The Reincarnationist

by M. J. Rose

  Chapter 21

  The gray sedan following Gabriella’s car through the serpentine streets of Rome had been with them since they’d left the church. Josh noticed it after they made their first turn.

  Leaning out of his window, he quickly swiveled around, pointed the camera straight at the car, and clicked away. The car didn’t slow down or change lanes.

  Photojournalists know that a camera can scare all sorts of people away. Either that or it can get you killed. Josh had pulled this trick in Haiti once. While driving through an area he wasn’t supposed to be in, taking pictures of the abject poverty, he’d been followed. When he focused the camera on the driver, the man had started shooting back at him.

  With a gun.

  But whoever was in the car behind Gabriella obviously didn’t care that he’d been observed, which made Josh think he was probably the police, not someone hunting him. He decided not to tell Gabriella. She was under enough stress as it was.

  * * *

  Josh stayed downstairs in the cafeteria while Gabriella went up to the professor’s room. Even though he wanted to see the professor, Josh didn’t want to upset Rudolfo’s wife and children. He was the man who hadn’t been shot when their father and her husband had been, not to mention still an unlikely but potential suspect.

  Finding a pay phone, he called Malachai, but there was no answer on his cell phone or at the hotel. After leaving messages explaining where he was and what had happened, Josh went into the cafeteria, bought a cup of coffee—which was far better than what they served in any American hospital—and waited.

  After a few minutes, a man and a little boy came and sat down next to him. For a brief moment Josh wondered if he should be suspicious. Could this man be part of a scheme to keep him under surveillance—either by the police or by the criminal he’d seen in the tomb?

  The man opened a container of milk and a packet of cookies and put them in front of the boy, who shook his head and pushed them away, refusing the treat. The man sighed, and then, noticing Josh watching, grinned and said something to him in Italian that was unintelligible except for the word bambino. Guessing that the man’s wife was in labor and the little boy was scared of what was going on, Josh took a simple cardboard matchbox out of his pocket, emptied it of a dozen wooden red-tipped matches, and put it down on the table. He wasn’t as good at this as Malachai was, but he had been practicing and was certain he could entertain the little boy and take both of their minds off of the drama going on in their lives for at least a few minutes.

  During his first interview at the Phoenix Foundation, Josh had found himself unable to answer many of the questions Malachai had put to him. No doctor or therapist had probed as deeply, and despite Josh’s desperate need to discover what was happening to him, he was uncomfortable baring his soul.

  It was then that Malachai had pulled out a matchbox and asked Josh for a coin. Although it was a strange request, he obliged. Reaching into his pocket, he found a quarter and gave it to Malachai.

  Taking it in his tapered fingers, Malachai reached under the table and tapped it once. It made a dull thud. Tapped it. Another thud. Then he showed Josh his palm: empty. He opened the matchbox. The quarter was nestled inside.

  “I didn’t see that happen at all.”

  “That’s the thing about sleight of hand, you know there’s a trick happening, but you are rarely looking in the right place to catch it.”

  “I never would have expected the director of the Phoenix Foundation to entertain me with magic tricks,” Josh had said.

  “What was a pointless obsession during my childhood, at least according to my father, now comes in quite handy with the children we work with. In minutes, instead of the hours it would otherwise take, the magic relaxes them, helps them open up. It’s not, after all, that easy to describe your nightmares to a stranger, even for children for whom past-life experiences are not all that extraordinary.” Malachai then asked Josh to tell him about the episodes that had been taunting him in greater detail. “Is there a pattern to when the stories appear?”

  “Should there be?”

  “There are no rules about these things, no, but sometimes there are patterns worth noting.”

  Josh shook his head. “Not that I can discern.”

  “Are they in any kind of chronological order, is there a sequence to them?”

  “They’re of lives that I’ve never lived…fantasies…dreams…I don’t know if there’s a sequence.”

