House of Darkness House of Light Read online

  “You fainted. You must have collapsed on top of it.”

  “Roger, that stake was buried a good eighteen inches into the ground. Go look. I left the hole untouched because I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “No need… . I believe you.”

  “No, you don’t. The hole is clean. It looks like the stake was pulled up, straight out of the ground. If I had collapsed on top of it, the point would not have landed in my hip. It would still be buried. If I fell on it that might have caused it to flip upward out of the dirt. There would have been some sign left behind. It would have disturbed the dirt around the stake. Don’t you see?”

  “Why didn’t you go to a doctor?” Quick change the subject. A flimflam thank you ma’am tactic he’d put to use in the past: a sense of redirection.

  “Are you kidding me?” Carolyn’s lips were curling in disgust. “You left me with twenty-five dollars; gone for more than a week. I ran out of tape the first day and this piece of gauze was the last one I plastered on, yesterday! I can’t even walk, let alone drive a car to go get what I need… even if I could, how would I pay for it? Any other questions?” Mt. Vesuvius had nothing on Carolyn when she had a point to make. On point, she was not done with him yet. “Roger, you didn’t even know I was in trouble. How could you know? You never called home, not once.” She blew her stack. With fire in her eyes, flame-throwing daggers in his direction, the time had come to cut and run. She would have preferred to plunge the suspicious stake into his cold, hard heart, though she was willing to settle for running him off. Acting out, in pure frustration, Roger emptied his pockets of cash, throwing it on the table. Then he hit the door. Carolyn glared at him as he stomped off, contemptuous of her mortal adversary, the man she’d married. All of his clothes were still packed in the car. Hit the road! It was his fault, all of it. Point… counterpoint.

  But it could not have been all of it, Carolyn thought. Roger would never leave himself destitute the way he had so often left her. Never known to be a penniless man, she knew it meant there was more money than just what he’d scattered across the kitchen table. It had to be elsewhere; out of sight… she thought she’d go out of her mind with rage, wondering where he had stashed the cash. As squeaky brakes on a school bus broke the speculative spell and kept her from conjuring anymore worst case scenarios, from the sound of it, there was room for improvement everywhere in her world, even beneath the seats her children occupied on Bus #10. Fired up, ready to roll, Carolyn was on the phone with the transportation company before her kids hit the door, brakes fixed by the following day. Piling into the kitchen, ravenous as usual, the girls began foraging for food while their mother intimidated some poor man on the other end of the line. Satisfied she had made her point, repairs promised, she hung up the telephone, properly greeting her daughters as they passed a box of cereal around. Deciding not to tell them that their father had already come and gone from the premises, she joined them at the table. No need to inform or disappoint them. His absence was nothing unusual. Ya get used to it. That is why Carolyn was so surprised to hear his booming voice behind her while she worked in the pantry, hardly music to her ears. She’d thought she was free of him, at least for awhile. What was he doing? Carolyn listened up. She’d heard it and there was music in the air; the sounds of her children greeting their daddy. It softened her stance a bit. His arms were full of paper bags, each one with a name written on it. Handing them over to his girls, they were shocked to find what each contained: girl stuff! He had never done it before. Nail polish and hand cream, make-up remover, hair barrettes, and a sample perfume for each of his little ladies (the ones who preferred to hang from trees) as Carolyn watched on in stunned silence. How incredibly thoughtful of him. It had to take some time to make the selections he did, matching hair bows to an eye-color, choosing the sweetest scent for April, something musky for Nancy. Daddy had been to the Chepachet Pharmacy! Eureka! Like striking gold itself… in the form of gold-foil chocolate coins!

  As shocked as the girls had been, Carolyn figured he was gone, if not for good, at least for the time being. Cautiously approaching his wife, taking her temperature from a safe distance, the core had cooled. Handing her a bundle of flowers, then one overstuffed bag crammed with anything and everything she could possibly need to fill up a heart or a first aid kit, she smiled. She did not want his sympathy but needed the medicine, accepting it graciously.

  “Look, mommy! Daddy brought all of us our own Whitman’s Samplers!” Nancy was beside herself with glee. Chris was as delighted by the pretty box as she was by what came inside; a little something to keep her trinkets in.

  Tempted to remind them that candy would rot their teeth right out of their pretty little heads, it hardly seemed the time to state the obvious.

  “I knew you were holding back on me.” Carolyn could not help herself. It just came naturally.

  “I should have called home.” Roger hung his head. This was the closest his wife would ever come to a full-blown admission of guilt, or an apology. He didn’t mean to be an ass. Couldn’t help himself… it just came naturally.

