House of Darkness House of Light Page 7

  It began as a low ominous growl, gradually rising in intensity, threatening in tone. Figures passing figures, as if choreographed, like crossing paths on a city street, they filled the room with wonder. Some heads were bowed, some facing straight forward. Cindy’s bedroom was suddenly crowded with souls. Queasy feeling struck her while she observed the swirling smoke, something akin to the onset of vertigo. Its constant waves swept the child seasick. There was no particular chill in the air or any detectable odor with which she was familiar; precursors she had learned to expect when manifestations occurred. Instead, light and shadow danced, waltzing across the once vacant wallscape of the room at twilight… then they were gone. Rather than running to her mom, Cindy decided to stay put and rearrange the barnyard. She could tell her about it at dinner. No big deal. She had already begun to think differently. But then…

  ***

  “As I looked up, she was heading toward me.” Cindy remembered it well. “She was floating. I didn’t see the feet. She was tall and had broad shoulders. Her head was cocked off to the side, her neck was broken. It made me sick to my stomach to look at her. The features were gross and distorted. Her head was awful. I couldn’t move. I could only stare at her.” Cindy’s face flushed. She went on, reluctantly, struggling to tell this tale. “She was wearing a gray house dress, cotton I believe, with orange and yellow flowers on it, all faded out, like it had been washed and hung a thousand times. It was a rag. It had a short, delicate ruffle around the neck and sleeves. There was a pinafore, too, as dingy and worn as the dress she had on. Her arms were extended toward me but no hands… just a handkerchief tucked up inside the cuff of the sleeve. That is what I focused on… her arms. I thought she was going to grab at me. I couldn’t move, not at all. The room was icy cold. It smelled like death. I could only watch then I panicked when I saw those sleeves reaching out for me… long sleeves, not leg of mutton… straight from the shoulders to wrists. I swear to God, I could hear her… telepathically! She was speaking to me! She kept telling me over and over again that she needed me and wanted me; she wanted to hold me. The entity appeared to be about thirty, which seemed old to me at the time. When I heard the door open I didn’t even look up at first. I thought it was one of my sisters or mom coming to get me for dinner. Once I did look I never took my eyes off of her. She started to speak out loud. Her voice was the kind of pretend sweet adults use when they want to get kids to do something for them. She kept on saying ‘Come to me, little girl.’ I was in the bubble. When she began leaning over me I just prayed… I begged God to get me out of there! It’s so strange though, because I could feel her presence very powerfully and it felt like she really loved me! When I look back on it now I have to think she did not want to harm me. She just wanted a little girl of her own. I can’t explain it. She coveted me. So did the other woman who came, to tuck me in at night, the one who smelled like flowers and fruit. It’s so sad… I guess she was the mother of the little girl who died in my room. I wonder if she thought I was her little girl! With so many spirits passing on through that room it was hard to know who was who. But the one who came that day… she was new. I had never seen her before. She was so disgusting to look at she’d be impossible to forget. She didn’t want me to go away but as soon as I broke free I started to run. Something helped me escape… I should have been more careful on that staircase. God! I fell so hard. I ran through Andrea’s room then fell down the stairs. It’s where I tripped. I don’t think I have ever been so scared in my entire life. Not ever before… or since. When I think back on it now, I feel pity for her. She was so ugly; especially that head, but I can’t help it. I feel sorry for her. What a way to spend eternity!” Cindy wrung her hands and asked for a cup of coffee, then continued. “I was just a little girl at the time and I didn’t deserve to be terrorized. I will admit, that experience left some scars but the truth is, I’m fine, she’s not. I’m sure she’s still there, at the farm, along with all the rest of them. Maybe she is pure evil. Maybe she tried to disguise it with her kind voice. I don’t know. Squatting down on the floor, minding my own business… and that happens!”

  When her coffee arrived Cynthia took a sip then studied the surface of the strong brew for a moment, composing herself along with her next thought. “We never really had a chance to be kids in that house. It seems like there was always something happening to yank us back into reality. OUR reality. We lived with ghosts. Sometimes we lived like ghosts! When dad got mad, we vanished! We lived in a haunted house and even though we got used to it we never stopped being shocked by it. They adored us but that never kept us from being frightened of them but it did make us stop and think about their plight… their existence. They have feelings and desires just like us and they only wanted acknowledgment. When that entity came to me I think she just wanted a hug. I have always wondered if I hurt her feelings by running away from her. She never came to me again.” Cindy got hurt as well, flying down the stairwell like a rag doll, bouncing off walls, scraped and scuffed, bruised and bleeding by the time she’d landed in the relative safety of her mother’s arms. She remembers sitting on the side of the bathtub sobbing, insisting that she belonged to Carolyn and did not want to go with the spirit who had come to call her home to the netherworld. Story over. Cynthia drank her lukewarm coffee. The eye of the beholder sees both ways. As spirits watched over them equally observant mortals practiced their presence, acknowledging them in a reversal of scrutiny, especially at twilight, the time when they seemed able to see one another. All agreed… it was best not to get too attached.

  “Yet do I fear thy nature;

  It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.”

