South Of Hell

Still, the walls closed in.

Slipping on a sweatshirt, Joe took her glass of wine and her books out onto the balcony, leaving the sliding glass door open a bit so she could hear Amy.

But Amy didn’t seem to need her watchful eye. Ever since they had returned from Dr. Sher’s house that afternoon, Amy had been oddly calm. The need for long naps was gone. The asthma attacks had disappeared. The girl seemed to have suffered no ill effects from the latest session, despite the belief that she apparently had recalled her own brutal murder.

“I can only guess that by excising this confabulation, Amy is finding a place in her personality now to accommodate it,” Dr. Sher had told Joe and Louis afterward. “If it has somehow brought her some peace, I suggest we don’t question why.”

Joe leaned her head back in the chaise, put up her feet, and closed her eyes, letting the cold night air wash over her.

Peace. She was the one who craved it now.

There had never been a time in her life when she felt more unsettled. Maybe when she was ten, when her father died. The hole he left had never completely healed, but she had gone on, grown up, found her footing in life.

But now, this new unease, this felt like the ground was shifting beneath her. Part of it, she knew, was because she had compromised her integrity as a cop on this case. She had bent the rules once thirteen years ago and vowed she would never do it again. But now she had.

Still, it went deeper than that.

Watching Amy this afternoon, she realized that everything she believed in had been turned upside down.

Joe set the glass aside and pulled the zipper of her sweatshirt to her chin. Her hands moved over the three books in her lap. Dr. Sher had given them to her that afternoon. Louis had no interest in them, but Joe had spent most of the evening reading them.

There was a slender paperback about life-regression therapy written by the Miami psychiatrist Dr. Sher had mentioned. One of its ideas was stuck in her mind: everyone is reincarnated with the same “family” of souls over and over.

The second book was by a Canadian psychiatrist named Ian Stevenson, Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy. Xenoglossy, Dr. Sher had told her, was a paranormal phenomenon in which a person is able to speak a language that he or she could not have acquired by natural means.

Joe picked up the third book, titled Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. It was a scholarly compilation of cases documented by Stevenson, who had devoted his life to researching children in India who claimed to remember previous lives.

This book she hadn’t been able to set aside as easily. Stevenson himself admitted that the lack of physical evidence made it hard for people to accept his argument for reincarnation. But his cases of twenty children who could remember past lives was chilling in its authority.

Joe set the books aside.

She didn’t need a fancy word like xenoglossy to tell her why Amy could sing in French. The fact that there was a piano roll in that farmhouse was concrete, real.

But the other things? After what she had seen today, she wasn’t sure Amy’s vivid memories of her “life” as Isabel could be explained away as easily.

And that, more than anything, was what was leaving her feeling so lost.

Joe looked out over the clear night sky, focusing finally on the waning white moon.

Tonight, she had thought about calling her mother. Florence Frye, with her astrology books and visits to psychics. Her father had cheerfully ignored his wife’s “dipping her toes into the occult ocean,” as he called it. But Joe, growing up, had been mildly embarrassed by her mother, hiding the tarot cards when her friends came over, wincing whenever her mother would ask her date what his sign was.

When she was fourteen, Joe had started going to the Presbyterian church down the block. Her mother teased her that she was going only to be with Troy, the boy she had a crush on. That was part of it, but it was also wanting to feel that she was part of a “normal” family, and going to church was what “normal” families did on Sunday. But sitting on the hard wooden pew, mouthing along with the hymns, listening to the deep voice of the minister warning about “the devil prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” she felt strange, like she was putting on a dress that was two sizes too big to impress someone she didn’t care about.

She never returned to church after that. Her work as a police officer — the single thing that most defined her — became her religion. And it depended on what was tangible, what was provable by evidence. Even that time in Miami, when the department had brought in a psychic to find a missing child, even when the psychic was able to describe the drainage ditch where the child’s body was found, even then, Joe had remained a skeptic.

But now? After what she had witnessed that afternoon in Dr. Sher’s home, after hearing the terror in Amy’s voice? No matter what Louis said, that was “proof” enough for her.

Louis…

Joe pulled her sweatshirt tighter around her shoulders.

The fissure she had felt between them before had widened. Tonight, he had picked up one of the reincarnation books, looked at it, and tossed it back onto the bed. He didn’t say anything, but she read his thought in his face: What is happening to you, Joe?

“Miss Joe?”

Joe swiveled. Amy was standing at the open door.

“Something wrong?” Joe asked, immediately tense.

“I’m not sure,” Amy said. She ventured out onto the balcony. “It’s going to rain real bad,” she said.

Joe was about to say it was the clearest night they had seen since she had come to Ann Arbor. But the seriousness of Amy’s face kept her quiet.

“Can I come out and sit with you?” Amy asked.

Joe hesitated.

“Please?”

Amy was backlit by the living-room light, so Joe couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see what was bothering her. “Okay. But go put on a sweater first.”

Amy disappeared, and when she came back, she was wearing one of Joe’s sweatshirts and had brought a blanket from one of the beds.

There was only the one lounge chair on the balcony. Amy stood there, clutching the blanket, until Joe finally scooted over. Amy wedged herself into the small space left and carefully spread the blanket over them both.

Joe could feel the press of sharp hipbones against her own, could smell the strawberry of Amy’s just- shampooed hair. She could feel the tension in her own body at this unfamiliar closeness. Even as she could feel the softening of Amy’s muscles and skin.

For a long time, it was quiet, with just the occasional drifting up of car noises from five floors below.

“Something’s wrong,” Amy said softly.

“What is it?” Joe said.

Amy was silent.

“You can talk to me, Amy,” Joe said. “Don’t you know that now?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Then tell me what it is.”

“I’m not sure. I feel like something bad is going to happen to me.”

“Does this have anything to do with what you remembered today at Dr. Sher’s?” Joe asked.

“No, that’s past now,” Amy said. “This is something that hasn’t happened yet.”

“You know we’ll protect you, Mr. Kincaid and I,” Joe said.

“I know. But you’re going home soon.”

Joe hesitated. “Not until I’m sure you’re okay.”

Amy was silent.

“Do you believe me?”

She felt Amy nodding slowly.