Read Holland Suggestions for Free Online

terrible pants and never wore them again, and I forgot that the watch was still in the pocket.”
    “What did you write?”
    “Just two words— plaid pockets— but they were enough to jar my conscious, and then I remembered.”
    “That’s fantastic. Can you still do it?”
    “Probably. But listen, Robert and I were into things like that all the time. The watch thing was just my first experiment with the practical use of hypnosis. There were others, more than I can remember. It’s all there—in his journals. Vivian began going with me, and she developed a kind of morbid fascination with both the hypnosis and the hypnotist I didn’t know anything about that then. …”
    Surprisingly, Judy shifted the talk away from her mother. “What else did he do?” she asked.
    “I can see now we’re going to have to play the tapes. But not today, okay?”
    “Just tell me the highlights.”
    “Robert conducted a long series of age-regression experiments. He sent me back to specific days in my past, which I described in great detail. I mean, I remembered what was on the radio, what the weather was like, damn near everything about any specific day. We checked it in the newspaper morgue and it was all accurate. I never missed once. My voice changed as we went back into my childhood—it became a child’s voice. But you’ll hear that on the tape.”
    “Go on,” she said; “there must be more.”
    “We went back further and further, until I was speaking baby gibberish. Then Robert decided that we were ready for that big experiment, back beyond birth, you know, just like Bridey. What we got was a man named Jake Walters in the 1870s. The name didn’t mean anything to me; still doesn’t. We researched my family tree but never found any record in my parents’ or grandparents’ lives of a man named Jake Walters.”
    “Who was he then?”
    “I still don’t know. I only know this: He was a vicious killer. He spoke in a gravel voice and used a dialect that was almost middle English. The first time I heard his voice on tape, I wanted out. I told Robert I didn’t want any more of that. He insisted that we go on, find out more about Walters, see if we could uncover some tangible proof that he had lived. That scared the hell out of me. I learned to hate that voice. If I had been Walters in the 1870s, I didn’t want to know about it.”
    “So you quit the experiments?”
    “Yes.” My head was clearing again so I reached across the table and picked up my glass. “Robert was crushed, but I didn’t have any choice. My grades had dropped; Christ, I was a physical and mental wreck. I almost flunked out that year, and I blamed Robert for that. I started blaming him for a lot of things. Then, when I found out he was seeing Vivian, I wanted to hurt him and I did.”
    I opened the package of newspaper clippings and unfolded the first yellowed sheet. Under the headline ANOTHER BRIDEY MURPHY? was my picture and the words First of a Series.
    “An acquaintance wrote that, a young reporter I knew. I gave him the whole thing, even let him listen to the Jake Walters tapes. You can imagine what happened. Robert was fired on the spot. Vivian and I fought over that and I got caught up in a defensive position. I know now that it was a rotten thing to do, but things done are never undone. Robert was fired and left town and that was that.”
    “And that’s all of it?”
    “Just about.”
    “There’s more?”
    “Not much. You were born four months later, and six months after that Vivian left us. Then, a few months after she had gone, there was a knock at my door late at night. I thought it might be your mother come home, but it was Robert. He looked like death warmed over, and at first I thought he was on the skids again. I remember we just stood there looking at each other for a minute; I remember that part so well. Neither of us knew what to say. Then he came in and we sat and talked for a time. We both apologized. He asked about Vivian,