Chapter Eleven

THIS one, at least, was more tranquil. Adam was standing alone on a gravelled path in the midst of a broad churchyard. On either side of him, the lush grass of early summer was broken up by grave slabs, with here and there a raised table-tomb to indicate the resting place of someone of more substantial means. In front of him the ground sloped away downhill toward the junction of two rivers, one broad and smooth, the other narrow and swift-running. At the lower end of the burial green, within the shelter of the yard's freestone wall, half a dozen ewes were placidly grazing while their lambs frolicked about in the sun.

The attendant church was large, stone-built in the cruciform plan of the late medieval period, with a high tower at its western end. The columns and friezes flanking the west door showed a gothic wealth of carving. Beyond the church, past the meeting of the waters, the noonday sun glanced off the crowstepped gables and grey slates of a modest-sized town. Between church and town, an L-plan tower-house jutted against the sky, encircled by a bawn wall of moldering stones.

The carts and wagons going into the town gave Adam his first clear indication that he was no longer operating within the confines of present time, and the wealth of detail suggested that this was more than a mere stage set devised by Claire's imagination to serve as backdrop for some romantic daydream. On the contrary, Adam realized with a rising wave of excitement that he was almost certainly dealing with a vision drawn not from fantasy, but from the memory of a historic personality - Claire Crawford's.

That Claire should possess a historic past was a discovery of no mean significance. Genuine experience of past lives was one of the hallmarks of individuals with Adept potential. That Claire herself seemed unaware of her historic past reinforced his earlier speculation that Claire might be a wounded fledgling - which made it all the more imperative that she should be healed and brought back into harmony with the Light.

Spurred on by this possibility, Adam surveyed his surroundings, trying to deduce where he might be, and when. Scotland, certainly; the crowstepped gables of the town roofs were a distinctive feature of Scottish architecture. And in a town of some consequence, given the presence of the tower house and the size of the parish church. Probably no later than the mid-seventeenth century, judging by the fact that the burial ground contained only grave slabs and table-tombs. Standing monuments, he recalled, had not become a feature of Scottish burials until shortly before the turn of the eighteenth century.

His interest deepening, Adam left the path in order to examine the inscriptions on some of the newer tomb-slabs. A preponderance of Scotts and Douglasses amongst the names suggested a location in the central Borders area. The most recent date he could find was 1640. Before he could begin to speculate further, the sound of a door opening behind him made him turn his head in time to see a tall, dark-haired woman emerge from the church porch with a flat basket of flowers looped over one arm.

She was dressed in a style that reminded Adam at once of portraits executed by the seventeenth-century Scottish painter George Jamesone. Her full-skirted gown was a blued-grey shade of plain, dark wool, but the quality of the cloth itself proclaimed her a member of the gentry. About her shoulders she wore a shawl of fine Flemish lace, with more lace frilling the cuffs of her full, elbow-length sleeves. The face beneath the sweep of a broad-brimmed chapeau was striking rather than pretty, and unfamiliar, but the eyes gazing out across the churchyard belonged to Claire Crawford.

She had three children with her, two small boys of perhaps five or six, and a girl who looked to be several years older. Shooing them off with a smile to go play with the lambs at the far end of the churchyard, this Claire-who-had-been left the path and picked her way decorously across the grass toward a handsome granite table-tomb on the south side of the church door. When she reached it, she paused a moment with her head bowed as if in prayer, then knelt and began arranging flowers in a stone sconce at the foot of the tomb.

Adam drifted over to join her. Halting a discreet distance behind her, he took a moment to glance over the Latin carved on the face of the tomb. Thomas Maxwell of Hawick, aged thirty-one, had been buried here with his three children: James, Margaret, and Eilidh, the last a mere infant. The year was the same for all four: 1636.

He needed nothing further to tell him how the four had died. Like the rest of Europe, Scotland had been visited by periodic outbreaks of plague from the fourteenth century onward. Prior to the turn of the seventeenth century, those outbreaks had been confined largely to the coastal ports, but with the stabilization of the English border in 1603, the increase of overland trade had brought the plague inland. One such outbreak had ravaged Hawick in 1636.

