I.

The first time I noticed it, I was sitting in my study at half past two in the morning, the fire burned down to embers, the house silent around me, and I found myself writing words I did not remember putting on the page.

The journal was leather-bound, the sort of thing one buys in Bond Street for a gentleman who wishes to keep his thoughts private. I had purchased it that afternoon, on a whim, because the shopkeeper had told me it was the sort of journal Dr. Johnson had used. A nice story, perhaps, but one I had no intention of testing.

I had written three pages before I noticed the fourth.

The handwriting was mine, but it was not. The letters were the same—my loops, my angles, my particular slant to the right—but the pressure was different. Where my writing was light, almost hesitant, this writing was heavy, deliberate, as if the hand that had held the pen were trying to force the words through the page and into whatever lay beneath it.

I read what I had written. Or rather, what had been written.

I am the third. I was a captain in the Royal Navy. I served in the East Indies. I was lost at sea in 1742, my ship taken by a storm off the coast of Sumatra. I do not fear death. I fear forgetting.

I closed the journal. I sat in the dark. I listened to the house breathe around me.

I am Dorian Ashworth, twenty-four years old, and I have lived seven lives. I know this because the journal tells me so. I know this because the voices in my head tell me so. I know this because when I close my eyes at night, I see things that are not my own—a battlefield in France, a monastery in Italy, a courtroom in London, a pyramid in Egypt.

II.

Dr. Blackwood was a small man with sharp eyes and a voice that was carefully neutral. He sat in his armchair in my study, his notebook open on his knee, watching me with the detached curiosity of a man who had seen too much to be surprised by anything.

"Tell me about the voices," he said.

I looked at the fire. The embers were glowing red, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat. "They come at night," I said. "When the house is quiet. When I am alone. They speak to me in my head. Seven voices. Seven men. Each one claims to have lived a life that was not mine."

Dr. Blackwood made a note in his pad. "And what do they say?"

"The first says he was a Roman soldier. He died at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, year ninety-eight of the common era. He says he can still feel the sword in his chest."

"The second?"

"A medieval monk. He spent forty years in a monastery in Ireland, copying manuscripts by candlelight. He died of the plague in 1348."

"The third?"

"A naval captain. Lost at sea in 1742, off the coast of Sumatra."

"The fourth?"

"A French revolutionary. He was guillotined in 1793, Place de la Revolution."

"The fifth?"

"A painter in Renaissance Florence. He died in poverty, 1520."

"The sixth?"

"A priest in ancient Egypt. He served at the temple of Karnak for thirty years."

Dr. Blackwood looked up from his notebook. "And the seventh?"

I looked at him. I looked at the fire. I looked at the journal on the desk, its leather cover dark in the firelight.

"That's me," I said. "I'm the seventh."

III.

The journal grew. Each morning, I would find new pages—pages I did not remember writing, in a hand that was mine but not mine, filled with words that were not my thoughts but were somehow more truthful than anything I had ever written myself.

The fourth voice wrote about the guillotine. He described the smell of the crowd—the sweat, the blood, the fear. He described the sound of the blade dropping. He described the moment when his head separated from his body, and the world went dark.

The fifth voice wrote about Florence. He described the light—the way it fell through the windows of his studio, golden and warm, illuminating the half-finished painting on his easel. He described the woman who sat for him—Lisia, twenty years old, with hair like spun gold and eyes like the sea. He described the hunger—the way his stomach ached, the way his hands trembled, the way he painted anyway, because painting was the only thing that made him feel alive.

The sixth voice wrote about Egypt. He described the river—the Nile, vast and golden and alive, flowing through a desert that had no other colour. He described the temple—the columns carved with hieroglyphs, the statues of gods with the heads of animals, the priests in linen robes chanting prayers to a sun that rose and set with mechanical precision.

I read all of it. I did not sleep. I sat in my study, the journal open on my desk, the fire burning low, the house silent around me, and I read the words of men who had died a thousand years ago and who were somehow, impossibly, alive inside my head.

I began to doubt.

Not the words. Not the memories. I believed them. I believed that I had been a soldier, a monk, a captain, a revolutionary, a painter, a priest. I believed that I had lived six lives before this one, and that each life had ended in death.

I doubted myself.

If I had lived six lives, then who was I? Was I Dorian Ashworth, twenty-four years old, heir to the Ashworth estate, gentleman of London? Or was I a vessel, a container, a shell that six dead men had inhabited and then abandoned?

If I was not Dorian Ashworth, then who was I?

IV.

The seventh voice appeared on a Tuesday in November. I was sitting in my study, reading the journal, when I noticed a new page—a page that was different from the others. The handwriting was not mine, and it was not any of the six men's. It was something else—something darker, heavier, more deliberate.

I am the seventh, it said. I am the one who remembers everything. I am the one who knows that none of this is real.

I sat back in my chair. The fire was burning low. The house was silent.

I am not Dorian Ashworth, the page continued. I am not a Roman soldier, or a monk, or a captain, or a revolutionary, or a painter, or a priest. I am not any of these things. I am the thing that lives inside Dorian Ashworth's head. I am the voice that tells him he has lived seven lives. I am the voice that tells him the journal is writing itself. I am the voice that is making him doubt his own identity.

And I am the reason he will never be able to tell the difference between what is real and what is not.

I closed the journal. I stood up. I walked to the mirror in the hallway and looked at my face.

Pale. Dark circles under my eyes. Hair unkempt. A man who had not slept in weeks, who had not eaten properly, who had not spoken to another human being except a doctor and a shopkeeper and a bartender.

I looked at my reflection and I did not recognize the face.

Because I was no longer sure whose face it was.

Was I Dorian Ashworth, twenty-four years old, heir to the Ashworth estate? Or was I the thing inside his head, the voice that had been speaking to him for months, the presence that had been growing stronger with each passing day?

I looked at the mirror. The man in the mirror looked back at me. His eyes were dark. His mouth was set in a line that was almost a smile.

And I wondered, not for the first time, whether I was looking at a man or a monster.