Seeing Darkness

by Heather Graham

  Kylie had to keep seeing this recent past, Corrine’s turn on the couch, with the hypnotist. It was something she could cling to as she fought against...

  The knife.

  No! Something inside her screamed, fought the new images that were not the past, but now.

  Fight it, fight it, fight it!

  Kylie saw the little bubble-movie of the recent past again. Sighs and murmurs of amazement and pleasure went around the little group who had come to Dr. Sayers, a psychologist/hypnotist who specialized in past-life regression. Her friends were enchanted.

  But Kylie couldn’t help but think, What a pile of...

  Yet, she had agreed to come. Her friends were dear to her, and Corrine was the bride-to-be, and this—regression to past lives—was what she had wanted to do that day.

  So Kylie had smiled the whole way. They were in Salem, a haunt they had all visited multiple times in the past, for parties, for history, the Peabody Essex Museum, fun ghost tours, even shopping.

  They were all from Massachusetts and had met at Harvard. None of them had come from money; they had worked hard for their scholarships and had kept jobs to pay their way through their school years as well. That had made their little jaunts extra special.

  They had come here, close to all their homes, so many times. They all loved the city. They took a ghost tour every time but avoided the obvious tourist traps. They didn’t usually come for tea-leaf or palm or tarot readings. The town, with its incredibly sad past, was a natural backdrop for every manner of Wiccan, New Ager, or occultist. They had fun with it. And Salem was, at a certain time of the year, Halloween heaven.

  When they’d started out that morning—she and Corrine Rossello, Nancy Ryman, and Jenny Auger—Kylie had assured them that she didn’t believe in past-life regression. However, Corrine had already made the appointments, and this little weekend together was Corrinne’s concept of a bridal party or shower—she had no interest in dance clubs and strippers. She just wanted their group to do something special together; this was her version of a bachelorette weekend.

  The knife.

  He’d caught hold of her and spun her around. Despite her hatred for him, she wanted to live. She begged, she pleaded, she cried. She’d have done anything, said anything, to stop him. And yet she knew, even as he held her there, that there was no chance, that the knife would fall, that she would look into the hatred in his dark eyes as he brought that blade down, ripping into her flesh again and again, she knew that he would want her to suffer even past death...

  Back to the bubble. Back to the immediate past.

  Kylie fought to remember where she was. Her mind was in a strange place, switching between screens, the memory of the hypnotist’s office, and the memory of the knife in the alley...

  She struggled hard to stop it, not to see the image of the knife, the pain and the numbness, the look in the eyes of her murderer.

  “It will be new for us! I hear it’s fun, and you’re going to love it!” Corrine had assured her, when she had first suggested it on the drive up.

  Kylie had smiled through it all. She hadn’t loved it, but she did love her friend, and this was what Corrine wanted. She had been last to go under with the hypnotist; Jenny discovered she had been a Norse princess, and Nancy had ruled a pirate ship until she’d married a legitimate sea captain and lived happily on a Caribbean island.

  Apparently, none of the three had been poor, nor maids or servants of any kind—or lived lives of any hardship or remarkable trauma.

  Or died beneath the fury of a razor-honed blade, cutting flesh and blood and bone.

  “Oh, my God!” Corrine had said, her eyes closed. She almost sat up, in love with the vision in her mind. “It’s Derrick—it’s my Derrick! He was a duke in his previous life, and now I’m running to him, and he sweeps me up and...”

  Corrine’s voice faded. She lay back, exhausted—and smiling. Of course, she was smiling; she was about to marry Derrick.

  A great guy, solid, but rather staid. He was working for an attorney as he made his way through law school. He was the kind of guy to give Corrine the life she wanted, with a picket fence, two-point-five children, and a cat and dog in the yard. They would settle in a suburb outside either New York City or Boston. Kylie knew that because they had all told one another their dreams often enough.

  Dr. Sayers had smiled, saying, “Corrine, I’m bringing you back now. I will count slowly to ten, snap my fingers...and you will wake up.”