At that moment, the woman kneeling at the tomb glanced around and gave him an inquiring look from under the brim of her hat.

"Good day to ye, sir," she observed pleasantly, the lilt of the Borders in her accent. "I dinnae think I know ye. Are ye a stranger here?"

In his vision, Adam shook himself out of his reverie, amazed that she could see him.

"In a manner of speaking," he said. "My name is Adam Sinclair."

"And mine is Annet," she returned with a smile. "Annet Maxwell."

There was nothing in her manner to suggest she found anything at odds with his appearance. Adam could only infer that just as Claire's imagination had lent shape to her earlier visions, so her submerged memories must be coloring her present perceptions. And the fact that he had been drawn into her vision at all suggested that Annet Maxwell had something to convey to him, having recognized another soul with a historical past.

"If your name is Maxwell, then these people buried here must have been your family," he said, directing his gaze toward the tomb. "I'm sorry. Was it the plague that took them from you?"

Annet Maxwell nodded wistfully. "My Thomas was an attorney-at-law. He had dealings with many folk from outside our borough. When the plague came, he was one o' the first to take sick, and our bairns with him. Why I wasnae ta'en too, I dinnae know. But I count myself fortunate that my daurlins found room here in the churchyard, with Our Lady herself to watch o'er their rest."

Her gaze flicked toward the frieze above the church door. Looking more closely, Adam saw that the scenes carved there depicted episodes from the life of the Virgin. But he glanced back at Annet as she stood up and shook her skirts back into place.

"Were ye looking for anyone in particular?" she asked. "If none o' the names here belong to ye, ye might try the burial ground across the river, on the north side o' the common. Many o' the later plague victims found rest there, when there was nae more ground left here to take them. It was a grim, bare place at the time, but the grass has since grown o'er the mounds, and the dead sleep there at peace."

"I thank you for that suggestion," Adam said, adding, "You sound as if you have come to terms with your loss."

Annet shrugged. "What would ye, sir? I couldnae bring the dead back to life again by any excess o' grieving. Besides, the kirk teaches that we shall all be reunited at the Resurrection on the Last Day. An' in the meantime, there are others who need me."

It was a more vigorous response than Adam had dared to hope for. If Annet Maxwell's words were any true indication of acquired inner strength, the potential resources available for Claire Crawford might well be considerable. Curious to see how far that strength might be tested, he asked, "Did you never wonder who might have been responsible for bringing the plague to town in the first place?"

"Ye mean, did I look for someone tae blame?" Annet smiled and shook her head. "Looking for some scapegoat wouldhae been so much wasted effort, when sae many people were dying. An' e'en if the spread o' the disease could hae been traced back to one man," she continued reflectively, "what good would that hae done? That one man would ne'er hae willed this disaster upon us knowingly, e'en had it been within his power to do so. And where there is nae premeditated will, e'en if the grief that follows is great, surely we were better advised, for the good of our own souls, tae forgive rather than tae demand retribution."

So saying, she turned away and waved a hand to attract the attention of the children playing down at the far end of the green. The girl was first to notice, and called the two boys to order. Watching as the three began picking their way up the hill through the grass, Adam was moved to ask, "Whose children are those?"

Annet answered him over her shoulder. "Mine, now. The same plague that left me childless left them without parents. Between us, we manage to make up our losses. But then I've heard it said that a will to love will always find a worthy object.''

As she spoke, Adam noticed a telltale blurring in the air along the peripheries of his sight. When he looked out beyond the river's embankment, there was no longer anything of the town to be seen. With a smiling nod of farewell, Annet Maxwell turned away and went to rejoin her adopted sons and daughter. A moment later, their forms disappeared from view in a wave of silvery mist.

Adam's return to his senses was gentle. When he opened his eyes, his left hand still lightly clasping Claire Crawford's wrist, Noel McLeod was standing over him, looking more than a little concerned. As soon as he saw that Adam's eyes were open, an expression of relief crossed his craggy features as he mouthed silently to Adam, Are you all right?

