The Memory Painter

Bryan couldn’t answer and ran to the bathroom to be sick, leaving her alone to study the disaster. An old Super 8 projector had been set up like Bryan’s own Cinema Paradiso with film reels stacked around it. A massive collection of neuroscience books was piled on the sofa.

Linz studied the titles with raised eyebrows: Developmental Neurobiology, Medical Physiology and Biophysics, Subcortical Visual Systems, and every issue of the International Journal of Neuroscience from its first publication in 1970 up until 1982. A pile of papers on the coffee table caught her eye—they were articles printed off the Internet on Medicor and her father. Linz reached for them. Why did he have these?

Bryan returned, wiping his face with a towel, and looking a little better. “Sorry about the mess. I was going to…” He stopped when he saw what she had found.

Linz stared at him. She was beginning to feel like she didn’t know him at all. “What’s all this?”

“I can explain. I was just on the Internet researching…”

“My father? Why?” she asked. Something strange was going on with Bryan and every fiber of her being told her to leave.

“Wait, don’t get the wrong idea. I was researching Michael and Diana Backer, and I found out your father knew them.”

“Michael and Diana who?”

Bryan sat down, a look of utter weariness on his face. “The couple from the wedding portrait. Your father knew them. There’s an article here with a picture of them together, just let me find it.”

Linz now realized that all the boxes belonged to Michael and Diana. “You’re going through dead people’s things?”

“Not technically,” he said, making more of a mess as he dug through the stack of papers. “I know it’s here.”

Growing more unsettled by the minute, Linz watched Bryan tear the room apart as he looked for the article.

He tried to explain things to her again as he searched. “Your father knew them. Diana and Michael were neuroscientists working with Alzheimer’s patients.” Linz started to open the door to leave. “Listen to me,” he pleaded, “I didn’t even know Conrad Jacobs was your father until tonight.” He looked at the Super 8 projector. “The film! He’s on the film. Don’t go. I can prove it.” He found the film he wanted instantly—it was obvious to Linz that he had viewed them all several times.

“My father is on these people’s films?”

Bryan threaded the tape through the projector. “These are Michael and Diana’s home movies.”

“You watched their home movies?” she asked. Now she was beyond unnerved.

“Yes,” Bryan admitted, exasperated. “I have to know who these people are, for my own sanity. I can’t get them out of my head. It’s different than the other times.”

“I think it’s time we discussed just how many other times there have been,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. At first, she had been fascinated and amazed by their connection—was even starting to buy into the idea of reincarnation. But Bryan seemed trapped in a dream world, unable to get out, and she didn’t know if she wanted to join him there. “I thought we agreed you were going to drop all this stuff about that Diana woman,” she reminded him.

“I’m sorry but I can’t. Just please sit down and watch the film.”

“I don’t want to sit down.”