  He was somewhere between thirty and thirty-five, Kylie thought. Neatly dressed in a blue pin-striped suit, with sleek sandy hair combed back and a surprisingly...mundane look about him. The lights in his office were kept low, but he’d had no problem with all of them sitting in for each other’s “regressions.”

  The tea, Kylie thought. He had something in the tea. But that can’t be legal, can it? As the hypnotist counted, Kylie couldn’t help but think, Are they all really falling for this? Seriously?

  Her friends were all professional women; they had met as freshman at Harvard, for goodness sake! Corrine was the regional manager of an incredibly popular restaurant chain. Nancy was working on Wall Street, and Jenny was head of accounting for a small group of boutique hotels. Kylie had just been hired away from the Met to manage all the newly opened Trelawny House, a museum that featured New York’s Colonial period through the present—including a historic-themed tavern.

  “Ten,” Dr. Sayers said, and snapped his fingers.

  Corrine’s eyes flew open and she stared around at the others. “That was amazing! I was there—that was me! Oh, I did live before, and Derrick and I... We were in love over and over again. It’s so wonderfully right!” She jumped up and caught Kylie’s hand. “Your turn, Kylie!”

  And then Kylie was on the couch, and Dr. Sayers was talking to her, telling her she would never do anything that she wouldn’t do naturally, that she would search back into the hidden recesses of her mind and memory.

  As she slipped under, she thought, I didn’t even drink the tea.

  But then she was somewhere else.

  She was someone else.

  The bubble was gone; she’d lost the fight to escape whatever was happening to her. To the her she had become.

  “I’m by the graveyard... It’s dark...and he has me...”

  Kylie couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth, but she could see herself moving down the dirt road by the forgotten graveyard just outside the city. She shouldn’t have come this way—the road was isolated.

  A cat screeched.

  She knew she had made a mistake, the worst mistake of her life, the mistake that would bring about her death.

  Someone was coming after her.

  And she knew it was him.

  When she turned and saw him, she screamed, but no one heard...

  He dragged her into the cemetery surrounding the small church. She saw the old gravestones around them as he jerked her along by her hair.

  For a moment, one of those little bubbles of reality broke through. Where the hell am I? Kylie wondered.

  But she knew where she was. Not in the center of Salem, not where the tourists went.

  The knife! Oh, God, ripping through her flesh, making that terrible noise...

  They’d warned her he would kill her. And he was doing it. She could feel the numbness setting back in, a terrible cold, a horrific sense of loss...

  “Ten. Wake up, Kylie.”

  Her eyes flew open. They were all there—Corrine, Jenny, Nancy, and Dr. Sayers. They were staring at her with concern.

  “Kylie, you scared us—you were screaming and screaming, as if you were being skinned alive!” Corrine said, her eyes wide, her face contorted with concern.

  “I don’t think she met a prince or a duke or anything,” Jenny muttered, hazel eyes narrowed. Tall and slim, she had long sandy hair, a d
ry sense of humor, and often used sarcasm as a method of defense.

  But despite her dry words, she appeared as concerned as the others.

  “Miss Connelly, are you all right?” Dr. Sayers asked nervously.

  Of course he was nervous. People came to him to find out they had been princesses or some kind of royalty or, at the least, had been very influential in some imaginary past life.

  They didn’t come to feel knives thrusting into their bodies.

  Kylie made an effort to smile. She didn’t know what the hell had happened, but she tried to touch her body surreptitiously, to make sure she wasn’t bleeding. It had all been too real: the feel of the knife; the terror, the sheer horror of knowing she was being brutally murdered.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, laughing desperately to shake the feeling that had come over her. “Sir, you’re very good,” she told Dr. Sayers to ease his fear. After all, he had made the bride-to-be very happy. “It’s just like I was there,” she said.

  “And?” Corrine asked nervously.

  When Kylie hesitated, Nancy, a petite redhead, spoke up, “You were screaming, crying for help...begging.”

