Past Presence

by Nicole Bross

  “Heard the news about you deciding to keep the inn,” she says as I sit down across from her at the table. Her kitchen is decorated cheerily with yellow walls and white cupboards, accented with all sorts of antique treasures she’s no doubt rescued from her shop, along with fresh-cut flowers and spider plants hanging from pots. It’s an eclectic mix, but somehow it works. “Cora’s not taking it so well.”

  “Only Cora?” I ask with a pointed look at her.

  “Maybe a few other people besides Cora,” she acknowledges. I heave a big sigh and wonder if I should ask her who, exactly, is against me, before thinking better of it. “Don’t worry about it too much, Audrey,” she tells me. “It’s true there are some people who aren’t too thrilled with the idea. They felt the same way when Roz bought the inn from the McCuaigs, you know. There was a lot of talk back then about how no one would be able to run the place the way they did, that people would stop coming if there was a new owner. You know what? They were wrong then, and they’ll be wrong now. You’ll see.”

  “Except Roz had some actual training in hotel management,” I point out. “All I have are a couple of her textbooks, and a manager who goes from wanting to help me, to wanting to see me crash and burn at the drop of a hat. Honestly, I’m not surprised people don’t have confidence in me. I don’t have confidence in me.” It feels good to say it to someone so it isn’t festering inside my head anymore. The kettle whistles and Sheena sets a few boxes of teabags on the table and fills my mug with boiling water. I select a peppermint herbal tea, hoping to settle my stomach, which hasn’t stopped churning since my confrontation with Cora in the hidden cellar.

  “She’s leaving, then?” she asks. I nod.

  “I don’t want her to, but I think she’s got her heart set on it. I don’t know what she’ll do after that. Leave Soberly altogether? She has friends here. This is where she made her home with Roz. It makes me sad.”

  “You’re not responsible for her choices, Audrey,” Sheena tells me. “If that’s what she ends up doing, you’re not to blame for it.”

  “I hope everyone else sees it that way.” I stare into my mug glumly.

  Sheena seems like she’s about to reply when her phone buzzes on the counter. I motion for her to answer it if she wants, and after glancing at the display, she does, telling me it’s Joanne the dispatcher at the police station.

  “Oh my god, are you serious? Are they sure?” Sheena covers her mouth as she speaks, and her eyes widen. She listens for a long moment. “I can’t believe it. I mean—oh my god. That’s terrible. Just terrible. That poor, poor woman.” They must be talking about Marnie, I conclude. Maybe the autopsy was complete, and there were more details about her death. Sheena is still listening, uttering the odd “mm-hmm” here and there before saying goodbye.

  “Marnie?” I ask as she sits back down. She looks utterly shaken by the conversation.

  “No, Irene,” she says in a daze. “She didn’t die of natural causes at all. She was smothered with her own pillow. Someone let themselves into her house and killed her in her sleep. What is going on in this town?” Her eyes fill with tears.

  I almost vomit from the revelation. That makes two, and possibly three, people who have been killed in Soberly in a short period of time, and in an identical manner to their death in a previous life. The knowledge feels like it’s too much of a burden to bear alone, and in a moment of panic, I decide to confide in Sheena. She didn’t tell anyone about the hidden room in the basement of the inn, and I hope she’ll be as discreet with my secret as well.

  “If I tell you something, do you promise to hear me out with an open mind?” She nods, my question shocking her out of her reverie. “All of them—Bill, Marnie, Irene—they all died the same way as they did in a past life. Except in the past, their deaths were accidental, or in the case of Irene, natural. Now they’re being killed to make it look like it was the same.” I pause for a moment to let it all sink in.

  “What?” Sheena says, utterly bewildered. She shakes her head and I press on.

  “When I was fourteen, I got really sick and was in a coma for a while. When I woke up, I had the ability to see bits and pieces of people’s past lives any time I touched them.” I give her a quick rundown of how the ability works and the types of things I tend to see. Although I do mention how the same spirits tend to find each other over multiple lifetimes, I don’t tell her about the ongoing saga of the Russian village that’s been unfolding amongst the people of Soberly. “I don’t know why it happened to me and not other people, but I’ve been able to prove a few times that the visions I have are of real people and real events. Bill, Marnie, and Irene all gave me visions of a way they died in a former lifetime, and now they’ve died in the exact same way. That’s not the way it usually works. In fact, that’s not the way it almost ever works. Except in Soberly. I don’t know what it means.”

  “That means…that means reincarnation is real,” Sheena says. I take it as a good sign that she doesn’t reject the idea altogether. On the other hand, maybe she’s pretending to entertain me and plans on calling the psych ward as soon as she can safely get me out of her house. It’s hard to read her body language, and her expression is still a mix of confusion and grief.

  “Yes. People seem to reincarnate several times. At least six, from what I’ve been able to track in my research. My point is, there’s someone else in town who can do the same thing as me, or at least I think there is, and they’re using it in some sort of sick game to kill people. Now that Irene’s death fits the same pattern, I’m more certain of it than ever. Ever since Marnie died, and I saw the connection to Bill, I’ve been hoping to be able to figure out who it is by using my own ability to look for some sort of pattern or clues from the past. To see if I can flush them out somehow.”

