Alicia: A Charming Psychological Mystery

by Lanascopic

When I was twenty, still living at home, I received a white card in the mail congratulating me for winning a free four-week stay at Ms. Gray’s Cottage Resort, which I had never heard of in my life. My mother pointed out that it was at least two hours away, outside of Beaksburg and that even she was unfamiliar with the little resort. She said, “But it sounds lovely. Are you going?” 

Sure, I was going. Why not? To this day I'll never forget what happened at Ms. Gray's. And it felt like I drove all day to get there.    

Now, if you take the two-lane highway out of Beaksburg for twenty minutes you’ll pass a post office, then a little country store. On the left there will be a bait shop, and an old road running down the side of it.      

Turning left there, you’ll see that the road goes on and on, with cows on the right, and trees to the left, but not one house. After five minutes you’ll almost pass up Promise Lane, the narrow, paved lefthand road, because by now it’s well hidden by bushy overgrowth. Back then the turn was clearly marked by her beveled wooden sign with its dull yellow background and blue-green vintage-style lettering that read “Ms. Gray’s Cottage Resort.”      

No phone number. No business hours.      

My invite said that to claim my prize I had to check in by noon the following day. Alone. I could have no guests, and a photo-ID would be required. The card explained, “These conditions are in place so that the other guests aren’t disturbed by incoming traffic or unnecessary activity. Ms. Gray’s is, by design, a place of comfort, rest, and solitude.”     

I was on summer break from college, where I studied poetry and music. It was the end of June. And I was so excited that I packed and then drove two hours to Beaksburg, Virginia immediately.      

Once I’d turned left at her sign, I drove on beneath the shade of massive trees for another five minutes, passing only one house that was entirely secluded behind an eight-foot privacy fence. Two more minutes gently cruising then I saw the beveled yellow arrow that artfully matched her sign. It pointed rightward.     

From Promise Lane I followed the arrow between a pair of welcoming trees. Their canopies formed a leafy archway that met midway above my path, which immediately curved leftward onto a gravel path.     

Now there was a line of trees dividing Promise Lane from this pathway, and to my right was a vast overgrown field, just speckled with a tree here or there.      

I saw the little cottage row against a hazy cotton-candy blue sky, gasped in delight and said to myself, “How adorable.”      

Yet, in the back of my mind I still wondered how I had been selected to win.      

I hadn’t entered any drawings. Maybe it’s just random, I thought, imagining an index finger sliding down a white page in the phonebook with closed eyes hovering above.      

Yes, we still had phonebooks in those days, big, fat, directories filled with the names, numbers, and addresses of perfect strangers, and thousands of them. I was still using my pink bedroom phone, which had a separate number from the main home phone. That number was listed in the phone book under my parent’s name as a youth-phone. So I was easily findable.       

And that was my internal reasoning, which I gleefully accepted. I guess the idea of going to a resort on my own for a month was too glamourous for me to question.     

After another minute my roadway met with a paved strip of parking pavement, which trimmed the edges of the tiny front lawns of those seven multi-colored cottages on my left. Other than the unique color-schemes of each of the cabins, one being white-brown-blue, another coral-lilac-yellow, and so on, the cottages were identical, craftsman style, with grainy, peaked roofs and beautifully furnished porches on each one, with stone skirting behind flower bushes.      

There were even little black mailboxes next to each of the front doors.     

Of the seven cottages, the second was the only one whose parking spot was open. So, I pulled up there. The first cottage, though, was much bigger than the rest, painted in cool red. It had pale yellow trim and light brown doors and shutters. That front door had a pretty, wooden Open sign hanging inside its paned window. And parked in front of that cottage were two Cadillacs, an older one and a brand new one. Shady trees sprawled over the back of its roof. Clearly, the main cottage had been here far longer than the other seven.     

When I met old Ms. Gray her small frame was draped in a frilly blue dress made of something like Chiffon. One bony hand gripped a cane that stood on a wood floor. The other hand rolled out on the air as if it had an invisible string tied from it to her cheeks that drew her smile into place. “Come in, dear.”     

I looked into her blue-grey eyes, which feigned the strength needed to keep their youthful shape despite the dragging eyelids that folded over her lashes.      

I registered on a form at her table, and she gave me the key. “What is your passion. If you had one wish, if you could spend your time here doing one thing, what would it be,” she asked.      

I wasn’t prepared to answer that. “Oh.” I smiled. “Well. I suppose ceramics would be fun.”     

“Then I’ll have your kiln and supplies delivered before supper. Porcelain or clay?”     

I think my mouth gaped inside my lopsided smile, through which came a vocal huff, “Ah, sure." Well, either would do. Wow, I didn’t expect that.     

She had my fridge stocked with everything I wanted to eat and there was a computer on the desk in my little living room: boxy and brand new.      

“Do you have internet here,” I asked as she showed me my cottage.      

“Oh, of course, dear. Nothing but the best for my guests.”     

Leaving my doorway, she told me to just relax, lounge around, and then she said, “Take this solitude into your lungs as though they were two pupils soaking in the gentle daylight without a blink.” I assumed she was trying to be poetic. The wind rustled her wavy gray hair, the crown of which was in a Bavarian-style braid that framed the elegant tilt of her head.     

I closed my door behind her after saying, “Thank you, I will.”     

She’d mentioned that Ms. Gray wasn't her real name, that her late husband, Earl Thomas, had passed away decades before and that she’d stuck with the nickname he’d given her, “Because," she said, "I can’t be separated from my Earl Gray tea, you see. I do appreciate a good hot cup, don’t you? These days I grow my own leaves, right in the backyard. And my blend is far, far more superior to those sold on the market. You see, I’ve learned how to make it like they used to. You must pop in sometime and try a cup.”     

I told her I’d be happy to do so.     

It was three in the afternoon. I sat on my couch with a little book, trying to concentrate on reading but growing distracted by the details of my real life.      

