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Holding onto the doorknob, Janice pulled herself painfully up to her feet. She felt dissociated from her body and swayed dizzily. She shut her eyes to steady herself for a moment, then directed her shaking hand to the chain bolt.

The elevator rose with a hum.

A panel of light and a clang of doors announced Hoover, dramatically spotlighting his exit, as he stepped out of the suspended vehicle and paused, hat in hand, staring down the long, dark hallway towards Janice. As the elevator descended behind him, plunging him into silhouette, he took a step forward and stopped again, testing the mood and temper of the enemy, probing the terrain for hidden pitfalls and booby traps before daring to advance further. Janice remained at the door, watching him, waiting for him to approach, but he didn’t move.

Suddenly, the shrieking voice pummelled at Janice’s back and spilled out into the hallway.

‘DADDYDADDYDADDYDADDYDADDY!’

Hoover took a tentative step forward.

‘Hurry!’ Janice screamed at him.

Her senses absorbed the events of the next minutes in the abstract - fleeting images, some vague, some clear, with little continuity and no particular order of importance: the smell of wet wool as Hoover sped past her through the door; his stance as he paused on the threshold of the living-room, recalling the circus lion tamer she had once seen as a child; her tripping over the telephone, still on the floor, us she hesitantly closed in on Hoover’s back; her skinned knees leaving bloodstains on the hall carpet; Hoover’s booming voice dominating her own sobs of pain and the screams of her child.

‘Audrey Rose! It’s Daddy! Here, darling! I’m here!’

‘Daddydaddydaddydaddy!’

‘NO! HERE, AUDREY ROSE.’ DADDY IS HERE, DARLING!’

A delirium of sound - mad patterns of movement - approaches, denials, entreaties, rejections - a lunatic kaleidoscope of sight and sound - leading finally and inevitably to the first startled suspension of disbelief - the bright look of recognition -the heart-stabbing smile of pure joy on the blood-smeared face -the quick scamper into waiting arms and the unifying embrace, bringing with it the sudden, blessed absence of sound - the descent of calm - sweet, languorous, settling peacefully on the torn air, mending the breaks, renewing silence.

Hoover remained kneeling, cradling the child in his arms, comforting her, quieting her with gentle strokes and soft whispers. Almost immediately, her wet eyelids began to flutter and close in sleep.

Janice stood, tightly clinging to the back of a chair to keep from falling, watching through tears, as Hoover rose with the sleeping child in his arms and slowly, so as not to waken her, carried her up the stairs and into her room.

Janice was scarcely aware of following them; her bruised and aching body seemed to move under some automatic compulsion. She only knew that somehow she had arrived at the bedroom door and was silently observing Hoover as he gently removed her child’s pyjamas and placed her naked and sleeping form on the bed. Then, moving rapidly between bedroom and both bathrooms, Hoover assembled his makeshift clinic of towels, Bactine, Solarcaine ointment, Band-Aids, a basin of warm, soapy water, and several washcloths.

He worked on Ivy’s wounds with a sure and practised touch, washed the encrusted blood from her face and hands, then sterilized and bandaged the cuts. He spread ointment on the raw and blistered fingers and wrapped them loosely in two towels. Janice’s numbed brain took in each motion and gesture, accepting it all without question.

‘Fresh pyjamas!’ He flung the words crisply over his shoulder. It was the first time he had addressed Janice that night.

She stumbled to the bureau and removed a flannel nightgown. As she turned to deliver it, she found Hoover standing behind her. His eyes probed the dazed, ravaged face with a look of great sadness, then glanced down her messy, torn dress to her blood-smeared legs. He sighed deeply and gently took the garment from her hands.

After easing Ivy’s flushed body under the covers, he turned to Janice and, taking her arm, softly whispered, ‘Come, let me help you now.’

The warm water felt soft and soothing against Janice’s bruised, chafed skin as Hoover cleansed her knees and legs with the soapy washcloth. She sat where he had placed her on the edge of her bed and watched him as he knelt at her feet, deftly manoeuvring the wet cloth around each cut, carefully avoiding direct contact with any open wounds. It vaguely occurred to her that she should be resisting these intimate ministrations, but at the moment she had neither the energy nor the mental capacity to do anything about it.

