“How can you find the right blisters?”
“Oh, that’s easy. My spirit guides will tell me where to place the needles. They know where your past lives are recorded in your body. Ready?” She smiled reassuringly at Jennifer. “I want to meditate before we begin.”
“What will I feel?” Jennifer asked, delaying.
“It depends. If you feel, for example, a sudden rush of warmth, you’re getting a negative reaction from hostile spirits. I call them the little devils.” Kathy Dart smiled down at Jennifer. She had moved a tall stool closer to the massage table and was perched on its edge.
“What if we don’t find anything?”
“Is that what’s worrying you?” Kathy asked. “That you won’t recall?”
Jennifer shrugged. “That there won’t be anything, period! No past lives.”
Kathy Dart nodded, then said thoughtfully. “It’s never happened. I have never had a patient who didn’t recall a previous existence. Some, of course, are much more vivid than others. Some are lives of great importance, but the majority, I’d say, are ordinary lives: farmers, serfs, one or two adventurous types, a bandit in one generation, a thief in another.”
“Have you had any patients who share my experience?” Jennifer asked. “That strange rage and physical power?”
Kathy Dart picked up a silver needle from the white towel and replaced it carefully. “That’s what frightens you, isn’t it? That somehow I’ll tap a certain cell in your body and you’ll become—”
“A raging primitive, yes.” She looked directly at Kathy Dart.
“That won’t happen.”
“How do you know?” Jennifer challenged.
“Because nothing like that has ever happened to me, or to anyone I have treated. You will ‘see’ your past, but you won’t become it. No one ever has.”
“No one else is me. I’m the one who has the out-of-the-blue surges.”
“But they are not out of the blue. They only occur when you’re threatened. Do you feel threatened now?”
Jennifer shook her head, remembering how she had even tried to summon up her rage in the dark hallway the previous evening.
“Perhaps what has happened is that you feel safe on the farm. You’re not in a hostile environment, and your senses intuitively know that.” Kathy shrugged. “It’s really as simple as that.”
Jennifer nodded. Perhaps that was it. She remembered the computer salesman at the motel. She would never have touched him if he hadn’t threatened her.
“Look, you’ll be fully conscious,” Kathy explained. “If you begin to feel that you’re losing control in any way, I’ll stop.” She hesitated. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like Eileen to be with you?”
Jennifer shook her head. “No, thank you. I better go at this alone. Aren’t you afraid my monster self will attack you?”
Kathy Dart laughed. “Not me! I’ve got Habasha, and he’s king of the jungle. He told me so.” She swung Jennifer’s legs up onto the wide table. “Now, relax,” she instructed.
“Are you kidding?”
“Try,” Kathy Dart insisted. “I’ll spend a moment in meditation and channel my spirits.” She moved around to the end of the table and out of Jennifer’s line of sight.
Jennifer closed her eyes and took long breaths. She would try, she told herself. She would try to surrender herself; maybe Kathy Dart could find out what was happening to her body.
“Try not to think,” Kathy whispered. “Just let your mind flow. Be at peace.”
Jennifer took another deep breath. She felt a wave of cold air cross her body, then a hot flash. She listened to Kathy sitting behind her at the head of the table and tried to match her steady breathing. Then her thoughts shifted, and Jennifer let herself go with them. She was listening to the house, but only occasionally did a muffled noise filter into the room. The acoustic tile on the walls told her the barn was soundproofed. She felt far away from the world, far away from time. And happy. So safe.
Kathy had moved around the table to her side.
“I am ready,” she whispered to Jennifer, but her voice had changed, become more confident. “My guides have told me where to seek your lives.” She reached up for the edge of the flannel sheet and pulled it off Jennifer’s shoulder, then tucked it in at her waist. Jennifer did not open her eyes.
“I will place the first needles at pressure points on your shoulders and chest,” Kathy said calmly, “and later in your third eye, which is the center of your forehead. You will experience some pain, as I mentioned, but it will pass. Also, you will feel that the needles are warm. That is because I am taking a ball of dried wormwood—it’s an herb—and I’m placing it on top of the needle’s handle. Then I light it when the needle is inserted. The warmth will aid in the stimulation of your memory cells.”
“Tell me when you’re about to begin,” Jennifer asked.
“I’ve already begun.”
Jennifer opened her eyes and saw two long needles protruding from her chest.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
Cathy smiled sweetly and asked, “Do you want to watch?”
“I don’t know. Do I?” She felt better now that she had actually seen the needles in her body. “Ouch! What happened?” Jennifer blinked back tears.
“Nothing. I stimulated your cells by twisting the needles, that’s all.” She reached across to select another needle, slipping it behind Jennifer’s right ear.
“I don’t feel a thing,” Jennifer whispered. At that moment she felt wonderful, warm and comfortable.
“Of course not. You’re doing just fine.” She smiled down at Jennifer. “Soon you’ll begin to see your lives unfold. Take another deep breath.”
She did.
“This will help stimulate your memory.”
“I’m getting excited,” Jennifer said, smiling.
“I’ve turned on the tape recorder, so speak up when you notice anything. Sometimes it’s only an odor or taste that comes back to us from another time. Anyway, speak up, talk to me, and we’ll have all the memories recorded for you.”
Jennifer waited, her eyes closed again. She felt Kathy’s soft hands on her body, felt another fine needle pinch the skin between her breasts, but there was no pain. Then Kathy drew the sheet up over the tops of the half dozen needles, and when Jennifer opened her eyes, it looked as if she were enclosed inside a tent.
“Your spirits are arranging themselves, battling for position, so to speak,” Kathy explained as Jennifer felt another wave of cold air. “Do you see anything?”
Jennifer shook her head. “No,” she giggled. “I feel as if I’m waiting for my life to begin or something.”
“Well, you are. But don’t be afraid. You won’t see anything that you don’t want to see. Our bodies protect us in that way.” She fell silent.
Jennifer felt herself drifting off, as if she were taking a morning nap. She started to resist the urge to lose consciousness but remembered that Kathy had told her to let her mind wander, to let it find its own place in the depths of her subconscious. She stopped thinking. She forgot about her body and focused her attention on trying not to think. Everything slipped away. She felt as if she were falling gently through the space of her memories, dropping and dropping without fear. Then she was floating free of her body, like the night she was attacked and was looking down at herself on the operating table.
“You’re beginning to recall,” Kathy said, speaking, it seemed, from across the room. “I see flashes of your life. I’m picking them up.”