My last table described the Cold Case internship. It was mostly made up of a bunch of random items in what appeared to be evidence bags. Some of them looked like buried murder weapons, while one of them held what Sibby would call “more lumps of metal”.
I picked it up to see if there was a description, but all I found was a case number and “EVIDENCE” written in black marker.
“It’s not the actual evidence.” Dr. Richards came over and explained. “Just to illustrate the point.”
“Chain of custody and all that?” I asked, well-versed in police procedurals thanks to my dad.
“Among other things,” he agreed. “Any idea what they are?”
“Very smooth rocks…” I tried to look at them for more details. “I’m not sure.”
“You can take them out of the bag to get a better look,” he offered.
“Right, they’re not actually evidence.”
“Just a piece of history,” he agreed, smiling as he often did when he watched me discover a new artifact.
I took out one of the pieces and touched the smooth surface, but the fear hit me like a ton of bricks. I could practically hear the screams of women and children being burned alive.
“They were coins,” I realized. I could sort of make out scratches on the side, probably of some Roman’s face.
“Why yes, Miss Carmichael, they were. Did you notice the faint outline of Caesar over here?” he asked, using a magnifying glass to point it out to me.
“That must be it.” I didn’t have a logical explanation as to how I knew. From looking at them, they could have been absolutely anything before they melted into nothing.
“Or did you feel it?” he asked.
“Feel what?”
“Everything that happened to them?”
“To who?” My first thought was that he was having an episode or going senile, but then something in his look scared me. Not that it was scary, per se, but he looked at me like he knew.
“When you touch the items, both the ones here and throughout the museum, I believe you either see or feel what happened to them,” he told me.
“To the objects? That doesn’t make any sense,” I argued. I might have described it similarly in my head while it was happening, but saying it out loud sounded wrong. Very wrong.
“Your work is extraordinary; it’s why I let you do all the cataloguing, even though that should be done by someone with a degree in the field or at least an intern. But you’re better than any of the students who’ve interned for me, even some of the so-called experts who’ve given Society Talks.” He gave me a warm smile, but there was more. “I say this with all the respect in the world, but you don’t have the knowledge or experience to come to most of the conclusions you’ve been reaching. You initially thought these were rocks because that is what they look like. Only when you touched them did you realize they were melted down coins. It wasn’t because you studied the pieces with all the tools at your disposal; it was because touching them did something to you.”
“Like what?” I asked cautiously. He didn’t seem shocked or concerned by the fact that he believed objects were talking to me. I was living through it, and it still made absolutely no sense to me.
“I believe you’re Gifted,” he said, like I should know what it meant. I knew the word, but it was clear he meant it differently than simply being good at something.
Before I had the chance to ask, Dr. Richards guided me over to an alcove, then pointed his palm into the unlit part of it. I stared into the darkness to see what he was trying to show me within the light of his flashlight until I turned back and saw his hand. The light was coming directly from his palm. There was no flashlight.
“How are you doing that?” I asked, forgetting myself enough to reach out and touch his hand before the light disappeared. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.
“I’m Gifted, too,” he admitted.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means we have special abilities that can help us accomplish specific things.”
“Like seeing in the dark?” I asked. It was weird, but I didn’t see the connection between his bright hands and the feelings I got when I touched certain things.
“It comes in handy on digs, in tight spaces, when you’re trapped, or lost—”
“I’m not Gifted,” I argued. He had to be going crazy.
“You can call it what you want, but what did you see when you touched the coins? How did you know the breastplate had arrows and swords in it rather than knives and forks?”
“Because it didn’t look like—”
“Alison,” he cut me off with my first name. I felt like we had gotten close over the years—I even considered him my surrogate grandfather—but he always called me Miss Carmichael.
“I have a vivid imagination, okay? I hear a story once and then I put myself in their shoes and I imagine what it was like. I must have realized the metal was partly melted or seen the Caesar outline, and that’s how I figured out they were coins. The breastplate was research, Google, and my due diligence about the things we display at the museum, because it’s a part of my job.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“It makes more sense than your fortune teller theory.”
“It does. But that doesn’t make it true. I believe I could hand you a dozen random objects from any collection without a description or any backstory and you could identify each one. Or at least give me intimate details of how it was used. Like the necklace,” he brought up the object that started my obsession with his museum.
“I’m pretty sure I would go mad if everything I touched showed me its story,” I argued, thinking I might already be. At least one, if not both of us, had lost their minds.
“I would choose the ones that would,” he said with confidence, already looking around the room in case he had to prove it.
“Which ones are those?”
“From what I understand, the ones that held high emotions. Your face lit up at the bowl that was crafted over a decade to prove a man’s love and devotion. But I saw the pain when you touched those coins, and the breastplate, or any other weapon that was used before being hung on a wall. If I had to guess, a painting that was commissioned for money would be like any other painting for you, but one painted by a lover would give you chills. I must confess, I’ve never seen a Gift quite like yours before, so I don’t know the particularities. But I know I’m not mistaken about you having one. And the fact that you haven’t gone off to find me psychiatric help tells me that on some level, you believe me.”
“Maybe I’m just a very empathetic person.”
“No, I’ve met Empaths, and they did not get visions from objects,” he argued.
“There still has to be another explanation.”
He gave me a moment, allowing me to come up with a better one, but I couldn’t. “You should do the summer internship because all of this makes you happy. That’s what I would tell anyone else with your drive and passion for antiquities. But knowing that you have this Gift and all the incredible things you could accomplish with it, I implore you not to let it go to waste.”
“I’m sure someone else can dig just as well as I can.”
“The team that goes with Professor Mallory is very prestigious, but I thought you would like the cold case placement better. They comb through the evidence, examining everything that was used in a crime to find clues and figure out who used what to kill who. I know the woman who runs it, and she would be more than happy to help you figure all this out. The program, but mostly your Gift. If I’ve discovered anything about our purpose, it’s that we have one for a reason.”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you’re clearly mistaken.” I tried to break it to him as gently as I could before walking past him and leaving the party.
Once I was outside, I lifted the hem of my dress and ran as fast as I could away from Dr. Richards’ crazy ideas, and from whatever happened when my hand touched those coins.
Find out what happens next in First Life…