Consider Me Gone, page 8
part #1 of Time Shadows Series
“Yes and no,” she whispered.
“A good honest answer,” Louisa said with a satisfied sigh. “Find out what Claire can’t forgive.”
“To have a soul obsessing away on past traumas like that is enough to drive a person whacko,” Jo muttered.
“Perhaps some mental states are interpreted that way. When people begin to behave in ways they can’t understand or hear voices and see visions, their trouble may not be one of the brain but of the soul.” Louisa tapped her substantial bosom.
“I always knew psychiatrists didn’t have all the answers.” Jo said, sitting up.
“I’m not sure anyone’s got all the answers but modern science is not equipped to deal with the crux of it,” her aunt remarked. “They usually deal with one lifetime instead of all the complex layers that lie beneath.”
“But how to you argue with that?” Jo asked.
“Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just live your own life your own way. To science, what can’t be proved doesn’t exist. What do they know? They think they can fit every human experience into tidy little boxes that can be explained from A to Z. Sometimes, when they can’t find something that fits one box, they invent a new one and slap on a label to make us little folk feel all impressed.”
Jo shook her head. “Those little boxes, as you call them, make sense. They’re explainable, quantifiable. Personally, if it can’t be proved, I get twitchy.”
“You need a good dose of faith, child,” Aunt Loo countered.
“Faith in what?” Jo asked.
“Faith that the universe is bigger than evidence, faith that your soul knows what your mind can’t grasp.”
“But things should make sense,” Jo answered back.
“They do make sense but not the kind you expect.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jo asked.
Romy said, “It means that you need to look at things differently, take everything you think you know and turn in upside down. I’m experiencing the past—know it, feel it, have my own evidence to prove it, even though everything that’s happening to me is supposedly impossible. I’m learning the rules as I go.” She turned to Louisa. “But why is my soul’s memory only affecting me now? Why not back home in Nova Scotia? Why not somewhere else?”
“Because the memory triggers are strongest here and so the soul remembers. Many of the souls involved in these same life events are also drawn back to New Orleans, too, like Dr. Adrian. There are more connections than you could ever imagine.”
Romy stared at her. “Like Adrian,” she repeated.
“Like Adrian and I’m in this, too.” Louisa said.
“You are?”
“I am. And so is Joquita.”
“Wait a minute,” Jo exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “I’m just the observer, the spectator on the sidelines. Leave me out of this, okay?”
“You’re in it already, child,” Louisa said, “only I haven’t figured out how or how deep. I expect Romy will discover that through Claire’s life.”
Romy grinned at Jo. “Sorry, girlfriend.”
Jo frowned. “I don’t believe this. I haven’t seen any ghosts or suddenly been transported into another age to have sex with some drop-dead gorgeous Spaniard. Now that would be worth believing in reincarnation. I can’t wait to hear what Dr. Countway says when you tell him he’s Ulloa.”
“When I tell him?” Romy repeated.
“He’ll have to hear it at some point,” Louisa said with a nod. “I suspect this has been going on for a long time between you two, maybe across many lifetimes.”
Romy sighed. “Unrequited love in purpetum.”
“Every life brings new opportunities, Romy. Don’t go thinking that you have to live every life in the same old groove. Make this the lifetime your soul breaks free from the pattern and claims love for your own. Tell yourself you deserve it and will make it happen, no matter what.”
“But how? What do I do?” Romy asked, almost afraid to hope. “And how do I fight Claire’s life inside my own?”
“ Why can’t she just tell Claire to go away like as in an exorcism?” Jo asked. “Tell her the error of her ways and send her packing?”
“You think we should just cut her a ticket and help pack her bags?” Louisa asked. Her gaze directed at Romy. “Claire is not aware she’s moving in this century. She’s caught up in her own sorry loop, obsessing. She’s helpless and locked into a traumatized state. You’re seeing events as Claire’s seen them.”