  “What about your emotional reactions to them? How do you feel after a regression?”

  This question silenced Josh. It was difficult to explain to anyone, no less a stranger, the overwhelming grief he felt for a woman whose name he didn’t even know but whom he was convinced he had failed.

  “I’m a photographer. I document reality. I take pictures of what’s in front of me. I can’t deal with pictures that I can’t grab on film.”

  “I understand that completely,” Malachai said. “And I can see how tough this is for you, so I only have a few more questions. Is that all right?”

  “Of course. I do appreciate what you’re doing…. I’m just…” It was a relief to be accepted, to have someone at last listen to his story without shaking their head and taking his temperature.

  “Frustrated. I know, Josh, it is frustrating. Can you give me any idea of how long the episodes last?”

  “Twenty, thirty seconds. One lasted a few minutes.”

  “And is it possible for you to bring them on?”

  “Why would I want to?” he asked in earnest, his aghast tone making Malachai smile.

  “Well, then, can you prevent them?”

  “Sometimes. Thank God.”

  “Can you stop them once they’ve started?”

  “Not always. That takes a colossal effort.”

  “But it’s something you try to do?”

  Josh nodded.

  “While an episode is in progress, are you physically or mentally uncomfortable? Can you describe how it feels?”

  Josh didn’t answer this question, either. He didn’t know how to explain it in words.

  Malachai’s voice was compassionate. “You’re looking at me as if I’m a maniacal surgeon coming at you with a scalpel. I’m sorry if you feel that I’m prying—this is all pro forma for us.”

  “It’s as if I’m…out of my own body.” He paused and looked past Malachai out the window at the trees in the park blowing in a harsh wind. “It’s as if I’m disconnected from reality and drifting untethered in another dimension.” He said each word as if it tasted bitter. As if it might even be poisonous.

  The boy had gathered up all the matches and gave them back to Josh.

  “Prego?” he asked.

  Josh didn’t have to guess, he knew what the child wanted.

  More distraction. More magic.

  Josh didn’t blame him.

  Chapter 22

  Gabriella sat by the professor’s bed watching the man who had been her mentor as he fought for every breath. His sudden frailty made no sense. Just two days ago they were underground, dirt clinging to their faces, sweating, doing what they both were meant to do. Except for the time she spent with Quinn, her almost three-year-old daughter, whom she missed terribly while she was away, nothing stirred her like digging out the dead and their secrets. During the past few years, Gabriella Chase’s life had changed more than it had stayed the same. It was the trips back to Rome and the field outside the city gates to the excavations that had kept her sane.

  There was nothing that competed with the moments of discovery. And there had been so many on this last dig. It was perhaps the proudest moment of her career when, only three weeks ago, the professor stood by her side, held his breath and watched as she brushed the first thick layer of dust off of the square object in the corpse’s hand, revealing a wooden box. Another sweep exposed an intricate pattern of carvings.

  “Well, look at that,” Rudolfo said, sotto voce. “I think…” He peered down, inspecting the b
as-relief carefully. “Yes, it’s a phoenix,” he said, naming the bird that symbolized rebirth to countless ancient cultures.

  Her eyes met the professor’s and they exchanged a look. Both of them knew the Egyptian legend dating back to the reign of Ramses III about a wooden box very similar to this one and the treasure of precious stones that the phoenix on its cover was purportedly protecting.

  Neither Gabriella nor Rudolfo dared to say out loud what both were thinking—was this the Egyptian box? Here, in Rome, in this fourth-century tomb?

  Patiently, Gabriella continued to brush off the remaining dirt and debris from the deep recesses of the small wooden casket, but she felt anything but patient. Typically, archeology itself destroys as it discovers; but, for the first time in her career, that had not been the case here. In fact, nothing about this dig had been emblematic of what had come before. It already had proved to be a significant find for her. Depending on what was inside this box, it might be the most important one of her career.