As Hoover worked on her legs, words tumbled out of him in quick whispers which, for a long time, Janice failed to hear. Her ears received his intonations as simply another sound in the room along with the clock and the water trickling into the basin each time he wrung out the washcloth. When her fractured brain did finally begin to absorb the content of his words, she discovered that he was lecturing her in the gently condescending tone of a teacher instructing a student.

‘I know you don’t take the responsibility of a child lightly. I see the guardrails on your windows. I’ve seen the way you hold Ivy’s hand when you cross the street. But we’re dealing here with something far greater than Ivy’s physical welfare. We’re dealing with something that’s indestructible. Her soul. And that’s what we must help and try to save - the soul of Audrey Rose which is in pain and torment…’

His hands were manipulating her legs with the towel, drying the excess water with soothing, mopping motions.

‘A pain and torment as real as the actual physical torment that took Audrey’s body out of this life. Ivy is experiencing the same anguish that Audrey experienced in that terrible fire, and Audrey will continue to abuse Ivy’s body until her soul is set free.’

His words throbbed dully in Janice’s head.

Dear God, what was he saying?

‘She will keep pushing Ivy back to the source of the problem; she’ll be trying to get back to that moment and will be leading Ivy into dangers as tormenting and destructive as the fire that took Audrey’s life.’

The softly uttered words oscillated in and out of Janice’s blurred consciousness, chaotic, distorted, a medley of terrifying catchwords and phrases. Soul. Harmful. Ivy. Danger. Audrey Rose. What was he saying?

Shut it out!

‘And now I can no longer just leave. It might have been simple once, when your husband so rightly asked, well, why if we’re doing such a good job with the child, why don’t you just go away and leave us to raise her? Fine! There was nothing I could say to that. He had the justice of man and God on his side. Why do you come here and upset our lives? Why do you come into my home and bring your turmoil with you? What can we do for you, man? We don’t know how to help you! But! Look what happened! The very first night I entered your home…’

He was massaging her legs, now with the baby oil in long, kneading, provocative strokes, replacing weariness with euphoria.

‘That very first night, there was Audrey Rose! Wanting! Needing! Crying out for help! For my help! Saying, here, Daddy! I’m here. I need you, Daddy. And making her presence known to me.’

The stroking action of his hands eased off somewhat.

‘You lied, Mrs Templeton. I know you lied. Your daughter didn’t have these attacks all through her life as you told me. Isn’t that true? She never had these nightmares before I came, did she?’

‘Once before,’ Janice blurted huskily, ‘when she was two and a half. They lasted nearly a year.’

Hoover looked stunned. ‘Two and a half?’ He slowly rose to his feet, wiping his glistening hands on the towel. ‘That would have been in 1967 - the very time I was here in New York City, doing a series of articles for the Steelman’s Quarterly—’

He remained standing before Janice’s wavering vision, his eyes pinpoints of intense concentration as his mind reviewed the awesome connection of the two events.

‘My God,’ he whispered in a kind of benediction. ‘That far back?’ He turned to Janice. ‘Even then she was pleading for my help!’ And seizing her arms with a strength that astonished her, he raised her up to the level of his eyes. ‘Do you understand now, Mrs Templeton? It’s the cry of a soul in torment! Can you bear to hear it? I cannot!’

‘Then get out of our lives!’ Janice snapped back at him. ‘This only happens when you’re near. Ivy has been fine and healthy all these years.’

‘No, you’re wrong! Your daughter’s health is an illusion. As long as her body shelters a soul that is unprepared to accept its Karmic responsibilities of earth life, there can be no health, not for the body of Ivy or the soul of Audrey Rose. Both are in peril!’

Janice shook her head, as though ridding herself of hearing him.

‘I don’t know what you’re saying—’

‘I’m saying that Audrey Rose came back too soon.’

Too soon? Oh, dear God, what on earth was he talking about?

‘After World War Two, many children came back too soon. Victims of bombings and concentration camps, bewildered, confused by their own untimely deaths, these souls rushed to get back into a womb, rather than the new astral plane they should have gone to.’

He was a nut. Bill said he was a nut. Bill was right.

‘And, like them, so did Audrey Rose move from horror back to horror, instead of remaining on a plane where she might have meditated and learned to put together her past lives before seeking a new one.’ There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was choked with emotion.

‘She came back too soon, Mrs Templeton, and because of it, Ivy is in great danger.’

