatural abilities. I watched you carefully throughout your childhood.”

  “You must have been very disappointed then.”

  “Not at all. You were special from the get-go.”

  “All children are special, Crystal,” Dad said.

  “Not in the way Garnet was. Don’t you remember how she just knew things?”

  “I know things,” Dad said. “For example, that Jeffrey Dahmer killed and dismembered seventeen victim
s but was found to be legally sane at his trial, and that his father taught him how to bleach and preserve chicken bones! People know things because they hear them, or see them, or read them. It’s not a metaphysical mystery.” He opened one of his true crime books and tuned out of the conversation.

  “Robert John McGee” — my mother always used our full names when she was angry — “you are such a … a muggle!”

  That set me laughing, which in turn made Mom become more earnest. Her face grew red.

  “It’s not a joke. It’s real. Even when you were little, you knew what I was thinking before I said it and—”

  “Everyone can do that, Mom. When you know someone well, you can tell what they’re thinking, and finish their sentences for them. That’s not proof of anything.”

  “And …” — she paused, as if for dramatic effect — “you had a friend no one else could see. When you were about four or five, you played and spoke with a presence called Johnny!”

  That, I actually did remember.

  “So?” I said. “I had an imaginary friend. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “If you knew anything about anything important,” she said, waving a hand to dismiss the entire field of psychology and anything else I may have learned in my life, “you’d know that ‘imaginary’ friends are actually spirit guides!”

  Dad lifted his book high enough to block us out of his line of vision and muttered something that sounded like, “Thirty-five years!”

  “No, they are not spirit guides,” I said to my mother. “They’re fantasy companions invented by imaginative children, from a desire to have a playmate. It’s not an uncommon phenomenon, especially for only children. I had no brothers or sisters, and I did have an active imagination.”

  And a self-serving desire to score two ice creams when the truck came around, and I conned our neighbor Mrs. Ellis to buy one for me and one for “my friend Johnny in the back yard.”

  “I’d often walk in on you chatting away to him, laughing or nodding. Maybe he’s back!”

  “Of course,” I replied. “He said he would be.”

  “He did?” she asked, in a thrilled voice.

  “He did. He said, ‘I’ll be back,’” I said, in perfect imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.

  Dad’s shoulders shook. He was sniggering behind his book, but Mom was overjoyed.

  "There you are then," she said. “A prophecy fulfilled.”

  Common sense was a flower that didn’t grow in my mother’s garden. She never listened to reason, and logic may as well have resided on a different planet for all the notice she took of it. Come to think of it, she’d probably have given it more credence if it came from the mouth of an alien. How was it possible that half my genetic makeup came from her, that I’d come out of her womb — apparently dragging a membranous bit of her with me?

  “I thought you said you had some cleaning to do,” I reminded her.

  “I was so excited, I got distracted! I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t bolted on,” she said, making her clumsy way back to the kitchen.

  “You shouldn’t tease her; it only makes it worse,” Dad chided me.

  “It couldn’t possibly be worse.”

  “Now, about your symptoms, kiddo.”

  I yawned widely. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t you know someone at the university you could consult? Find out what might be happening with you? You might discover that this is completely normal for someone who’s been through what you have.”

  At least I had one sane parent. “That’s a good idea. I’ll call my supervisor first thing tomorrow. Right now, I need my bed.”

  “Sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite. Or the nightmares!”

  I kissed him on the forehead and left him to his killers. Just then my mother came into the hall, awkwardly holding a plastic bucket that banged against her crutches, sloshing water over the sides with every step.

  I quickly took the bucket before she could slip and break the other ankle.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  Piled in the bottom of the bucket was a small mountain of stones of different shapes, sizes and colors, covered by water.

  “What on earth is this?” I asked

  “My crystals, of course.” Mom opened the front door and said, “Will you just put them over there, in a clean patch of snow in the moonlight?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a full moon tonight, so I’m bathing them. The light and the distilled water purifies them of negative energy and recharges their healing and metaphysical properties.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, thought better of it, and put the bucket in the snow outside.

  “A little to the left, so they’re all in the moonlight. Lovely! Just there is perfect.”

  “That reminds me,” I said as I came back inside, locking the door behind me. “I found a pretty stone down at the pond. I thought you might like it.”