  Normally, a site can take a decade to uncover, but this tomb hadn’t collapsed in on itself. Other buildings had never been erected above it. That was one of the mysteries she and Professor Rudolfo had marveled at—how pristine this whole area had remained; how, after so many centuries, there were still parts of the world, even in metropolitan areas, where the past was so very close to the surface.

  Everything about an excavation was a mystery, but, to both of them, this one seemed more mysterious than most—including the way they had discovered the site itself.

  It had been snowing that Sunday morning four years before, and the old Yale campus had been shrouded by a thick white blanket. Walking across the quad, Gabriella was glad she’d gone out early. It was one of those perfect winter mornings, quiet and sparkling, and she was almost enjoying it.

  Since childhood she’d been going to services at Battell Chapel, where her mother had been the choirmaster of the Beethoven Society. When she’d died, the chapel had been the only place where Gabriella could still feel her, where she didn’t miss her quite so much. Maybe that was because she’d always sat without her mother beside her, or maybe it was because there, God’s grace offered her some peace.

  The unusual acoustical effect in the chapel that day, she later read in the Yale News, was a result of the heavy snow quieting the world outside and insulating the building at the same time. The singers’ voices rang out like bells, pure and crystalline, and it felt as if the organ’s deepest tones were vibrating inside of her body, not just in the brass pipes.

  The storm had kept a lot of people away, and there wasn’t much of a crowd; still Gabriella hardly noticed the priest sitting in the row in front of her. There were often visiting clergy at Battell, some who officiated, and others, like him, who just came to pray. Nothing out of the ordinary happened until, after the service ended, he approached her while she put on her coat and greeted her by name. She was surprised that he knew who she was until he explained that he’d driven up to Yale specifically to see her and that the chaplain had pointed her out when she’d walked in.

  The priest introduced himself as Father Dougherty and asked if she could spare him a few minutes, and she agreed. They stayed in the chapel while everyone else left.

  Gabriella could still remember how quiet it was.

  The snow altered the sound of the silence, too.

  Because of the storm, the interior of the chapel had been dark during the whole service, but the sun had come out and suddenly the dozens of richly colored stained-glass windows were illuminated, casting their jewel-toned shadows across the pews. Across the two of them.

  Battell is a lovely building. The interior is carved from solid oak, and the walls are stenciled with complicated patterns. There is so much going on visually inside the chapel that, in retrospect, Gabriella realized she wasn’t always focused on the priest’s face.

  He’d been so average looking. Almost too average, if that made any sense. He was at that indiscriminate age—somewhere between fifty and seventy. He wore wire-rimmed glasses. They must have been thick or slightly tinted, because she couldn’t remember what color his eyes were. Or maybe his eyes were just brown. He had a very slight Boston accent.

  Father Dougherty said he’d come to give her a document that had been written in the late nineteenth century. “It’s stained with blood, but you can wipe it clean,” he said as he handed her a manila envelope.

  Inside were several sheets of rich vellum paper covered with spidery, hard-to-read handwriting. After a few seconds of staring at them in the semidarkness, it became clear what she held was torn from someone’s journal.

  “The diary those pages come from is safely put away,” the priest explained. “It was in the possession of a parishioner who turned it over to his priest in the 1880s during confession, and because confession is sacred I can’t tell you any more. I know I’m being cryptic and I’m sorry. But you really don’t need to know the whole story or to read the rest of the diary, you have all you’re going to need right there.”

  “All I’m going to need for what?”

  The priest stared into the apse, an intensely meditative expression on his face, and didn’t answer for a few seconds.

  “If what’s written there is true, you’ll be famous.”

  “What about you? What will you get out of this?”

  “I’m just the messenger. All this happened a long time ago, but my bishop believes that it’s wrong for us to continue to keep this part of the document a secret.”

  Unexpectedly, he stood and pulled on his coat. “Just read it, Professor Chase. Do the right thing.”

  “What’s the right thing?”

