For the first several days I was in the hospital, Dad wouldn’t leave my bedside, so the police had to take his statement there. Of course, he had to tell a good story that made sense of the kidnapping at Milton’s house and the incident at school. And he had to explain how we all ended up at the warehouse. He was great, though. I guess he'd had some practice before now. He told the cops, “I was buying coffee, standing in line, and struck up a conversation with the fellow behind me," I was listening from my bed. “He seemed interested, so I told him about my family, my son, and his friends. That was the end of it until I saw him outside our house a few days later. I approached him and asked him what he was doing there. He acted like it was a coincidence but I could tell something was wrong. I should have gone to the police right then,” he shook his head. I hated to admit it but his acting was pretty brilliant.
“That sounds about right,” the policeman replied.
“The next day,” my dad went on, “I heard there was a disturbance with one of the students at the high school but I didn’t know it was one of Phil’s friends. Then, I saw the same man again in the hall at school after watching my son in “The Crucible”, and he definitely had a gun.” It was an impressive tale Dad told. And they believed it. Why wouldn’t they? It was better than a story about people who keep being reborn and who know the past so well they can predict the future.
I was still in my hospital bed recovering while everyone came and went, sharing their stories. Mike, Roger, Jamie and I told my parents and Milton what we had done to rescue them and they filled us in on what had happened to them since they’d disappeared.
Milton told us, “That day that Philip ran into me and Roger after school, I was really just thinking about getting home to my computer. I noticed this fellow I didn’t know as I was walking up to my house. He called me over to his car just as I was unlocking the front door.” He paused and thought for a second and then went on, “His car was parked in front of our house and it looked like he was changing a flat tire. He explained as I walked toward him that he was having trouble getting a nut off of the wheel. He asked me if I would lend him a hand and, as I bent down to take a look, he stood up really fast, wrapped his arm around my neck, and clamped this foul-smelling cloth over my mouth and nose. I remember trying to fight him but then my knees started to give way… and he sort of launched me into the back seat of his car. Then I guess I blacked out.”
Milton shook his head at the memory. Then, he continued, “When I came to, I was handcuffed to the frame of an old, cast-iron bed. It squeaked loud enough when I moved to let anyone around know I was awake. Also, I had a killer headache. I was being held in what looked to be an old barn. The bed was right out in the middle of the space with nothing near it. I was only handcuffed by my right wrist, my left arm was free. I discovered that I could slide the metal ring around the top part of the bed frame so I was able to stand up and even walk a few steps around the bed. Not that doing that helped me in any practical way, except to get to the other side of the bed. On that other side there was a plastic jug full of water and an old chamber pot. The room was mostly empty except for the bed, which was bolted to the floor. Someone had spent some time planning this. There was also an old potbelly stove in the corner that was pumping out heat, keeping the place pretty warm—thankfully. A few low watt light bulbs were hanging from the roof here and there, casting a dim yellow glow to the old wooden walls of the barn.”
Mike interrupted, “Did you hear anything or see anything to figure out where you were?”
“Did you ever see the man again?” Jamie asked.
“I heard some distant traffic, like trucks on a highway, but they were far away, and yes, Jamie, I did see the man again. I’m getting to that. But first, I was there for hours without anything changing. I mostly slept, I think. I didn’t want to drink any of the water in the jug. I also realized that whoever had kidnapped me now had my backpack. I had everything in there—a flyer for the show, all of your names and phone numbers in my day planner, my research on the Hunter—everything. Finally, I sat up when I heard someone moving around outside, making quite a bit of noise. The door was near the stove and when it opened, an old man entered. He was about five-nine, thin but muscular. He was balding, with blond hair on the sides over his ears. Oh! And he had a big nose. A long, skinny nose like a sail attached to his face,” Milton chuckled a little. He went on, “The guy walked quickly in a straight line to the bed. I was frozen in place. He didn’t say a word and neither did I. I still couldn’t move—as well as being handcuffed to the bed—and before I knew it, he’d reached out with that nasty smelling rag and clamped it to my face again! When I woke up, this time we were in that cold warehouse, and you two were there,” he said gesturing to my mom and dad.
“First of all,” Dad said when Milton had stopped talking, “I don’t think this guy’s actually old. I’d say he’s fifty years old—tops.”
“Yeah, that’s old,” Milton said, laughing. Mom and Dad just looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
“Anyway, the rest of your description was really accurate, Milton,” Mom said, as she took her turn telling the story. “After we left the school, he forced us all to get into his car—all of us in the front seat. He made your father drive and I sat in the middle with that little gun pushed into my ribs for the entire drive to that factory. He didn’t take the gun away from me until we were all the way up in that back office. Once we stepped through the door, he pushed me away from him really hard, like he absolutely hated me. He’s an awful man!”
“He pushed you right into me,” my dad added, “So I would have to catch you and couldn’t go for him. He stepped out the door and slammed it shut, throwing a bolt and locking us in. Then, we realized Milton was there. He was asleep on a sofa and we had a hard time waking him up.”
