metempsychosis
The Leone Hotel has not changed, nor the spired bridge above the wide canal running past its front door. The tourists are still milling around under brightly colored umbrellas, and the apartment building on the other side of the water is still in construction. A pinwheel, dark against the crepuscular sky, perches atop the scaffolding like an augur.
“Have you heard of metempsychosis?” you said to me the first time we sat down together at the café on Piazzale Roma. It was the topic you’d been researching, the soul’s move to a new body after death.
“Is it real?” I asked—and then, realizing it didn’t make sense because everything we think, say, hear is real, corrected: “Does it happen?”
“The soul, whatever it implies, far outlives the body,” you mused instead of answering. “The intangible—memories, stories, personalities—are maintained long after the atrophy of the tangible, but rarely does one occur without the other. Only through experiencing what we can perceive are we able to retain its knowledge, to allocate it a portion of our minds for future recollection or perusal.” You looked at me over your coffee and smiled lightly. “Well, what do you think? Does the soul find a new body? Can the intangible change its owner?”
I couldn’t answer then, instead opting for a flustered explanation of neuron connections and cell assemblies. But now—Yes, I think as I walk past the café we had frequented that spring many years ago. Now I understand. I hear your footsteps falling into place beside mine on the worn cobblestone, and the brushing of our jacket sleeves, and your gentle laughter, and I think: we’ve experienced everything together. Your memories are mine, and mine yours—how similar our souls are, how interchangeable!
I’m still here, you assure me, I’m still here.
“Still here,” I repeat into the chilly evening air, and I smile when I realize I’ve said it out loud.
Liana calls me early the next morning. The ringtone ricochets off the bleak walls of the hotel room and jars me awake.
“Did you hear?” Her voice is hushed.
“What?” I mumble.
“I just found out—my God, Len—”
I sit up. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Hana—”
My heart stops.
“—we don’t know what happened, but someone broke into her house and nobody found out till tonight—we saw pictures—red everywhere—on her bed, the kitchen, on the floor—there was a lot of blood—a lot—”
“Where is she?” I breathe. “Is she alive?”
“We don’t know!” Liana says. Her voice sounds odd. A bit quivery. She continues, “They couldn’t find her anywhere, she didn’t even take her wallet and keys. Her car’s still parked on the street.”
“What do you mean, they couldn’t find her anywhere?”
“She wasn’t home—they’re looking for her now. They’ve also tracked down a suspect—”
There’s a sudden flare of white-hot fear in my chest. The feeling is rusty at first; it hasn’t surfaced in some time. And then it becomes terribly familiar. “Who?” I say in a low voice.
I hear Liana draw a sharp breath. She hesitates. “They think it’s Daniel Moore.”
A beat.
“Her new boyfriend,” I say slowly. “Of course.”
There’s another tense silence.
“They searched his home,” Liana says, almost apologetically. “He had a knife. And blood in the trash.”
“Okay.”
“They haven’t confirmed whose, yet.”
“Sure.”
Liana lets out a distressed noise. “Listen, just—stay there, okay? Get some rest. You need a vacation. Don’t worry about this. Please.” She hesitates, then adds gently, in the voice she uses with her foster dogs, “Hana’s not your problem anymore, Len.”
“Stop.”
“He’s being detained right now. They’re going to find her very soon, I promise.”
“You know better than anyone how much she means to me—”
“I do,” Liana interrupts. Her voice takes on the strange inflection again. “And you know better than anyone how much you mean to me.”
I don’t reply, and after a while I hear her sigh heavily. “Stay in Italy for now.” She hangs up with a hollow beep.
The call comes again in the early evening, when the Venice sky is bruised with dying light and the air smells of brine and wet stone. I have been walking for hours.
“Len.” Liana exhales. “They found her.”
I stop mid-stride, staring at the rippling canal. The street lamps have flickered on, their light bleeding into the water. I press the phone tighter against my ear. “Where?”
“A field. Somewhere near Daniel’s apartment building. In the tall grass near the tree line.”
I feel cold. It doesn’t make sense. I picture the house, the dark interior, the sepulchral quiet that stretched far too long. White-hot fear. My hands, slick with something that didn’t feel like my own, the body curled where I had left you, limp and unmoving. The blood was black in the moonlight. I remember looking at you and thinking of souls.
—A field?
“Len?” Liana’s voice is careful. Measured.
“I’m here.”
“They confirmed it’s her,” she continues. “They’re running more tests, but—” A pause. “She’s alive, Len. But she must’ve hit her head somewhere. They said she’ll never wake up again.”
Something slides in my chest, a slow, glacial shift. The buildings around me seem to tilt into the water. A reflection of a wretched world disparaged into normalcy. I grip the railing of the canal, feel the rust flake under my fingers. The space next to me is suddenly empty.
“She was dead,” I say. I don’t know if it’s to her or to myself.
Liana doesn’t answer.
I turn away from the water, my shadow corrugated and unfamiliar against the cobblestones. “Why?” I say.
She doesn’t ask what I mean. “Come home, Len.”
The flight back is a slow plunge into numbness. The air in the cabin is too thin, and the hum of the engines presses against my skull like an execution helmet. I rest my forehead against the window, watching the Maryland greenery spool out below. When the wheels hit the tarmac, I don’t feel like I’ve landed at all.
Liana meets me at arrivals. She looks tired. I wonder if I do too.
We drive in silence. The streets are the same as I left them, but now they feel too bright, too sharp. When we pull up to her house, she cuts the engine and turns to me.
“Len,” she starts, “before we go in—”
“You found out what I was planning. Did you save her?” The words taste metallic in my throat, like after a long, hard run.
Liana meets my gaze, eyes wide and shiny in the dimness. Then she looks away. “I had to.”
I step out of the car, and the frigid night air rushes to fill my lungs. Liana follows, moving toward the house, but I stay where I am. My pulse thrums against my skin. A steady heartbeat. I can almost feel yours.
Have you heard of metempsychosis?
“I thought I killed her,” I say. “I thought it was over. She was—I could feel her. I could feel her, Liana! We were going to be together forever. I didn’t care if—”
“She wasn’t dead yet, Len. After you left. And I couldn’t…”
I take a gasping breath, but it’s not enough. Nothing will be enough.
“I was trying to protect you, too.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “So I moved her. Else they would’ve found her too quickly, they would’ve found her before I set up the evidence, they—they would’ve found you.”
I shake my head. The world is distant and dissolving at the edges. Tipping into the water. Your laughter dips beneath the surface and drowns. “No—yes. I would’ve let them—it didn’t matter as long as—”
“You mean too much to me,” Liana says, anguished. “But still—I couldn’t watch her die. I couldn’t just stand there and—and—that makes me a murderer, Len. That makes you a murderer.”
She reaches for my arm, but I step back. “I can’t—” My throat closes. I look past her, at the house, at the darkened windows. Everything is too dark. Her dogs are raising a frenzy at our arrival. Blood is black in the moonlight. “I have to go.”
“Where?”
I don’t answer.
We both know.
The police station smells like printers and coffee. The officer at the front desk looks up and nods at me through the security glass. He seems surprised.
“I need to speak to someone,” I tell him. Behind me, Liana is sobbing.
“Speak about what?”
I let out a slow breath.
“My name is Len Moreau,” I say. “And I killed Hana Evans.”
Somewhere in a hospital room, a heartbeat monitor stops beeping.
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