His eyes, moist and limpid, fixed themselves on Janice’s drawn and frightened face. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘No,’ Janice shouted, staring at him in unblinking incredulity. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘That’s because you know so little, and there is so much you need to know. Because your fear keeps holding you at arm’s distance from what you have seen and heard and know within you to be the truth.’

‘What truth?’ Janice struggled to free herself from his grip, but Hoover’s hands held fast to her arms. ‘My husband says that you’re crazy! That you’re a nut and belong in a nuthouse, and I think he’s right!’

Hoover’s grip relaxed somewhat. He gazed at her deeply, sadly.

That’s your fear talking, Mrs Templeton.’

‘No, damn it, it’s me talking!’ Janice sobbed. ‘Now please go!’

For a fleeting instant in the midst of Janice’s sobs, Hoover seemed to lose his poise, but he held on and softly replied, ‘I’ve frightened you. I’ve been clumsy, and I’m sorry.’

His hands continued to hold her arms, to support the sagging weight of her bruised and weary body.

‘I know you love your daughter,’ he continued in a very gentle voice, ‘and are seeking what is best for her. Love tries, love is so desperate to help, but it must also question and take chances until no more cries are heard. How do you think a man like me, accustomed to a life of credit cards and soft mattresses, could spend seven years with cows and rice? Come on, Mrs Templeton, I’m no nut. I didn’t give up a fine career and a position in life for no reason. A story, an incredible story that two people told me, grabbed my heart and made my heart search. That’s God, Mrs Templeton, that’s love, when your heart moves faster than your fear.’

His lips were inches from Janice’s face; she could feel his breath on her cheeks.

‘Will you open your heart and try to understand what I’m saying?’

‘I don’t know,’ Janice murmured uncertainly through softening tears. ‘I don’t know what you want of me.’

‘I want your help and your trust. The soul of a child is crying, Mrs Templeton. She is crying over a pain that occurred more than ten years ago, and she will keep suffering this pain unless we can help her.’

Janice turned to him in woebegone confusion.

‘Help her …soul?’

‘Yes,’ Hoover said brightly, sensing contact. ‘We must form a bond to help her get through this ordeal. A bond that is so tight and so filled with all the love you have, and all the love that I have, that we can carefully mend her, patch her, get rid of the scar tissue, wipe it out so that Audrey Rose’s soul may be put to rest once again. We are all part of this child, Mrs Templeton. We have all had to do with the making of her, and only we can help her. You and I. Together. You will help Ivy. I will help Audrey Rose.’

His voice held a hypnotic power, lulling, gently tugging at Janice’s defences.

‘How?’ she heard herself softly inquire. ‘How will you help her? You say she’s trying to kill Ivy. How can you or anyone stop her?’

‘I must try,’ Hoover asserted. ‘I must be with her, close to her, to pray and do good for her soul. Audrey was only five when she died. In her brief time on earth she was just coming to an awareness of the beauties of life.’ His voice cracked with emotion. ‘I must return her soul to that awareness of God’s manifestations, the beauty and oneness of the earth life she knew and loved before the fire seared her soul with its destructive force.’

Janice felt his hands tighten on her arms and herself being drawn closer to him. He was crying openly, without shame.

‘Not for me and for the fact that I miss her, but to quiet her spirit, which is the right of every one of us. Please, please allow me to help her!’

Janice began to weep, holding her face away from him, avoiding the sting of his passion.

‘Don’t shut the door on me, Mrs Templeton,’ he cried breathlessly. ‘Please allow me to come into your life. Allow me to serve you, and Ivy, and Audrey Rose.’ The tears overflowed his eyes and were coursing down his smooth cheeks. ‘This is why I’m here tonight. This has been the meaning of my journey. All those years of seeking and searching, of questioning and doubting have been a prelude to this one moment in time and space.’

Pausing for emphasis, he drew Janice closer to him.

‘Can you now just push me aside, Mrs Templeton? Can you do this now? Reasonably?’

‘No,’ Janice cried weakly, feeling the wet of her own tears on her face.

‘Thank you.’ Hoover exhaled, grateful for her understanding. ‘Forgive me. I’m not an evil man. I’m not a saint. What I am is a man who now knows that God sent him on a journey of absolute necessity. And there must be no further talk of separation between us. For we are so connected. You. Your husband. Your child. Audrey Rose. And I. We have come together by a miracle and are now inseparable.’ He paused, for emphasis, then went on in a stronger, more urgent voice. ‘Say yes, Mrs Templeton. Please!’