Transience (15 page)

"But you won't."

"Why?"
 

"Because you want to know just as much as I do."

Jack studied Leonard a moment.
 
He took a seat, not breaking eye contact.
 
The two stared at each other a long while.

"I saw something yesterday I can't explain," Jack said.
 
"No one could."

"
Doctor?
 
Mrs. Burke's on 1, should I tell her to call back?"

Leonard jabbed at the button on his intercom. "Mary, clear my afternoon."

Leonard walked Jack into a room lined with file cabinets and thick, expensive mahogany bookshelves that looked like they'd been passed down for generations.
 
The room was a complete mess, as if ransacked by thieves.
 
Books, papers, entire drawers removed, notes hastily scribbled down and scattered about, nothing in its place.
 
Well, Leonard, we have one thing in common.

Jack stared out a grimy window that hadn't been washed in years.
 
It was lunchtime.
 
The rain had scaled back to a soft drizzle.
 
People were racing around, going about their daily routines.
 
Inside here
,
madness
…

Leonard swiped a stack of folders off a chair.
 
"Here, sit."
 
He closed the large door and grabbed another chair, pushing it up to a table stacked with books and notes.
 
Several times he opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated, unsure of where to begin.
 

"I haven't got all day," Jack said.

Leonard rubbed his hands together.
 
"At first I was convinced I was looking at a clear cut case of some sort of abuse, physical — mental.
 
I noticed she had these marks on her neck — the mother said they were birthmarks.
 
I was suspicious."

Jack listened quietly, intently, desperate for Leonard to get to the damn point.
 
But something about the drama in Leonard's delivery forced him to hang on every word.

"No matter what I tried, I just couldn't get Rebecca to open up.
 
I suggested regression therapy to the mother.
 
She agreed."

Leonard got up and went to the window.
 
It was open a crack and he pressed it down, shutting out the street noise, quieting the room.
 

"The sessions began normally.
 
But as I regressed her further backwards, she became very distressed.
 
I knew I was getting somewhere.
 
Then…something happened.
 
Something that altered my entire belief system, not just as a doctor, as a human being."

"Get to the point."

"Do you believe that the complexity of our bodies, our world…our universe, is too great to be just mere coincidence?"

"Never thought about it."
 
Liar.

"You a religious man?"
 

"Stop dancing around the subject."

"Well, I'm Jewish; my faith doesn't allow for the possibility of transmigration of the soul.
 
So you can imagine my dismay when this nine year old girl began to recount, in wrenching detail, how she was brutally attacked and viciously raped.
 
She went so far as to describe the pain of having her windpipe crushed, blood rushing out her nose and ears.
 
You can see why I hesitated about telling the mother?"

"There has to be a logical explanation."
 

Leonard walked over and opened a file cabinet. "There are two explanations.
 
One is the possibility of transmigration, where the soul exits one body after death and enters another."

"You're talking about reincarnation?"

"Yes," Leonard replied, locking eyes with Jack to make sure he knew he meant it.
 
"The other is demonic possession.
 
However, I gravely doubt that a demon would supply a young child with intimate knowledge of the problems a Dominican immigrant faces in a predominantly white American high school.
 
Or fond memories of another loving family and mother.
 
The evidence of xenoglossy alone was convincing enough."

"Xenoglossy?" Jack asked.
 
Leonard grabbed a folder from the cabinet and closed it.

"Fluently speaking a language you've never heard before."
 
Jack sat back, Rebecca's episode at the hospital repeating in his memory.
 
"To my knowledge, no one in her immediate family speaks Spanish, yet I had to translate almost half our session."

"It's just not possible," Jack said, but he couldn't deny that as incredible as it sounded,
there was no rational explanation for how Rebecca knew what she knew.
 
He had no choice but to remain open-minded for the moment.

Leonard returned to the table, placed the folder down, and began rifling through it.
 

"She even went so far as to recall her fear of dying
unclean
for God.
 
I'm sure I don't have to elaborate.
 
Does that sound like the imagination of a nine year old to you?"

Leonard removed a report from the folder.
 
"The attention to detail and the forensic pathology with which she described her experience of death virtually eliminated any possibility of an overactive imagination.
 
But I still wasn't convinced."
 

Leonard placed a printout on the table.
 
"I looked into the identity of this girl Carmen she described.
 
I found her listing under missing persons."
 
Jack looked closely, it was a copy of Carmen's report.
 

"I've seen it."
 

"I knew if somehow her body was found, it would prove beyond a doubt that what Rebecca was telling me was real."

"So you called me.
 
I find the body, give your research credibility.
 
Unbiased validation?"
 
Jack's tone turned Leonard around.

"Do you have any idea how important this is?
 
If I can prove it irrefutably, it could rewrite Judeo-Christian dogma as we know it!"

"You're crazy."
 

"Of course I am."

"Why didn't you just tell me the whole story from the beginning?"
 

"I thought it would be better for you to experience it firsthand.
 
Only then could we sit and discuss it like rational human beings.
 
Clearly, it's had the same effect on you as it did me."

"You knew this had nothing to do with my case, didn't you?"

"If it has nothing to do with your case, why then are you backtracking your investigation as if these crimes are related?"

Jack folded his arms.
 
It was obvious he'd been used.
 
But what difference did it make?
 