  “That’s very thoughtful, dear. Thank you!”

  My mother sounded so surprised at this small kindness that I immediately felt guilty. Really, it wasn’t hard to make her happy. I didn’t do enough for either of my parents. It wouldn’t kill me to call more often, or send the odd bunch of flowers or a bottle of whiskey. Mentally committing to spending lots of time with them while I was in town, and Skyping more regularly once I was back in Boston, I patted the pockets of my parka where it hung on the coat rack in the hall and pulled out the purply-white stone.

  As soon as she saw it, my mother sucked in an astonished breath.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “You picked this up just before you had the visions of Colby, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe,” I said warily. “Why?”

  “It’s a quartz. Amethyst quartz on this side” — she touched the lavender-colored end — “and clear quartz at the other. It’s very unusual to find both colors in one piece like this. And very significant. Would you like to know why?”

  “I’m sure you’re about to tell me.” I was already regretting giving her the stone.

  My mother sat in her chair, lifted a heavy book off the small table beside it, and flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for.

  “Here we go.” She passed the book to me, stabbing her forefinger at two entries on a page headed “Quartz.”

  I read them quickly.

  Clear quartz: Quartz amplifies and helps transfer one form of energy into another. For example, it transmutes mechanical forces into the electrical signals of information, enabling psychics to receive communications from the spirit realm more clearly. Use quartz to clarify communication and to intensify the energetic properties of other crystals, so as to channel stronger, clearer vibrations.

  Amethyst quartz: This violet quartz also amplifies energy, plus it opens and intensifies intuitive gifts. Use it for protection, to clear and stimulate the third eye of the sixth chakra, and to kindle the crown (seventh) chakra so as to maximize intuition and clairvoyance, and allow a powerful connection to the metaphysical universe.

  When amethyst and clear quartz bind in a single crystal, their separate effects are combined and magnified. A good mantra for the possessor of such a stone is: “I trust myself. I see what I need, and what I need to see will come to me.”

  I didn’t believe a word I’d read. So why did I feel so rattled?

  Telling myself that any similarities were mere coincidence, I slammed the book closed and handed it back to my mother.

  “I think it belongs on the fiction shelf,” I said and tried to give her the crystal. “Here.”

  But she shook her head and closed my hand around the quartz, enfolding it in the old scar in my left palm. “Oh, no, dear. It found you. It’s yours.”

  21

  NOW

  Wednesday December 20, 2017

  My body was exhausted, but my brain was not yet ready for sleep; too many questions and what-ifs bounced around the trampoline walls and floor
of my mind. I fired up my laptop, replied to a couple of the most pressing emails and then, hoping to prove my mother wrong, asked Google to give me the lowdown on being born “with the caul.” Immediately I discovered that my mother was right about it being a rare event — occurring in only about one in every eighty thousand births.

  According to longstanding beliefs in many cultures, being born with the remnants of the amniotic sac covering my face meant I was destined for greatness and good fortune, and would be the lucky possessor of psychic abilities and … immunity from drowning.

  Superstition and coincidence, that’s all it was. Nothing more.

  I killed the crazy caul sites and began researching the phenomenon of near-death experiences; it wasn’t a topic that had ever even been mentioned in my science-heavy psych courses. Although what I read raised more questions than it answered, I must have drifted off eventually, because when I startled awake just after six the next morning, my laptop was on the bed beside me, its screensaver showing me the red sands of a distant desert.

  Remnants of my disturbing dreams — vivid enough to be the products of a hallucinogenic trip and featuring a scantily clad Michelle Armstrong, former Chief Frank Turner, and my father wearing a butcher’s apron — evaporated like mist in the sun, and I was left with a vague sense of unease. From now on, I’d just take the damn sleeping tablets.

  A bleary-eyed glance at my face in the bathroom mirror showed that my eyes were now two distinctly different colors — my right eye was the usual blue, while my left eye was mostly brown. It looked like I was going to be stuck with a permanent reminder of my trip below the ice.

  The house was dark and quiet when I stole down to the kitchen in my bathrobe and socks to put on the coffee machine. I stuck two slices of whole grain bread in the toaster and, yawning, thought about the day ahead. Priority number one was to find a charger for Colby’s old phone.