Ghostly figures with black sockets for eyes and dressed in warbonnets and buffalo-skin robes; priests in full-length Catholic regalia with rings of hair on tonsured heads; others — slaves, both men and women, their dark and thin frames bent over in shadowy fields; still others — men in animal skins, dishevelled and sodden, battling wild seas in long-wooden boats. Initially, they appeared as if they were actors in an old grainy, black and white picture show, before emerging clear and vivid — symbolically, when Kate was drawn into a world as real as the one in which she lived.
She had no idea that what she had seen behind her closed lids would be a breach into the past, her past. When she had fallen through the quicksand of time she had encountered cultures where societies were ruled by their religious beliefs that had no regard for basic human rights. She had no idea that the harrowing events she had seen and been a part of were somehow connected to her present-day situation.
As she emerges from her convoluted and murky depths, withdrawing from the psychic network of her subliminal self that had subconsciously connected with others, Kate is convinced the events she experienced were real and authentic. In her hypnopompic state, she discerns that there is no real barrier to separate the system of reality from which she has just returned and the earthly environment in which she lives, and understands it is only her focus of attention that closes her off from it.
She wakes with a pounding headache, feeling as though a giant wave has crashed down on her, largely forgetting the scenarios, and silently cursing the unfamiliar outside noises — a racket from a construction site. Auckland councillors are determined to make New Zealand’s biggest city a world-class one with never-ending projects of large-scale proportions at eye-watering expenditure. Moments after she is awake she realises she is at her friend Julianne’s rented inner-city apartment that she shares with her crown prosecutor boyfriend. An apartment seven storeys up; its nighttime vista is a sweeping expanse of glittering diamonds.
Though Kate remembers fragments of her slumbering adventures; they involved memories of her long-ago companions — many years have passed since she has thought about them — and is convinced that the dream was something else; not merely a dream from a drug or liquor-induced-comatose-stupor because it had so much living weight to it.
She swipes at her blonde hair which is stuck to her face. Her mascaraed lashes are clumped together. Last night’s makeup, which deepened the colour of her hazel-green eyes and enhanced her childlike features has smeared and obscures her prettiness.
Kate folds back the knitted blanket and sits up on the hard-sided couch. Julianne’s love of high-end furniture synonymous with designer craftmanship affords little comfort. She rubs her neck which she had slept on at an awkward angle. She gratefully accepts the coffee her bestie holds out to her and threads her forefinger and middle finger through the handle as she cups the mug in both hands. ‘What happened last night? I feel like shite.’
‘Well, we went to the hen’s party and it got a little messy.’
Kate stiffens. ‘How messy?’ She aims her worried gaze at her friend who is the exact opposite of her in complexion and hair shade. Julianne’s long, dark-brown tresses frame her royal-blue eyes and perfectly formed, un-Botoxed lips.
Julianne sits on the edge of a barrel-shaped grey ottoman and regards Kate with a slight, close-lipped smile. ‘Kate-shotting-tequila-off-the-stripper’s-abs-messy,’ she says with a lilt at the end. ‘Then you passed out and Laurel helped me Uber you here so I could keep an eye on you and be your doting mummy for the night.’
Kate’s jaw falls slack; her lips slightly parted. ‘No, wait. I wasn’t that drunk.’
Julianne raises an eyebrow.
‘Well, I was, but there was something else, I’m sure of it.’
‘Do you think someone spiked your drink?’
‘Yeah. No. I don’t know. Maybe.’ Kate sips her coffee with her shuttered eyes focused on something invisible on the floor. ‘It was as if my senses came alive and everything was much brighter — the colours and the chatter.’
‘Did you knowingly take anything?’
‘Like a party pill? No. You know I don’t do drugs.’ She crosses her legs with annoyance. ‘But it felt as though I was more than just drunk.’
Julianne puts a glass of water in front of Kate. ‘Here, you better hydrate yourself then. Do you feel like eating anything?’
Kate ignores her question. ‘I saw stuff.’
‘Now I’m intrigued. Keep talking.’
‘Inside the taxi,’ Kate continues, realising it was then that she first experienced her strange new perception. ‘It was like a door had opened in my brain. The back of the seat, the fabric. It was alive. So peculiar.’
‘Okay.’ Julianne says with rising intonation.