Leonard was right, he
was
just as interested.
 
Maybe more.
 
There had been a murder, just like Leonard said.
 
One mystery was solved, with a new one introduced.
 
Leonard was also right not to tell him beforehand.
 
He would never have even listened to the tape.
 
Jack wanted to believe that Rebecca's story - Leonard's interpretation — could be real.
 
But complex twists were for TV drama.
 
The real world was ugly and sad, and rarely extraordinary.
 

"In the following weeks I did some research.
 
Doctors who'd risked their practice to publish articles on their experiences, ones I would have normally dismissed.
 
Now they had a profound resonance.
 
I discovered that an overwhelming majority of these children recalled suffering through a painful, untimely death.
 
Usually very violent and traumatic.
 
There's nothing more traumatic than murder."

"What does it prove?"
 

"Do you remember your dreams?"
 

Jack shook his head, "Not really."

"But I'm sure in your line of work, you've awoken on several occasions from a terrible nightmare."

Jack nodded.
 
Leonard removed his glasses and rubbed the sides of his nose.
 
"Most of us pass away having lived out our dull, normal, boring lives; lives many of us might want to forget.
 
But should you be taken before your time, perhaps stabbed and strangled as you repeatedly begged for your life, that might be too painful to ever forget.
 
We lose most of our childhood memories, but we retain the painful ones in intricate detail.
 
Many of my adult patients come to me because they're plagued by traumatic events from their adolescence.
 
Most of us have difficulty living with just the problems of this life."

Jack looked at Leonard a long time.
 
"You really believe all this?"

"It took a while to discard my scientific ideals, but after your discovery by the river, how can I dispute it?"
 

Leonard unwrapped the file he took from the cabinet.
 
"I've always been fascinated by stories of how some children come out of the womb with the uncanny ability to speak and read before they can walk.
 
Or to draw and paint— " he removed Rebecca's sketch pad and tossed it across the table to Jack, "with the skills it takes many artists a lifetime to acquire."

"Something in the brain chemistry," Jack said, feeling as if he was defending rationality itself.
 
He picked up the book and flipped through Rebecca's work.
 
His eyes widened, each sketch was more brilliant than the last.
 
His resistance was wearing thin.
 
"She drew these?"
 
Leonard waved his hand
, that's nothing
.
 

"1962, in Glasgow, a five year old child was placed in front of his aunt's piano for the first time at a party.
 
The child proceeded to belt out excerpts from Beethoven's Appassionata.
 
Neither of the parent's came from any musical background, they didn't even own a piano.
 
A noted physician who attended the party documented the case.
 
There are hundreds of these on file."

Jack flipped to a charcoal rendering of Laura.
 
Her face was neither happy nor sad.
 
The detail was extraordinary, he couldn't turn the page, transfixed.
 
He examined each hand drawn line.

"Most of the children documented seem to lose the ability to recall these memories after age six.
 
Coincidence that this age coincides with the onset of the childhood latency period?
 
I now believe this regression is the stage where old and new merge, and the soul accepts its new identity.
 
But in extreme cases, perhaps involving murder, violence — it scars the soul.
 
It doesn't recede.
 
In Rebecca's case, her episodes were triggered when she arrived in Monroe County.
 
New to her — grievously unforgettable to Carmen."
 

"What about these people who get hit in the head and suddenly remember what the weather was like every day of the year for the last 20 years, or can suddenly memorize entire volumes of encyclopedias?"
 

"Photographic memorization is far different from being able to recall something you've never been exposed to."

"If it was her own death she was describing, why was Rebecca talking in the third person?"

"She was recalling the moment of detachment from the physical state.
 
Looking down at her own body, unable at that point to make the distinction of self, since we had yet to make that connection.
 
She didn't
know
it was her own body."
 

Jack stared at the floor.
 
Leonard waited for his reaction, expecting him to roll his eyes.
 
But Jack was stoic, sincere.
 
Leonard seemed relieved; Jack was the first person he'd confided his theories in and he had fully expected ridicule.
 
Instead, Jack was curiously intrigued, even if skeptical.
 
At least he was still in the room.
 
Still listening.

Jack finally looked up.
 
"The tape you gave me of Rebecca.
 
It seemed like parts were missing."
 

"They're not missing…"
 
Leonard returned to the file cabinet and retrieved his cassette recorder.

CHAPTER 30

Jack watched from the window as Leonard's secretary exited the building.
 
Leonard had given her the rest of the day off.
 

Leonard sat at the table, a tape playing.
 
It was a different session and much more intense than the previous one Jack had heard.
 
Some of the material was tough to listen to.
 
Rebecca recited very adult situations through her tiny young voice.
 
Sexually violent, horrific situations.
   

Rebecca's fragile voice cracked on the recording: "
I can't!
 
I can't,
" she repeated, sounding so helpless, "
Please!
"

"
Rebecca, detach yourself!
"
 
Leonard's voice was clear on the tape, in control.
 
"
He can't hurt you!
"

"
No!
 
Oh God!
" Rebecca shrieked as if being defiled, violated.
 
She began to choke.
 
Her suffering, even if just recollections brought to the surface with dexterity by a doctor's skilled coercing, was excruciating to bear witness to.
 
Jack winced with every scream.
 
The experience was real and heartbreaking.