“D, I’ll go nuts if I don’t know what happened in there, so it’ll be worse if we don’t. Now come on, what happened?”
“Well, you started out saying the same stuff you’ve been saying, describing the dream. You’re running in some kind of cave and you’re scared and someone is coming after you. And then…” Damien paused.
“Yeah? And then?” Josie prompted.
“Umm, this will sound bizarre but...”
“Bizarre? More bizarre than the situation already is?” Josie asked, half joking and half serious.
“Yeah. More bizarre. You were talking as though you were in the dream. Like not telling us about the dream, just talking out loud. But… you were speaking French. At least, I assume it was French.”
“What?” Josie asked, shocked. “I don’t speak French.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’m not kidding, you were speaking French. Fluently. Dr. Reed had to tell you to speak English again.”
“I… I’m speechless. I don’t even understand how that could happen. I don’t speak French, I never have. What did I say?”
“I didn’t understand you, I don’t speak French either. We both took Latin together in high school, remember?”
“Great, so I’m rambling in French and we have no idea what I said,” Josie said, throwing her hands up in frustration.
“Actually, though, I recorded it while you were under, just in case, so we can try to find someone who speaks French to translate it?”
“I speak French. Well, not fluently, but I might be able to translate it,” Michael suggested.
“I hope you can, I don’t relish playing this for some random person,” Josie said.
Damien unlocked his phone and navigated to his video files. “Ugh, you took a video? That’s kind of creepy, D,” Josie complained. “How did the doctor not notice?”
“I was discreet! And I thought it might be useful because now you can see it’s really you speaking perfect French.” He played the video. Michael listened while Josie and Damien watched as the doctor put Josie under hypnosis and asked her to recall her dream. As Josie began discussing the dream, becoming more and more upset, Damien said, “Here, it’s right after this.”
As if on cue, Josie began to speak in French. “Okay, that’s just weird,” Josie said after seeing the video. “Did you understand any of that?” she said, turning to Michael.
“Uh, maybe, play it again?” Damien replayed the part of her speaking French. “Okay, something like ‘help me help me my God help me’ I think. There’s something else, too, play it again.” Damien replayed this part. “Okay, it’s ‘help me help me, he’s coming, my God, help me.’ Go to the next part.” Damien let the video play to the next lines in French. “No, no, he’s coming… play that again? Okay, yeah, ‘no no, he’s coming, I have to go’ is what you’re saying.”
“Okay, so that at least seems consistent with what I have described before but how the heck am I saying it in French? I doubt I could repeat that as fluently as I did while under hypnosis even after hearing it a few times!”
“Yeah, I’m not sure, I mean, if I didn’t see it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it but I was right there and saw it happen.”
“Did you hear it on a movie somewhere?” Michael asked, turning onto their road.
“I don’t know, I mean, not that I recall. I don’t watch a lot of stuff with people speaking another language and if there was a small foreign language part, I don’t remember it.”
Within a few minutes, they were pulling down their driveway. “Maybe it’s best we drop this, like Dr. Reed suggested. You’re not supposed to be thinking about it, remember?” Damien suggested.
“Right, yeah, we can. I can’t explain it, that’s for sure. I’m not sure I can forget about it especially since it took a turn for the weirder, but I’ll try. Perhaps some pizza will help?” Josie joked, hoping they’d like her plan for dinner.
“Pizza always helps!” Damien grinned.
“While I’m not sure that statement is valid, I’m on board with pizza,” Michael agreed. They unbuckled their seat belts and gathered their things, heading into the house for the night.
The man observed them entering the house from his usual hiding spot. Where had they been, he wondered? He had not followed them, unsure of their destination. He preferred to follow Celine when she was alone. She was far less likely to notice him and, if she did, far less likely to cause a scene. There had been no miraculous moments that he could tell so far, no sudden flashes of clarity on her end. At least none that he was aware of. Impatience was growing in him, as it was in everyone else. He had received a text from his cousin this morning asking for a status and to learn if he had made any progress. While he couldn’t offer much hope, he brought him up to date on the progress with Celine. The final text from his cousin rung in his head: We’re running out of time. Running out of time, he thought. It was time to enact the next phase of his plan. The next opportunity that he got he had to take things one step further. He only needed a moment alone with her. His cousin was right; they were running out of time.
Chapter 7
Josie sat on the edge of her bed. Despite being relaxed, sleep would not come to her. She could not prevent her mind from darting from concern to concern. She tried to push away the thoughts of the video that Damien had captured of her hypnotherapy session but found herself unable to do so. It wasn’t what she had said that bothered her, but how she had said it. She had spoken fluent French. How? She had never taken a course in French, never traveled to France; she had no knowledge of the language. Yet she had undeniable proof that she had, in fact, spoken it and in a way that made