Why do I say real life? Because somehow this ambient experience felt nothing like real life.     

I wondered who the other guests were. I’d noticed license plates from as far as Louisiana and New Mexico. Then I thought of my next term’s class schedule, prerequisites I’d be taking at three hours apiece, leaving little room for the art class I hoped to start.     

I sat forward adjusting the coffee table so I could have my feet up. This went on for a frustrating twenty-five minutes. Finally, I gave up and put a pillow on it to prop my feet on. And that did the trick: the table was just too low.     

I huffed at it.      

Then I thought of my boyfriend, Ricky, who had joined the Army. They sent him to Germany, which made me so upset. He wanted to fight for his country, he said, he wanted his favorite uncle, a former serviceman himself, to pat him on the back. I tried to talk Ricky out of going but he said, “Monica, my whole life I’ve wanted to make my uncle proud. This has been going on with me since I was five, way before you and me. I’m sorry. This doesn’t mean it’s over between us,” he insisted. “Besides, I’ll write. I promise.”     

He didn’t.      

I thought about Mom. She was still battling a terrible breakout of psoriasis, so she refused to leave the house.      

My father was still battling his new, young boss, who kept looking for ways to entice him to retire early. It enraged him and he’d been hard to talk to lately without feeling like I was interrupting an important, ongoing argument inside his head.      

My brother was still in the process of divorcing a girl who’d become pregnant for him. I had never even met her, and he’d only known her a few months. Now he was interested in a non-pregnant girl and complaining that Jessica was being a rag, not worth his lifetime.     

My best friend, Molly, was in rehab with an opium addiction. She’d tried to have me try some, but I was terrified of going blind or something, so I flat refused. Then she became distant until she ended up in the hospital with an overdose.     

And my grandmother had passed away the previous Christmas Eve. Mom inherited Leon, her overaged Chihuahua, which peed in the house constantly. All that left her too distracted to efficiently deal with another problem: She was receiving monthly deliveries of live flowers, and to our home address, because of a mistake on the order form when she selected Grandma’s funeral bouquets. The guy who could fix it kept putting her on hold.      

When I left there were forty vases filled with rotting flowers all over the house. Mom couldn’t mourn quite right with that going on, so, she’d taken to a few tall drinks of wine every day after lunch.      

This cottage resort thing couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I was emotionally exhausted with dealing with people who were dealing with themselves with no more success than I had.      

I closed my eyes, set the book aside, and focused on that weird world, concluding that maybe when I returned from solitude everything would have self-resolved at home.      

Ironically, though, I felt only more lost between two strange worlds while I thought of both of them at the same time. So I put the other one out of my mind and this cottage thing came into better focus for me, at least emotionally: I decided to live in the dream while it lasted.      

There was a tap on my front door. I opened it to Ms. Gray, who whispered, “I don’t like knocking much. It disturbs the others. But let’s get your back door open. I’ll meet you on the other side.”     

When I opened the back door there were two men waiting there with my quiet delivery. Ms. Gray said, “Please, place it on that wall next to the big outlet, boys.”     

They didn’t say a word, as if she’d instructed them to keep it hushed.     Once they left- driving from the front entrance, where they’d parked then dollied the delivery, Ms. Gray said, “I take it you’ve fired pottery in the past?”     

“Yes. With my grandmother. She passed away.”     

“Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss, dear.”     

After she left, I started tinkering— with my big smile all to myself— delighted to have these brand-new tools at my sole disposal.      

For the next week I was absorbed in firing and glazing gifts I planned to bring back to my family: Dad’s astray matched Mom’s tea set, which matched a set of dessert bowls I was working on.

I made tons of beautiful, glazed pottery over several days, and tons of messes I had to clean up every morning just to make room to make more lovely pottery. Yellow and white swirled pieces, crimson and red speckled pieces, I tried a couple of midnight blue cups with little white stars, which bled a little under the glaze but looked only better that way, honestly.

On the seventh morning I opened the front door to let the cool of dawn pour inside, since all that firing kept the cottage a little warm. There was a white envelope, now taped to my door. I pulled the card out. It read, "Congratulations! You've been selected for a free reading over a nice hot cup of my homegrown Earl Gray tea. Please stop in to learn about your past life from a Master Psychic, World Renowned, the Incredible Ms. Gray." 

I giggled to myself, trying to imagine this tiny old woman with her shawl and cane being world renowned. Then I went inside and looked her up online. 

There was nothing about her. 

So, I thumbed through a copy of the Beaksburg phonebook, which I found in my desk drawer. No psychics listed. Nothing. I wanted to call my mother so we could get a good chuckle, but there was no phone in the cabin. I assumed Ms. Gray had been kidding in the note. So I showered for teatime, pulled on a pair of Leggs pantyhose so I could go wearing a dress; I didn’t want Ms. Gray to think I was inelegant. 

She was also dressed up for tea, almost as well as the Queen of England, when I knocked at 7:30. I saw that pale flesh-toned powder on her nose in the sun’s eastern light. She even wore a hat- she looked like the old-lady version of a porcelain doll. I smiled at how cute she was with her flower on her hat. She smiled back, though not as cheerfully as the Queen, but more like a teacher with some serious routine on her mind. “Good morning,” we exchanged. 

I followed her in awkward silence leftward into an impressive parlor: it was filled with gold, for Christ’s sakes. Bulky baroque gold frames around glass that encased some documents, which looked historic, gold vases as tall as umbrella stands and filled with chic stalks of that puffy, bone-toned pampas grass. 

There were gold things included in that room strictly for the sake of including gold things in that room, such as gold lamps where white ones would have done fine, and little gold tiles integrated into the multi-toned collage of early astrologers gazing covering the lower part of the wall where a nice black paneling would have sufficed. And the table, most impressive of all: round, gold, with a gold pedestal. 

