Chapter Ten

"I was hoping you'd see it that way," Adam said gravely. "Shall I take those photographs back now?"

Wordlessly Claire handed the prints back to Adam, who rose and returned them to their envelope, stowing it away again in his briefcase. McLeod, meanwhile, fetched two white plastic lawn chairs from the patio and brought them into the shade of the arbor. Claire watched these preparations without comment, but made no move to join them.

"Would you prefer to stay in the sun?" Adam asked, handing his briefcase to McLeod.

She shrugged and glanced at the fishpond, where a dragonfly was humming just above the surface, its wings barely stirring that water.

"Does it matter?" she said.

Retrieving one of the chairs, Adam brought it over beside her, angling it slightly toward her before sitting. She was not making this any easier.

"Not really," he replied. "Wherever you're most comfortable. I can certainly understand your apprehension, but please allow me to reassure you that nothing is going to happen without your consent. Despite what the makers of a B-grade horror movies would like you to believe, hypnosis has nothing to do with brainwashing or mind control. Only your cooperation will make any kind of success possible. My role, as physician and therapist, is simply to be your guide and companion." He smiled slightly. "Shall we begin?"

She shrugged, feigning indifference, but her hands were clasped tightly in her lap.

"Very well," he said easily, aware of McLeod settling a few feet behind them, still in the shade of the arbor. "The most important initial rule is always to relax. So before we do anything else, I'd like to make sure you're quite comfortable. Take a deep breath and let it all the way out, as far as you can. Close your eyes and feel the warmth of the sunlight on your face and hands. Unclasp your hands and let them just lie there in your lap… that's right.

"Next, I'd like to run through a simple breathing exercise with you," he went on. "The pattern is this: Take a deep breath in for a count of five, hold it for a count of five - and then exhale as fully as you can, also for a count of five, and feel the tension draining out of your body each time you repeat the sequence. Let's do it together a few times. In for five - hold for five - out for five…"

He made a soothing litany of the instructions. Under the calming influence of his voice, Claire showed signs of beginning to unbend, but her eyes kept flickering open to see what he was doing. Noting her distraction, Adam casually slipped the pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket and unfastened the fob and chain from the buttonhole.

"That's fine," he murmured. "Feel yourself becoming more and more relaxed as you sit here soaking in the sunshine. And now I'd like you to fix your gaze on this pocket watch, if you would." He dangled it at the end of its chain and set it gently turning. "As you can see for yourself, there's nothing particularly unusual about it - just an ordinary gold pocket watch, if a bit old-fashioned. I'd like you simply to use it as a focal point. Watch it spin; see how it catches the sunlight. We're going to use it to distract your conscious mind - the mellow flicker of sunlight on the gold. It's very pleasant sitting here in the sunshine….

"And as you find yourself more and more comfortable, more and more relaxed, you can feel yourself growing drowsy, your eyelids growing heavier and heavier as the sunlight dazzles your eyes. You can even feel the warmth of the reflected light. It's so much more peaceful just to let your eyelids close, and float on this calm, tranquil tide of well-being. You're safe and warm and secure and very relaxed and comfortable… so relaxed, your thoughts subsiding, floating, drifting… too much effort to think very much. You just drift and float, like a leaf on the surface of the pool. No strife, no danger, just peaceful silence all around you… Let your eyes close if you want. You can feel yourself becoming more and more relaxed, more and more at ease…."

His voice continued to soothe and reassure. She was more resistant than most, and for a while Adam was not certain she would let go enough for any useful work; but gradually her eyes closed and her breathing steadied, some of the lines of tension easing from face and shoulders. When she seemed to have settled, he pocketed his watch and shifted his approach slightly, easing into a standard induction for deepening trance.

"I want you to imagine now that I'm holding the string of a helium balloon, just between us. The balloon is about twice the size of my head, and it's made of shiny silver mylar that flashes in the sun. Can you see it in your mind's eye, floating just above our heads?"

"Yes," she replied, after a slight hesitation.

"Very good. Now I want you to imagine that I'm pulling the balloon over closer to you, and I'm going to tie the string around your left wrist. You'll feel just a light touch as I attach it." He lightly stroked across the back of her wrist with a fingertip.

"And now you can feel the tug of the balloon against your wrist, pulling at it, making it lighter and lighter, so that any second now, your hand will begin to float free of your lap. You can feel the tug of the balloon, and your hand is becoming lighter and lighter…."

Under such guidance, her left hand soon began to float free of her lap, slowly rising toward her face. As it touched, at his suggestion, she seemed to relax even more deeply into her chair, indicative that she finally had slipped into trance. Satisfied that the depth probably was sufficient to be of use, Adam gently clasped her wrist and eased her hand back to her lap.

"That's fine," he said softly. "I've removed the balloon now, and your hand can lie easy in your lap again. Can you hear me clearly?"

"Yes." Her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.

