“Come on, Clay, there is no way Iqbal’s guide would lead us to a place based on some loony-tune British movie.”
“Don’t sell it short. If the soul that is now Tommy Evans has worked at and around Kidwelly Castle much of his adult life, the Holy Grail has to be a prominent thought on his mind. Those thoughts would carry back with the soul to their guide, wouldn’t it? And the guide in Jordan could be one of Tommy’s guides. After all, we’re not looking for the Holy Grail; we’re looking for the soul of the guy associated with that castle, which had some association with the Grail. A spoof movie is an association.”
“Alright, I get your point, but it is a little hard to accept.”
Clay smiled. “Yeah, after a couple of phone calls to Wales this morning, I made contact with our fifty-one-year-old Thomas Evans. He is a town councilor in Kidwelly and works for the Welsh Historic Division. Now get this: Evans is the curator of Kidwelly Castle.” After a bite of fried rice, he continued. “Tommy seems like a jovial guy so it was easy to build a rapport. He was open to trying something different like hypnosis, particularly when I offered to pay him for his time. But he openly told me that he thinks I am a wacko.”
“If only all regression targets were this easy to find and get a commitment.”
“Right on. We lucked out on this one. I told him we’d be there in about a week. Will you be ready?”
Shali nodded, “My bills are paid so I’m ready any time. Tell me when you want to go and I’ll book the trip. I should be able to finish transcribing and translating Iqbal’s regression before we go. I haven’t found anything new in the transcriptions so far this morning.”
Chapter 9
Kidwelly, Wales
Shali and Clay landed in Cardiff Airport after a transfer from Heathrow Airport in London. They rented a car, drove an hour to Kidwelly and checked into a bed-and-breakfast style inn with an adjoining room for the regression. Tommy lived in the village of Kidwelly and had made reservations for them. They agreed to meet at the inn’s restaurant for a traditional Welsh breakfast the next morning.
They got to the inn’s restaurant before Tommy arrived. As they walked into the dining room, both smiled at the high ceilings with heavy wood cornices and finely trimmed doorways. Colorful rounded field stones rose on one wall, accenting the large stone fireplace, while a wood fire crackled away, warming the room. The slight smoky wood aroma mingled with the kitchen smells of cooked breads, bacon and coffee. As Shali sat down at a table near the window overlooking a brilliant green pasture with cows and sheep, Clay fetched two cups of dark black English coffee.
As he approached the table Shali looked up and nodded a thank you. “Oh, by the way, did you sweep this place for bugs?”
Clay answered in a matter-of-fact tone, “I swept the regression suite. Nothing. But I did not sweep my room. I want them to hear my sex romps with the maid.”
Shali glared at Clay until she realized the prank. She instantly recovered and asked, “Oh, the hairy one that looks like a rugby player?”
Clay smiled, knowing he hit a touch of jealousy. Just then, a large, plump-bellied man with thin, disheveled hair and rosy red cheeks walked into the restaurant. He eyed them and waved his hand acknowledging their anticipated meeting. Tommy waltzed across the room, offered his hand to Clay and said, “So, are you my American mutts?” Before Clay could answer, Tommy looked at Shali and reared his head back in surprise. “Well you sure as hell aren’t a Yank. What’s your name?”
“Shali. Shali Faisal.” She blushed slightly at the blunt, straightforward nature of his introduction.
“Be damned. Are you some kind of Arab? Not Al Qaida, are you?” With a smile she replied, “No. My family is from Northern India. But I was raised in California.”
“Hell. Got that one wrong. But I don’t lift a petticoat after pissing.”
“What?”
“I don’t cry over spilled milk. Are you some kind of a veggie eatin’ Indian? ‘Cause if you are, you are gonna get hungry here.”
Shali smiled and looked at Clay, who was enjoying Tommy’s jabbing at his colleague.
“No, I eat meat. No problem there.”
Tommy plopped down in a chair at the table. “Well that’s good, because I told the innkeeper that I wanted a really good, authentic Welsh breakfast. So we’re having a big plate of laver cooked in bacon fat. The seaweed is really good this time of year so that is going to be delicious. Then she’s got a big steampot cooking for cockles. We’re dipping those clammers in butter and lemon juice. After that there will be plenty of eggs and bacon, so you get ready for a real good breakfast. None of this continental European crap.”