I sat down. “I’ll be right back,” she said. And she returned quickly with a gold tray that held a steaming tea-for-two set. She sat down across from me. “Have you finished any pottery,” she asked, taking her cup and saucer like her hand was programmed to compensate for gravity with precision balance. I took my own, affirming my progress in detail as she listened attentively. “How lovely those must be,” she said.

Meanwhile my gaze kept dipping away from hers at the distracting gold things. She paused in her introduction of this reading to say, “It’s all real gold. I worked for kings at no charge, so they pay me with these gifts. That,” the golden tusk I was staring at, “comes from Africa. Somewhere. My clients expect my complete confidentiality.”

That claim caught my eyes, which turned straight to hers. “Oh yes,” she said casually. “This table is from France. That little portrait frame is from a prince in England, though the British nobles have always indulged me in, well, their extreme frugality,” she whispered. “I have gifts here from Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, even the Netherlands and Brazil. They always ask me what I want. I always say gold.” With a satisfied parting of outstretched arms she looked around, “And this is what I get.”

I wasn't smiling anymore, just staring at her like I wasn't very bright. "I have lots of golden items in this house. There's something substantial in every room. Look at how intricate the design is," she said, brushing her veiny hand over the table like it was her fragile yet oversized Goldendoodle pup, and with almost as much texture, ornamentally speaking. 

"Aren't you afraid of being. You know?" I shrugged, afraid to sound silly.

"Being what? Robbed? Heavens no. If anyone tried stealing my golden things they'd be in for a good surprise." She took a look at her four windows now for some reason, two on each end of the front wall.

"What do you mean?"

Ms. Gray dragged her golden hinged box over, lifted the hinged lid. She dipped her hand inside to pull out a golden smoking pipe with a very long stem, lit it with a match, looked at me while blowing smoke. The smoke cloud moved like disturbed water, locomoting itself over the air almost like a giant, inching worm under the force of nothing but itself. I thought about that a minute. 

That aside now, she reached into the box for an indigo velvet drawstring-bag, which reminded me of my father’s holiday Crown Royal, except authentically pristine, shimmering. “Well. Aside from my golden table, which weighs more than a human being,” she carefully drew a set of tarot cards from the bag, “all my other gold things are as good as being cemented permanently in place.” She glanced up at me. "Please," she nodded at my teacup. "It'll get cold fast, dear."

I took my cup, started sipping quickly. Now she paused everything. As gently as Mother Goose she said, "No, no my dear. Never guzzle your tea. It curdles in the stomach when people drink it too fast."

I was sure that was some old wives tale but I didn’t stop to address it. I said, "I guess you do have a point. It would be hard to steal."

"I practice science. Did you know that?"

I was giggling inside. No she doesn’t. She couldn't: Not with all those gold-framed astrology posters on the walls between the palm-reading charts and related divination charts. And they were beautiful, probably very old, though clearly for her practical use- to play out this fantasy that she was some world-renowned astrologer who’d worked for kings, even though her gold treasures made the ambiance resemble a scene out of Tomb Raiders. Probably an inheritance, I was starting to suspect, trying not to smile as I looked down at her shuffling. 

"Well, did you," she asked, glancing up from her busy hands as she laid the cards out directly on the golden surface. 

"Ah, no." I kept a blank stare. "No. I didn't know that about you."

"Mm, well. I do things with magnets, you see. And many years ago, I designed a magnetic network with cabled conductors that feed off a crux, which is comprised of one spherical magnet under the center of the floor. I call it the Nexusphere."

I was confused. “Crux?”

“Yes, a central point.”

No, that didn’t sound like the right use of that word. “You mean an apex?”

The pitch of her answer rose and fell like a figure V to reveal her confidence, “N-o-o. I mean crux.”

“But I.” I was a little scared of challenging her, so I said softly, “I thought that crux meant the central point of an argument.”

She smoked on her pipe again, eyes bluer than they had been before, with lashes that looked shorter a moment ago, and blinked. A new smile summoned a laugh and she said, “Then this is the crux; I mean to say something akin to the central point, except physically speaking.”

After baffling over how her teeth looked whiter instead of duller every time that she sipped her tea, I saw her watching me and answered, “Oh. Then apex could work.”

“Let us call the central sphere the Nexusphere. Will that appease your particular ears, my dear?”

“I wasn’t trying to be difficult, Ms. Gray.”

“Shall I continue, then?” 

“Please. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. Now. As I was saying..."

I was overcome with impatient curiosity, like an itching armpit that I was trying not to rudely scratch. But my figurative arm shot straight up to expose the itchy pit as I blurted, “What does it do?" Then, feeling pressured by her glance at my cup, I sipped.

“It does as the name suggests. It is a sphere that is connected to a network of, well, let's just say conductive cables, which each span to within five feet of each of my golden collections. Imagine a huge spider turned upside down under my house, having 88 legs, each reaching toward one of my prized possessions. Yes- as if to paralyze them in place. Because that is what a spider's bite does, you see. It paralyzes its prey. The only difference is that my gold isn't edible." 

"So that's your secret," I smiled. "Super magnets that are hidden under the house?"

"That isn't exactly what I said," her face stiffened at me like I offended her. "Mm. But, close enough." Then she smiled, leaning back with her steaming cup. "And now that I've told you, I'll have to kill you."

I found her comment disturbing, even if she was smiling. My stomach sank. I said, "You know, I might have to come back later. I'm not feeling well."

"Please, my dear Alicia, I’m just kidding. Do drink your tea. It has a tendency to curdle in your belly if you drink it too slowly."

Too fast, too slow. Which was it? Wait a minute. “My name’s not Alicia.”

“Yes it is.”

“It’s Monica.”

“N-o-o. Alicia is your saint name.”

“I don’t have a saint name.”

“I just gave you one. Alicia.”

I wasn’t her possession to name. I thought, “What’s wrong with her. How rude, going around giving people names. So, quite facetiously I countered, “Then your name is Queen Elizabeth.”

“I’ll take it. Do you know why?”

That was unexpected. I shook my heavy head.