  By the end of that evening, all was forgotten… but never really forgiven. The lone victim had suffered far too much to ever forget her predicament and its aftermath. For better or for worse, for richer or poorer; nothing had really changed between them. Typical… so like her husband to make matters worse then try to make it all better by making amends with one kind gesture. She mustered some gratitude but the fact remained, no matter what Carolyn said, he had to counter it with his differing opinion. Point… counterpoint. It was almost like a game. Jeopardy. Their whole family was in jeopardy. Nobody could provoke him with greater ease than his wife. It seemed as though both of them were always right on the verge of picking a fight. As usual their children chose to ignore a residual tension which lingered in the air. Instead, they nibbled on candy and filled their home with a variety of fragrances that thankfully did not clash as they laughed and played dress up in the bathroom. Carolyn watched on while soaking in the tub, attempting to heal one of the wounds inflicted. She closed her eyes, revisiting an event that brought her to the knees, begging God for help she could not find anywhere else. Studying the hole in her hip, Carolyn was quite certain it had been no accident. Certain she’d been deliberately targeted by a force of evil with malicious intentions she knew the worst of it was over. Eventually it would heal; the pain would gradually subside. As for her emotional scars, they proved to be permanent. Feeling especially soft-hearted toward the five tomboys trying to be ladylike, Carolyn kindly suggested they were free to use her cosmetics. At least they would have a great day, one to remember for the rest of their lives. For these children, a day filled with light and the love of their parents. It mattered.

  “Life is short and we have never too much time

  for gladdening the hearts of those who

  are traveling the dark journey with us.

  Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind.”

  Henri Frederick Amiel

  in the closet

  “When you close your doors, and make darkness within,

  remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay,

  God is within, and your genius is within.

  And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?”

  Epictetus

  April had a series of experiences at the farm, some she never shared with anyone. It was a private matter so she kept it that way for almost forty years. Only recently has she divulged the relationship which so profoundly affected her life. It was difficult for her to do so because what happened to April was decidedly different than anything else happening with any other members of the family. She defended her privacy, and that of the boy she had befriended, with silence, the only way she knew to protect both of them from scrutiny.

  ***

  When the Perrons moved to the farm in January of 1971, April was still just a little bit of a thing, only five years old. Nobody knew at the tim
e what the place held in store for the family. Of course, none of them knew about the spirits or anticipated supernatural activity of any kind. The thought had not even occurred to anyone, having had no experiences of this nature prior to their arrival. It was the stuff of scary movies and grim fairy tales. As far as Roger and Carolyn were concerned, the two pragmatic, reality-based parents were preoccupied, worried about those mundane yet important things in life, like registering the girls for school and unpacking multitudes of boxes. They thought of little else than getting settled. Nobody realized what was going on in the upstairs closet, from the inception, as a slightly neurotic attachment in the making, a bond forged for life and afterlife.

  As the youngest child, April was the most malleable, highly susceptible to omnipresent forces in their farmhouse. Her innocence, that certain sweetness she possessed was quite enticing to mortal and immortal alike. Little wonder it was an invitation to interactions of the supernatural persuasion. Reclusive by nature, she loved to play alone, as long as it included access to all the toys while her sisters were away at school. April hoarded them, not selfishly, not by any means; her exceedingly generous spirit persists, to her own detriment. She is still one of those “give you the shirt off her back” folks. She’d always enjoyed gathering the Little People together, a complete assortment of trolls and a regimen of ghostly-glow-in-the-dark finger puppets. She built an entire community, along with many amenities, using Legos to construct the shelter, Lincoln Logs for the barn and a place to park the school bus, a barnyard for the animals and an airstrip for plane landings. She established a hierarchy of toys. The dolls played with the trolls and Little People were in charge of any theatrical productions, putting on plays with the talented finger puppet cast. They directed the show. April’s playtime was extremely creative but Carolyn worried when her baby girl spent too much time alone, by choice.

  While her mother was preoccupied unpacking and arranging a new house April claimed a space in it for herself. It was a warm and private place in which to explore her great gift of an imagination with no boundaries. This is precisely why she’d withheld vital information from her family. She always presumed they’d think she made it up. A secret she kept for decades was based on fear. Her spiritual encounters were so unusual, so frequent April thought nobody would believe her. Even after everybody else began telling their own tales of supernatural origin, encounters with spiritual beings, April protected her own knowledge from scrutiny, even by those eager to hear about it and willing to accept whatever she had to say. Lorraine Warren knew the child had a secret. April trusted no one. Strangers would certainly never pry this from her lips if she steadfastly refused to tell her mother about what happened in the closet. Confiding in no one, especially those who claimed to help, in her mind, they posed a threat. They offered to make the spirits go away! Her concerns were legitimate. It was precisely their intention. April was unwilling to part with a precious, enduring friendship she had, by that time, nurtured for years.