Adam blinked and nodded. Though the sunlight was still warm, he felt chilled all over. It was one of the common aftereffects he had come to associate with astral travel; nevertheless, he could not repress a slight shiver. He glanced over at Claire Crawford, but she was still sitting quietly, her face becalmed in deep trance.

"Claire, I want you to rest for a few minutes now," he murmured, holding a finger to his lips to caution McLeod. "Take a very deep breath and go deep asleep as you let it out. Hear nothing until I take your hand again and call you by name."

As she complied, her head nodding onto her chest, he released her wrist and got shakily to his feet, momentarily leaning on McLeod's shoulder as they withdrew into the shade of the arbor.

"I'm fine," he assured his Second. "Just give me a few seconds to settle. Did I give you a turn, there?"

"Not exactly," McLeod said. "But there at first, I wasn't sure you were totally in control. This last bit was a fairly straightforward conversation with someone called Annet Maxwell, who I can only assume was a past-life persona, but before that, you suddenly cried out, "No!"

Adam nodded. Remembering the flashback to fiery martyrdom as a Templar Knight, he could well believe that the pain's reliving had found expression in his voice.

"I hope I didn't make myself heard as far as the house," he remarked with a grimace.

"No, no, it wasn't all that loud - and you calmed immediately. But you did give me a start. I even considered trying to bring you out." He cocked his head at Adam. "What did you find out?"

"Well," Adam said, "I'm certainly satisfied that this unhappy lady is, indeed, the cause behind what's been happening at Carnage Corridor. She's been trying to see the face of the driver who hit her and her husband. But instead of going back in memory to the accident itself, she's been looking into real cars in contemporary time - and the drivers swerve and crash, trying to avoid hitting her."

Pursing his lips in a silent whistle, McLeod shook his head.

"That's only the beginning," Adam went on. "She has a historic past that could have a significant bearing on this present crisis. But to use it, we'll have to find a way to break down the barriers that Claire Crawford has since erected in her own mind, between the past and the present."

In as few words as possible, he related his experiences on the astral, including visual details of his churchyard encounter with Annet Maxwell. By the time he had finished, McLeod was looking both extremely interested and extremely concerned.

"So this is not the first time she's had to cope with multiple bereavement," he said thoughtfully. "I can certainly see how Annet Maxwell's experience might throw some beneficial light on this present situation - both for what she's lost and for what she's done inadvertently - but bringing together those two aspects of herself could take a while. And in the meantime, what's to stop her from causing further accidents?"

"We'll have to stop her," Adam said with bleak candor, "and there are no easy answers. In the short term, I could probably leave her with a posthypnotic suggestion to forbid dreaming about the accident, waking or sleeping - but that's a stopgap measure, at best. In the long term, that kind of repression would only lead to more trouble - maybe even plunge her into psychosis - which would only make her that much harder to reach.

"No," he continued, "the impetus to stop these astral forays has got to come from Claire herself, by breaking this compulsion of hers that she must find that driver. We all hope he'll be found, of course, but not at the expense of more innocent lives."

"So, what do we do?"

"Well, just now, she's under the illusion that she's doing nothing more than reliving her own accident. So what I must do is to strip away that illusion, to lay bare the underlying truth."

"Do you think she can handle that truth?" McLeod asked dubiously. "How is she likely to feel when she finds out she's inadvertently killed nine people?"

"We'll deal with that issue when we come to it," Adam said. ' 'Right now, our main priority is to ensure that no more innocent people get hurt or killed through no fault of their own. Let's see what we can do."

Returning to Claire, Adam eased himself back down into the chair beside her and gently touched her wrist.

"Claire, listen to me," he said softly. "You've done very well so far - so well that I'd like to venture a bit further. You understand that you've been reliving your accident in your dreams. Could I clarify a few points? May I ask you a few more questions?"

Claire's cropped head made a slight movement up and down.

"Thank you," Adam said approvingly. "Now, the police reports say that your accident took place shortly before midnight. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"And the car that struck you and your husband was red - a red Mercedes, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Was there anyone else in the car besides the driver?"

"No."

"Good. That all tallies so far. Now, leaving aside the recall work we did earlier, I'd like you to tell me, please, when you last had the dream."

A small furrow appeared in Claire's smooth forehead. "It was yesterday morning," she murmured. "It woke me up."