Dad turned to Milton and spoke directly to him, “You seemed a little beaten up, but otherwise fine, just groggy from whatever had been used to drug you. We sat there, waiting, but the man never came back. Then, we heard a gunshot and started banging on the door. Not long after that, Jamie and Roger found us!” He sat there thinking and then added, “You know, he never asked me a single question or gave us a single reason for kidnapping us.”
◆◆◆
Since by that time there were only a few more weeks left in the school year, Mom and Dad fixed it so I didn’t have to go back to classes. Instead, Mike would pick up my assignments and deliver them to me after school each day. It was a great way for us to have a little time alone together. We spent a lot of that time holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes. It wasn’t as sappy as it sounds. This is how the Knowers get to know each other, remember?
In those days while I was recovering, I also learned all about Ansel and Ingmar, our previous incarnations, as well as many other lives and situations we’d been involved in. I already knew a bit about us helping to end the reign of terror instigated by Senator Joe McCarthy. In another life we’d been unacknowledged helpers in New York when we managed to trace a typhoid outbreak to Mary Mallon—the woman who was later called “Typhoid Mary.” There’d been a good chance of her getting a job cooking for the Roosevelt family, which included their new baby named Franklin Delano. We knew that if she infected members of that family, it would be devastating somehow, and we knew we had to stop her. Our Knowledge didn’t extend so far as to tell us that the baby was going to be President of the United States, but we knew we had to keep Typhoid Mary away from him.
As the days passed, I learned surprisingly detailed memories from several other lives as I sat on the floor looking into Mike’s eyes, looking so deeply at times that I swear I couldn’t even feel the floor. It was pretty great, but it was also really intense. There was this rush of emotion each time a new memory surfaced and it also sorta made me nauseous, so we couldn’t do it for too long.
One of the major realizations I had when I was remembering those previous lives and experiences was that, during most of those lives, Mike an
d I had been two men who spent their lives joined together as a couple, whether we were open about it or not. There were some exceptions, of course. With the Mary Mallone episode, we were brothers who lived in upstate New York. In several memories, which were disturbing for me, I was Mike’s wife. In one such memory we lived in a village in Switzerland and we were apparently very happy. In all the memories I had of being Mike’s wife, life was rather blissfully serene. There were no tangles with dictators or putting down bad guys. My memories of when we were two men who spent their lives together as a couple were the ones filled with dramatic confrontations. There must have been something about our outsider status, or always having to be on guard against discovery that kept us vigilant for useful Knowledge. Whatever it was, the lives where we willingly chose each other, as two men, were the ones where we were most able to save others from death and destruction and war. It was pretty cool.
We never really discussed the kiss we’d had that night at the warehouse. I wanted to, but the time just never seemed right. For his part, I think Mike may have been worried about my mental capacity to absorb any more new material. I was getting routinely freaked out after almost every session we had. Maybe he didn’t want to put any more pressure on me by asking me about it.
Instead, we would sit on the floor for a few minutes each day and I would remember how we had tried to save the world in our relatively small way at some point in the past. Two other things I learned about during those sessions were filth and stink. People watch movies set in the past and they think that it looks beautiful. No. The world used to be a filthy, smelly place. After one of those sessions I asked Mike, “Did you never bathe? And what was that on my shoe? Oh, never mind, I don’t want to know.” Mike just sat there and watched me with amusement. “Help me up, please,” I asked, as it was still hard to stand up from the floor without feeling pain. He stood up and then gave me a hand.
“That was such a tragic failure," he said. “We tried to get those people to leave earlier. They just wouldn’t go,” he shook his head sadly.
“Remember that little woman?” I asked after standing and getting my breath back. “Tamson was her name, I think. You practically begged her to go after her husband had left the room. I remember thinking you’d done it, you’d gotten them out on the trail in time, but Mr. Donner wouldn’t listen to us or his wife. He would only go when he was good and ready.” The memory was heartbreaking and deeply frustrating on a very personal level because I was the one who had the vision of their disastrous future if nothing changed. Donner’s was the last wagon train out of Saint Louis that season. “We failed them," I said, closing eyes, still half-way stuck in the memory.
“We did the best we could,” Mike replied. “We couldn’t exactly tell him he was going to starve to death and then someone would actually eat him to stay alive, could we?”
“No, I guess not," I said, teeth clenched at remembered failure. I was also learning a lot about frustration and failure. Every vision I had for this family unfortunately came true. The Donner’s and several other families left for California, thinking they could take a faster route to beat the winter snows in the mountains. They didn’t, and were stuck there, freezing and starving, struggling to survive. Most didn’t live to see the spring.
Many of my memories were of being ineffective in changing the course of events that I knew would end badly. There’s a special kind of frustration when you know exactly what’s going to happen and yet all of your efforts to change outcomes for the better fail—sometimes miserably. As exciting as all this was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to devote my life to being frustrated when no one would listen to me—especially when I knew what was going to happen and I could literally save lives. Also, in every past life I saw, I was with Mike. Was this relationship preordained? Fated? Destined? Why do we have so many words that mean the same thing? When we began having our afternoon sessions, I still didn't know what I wanted. I did know that I wanted to make my own decisions about my life, and not just step into the role of destiny’s puppet. It was clear that Mike and I were getting closer, but I was waiting for more clarity on the issue.