  “Well, sadly, I guess my last life wasn’t so good,” Kylie said lightly. “I apparently had something going with a gorgeous monster of a man—and he killed me.”

  “That’s awful. I’m so sorry,” Corrine said with distress. “This was all my fault.”

  “No one’s fault—a truly unique experience!” Kylie said quickly. This was supposed to be a wonderful weekend. Corrine wanted to go to Salem and do some of the old things that had helped them escape the stress of final exams, like staying at their favorite inn and strolling through the funky shops—so many of them witchcraft themed, some owned by true believers and some by smart capitalists. And that night, they would have drinks and dinner at their favorite witch-themed restaurant on Essex, the Cauldron. A packed itinerary.

  Which gave Kylie an out now.

  She offered Dr. Sayers her most effervescent smile. “That was great—and reminded me we’ve still got a lot to get done tonight. Guys, I’m so sorry if I freaked you all out! But it was really amazing. Truly. So...” She paused, looking at her threesome of concerned friends. “Onward?”

  She wasn’t seeing any visions and she wasn’t feeling the agony of the knife, but she was anxious to move and go—anywhere. Out of the doctor’s office.

  And forget.

  “We have to take care of the bill,” Nancy said quietly.

  “Looked after it with the receptionist when we got here,” Kylie said, never so happy she had chosen to take care of a bill—and that she had done it discreetly ahead of time.

  Corrine protested, but the rest of them argued that this was her special weekend, and they wouldn’t hear of her paying for anything. But Nancy and Jenny turned on Kylie—she shouldn’t have paid the whole thing.

  “You guys get dinner,” she said breezily, standing and collecting her purse and jacket.

  Assuring Dr. Sayers once again she was all right, Kylie managed to herd the others out to the street. Slowly, she got them all moving through shop after shop, looking at charming local art and handmade jewelry, along with the T-shirts, bumper stickers, incense, and souvenirs that could be found just about anywhere in the city.

  At last, they headed to the Cauldron.

  They ordered their first round at the bar. One of the bartenders was named Matt, and he was friendly, tall, dark, and charming. His partner, Cindy, was just as cute and perky. Eventually, as a dinner table cleared, they settled into one of the restaurant’s upholstered booths.

  “You know, it was Laurie Cabot who made it all what it is today,” Nancy said, looking back at a painting of a typical evil witch—a crone in a black hat and cape, stirring a cauldron—at the entrance to the restaurant. “In the 1970s, Governor Dukakis gave her the title Official Witch of Salem. And, of course, the practice of Wicca has nothing to do with the devil-worshipping, dancing-naked-in-the-moonlight witchcraft those poor people were accused of. I mean, I remember as a kid...it was always so sobering. How horrible to imagine people were convicted on spectral evidence!”

  The four of them knew all the theories regarding the 1692 trials. Nancy was from Marblehead, just a stone’s throw from Salem and, at one time, an area caught up in the witchcraft hysteria as well. Her family was all but entrenched here. Her mother belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution and wanted Nancy to belong as well.

  Jenny’s parents had come from Germany as children but settled north of Boston, in Lynn. Corrine had been born and raised right in Boston, and for Kylie, it had been Swampscott—a tiny place just outside of Salem.

  “Well, I, for one, do not agree with the idea about the mold in the wheat in the least,” Jenny said. “Everyone in the area would have eaten the same wheat.”

  “Just the art of suggestion,” Kylie countered. “I mean, seriously, there were a zillion property disputes going on at the time. And kids were bored out of their skulls. It was dark as all hell at night, and the girls had Tituba telling them all kinds of tales. Mix that with the fact that you got into trouble for just about anything, you were afraid of native attacks, the woods were terrifying—and you could hear authority figures talking about their problems with their neighbors. Not to mention the fact that in Europe—”

  “Hey,” Corrine said, “you weren’t being attacked as a witch back in the seventeenth century, were you, Kylie?”

  Kylie shook her head.

