The Reincarnationist

Chapter 21

The gray sedan following Gabriella’s car through the serpentine streets of Rome had been with them since they’d left the church. Josh noticed it after they made their first turn.

Leaning out of his window, he quickly swiveled around, pointed the camera straight at the car, and clicked away. The car didn’t slow down or change lanes.

Photojournalists know that a camera can scare all sorts of people away. Either that or it can get you killed. Josh had pulled this trick in Haiti once. While driving through an area he wasn’t supposed to be in, taking pictures of the abject poverty, he’d been followed. When he focused the camera on the driver, the man had started shooting back at him.

With a gun.

But whoever was in the car behind Gabriella obviously didn’t care that he’d been observed, which made Josh think he was probably the police, not someone hunting him. He decided not to tell Gabriella. She was under enough stress as it was.

Josh stayed downstairs in the cafeteria while Gabriella went up to the professor’s room. Even though he wanted to see the professor, Josh didn’t want to upset Rudolfo’s wife and children. He was the man who hadn’t been shot when their father and her husband had been, not to mention still an unlikely but potential suspect.

Finding a pay phone, he called Malachai, but there was no answer on his cell phone or at the hotel. After leaving messages explaining where he was and what had happened, Josh went into the cafeteria, bought a cup of coffee-which was far better than what they served in any American hospital-and waited.

After a few minutes, a man and a little boy came and sat down next to him. For a brief moment Josh wondered if he should be suspicious. Could this man be part of a scheme to keep him under surveillance-either by the police or by the criminal he’d seen in the tomb?

The man opened a container of milk and a packet of cookies and put them in front of the boy, who shook his head and pushed them away, refusing the treat. The man sighed, and then, noticing Josh watching, grinned and said something to him in Italian that was unintelligible except for the word bambino. Guessing that the man’s wife was in labor and the little boy was scared of what was going on, Josh took a simple cardboard matchbox out of his pocket, emptied it of a dozen wooden red-tipped matches, and put it down on the table. He wasn’t as good at this as Malachai was, but he had been practicing and was certain he could entertain the little boy and take both of their minds off of the drama going on in their lives for at least a few minutes.

During his first interview at the Phoenix Foundation, Josh had found himself unable to answer many of the questions Malachai had put to him. No doctor or therapist had probed as deeply, and despite Josh’s desperate need to discover what was happening to him, he was uncomfortable baring his soul.

It was then that Malachai had pulled out a matchbox and asked Josh for a coin. Although it was a strange request, he obliged. Reaching into his pocket, he found a quarter and gave it to Malachai.

Taking it in his tapered fingers, Malachai reached under the table and tapped it once. It made a dull thud. Tapped it. Another thud. Then he showed Josh his palm: empty. He opened the matchbox. The quarter was nestled inside.

“I didn’t see that happen at all.”

“That’s the thing about sleight of hand, you know there’s a trick happening, but you are rarely looking in the right place to catch it.”

“I never would have expected the director of the Phoenix Foundation to entertain me with magic tricks,” Josh had said.

“What was a pointless obsession during my childhood, at least according to my father, now comes in quite handy with the children we work with. In minutes, instead of the hours it would otherwise take, the magic relaxes them, helps them open up. It’s not, after all, that easy to describe your nightmares to a stranger, even for children for whom past-life experiences are not all that extraordinary.” Malachai then asked Josh to tell him about the episodes that had been taunting him in greater detail. “Is there a pattern to when the stories appear?”

“Should there be?”

“There are no rules about these things, no, but sometimes there are patterns worth noting.”

Josh shook his head. “Not that I can discern.”

“Are they in any kind of chronological order, is there a sequence to them?”

“They’re of lives that I’ve never lived…fantasies…dreams…I don’t know if there’s a sequence.”

“What about your emotional reactions to them? How do you feel after a regression?”

This question silenced Josh. It was difficult to explain to anyone, no less a stranger, the overwhelming grief he felt for a woman whose name he didn’t even know but whom he was convinced he had failed.

“I’m a photographer. I document reality. I take pictures of what’s in front of me. I can’t deal with pictures that I can’t grab on film.”

“I understand that completely,” Malachai said. “And I can see how tough this is for you, so I only have a few more questions. Is that all right?”

“Of course. I do appreciate what you’re doing… I’m just…” It was a relief to be accepted, to have someone at last listen to his story without shaking their head and taking his temperature.

“Frustrated. I know, Josh, it is frustrating. Can you give me any idea of how long the episodes last?”

“Twenty, thirty seconds. One lasted a few minutes.”

“And is it possible for you to bring them on?”

“Why would I want to?” he asked in earnest, his aghast tone making Malachai smile.

“Well, then, can you prevent them?”

“Sometimes. Thank God.”

“Can you stop them once they’ve started?”

“Not always. That takes a colossal effort.”

“But it’s something you try to do?”

Josh nodded.

“While an episode is in progress, are you physically or mentally uncomfortable? Can you describe how it feels?”

Josh didn’t answer this question, either. He didn’t know how to explain it in words.

Malachai’s voice was compassionate. “You’re looking at me as if I’m a maniacal surgeon coming at you with a scalpel. I’m sorry if you feel that I’m prying-this is all pro forma for us.”

“It’s as if I’m…out of my own body.” He paused and looked past Malachai out the window at the trees in the park blowing in a harsh wind. “It’s as if I’m disconnected from reality and drifting untethered in another dimension.” He said each word as if it tasted bitter. As if it might even be poisonous.

The boy had gathered up all the matches and gave them back to Josh.

“Prego?” he asked.

Josh didn’t have to guess, he knew what the child wanted.

More distraction. More magic.

Josh didn’t blame him.