“So, what then?” Romy asked. “She’s becoming stronger every day and causing me to enact her behavior. How do I get control?”
“First, we need to figure out just when and where you slip into Claire’s head.” Louisa rose to her feet and towered over Romy, arms crossed. “We need to recognize the triggers so you can protect yourself from going back at an inconvenient time. Think about it. When are you having these experiences?”
Romy gazed up, trying to remember. “At first, it happened at the end of my Frozen Angel performances but last night was different.”
“Let’s just focus on the Frozen Angel routine first. That was when they started, yes? Something about that angel is important. What do you do when you go into your angel state?” Louisa asked.
Romy hesitated. So much of what she did, she did without thinking. “Well, I try to settle myself into a quiet frame of mind and focus on something.”
“Focus on what?” Louisa pressed.
“It varies. Usually I try to fix my gaze on some faraway spot and think of the past.”
Louisa frowned. “What kind of things in the past? No, wait, better yet, show me. Get into the angel position right here and prepare yourself as if for a performance.”
Romy scanned the patio, wondering if she could manage without her props—the wings, starched gowned, pedestal, everything that helped her ‘freeze’.
Reluctantly, she got to her feet, walked to the center of the flagstone space and got down on one knee with a hand resting on a thigh and the other stretched out as if holding something—a scepter or staff. “It doesn’t feel right wearing jeans.”
“Where’d you see that pose, now?” Louisa asked.
“It’s as if I’ve always known it.”
“You probably have.”
“I used to freeze as a child and the kids would count the minutes before I blinked. The first time I struck this pose as an adult was in Adrian Countway’s office. I told him about my strange childhood ‘gift’ and he asked me to demonstrate. I thought I had experienced a brief sense of being somewhere else even then but decided I had to be imagining it.”
“What is it you think of when you get yourself into the freeze?”
“I think of cemeteries and the stillness of stone. I think of this stone angel staring down into forever, still as death, no, stiller than death—unchanging. She wants to fly but can’t; she wants to beak free of stone and just be but can’t.”
“Now, if that’s not a description of the soul’s quest, I don’t know what is. Something there is opening the door to Claire’s memories, one of the triggers,” Louisa said.
“Let’s find another.”
“The headaches,” Jo prompted.
Still in her angel position, Romy grimaced. “The migraines. Yesterday, I’d been fighting one all day and then I ended up with a sexist lout in the tour group. By the time I reached the last stop at Pat O’Briens, I knew the headache would strike hard and it did. I began behaving uncharacteristically—-first I saw Adrian and panicked, then I pushed my client down the stairs. Can you imagine me doing that?”
“No way,” Jo marveled, “but I sure enough wish I’d been there to see it.”
“The event must have been witnessed by at least fifty people, including Adrian. Imagine him just happening to be at O’Briens at that moment? I—“
“Wait,” Louisa commanded.
Romy looked up. “You’re going to tell me that wasn’t a coincidence.”
“I was just fixin’ to do exactly that.” Louisa chuckled. “The universe may seem chaotic but it’s anything but. There’s a pattern but it’s far too complex for us to understand it its entirety. Adrian was there because he’s part of what’s happening to you, he’s part of the pattern. Remember, we’re all connected.”
Romy stared. “Of course.”
“Synchronicity,” Jo said. “Like in Sting?”
Louisa swung towards her niece, hands on hips. “Why is it my own niece sees the world through the eyes of popular culture? I thought you were a scholar?”
“I am a scholar but one who lives in this particular culture,” Jo protested.
“Touche. But remember that Sting didn’t invent the term. synchronicity. He probably read Carl Jung, for a start, and maybe you should, too.”
“I don’t have time to read Carl Jung. I’m too busy studying slavery,” she countered.
“There’s more than one kind of slavery in this world, Joquita. Only you can set yourself free.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jo protested.
