The Truth of Yesterday (40 page)

     It had been a few months since I'd walked up the narrow steps to the cupola on the roof of the bed and breakfast. The house was old by American standards, pre-civil war in fact. It had been built by a wealthy sea captain who married late in life. Its style was hard to categorize since the architect seemed to have blended several together to form a rather unique result. It was three stories, with a flat roof, lots of intricate trim, and a wrap around porch. Perched in the middle of the roof was a small room that the Captain had built so that his young bride,
Amalie
Marnien
, could watch for his return. The young woman was left alone in the house for months at a time while he was out to sea. Now she was apparently haunting this same house.

     Our resident ghost might have gone unnamed had I not found a portrait of her stored in one of the rooms when Steve bought the house. I'd let Judy talk me into talking to
Amalie
once before, during the renovations. That time she had led us to the basement. Judy and I had both had strange dreams while sleeping in the house. They had involved a baby that we thought was
Amalie's
and her burying the baby in the basement. The dirt floor of the basement had been excavated and sure enough, a tiny skeleton had been found with a silver brooch that
Amalie
had worn in her portrait. We had moved the baby out to the small private cemetery on the ground, buried it next to its mother, but for whatever reason,
Amalie
had not been laid to rest.

     I climbed the stairs feeling the same sense of loss and despair that I had felt every other time. We believed that the baby may have died when
Amalie
fell down these very stairs. I followed Judy up the stairs, trying not to think about the way every hair on my body was standing on edge. When I reached the top step, a small scuffing sound came from behind me. I spun around but didn't see anything, or anyone.

     
“Killian?”
Judy asked from behind me.

     I started to turn towards her, but just then, a strange feeling washed over me, a feeling more defined than the vague sense of horror I had felt before on the staircase. My vision flickered and the already ill-lit room seemed to dim even more. The stairs darkened until you could no longer see the bottom step. The steps directly in front of me were lit by a flickering light reminiscent of candle light. My feet were rooted in place, yet at the same time, I felt a terrible, almost overpowering, fear. I wanted to run away, I wanted to throw myself headlong down the stairs, but I couldn't. I felt as if I had been frozen in time. I somehow knew without being told, that I was
Amalie
, and just as assuredly, I knew I clutched a small baby to my chest. There was someone or something behind me, someone I was afraid of, someone I was trying to escape. Suddenly, I was shoved violently from behind. For a few seconds, I felt as if I was suspended in mid-air, but then I was falling, falling into the inky blackness of the stairwell.

* * *

     “Should I call an ambulance?” I heard someone ask in a tense, strained voice. It sounded like Adam.

     “I don't know. Wait, I think he's coming to,” another voice, this one Judy, answered.

     I opened my eyes to find myself in the hall floor at the bottom of the stairs. Steve, Judy, Adam, and that strange ghost-hunting couple were standing around me in a football huddle. Everyone looked a little fuzzy.

     “Killian, are you ok?” Adam asked anxiously.

     “I was pushed,” I said.

     “What?” Steve, Judy, and Adam demanded in chorus. Steve and Adam turned disbelieving looks on Judy. Judy looked stunned and a little afraid. I'd never seen that expression on her face before, and I found it more than a little disconcerting.

     “There was no one up there except me and Killian,” she said quickly.

     “The ghost pushed him?” Carla of the ghost-hunters asked in a slightly excited voice.

     “No,” I said as things began to come into focus and my thoughts cleared along with my vision. “
Amalie
was pushed. Not me. I think I fell.”

     Everyone looked down at me as if I had lost my mind. Maybe I had, but the excitement of the scenario that was forming in my head overcame any thoughts of insanity. I struggled to sit up but Steve quickly pushed me back down.

     “Lay still, Killian. You might have a concussion.”

     “I'm fine,” I insisted. I pushed him aside and sat up. My head spun for a moment, but quickly settled into its proper place. “Don't you see?
Amalie
didn't fall with the baby, she was pushed.”

     
“Baby?”
The couple asked in union. Adam and Steve seemed to remember they were there and turned twin glares in their direction. They took the hint and quickly excused themselves, leaving us alone.

     “Are you sure she was pushed?” Judy asked as soon as they were gone.

     “Yes. It was like...” I broke off and glanced at Steve and Adam, who were both looking confused. “It was like what happened with Paul in DC,” I finished and I saw realization light up Judy's eyes.

     “You experienced it yourself?” she asked. I was surprised by the intensity in her voice.

     I threw a meaningful glance in the direction of Adam and Steve but it was too late.

     “What do you mean?” Adam demanded.

     “Like an out of body experience?” Steve asked, excitement coloring his words.

     I paused and then sighed. “It seems as if one of my other so-called Gifts is experiencing the...emotions and well, experiences of another person as if it were actually happening to me.”

     “I don't understand,” Adam said.

     “It has to be in the past,” Judy began explaining. “From what I can tell, Killian's strongest Gifts all pertain to the past. Somehow, he can feel and experience things that have happened to other people in the past. I would say the things he experiences will almost always be connected to either death or some sort of very strong emotion. They would leave the strongest imprints for him to pick up on.”