Tommy leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, then stretched out his arms and patted his large belly while smacking his lips.
“I’m looking forward to this breakfast.” Clay replied, “Good thing we don’t start until tomorrow.”
Shali injected, “But when we finish breakfast, we would like to have a little trial run with the hypnosis just to see how you do. Think you can handle it, big guy?”
“I’m ready when you are, my sweetie.” He looked up as the innkeeper brought out a large plate of deep green pungent smelling seaweed puree and a pot of steamed cockles. “Ah, and you think those little Orientals are the only ones who know how to eat seaweed? No sir, they’ve never been to Wales.”
The three of them had a long breakfast to get acquainted, while joking about classic Welsh dishes. Two hours later, they waddled up to their regression room and spent an hour running Tommy through a set of general hypnosis practice scripts. There were no issues with Tommy’s ability to be hypnotized. They agreed to meet early the next morning after a light breakfast. The rest of that first day, Tommy gave them a first-hand tour of the Kidwelly Castle, including highly animated descriptions of the filming of the Holy Grail movie.
* * * ~~~ * * *
The setup and start of the first day’s regression was uneventful. Clay performed the regression while Shali manned the console and recording equipment. Tommy went into a deep trance, through the hall of doors and described many ancient insignificant lives up to the sixteen hundreds BC. There they found the life of Ismael, son of Abraham and brother Isaac.
“Yeah, my brother Yitzak, he was a limey prick if there ever was one. Always pushing me around, the lame ass. And Dad? Oh shit, the older he got the more his brain went to mush. He couldn’t keep his dish level. Always hollering at us and even threatened to kill us a basket of times.”
Tommy rattled on about his life as Ismael using his strong Welsh slang.
Clay smiled and looked across to Shali. “Tommy is definitely in Iqbal’s soul pod. They were both Abraham’s sons. Listen how he corroborates Iqbal’s descriptions of Abraham.” She nodded and gave Clay a thumbs-up.
Clay let Tommy play out the life of Ismael and then moved to the next life in fourteen hundreds BC. Surprisingly, he described in graphic detail his life as Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron. He described how passionately respectful she was of her brothers. But they were surprised when he described his previous life’s view toward the wife of Moses.
“Sephora. What a bitch she was. My poor brother Moses was so gullible and manipulated by her. She was a good mother to his kids, but I just hated her. I wish he would have left her back in Egypt. Aaron saw through her, too. There was no Welsh between us, I tell you.”
“What do you mean ‘no Welsh between us’?”
“We didn’t speak. I didn’t trust her. I just couldn’t stand her.”
Clay proceeded with his questioning through the life of Miriam with no significant events.
Clay then moved Tommy through half a dozen inconsequential lives over the next thousand years. In his strong Welsh accent, Tommy then revealed a most interesting life between 367 to 283 BC. As Tommy described this life in graphic detail, Shali pulled Clay aside.
“I’m telling you, we’ve got a hot one here.” Shali pointed at her laptop. “This is the life of Ptolemy
Soter. He was one of Alexander the Great’s most trusted generals and later became the ruler of Egypt.” She grabbed his forearm and leaned toward him. “Clay, this Ptolemy was known as the founder of the Alexandrian Library. I think we’ve got our key player, here.”
Clay’s smile grew into a huge grin. “Good stuff. But I think we need the last librarian, not the first. But keep digging and see what you can find about Ptolemy while Tommy’s rolling, here. His comedic narration is busting me up.”
