It was a cold winter’s night in January, as Mary-Jane Wright crouched in the corner of her cell at the Pink-fryers institute for the mentally ill.
Her raven black hair, fresh complexion and shapely figure, made her one of the most beautiful woman the doctors at the institute had ever seen.
The only thing that spoilt the lovely face were the eyes, the way they stared straight ahead in terror, of what had happened and the dreams that were yet to come,
In this one moment of near sanity, as she crouched in the corner, she was able to reflect on what had happened.
As she remembered it had been about two years ago that it began, when she was just twenty two,
Mary-Jane had been a student at the time, and one of the most promising at the college.
At this early age, she had already taken “A” level in anatomy, physics and technical science, and had passed them all.
Now she wanted something different to occupy her mind, so she decided on reincarnation.
It was something that had always fascinated her, so it seemed logical to her that she should study it next.
Her teacher in this subject, was a Mr John Fitzwarren, and he had picked Mary-Jane out of the whole class, to be hypnotized and taken back to a previous life.
Because for some reason, unknown even to herself, she had she seemed the most dedicated pupil in the class, even more so that the teacher himself.
Although at this time John Fitzwarren thought that he knew all there was to know about reincarnation.
A small flicker of a smile came to Mary-Jane’s face now as she thought how wrong he had been.
The poor fool had known next to nothing about it, although it didn’t take him long to find out all he needed to know.
By then however it was too late, for he had been found dead in mysterious circumstances.
The police had put it down to accidental death, which Mary-Jane recalled it was, but they had found out the reason for the accident.
Mary-Jane recalled the day that John Fitzwarren had knocked at the door of her flat, while she was washing her hair.
How she wished now that she had never opened that door, but she had.
Now she remembered how this tall dark haired man, with piercing blue eyes, had stood there almost shaking with excitement.
“Mary-Jane” he said excitedly, “you must come with me at once, I have some very exciting new for you”.
“Why what’s happened” ?, Mary-Jane had asked.
“Mary-Jane, have you ever heard me speak of a woman named Bella Polanski” ?,
“yes of course you have”, Fitzwarran continued, answering his own question.
“well anyway, professor Polanski is the worlds leading authority on reincarnation, and she is in our classroom waiting for us at this very minute”.
Mary-Jane was almost as excited as Fitzwarren now as she grabbed her hat and coat and walked with him to his car.
“Is she going to help us with our experiments ?”, Mary-Jane asked as they got into the car.
“She says she is” Fitzwarren replied in the same excited tone,
“But why” Mary-Jane, enquired, “she must be a very busy woman, so why would she be interested in us”,
“because”, Fitzwarren replied, with a smug smile, “she is a friend of mine and I asked her to help”.
“Oh”, Mary-Jane said and then sat in silence until they arrived at the college ten minutes latter.
They left the car in the street and walked quickly up to the classroom, where professor Polanski, was waiting for them.
Bella Polanski, was a tall woman of about thirty five, with a face that must have been a beauty in it’s day, but now the years of hard studying had taken their toll.
“Hi”, she said, as soon as the two had entered the room, and turning towards the girl she continued, “you must be Mary-Jane, your teacher has told me quite a lot about you, and I only hope I can help you in your studies”.
“Mary-Jane, would you please sit here”, John Fitzwarren was pointing towards a comfortable looking steel framed chair, in front of a table.
On the table was a piece of machinery with a large round disc attached to it.
The disc itself was white with a thick red line starting at it’s edge and decreasing towards the centre.
Mary-Jane sat in the chair as instructed and stared at the disc as John Fitwarren started the hypnotiser,
A light shone directly at the disc and it began to turn slowly.
“just look at the disc and relax Mary-Jane”, Fitzwarren was saying.
“relax”, he repeated.
“ you are beginning to feel sleepy, very sleepy, don’t fight it Mary-Jane, just relax and let yourself go”.
Mary-Jane’s eyes closed very slowly, but she was not asleep.
She was thinking of the twirling red line that reminded her of a miniature whirlpool.
“Now Mar-Jane”, John continued.
“You are going to sleep, you will hear nothing but my voice, let your mind go blank Mary-Jane and think of nothing but my voice”, “Concentrate only on my voice”.
Mary-Jane’s eyes were completely closed now, her mind was a blank, she could do nothing but listen to the voice of her teacher and obey what he said.
“Mary-Jane, can you hear me ?”, John asked,
“If you can just nod your head”,
Mary-Jane nodded her head.
“Good, now how old are you”, ? “twenty two”, she replied,
“Well we are now going to go back in time, do you understand”,
She nodded her head again.
“That’s fine”, Fitzwarren continued, “now listen, you are twenty one, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen,……..”.
John Fitzwarren counted back the years to Mary-Jane’s tenth birthday.
“Now Mary-Jane, it is your tenth birthday, tell me what is happening, what can you see”. ?