‘I saw the weave of the thread, the particles, moving around at high speed, like a charge of electricity. It was as though I could see the atoms and molecules of the thread. Then the back of the driver’s head. His hair. The minute particles and cells in the strands vibrating at a fantastic speed, like some cosmological web of activity. I could see the basic-cellular structure of each strand. When I stared at his hair, I could see billions of dancing molecules. And that’s not all.’ Kate looks at her friend with a fixed gaze. ‘I understood that they had a consciousness.’
Julianne leans in towards her. ‘The driver’s hair had a consciousness?’
‘Yes. And it was as if I became one of those strands. I appreciated it’s consciousness.’ Kate looks at Julianne with question marks in her eyes; her posture is hunched. ‘Am I making any sense?’
Julianne’s deep-blue eyes are full of compassion. She gives a delicate grimace and mouths a no. ‘I’m sorry, Hun, but it does sound like someone spiked your drink. Who were we with who would do that to you?’
Kate presses the warm empty mug to her lips. ‘Laurel does have some crazy friends.’
‘Such as the girl with the neck tatt? Or the quiet one who sat in the corner all night with a sour expression. I saw her watching you.’ Julianne suddenly straightens her back; her mouth dangles open. ‘Do you think the stripper was her boyfriend and didn’t like seeing you licking his chest?’
Kate stares at her friend for a moment before scrunching up her face and shuddering. ‘Wow, I did that?’
‘Fraid so.’
‘Well, I’m not going to hold it against her … if she did. I actually enjoyed the experience. I should be thanking her. Find out what it was she slipped into my drink so I can do it again.’
‘I thought you didn’t do drugs.’
‘I don’t. But it might be the trigger I need to open up my mind.’
Julianne raises her brows again.
Kate shakes her head. ‘On second thoughts … it’s a bad idea.’
Julianne smiles and gives Kate a sideways glance. ‘Okay, well, fancy some breakie?’ she asks as she stands up.
‘Just toast and honey, thanks. Manuka if you have it. And another coffee. I’ll get it. And thanks for looking after me, Mummy.’
Julianne returns her grin. ‘No worries. That’s what best friends are for.’
◊.◊.◊
Kate thinks about her dream. It incorporated her earliest memories; that of standing in her cot in the cold farmhouse that had been in the family for generations, while it was still dark, and a ghostly wind was thrashing leafy branches against the bedroom’s white wooden sash window. Her brother was asleep in his bed, but Nicky had begun to grizzle, his blond-curly hair strewn across his sweet-two-year-old angelic face with flushed pink cheeks.
She was speaking to her friends in a mutually-understood language. Merely because no one else could see them didn’t mean they weren’t real. She was visited on separate occasions, by friends who spoke in different languages. Sometimes they were in the room with her and sometimes they weren’t. On occasion, Kate’s friends would appear as though she was watching them on a tv screen. Occasionally she would be in the movie with her friends. Though, the Kate in the films was an adult, and sometimes the Kate in the films would be a man. Through her toddler eyes, she was not afraid. Everything appeared as normal as it should, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. She believes she was born with an innate faculty of understanding.
When she was slightly older, Kate’s friends came from far-off places to play. At the end of the day, Kate’s mother would call her inside and her friends would say, “Vale,” “Góða nótt,” and “Au revoir,” and return to their far-off homes in a chariot, a long boat, or a golden carriage.
◊.◊.◊
Night had fallen by the time Kate returns to her cosy two-bedroomed flat, which she shares with a flatmate and her cat, nestled in a quiet and leafy West Auckland suburb. Under the shower, Kate lets the liquid warmth wash away her wish-to-be-forgotten night of crazed, unbridled conviviality and thinks about her long-ago companions. They still seem profoundly real. It was around the time she started school when her friends disappeared and never returned. Once she arrived home, she had run to the back of the house and into the garden where they always waited for her. That day they were not there. Kate looked everywhere for them, in among the trees where they played and in a grove of native bush that backed onto the property — where the fairies lived. They too had gone. Kate recalls how upset she had been. Phillipa, the girl who had befriended her on her first day of school, became her best friend, and Kate soon forgot about her first group of friends. She also forgot about the fairies.
