It started when my son was three.
I’m a married mother of four. I’m a nurse and I work weekend shifts so that I can homeschool my youngest son, Justin, who is deaf. My older children, who are from a previous marriage, watch Justin during the weekends while I’m at work. My husband, Mark, works night shifts so he’s not very helpful with the child care. Mark is a police officer and an avid collector of cars. His favorite toy cars from his large collection are displayed in a display case that takes up an entire wall out of our living room.
On this particular day, my son and I were playing in the living room with his toy cars when he suddenly jumped up and hurried to the display case against one wall. He tapped on the glass and motioned me over before signing “I want that one!”
I looked at the car - a 1940’s model of some sort - and shook my head. I tried to explain to him that he couldn’t play with Daddy’s cars because they were special, but he wouldn’t listen.
“I used to have a car like that.” he insisted. “It looks like my car so I should have it.”
I was confused. “When did you have a car like that? Did grandma get you a toy I didn’t know about?”
“No, I had it before I was born.” was his reply. “When I was a grown up.”
I played it off and finally distracted him, but inside I was shocked. Had my son had a past life?
I asked him little questions about it at first, like where did he live before he was born. He told me that at first he had lived in Siam (I had to go to google and I found out that Thailand used to be called Siam… he couldn’t have known that) but then he died and was born in India, where he died again. In his third life, he was born in Jerusalem. In his fourth life, he lived in Germany. This, he explained, was his fifth life (or, in his words, his “fifth birth”).
As he got older, at around age five or six, I tried to ask him harder questions like what he did in those lives. He would explain his jobs. In Siam, he said, he and his friends stole things for a living. In India, he was in charge of many women who he would lend out to men for money. In Jerusalem, he sold fake jewels to “outsiders”, which I gathered to be tourists or perhaps pilgrims. In Germany, he was in charge of a large camp where many people died. It was in his German life that he had a fancy car.
I was beginning to see a pattern and it frightened me. In my son’s past lives he was a thief, a pimp, a fraudster, and a Nazi. Now, Justin is eleven, and about a week ago he started talking about his past lives out of the blue while we were eating a breakfast of toast and cereal.
“Before I’m born, a woman comes to talk to me.” he signed.
“What does the woman say?” I asked, now genuinely worried that perhaps my son had mental problems.
“She tells me what my task is.” Justin responded.
I pushed him further, and he explained.
“In my Siam life, I was supposed to find an old woman and steal her life. In my India life, there was a little girl whose life I had to take. In my Jerusalem life, it was a traveler woman. In my German life, it was a special little Jew.”
I was shocked and prayed that this was all just a figment of his imagination.
“It was all the same girl though.” he continued. “A long time ago, before I was ever born, she killed my Mom while I was in her tummy. The woman who comes to talk to me - my Mommy - wants revenge.”
I was about ready to call a child psychologist when he said something that chilled me right to the bone.
“Usually I have to look for her, but I already found her in this life.” he reached for the butter knife and lunged at me. Luckily, I’m a full grown woman and he’s a little boy. I wrestled the knife for his hand and called for his father.
Justin was admitted to a short-term psych treatment facility. He’s been acting very sweetly toward me, but I know better now. I’ve been having dreams of a robber slicing my throat, of a pimp beating me to death, of a salesman dragging me behind his store and strangling me. And, of course, of a bald and evil man watching me waste away in his camp before ordering me into a horrible room where I can’t breathe.
I know what my son really is now. He is not my son at all. I am going to have to do more than kill him. I am going to have to destroy his soul.
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Credits to: Thornypotato
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