“Once before,” Janice blurted huskily, “when she was two and a half. They lasted nearly a year.”
Hoover looked stunned. “Two and a half?” He slowly rose to his feet, wiping his glistening hands on the towel. “That would have been in 1967—the very time I was here in New York City, doing a series of articles for the Steelman’s Quarterly—”
He remained standing before Janice’s wavering vision, his eyes pinpoints of intense concentration as his mind reviewed the awesome connection of the two events.
“My God,” he whispered in a kind of benediction. “That far back?” He turned to Janice. “Even then she was pleading for my help!” And seizing her arms with a strength that astonished her, he raised her up to the level of his eyes. “Do you understand now, Mrs. Templeton? It’s the cry of a soul in torment! Can you bear to hear it? I cannot!”
“Then get out of our lives!” Janice snapped back at him. “This only happens when you’re near. Ivy has been fine and healthy all these years.”
“No, you’re wrong! Your daughter’s health is an illusion. As long as her body shelters a soul that is unprepared to accept its Karmic responsibilities of earth life, there can be no health, not for the body of Ivy or the soul of Audrey Rose. Both are in peril!”
Janice shook her head, as though ridding herself of hearing him.
“I don’t know what you’re saying—”
“I’m saying that Audrey Rose came back too soon.”
Too soon? Oh, dear God, what on earth was he talking about?
“After World War Two, many children came back too soon. Victims of bombings and concentration camps, bewildered, confused by their own untimely deaths, these souls rushed to get back into a womb, rather than the new astral plane they should have gone to.”
He was a nut. Bill said he was a nut. Bill was right.
“And, like them, so did Audrey Rose move from horror back to horror, instead of remaining on a plane where she might have meditated and learned to put together her past lives before seeking a new one.” There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was choked with emotion.
“She came back too soon, Mrs. Templeton, and because of it, Ivy is in great danger.”
His eyes, moist and limpid, fixed themselves on Janice’s drawn and frightened face. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No,” Janice shouted, staring at him in unblinking incredulity. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“That’s because you know so little, and there is so much you need to know. Because your fear keeps holding you at arm’s distance from what you have seen and heard and know within you to be the truth.”
“What truth?” Janice struggled to free herself from his grip, but Hoover’s hands held fast to her arms. “My husband says that you’re crazy! That you’re a nut and belong in a nuthouse, and I think he’s right!”
Hoover’s grip relaxed somewhat. He gazed at her deeply, sadly.
“That’s your fear talking, Mrs. Templeton.”
“No, damn it, it’s me talking!” Janice sobbed. “Now please go!”
For a fleeting instant, in the midst of Janice’s sobs, Hoover seemed to lose his poise, but he held on and softly replied, “I’ve frightened you. I’ve been clumsy, and I’m sorry.”
His hands continued to hold her arms, to support the sagging weight of her bruised and weary body.
“I know you love your daughter,” he continued in a very gentle voice, “and are seeking what is best for her. Love tries, love is so desperate to help, but it must also question and take chances until no more cries are heard. How do you think a man like me, accustomed to a life of credit cards and soft mattresses, could spend seven years with cows and rice? Come on, Mrs. Templeton, I’m no nut. I didn’t give up a fine career and a position in life for no reason. A story, an incredible story that two people told me, grabbed my heart and made my heart search. That’s God, Mrs. Templeton, that’s love, when your heart moves faster than your fear.”
His lips were inches from Janice’s face; she could feel his breath on her cheeks.
“Will you open your heart and try to understand what I’m saying?”
“I don’t know,” Janice murmured uncertainly through softening tears. “I don’t know what you want of me.”
“I want your help and your trust. The soul of a child is crying, Mrs. Templeton. She is crying over a pain that occurred more than ten years ago, and she will keep suffering this pain unless we can help her.”
Janice turned to him in woebegone confusion.
“Help her … soul?”
“Yes,” Hoover said brightly, sensing contact. “We must form a bond to help her get through this ordeal. A bond that is so tight and so filled with all the love you have, and all the love that I have, that we can carefully mend her, patch her, get rid of the scar tissue, wipe it out so that Audrey Rose’s soul may be put to rest once again. We are all part of this child, Mrs. Templeton. We have all had to do with the making of her, and only we can help her. You and I. Together. You will help Ivy. I will help Audrey Rose.”
His voice held a hypnotic power, lulling, gently tugging at Janice’s defenses.
“How?” she heard herself softly inquire. “How will you help her? You say she’s trying to kill Ivy. How can you or anyone stop her?”
“I must try,” Hoover asserted. “I must be with her, close to her, to pray and do good for her soul. Audrey was only five when she died. In her brief time on earth she was just coming to an awareness of the beauties of life.” His voice cracked with emotion. “I must return her soul to that awareness of God’s manifestations, the beauty and oneness of the earth life she knew and loved before the fire seared her soul with its destructive force.”
Janice felt his hands tighten on her arms and herself being drawn closer to him. He was crying openly, without shame.
“Not for me and for the fact that I miss her, but to quiet her spirit, which is the right of every one of us. Please, please allow me to help her!”
Janice began to weep, holding her face away from him, avoiding the sting of his passion.
“Don’t shut the door on me, Mrs. Templeton,” he cried breathlessly. “Please allow me to come into your life. Allow me to serve you, and Ivy, and Audrey Rose.” The tears overflowed his eyes and were coursing down his smooth cheeks. “This is why I’m here tonight. This has been the meaning of my journey. All those years of seeking and searching, of questioning and doubting have been a prelude to this one moment in time and space.”
Pausing for emphasis, he drew Janice closer to him.
“Can you now just push me aside, Mrs. Templeton? Can you do this now? Reasonably?”
“No,” Janice cried weakly, feeling the wet of her own tears on her face.
“Thank you.” Hoover exhaled, grateful for her understanding. “Forgive me. I’m not an evil man. I’m not a saint. What I am is a man who now knows that God sent him on a journey of absolute necessity. And there must be no further talk of separation between us. For we are so connected. You. Your husband. Your child. Audrey Rose. And I. We have come together by a miracle and are now inseparable.” He paused, for emphasis, then went on in a stronger, more urgent voice. “Say yes, Mrs. Templeton. Please!”
“Yes.” Janice wept, feeling her breath commingling with his, as his hands continued to grip her tightly.
His face softened, and she thought he would kiss her, would not have found it extraordinary, nor would she have resisted, but he did not.
His hands relaxed and slowly withdrew.
Unsupported, Janice took hold of the bedstead as she felt she might fall. Her legs were like water.