Mary-Jane’s eyes fluttered for a moment or two, and then opened fully,
she stared straight ahead into the still turning metal disc of the hypnotizer,
then in a child like voice she said,
“I’m having a birthday party, with cakes and ice cream, all my friends are here and some grown up, like mummy and daddy, aunty Jossey and uncle Droit, he’s an American you know, oh I am having a lovely time I wish it could go on for ever and ever and ever…..”,
At that point John Fitzwarren, stopped her, made her relax and took her back further, stopping at intervals of two years, until finally he got her back to the day of her birth,
“Mary-Jane, we are now at the day you were born”, Fitzwarren told her,
“And we are going to take you back a little further, but before we do professor Polanski will attach some wires to you, so that we can measure your heart and brain activity, to see that you are alright, so you just relax for a moment and rest ok”.
Mary-Jane made no sound, apart from the her slow rhythmic breathing, as Bella Polanski stepped closer and gently unbuttoned Mary-Jane’s blouse, and unclipped the front of her bra.
She then smeared some electroyd lubricant beneath Mary-Jane’s left breast, just left of centre.
After which the professor attached the leads of an E.C.G to the moistened area,
For a moment she watched the green line blip it’s way across the screen, like a demented worm, then turned to the E.E.G machine and placed the electrode suction pads to Mary-Jane’s temples,
For a while the professor watched the two screens, and then nodded to Fitzwarren, indicating that all was well.
“She’s doing fine”, she said.
“Good then we can continue” He replied, and turning back to Mary-Jane, he continued his experiment.
“Now Mary-Jane, you are going back in time again, to the day you died, now take your time and try to remember who you are and how you died”.
Mary-Jane’s mouth opened, but she didn’t speak, instead she laughed.
at first it was a low chuckle, but soon it mounted into a high pitched crescendo,
almost like a cackle, the noise was unbearable.
Fitzwarren held his long fingered hands to his ears, trying to block out the agonizing pain that the sound had caused inside his head.
Bella Polanski also held her hands to her ears, to stop the noise, but it was no good, and when she could stand it no longer, she started to scream.
A wrinkled and hag like hand lashed out from the chair, silencing Bella’s screams, and sending her sprawling across the floor.
The deafening laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and was replaced by Bella Polanski’s sobs.
Mary-Jane turned her hair to face Fitzwarren,
Her flaxen hair no longer flaxen, it was a mess of long grey tangles, her face was withered with age, and the few teeth she had left were black and her breath stank of decay.
Her blouse was still open but the firm rounded breasts of the young woman were now replaced by the wrinkled sagging breasts of an old hag.
“You wanted to know who I am and where I came from”, she said.
“well I’ll tell you meddling fools all you need to know, my name is Mary Wrightfield and my body died at the stake on the 13th March 1729.
“But it was only my body that died, not my spirit, they said I was a witch and they were right, but they couldn’t kill me, they could only postpone the horror that I can and will bring to the world”.
The witch turned towards Fitzwarren and in turning her eyes fell on the hypnotiser.
However this time the twirling red line didn’t remind her of a whirlpool of any kind, instead it reminded her of the twisting burning flames and the thick black smoke of the witch-finder generals fire, at which she was burned so long ago.
She could still smell the stench of her burning flesh, feel the heat and the pain, the recollection made her flinch and grow more angry.
“Damn that stupid witch-finder”, she said.
“Who put that thing on”, she demanded pointing towards the hypnotiser.
“Er, I did”, Fitzwarren replied nervously.
“Then you can have it”, shouted the witch as she hurled the machine at Fitzwarren, who ducked barely in time.
It past within an inch of Fitzwarren’s head showering him with blue sparks from it’s dismembered power cord, and crashing into the E.C.G, which exploded taking the third machine with it, send blue flame and shards of jagged broken glass flying around the room.
The power lead of the E.C.G machine lashed out with the explosion, and caught the metal frame of the witches chair, sending two hundred and forty volts coursing through her body.
She convulsed violently, shaking like a paper bag in a hurricane, and then went limp.
Professor Polanski stared in disbelief as the aged old hag turned slowly back into Mary-Jane.
Bella cautiously moved closer and nudged Mary-Jane’s shoulder, who eyes opened slowly but they had lost their sparkle, they were blank and frightened.
Bella started to cry, but not from fear, this time it was out of relief.
“It’s over, it’s over”, she repeated over and over again,
“My god it’s over, thank god, it’s over, John it’s over and we’ve lived through it”.
But John Fitzwarren couldn’t hear her, he was lying on his back by Mary-Jane’s feet, his eyes were open but glazed.
Bella Polanski was kneeling beside him now, but her mind had snapped, just like the silent Mary-Jane’s had.
Bella held John’s head in her lap, she stroked his hair talking to him, she looked into his glazed eyes as she spoke, but didn’t notice the jagged shard of glass from one of the monitoring machines protruding from his throat, just below his Adams apple.
The cold clang of a cell door, brought Mary-Jane out of her thoughts, and back into her prison cell.
She was so lonely in this place, nobody spoke to her, not even the strange woman in the opposite cell.
What was her name again? Bella what? Oh yes Polanski, that was it.
Written by Steve Ralph.
10-1-1987
