Franz Liszt’s Liebesträume has been on loop-play for a good couple of hours, Kate is certain, when she rouses with heaving breaths and her heart racing. Still in shock from the effects of Lachlan’s grisly death, a good half hour passes before she gathers her wits. When she checks her phone and sees it is nearly flat, Franz Liszt’s Liebesträume would have been cut off mid cadenza anyway.
The neighbours can open their windows again. Curious, she looks out to see if they had actually shut them.
◊.◊.◊
‘Are you okay? Call me back or I’ll come banging at your door.’ Kate listens through her umpteen messages, reaching the last frantic one from Julianne. Three from Jason.
‘That man’s getting a bit clingy,’ she says to herself.
◊.◊.◊
‘That man’s getting a bit clingy,’ she says to Julianne when she rings again.
‘Really? How many times did he ring?’
Kate tells her.
‘That’s not so bad. You did rush off after all. Hey, hon, I’m sorry I dropped you in it.’
‘It’s fine.’ Kate hesitates. ‘I just want to keep things to myself for the time being. Don’t want Jason thinking I have a screw loose. Imagine me saying to him, Oh, hi Jason, I’ve just made a trip into the twelfth century. He doesn’t need to know everything about me, anyway.’
Julianne is quiet. ‘Do you feel like you’re actually there? In those lifetimes?
‘It’s as if I just step through a door and I’m there. The first thing I notice is the change in temperature, wherever it is that I am. Then I look down at my feet and see what I’m wearing. I had absolutely no fashion sense in some of those lives.’
Julianne laughs cautiously. ‘So, what happens next?’
Kate realises she is sharing more than she wants to, then shrugs her shoulders. ‘Yeah, so, I look at my hands, at my surroundings. I try and find a mirror.’
‘A mirror?’
‘To see what I look like. And if I’m a man or a woman.’
Julianne makes a sound as if she is blowing through her lips. ‘You probably don’t need a mirror to know if you’re a man,’ she sniggers.
‘Huh? Oh yeah.’ For a moment, Kate is quiet. ‘There’s something I don’t get though.’
‘And?’ Julianne prompts when Kate goes quiet again.
‘Not sure how to explain it.’
‘Try me. You have to, now.’
‘Well, Gaius says …’
‘Wait. Who’s Gaius?’ Julianne asks, her voice in a thin rise.
Kate thinks momentarily, then asks, ‘Why don’t you come over? Come for tea. And a wine. I’ll rustle up something. Beans on toast.’
‘Great. My favourite,’ Julianne says in a mock-cheerful voice. ‘Not.’
◊.◊.◊
With a throw over their knees as a result of the heater dying, and plates on their laps, Kate and Julianne clink glasses, sip wine, and enjoy the creamy chicken pasta Kate has whipped up. A pleasant surprise, Julianne had said.
‘So, what don’t you get?’ Julianne asks after finishing her first glass of wine.
Kate rests her fork on her plate. ‘Okay, well, you have to hear me out if I tell you everything.’ She averts her eyes, suddenly anxious and unsure if she is making the right decision.
‘Sure. Absolutely. And I want a full disclosure.’ Julianne makes a motion across her mouth as though she is zipping it closed. Kate can see in her peripheral vision that Julianne is staring at her, waiting. For some reason she feels nervous telling her, even though she is her best friend.
‘Kate!’ Julianne exclaims, impatient.
Julianne’s exclamation causes Kate to jump. She places her finished plate on the coffee table and shifts her bottom into the corner of the couch, facing her friend. She sits cross-legged, somewhat awkwardly, and pulls her jersey sleeves over her hands as if she is biding time. Julianne hurriedly sits likewise at the other end of the couch, facing Kate.
‘Okay, so, when I go into trance, I get messages from a man with a strange accent named Gaius.’ She regards Julianne, who is quiet, focused, and sticking to her promise. ‘He says he’s an entity in spirit form.’
‘Okay,’ Julianne responds with a lilt in her voice.
‘Well, in one of these sessions, Gaius told me that we bring through strengths and weaknesses we had in our earlier lifetimes to learn discernment and stuff.’ Julianne’s expression invites her to elaborate. ‘He said past traits and experiences give us the power of hindsight.’ Kate falls quiet, considering something. ‘You know, it could be why depressed people don’t know why they’re depressed. They just are.’
‘Most are like it because of a traumatic incident they experienced when they were young.’
‘Yes … but some don’t remember any traumatic incidents and wonder why they’re depressed.’
Julianne tilts her head and frowns. ‘And you think because …?’
‘Their trauma happened in an earlier lifetime.’
Julianne is still confused. ‘Well, how would they even know about it then?’
‘Gaius said we have psychic memory that systematically collects genetic records of past events and transfers the records into the genetic memory of the cells of the individual’s new physical form, and that conscious memory of our past lives is not retained but the psychic memory is.’
Julianne’s jaw drops open. ‘Wow!’
