A hand went up from the person Landry had hoped for — Cate.
"Is it something your dad knows about too?"
She nodded and he smiled. "Great. I was hoping so."
Cate's psychiatrist father was a frequent contributor to medical journals and a sought-after lecturer at seminars around the world. He and Landry had talked about his profession and how the human brain was a thing of mystery and wonder. From the moment Henri Duchamp brought up age-regression therapy, Landry had wanted to ask Doc if he knew anyone who did this kind of work.
With his report finished, Jack left, saying he'd be at work by eight. At the apartment Tiffany went to the guest bedroom, Landry again stacked furniture in front of the door, and he and Cate went into his bedroom to call her dad.
Doc was interested to hear about Landry’s lunch. He knew about the therapy and observed a session, but that was the extent of his involvement. They discussed Tiffany’s dreams and her compulsion to return to the building, and Landry told him what happened in the restaurant tonight.
"Do you think age-regression therapy might help her?" he asked. Doc couldn’t say, but he had a friend who was an authority on the subject.
"His name is Fredrick Little. He's not a physician. He has a PhD in clinical psychology and runs a clinic in Santa Fe. I'd be happy to set up a conference call so you can explain what's going on with your friend. I'll be listening in too — you've got me intrigued."
Doc said he'd call back when he knew something. Landry prepared for bed, thinking it might be days before he heard. But his phone rang just thirty minutes later, and Landry put the call on speaker for Cate to hear.
"How about nine our time tomorrow?" he asked, and that worked for Landry.
Doc added, "Before we go further, I want to tell you something. There's a lesser-known and controversial aspect to age-regression therapy. Sometimes during the sessions very unusual things have happened."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about an esoteric offshoot called past life regression. I find it fascinating, but then I have the luxury of merely reading about it and not performing procedures. It would scare the hell out of me to be a doctor doing some of this stuff, but I also admit the results have been downright astounding. They'll blow your mind."
"Past life regression. Henri didn't mention that."
"Here's what it's about. You heard how age regression works. The hypnotist takes the subject in stages back to childhood in a search for understanding. There have been rare instances wherein the effort to take the person as far back as possible provides unexpected, alarming results. Cases have occurred where the person's mind travels back past the moment of birth."
Landry still didn't understand. "Into the womb?"
"No. Further than that. Years and years, sometimes centuries. Back into a previous life."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Landry and Cate looked at each other in disbelief. After a moment her father said, “Hello? Are you all still there?”
“Yes, sorry,” Landry said. “You threw us for a loop. What you’re talking about — past life regression — that’s not accepted therapy, is it? How could it be? It’s like something out of a movie. Sounds like you’re in my arena now — the paranormal.”
“Most of my colleagues would agree with you. Think of an archaeologist who makes a stunning discovery, one that goes against traditional scientific thinking. Professionals are quick to call it a fake.”
Cate laughed. “You always have been one to go against the grain, Dad.”
“Honey, I’ll take that as a compliment. I have a healthy respect for the unknown. The more time I spend working with psychiatric patients, the more I understand that the brain is an incredible thing. I refuse to dismiss something because it’s unexplainable. There are cases of hypnotic sessions during which a patient crossed from his own life into another’s.”
Landry said, “I’ve seen a lot of unusual things, but this is too bizarre even for me. Do you believe it’s true?”
“It is true. The facts are indisputable. How do you explain a 1940s case where a housewife from Indiana regressed to a previous life as a housemaid in Elizabethan England? She lived in a village and saw William Shakespeare in person. She gave facts about her life — her name, place and date of birth, her family and the house she lived in, facts about her death and where her grave was. It all checked out, Landry.”
“But it could have been something she read about a woman from the past.”
Doc disagreed. “That’s not what happened. If you believe that, then you accept that she created a massive, elaborate hoax and kept it quiet for years, until someone convinced her that hypnotism might cure her psychotic episodes. The patient had never been out of the United States, but she knew the most intimate details about a woman from the late fifteen hundreds, and every verifiable detail was correct. The person’s grave was in the village cemetery where she said it would be. They couldn’t find a gravestone, but in parish records there were the names of the woman, her husband and son, her date of death and roughly where in the graveyard she was buried — next to a tall tree by a rock wall. Everything they could check was factual.
“I may be a medical doctor, but I’m not bound by convention. The woman I described lived a previous life. There’s no other explanation for it. None. I believe it happened to her.”
Landry said, “How does this relate to Tiffany? Are you suggesting she lived before, and going