"Excellent," Adam murmured. "Now, you're very deeply relaxed, but you're also perfectly well aware of who and where you are, sure of yourself and your surroundings. Even with your eyes closed, you will always retain some sense of being solidly anchored to your familiar environment, relaxed and safe and secure. That underlying security will abide with you, whatever else may happen here today, and wherever our inquiries may take us.

"Now, we've agreed that we'll try to discover what reason you might have for wanting to revisit the scene of your accident. To explore this question, I should like to take you back to the accident itself. Will you allow me to do this?"

A flicker of uncertainty passed over Claire's hitherto quiet face, suggestive of conflicting impulses at work. Adam half held his breath and waited. After a moment, however, she gave a dreamy nod of acquiescence.

Adam allowed himself to breathe again, though something in her manner made him wonder whether the simple regression he had in mind would be sufficient. Even relaxed in trance, the strength of Claire's anger and fear remained as an almost palpable tension. As much to safeguard himself as to focus his own powers, he dipped into his trouser pocket to slip his sapphire ring onto his finger, mentally pausing to pay homage to the Light as he touched the stone to his lips.

"Thank you, Claire. Now, I'd like you to picture yourself poised at the threshold of a doorway," he said, himself building a mental image of what he described. "This doorway represents a portal to the past, and in a moment I'm going to ask you to open the door and step inside. The place and time we're about to revisit is the occasion of your accident. The difference in this instance, however, is that I will be present as well, ready to lend you all the support I can. And you will have the authority to alter the scene at any point you desire. I'm going to take hold of your wrist now, so that you'll know I am truly with you."

When Claire made no demur, he reached out with his left hand and gently encircled her near wrist, setting his fingertips on the pulse-point. Claire trembled slightly at his touch, but made no attempt to pull away. His own breath coming calm and slow, Adam let himself sink into trance as well, waiting until his pulse synchronized with hers. Then he closed his eyes and let himself enter the scene he had built in his mind's eye, hopefully well-matched with Claire's.

Sensory impressions from his own body receded into hazy obscurity. The transition was like overstepping a stream. A momentary sensation of imbalance gave way to a sense of firm footing as he settled into the scene, standing before a tall portal half-shrouded in shimmering silver fog.

And standing beside him, her spirit-form unconfined to any wheelchair, Claire was gazing up at the door, head flung back.

"Tell me what you see, Claire," he murmured aloud.

Ignoring his request, Claire put her hand to the door and lifted the latch, which yielded without a sound. The door opened when she gave it a push, and to his surprise, she stepped boldly across the threshold.

Adam darted after her, preparing to intervene, but he found himself out-of-doors, beneath the dim sweep of a nighttime sky. The grass beneath his feet was flecked here and there with cast-off bits of litter, and gave way to a ribbon of tarmac an arm-span to his left. Houses were visible on the opposite side of the road a quarter of a mile away, their rooftops dimly silhouetted against the amber glow of a distant row of street lamps. Though Adam had not yet been to the scene of Claire's accident in the flesh, somehow he knew it would be exactly as he saw it.

"Now, don't tell me you didn't enjoy yourself tonight!" a woman's voice said in the darkness. "Once the baby arrives, you'll be glad we made the most of these last few opportunities to slip out for the evening."

It was Claire Crawford's voice, both in reality and in his visualization - and he saw that the Claire standing beside him in vision was the same who had appeared in Tom Lennox's photographs, her shorn locks restored, wearing a light-colored cardigan over a denim smock, her body gently rounded by advancing pregnancy. She was smiling, her dark curls bobbing in the breeze, and Adam realized that she was speaking to him in place of her dead husband.

Even as the setting registered, a set of headlamps appeared in the distance and began to converge with frightening speed, flaring like strobe lights. As the glare expanded to encompass them, Adam saw the woman at his side make a sudden lunge, calculated not to carry her out of danger, but to place herself squarely in the path of the onrushing car.

In that same instant Adam was gripped by a sense of genuine peril. Without time to analyze the situation, he yielded to instinct and tried to wrench her back.

"No!" she gasped, head wildly shaking in denial as she fought him. "Let me go! I must see the driver! I must!"

The car was almost upon them. Brakes squealing, it made as if to veer aside. Exerting all his strength, Adam forced her back onto the grassy verge just as the car flashed on by. Its passage raised a gale of wind and grit, and left him with racing pulse and pounding heart.

"Why did you stop me?" Claire demanded hoarsely, aloud as well as in their shared vision. Vision-fists pounded impotently against his shoulders as she rounded on him with blazing eyes and angry tears. "You should have let me seel What happens to me doesn't matter. All I'm trying to do is get close enough to see his facel"

The truth dawned on Adam like a thunderclap. In that instant of revelation, he realized that the scenario into which he had just been pulled had been drawn not from Claire's memory of her original accident, but rather from a follow-up dream born of unfulfilled compulsion - the desperate yearning to identify her husband's killer.