She said, “Because that puts me in two places at once: In the palace, and in my cottage. Anyway, Alicia, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s better than Bertilla.”

So that was her first name. I spared myself any more of her rambling by not engaging with her about her first name. I appeased her instead by taking a teeny sip of my tea as she watched with her bulbous chin going as flat as the table under her grin. She stood up, went to the windows, and drew a pair of her artsy floral curtains closed. Then she went to get more tea saying, “Pardon me,” as she carried the tray with the teapot. 

As I watched her, I felt a little outside myself, like I was capable of being aware of myself. Not as me, but as an observer. I looked at this little girl’s dress and shoes, considered the headband in her hair, smelled her light floral soap. Her delicate hands had never known work. I thought of her in terms of a child, and a girl, and a guest who may have been unassuming, or naive. I knew she couldn’t see through the bedazzlement before her. I knew she was innocent of mind. I wondered if she might have to go trekking through the June fields in search of her own voice. But then if she was blind, who was I? 

Now I watched Ms. Gray with the fleeting impression that I knew her more than I knew myself as she entered the room, set the tray down, went to another window.

Those curtains were clearly made of loosely woven jute, so couldn’t possibly act as blackout curtains. Still, each time she closed a pair of curtains the room became disproportionately darker. As I poured some tea the face of her golden grandfather clock revealed that it was only eight in the morning. The chimes went right through me like I was a crisp, fragile rice wafer and they, though being as harmless as running faucet water, could still crumble me to bits. When she was finished, I could hardly see the silhouette of my hand three inches from my face. 

"Oh my. It sure got dark in here, didn't it Ms. Gray. Is there a storm coming?"

"Shh," she said, strolling through the room with a long match, lighting candles.

Why did she hush me, I thought. When she sat down, she said. "Now my dear Alicia. Here before me are the cards that know who you were the last time you lived."

“How can the cards know anything,” I asked her. “Is that scientific?”

“Every wise, psychic diviner knows that the cards are but a tool, and the magic that brings them to life comes from the reader, in this case me, the queen. Now sip your tea, close your eyes. And we'll go back to the time when you lived as a?"

"Midwife," I heard myself utter like a speeding ambulance as it passes by the stopped traffic. Doppler, I thought. The effect was intriguing at first. I asked, “What’s in your homemade Earl Gray?” At least I thought I asked it. Maybe I didn’t. I whistled softly just to see if the effect was in my voice or in my ears. I heard her turn a card over. "I'm seeing Spain, decades into your soul’s past. Can you remember it?"

I wasn’t sure. Maybe. 

She said, "I'm seeing the forceps in this card. Yes. You once delivered a child who, you claimed, was stillborn. Afterward. Oh. It’s fuzzy.” She stretched across the table. “Give me your hands.”

I stretched my arms out. She was holding my hands now, and her hands felt like they were full of static. “Now we can both see. Look at those tiny infant hands, just limp. You had to give him to his mother this way. His mother embraced him. Then she blamed you, accusing you of dropping the baby on the floor.”

I started whispering my thoughts aloud under the pressure of intense emotion, tears welling up behind my closed eyelids. “No, I swear, I didn’t drop the baby. Ms. Gray, I can see it. There is a red and white rug on the floor, it’s at the foot of her bed.”

“Yes, you are tuning in. Continue. Do you see that man? He’s in the window. And the date on the calendar on the wall.”

“June-“

“No! Not today. It was January third. Nineteen sixty-four. Your name was-“

“Jasmine!”

“Yes, that was your Saint name. but Marcella was your given name.”

“Yes! Marcella! I remember it!”

“Calm yourself. You’ll break the connection. Now, let me turn another card to see what happened next. I do believe I know but I’ll have to have the cards confirm it for me.” 

I sipped my tea with one eye cracked open, watching the candle flames stretch to the ceiling then back into their jars. That somehow didn’t look natural. I asked, "What's in the tea?"

"Truth. Drink it slowly now." 

I watched her flip a card over then closed my eye, remembering the Magician card. I heard the voice again, as if it was right beside my ear. Startled I jumped up, spilled my tea all over the table. It almost reached the cards but she threw a towel on the spill, one she had folded up nearby as if to be prepared.

I apologized; my voice meek. She answered me with her elegance intact, "No need to fret, Alicia. All is well. Sit. I'll pour honey in your tea. Rest in your chair."I didn't want to. I wanted to leave, but I kept thinking to myself that I was magnetized here by giant magnets under the house, and I believed it, though it made no sense.”

“Sit my dear. Don’t you want to know more?”

I remembered the reading and sat. “Yes, I do.”

"Relax your shoulders. You look as if you feel paralyzed," she chuckled. I didn’t.

Then she whispered, "Do you?"

“Do I what?”

She said, “What?”

I said, “You said do you."

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh.” 

I turned my eyes to the golden table, so magical, a solid gold table, I thought, all its parts made of gold. No wood, no brass, even the fasteners were made of gold, I imagined. 

“Do you.” It was another whisper, startling my concentration.

“No!”

“Dear, dear. You must compose yourself.”

I had a golden ring when I was seven. And a magnet and I remembered now, trying to stick them together. Furious that she lied to me I blurted, “Gold is not magnetic!”

“Compose yourself.”

“How?”

“Just look at the cards.”

I did. They were swimming without moving. I heard her whisper, “That’s what makes my magnet special.” When I looked at her I heard her say, “I told you, child, I practice science.”

“Why don’t your lips move,” I asked.

“Why don’t yours,” I heard. 

“I can hear your thoughts.”

Abruptly I realized I couldn't move my legs. It didn’t seem pertinent to say so, so I didn’t. Instead, I questioned why; what did this mean?”

She turned over the Hanged Man card. Now I was sure she wanted to kill me: why else were we in this dim light drinking tea.

She said, "Keep your eyes closed.”

I did. 

She said, “The man in the window was furious. Remember.”

