Stevan Mena - Transience

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“There’s a lot I haven’t told you.”

“I’m listening.”

Leonard turned and finally looked at Jack. “I’ve already said more than I should have.”

“We’re not leaving this room until you—”

“You told the mother. You didn’t mention the tapes, did you? I never even let her listen to them.”

“No, but she’s not stupid. How else could I have gotten Rebecca’s account of the murder? You were right, her descriptions were vivid.”

“A credible recollection, not a vivid imagination.”

“It’s not possible… How?”

“You mean, how could a nine year old girl describe a murder that took place… before she was even born?”

Jack slapped his palms flat on Leonard’s desk and leaned in. “The river, the train, that tree — it’s just as she described, not another like it in the whole damn world. How could she have known? Where’d she get it from? Even the method of death.” Leonard remained calm.

“You heard the tapes; that wasn’t her imagination re-creating something she overheard. She was there.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“They’ve positively identified her body?”

Jack nodded. “We couldn’t release it otherwise.”

“And you’ve visited the family.”

“What’s going on here, Leonard?”

Leonard sat back and drew a deep breath. The office intercom buzzed: “ Doctor, you have a call on 1, Mrs. Burke has a question about her son’s prescription? ” Leonard ignored the page.

“I’ve exposed my practice too much already.”

“You called me. I could cite you with obstruction.”

“But you won’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you want to know just as much as I do.”

Jack studied Leonard a moment. He took a seat, not breaking eye contact. The two stared at each other a long while.

“I saw something yesterday I can’t explain,” Jack said. “No one could.”

“ Doctor? Mrs. Burke’s on 1, should I tell her to call back?”

Leonard jabbed at the button on his intercom. “Mary, clear my afternoon.”

Leonard walked Jack into a room lined with file cabinets and thick, expensive mahogany bookshelves that looked like they’d been passed down for generations. The room was a complete mess, as if ransacked by thieves. Books, papers, entire drawers removed, notes hastily scribbled down and scattered about, nothing in its place. Well, Leonard, we have one thing in common.

Jack stared out a grimy window that hadn’t been washed in years. It was lunchtime. The rain had scaled back to a soft drizzle. People were racing around, going about their daily routines. Inside here , madness …

Leonard swiped a stack of folders off a chair. “Here, sit.” He closed the large door and grabbed another chair, pushing it up to a table stacked with books and notes. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated, unsure of where to begin.

“I haven’t got all day,” Jack said.

Leonard rubbed his hands together. “At first I was convinced I was looking at a clear cut case of some sort of abuse, physical — mental. I noticed she had these marks on her neck — the mother said they were birthmarks. I was suspicious.”

Jack listened quietly, intently, desperate for Leonard to get to the damn point. But something about the drama in Leonard’s delivery forced him to hang on every word.

“No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t get Rebecca to open up. I suggested regression therapy to the mother. She agreed.”

Leonard got up and went to the window. It was open a crack and he pressed it down, shutting out the street noise, quieting the room.

“The sessions began normally. But as I regressed her further backwards, she became very distressed. I knew I was getting somewhere. Then…something happened. Something that altered my entire belief system, not just as a doctor, as a human being.”

“Get to the point.”

“Do you believe that the complexity of our bodies, our world…our universe, is too great to be just mere coincidence?”

“Never thought about it.” Liar.

“You a religious man?”

“Stop dancing around the subject.”

“Well, I’m Jewish; my faith doesn’t allow for the possibility of transmigration of the soul. So you can imagine my dismay when this nine year old girl began to recount, in wrenching detail, how she was brutally attacked and viciously raped. She went so far as to describe the pain of having her windpipe crushed, blood rushing out her nose and ears. You can see why I hesitated about telling the mother?”

“There has to be a logical explanation.”

Leonard walked over and opened a file cabinet. “There are two explanations. One is the possibility of transmigration, where the soul exits one body after death and enters another.”

“You’re talking about reincarnation?”

“Yes,” Leonard replied, locking eyes with Jack to make sure he knew he meant it. “The other is demonic possession. However, I gravely doubt that a demon would supply a young child with intimate knowledge of the problems a Dominican immigrant faces in a predominantly white American high school. Or fond memories of another loving family and mother. The evidence of xenoglossy alone was convincing enough.”

“Xenoglossy?” Jack asked. Leonard grabbed a folder from the cabinet and closed it.

“Fluently speaking a language you’ve never heard before.” Jack sat back, Rebecca’s episode at the hospital repeating in his memory. “To my knowledge, no one in her immediate family speaks Spanish, yet I had to translate almost half our session.”

“It’s just not possible,” Jack said, but he couldn’t deny that as incredible as it sounded, there was no rational explanation for how Rebecca knew what she knew. He had no choice but to remain open-minded for the moment.

Leonard returned to the table, placed the folder down, and began rifling through it.

“She even went so far as to recall her fear of dying unclean for God. I’m sure I don’t have to elaborate. Does that sound like the imagination of a nine year old to you?”

Leonard removed a report from the folder. “The attention to detail and the forensic pathology with which she described her experience of death virtually eliminated any possibility of an overactive imagination. But I still wasn’t convinced.”

Leonard placed a printout on the table. “I looked into the identity of this girl Carmen she described. I found her listing under missing persons.” Jack looked closely, it was a copy of Carmen’s report.

“I’ve seen it.”

“I knew if somehow her body was found, it would prove beyond a doubt that what Rebecca was telling me was real.”

“So you called me. I find the body, give your research credibility. Unbiased validation?” Jack’s tone turned Leonard around.

“Do you have any idea how important this is? If I can prove it irrefutably, it could rewrite Judeo-Christian dogma as we know it!”

“You’re crazy.”

“Of course I am.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me the whole story from the beginning?”

“I thought it would be better for you to experience it firsthand. Only then could we sit and discuss it like rational human beings. Clearly, it’s had the same effect on you as it did me.”

“You knew this had nothing to do with my case, didn’t you?”

“If it has nothing to do with your case, why then are you backtracking your investigation as if these crimes are related?”

Jack folded his arms. It was obvious he’d been used. But what difference did it make? Leonard was right, he was just as interested. Maybe more. There had been a murder, just like Leonard said. One mystery was solved, with a new one introduced. Leonard was also right not to tell him beforehand. He would never have even listened to the tape. Jack wanted to believe that Rebecca’s story — Leonard’s interpretation — could be real. But complex twists were for TV drama. The real world was ugly and sad, and rarely extraordinary.