“Why, hell, I had more whores than I could handle. Yeah, I had to marry this one little bitch, Artakama. Her daddy was some Persian general. Alex was trying to keep peace in Persia, so he made me marry her; the twerp. What a spoiled brat she was. But I had me one really hot lady on the side. Yeah, Thais. She was one fine Greek lass that could suck the paint off a car. I brought her along on our campaigns. We had one hellish big party in the palace in Persepolis one night. We burned the God-damned castle down. I’ll bet they saw the flames in Shiraz that night. What a piss. Alexander would have had a big shit about that bonfire, but be damned if he didn’t start the fire himself. Thais, she was one hot, manipulative woman. She could make a man skin his own mother. Hell, she pushed Alex into burning down his own new castle. She dared him, told him he didn’t have the balls to burn it down. Alex could never pass up a good dare. We had some good times, we did. There were great battles in Afghanistan, India, Syria, Cyprus. Oh, hell, the day we took Jerusalem; wow, what a fight. We fought hard and we played hard. Ahh, now those were the days.”
Clay and Shali both laughed out loud.
“Why, we kicked big ass like there was no tomorrow. We pillaged every place we went. Now, I always liked books, so I brought back thousands and thousands of books and scrolls to Alexandria.” Clay sat up in his chair and glanced at Shali. He turned a serious face as Tommy expounded. “I had trains of wagons taking all kinds of writings back with us. I liked the stories and philosophies of life in those books, but I couldn’t read the damn things. All these weird languages. So I brought me back some translators to help me. And, I might add, a few of them slaves were hot little ladies. They would sit and read to me from those scrolls and books, and then I’d have a hot sex romper with ‘em.” Tommy himself laughed out loud and paused. “But some of those writings were just confusing trash; couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. It was a lot of strange numbers and drawings and weird stuff. Nevertheless, my campaigns with Alexander led me to build a great library with all of them books. At least that was one good thing I did in that life.”
Clay looked at his colleague and shook his head. “You’re right. We found the first librarian of the Alexandrian Library. Maybe we’ll get more details in later lives or in the LBL.”
* * * ~~~ * * *
After breaking for a light lunch the three started into the afternoon regression. Tommy described an insignificant life of a Chinese woman in the one hundreds BC, that was followed by a prominent life between 20 BC and 50 AD.
“Good family, you know. Aristocrats, we were. Everybody knew us in Alexandria. We were Jews and damn well connected back to Rome. You had to be connected to Rome or you’re at the fords of the river — dead like a sheep. Philo Judeaus, they called me. Oh, and I was a good writer. Wrote a lot of books and they put a lot of them books in the big library up by the coast. I loved the works of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras. I wrote about my philosophies, but I got it from these guys.” Tommy continued his colorful narrative while Shali pulled Clay aside.
“I’d heard of this Philo guy but never realized his depth of influence.
We asked for prominent, and we got it, here.”
“Where do you think I should take him?”
“Ask about Iqbal’s Hillel. They lived in the same time. I’ll bet they ran the same circles. Then see if he knows about JC.”
Clay turned back to Tommy, who was rattling away about his life as Philo Judeaus. At a slight pause, Clay injected, “Did you know a man named Hillel or Allal? A Jewish man in Jerusalem?”
“Oh hell, yes. Who didn’t? He was a sharp nail, for sure. He was in Jerusalem but I met him once in Alexandria when I was a young man. He came to see the library. After that he sent over rabbis to the library. I would meet with those rabbis and talk about the problems we had in Alexandria with the Romans and Greeks. Assholes they were. They busted our asses all the time.”
“Did you know of a man named Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth, perhaps in Jerusalem? He was a Jewish man.”
“Yeah. Stupid prick. Got his-self nailed up for shootin’ off his mouth too much. I took a different tack. I wrote about our problems. I wrote to the Emperor in Rome several times. I even went to see him, but that Caligula didn’t want to hear anything about our problems. The senators were no better. They were pricks, too.”
Clay guided Tommy through the rest of Philo’s life and then quickly through another insignificant life in the wilderness of Siberia.
Clay started into the next life lasting from 207 to 270 AD. Within minutes Shali nearly jumped out of her chair. With a huge smile she waved at Clay to get his attention and pointed at Tommy.
“We’ve got Plotinus. Yes, Plotinus.”
He smugly smiled in return. “I figured this might be him. We’re going to spend some time to dig in, here.”
Clay intensely questioned Tommy’s soul as Plotinus for more than thirty minutes, probing for any leads to the secrets. They got absolutely nothing and looked at each other with disappointment.