  “Have you come up with anything?”

  “Not really.” I can’t tell her about the vision Kellen gave me of the man he killed. I don’t want to believe he could be involved in anything like this. The idea makes me sicker still, and I hastily bring my mug up to my face to inhale the warm scent of peppermint. “Can you think of any way the three of them are connected, beyond the fact that they all live here? Someone they all have in common? Maybe that would help.” Sheena contemplates the idea for a couple of minutes, biting her lip before eventually shaking her head.

  “Nothing,” she says. “They all knew each other, of course, but I can’t think of something or someone specific linking them together. Have you…have you seen anyone else’s death in the past? Have you seen mine?”

  “No one’s,” I tell her, and she sighs with relief. “In fact, somehow or another you and I haven’t made any skin-to-skin contact yet. I don’t know anything about your past lives at all.”

  “Really?” She seems to be thinking back for a moment, and shrugs. “Does it hurt when you do it?”

  “It doesn’t hurt at all, no. It’s sort of like when you remember something all of a sudden, except it’s not one of my memories. After a while, it does tire me out though, especially when I’m making contact with lots of different people all at once. I kind of lose myself in all the bits of other people.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that before.” Now she looks dubious. I’m losing her. “I mean, there are mediums and stuff with their crystal balls, I guess, but I always figured they were hoaxes.”

  “They probably are,” I say. “Everyone’s some member of royalty when you visit one of those. They spin you a story to make you feel important. In all the people I’ve ever made contact with, I’ve never come across the past life of any member of the nobility or famous figures. Just normal folks like you and me.” I fiddle with my teabag, dunking it up and down repeatedly in the water. I want to tell her how part of me wants to be able to prove it’s real, to see what it looks like on an MRI when I touch someone. The other part of me thinks that if people know about this, everyone will think I’m some sort of freak. I’ve had enough social isolation in my life already, some of it m
y own doing, some of it not. Telling the police about my ability is not an option. Hopefully, the killer left clues behind and the case is already close to solved, but I can’t count on it.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” Sheena asks.

  “You know the people here way better than I do,” I say. “Maybe you can point me in the right direction or introduce me around so I can make more connections. You said you always wanted to be Nancy Drew,” I add wryly. “Here’s your chance.”

  “More like one of her sidekicks,” she says, but my mention of the girl detective does bring a faint smile to her face, the first one I’ve seen since we sat down. “Seriously though, Audrey, I don’t think we should get mixed up in this. This person has killed at least two people already. Let the police do the detective work.”

  “What if I can help? What if someone else dies while they’re still trying to figure it out? I have an advantage they don’t. I could make a real difference.”

  “You could also get yourself killed.”

  “I know.” The thought is sobering. “I still have to try.”

  “Have you told Kellen about any of this?”

  “No, and I’m not sure I’m going to. Please, Sheena, don’t mention this to anyone. Besides the fact that probably no one else will believe it, it could put me in danger if the killer finds out.”

  “I won’t, I swear,” she says, but she frowns.

  Having gotten a lot off my chest, I thank her for the tea and stand up to leave. She surprises me by holding out her hand as though to shake.

  “Will you tell me? What you see?” she says hesitatingly. This is a new one for me. Not since I was fourteen and first started having the visions have I told anyone about my ability, and back then, the doctors I tried to describe it to brushed it off as vivid dreams or delusions as my brain healed. I’ve never been asked to describe someone’s past life to them in the moment.

  “Sure,” I say, and grasp her hand.

  REGRESS

  The light of the small lamp on the desk beside him flickered as the oil began to run low, but he figured he still had another ten minutes by which to write, and he redoubled his efforts to get as many words down on the page as possible before he was forced to retire for the evening.

  This tale he transcribed had been haunting his dreams for months—a future world where clockwork men replaced human ones in the factories, farms, and shops, leaving people indolent and without purpose. Now that the skies over much of the planet were dark with smoke from all the coal these mechanical creations consumed, the chief luxury on Earth was sunlight, enjoyed primarily by the wealthiest who could afford to rise above the smog in flying machines, and fresh air, which they trapped in bottles to bring back to the surface to breathe in the comfort of their homes. Crops were failing, people were starving, and still, humanity could not wean itself from the reliance on their clockwork men.

  The writer saw the signs of this hellish world to come all around him—the locomotive, the steam engine, the weaving machines, and cotton gins replacing men’s work already. The writer was an avowed Luddite, but rather than smashing machinery and burning down factories, his weapon was his words, the cautionary stories he wrote of what the future would hold if mankind did not return to its pre-industrial ways. He raged at the fact that none of the newspapers or periodicals would publish his stories, forcing him to print them himself as pamphlets and distribute them on the street to anyone who passed by. This—this was his masterpiece. This would be the story that persuaded people to reject these advances in technology before it was too late.

  The irony was not lost on him that some of these modern inventions like moveable type and the printing press allowed him to create his tracts in the first place, but in service of the greater good, he swallowed his convictions to spread the word as widely as possible.

