“Five candles,” she sullenly corrected. “Didn’t buy it. Too offenspif. Mommy made it from a magzadine, and I helped her.”
Tears sprang to Janice’s eyes at the sound of the voice, the sweet, simple voice of her four-year-old, making all those charming mistakes in pronunciation. “Offenspif” for “expensive,” “magzadine” for “magazine”—wistfully recalling the times she had hesitated to correct her, waging war with the years to preserve her exquisite naïveté, reluctant to let go of the child.
Janice’s mind was suddenly wrenched back to the present by the sound of sobbing, as she watched Ivy, huddled in the couch, hands covering her face, surrender herself to heartbreak in wave after wave of sobs so intense as to cause her body to shudder. Why was she crying? Janice asked herself, probing her memory for some clue to her grief. It had been a joyous birthday, hadn’t it? And then Janice remembered. There had been a moment, a terrible moment when that boy—what was his name?—
“He broke it!” Ivy sobbed. “Stuart broke my monkey!”
Yes, Stuart—that was it—the wind-up toy—a monkey on a tricycle. Stuart Cowan, a boy from the nursery school Ivy attended, had wound it up so tightly that the spring broke.
“Damn rotten little boy!” Ivy wailed.
Bill swallowed as the scene shot vividly back to him. It was a melee. Ivy screaming. Stuart laughing. Bill mollifying, telling her that Stuart was just a damn rotten little boy.
“Damn rotten little boy!” Ivy repeated in a singsong of sobs.
“It’s all right, Ivy,” soothed Dr. Lipscomb. “It’s all right. You’re going to move away from that bad memory. You’ll leave it now and move back in time even farther. You’ll move back in time to your third birthday. One … two … three.… You are now at your third birthday party, Ivy.…”
The tears stopped. The expression became remote, then softened. A smile hovered at her lips, followed by a tinkling, childish giggling, which then exploded into a burst of laughter—harsh, raucous.
“I win! I win! I win!” she screeched in the wild, hysterical manner of a three-year-old. “I win! I win and you lose! You all lose ’cept me!”
“Very good, Ivy,” praised the doctor. “Very good. Now, move back in time a little bit farther. A little farther back in time. You’re two and a half, and you’re having trouble sleeping. Go back to the night when the bad dreams began. You’re dreaming now the same dream you had on that night.…”
Her expression gradually tightened. She began to feet and tremble. Her breath came in quick, shallow bursts. The whimpering came next. “Mommydaddy mommydaddy hothothot—” And began to build.
Bill heard sharp intakes of breaths and a general nervous stirring in the observation room.
Janice sensed a deep hush around her as pencils paused above pads and attentions riveted on the screens.
“DaddydaddydaddyhothotHOTHOT—”
“All right, Ivy! Leave the bad dream!” Dr. Lipscomb commanded. “Leave the bad dream! It’s morning, and the dream is over!”
The whimpering abated. The face lost its tension, began to relax.
“Good, Ivy, good.… Now just relax, relax, calm. I want you to slip back farther and farther in time now. Go way back in time, Ivy. Way back to a time when you can see and hear and feel and think but you cannot say things. You’re a little baby in Mommy’s arms now, and Mommy’s putting you in your carriage.…”
Once again, tears rushed to Janice’s eyes as Ivy began to chortle and smile and express the small, scattered discomforts and pleasures of early infancy. The utter sweetness of this recollection came back in full force, bringing with it the very feel and smell of the tiny bundled body in her arms and a stab of pain to her heart for all those treasured, precious moments forever gone, forever lost to her, some even beyond the rescue of memory.
“Very good, Ivy,” Dr. Lipscomb told her, his voice so soft, so caressing in its gentleness. “And now, we are going even farther back in time … farther back … farther back to a time before you were born … before you were born … before you were born.…”
The repetition, the insinuating cadence, the firm, indomitable note of command gradually began to manifest an overwhelming lethargy in the child. Eyes tightly shut, head reposing on a shoulder, her hands slowly clasped together as if in prayer, and her knees gradually drew up to her chest in a startling approximation of a fetal ball, whereupon she remained rigidly still, neither moving nor flinching nor seeming even to draw breath, in effect, duplicating the perfect in-limbo attitude of a fetus floating in the womb’s juices.
The moment was electric.
“My God,” Janice heard someone behind her whisper, “she’s in her mother’s womb.”
In the observation booth, not a ripple of sound disturbed the steaming, fetid stillness as nineteen people were held captive by the incredible performance.
His face bathed in sweat, his eyes blurring from the room’s closeness and the strain he was subjecting them to, Bill could only stare along with the rest of them, uncertainty giving way to incredulity, as the weird behavior of his child, his own little princess, unfolded before his stunned scrutiny. It was impossible, he thought. She was playacting. Had to be playacting. Wasn’t asleep at all. Just putting the old duffer on. Had a good memory of her birthdays, that was it. But—how did she know about things like fetuses? And what they looked like? Books? Bettina probably. She was pretty damned advanced. And yet—it was weird, how still she remained, how deathly still—like one of those things in jars you sometimes see in doctor’s offices. Weird. His struggles and his doubts were now showing plainly on his face. And his fear. If this was on the level, it was wrong. All wrong.…?
“Back, back, back in time,” the verbal metronome continued, urging, pleading, pushing, “back in time, back farther and farther to the time before you existed as yourself. Back to the time when you were not Ivy, not Ivy, not Ivy, back to the time when you were somebody else, somebody else, not Ivy, but somebody else.”
This was wrong. Bad. The way she sat there, not moving, hardly breathing, suspended in space, floating. What the hell was he doing to her? Where was he taking her? Was it possible he was really taking her back to another life? Crazy. Impossible. And yet—
“…not Ivy, but somebody else, somebody else, back in time, back in time, back in time … back in time until you can remember, until you can remember, remember, remember remember … remember the very next thing, the very next thing, remember, remember … you are not Ivy but somebody else.… somebody else … not Ivy, not Ivy … but … who are you? Who are you? WHO ARE YOU?”
He’d stop it! Dammit, he’d stop it! This was wrong. Bad. He’d stop it now!
“WHO ARE YOU?”
“I want this test stopped, Mr. Velie!” Bill had risen to his feet and was swaying uncertainly. His head felt ready to burst.
“WHO ARE YOU?”
“I want it stopped!” he demanded in a quavering voice, clutching the chair to keep from falling. “God damn it, do you hear me?”
“WHO ARE YOU?”
“Stop this test!” he shouted. “Mr. Velie, Judge Langley—do you hear me?”
But even if they heard, which was doubtful, none could act, for all sat mesmerized, shocked into silence by the specter that was slowly materializing on the other side of the mirror. For now the child was sitting bolt upright on the couch, eyes wide open and staring, body rigid, expression startled, hovering between terror and amusement, warily seeking a persona just beyond reach, moving tentatively, cautiously, toward the brink of some startling discovery.