Eileen was running late on the evening of her next psychics meeting and was the last one to arrive for class. The group leader, Madame Frederika, nodded at her as she entered and remarked to no one in particular. "It looks like we're all here except Cassandra."
"Cassandra's not coming tonight," one of the women in the class spoke up. "She's out of town, visiting her sister, I think."
"All right," Madame Frederika replied. "Then let's get started, shall we?"
As the group started to settle in for the beginning of class, Bella Goth turned to her husband. "Oh, Mortimer, what do you think of the name Cassandra for our baby?" she asked in a whisper as she laid a hand affectionately on her protruding stomach.
"I think it's a good name, Bella. But not for our baby."
"Why not?" Bella asked sharply. The idea had come to her on a whim, yet she already had her heart set on it.
"Because my psychic powers tell me this baby is going to be a boy," Mortimer stated confidently, but with a teasing look in his eyes.
Bella smiled cryptically at her husband. "We'll see."
The group pushed the classroom desks and chairs aside, as they usually did and sat in a circle on the floor.
"Tonight we are going to continue our focus on past lives," Madame Frederika announced. "Last time I explained to you the significance of understanding former incarnations, but tonight we are going to attempt to read them first hand. We'll start with me and move around the circle. Now just relax and remember to focus on my energy."
Madame Frederika chanted in a steady soothing voice, lulling the group into a semi-hypnotic state.
Eileen tried to focus, tried to come up with some sort of image. She wanted so badly to see something, but nothing was coming to her. Not for Madame Frederika or for the two women after her. By the time it was her turn, Eileen was feeling discouraged.
"What do you see for Eileen?" Madame Frederika asked.
"I see a tall, dark, stranger," Clara replied and the man sitting next to Eileen snickered.
"Yes, Clara, good," Madame Frederika responded. "But he's no stranger . . .not to Eileen. What else?"
"He seems sad," Clara said in a whisper.
Suddenly a vision came to Eileen, not just an image as she expected, but an experience that overtook all her senses. She was someplace far away, near the sea, she could feel and smell the sea air. She sensed two men near by. Her vision seemed foggy and she couldn't make out their features. But she could tell that one was the sad man that Clara saw and the other had a different type of darkness about him. She could feel it all around him.
As quickly as the vision came to her it vanished and Eileen found herself once again in Madame Frederika's classroom. She looked up and caught a glimpse of recognition and understanding in the master psychic's eye, before the reading moved on to the next student.
Eileen had lost her focus and didn't even try to make a reading on the next student. She regained her nerves long enough to try again when the Goths' turns came, but like before her startling vision, everything was blank.
Eileen waited until class was over to talk to Madame Frederika about her experience, but before she could speak, the teacher pulled her aside.
"There's something we need to talk about Eileen," she began hesitantly. "Your class fees were due two weeks ago and you still haven't paid them.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Eileen said, startled. "I meant to, but my father's been trying to get me to cut back on my spending."
"I understand, but I need you to pay your tuition before class next week or I won't be able to allow you to stay for class."
Eileen was alarmed. "But I've been making so much progress, Madame. Just tonight-"
Madame Frederika patted Eileen reassuringly on the arm. "You'll find a way to pay the fees before next class, don't worry."
Eileen nodded solemnly and headed out of the classroom. She had wanted to talk to Madame Frederika about the vision she had experienced and find out if the older woman could make any sense of it. But after the talk of unpaid tuition, she lost interest.
Eileen loitered in the hallway for a few moments instead of going straight home. She didn't know why, but she was half-hoping to run into Lawrence. She wasn't thinking of asking to borrow money from him; she didn't know him nearly well enough to ask him for something like that. And she wasn't planning on telling him about her experience in class either. He was too logical and serious, like her father, to put any faith into the supernatural.
She wondered if she was looking for him to get her mind off of her class, but in any case, she didn't see him and decided to leave.
At home, Eileen took a seat next to her bedroom window and relaxed, trying to clear her thoughts. But when she closed her eyes, she kept thinking of the image of the past, of the two men in her vision. They seemed so familiar to her, like she knew them, but she couldn't remember who they were.
She tried to concentrate. If she could recall that one moment from a past life, surely there must be more that she knew. She struggled to remember, but couldn't find what she was looking for. Instead, her mind wandered to the past that she already knew.
As usual, Eileen's thoughts went back to her mother.
Even though her mother had died when she was very young and Eileen had very few memories of her mother, she thought about her often. She remembered her as a beautiful and elegant woman who swept in and out of the house between charity work and parties. But no matter what else was going on, her mother always had time for her to tell her how much she loved her and what a special child was.
Eileen remembered clearly, how much she had missed her mother after she died from a terminal illness. For years after her death, Eileen dreamed about her mother at night and longed so much just to see her and talk to her again.
That was what originally fostered her interest in the supernatural. She had heard stories about people who had contact with spirits and the dead. She learned all that she could about it, hoping that she could make that connection with her mother, but she had never been able.
Letting her mind wander, Eileen remembered one summer when she was about 12 years old. She had been at an age where everything seemed childish or boring to her and she couldn't wait until she was older.
Her favorite thing to do that summer was to wander around the neighborhood. She especially liked to linger around the Burgesses' house where their son, Hector, and his high school friends liked to hang out. The older kids were always nice when they talked to her, but since she was so much younger than them, they usually ignored her. But she didn't mind that she wasn't a part of the group, she was happy enough to observe from a distance.
Thinking back now, she suddenly remembered one boy in particular. He always seemed a little apart from the others. There was a sadness about him that the others couldn't understand, but that Eileen knew all too well.
Eileen wasn't sure why she was thinking about these things at the moment, but she had a nagging sense that everything somehow fit together. She tried to figure out how, but thinking about it only gave her a headache.
Giving up, she glanced at the clock and was surprised at how late it was. She rose from the sofa and went to get ready for bed. As she finished dressing for bed she paused to look at the old portraits of her mother and father that were hanging on the wall. Her mother had been the reason she took up the interest in psychic phenomenon in her first place and her father was the reason she had to keep that part of her life a secret.
She sighed and then reached to turn out the light. How was she supposed to think seriously about other lifetimes when she couldn't get beyond her past in this lifetime?
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