As he speaks, a shiver runs up my spine that makes every hair on my head tingle. “You try to make up rational explanations for everything,” he continues. “Maybe you think you’re going crazy. Or that you’re just dehydrated.” He looks at me, and I remember the excuses I gave for fainting that day. “Or that you’re seeing ghosts.”
I force myself to keep breathing as he talks, closing my eyes so that I can focus on his words. “Any of this sound familiar?” he asks.
I bite my bottom lip and nod, too scared to speak. He’s describing everything I’ve seen and felt for the past several weeks. “So, what is it? If it’s not ghosts and I’m not crazy, how can you possibly explain all this away?”
“It’s the transition,” he says. “Sometimes it goes quickly, and sometimes it takes an entire lifetime. You had a vision the day we met, didn’t you?”
I can barely manage a whisper. “It was on the Green,” I say. “Everything went dark, and then, as clearly as I can see you, there was a girl, and she was being led up the scaffold … there were people, but there was no one to save her…” My voice trails off and I can’t continue as I remember the tumble of emotions that ran through me as I watched.
“And all of this happened right where the scaffolds were really located,” Griffon says.
I nod. “I keep thinking there has to be a logical explanation, right? That it’s all just some kind of crazy dream. Even crazy is more logical than…” I trail off. Than what?
“There have been other times too, haven’t there?”
“Yes,” I say slowly. “At first it was mostly just feelings. But the actual visions are coming more and more often. Today at lunch … I saw a boy who was watching his mother cook. An Indian boy. One minute I’m trying a friend’s lunch, and the next minute I’m someplace else completely. And there have been others—in a concert hall and at a ferry dock.”
Griffon stays silent, but shifts closer to me. It’s all I can do not to reach out and touch him, but I don’t. It feels like I’m on the edge of something big, and as much as I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want him to stop. I need to get through to the end.
“Think for a second,” he says. “The visions that you’re having. You didn’t really see a boy and his mother, did you? That girl being led up to the scaffold … you weren’t watching her, were you? You said it yourself.”
All of a sudden I know what he means, even though everything inside pushes against the thought. None of the visions have been like me watching a movie. It’s like being in the movie. “No,” I say, barely above a whisper.
“Where were you when all of these things were happening?” he pushes.
I squeeze my eyes shut, knowing that it makes sense, but not wanting to admit it, because if I admit it, everything changes. Everything I know about life will be different.
“Come on, Cole,” he says. “You already know.”
“The girl on the scaffold is me,” I say quickly. “They were all me. I’m watching as these things happen to me, not other people.” I open my eyes and look at Griffon. He’s looking at me with a sad smile on his face.
“That’s right,” he says, as if I’m a child who has finally learned to read. “They are all you.” He pauses before continuing. “All of the things you’re seeing happened to you. Sometimes they’re big moments in a life, sometimes they’re just small things triggered by a smell or a place.”
It feels like the truth is dangling there in front of me, just out of reach. All the pieces of the puzzle are right there, waiting to be put together. “Why has this been happening now? I’ve gone my whole life without any of this. Why now, all of a sudden?”
A strand of hair falls in front of my face. Griffon starts to reach up and tuck it behind my ear, but stops himself the instant before he touches me. As he pauses, I realize I’ve been holding my breath, waiting for the feeling of his fingers on my cheek. “Because,” he says, folding his hands around his knee. “You’re starting to remember.”
I sit on the rock, watching the kids slide down the hill, feeling like my sanity is slipping away too. Griffon is studying me as I turn all of this new information over in my mind.
“Starting to remember what?” I finally ask, partly afraid to hear the answer.
“Other lifetimes. Your other lifetimes.”
There’s a catch in my throat as I inhale, and it feels like the wind has been knocked out of me. My other lifetimes. “Like reincarnation?” I say it softly because I can barely get the words past my lips.
“Exactly,” he says. “Reincarnation. Past lives. All of that. Remembering them is what happens when you become one of us.”
I look into his face, trying to find a sign that he’s lying. I want to see his eye twitch, or a glance away for just a split second that will tell me that it’s not true. That people don’t get reincarnated and that the visions I’m having aren’t glimpses into my past lives. But I don’t see any of that. He’s telling the truth. At least, the truth as he believes it. “What do you mean us?” I ask. “Who is ‘us’?”
“Akhet,” he says, looking me straight in the eye. “You’re becoming Akhet.”
Seven
I take the stairs two at a time, making it halfway down the hill before I even realize I’m moving. Everything Griffon said is so horrifying that there’s no way it’s the truth. There’s no way the girl on the scaffold was me. That I was the one who was executed. That I was actually there that foggy morning, climbing the wooden steps to my own death. Just the thought sends shards of fear rushing through my system.
Griffon runs to catch up. He matches my stride in that familiar way he has and we walk in silence for a minute or two. Slowing his pace, he says softly, “Look, I know it’s a lot to take in. And you probably have a million questions.”
“Now there’s an understatement,” I say, walking a little faster.
Griffon continues, even though I’ve given no sign at all that I still want to talk. “Akhet are people who can remember who they were in the lives they’ve lived before. It’s an Egyptian word that’s been used to describe us for thousands of years. We keep our memories while everyone else has to start all over again each lifetime.”
I struggle against the tide of questions that are churning through my brain. Akhet. I turn the word over in my mind. I know I’ve never heard it before, but at the same time it’s almost familiar. It feels like ideas are going by too fast for me to reach out and grab just one to examine. I stop at the edge of the playground and turn to face him. I feel almost angry, like he’s getting something out of making me believe his big joke. “You said ‘us.’ So you’re … one too?” I can’t bring myself to use the word, as if acknowledging it means that I believe what he’s saying. And I can’t believe him. It’s crazy.
“I’ve been Akhet for a long time,” he says simply.
I watch the kids on the swings at the other end of the playground. I look around at all of the people on the lawn, the stoners playing hacky sack by the pond. This is real life, not some fantasy story. I want him to laugh, to tell me that he’s only kidding, to take my hand and squeeze it tight, and let me know that all of this is going to be okay. But he doesn’t. He just stands there, waiting for me to make the next move. So I do. “Now that you’ve gotten the lie out of the way,” I say, “do I get to hear two truths?”
“I’m not kidding, Cole,” he says, his gaze steady on me. “It is the truth. I can help make things easier.”