  Within days of moving in, the child had her first encounter with the spirit, an entity she would claim, then covet, one with whom she would develop a profound emotional bond; one so meaningful its mere existence permanently altered her perceptions of life and death. It was a fateful union, haunting her still, within her dreams and memories of a significant friendship. She cannot speak of it without crying, remorseful about how it ended. April considers it to be a childhood tragedy… for two children.

  The original center chimney was removed from the farmhouse before the furnace was installed, decades before their arrival. A much smaller chimney replaced it at the time, creating space: the “warm room” off the bathroom on the first floor, an equally cozy alcove directly above it. Their chimney closet was such an inviting place for this solitary child, though it proved a favorite spot for all the girls at play. They would often cram in together for hours, but when the four eldest were in school, April had it all to herself. She relished those times in total solitude. Tucking up into that gap behind the chimney, she would spread the toys out all around her, building a miniature village, reconfiguring the scene piece by piece. One chilly morning her playtime was interrupted by a timid presence she had already sensed for days. He bravely manifested, pushing an open door a bit wider, the one leading into the eaves. April heard a creaking sound and looked up, instantly noticing a wider crack in the narrow door. She watched with a curiosity reserved for the youngest at heart, as her newfound friend emerged from the ether. He too was a child, no bigger than she, tentatively raising his head from within the dark confines of a cubbyhole in the eaves. He appeared to be frightened, peering in panic into the place with which he seemed familiar, checking it, for safe passage, so it seemed. He didn’t appear to see April at first. His facial expression indicated trepidation. He’d been hiding out. Entering cautiously, nervously glancing over his shoulder, the lad looked scared to death. She was not a bit afraid of him. He posed no threat. Quite the contrary, he was the one who appeared to be threatened, evading something or someone from whom he’d escaped. She studied him in silence as he entered the space she willingly shared.

  The boy wore a pair of handmade trousers, about three inches too short. A pair of loosely bound brown socks sagged at his ankles inside a ragged pair of shoes. One of the shoes had a distinct hole worn into the side, too small to contain his tiny foot. The shirt was grey flannel with a strip of cloth running down the center of the front, pockets on both sides. His clothing was shabby but he appeared to be clean. He had a full head of very blond hair, so blond it seemed almost white. His eyes were the most haunting aspect of this tortured soul. Pale green, watery, filled with pain: an inexplicable sadness, enough to break a stranger’s heart. When he looked up at the child, she acknowledged his presence, his existence, with a smile. The boy crawled out into the closet then he sat down on the floor a few feet away from her, a safe distance from which to observe one another. As April recalls, he was fragile and delicate, perhaps six or seven years old, though extremely frail, obviously a child who had known hunger and deprivation in life. It was difficult for her to describe him, even though her recollections remain quite vivid. As she struggled to adequately capture his physical essence in words, April used “translucent” to express what proved to be a fascinating visual anomaly to a five year old kid. Unable to see through him, she says he was solid but light, as if he was about to disappear, on the verge of vaporizing into thin air at any moment, but he never did. Instead, he stayed, becoming her companion: playmate. Whenever he came it was for the duration, for as long as a living soul remained at play. Not as vibrant in tone and texture as a mortal being, his coloring was muted but clear. In time he would come to trust her, moving ever closer to her spot behind the chimney. Their interaction was limited in the beginning, based primarily on mutual the observation. A willingness to communicate existed between them, even though neither knew how to begin conversation between dimensions. April longed to ask the boy why he was so sad and worried, why he would always look around the way he did before entering their closet. It was a trial. His despair weighed heavily on her. April felt very protective of him, defensive about the lad. It required some time for them to learn how to properly converse together. When their connection was firmly established, it was telepathic in nature, because Nature always finds a way.

  It was a heart wrenching process for April to describe her encounters with a little lost soul. Because it was so difficult to talk about she decided instead to write about her recollections. After so many decades had passed, anyone would assume that time would taint or diminish her memory but April insists her vision of him remains vivid and pure, an image she could not ever forget. She spent so much time in his presence, studying his expressions, the details of him, marveling at his wide-eyed wonder he has become a permanent part of her consciousness, etched in stone, not simply a vague childhood memory.

  As for the pain, it comes not in recalling the past but in reliving it, if only briefly. The emotion it still evokes i
s the natural consequence of revisiting a place in the country, re-exploring this sad and tragic loss of life involving the demise of an innocent child. It never mattered to her that his death occurred well before her life began. Simpatico: they shared acute awareness, a mutual vulnerability. Both sensed a threat, a suspicion that they were in danger. He was frightened and alone. Without her, he was on in own in the cosmos. This was all that mattered to April. Still raw, she cannot escape the image of him. Time does not heal everything. She will never close the book on this chapter.