Gillian Anderson - A Vision of Fire

“All of that is possible,” Ben said. He repeated another gesture they had seen in the videos: pointing his left hand away from him at an angle while crossing his body with his right hand. At the same time he said, “ ‘ Ogrusse. ’ That seems to be the superlative for ‘water,’ meaning ‘the biggest water,’ and it appears very near the word for ‘sky’ too.”

“You mean they’re interchangeable? ‘Sky’ and ‘water’? Because they’re blue?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” he said. “I took it to mean water that touches the sky.”

“Like a tsunami?”

“Again, still guesswork, but that’s a possibility.”

Caitlin thought back to Phuket. “You’d have to be sitting on the beach to see it quite like that, rolling in from the horizon.”

“If we’re talking about recent tsunamis, yeah. But what if this is a mega?” He extended his arms as if he were holding a barrel. “One big mother?”

“How big are we talking?” she asked.

“In living memory?” Ben replied. “Lituya Bay, Alaska, July 9, 1958. An 8.3-magnitude earthquake along the Fairweather Fault caused a landslide that pushed a hundred million cubic feet of earth and glacier into the narrow inlet of the bay. The result was a wave that rose 1,720 feet. That’s the tallest mega-tsunami of modern times, and I stress ‘modern times.’ There’s a whole lot of history that happened before we started keeping records.”

“Apparently,” Caitlin said. She shook her head, not quite able to process all of this. Partly from gratitude, partly for comfort, she hugged her companion. “Thank you, Ben. I have no way to say it enough, thank you.”

“ Thurstillalotlfttoworkt ,” he said into her collar.

They laughed at his muffled voice and she pulled back.

“There’s still a lot left to work out,” he repeated. “I was hoping you would bring back a video or something with more language from Haiti, but it doesn’t sound like you had a chance?”

Caitlin deflated. “No. I brought back stuff but I don’t know what it was.”

“More writing?”

“No,” she said.

“Caitlin?”

“The Vodou vision I had there, and then the nightmare on the plane. When I was hit with—with whatever it was, I felt heat, I saw fire.”

“Power of suggestion?”

“Well, sure, maybe. But from whom? The madame and her son didn’t say anything about fire. I mean, I was choking on sulfur, Ben. What would do that except a volcano?”

“But you weren’t around a volcano then. Or ever, were you?”

“I was around a caldera, once, in Southern California.”

“Right, dormant for how many thousands of years? How about incense, was there any of that in Haiti? Anything that could have suggested that smell?”

She shook her head.

Ben took a deep breath. “So, a volcano. How? Where?”

“What about when ?”

“No.” Ben shook his head. “Not buying where you’re going.”

“Honestly, I don’t know where I’m going but stay with me. We know that both of these girls experienced something—nightmares, visions, hallucinations, whatever you want to call them. And we know that they didn’t experience these things at any other time in their short lives. All they seem to share, what stands out, is that both have a parent or stepparent—in any case, a close adult figure—who recently experienced a near-death incident.”

“And the suicidal boy in Iran that you mentioned, didn’t he have a relative who just died?”

“Yes, a brother who was executed. So these physio-visual-linguistic reactions are being triggered by family trauma, even if there is no direct bloodline.”

“Which tells you what?” Ben asked. “Other than some kind of post-traumatic stress being a possible trigger. Where’s the physical volcano? Where’s the water that touches the sky? You’re saying you all experienced some part of that. Where?”

“That’s just it,” Caitlin said. “I don’t know.”

“What else could it be, then? Genetic imprinting? Vodou? Aliens?” Ben said.

Caitlin slumped. She thought for a moment, then shook her head slowly. “Yeah, I’m not there either,” she said. Then she started to get excited again. “But hold on. You just said genetic imprinting. What if it’s something similar? Jung talked about genetic imprinting—feelings, ideas that were passed down from our ancestors. Maybe these three family bonds are creating a portal into that collective unconscious.”

“But we’re not just talking about vague feelings or even ideas. Maanik and Gaelle seemed transported, almost totally.”

“And me,” Caitlin said.

“To where? A volcano somewhere in the past?”

“Not just the volcano, the Vikings too,” she said. “A lost language.” Then she murmured, almost as if it came from her unconscious, going with the flow: “No, not genetic imprinting. That’s too specific, individual-to-individual, and Gaelle wasn’t related to her stepmother, at least not genetically. What about racial memory, Ben? Group experiences.”

“You mean like past lives?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what I mean,” she said. “Because there’s something the girls and I share, my Viking ship and the Old Norse factor in their language.”

Ben shook his head no. “That’s tenuous at best. And really, really specific. Besides, where do the Mongolian and Japanese fit?”

“I don’t know, but my point is we are dealing with something way older than any of us that has somehow manifested itself here, now.”

“I don’t know, Caitlin. If you’re going to consider racial memory and past lives, what’s to prevent you from considering future lives or—”

“You’re right.” Caitlin nodded.

“Cai, I wasn’t being serious.”

“But I am! Ben, what if ? What if these phenomena—or just a single big phenomenon—are somehow free of time constraints? What if there is some kind of communal stream that’s carrying images and language—information—from ‘somewhen’ to ‘now’ and we’re here to receive and pass it forward?”

“Why you four?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I need to look up Pompeii, I remember there were eyewitness reports—”

“Pliny the Younger,” Ben said. “Chilling stuff. One of my schoolmates did a translation for his thesis.”

“Atlantis,” she muttered.

“Cai, don’t.”

Caitlin was only half-listening. Her brain was free-associating all over the map and through all the calendars that were and ever would be.

“Time to reattach your wires to the ground,” Ben said. “This is beyond speculation.”

“I’m fighting myself,” she said.

“Huh?”

“One of my professors always said that guesswork is part of the scientific method and if you skip that step, you just keep living in the same box that was handed to you at birth. I never really liked that intellectual bungee jump—but here I am, doing it!”

“And heading for the rocks,” Ben said. “You remember what your sophomore roommate used to call you?”

“ ‘The girl with rivets,’” Caitlin said. “Yeah. I like things to make sense. And this thing doesn’t seem to, does it?” Then she added almost dreamily, “But it must.”

Caitlin’s phone buzzed with a text. It was from Mrs. Pawar: My husband suggested I send this to you. It’s from Maanik.

Caitlin tapped on the attachment and a triangle made of triangles made of crescents filled the screen.

“Oh no. No.”

She turned the phone to show Ben.

“Jesus,” he breathed. “That’s impossible.”

“I’m going over there.” She stood, already tapping a reply to Mrs. Pawar. “I’ve got a couple hours before my first session.”