A Vision of Fire

“I see,” he said, but didn’t.

The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. Both were silent until Ben reached for her. She started to respond but stopped herself, kept her distance.

“Sorry,” Ben said. “I only—”

“I know, it’s just — whatever happens, don’t touch me and don’t let me touch you.”

“Am I that irresistible?” he joked.

She smiled. “It’s not that. There’s just an energy balancing act going on inside me and I don’t want to upset it.”

“Can you explain?”

“Then and now. There and here. I’m holding them both. I don’t want any outside energy to distract me.”

He looked at her. “Was that meant to clarify?”

The door opened at the lobby and they hurried toward the street.

“It’s like hypnagogia,” she told him. “Half-wakefulness. Like when you’re wrenched from a nightmare but you still feel partly trapped in it.”

Ben held open the front door for her. “You don’t seem half-asleep to me, Cai — girl with rivets—”

“Right, like the big strong ocean liner that ran into an iceberg,” she said.

“But you’re alert.”

“Guarded,” she corrected him. Under the entrance canopy she hesitated, peering around at the soft rain. “It’s back,” she said. “The feeling I had here before.”

“Of being watched?”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes, shutting out the glistening blackness of the street, seeing the high columns of that strange other place, the black pillars covered with misty sea spray.

“So where are we going?” Ben asked.

She snapped her eyes open. “I need to go to the United Nations.”

“Okay. You want a cab?”

She shook her head and quickly started walking the few blocks to the Secretariat Building, silent the entire way, Ben’s fingers hovering near Caitlin’s elbow. She felt his energy, his care.

The rain intensified. The asphalt of the streets shone more and more like polished black stone and it was difficult to stay present here, now. Caitlin focused on the white lights of the thirty-nine-story oblong United Nations tower; they read like lines of Braille through the darkness. She did not speak until Ben had flashed his ID to the guard and brought her to the elevators.

“My office?” he asked.

“No. I want to go to the room where the Kashmir negotiations are taking place.”

Ben froze. “The guard will want to know why,” he said, anxiety in his face. “So do I.”

“Trauma.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You saw how Maanik’s room was a magnet, a nexus?”

“You lost me. I thought she’s the conduit, not the place.”

“She is, but once that horror was out, it stayed. Jack London sensed it. I’m not a direct conduit the way Maanik is, so I can’t go back without something that will act like a bellows, fanning the fire. I need more trauma, pain and fear.”

“You know how that sounds?” Ben asked.

“Yeah. Sad, masochistic — and necessary.”

“Rewind. You said ‘go back.’ To do what, exactly?”

“To work with them,” she said, “the entities from Antarctica millions of years ago.”

“Are you loopy? Assuming you can get there, this goes beyond racial memory, Cai, beyond Jung. I mean, way beyond.”

“I know. Crazy as it sounds, I believe their souls were in the middle of something that locked them there, in that state, before some force from inside the earth vaporized their physical bodies.”

“And they’ve been doing what

in limbo for all these millennia? Trying to get back?”

“It’s the transpersonal plane, not limbo, and yes, I think so. Maybe some of them have succeeded, cases that have been misdiagnosed as everything from demonic possession to severe schizophrenia.”

“You got all this from a vision that may not be real, that may never have been real.”

“That and a Hindu cleric.”

“Oh, that makes it all right,” Ben said.

“Damn it, Ben. Maanik catching fire was very real. We have to discuss this later, we’re wasting time.”

“No. You want in, you’re going to have to tell me what you’re planning,” Ben said. “I’m worried about you too.”

Caitlin sighed. She would have done the same thing if the roles were reversed. “What I think I saw were the souls of many individuals melding into one. They want to be joined in the transpersonal plane, in their afterlife, for some reason. And they can only do that as they are in the process of transitioning.”

“You mean, the ultimate group hug before death? Or else your soul flies solo?”

“That’s my general understanding,” Caitlin said. “If they go individually, like the ancient girl struggling to take Maanik, it’ll derail the purpose of the ceremony. I bought us some time by bargaining with that girl, Bayarmii, on her own. That weakens the ancient ritual but it’s not going to hold. They’ll pull Bayarmii back in and she will try and get to Maanik again. That’s what’s been happening, over and over. I think I have to encounter all the individuals while they’re in the process of transitioning into their group soul, and try to stop the transformation.”

“How?”