  He wrote on, his quill scratching the paper, words packed tightly together to conserve the expensive material. He was running low on funds after leaving his job as a clerk to write full time. He had planned to support himself by selling his stories, expecting his name to be alongside the likes of Dickens in London’s best-regarded magazines. With this, he would. There could be no way the editor would not see the value in this tale, see his skill as a wordsmith.

  His protagonist, John, a young clerk like he had once been, was now about to duel a clockwork man who was trying to prevent him from setting fire to the machinery that operated the last coal mine on Earth. Without coal, the machines could not operate, and humanity would be forced to start working for themselves again. The owner of the coal mine, and the factory that produced the clockwork men, Viscount Magnus Munro, had ordered John’s death. John had realized that if he could get the mechanical man to burn through its coal faster by pursuing him throughout the mine, it would die, and he could perform his mission. It would cost him his own life, naturally—the writer had a flair for the dramatic—when the writer’s lamp sputtered out and he was swallowed by darkness. He pounded his fist on the desk, but there was nothing to be done for it—he was out of oil, and none could be purchased until tomorrow.

  Laying his quill in the small box that also held his inkwell, gifted to him by his mother, the writer carefully stacked his papers together and locked them in his desk. Tomorrow at the first light of dawn, he would resume his work.

  19

  Ihave to laugh at the vision Sheena gives me, the paradigm between the way she immerses herself in objects of the past in this lifetime, and her obsession with the future in another.

  “What?” she asks, looking like she’s not sure if my amusement is a good thing. I tell her about the writer and how he envisioned the future to be, along with his struggles to have his writing acknowledged by society.

  “I wonder if he was ever successful,” she muses.

  “Dunno. Without a name, it would be pretty hard to find out. If you had that, you might be able to find some surviving example of his work, particularly since he did self-publish. Unfortunately, it was as hard to get published in those times as it is today.” In fact, it was probably harder, since everything was handwritten, and sent by snail mail. On horseback. Sheena’s writer would probably love today’s modern options. Two clicks and your novel can be on Amazon. I wonder what he’d think of the Internet. Of the world in general, really. It certainly hadn’t turned out as terrible as he’d predicted.

  I check my phone while walking back to the inn. There are fourteen missed texts and one missed call from Kellen. With a sinking feeling in my chest, I bring them up on the screen.

  “u coming to the staff meeting?” reads the first one. Staff meeting? I don’t know anything about a meeting being called. Maybe it’s a regular weekly thing at the inn? If so, it’s the first time I’ve heard about it.

  “where are u? Checked ur office and u weren’t there. Everyone’s waiting”

  “C is starting without u” C must be Cora. Cora called a staff meeting?

  “Holy shit she just told everyone she’s leaving”

  “And that they can go to u from now on with their problems”

  “Audrey where are u this is brutal”

  “she’s making it seem like we’re all gonna be out of jobs in a couple months”

  “says we’re more than welcome to contact her for references and wishes us the best”

  “did u even know about this?”

  “mama and I tried to downplay it but everyone looks nervous”

  “Jana’s almost crying”

  “now C’s apologizing to us and said she tried her best but it’s out of her control now”

  “I don’t know what to do but the meeting is over. C’s glaring at me, think she knows I’m texting u”

  “text me back when u get these”

  The beep of a car horn startles me back into the present, and I look up to see a Subaru stopped in front of me, beckoning for me to cross the street. I hadn’t noticed I’d stopped at the corner, shaking with rage as I read Kellen’s texts. I wave at him to dri
ve on. I read through them again, clutching my phone so tight my knuckles turn white. I’m at a loss for how to reply. Even if I had gotten the messages in time, what could I have done? I do know one thing though. Cora and I need to have a conversation. Right now.

  The bell above the door of the inn’s lobby jangles aggressively as I push it open. Cora’s sitting at the desk, chatting with a man and a woman holding suitcases. I stop short, not wanting to cause a scene in front of guests and see Cora glance over the rim of her glasses at me, taking in my narrowed eyes and heavy breathing. She knows I know, and that I’m not happy. Is that satisfaction in her eyes at my thwarted lecture? Not knowing what else to do, I stalk past her without a word of acknowledgment, taking the back stairs up to the office. To my surprise, Kellen’s sitting on the couch. He jumps up when I storm in.

  “You need a better lock,” he tells me when I open my mouth to ask him what he’s doing in here. “I opened the door with my credit card. Audrey, tell me you didn’t freak out on Cora just now.”

  “You would have heard it if I did, she’s right downstairs—”

  “Good. Take a minute to calm down and think—”

  “She’s trying to undermine my authority here. She’s sabotaging me before I even have a chance.”

  “I know, but do you think going off on her is going to help your case, either with the staff or your credibility?”

  “I can’t just let her—”

  “You have to think smart about this. Losing your temper isn’t the way to go.”

  “You should talk.” I jerk my head at the cast on his hand.

  “Yeah and look where it got me. Got us. There’s twice the talk in town now about what’s going on here. You’re not going to reassure people that everything’s going to be fine if you lose your shit on Cora, and word gets out that the two of you are butting heads. Let her spout her doom and gloom before she leaves, then prove her wrong. That’s how you can win this.”