"About what time was that?"

"It was seven minutes past eight," she replied. "I looked at the clock."

Adam exchanged a glance with McLeod, for the time coincided almost perfectly with the reported time of Malcolm Grant's accident.

"Claire, I'm going to count backwards from three," he told her. "On one, I'll touch you lightly on the forehead. That will be your signal to begin reliving that dream again - the same dream you had yesterday morning, as if it were a film being projected against the insides of your eyelids. When I touch you a second time, those dream images will become translucent, like stained glass windows. At that moment, you will see through the dream itself to glimpse the reality that lies beyond it. The dream will begin as I count three… two… one."

As he spoke the final word, he tapped her lightly between the eyebrows. Claire's eyelids trembled as a sigh escaped her lips, and her shoulders stiffened.

"Tell me where you are," Adam instructed.

"On the south side of the Lanark Road." Claire's voice was soft, intense. "It's getting late. John and I are walking home. We're talking about the music."

"And then what?"

"Several cars pass us by. It's very dark for a bit. Then we see headlamps in the distance."

She caught her breath. "High beams, coming fast. Engine roaring… speeding… coming on like an express train. Jump for the bank - no, too late! The car's almost on top of - ''

"Stop!" Adam ordered, touching her forehead again. "Freeze the action!"

Claire paused in mid-sentence. Her hands were white at the knuckles where they gripped the arms of her chair.

"Listen to me, Claire," Adam said urgently. "A year has passed since the accident you're envisioning. Look beyond the dream and tell me what you saw yesterday."

As he spoke, he laid his right hand briefly across her forehead again. Claire's lips parted with a slight gasp, and her blue eyes snapped wide-open, but she stared past Adam with an expression of bewilderment on her face.

"What is it?" Adam demanded. "Tell me what you see."

Claire seemed more than a little confused.

"Same stretch of road, but not dark," she muttered dazedly. "Not night - broad daylight."

"Do you see a car?"

She nodded, looking even more perplexed. "Not a red Mercedes. Yellow. A yellow sedan, with two men in it - "

She raised a distracted hand to her brow. Adam reached out and clasped her other hand gently. She recoiled with a gasp, then all at once seemed to become aware of his presence.

"What's going on?" she murmured disjointedly. "Where am I?"

"Safe at home," Adam assured her. "Take a deep breath to ground, and come fully back to normal waking consciousness. You were dreaming, remember?"

"About the accident, yes." Claire still seemed bemused. "I've dreamt about it before. Only this time - where did that yellow car come from?" She scanned Adam's face as if seeking enlightenment.

"It belonged to a man named Malcolm Grant," Adam said, as gently as he could. "Yesterday morning, just after eight o'clock, he and a friend were driving in to work along the Lanark Road. Just where your accident occurred, they went off the road and crashed. When the ambulance first arrived at the scene, Grant told the attendants that he'd veered off the road to avoid hitting a pregnant woman. Nobody else could remember seeing such a person on the scene - but she turned up later in the news photographs taken by Mr. Tom Lennox."

Claire gave a small choked cry, her eyes darting to Adam's briefcase, then lapsed abruptly into white-lipped silence. Adam let the silence stand. After a moment, she roused herself to look at him fearfully.

"Did they die?" she asked.

Adam nodded. "I'm afraid so."

"It was me that man saw, wasn't it?" she said.

Her face was white as chalk. Without waiting for Adam to offer either confirmation or denial, she added in a hollow voice, "That's not the first time I've had that dream. Do you suppose - does this mean that - I'm somehow responsible for all those accidents? All those deaths?"

Adam's response was measured. "As to that, it's too soon to tell. We may yet discover an element of coincidence - "

"No." Claire cut him off. "Coincidence wouldn't account for that many accidents taking place in exactly the same place - "

She broke off short, unable to complete the sentence. Then she said, "I don't understand. Why should I want to kill people I didn't even know?"

"The obvious answer to that question is that you didn't," Adam said. "When I first took you back in trance to your dream about the accident, you spoke of wanting to see the face of the man who ran you down. I can only guess that your repeated excursions on the astral are the result of that burning desire. Unfortunately, that desire is so intense that every now and then it escapes the confines of conventional dreaming, allowing your astral image to manifest itself at the actual physical location where the accident took place."