“Yes! He wanted to kill me. Wait. Is this how I died?”

“January third, nineteen-sixty-four. You tell me, was that the day you died?”

“Yes.” That wasn’t me. It was the whisper. I said, “There is a whisper in here.”

I heard unintelligible speech for a moment or two. It sounded like she was muffled. Then she said, “It’s late, Alicia. Rest.” I heard a door.

Then I heard the clock chime nine. I stretched my legs, but the floor was out of reach. I mumbled, “I’m shrinking. Ms. Gray. Reverse it.”

There was silence, the room shifted, my eyes opened. I was lying on my couch, stretching my toes toward its upholstered arm. They didn't reach. “I’m not shrinking." The grandfather clock in the corner read nine.

As soon as I sat up my dream started coming back to me, like it was downloading into my chilled face, widened eyes, stiff jaw muscles. I saw it all- images of the entire day of my past life had streamed through my head so fast I could never have named everything I saw as quickly as I saw it. There were shoes with a broken heel, and a torn curtain, a bawling woman, a violent man.

The intense expansion of that awareness swallowed my present moment. Overwhelmed I had to go see Ms. Gray immediately. Without even changing yesterday’s clothes, without shoes, I stumbled to my front door and threw it open.

“Dear, your face looks a fright,” she said, standing there in another queenly outfit with a rose-colored hat. “I was just coming by to invite you to tell me what you dreamed.”

I flipped out both my palms, shook my head. “I can’t drink your tea today. It’s a little much for me.”

“Are you alright?” She was looking at my disheveled hair and wrinkled dress.

I nodded, realizing how insane I must have looked. “Yes. I. Just woke up.” I chuckled down at my appearance. “Oh. I suppose I should shower and-“

“No. Quickly, before you forget. Come,” she gestured large with her hand. “Come on,” she urged me.”

“Alright.” I slipped on my shoes and ran out in them, racing behind her through her door.

We were in our seats again, the woven curtains closed, yet the soft daylight filtered through unlike it had the day before. A mulberry pillar candle burned at the center of the table.

There was a tape recorder next to her. “Don’t mind that. I used to be in parapsychology, but I still like to document these rare, invaluable cases of first-hand reincarnation accounts.”

“Oh.” I started, “So I was dreaming last night and."

She smiled. “Oh, silly me. I’ll have to start over.” She rewound the tape to record over it. “Now I’ll get this started. I’ll ask questions, you answer them.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“We want this to sound more, well, realistic, you see?” She wrinkled her nose. “So, let’s not use terms like dreamed; instead, we’ll use the word remembered.” She chuckled. “Hm-m, okay?”

“Ah. Who’s gonna hear it?”

“Well discuss that after,” she nodded. “Just answer the Well, I didn’t want to lose track of my dream, so I didn’t argue. “Okay.”

“Here it goes, Alicia.” She pressed the record buttons, said, “Good morning. I’m Beatrice White, parapsychologist. With me now is a young woman who’s had a spontaneous recall of details of her past life. Please state your name.”

“Monica.”

“Alright, Monica. What is your last name?”

“Wells.”

“And where are you from, Monica Wells?”

“Ah. Virginia.”

“Delightful. I understand that you have a story to tell, one about the last day of your past life. Tell me, have you recalled your past life name?”

“Yes.”

“Hm-m. Well? What was it, then?”

“Marcella”

“And your occupation as Marcella?”

“Midwife.”

“Wow. So, what was the first event you remembered about your past life?”

“I was. I had delivered a child.”

“Could you speak up just a little? Monica has such a soft voice it’s a little hard to hear her,” she said for the benefit of the future audience.

I guess she was trying to keep it all authentic, with no pausing and no cuts. “Yes,” I said a little louder, though still sounding timid as I was. “I remember that I had delivered a child.” She was nodding me on. “And it was stillborn.” 

She smiled, nodding me on further. “Mm."

"And her mother was furious with me. She thought I dropped the child but.”

I had to pause. I was sniveling, that memory so stark in my head that it felt like yesterday. “I’m sorry. It’s just that. I didn’t drop the baby. I didn’t. I swear.”

She turned away from me with her microphone while I cried, saying, “Sometimes the emotional release is very great, very great. These subjects have suffered real, valid traumas in past lives and not until after their sessions with me do they discover the source of so much of the irrational doubt and fear in their lives.”

I was just looking at her now, feeling foolish, wondering if I had missed something or had been misled. She did say it would be a past life reading. But recorded? 

"Oh, there she is. Okay. Let’s resume. Now. Clearly, my dear, no one with a clear mind would want to harm any child. And remember, your past life is quite different from this one, which you can control by applying life lessons from the last life. So, after you kil- ah, carried, the stillborn to her mother, what happened.”

“Uh. She held her son. But the father was outside the window. It was dusk. He looked insane. I could see that he was drinking from a bottle. His wife was screaming in agony. So he went around to the kitchen. I heard him, like, scrambling through utensils. And he stormed into the room with a knife. Then the first thing he did was slit his wife’s throat in front of me. He said he had stayed with her this long only to get his son and leave her.”

“Oh that’s awful.”

“Then he accused me of killing the baby on purpose because.” My voice trembled. “He thought I hated boy babies because I guess I was involved in women’s liberation movements or something?”

It sounded like a question because the more I heard myself the less I understood where all this was coming from. Some of these details weren’t in my dream- at least if they were I didn’t remember them consciously.”

“So, you were in women’s lib. Go on."

I was sure that what would come out of my mouth next had not been a part of my dream, but still I had an instinct to vomit it up. And as I gave each gory detail, I bawled more: I felt these things like they were in my history. That convinced me that wherever they had come from they must have been part of my real experience. “The man. He locked me inside and. He made me.”

I went on to describe an entire five-hour rape, followed by an abduction that led me into the woods, which was where he’d stabbed me multiple times. Fourteen kept popping into my head. So, I said, “Fourteen times.”