◊.◊.◊
‘Oh no, not again!’ Irritated, Kate turns off the faucet which has slowed to a stop, steps out of the shower and gropes for her towel in the dark. She has counted eleven unplanned power outages this year. She wonders why, instead of putting up overhead power lines strung with thick-black cables, which spoil everyone’s view, the power companies don’t bury power lines. There’s always some speeding idiot who careens around corners on two wheels, or some red-nosed boozer, filled to the gunnels, who slams into a power pole or transformer. She recalls the time when a couple of locals, disgruntled about the soaring costs of electricity, shot at high-voltage power lines and caused a blackout to thirty-thousand homes and businesses in the district for five long days. Because it happened in winter, bathing in the creek was not an option, and everyone spent their time huddled in a generator-powered bar that reeked of body odour.
It always happens when she’s either about to cook dinner or make a cup of tea. And when the power goes off the water pump is inoperable, so she can’t fill the kettle let alone boil it.
After drying her soapy, lathered body she feels unwashed and sticky. A night light that automatically comes on with an outage diffuses the bathroom in a soft-blue hue, offering a subdued light. Kate pulls the hand towel from its ring and wipes the fogged-up mirror.
‘Jesus!’ She sees a face staring back at her — a face that is not hers. Kate wipes the mirror again, but it doesn’t change. The face she sees is the face of a man.
Kate is terrified. She wants to scream and run out of the house but is rooted to the spot. It is as if she were in one of her dreams where she feels paralysed and escape is impossible. A forceful drawing-in of shaky breath calms her slightly and she gapes at the face staring back at her — a man with thick-black-wavy hair, cut bluntly just above his shoulders. His dark-narrow eyes look straight into hers, his thin lips pressed into a line. His expression isn’t harsh though, and he studies her. He has a strong Roman nose and strangely, his face is illuminated in light. His garb is a red cloak or red-overlay type coat. She can only see to his chest. His skin is dark-hued, but not as dark as if he is of African descent. Alarmed, it crosses her mind that the drug she inadvertently consumed must still be in her system.
The room bursts into light and she hears the bleep of the microwave downstairs. The face — frozen in fright — is now her own. Hazel-green eyes; sunflowers set inside filmy dewdrops, regard her in stunned disbelief. Dark-brown eyebrows, neatly plucked, frame her wide-eyed reflection, eyes that have a slight downward slant at the outer corners and are a perfect sexy cat’s-eye shape. Or so she’s been told.
Thirty-one-year-old Kate has always been quietly narcissistic about the shape of her mouth. Her smile turns heads at social gatherings and dazzles even the most hard-hearted of hearts whose day is often brightened by it. Embarrassing years of wearing braces that called for tentative open-mouthed kissing are now a distant memory.
She becomes aware of her armpit-length blonde hair that is dripping on her feet. She steps back into the shower. She’s still numb from the shock and when her hands don’t cooperate she turns her back and lets the force of the water clean her and fill the bathroom with steam.
Even though they were alarming, last night’s and this morning’s incidents hold her transfixed and she thinks about alternative ways to experience them again.
◊.◊.◊
Kate remembers a book she once read, about regression therapy. At a training workshop, attendees listened to lectures and participated in experiential exercises. As an exercise, the therapist instructed his participants to team up with a stranger. They sat opposite one another and stared at each other’s faces. In the low-light setting, the strangers saw their partners’ faces change. The instructor, a hypnotherapist, told the participants that they were faces their partners possessed in a previous lifetime. At the time, Kate dismissed what she’d read as nonsense — she didn’t believe in reincarnation.
It occurs to her that the face she saw must have belonged to whoever she was before. While her brain is still in a receptive state, Kate decides to take advantage of it. With a few deep breaths to calm herself, she gets comfortable, slides on her headphones and plays an audio she bought at a show when a psychic medium came to her town last year. The smooth, cockney-accented voice of the medium carries her into a hypnotic trance and she drifts into a place where time does not exist.
Once again, she sees the image; this time it is more than just a flat image in a mirror. The man’s features — the thick-black-wavy hair, dark eyes and strong Roman nose — appear in 3D, vivid in colour, and in differing angles. After a time, the image fades and Kate finds herself in an ancient time, during the era of the Roman Empire.
◊.◊.◊
She is the face in the mirror. At once she recognises the event as one she watched play out, when she was a toddler standing in her cot in the early morning dark.