  “It drives me crazy when people depict them as being burned!” Nancy said. “No witches were burned here in America—they all went to the gallows.”

  “Salem has a long history, and not all to do with the Witch Trials of 1692,” Kylie reminded them.

  Just then, a tall man with shaggy blond hair walked over. “Hey, ladies. Just stopping by to say hello and welcome to Salem. I’m Carl Fisher. I lead ghost tours. I start out just down the street in about an hour. I hope you’ll join me. I mean, I really hope you’ll join me.”

  “Maybe tomorrow night,” Corrine said politely.

  Carl looked them all over and smiled. “That’ll be nice. Oh, if you want some lowdown on the town, I come back here after. I’d love to help you out.”

  “I’m from Marblehead,” Nancy said, staring at him. “And we’ve all been here many, many times. But thank you.”

  “We’re all from the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Jenny added.

  He was cute and friendly and obviously interested in them. Kylie knew her friends were trying not to be rude. But Corrine was getting married, Nancy was in a serious relationship, Jenny had just gotten out of a relationship and wasn’t ready for even a rebound. And Kylie had been working hours and hours per day, getting up to speed at her new job. She was too busy to date. Then again, she hadn’t been interested in the dating scene for a while now.

  Carl looked at them all hopefully for a moment longer.

  “Girls’ weekend,” Kylie told him, wincing slightly. She hoped her tone and body language were right—they thought he was fine, they just weren’t ready to welcome a stranger into their evening. “Corrine here is going to be married.”

  “Ah, well. Congratulations,” he told Corrine, who smiled and nodded her thanks. “But I do give an amazing ghost tour—chock-full of history. Which you guys probably already know. But I tell it well, if you should change your mind or maybe tomorrow night or whenever.”

  “We love ghost tours. And we will look for you tomorrow night,” Jenny assured him.

  “Great. See you then,” he told them, and moved on. He headed back to the bar, where, obviously, the bartender and several regulars seemed to know him.

  “Slow to take a hint,” Corrine murmured.

  “Hey, he’s cute,” Jenny protested. “You’re getting married. That’s not on the horizon for the rest of us yet.”

>   “Ouch. And, hey! Nancy and Scott have been together a long time now,” Kylie said.

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a handsome man,” Nancy said, grinning. “Besides, he was looking at you, Kylie.”

  She tried to smile; she still felt odd. She’d been trying to shake what had happened during her “regression” all afternoon.

  “She’s right. He is cute, and he was definitely into you, Kylie,” Corrine said.

  “He was into all of us,” Kylie said. “We’re women, and we’re young. Anyway, we’re here to celebrate our last time together as a foursome of single women. We’re here for Corrine to go crazy as a bride-to-be. So what if her crazy is a little tame. Past-life regression, shopping—museums! And dinner. And we’re all into it.” She grinned at Corrine.

  “You guys are the best,” Corrine told them. “Thank you for doing that regression thing. But...oh, Kylie. I’m still so sorry that yours was awful. Mine...my life under hypnosis was truly spectacular. I could feel the breeze and sunshine, and I knew I was hurrying to meet my love! But, Kylie, we were worried. Dr. Sayers tried to get you out—he counted and snapped his fingers, because you were literally screaming. It was really scary.”

  Kylie waved a dismissive hand. She just wanted to forget. “So what is everyone going to order?” she asked, turning to the menu.

  As the others discussed what looked most delicious, Kylie fell silent, her attention elsewhere. She stared at one of the wide-screen televisions over the bar. The news was on, and something inside her seemed to freeze.

  He was on the news.

  The man she had seen under hypnosis.

  The man viciously dragging her into the graveyard, the man who had shoved the knife into her, time and time again.

  Kylie stood, heedless of the looks from her friends. She approached the bar.

  On the television, the man was nicely dressed in a designer suit. His hair was conservatively cut and framed his face—a handsome face, lean, with broad cheekbones and a square chin.

  Kylie couldn’t hear the sound, but the words were close-captioned at the bottom of the screen.