After she finished making her documentary, I had to run back to my cabin to be alone. I was visibly upset. She told me to take the day off. Those were her words. “Take the day off and come back in the morning and we’ll do something very special: We’ll talk with a historian to see if he can find any physical evidence of your past life.”

Intriguing as that sounded, I was an emotional mess.

I locked myself inside and bawled until bedtime, deeply depressed. I felt like a criminal, a monster, for letting that infant die. And the hate that man had for me, like it was intolerable to him to see me still breathing, that hurt me like no hurt I’d ever known in my whole twenty years.“

"I didn’t know people could hate like that,” I whispered in my prayers at bedtime, still sniveling softly. In the morning there was a bus parked on the other side of her house, solid navy blue. Brown lettering across the side read, “The Annals of History, Traveling Historian Ugene Fox and Television Host Rick Baxter. Let’s See if You Can Make a Difference!”

I was a little jolted by the sight of that as I walked with her towards the smiling man in the brown tweed suit under that June sun. He was leaning on the door with his arms crossed, waiting. Stood tall and smiled. “Well, good morning Jane. And who do we have here?”

How many names did this woman have?

"Eugine, meet Monica Wells.”

“Pleasure,” he shook my hand, and I tried to smile. Up we went on board, into his ‘history lab’, where we listened to the recording. It was humiliating for me to show that whimpering side of myself to a man I’d met moments before. Afterward he started researching while asking me more nuanced questions, like, “What did the house look like?”

I was going to say I didn’t recall then boom, I did recall. So I described it.

He had a stack of old newspapers from that town in Spain and we all gathered at the booth table and started looking for any related pictures.

I was the one who discovered the picture, not of the house, but of my freaking killer. And when I saw it, after sitting silently for an hour, a screech jumped out, and I covered my trembling hand. “That’s the man. Oh my God, he was so hateful! He was so horrible!”

By the end of the day, we had gathered numerous original documents in the case, as well as documents of my past existence, a book that had a picture of my birth record, death record, another parcel with my address, the name of a husband who I didn’t remember. "It’ll come to you,” she told me. 

Eugene had a professional camera, which he used to photograph each piece of evidence. He’d be developing those overnight, then return the next day to give them to Ms. Gray.

She invited me for dinner, and hesitantly I accepted. The bus had left. 

I was hesitant to eat her food, fearing I’d been drugged enough already.

She was cutting the meat on her place. “I understand if you don’t have an appetite. I’m not offended. In fact, it’s to be expected, really. Tell me, dear, what’s on your mind.”

I felt outside of reality was what. She didn’t even seem to be the same woman who’d gone on about her golden gifts. In the kitchen there were none; it was a plain room with brown chairs, white walls, no pictures, and no décor. Even though I was hesitant to confide in her I crossed my arms, leaned back. “Did you drug my fucking tea?”

“My dear. Please. Language.”

“Answer me.”

“Now, now. Let's be calm. First of all, no. I don’t drug people.”

“But you said the tea was homegrown.”

Softly squealing she said, “Well it is. That certainly doesn’t equate to drugging.”

“Then why did I feel so strange all day. I mean, it was morning. Then night. And my thoughts were scrambled. Don’t lie to me.”

“Precious deary. I’d never do such a thing. To answer your question, however, occasionally a client will have an adverse reaction to my Nexusphere.”

I winced. “That’s ridiculous."

“Oh?” She went high-brow on me. “Is it? Well as a matter of fact, there have been studies showing that magnets, especially where conductors are involved, can and do cause ill effects to some people.”

She sat back, her forking landing on her plate with a clang, and flipped a palm up to say, “Now I know it’s rare. But it does happen. And I’m convinced it happened to you.”

"Oh yeah? Lady? You’re really going to try to outwit me? I asked, “Then why am I fine now?”

“Because. Look around. There is no gold in this room.” She leaned forward and whispered hard, “Hence, no conductors. Hence, no ill effects.” Satisfied, her eyelids plumped like they’d just eaten 20 years off her age, she sighed. “Why do you think we are eating in this drab kitchen anyway, when my dining room, dear child, is far more delightful?”

Okay. She had me. I slouched, head bowed, my rage subsiding slowly like a cooling body after spending a day in the hot sun, until I felt too cold, slowly the sensation of embarrassment chilling me to the bone.

She said, “Let’s move on, shall we.”

I didn’t move, speak, or look at her. I just let her talk.

“I do hope you haven’t felt so suspicious of me as to suffer some illusion of me actually planning to discover an historic Spanish crime that involved you. Well?”

“No.” I was bouncing my heel on the floor, sitting very unladylike without any give-a-crap about it. And besides that, I was lying. My subconscious suspicion of her was becoming conscious. “Would you like to take a piece of cake back.”

I looked up. “Who else stays here?”

“Private individuals,” she answered,

I shrugged. “How come I never see them come outside. Their cars never move. I never hear a sound, not a door or a peep.”

She smiled. “I’m sorry that troubles you.” She shrugged a shoulder. “You know, you can’t always be watching. Perhaps that is why you’ve never seen them. But trust me,” she chuckled. “There are vacationers in those cottages as well.”

After I went to bed my eyes stayed open awhile. So, I got on the computer again to look up ill effects of magnets on people. Then I went outside with chewed up some gum, and stuck it on top of each back tire, directly at the 12 o'clock point. That way I’d know if or when those cars ever moved.

I wanted so badly to knock or leave notes, but that seemed too risky. They might tell her. And I didn’t want her to know that I was still here only so I could pay closer attention to whatever her game was.

Finally I went back to bed, but the overwhelming sense that I had lived that life haunted me. I saw images: Crosses on walls in different houses, places I knew I'd been to. I saw down a yellow hallway, through an open doorway, saw a yellow and white crib. In another house the hallway was red and white wallpapered, and there was a bassinette in the corner of the living room near the sandy pink fireplace. There were flames pouring from that fireplace like it was a fire-breathing dragon. I heard my name, and I saw them man's hands, coarse, rough, over-sunned, wrapped around my two wrists. His chest heaving, his white T-shirt, the cross that hung from a chain there. It was gold with an ivory figure of Jesus on it. There was a black iron gate, overgrown with ivy, a black iron table and chairs on a porch. 