“Shush up, Jocquita Bonita. This isn’t about you—yet.” Turning back to Romy, Louisa sighed. “Lost my equilibrium for a moment. Sorry ‘bout that. Go on, child.”
Romy glanced from Jo to Louisa. “You two have a little cycle on replay all your own, don’t you?”
“That we do,” Louisa acknowledged. “That’s what happens between families: we fall into this spin of trigger and response that’s mighty hard to break out of, but enough of that. Carry on. You were talking about your migraines.”
“Right, well, the migraine took over. That’s when all the really strange things began. The migraine must be a trigger.”
“Hard to say. Could be the past life experiences are provoking the headaches, making you susceptible.”
“Or, there’s something about migraines that cause my brain to hit the necessary state to have these past experiences. They come in clusters. I may have none for months then suddenly I’m plagued by them for days on end. Lately, I seem to be getting them a lot, which coincides with my recent past life encounters. It’s hard to say which is intensifying which.”
“All kinds of things may trigger these jumps back. There are countless things that trigger even regular memories.”
Romy climbed to her feet. “Like a smell or a thought or seeing something that connects with something in my past life?”
“Exactly,” Louisa said. “The same kinds of things that trigger regular memories could be causing yours. Could be anything. Most folks encounter a lesser version of this when they experience déjà vu but yours is just much more vivid.”
“In living color and Surround Sound,” Jo muttered.
Romy stared out across the darkened garden. “I feel as though I’ve been dropped into a period film only someone else is saying the lines from my lips.”
“Well, you’re going to have to learn the script as you go,” Louisa said.
“My God, if this is true, you really could be reliving the past,” Jo marveled. “Think about it.”
Romy turned to her friend, her heart thumping both fear and exhilaration. “All my life I yearned to travel back into the past to taste another age and live what the people experienced back then. Every time I hold an artifact in my hand, I try to feel the resonance of those who used it long ago. When I stand in an old, hallowed, spot, I practically ache to be transported back for one instant. And now,” she took a deep breath, “and now that it’s happening, I swear, I’m more terrified than anything else.”
Louise walked back over to the chairs, her movement graceful despite her size. “Bad enough a soul has to go through the wringer once let alone live another life over again and again. Claire lived in dangerous times and whatever happened to her has left everlasting scars. It won’t be easy reliving that.”
Romy followed Louisa back to the fireside. “And that’s what I
“I’ll help prepare you,” Louisa said. “Though you can’t control the events that impacted Claire, you need to at least be the one to decide when and where you go back to experience them. Right now, you’re just getting jerked back every time a connection is made. That’s dangerous. That’s got to change.”
“Can I control the order in which I experience these events, too? So far, the memories are completely out of sequence. At first, I saw Antonio wounded but some of last night’s events seemed to have occurred before that, when he and Claire were still lovers.”
Louisa took another sip of her julep. “Memories don’t occur in any particular order unless you’re consciously controlling them. When you go back for a longer experience—more than an hour at a time, let’s say—the memories might be more sequential. No guarantee, though. I don’t advise you to try going back for more than an hour at any give time, anyway. Too dangerous.”
“You’ve been back yourself, haven’t you, Aunt Loo?” Jo said.
“Sure enough I’ve been back,” Louisa admitted, her eyes fixed on the fireplace. “But it’s not something I do lightly or often but I did so to clarify my own soul. Recently, I try not to go back at all. Every time a soul goes back in time, there’s a danger it will get entangled with the old memory and get stuck there forever. That’s one way a soul gets lost.”
Romy felt a sudden chill. Her uncle used to call it ‘someone walking across your grave’ and, in this setting, the old saying held special meaning.
“What would that look like in the body left behind?” Jo asked.
“Either empty or mad, depends on the person.”
Jo shook her head. “Empty as in trance?”
