"Well, just now, she's under the illusion that she's doing nothing more than reliving her own accident. So what I must do is to strip away that illusion, to lay bare the underlying truth."
"Do you think she can handle that truth?" McLeod asked dubiously. "How is she likely to feel when she finds out she's inadvertently killed nine people?"
"We'll deal with that issue when we come to it," Adam said. ' 'Right now, our main priority is to ensure that no more innocent people get hurt or killed through no fault of their own. Let's see what we can do."
Returning to Claire, Adam eased himself back down into the chair beside her and gently touched her wrist.
"Claire, listen to me," he said softly. "You've done very well so far - so well that I'd like to venture a bit further. You understand that you've been reliving your accident in your dreams. Could I clarify a few points? May I ask you a few more questions?"
Claire's cropped head made a slight movement up and down.
"Thank you," Adam said approvingly. "Now, the police reports say that your accident took place shortly before midnight. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"And the car that struck you and your husband was red - a red Mercedes, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"Was there anyone else in the car besides the driver?"
"No."
"Good. That all tallies so far. Now, leaving aside the recall work we did earlier, I'd like you to tell me, please, when you last had the dream."
A small furrow appeared in Claire's smooth forehead. "It was yesterday morning," she murmured. "It woke me up."
"About what time was that?"
"It was seven minutes past eight," she replied. "I looked at the clock."
Adam exchanged a glance with McLeod, for the time coincided almost perfectly with the reported time of Malcolm Grant's accident.
"Claire, I'm going to count backwards from three," he told her. "On one, I'll touch you lightly on the forehead. That will be your signal to begin reliving that dream again - the same dream you had yesterday morning, as if it were a film being projected against the insides of your eyelids. When I touch you a second time, those dream images will become translucent, like stained glass windows. At that moment, you will see through the dream itself to glimpse the reality that lies beyond it. The dream will begin as I count three… two… one."
As he spoke the final word, he tapped her lightly between the eyebrows. Claire's eyelids trembled as a sigh escaped her lips, and her shoulders stiffened.
"Tell me where you are," Adam instructed.
"On the south side of the Lanark Road." Claire's voice was soft, intense. "It's getting late. John and I are walking home. We're talking about the music."
"And then what?"
"Several cars pass us by. It's very dark for a bit. Then we see headlamps in the distance."
She caught her breath. "High beams, coming fast. Engine roaring… speeding… coming on like an express train. Jump for the bank - no, too late! The car's almost on top of - ''
"Stop!" Adam ordered, touching her forehead again. "Freeze the action!"
Claire paused in mid-sentence. Her hands were white at the knuckles where they gripped the arms of her chair.
"Listen to me, Claire," Adam said urgently. "A year has passed since the accident you're envisioning. Look beyond the dream and tell me what you saw yesterday."
As he spoke, he laid his right hand briefly across her forehead again. Claire's lips parted with a slight gasp, and her blue eyes snapped wide-open, but she stared past Adam with an expression of bewilderment on her face.
"What is it?" Adam demanded. "Tell me what you see."
Claire seemed more than a little confused.
"Same stretch of road, but not dark," she muttered dazedly. "Not night - broad daylight."
"Do you see a car?"
She nodded, looking even more perplexed. "Not a red Mercedes. Yellow. A yellow sedan, with two men in it - "
She raised a distracted hand to her brow. Adam reached out and clasped her other hand gently. She recoiled with a gasp, then all at once seemed to become aware of his presence.
"What's going on?" she murmured disjointedly. "Where am I?"
"Safe at home," Adam assured her. "Take a deep breath to ground, and come fully back to normal waking consciousness. You were dreaming, remember?"
"About the accident, yes." Claire still seemed bemused. "I've dreamt about it before. Only this time - where did that yellow car come from?" She scanned Adam's face as if seeking enlightenment.
"It belonged to a man named Malcolm Grant," Adam said, as gently as he could. "Yesterday morning, just after eight o'clock, he and a friend were driving in to work along the Lanark Road. Just where your accident occurred, they went off the road and crashed. When the ambulance first arrived at the scene, Grant told the attendants that he'd veered off the road to avoid hitting a pregnant woman. Nobody else could remember seeing such a person on the scene - but she turned up later in the news photographs taken by Mr. Tom Lennox."
Claire gave a small choked cry, her eyes darting to Adam's briefcase, then lapsed abruptly into white-lipped silence. Adam let the silence stand. After a moment, she roused herself to look at him fearfully.
"Did they die?" she asked.
Adam nodded. "I'm afraid so."
"It was me that man saw, wasn't it?" she said.
Her face was white as chalk. Without waiting for Adam to offer either confirmation or denial, she added in a hollow voice, "That's not the first time I've had that dream. Do you suppose - does this mean that - I'm somehow responsible for all those accidents? All those deaths?"
Adam's response was measured. "As to that, it's too soon to tell. We may yet discover an element of coincidence - "
"No." Claire cut him off. "Coincidence wouldn't account for that many accidents taking place in exactly the same place - "
She broke off short, unable to complete the sentence. Then she said, "I don't understand. Why should I want to kill people I didn't even know?"
"The obvious answer to that question is that you didn't," Adam said. "When I first took you back in trance to your dream about the accident, you spoke of wanting to see the face of the man who ran you down. I can only guess that your repeated excursions on the astral are the result of that burning desire. Unfortunately, that desire is so intense that every now and then it escapes the confines of conventional dreaming, allowing your astral image to manifest itself at the actual physical location where the accident took place."
"And innocent motorists think there really is someone there," she whispered. "And they - "
She drew a deep breath and passed a hand across her eyes, as if to shut out the image conjured up by her own thoughts. "There is more power in the human spirit than is ever likely to be fathomed by science," Adam told her quietly. "Emotion without an outlet is like water building up behind a dam. If that accumulating energy can't be channelled off to some constructive purpose, it becomes potentially destructive. Sooner or later, either the reservoir will overflow or the dam will burst.
"In your case," he went on, "you've built your bulwarks too strongly, and the dam itself has refused to break. But there is a limit to what it can contain, and the excess, un-governed, has found its own release, creating in the process an illusion powerful enough to deceive the unwary observer. There's no denying that you're probably indirectly responsible for a number of unfortunate accidents. On the other hand, it certainly wasn't intentional. And now that you know, you can stop it."
"But you just said yourself that I didn't realize what I was doing," Claire protested. "If that's true, how can I stop it, when I don't seem to have any conscious control over the situation? It's worse than possession! How can I even go to sleep, knowing that I might kill some one else?"