After lunch the next day we returned to the bus. Eugene had typed a three-page summary of my past life. He’d come across other evidence about the events of my last day on earth: and it was included in his report. In the booth, over coffee, I read it, learning that my sisters from my past life told police I had written things in a journal I kept about loathing men so much that I wished they'd die as infants. One of those sisters accused me of putting poison in her son's bottle when he was a newborn. The summary said I had blamed it on the maid at the time, that everyone believed me. They said when he was a toddler, I watched fall from a two-story living room window while they were in the kitchen. They said that I claimed I didn't see him on the window's ledge but that when they ran after him, I was sitting up straight, had an icy stare with a demented smirk on my face, perfectly stiff, hands on my knees.

When I got to that part, that sick, twisted part. I became so disgusted that I screamed at the man. “I did not kill the baby!”

She took over the conversation, appeasing me with a fresh pour of coffee. “Just relax now, dear. If you remembered your past life in such vivid detail, then how could you not recall that part?”

I was crying. “I don’t know.”

She gently gripped my arm to say, “Well I have a theory. When we die, we often leave unfinished business. It’s what keeps us reincarnating. The problem is, it’s hard to identify what it was in your past life that kept you from moving on into the next plane. But my dear, you have this amazing opportunity to make amends with yourself. And with the Universal. God. You can ponder what really made you do that then-“

I broke down so hard right there under the weight of this defeat. She rubbed my arm, kept talking, “There, there. You can learn from that mistake then have it resolved once and for all- but not until you first accept it.” She whispered, “You can’t deny it anymore. It’s time to come home to the truth.”

After a crying a lake of tearful surrender I composed myself and we talked.

The man went into greater detail about my crime. “A neighbor said she saw through the window that day, saw Marcella deliver the baby then slam the victim’s head into the iron bed railing while the mother had her knees up under a white sheet and couldn’t see the footrail. So, apparently the mother did know something, she hadn’t seen all of it, but saw Marcella, who was stooped over, twist hard, abruptly. Do you know why you twisted? Do you remember?”

“I. Guess. I guess I hated male infants.”

“Do you remember what you thought at that moment?”

Wiping my eyes I said, “Ah. Suspense, maybe?”

“Why suspense,” the man asked.

“Oh, um. I guess I’d have wanted to get it-“ 

I whimpered a minute, loathing what was coming out of my mouth then blurted, “to get it over with!” I couldn’t handle another minute- I went running out of that bus and back to my cottage just screaming, bawling out loud despite the quiet rules.

Slammed my door. Screamed in rage at myself, “How could you kill an innocent- An innocent- Ah!” I drew hard then screamed hard, “Ah-ah!” Then I fell on the floor, self-loathing. Suicidal rage. Lodged in my misery like a speck of dirt mashed into clay. 

She left me alone a while now. I was contemplating leaving, contemplating flying away to my boyfriend overseas, contemplating suicide, and I was contemplating beating on all those doors to see what was true and what was not true.

I went to my window, peered out. Opened my door quietly and stood on the porch, waiting to see if anyone was peeping through their windows or looking out their doors. “Any concern? Anyone,” I spoke out loud, waiting for a response of any kind.

I was so angry now, though without a sound. I leaned my back on the railing, arms crossed, looked towards Ms. Gray's, or Bertilla’s, or Jane's, or the damn Queen of England's or whoever she was. I could have packed right then and left, but I wasn’t going anywhere without proving to myself whatever it was that was actually true- even if that meant I had been wicked in a past life.

I laughed at myself, scoffed out loud. "And I didn’t even believe this crap before,” I mumbled. I decided to take a drive. I was grumpy, and I wanted to be bad. As I backed out, she came waving me down out loud, breaking her own rules, “Wait! Where are you going. Please don’t leave.”

I lowered my window and in a mashed, broken tone said, “I’m just going to the store.” I watched the worry on her face as I drove off.

I went to the store. Bought myself a pack of cigarettes like my best friend smoked. And then I called Mom on the payphone.

She said, “Your brother’s in jail for beating her up. Can you believe this shit. Damn boys! So much trouble,” she said.

I wanted to unload a teeny bit of my problems on her, but not after she told me that my brother had beaten his girlfriend. She was drinking. I just listened. After a moment I said, “I love you, Mom.”

“You too sweetie. Now enjoy yourself. Don’t let all this drama get to you.”

I hung up. If she only knew, I thought.

Then I looked at the store again, and instead of going straight to my car I went back inside and bought myself two bottles of sweet grape wine. Inside my cottage I locked the door. Whispered, “I sure do wish I had a phone in here.”

I didn’t. but there was a radio. So, I turned it on, kinda low, and poured. Downed. Poured. Downed. Poured again and went to sit on the couch with my bottle, cup, and smokes. And after about an hour I started singing along to Aerosmith's Angel on the radio. After another hour I took out some stationary and started writing in what I thought was pretty amazing penmanship for a drunk gal. Then I sealed the letter, stamped it, and dropped it in my mailbox on the front porch, noticing the wonderful, puffy white clouds that were blowing in from the north. 

The sky darkened and the breeze cooled, so I sat on the porch, singing Chantilly Lace with the radio in the window, flipping off Ms. Gray and uttering to myself, “Fuck her. There’s probably nobody else here anyway. If I wanna party…” I ranted quietly.

Then Boys will be Boys played and my mind shifted instantly to something Mom said on the phone, that boys are trouble.