“Ask him about Ammonius,” Shali whispered to Clay.
“Do you know a man named Ammonius Saccas?”
“Why, hell yes. Ammonius was a good teacher — a damn good teacher. He was sharp, plus he was a good guy, a real nice man with a good heart, good thoughts. But the poor sap couldn’t write for shit. Me and his other students did all his writing, and he let us take credit, the dipshit. We should have signed his name for him and not taken credit. That wasn’t right.”
“Anyway, he was as queer as a football bat. The guy never married and never wanted to be with women; he liked his fellas, as I recall. What do ya expect? He was a Greek. He tried to get me one time, but I got pissed at him. I told him I’m not into that kinda stuff. No, sir, nope, not me; I like my women. Let me tell you about this time when I was teaching in Rome. You see, I had women students under my study. One wonderful, beautiful lady named Gemina. Oh yeah, she was a charmer and a good looker. I lived in her house for a while, in a back room. Her husband was always off on some Roman Empire kinda bullshit, killing people in some faraway land and taking all their money. Well, let me tell you that I had my way with this Gemina, his wife. And with her fine-looking teenage daughter, too. And then there was this other Roman’s Legionnaire officer’s wife — ”
Clay and Shali laughed so hard at Tommy’s descriptions, tears streamed down their faces. After finishing the review of Plotinus, they brought Tommy out of the regression through the decompression scripts. After a tiring day of regressions, they all went to a nice dinner in nearby Carmarthen for a fashionable meal of monkfish and lamb.
* * * ~~~ * * *
The second day of regressions started well as Tommy leapt into a life from 271 to 312 AD.
“My name was Cletus Aurelius. Pretty nice Roman-Greek name, huh? I wanted to be a Roman Legionnaire when I was a boy, but I think I was Greek. No, I can’t tell whether I was a Roman or a Greek. Must have been a mutt.”
With little prompting Tommy went into thirty minutes of precise detail on this particular life. As he delved into the minutiae of that life, Clay motioned Shali to the side.
“What is Tommy’s hang up on this Cletus guy? Did you find anything on him on the ‘net?”
“Not a trace. I tried all kinds of combinations on the name but I found nothing that matched the time or places he is describing.”
“He’s infatuated with this life for some reason, so let’s let him run with it a while longer.” Clay turned his attention back to Tommy.
“God, my wife
was a nagging bitch. Hell, I joined the Legions to get away from her. She can keep her pompous assed family. The Legion sent me to control the Numidians and the Berbers down in North Africa. Those damn barbarians gave us a lot of trouble. But there’s a lot of resources down there, loads of grain to send back to the Empire and to feed the army. I controlled a small outpost of Roman soldiers. We were responsible for about ten villages. The boys got a wee bit rowdy at times with the locals, you know, raped a few girls. Well, raped a lot of girls and took some extra taxes from the merchants. I should have stopped them, I know it. But what the hell, you can’t do everything right. But I was behaved; I just did not control my soldiers. I was sweet on this one girl in the village where we lived. Her father was one of the elders and I think he liked me. He used to complain about my soldiers. But I didn’t listen to him.”
Tommy paused for a moment then let out a big sigh. “Anyway, my soldiers and me went for a walk one day to the next village; about eight of us. The rolling hills and golden fields of grain were beautiful.” Tommy breathed in deeply through his nose. “Ah, the smell of summer jade and clover was in the air that day. The sky was brilliant blue with lots of white puffy clouds. As we crossed through this small dip in the field, they came running over the hill. Forty or fifty of them came running from behind us, flailing their short swords and spears. We didn’t stand a chance. They cut us down like sheep.”
“Aw! My back.” Tommy’s body jerked violently in the chair. He curled to the right side, almost falling over the arm of the chair.”
“Tommy, come out of the body!” Clay commanded. “Do not view this scene from inside the body. Only look at this from above the body. You will not feel any pain. Remove yourself — ”
“Aw!” Tommy jerked back to the left side of his chair. “He sliced me down the back, that pipsqueak.” His head rolled back to the right side, “I’d kick your ass if I could get up.”