“Empty as in comatose. Whether the person is revisiting the past for a short time or is lost for good, the way their body behaves back in current time remains consistent for each person. For example, I go into a deep sleep and can’t be roused. My body just stays here kind of comatose. Some folks have a more dramatic reaction. Their body walks around speaking and behaving just as if they were back in their past life. They’re acting out their soul’s past right here today but inside, they’re gone.”
“Like me at times,” Romy said in a small voice.
“Like you at times,” Louisa nodded. “You do need to know the risks, Romy. Fact is, the stronger the soul’s memories, the greater the influence it will have on your current life. I’m afraid you’re getting close to that point now.”
Romy’s shivering increased. Getting up from her seat, she stood before the fire’s grate, trying to leech the ember’s last warmth into her icy fingers.
“You have a strong though a damaged soul,” Louisa continued. “When you go back, you could get so wrapped up in Claire’s life that you forget your own—if you don’t take precautions, that is. You will take precautions, though, ‘cause I’m going to teach you how. Don’t fret now. We’ll spend some time schooling you for the trip tomorrow.”
Romy glanced at Louisa. “Tomorrow, not tonight?”
“You need rest first. Being overtired makes you vulnerable, makes it harder for you to come back.”
“Are there other alternatives? I mean, what would happen if I didn’t go back and focused on trying to stay anchored in the here and now, instead?” Couldn’t I learn to live with those ghosts moving around inside my head or, better yet, shut them out entirely?”
Louisa looked pained. “You know it’s too late for that. Claire’s already worn a groove into your brain.”
She did know that, damn it. Romy rubbed her eyes, suddenly feeling exhausted. Burying her face in her hands, she staved off the fresh urge to cry. “It was a desperate hope. If I don’t go through with this, not only will my soul bang itself into a wall for eternity but I’ll go crazy.” When Louisa didn’t respond, she lowered her hands. “I have no choice.”
“You have a choice, right enough,” Louisa responded. “And only you can make it.”
“Risk my sanity or lose my mind? Not much of a choice.”
“Still, you can choose the how of it.”
Romy nodded, so weary she felt she could sleep for a week. “If I’m going to do this, I just want to get it over with. When do I start?”
“First, you go home, gather some things, and return here tonight. I want you both to sleep under this roof so I can keep an eye on you until this business is finished. I don’t want you to go imagining the seventeenth century at all, do you hear? Turn it off. Focus on something benign. Avoid the triggers. Get rested. Joquita Bonita, keep her distracted.”
Jo nodded. “Distraction is my specialty.”
Louise smiled. “Now, tomorrow morning, bright and early, we’ll get started with the preparation. By the afternoon, I’m fixin’ to have you ready to go back, Romy. We have to be strategic here. No time to dawdle. I fear Claire’s getting too strong a grip on the present and every day wasted will put you in more peril.”
10
Romy and Joquita took a cab home to gather their things, fare paid compliments of Aunt Loo.
“I just can’t believe we’re preparing you for a past life regression,” Jo remarked as the car sped through the streets. “Still, when it comes to Aunt Loo, I’ve learned not to argue, at least not all the time. She’s usually right about most things. Now, all I have to do is get my mind around the possibilities—life after death, diseased souls muddying up the present. My life as a historian may never be the same.”
Romy, who had been leaning her head against the back of the seat, gazed out into the city night, too weary to talk. The cab began to slow down as it wound through the narrow streets of the French Quarter.
“This the place?” the driver called over his shoulder as the car eased into the curb. Both women remained silent, studying a car with its engine running parked outside their cottage. Romy leaned forward. “Who’s that?”
“Police,” Jo whispered, peering at the dark sedan.
“How’d you know?” Romy stared at the unmarked car. Something awful must have had happened to someone she loved. Only there wasn’t anyone left.
Jo peered through the window. “The guy on the driver’s side who’s getting out if the car is Detective Thelonious Brown. I dated him for awhile. He rates as my longest-standing boyfriend, in fact. So, why don’t I just pay the driver while you see what’s up? Maybe one of us has overdue library books.”