I caught myself singing that, and thinking of my past self, hating boys. Feeling incriminated I turned the channel and listened to Burning Down the House. Well, I decided to take a walk with my Walkman on. Still in my pretty dress, I grabbed that book I’d been meaning to read and my second bottle, then took off down my steps with eyes fixed on the great field beyond. I marched on in slow motion over the tall weeds singing to the lungs of Sinead O'Connor’s Nothing Compares 2U, "It's been seven hours. And Fifteen days..." I bawled over Ricky, over how he could so easily leave me here and go to Germany. 

I sat in the grass and cried out, “You could have at least married me first. I know you’re never coming back. At least not to me."

I was about a hundred feet into the field, all the way on the other side of the last cabin, when I realized I was lying in bright sunshine, my book under my throbbing head, my dress twisted around me and tangled in the weeds, one shoe off, and my bottle in my arm. There was still a little liquid in it.

“Alicia!” I heard distant knocking. Sat up. Ms. Gray was looking for me. My door was still open from the night before, and she was using her key to enter every cottage. “Alicia!"

"Alicia, dear, where are you! On-my-goodness,” she uttered with her head down.

My splitting headache gave me two distinct brains- the right one felt endeared that she was worried about me, the left one furious that she had opened every cottage door and left them open. They were dark inside and as vacant as a lying face. So, I just crossed my arms and watched her go frantic. “Oh my, I’m calling the police. What’s happened to her!”

There was no one else there. She was saying that to herself. I didn't want the police around. So, slowly I got up and dragged back with stickers in my foot and elbow. 

Her front door was wide open. “You crazy woman.”

I walked in to confront her. She looked at me with the phone to her head then said, “Oh, never mind. I’ve found her. Nevermind. Thank you,” and hung up.

She was furious with me. Not because I had been drunk or missing, or because the bits of grass and weeds mashed to my arms and legs were gently drifting her floor. Not because I looked like a matted feline that had absconded from the dirtiest ally in town. And not even because a beetle flew out of my hair into her living room and landed high up out of her reach. But because, “I have put so much hard work into creating an environment fitting for my subjects and now you! I had to go out there, bashing in doors, worried that you’d left for good. And.” She punched her fingers out at me, “Where were you? Sleeping in the field?”

I limped over to her desk where she sat, which was a rolltop. It had been left open so she could access the phone. Sitting broad as day inside it was a book with her face on it entitled, “Evidence of Reincarnated Deviants by Jacklyn Stouffer Billings, PhD and Eugine McGraw, her historian.

Then I saw a contract with some producer’s name on it before she slammed it shut. “Oh! I never lied to you. You were reincarnated. I am a parapsychologist. I have a PhD. And therefore, I do practice science. So what that I was merely documenting your case. I was going to get your permission before publishing anything.” She opened the desk and flashed a contract with my name typed on it.

“Oh? How. By coaxing me with your tea?”

“Oh stop.”

“Just like you coaxed me to believe I was some person from Spain-“

“They were your dreams, not mine.”

“No. They weren’t. What did you do to me while I spent a whole missing day drugged in your parlor? Hm? Did you put things in my mind? Did you-“

“They were your dreams. Now. Unless you want to sign the contract please leave.”

“Really? You want me just to leave. Ha. I’m not surprised. Although,” I squinted, “I am surprised that you didn’t send me a formal invitation to do so.”

“That doesn’t even make sense. You invite people to come in, not to go.”

“Don’t grapple with me you old witch. You’ve drugged me, you’ve hypnotized-“

“I did no-“

“me. You’ve lied-“

“Such thing. Now get-“

“to me. You’ve-“

“Out!”

“Bedazzled me-“

“You are-“

“Said you worked for-“

“Free to go-“

“Kings.”

She slouched in her desk chair. Silent. I watched to see what she’d try next.

But she didn’t try anything. She just started bawling. I was uncomfortable watching an old lady cry, so I walked onto the porch, left the door open, though, just so I could keep one eye on her. I just leaned into the sunlight, squinting hard, on the railing, wondering how she’d done it. How had she convinced me that I had been such a horrible person. And how many other people had she done this to? It was a con game.

Yet, the images of that woman she convinced me I had been were still as vivid in my head as my mother’s face with a wine glass stuck to it, bottoms up.

That man. I didn’t have to ever think about him again. He had never been a factor in my existence, and I had not been murdered. Yet, those images, like me, wouldn’t leave without a fight.

I heard her mumbling. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if you can’t believe what the cards say. And they did say you were her.”

I walked back in. “Really?”

There were the cards she abused, laid out on the coffee table as if she’d readied them to perform another reading on me. I shoved them all to the floor in a mad dash. “You’re sick! What were you going to do next? Tell me I robbed a bank, killed more children, burned churches or something. And you, being you with whatever secrets that you use to do whatever the hell you do, would have convinced me of my own wicked deviance.

"Now I’ve heard good things about other card readers- they are at the very least ethical enough not to push someone to the brink of suicide. But you? Ms. Gray. The Queen of Hell. As far as I’m concerned you can take your cards and shove them up your ass.”

I turned away.

“No, the cards did guide me, Alicia.”

There was that name again. I didn't dignify it. I skipped it to say, “And you really have golden gifts that unnamed world leaders have secretly sent you,” I mocked.“

But I do. It’s the truth.”

“Really? Just like the truth is in the tea?”

“You are allergic to the magnetic network under my house,” she still maintained. And she defended herself in earnest, desperately, sadly.

As I stood there preparing to walk out, I considered how she must have once been a perfectly sane human being, and wondered what could possibly have driven her insane.

And I considered how hurt I was that, despite her illness, I had enjoyed her company. I did like her. I imagined taking it all back and giving her a big hug- but for what? So I could hand my mind over to her on her golden platter to do with as she whimsied? 

I interrupted her to say softly, holding back my tears, “Ms. Gray?”

She hushed, wide eyed and suspenseful. 

“Despite our misunderstandings it’s been a pleasure. Goodbye.”

Then I walked away, down the steps, listening to her sobbing. But I didn't look back.