  “Shed light on the darkness.”

  He left quickly, not waiting for Gabriella, and by the time she gathered her things and went outside, she couldn’t see the black-clad figure anywhere. Just an expanse of white snow and a woman wearing a red parka trudging across the campus.

  The sheets outlined directions to five separate locations that were all potential archeological digs of historical and spiritual importance, the notes said. It took Gabriella a few days to ascertain that all the sites were in Rome. Having made that connection, she contacted her mentor and partner in a recent dig in Salerno, Professor Aldo Rudolfo, who was equally intrigued. Of course he knew the general areas referred to, and he told Gabriella that just two years ago a spot nearby had been excavated, but nothing had been found.

  A few weeks later he e-mailed her to say that all the sites in question were on land owned by the descendants of an archeologist who had died in the late 1800s and he was negotiating with them, hoping they’d allow a team to excavate.

  It took a year, but he worked out a contract with the family and they’d finally been able to go to work.

  Nothing would ever replace trowels and shovels once you got to the heart of the find, but the advanced laser and infrared surveying devices she and the professor had been using enabled them to pinpoint the exact areas to dig with more accuracy than ever before possible. The first two sites had not yielded anything of significance, only some walls, some ancient shards of pottery and glass. Typical detritus for an old field outside of the city gates.

  But this site, number three, had been different.

  The professor opened the box, extracted a dried-out leather pouch and untied it. The sound he made when he shone the light into it was somewhere between a cry and a shout. “Look, Gabriella, look at what our Bella is holding. It may be that you’ve found your treasure.”

  Now, with the professor lying in a hospital bed, suffering from a gunshot wound and a substantive loss of blood, fighting a critical infection, it appeared that someone thought the treasure had been worth killing for.

  Chapter 23

  Rome, Italy—Wednesday, 3:10 p.m.

  The light changed to green, a car horn blasted and the priest crossed the street past a row of vendors, giving cursory glances at their merchandise. If he made eye contact with any of them it wasn’t visibl
e to any strangers who happened to see the middle-aged, overweight cleric. Twenty yards farther, he huffed as he climbed the few steps at the bottom of the Via Vittorio Veneto next to the Piazza Barberini and entered the dingy church of Santa Maria della Concezione.

  No one at the sidewalk cafés across the street paid any attention to him as he disappeared behind the wooden doors. The church wasn’t nearly as popular a pilgrimage destination as the Vatican or the Pantheon. Compared to Rome’s grand and glorious houses of worship, a visit to the crypt at della Concezione was a macabre adventure, though, so it had its share of tourists. Another priest walking in didn’t attract any notice.

  The change from the bright afternoon to the dark interior took some adjusting to. The church was musty and lackluster except for the gold cross glinting above the nave. He looked at his watch. Stepped up to the font, dipped his fingers into the basin of holy water, crossed himself, walked up the main aisle, entered a pew, knelt down and prayed for a few seconds. Or at least it appeared that he was praying.

  He was really keeping his eye on his watch. The tour, he knew from the guidebook, would begin on the hour. His heart jumped around in his chest.

  After six minutes passed, he lifted his head, stared at the altar, got up and made his way to the back of the church, where the curious gathered.

  The scent was different down in the crypt, but the ancient smell of dirt and moisture was not unpleasant. The smell of antiquity, he thought. A monk with a dour face escorted the six of them down a narrow corridor, through iron gates and into the five chambers of the underground cemetery that contained the remains of four thousand Capuchin monks.

  But not buried remains.

  Every wall and each ceiling was covered with baroque decorations made up entirely of the monks’ dried out and bleached bones. Altars, chandeliers and clocks: everything a human relic.

  He barely listened as the monk who led the tour droned on, explaining that la macabra composiziones in the series of tableaux had been made out of the bones of the dear departed monks dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that the spectacle had not been created to inspire fear, but, to encourage prayer and meditation.