The Mask

cleaver.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Yeah,” Polly said, obviously enjoying his shocked reaction. “Dr. Maugham says she put that cleaver right into her daughter’s throat. Pretty much cut the girl’s head clear off. Isn’t that a terrible thing? But what else could she do? Just let the kid go on jabbing that knife into her?”
    Stunned, Paul thought about yesterday’s hypnotic regression therapy session, which Carol had recounted for him in some detail. He remembered the part about how Jane had claimed to be Millicent Parker and had insisted on writing out her answers to questions and had written that she was unable to talk because her head had been cut off.
    “Are you still there?” Polly asked.
    “Oh. Uh… sorry. Is there more to the story?”
    “More?” Polly asked. “Wasn’t that enough?”
    “Yes,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. That was enough. More than enough.”
    “I don’t know if this information is of any help to Dr. Tracy.”
    “I’m sure it will be.”
    “I don’t see how it could have anything to do with the girl she brought in here with her yesterday.”
    “Neither do I,” Paul said.
    “I mean, that girl can’t be Millicent Parker. Millicent Parker has been dead for seventy-six years.”
     
----
     
    In the study, Grace stood at her desk, looking down at the open dictionary.
     
    REINCARNATION (re’-in-kár-na’shen), n. 1. the doctrine that the soul, upon death of the body, comes back to earth in another body or form. 2. rebirth of the soul in a new body. 3. a new incarnation or embodiment, as of a person.
     
    Bunk? Nonsense? Superstition? Bullshit?
    At one time, not long ago, those were all the words she would have used to write her own irreverent definition of reincarnation. But not now. Not any longer.
    She closed her eyes, and with only the slightest effort, she was able to bring back the image of the burning house. She wasn’t just envisioning it; she was there, hammering with her fists on the cellar door. She was not Grace Mitowski now; she was Rachael Adams, Laura’s aunt.
    The fire scene was not the only part of Rachael’s life that she could recall with perfect clarity. She knew the woman’s most intimate thoughts, her hopes and dreams and hates and fears, shared her most closely held secrets, for those thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears and secrets had been her own.
    She opened her eyes and needed a moment to refocus them on the present-day world.
    REINCARNATION
    She closed the dictionary.
    God help me, she thought, do I really believe it? Can it be true that I’ve lived before? And that Carol’s lived before? And the girl they’re calling Jane Doe?
    If it was true—if she had been permitted to recall her previous existence as Rachael Adams in order to save Carol’s life in this incarnation—then she was wasting valuable time.
    She picked up the phone to call the Tracys, wondering how in God’s name she was going to make them believe her.
    There was no dial tone.
    She jiggled the receiver-cradle buttons.
    Nothing.
    She put the receiver down and followed the cord around the side of the desk to the wall, to see if it had come unplugged. It wasn’t unplugged; it was chewed.
    Bitten in two.
    Aristophanes.
    She remembered other things that Palmer Wainwright had said in the garden: There are certain forces, dark and powerful forces, that want to see this played out the wrong way. Dark forces that thrive on tragedy. They want to see it end in senseless violence and blood. … There are forces aligned. … good and evil, right and wrong. You’re on the right side, Grace. But the cat—ah, the cat’s a different story. At all times, you must be wary of the cat.
    She also remembered when the series of paranormal events had begun, and she realized that the cat had been an integral part of it all, from the very start. Wednesday of last week. When she had suddenly awakened from her afternoon nap that day—catapulted out of a nightmare about Carol—there had been an incredibly brilliant and violent barrage of Lightening beyond the study windows. She had staggered to the nearest window, and while she had stood there on unsteady, arthritic legs, half-awake and half-asleep, she’d had the eerie feeling that something monstrous had followed her up from the world of her nightmare, something demonic with a hungry grin on its face. For a few seconds that feeling had been so strong, so real, that she had been afraid to turn around and look into the shadowy room behind her. But then she had dismissed that weird thought