The Hypnotist

SIXTEEN

Malachai swung the shiny gold disc slowly, back and forth, until the child’s eyes grew heavy and closed.

“Where are you, Veronica?” Malachai asked the little girl sitting opposite him.

“It’s so dark…” she whimpered.

“Where are you?”

Nothing.

“Do you recognize this dark place?”

“Yes…” Her voice was quivering.

“Tell me.”

She shook her head, no, and then again no. “Don’t go.” She sounded frantic, almost hysterical. “Don’t go.”

Robert Keyes inched forward on the couch. Malachai knew he wanted to stop the hypnosis, but he shook his head at Veronica’s father and mouthed, She’s fine.

“Has someone left you in the dark?” Malachai asked.

“No.” Her little voice broke.

“What’s happening?” Malachai asked.

She was half panting, half crying.

“Can you step back from where you are? Try to see what’s happening, like a picture in a book.”

The little girl’s panting intensified.

“They’re here.”

“Can you tell me where you are?”

“Inside.”

“Inside your house?”

She nodded.

“Where is your house? Where do you live?”

“Shush,” Veronica said. “I live in the ghetto.”

“Do you know what year it is?”

“1885.”

Malachai had been a reincarnationist for over thirty years and by now knew about almost every culture and country. Shush was in Persia, which at the end of the nineteenth century was a very difficult place for Jews. They weren’t allowed to travel outside the ghetto’s gates or to wear most colors. They needed to be easily identifiable.

“What is happening to you?”

She was oblivious to his question, reenacting a scene in her mind that had happened over one hundred and thirty years ago. “Don’t go,” she whimpered, her lower lip trembling, and then she reached out with her little hands to grab at someone who wasn’t there, whom Malachai couldn’t see.