◆◆◆
“I think we need to talk," Mike said to my mom. Mike and I were at the kitchen table doing homework and eating snacks when she came home. She was headed to her bedroom when he spoke up.
“Can it wait till I’ve changed?” she asked and, instead of waiting for an answer from Mike, said, “I’ll be right back." Mom barely slowed down as she spoke, continuing on her way down the hall, kicking off her shoes as she went.
“What’s up?” I asked him quietly. I had a feeling that this was not going to be good.
“We just need to talk about what we’re going to do,” he said, which didn’t make me feel any better. “I graduate next week. You’re healing and, well, the Hunter is still out there." He spoke without looking at me, like he knew this would be hard for me.
“I don’t want to talk about any of that,” I whispered into the silence of the dining room. Mike reached out and touched my hand but said nothing.
“Okay, Mike,” Mom interrupted. “What’s going on?” she asked as she came down the hall and then took a seat at the dining room table next to Mike and across from me.
“Well, what’s our plan?” Mike asked once she’d sat down.
“Sorry, I don’t follow you,” she responded, glancing back and forth between me and Mike.
“The Hunter is still out there—as far as we know—and I haven’t heard anyone talk about what we’re going to do about that.”
“You’re right. George and I were just talking about this. First, you should know that the police are still driving past the house everyday, looking for anything suspicious. Philip, your father has been calling the detective in charge, updating him on your progress, and reminding him that a kidnapper is still on the loose. Since you boys hadn’t brought it up, we thought we wouldn’t either—at least not until after graduation. But, now that you want to talk about it, maybe we should get everyone together and come up with some kind of plan?”
“Okay,” Mike replied. “I think Milton and Roger and Jamie ought to be involved in this discussion, too. Hey, are we forming a pod here?” Mike asked excitedly. I’d learned a pod was a group of Knowers who work together to confirm their knowledge, then work to achieve their common goal. Mike and I had sometimes been a pod of two but had also worked in pods with as many as ten other Knowers.
“No,” Mom said. “No pods, just a group of Knowers coming together for mutual survival. The last true pod I was part of was back in Salem, and as you know, that didn’t go so well.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “After that, I’ve always told myself, no pods, never again.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Knowers do not typically communicate between pods in order to limit their risk and protect others in case of discovery. Exposure of a pod has happened in the distant past leading to the demise of the pod, and death of its members. The American witch trials of the 17th century are perhaps the most famous example of discovery, exposure and death of a pod of Knowers.
Southampton Free Press 1975 (Excerpt)
After Mike went home to his dinner and Dad came home to his, Mom and I told him about our plan. I let Mom do most of the talking as my mouth was almost always full. The second helping of everything was better than the first. It seemed that after I’d been shot, my usual non-stop hunger had gotten even worse. Was that possible?
“So,” she filled him in, “We decided we’re all going to get together here after I come home from work tomorrow and you’ll join us. Then as a group, we’ll figure out what we’re going to do next.”
“I don’t hear you saying much about this plan, Son,” Dad noticed. “Is this what you want to do?”
“Honestly, Dad, I don’t know what I want. No, that’s not true. What I want is to make all of this go away and just go back to the way things were before. But that’s not going to happen, I know.”
“No, Philip, it’
s not. It can’t.” Dad looked truly concerned. He’d really changed the way he talked to me since the shooting. I’d noticed a difference even before that, but ever since I’d been shot, it’s like he couldn’t act more caring or show enough how concerned he was. Half the time I wanted to laugh at this newfound attention, and half the time I wanted to puke at his phony ‘My son, the hero’ act. After all, he’d spent sixteen years practically ignoring me, and now, what? Was he trying to be father of the year?
I must have rolled my eyes or given my thoughts away somehow because my dad sighed and said to me, “I think we need to share some things with each other. It’s long past time you learned about our story—yours and mine.”
“You want to do the Look? With me?” I asked, beyond surprised.
“Yes. Stay there," he instructed, then moved across the table from me. He put his elbows on the table and leaned towards me, staring directly into my eyes. I’d only been practicing this process with Mike, so to do something this intimate with my dad was more than uncomfortable. I forced myself to stare back.
The woman is huge. I can’t see anything else but her. She is warm and soft. She is Mother. She is George. She takes me away from her body and lays me down. She’s gone then, but there is someone else... I manage to turn my head and I see another baby lying next to me. It’s Mike. Well, in this life, his name is Virgil and my name is Vincent. We’re twins.
Dad closed his eyes and the connection was broken. “You saw me. I mean, you saw Ada, didn’t you?” he asked. I nodded, still trying to process that a couple of generations ago, my father had been my mother.
He continued quietly, “I lived with you two, with the twins, for three days before I died from complications of childbirth,” he went on. “Those three days changed everything that followed for the next hundred years. I loved you both so much! And then, everything was taken from me.”
DEAD AT SIXTEEN (THE KNOWERS Book 1) Page 9