Kate is pleased with her ability to remember Gaius’s exact words and continues. ‘I once read a book about regression therapy, in cases where patients were regressed to the root of their trauma; sometimes it wasn’t in their present lifetime. Sometimes the trauma happened several lifetimes before. It said once a subconsciously-embedded trauma comes to light, the effects of the trauma miraculously disappear, and the patient is cured.’
‘Really? Awesome! I want to try that. Okay, so what don’t you get?’
‘In a lifetime after the one where I was sexually violated and traumatised, I had amazing sex.’
Kate’s remark confuses Julianne. ‘So, what’s the problem?’
‘I still suffer from my hang up. Well, suffered. What Gaius said and what I read made me realise that what had had happened to Lilith was the root of my hang up. It made sense of why I wasn’t into sex. It also suddenly felt like I’d been released from my hang up. Then when Jason and I …’ Kate feels the heat on her face.
‘Oh. But ...’ Julianne replies, still looking confused. Kate knows she has to spell it out.
‘So, I would’ve, or should’ve, still had the hang up when I was Héloïse.’
‘Héloïse?’
‘Yes, Héloïse. I was a French woman called Héloïse in the seventeenth century. I was Lilith — my life in the twelfth century — when I suffered from the trauma that gave me the hang up. Héloïse didn’t have the hang up, but I do. Did. How does that make sense?’
Julianne shakes her head and gazes at Kate, baffled.
Unexpectedly, Kate feels the heady sensation she felt earlier when she entered her meditative state. ‘Um, can I call it a night? Sorry. I feel a bit drained.’
‘Again?’
‘Yeah, sorry girlfriend.’ Kate puts on an innocent, sad face, pouting. She tries to act calm in spite of it being a matter of urgency.
Julianne stares fixedly at her for a few moments, then unfolds her legs and gets up. ‘Sure. Shall I call you in a couple of days?’
Kate nods and quickly hugs her friend in a warm embrace and sees her to the door. ‘Unless you hear from me first.’
◊.◊.◊
She prays her flatmate doesn’t come home soon, and settles in for another session. Gaius comes through immediately.
‘Your notion concerning trauma and its relation to depression is correct. An identity may not know why he suffers from depression. The trauma may have happened in an earlier lifetime.
‘Hitherto, I would like to expand on the topic of trauma, if I may. Lachlan’s horrendous death is part of your psychic heritage, and part of your cellular genetic memory, and moreover, part of your present cellular structure. Thus, any unexplained pain in your stomach or abdominal region is the direct result of Lachlan’s frightfully maimed cellular structure.’
◊.◊.◊
Kate automatically cradles her stomach, realising the stabbing pain she has from time to time in that area, a pain that her doctor can’t explain, is because of Lachlan’s death. Gaius has quietened, but for some reason Kate remains under. She waits.
Gaius again speaks in a strong, steady voice. ‘This also accounts for the trauma you suffered as Lilith — your fear of bonfires, and your personal repression.
‘I am aware, in respect of your personal repression, this discombobulates you. Why, as Héloïse, you were without hindrance, yet in your present life, your mental obstruction remains.’ Even under hypnosis, Kate feels disconcerted that such a personal issue has been raised. By Gaius. Yet, she’d love to know.
‘The information I am about to impart may astound you.’ A long pause. ‘Your higher self, your soul, exists in a system of reality called the infinite present. In the infinite present, past, present, and future do not exist.
‘In the infinite present, all things exist at the same time and all events happen at once. Various identities of your higher self, such as Héloïse and Lilith and your other selves, are living in their own time systems in the infinite present. You are, in fact, experiencing your present life along with the lives of your other selves at the same time.
‘Thus, your twelfth-century life as Lilith and your seventeenth-century life as Héloïse, in fact, are being lived at the present time, together with your other selves, as you live your life as Kate in the twenty-first century.
‘Earlier, I spoke in past tense for simplicity’s sake concerning the bringing through of strengths, weaknesses and traits from our earlier lifetimes, because at that stage you were not ready to learn the concept of the infinite present.’ Another long pause.
‘Since you live all your lives simultaneously, albeit in separate time systems, the trauma you suffered as Lilith may have been experienced as a later moment than your episode as Héloïse. Thence, the psychically-charged unconscious memory of Lilith’s traumatic event did not electromagnetically link to the atomic make-up of your identity as Héloïse. Nevertheless, it did in your identity as Kate.’
Gaius says no more and Kate blinks open her eyes. She lies still, absorbing Gaius’s astonishing revelation, bewildered, and feeling extremely — in Gaius’s words —discombobulated.
‘Simply un … freakn … believable,’ she murmurs, slurring, still not fully conscious. The heady sensation returns. With a deep breath, she exhales slowly, and slips back under.
◊.◊.◊
Kate steps into another reality. She is an eleven-year-old girl in Italy, in the nineteenth century.