Last evening Dr. Little said that during the session he would include certain specific, verifiable questions. "When I cross-check answers later, I find my subjects answer accurately. It will surprise you the first time you observe a session, so keep in mind that Tiffany really will be going back in time, even if only in her mind."
He took her to age twenty-two when she married and divorced within seven months. Angry and hurt, she described two immature young people who had a lot of sex, fought over money and everything else, and ultimately gave up. It was an emotional time in her life, but apparently it had nothing to do with her obsession, so he kept going.
Over the next thirty minutes he took her further and further back. Everyone smiled when Tiffany's voice became that of a child and she gleefully recalled her father taking her to a farm for a pony ride on her tenth birthday. He asked her the name of the farm, and she replied, "There's a sign right there. Can't you read it?"
"I want to see if you can read it," he urged, and she said she knew some of the words.
"C-H-A-P-M-A-N Farm, A-U-R-O-R-A, Colorado. That's the name, and Starball is my pony's name. Come here, boy. Do you want to pet him?" Dr. Little jotted notes on a pad.
At every stop along her journey through time, the hypnotist probed her memory about interactions with her parents, sibling and friends. He tossed out specific things — New Orleans, Toulouse Street, the LaPieres, their servants — but they meant nothing to her. Tiffany's life sounded like many others, with ups and downs, good times and bad ones, anger at her parents one day and happiness the next. She was a typical child of the seventies with no major crises or traumas.
Dr. Little also asked often about the dreams, and he pinpointed their beginning shortly before her eighth birthday. Even knowing when they started, he could find no indication why. They had begun as rare occurrences, but as she grew older, the dreams became more frequent. Today they invaded her mind several nights a week.
After she described her second Christmas in baby-talk that made the others smile, the psychologist told the observers that now they'd go even further back — to moments after birth. There would be no more intelligible communication since she was too young to talk.
He added, "I expect nothing from this early age to be helpful in solving her issues, but I always take my subjects back to the start because I believe it's cathartic."
He guided her thoughts further and further back. She squirmed on the recliner and moved into the fetal position as they approached April 19, 1973, the day of her birth.
Dr. Little told her to rest and turned to Landry. "As you know, she's consented in writing to further regressive study. I want your consent now. Do you want me to try it? As I told you earlier, successful attempts to pierce the veil of time are very rare. One in many tens of thousands."
Doc and the psychologist had talked with Tiffany at length last night about past life regression. She had listened closely, asked almost no questions, and said she trusted Dr. Little to help her. She had signed a release, and now it was time for Landry to make the call. If he said yes, the regression would continue.
"We don’t have answers yet," Landry said. "If you say it's safe to proceed, I'd like to see what happens."
CHAPTER THIRTY
A ray of sunlight peeked through the clouds and rested on the fountain next to Tiffany’s recliner. The courtyard was silent except for Dr. Little’s whispers in his subject’s ear. He was taking her into a deep, deep sleep.
“Tiffany, you are one day old right now. You cannot speak, but if you are one day old, I want you to move your finger.”
She raised her right index finger a millimeter.
“Okay. Now we will continue our trip. We will go back even more. Go back two days. Now it’s April 17, 1973.” Her fetal position tightened. She pulled her feet up and held her breath.
“She’s in the womb,” he whispered to Landry.
“Tiffany, you can breathe. Now I want you to go back even further. I want you to go back to 1971. It’s 1971 now, two years before Tiffany Bertrand will be born.”
Some people gasped as Tiffany’s body went rigid. With arms pressed against her sides, she lay like a soldier at attention. There was no fetal position, because Tiffany was no longer a baby.
“What do you see?”
She didn’t answer.
“Can you see anything at all?”
She murmured, “Just darkness. Darkness is everywhere.”
“Where are you?”
She paused and furrowed her brow. She was thinking. “Nowhere. I’m not anywhere.”
Dr. Little glanced at Landry and shook his head. Then he asked her to go back to 1950, but she gave the same answer. 1940, 1930, 1920. Everything was the same. There was nothing in her mind.
“It isn’t working,” he said at last. “I’m sorry.”
“Take her to January 1832,” Landry said. It was the month before Prosperine LaPiere murdered her husband and his mistress.
Dr. Little moved her back in time in thirty-year increments, and each time they stopped was the same. Then he told her to go to the time Landry wanted.
“Tiffany, I want you to go to January fifteenth, 1832. Tell me what you see.”
Tiffany sat bolt upright in the recliner, opened her