"And innocent motorists think there really is someone there," she whispered. "And they - "

She drew a deep breath and passed a hand across her eyes, as if to shut out the image conjured up by her own thoughts. "There is more power in the human spirit than is ever likely to be fathomed by science," Adam told her quietly. "Emotion without an outlet is like water building up behind a dam. If that accumulating energy can't be channelled off to some constructive purpose, it becomes potentially destructive. Sooner or later, either the reservoir will overflow or the dam will burst.

"In your case," he went on, "you've built your bulwarks too strongly, and the dam itself has refused to break. But there is a limit to what it can contain, and the excess, un-governed, has found its own release, creating in the process an illusion powerful enough to deceive the unwary observer. There's no denying that you're probably indirectly responsible for a number of unfortunate accidents. On the other hand, it certainly wasn't intentional. And now that you know, you can stop it."

"But you just said yourself that I didn't realize what I was doing," Claire protested. "If that's true, how can I stop it, when I don't seem to have any conscious control over the situation? It's worse than possession! How can I even go to sleep, knowing that I might kill some one else?"

Adam had already been giving some thought to precisely this problem. "To begin with," he said, "I should like to admit you to hospital."

"I spent six months at Stoke-Mandville," she retorted, turning her face away slightly. "It didn't help those people who died."

"Perhaps not - but these auxiliary tragedies didn't start occurring until after you came back from Stoke-Mandville. This would seem to suggest that the dreams have more potency - or you yourself are more susceptible to them - the closer you are to the site of the original trauma.

"So I'd advise putting some physical distance between you and this stretch of the Lanark Road - which may enable you to gain some psychological distance as well. And I'd also like to prescribe some appropriate medication at night, to take you quickly past the normal transition between wake- fulness and sleep, in which you're most apt to dream. If there is some strange connection between your dreams and the accidents, this should stop it."

Though he did not say so aloud, it also was in the back of his mind that he and McLeod could probably arrange to ward Claire's hospital room in order to prevent her spirit-self from venturing too far afield.

"Beyond that," he continued, "I should very much like to continue working with you, using hypnosis. One of the functions of hypnotherapy is to assist a subject to retrieve detailed information from memory. This being the case, it offers an effective means of redirecting your desire to 'see' what there is to remember from your accident. There's no guarantee that you will be able to 'see' the driver of the car that ran you down," he allowed. "However, 1 would be prepared to conduct a session with a forensic artist present. From your description, it's possible he might be able to produce a recognizable drawing of the perpetrator. This could even aid the police in locating him."

At his glance, McLeod said on cue, "I'll be glad to arrange it. Just tell me where and when."

"You want to hospitalize me, then," Claire murmured, wringing her hands. Then, after a long pause, she added abruptly, "What about my cats?"

Adam breathed a mental sigh of relief. "I expect your sister-in-law would be willing to look after them and your house. She seems to be quite devoted to you."

She looked away, tight-lipped, then returned her glance to Adam.

"How long would I have to stay?"

"1 can't begin to predict that yet," Adam said honestly. "The sooner we begin, however, the sooner we'll find out just how much work we have to do. Are you willing to make the effort?"

Claire drew herself up, once more taut and angry.

"I don't have much choice, do I?" she said with brutal bluntness. "I don't want to be a murderer."

Adam let this piece of self-condemnation pass without comment.

"My medical practice is out of Jordanburn," he said quietly. "That's part of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. If you'll allow me to use your telephone, I'll make the necessary arrangements to have you transported cross-town. Assuming that you have no objections, I would advise that we start work first thing tomorrow morning."

Claire gave a perfunctory nod. She was staring off into space, her gaze fixed upon some distant point.

"That bastard has a lot to answer for," she muttered. "Because of him, it seems I'm not only a widow, but also guilty of manslaughter. I find myself asking, Is forgiveness possible?''

The tone of her question, however, left Adam wondering if she was thinking of herself or of the unknown driver of a red Mercedes.