The situation at Carnage Corridor suddenly became crystal clear. Given focus by the longing embodied in her dreams, Claire Crawford was returning on the astral to the scene of the accident, unaware that the cars she was now confronting were real. So convincing was her astral presence, powered as it was by her own emotional turmoil, that the drivers involved were being wholly taken in by the illusion. To avoid hitting her, they were swerving off the road to their deaths.

And had Adam's own intervention a moment earlier perhaps narrowly averted yet another tragedy? Even as he considered that possibility, Claire's voice broke in sharply, high and strained.

"Why did you stop me?" she demanded again. "Don't you understand? Until the driver of that car is caught and punished, my husband and my baby won't be able to rest easy!''

Her fierce accusation conjured a brief but poignant vision of John Crawford laid out in his coffin, the tiny form of his infant daughter cradled in one arm.

"Damn you!" Claire cried, her fingers digging into his arm. "You should have let me see!"

Her sudden fury was like a blast of burning wind. The sheer, undisciplined force of it staggered Adam, and the surrounding dream-landscape shrivelled away like so much burning celluloid, plunging him into sudden darkness.

As good as blind, he raised the focus of his right hand and the ring it wore and cried out the Word of power that was his to command on the astral. His utterance called forth a spark of blue flame from the ring's stone, which expanded and fragmented, sending javelins of sapphire cleaving outward in all directions. Before that light, the darkness fell back, showing him a vaulted tunnel stretching off into murky distances.

Stalactites and stalagmites lined the passageway like ranks of dragon's teeth. The floor was pooled with black wherever their shadows overlapped. Straining his eyes to penetrate the gloom, Adam caught sight of Claire Crawford's fleeing form. Determined to stay with her, he held his ring-hand before him to light the way, and set out after her.

A red glow materialized ahead, growing brighter as he approached. Claire's racing figure showed up as a black silhouette against the glare. The light intensified, volcanic in its jewelled radiance. Like a meteor drawn toward the sun, Claire abruptly vanished into the midst of it.

Fearing he might lose her in this labyrinth of dreams, Adam plunged on after her. A rift opened up before him, a scarlet slash in the surrounding rock. Waves of hot air hissed and roared through the rift like the sulphurous fumes from a lava pit. Shielding his face with his right arm, Adam pressed forward as far as the opening, then stopped short at the sight that met his eyes.

He was standing at the cavernous edge of a lake of fire. Out on the lake, wild torrents of flame leapt and seethed like magma in a cauldron, around an island ringed with blazing whirlpools. Standing alone on the island was Claire Crawford.

Fire roared around her like a cyclone. On a lectern before her lay an open book, its pages alight with tongues of dancing flame. The sight of it told Adam where he was - back in the hall of Akashic Records, catapulted thither by the spontaneous rapport he had formed with Claire Crawford, translated past her mind's inner defenses into the raging core of her heart-of-hearts.

That psychic link was represented here as a slender bridge of stone overarching the fiery lake. Clinging fast to the lectern, Claire gave a wild, despairing cry - the cry of a soul in torment. Hearing it, Adam reached out to her - and began gingerly moving out onto the bridge.

Fire rose to meet him, raging round him with hurricane force. The blistering furnace of the flames erased all distinctions between body, mind, and spirit, leaving only pure agony, but he clung to his purpose and struggled on. Halfway across the bridge, he felt its fabric shudder under him. He tried to quicken his pace, flinching at each fresh explosion, but he was forced to a standstill only a few paces from the shore, choking on fire.

His whole being felt blasted and flayed. Beaten to his knees, for a moment he could go no further. The excoriating heat conjured up a tortured memory out of his own past. In as agonizing wrench of perspective, he was suddenly a fourteenth-century Templar knight, reliving fiery martyrdom at the instigation of the French king, Philip le Bel….

His chains held him fast to the stake as the flames licked hungrily up his legs, surrounding him with pain. Assailed by the stench of his own burning flesh, he flung himself against his bonds, hearing his own voice moaning in mortal -

"NO!"

With a supreme effort of will, Adam wrenched himself back to his present purpose, pressing his ring to his lips as he forced himself to remember who he was and what he was doing here. With a puissant lunge, he broke free of the chains and burst from the flames, at last gaining the refuge of the shore.

Claire was slumped over the lectern. Once more in command, Adam made his way to her side. No time now to wonder how he had been drawn so completely into her visualization - though a part of him knew it betokened contact with a far older soul than he first had thought. Could it be that Claire Crawford, like Peregrine when Adam first had met him, was a damaged fledgling?

He caught hold of her arm, intending to lift her clear and bring her back to her senses. But before he could invoke the necessary controls, his senses wrenched again and the scene around them blurred and vanished in an accompanying pang of dizziness. When Adam's vision cleared, he discovered that he had been cast into yet another scene conjured up from the well of Claire's personal unconscious.