Chanai Choomalaiwong was born in central Thailand in 1967 with two birthmarks, one on the back of his head and one above his left eye. When he was born, his family did not think that his birthmarks were particularly significant, but when he was three years old, he began talking about a previous life. He said that he had been a schoolteacher named Bua Kai and that he had been shot and killed while on the way to school. He gave the names of his parents, his wife, and two of his children from that life, and he persistently begged his grandmother, with whom he lived, to take him to the previous parents’ home in a place called Khao Phra.
Eventually, when he was still three years old, his grandmother did just that. She and Chanai took a bus to a town near Khao Phra, which was fifteen miles from their home village. After the two of them got off the bus, Chanai led the way to a house where he said his parents lived. The house belonged to an elderly couple whose son, Bua Kai Lawnak, had been a teacher who was murdered five years before Chanai was born.… Once there, Chanai identified Bua Kai’s parents, who were there with a number of other family members, as his own. They were impressed enough by his statements and his birthmarks to invite him to return a short time later. When he did, they tested him by asking him to pick out Bua Kai’s belongings from others, and he was able to do that. He recognized one of Bua Kai’s daughters and asked for the other one by name. Bua Kai’s family accepted that Chanai was Bua Kai reborn, and he visited them a number of times. He insisted that Bua Kai’s daughters call him “Father,” and if they did not, he refused to talk to them.
JIM B. TUCKER, M.D., LIFE BEFORE LIFE
Eleven
A door opened, and she fell through.
That’s what happened, Janie thought afterward, standing in the dark living room. Yet there had been nothing so unusual about the sight of Noah yelling and thrashing about in his Ninja Turtle sheets. His mouth was open, his hair damp, plastered to his cheeks. She moved toward the bed to comfort and restrain him, but Anderson moved faster; he was beside Noah in an instant, leaning over him, holding down the feet kicking at the sheets.
A stranger was touching her son, who was calling out for her. Who was calling out— “Mama!”
“Noah,” she said, moving toward the bed, and Anderson looked up at her and held her back with his glance.
“Noah,” Anderson said quietly. His voice was very firm. “Noah, can you hear me?”
“Lemme out!” Noah yelled. “Mama! Lemme out! I can’t get out!”
“Noah. It’s okay. It’s a nightmare,” Anderson said. “You’re having a nightmare.”
“I can’t breathe!”
“You can’t breathe?”
“Can’t breathe!”
Janie knew it was the dream, but she couldn’t help saying, “Noah has asthma. We need to get his nebulizer—it’s in the drawer—”
“He’s breathing.” Anderson’s long body was poised over Noah’s small struggling form, his hands still on his feet. Don’t touch my son, she thought, but she didn’t say it. She didn’t say anything. She sent Anderson a silent message: One wrong move, bud, I’ll boot you out of here so fast your head will spin.
“Noah,” Anderson said firmly. “You can wake up now. It’s all right.”
Noah stopped moving. He opened his eyes wide. “Mama.”
“Yes, honey,” she called from the foot of the bed. But he was looking past her. She wasn’t what he wanted.
“I want to go home.”
“Noah,” Anderson said again, and Noah turned his blue eyes on Anderson and kept them there. “Can you tell us what happened in your dream?”
“I can’t breathe.”
“Why can’t you breathe?”
“I’m in the water.”
“You’re in—the ocean? A lake?”
“No.” Noah took a few ragged, shallow breaths. Janie felt the struggle in her own lungs. If he stopped breathing, she would, too.
Noah squirmed into a sitting position. Anderson didn’t need to hold on to his feet anymore. He was holding his attention. “He hurt me.”
“In your dream?” Anderson spoke quickly. “Who’s hurting you?”
“Not in my dream. In my real life.”
“I see. Who hurt you?”
“Pauly. He hurt my body. Why’d he do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why’d he do it? Why?” Noah grabbed Anderson’s hand, his eyes troubled. Janie herself had become invisible, a shadow at the foot of the bed.
Anderson looked back at him intently. “What did he do?”
“He hurt Tommy.”
“Tommy? Was that your name?”
“Yes.”
Janie was listening to her son, but the words echoed oddly in her mind, as if she were hearing them from somewhere far away. And yet she was here, in this familiar room, with the glow-in-the-dark stars she’d pasted on the ceiling, one by one, and the bureau she’d hand-painted with elephants and tigers, and Noah, her Noah, and the door in her mind opening and closing and opening again.
“I see,” Anderson said. “That’s great. Do you remember your last name?”
“I don’t know. I’m just Tommy.”
“All right. Did you have a family, when you were Tommy?”
“Of course.”
“Who’s in your family?”
“There’s my mama and papa and my little brother. And we have a lizard.”
“And what are their names?”
“Horntail.”
“Horntail?”
“He’s a bearded dragon. Charlie and I named him that ’cause he looked like the Horntail Harry fought.”
“I see. And who’s Harry?”