     “So you're saying he felt
Amalie
being pushed down the stairs with her baby?”

     “No, I felt like I
was
Amalie
being pushed down the stairs. I knew I was
Amalie
. I can't tell you how I knew, but I knew. And I knew I was holding the baby, even though I couldn't see it. It was like I was actually there, inside her body or something. I couldn't move, I was frozen, but I knew there was someone else in the cupola with me; someone I was afraid of. And then it felt like someone shoved me from behind and I was falling. The next thing I knew I was down here with all of you standing over me.”

     Adam turned his attention to Judy. “You never said these gifts could be dangerous,” he said accusingly.

     “As far I as I know, they aren't. If he had been on solid ground he probably would have never fallen.”

     “Well he wasn't on solid ground; he was standing at the top of a very steep staircase. He could have been killed. And what do you mean, as far as you know? Are you saying that you don't really know how dangerous this stuff is? And you've been encouraging Killian to pursue it?”

     “Adam, calm down,” Steve said, laying his hand on Adam's arm. Adam shook it off angrily.

     Judy was all business again. “Nobody knows everything about the Gifts, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either a liar or a fool, and probably both. Every person's experience is unique to them. No one can say that this or that will definitely happen, or that this is the way this works for sure. The Gifts come in varying strengths and in different combinations; not to mention God only knows how many variations. I'm not an expert and I've never pretended to be.”

     “She's right, Adam,” I said as I stood up shakily. I felt like those newborn giraffes you see on TV, all wobbly and unsteady, not quite sure where to put their feet. Steve moved quickly to support me and I leaned against him gratefully. “She never promised me anything and it's not like she gave me the Gifts. I already had them. All she's ever done is try to help me understand them and encourage me to understand them better. If I have them and didn't understand them, that would be truly dangerous. I'm sure many people have driven themselves insane because they didn't understand what their Gifts were. I've wondered more than once if I was losing my mind, and I knew what was happening-for the most part.”

     Adam shook his head as the rush of adrenaline slowly drained away. “It's just that I've never thought about all this as really being dangerous,” he said tiredly.

     “We still don't know if it is,” Judy insisted. “It happened to be that particular time because of where Killian was standing when it happened. We don't know that his…experience was the direct cause of his fall.”

     “I think I was just disoriented and lost my balance,” I said, but I don't think I was too convincing since I wasn't all that sure that was what had happened. It was preferable to think that than to think that something pushed me, however.

     Apparently Judy was satisfied with that explanation, even if Adam wasn't, because she began to question me about the experience. “What exactly did you see?” she asked me.

     “I didn't exactly see much of anything, really. I thought I heard a noise behind me on the stairs, so I turned around, but there was nothing there. And then, just as I was about to turn around, it was like time stopped or something. I couldn't move or talk, the stairs got darker and darker until the only light came from behind me and looked like it came from a candle. Somehow, I just knew that I was
Amalie
and that I was holding my baby. And somehow, I also knew that I was in danger and there was someone behind me that I was trying to get away from, but I don't know who it was.”

     “You didn't know, or
Amalie
didn't know?” Judy interrupted.

     I shrugged. “I don't know. I think I was thinking separately from
Amalie
. The thoughts were my own, but I just knew certain things, like in a dream. You know how you don't have to have things explained, you just know somehow?” Everyone nodded. “All I know is that I wanted to get away so bad, but I couldn't move. And then all of a sudden I was shoved really roughly and that seemed to break the spell, because the next thing I knew I was falling.”

     “It sounds like you were pushed to me,” Adam said.

     “I might have just been dizzy. Actually, I was dizzy after the last time it happened too.”

     
“The last time?”
Adam yelped. “It's happened before?”

     “Once,” I said sheepishly.

     “And you didn't tell me?”

     “I didn't really have a chance. I haven't seen you since it happened.”

     Adam flushed and looked a little ashamed. A phone rang somewhere downstairs and Steve reluctantly left to answer it. Judy excused herself as well, giving us a little time alone.

     “I wasn't saying that to make you feel bad,” I said softly. “I know you've been busy here with Steve.”

     “It doesn't change the fact that I haven't been home in three days,” Adam said wearily. He sat down on the bottom step of the staircase. “I haven't seen Kane since Tuesday and here it is Thursday. I just assumed that since I hadn't heard anything from you boys that everything was fine.”

     “Everything is fine,” I assured him. I moved to sit next to him on the step. “We're making out ok. It won't be like this forever.”

     “Is everything really fine? You're having these…these experiences. What happened with the other one?”

     “It had to do with a case I'm working,” I said simply. The less Adam knew about my cases the less he worried.

     He shook his head. “Honestly, how is Kane holding up through all this?”

     “He'll be ok. He was upset the other night; he said he felt like the family was falling apart. We agreed to try and spend more time together and that seemed to cheer him up. He's a good kid; don't worry about him too much.”