  William Shakespeare

  The hiding and seeking of sisters was wrought with perils. Even though the children had some rather unpleasant experiences, it didn’t stop them from engaging in a favorite game… kids just being kids. Certain cubbyholes in the house were deemed off-limits. They avoided places like the borning room, for instance. During one spirited round of the game, Cynthia decided that the woodshed was attached to the house, so it qualified as a place to go and hide. The cellar door out there gave her the creeps but it was not reason enough to shun the space… not yet. They’d all played out there so many times before, without incident. Discreetly scooting through the summer kitchen, she pulled open the heaviest door in the house. As quietly as possible, a kid slid into the darkness undetected, or so she thought. She forgot they were never alone.

  Months earlier, Carolyn discovered an old wooden box hidden beneath a tarp on the lower level of the woodshed. She’d enlisted the help of her eldest and hoisted it onto the upper level, placing it near to the front entrance, the sliding door. That spot would provide sufficient light to work on it over time. Covered up in cobwebs and dust, it needed a good cleansing and a paint job before it could move into the parlor. There it sat untouched, but for a cursory brushing off. It seemed a likely place to get lost in space reserved for logs. A simple box: the frame, set on four peg legs, about five feet across, two feet wide and equally deep. The lid was hinged on the back, folding over like the cover of a book, a real find in the dark and dusty archives of antiquities. No latches. No locks. No problem. It was safe enough, for the moment.

  Running short on time, Cindy climbed into the wood box, reached up and lowered the lid. Nobody would ever find her there, not in the time and space allotted for the game. Out of sight and out of her mind with panic when the lid would not reopen. The child was trapped. Its lightweight lid would not budge. Having had second thoughts the moment she crawled inside, Cindy wanted out. No way out! She banged and screamed as steam heat building up around her became oppressive. It was August, a very humid day. The air was stagnant, no breeze to circulate what a frightened kid required: air to breathe! She could not catch a breath inside a box with no exit.

  Running short of safe places to seek the well-hidden sibling, Christine and Nancy reported to the kitchen then decided to search the woodshed next. Lost and FOUND her! Nancy
lifted the lid with ease, only to find a huddled mass of matted hair; beneath it, the face of terror. Soaking wet with sweat, wild-eyed, Cindy could barely move. Seek and ye shall find a sister in crisis! There she was, desperately gasping for a breath of fresh air. Game over and out of the box, Nancy and Christine grabbed Cindy by the arms, lifting her up and out of solitary confinement. Free at last. Thank God Almighty.

  “Oh God! Cin! Are you okay?” The words shrieked from Nancy’s mouth, scared stiff by the sight of her little sister. “Come on, honey!” The panic in her voice could not be disguised… Cindy was dead weight in her arms.

  “No! I… was stuck… in here!” Barely audible, voice shrill from screaming for what she suspects was at least twenty minutes, she fought to contain her rage for being abandoned, while expressing undying gratitude for the rescue. Bursting into tears, sobbing hysterically, an emotion had her by the throat.

  “Why didn’t you just climb out of it?” Chrissy was perplexed and equally disturbed by the sight, a wonder to behold. One had to wonder.

  “I… couldn’t… climb… out!” Cindy’s body lurched as she wept, creating a staccato effect, erupting as words she was struggling to speak aloud.

  “What the hell happened?” An alarm in Nancy’s voice spoke volumes about the sight before her eyes.

  “Why didn’t someone… come for me… I was… screaming for… help!”

  “I didn’t hear you until I came out here.” Nancy was telling the truth.

  “I… I was kicking the lid… as hard as I… could! It wouldn’t… open!”

  “Of course it opens, sweetie. There’s no latch on it.” Showing Cindy how easily the lid lifted up, no locks, no impediment to escape, Nancy closed the wooden box, returning to her sister’s side.

  Completely drained of energy, Cynthia staggered as her sisters guided her back into their house, toward the kitchen. She was unable to walk without an assistant and still crying. Carolyn was in the kitchen. Mommy would know what to do. Overcome by an inexplicable lethargy which was, in hindsight, something more than the result of a traumatic situation, more than oxygen deprivation, Cindy was profoundly, physically affected by the metaphysical encounter. She’d been touched by something wicked.

  Only eight years old at the time, Cindy appeared to have aged. Extricated from the coffin-like box, she seemed as frightened as when she was trapped within its wooden walls. Carolyn knew instantly what to do. Snagging a dish towel from the pantry, she soaked it with cool spring water and swabbed her daughter’s face and hair. Andrea brought her a cold glass of water to drink.

  “What were you girls thinking?”

  “We were just playing, mom. We were hiding and seeking like we always do! But Cindy got stuck in the wood box.”

  “Out in the woodshed? How is that possible?”

  “It’s not… but it happened.” Cynthia’s pitiful face emerged from beneath the towel drenched with sweat, tears still streaking down cheeks flushed with frustration. Nobody understood it, as usual… easy to misunderstand unusual things occurring there. A rigorous curriculum… complicated subject matter.

  “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.” Carolyn was cross.

  Something beyond exhausted, Cynthia went to bed and there she stayed. Hour after hour, she slept like the dead in her mother’s bed. Her numinous encounter from another realm left the kid weak and weary, to such an extent, it was as if the life force had been sucked from her soul.

  Meanwhile, Carolyn took Andrea out to the woodshed. They retrieved the suspicious wood box, carrying it into the house. Nailing two props in place, securing the lid in an upright position, they filled it with firewood. From that day on until the family moved away, it remained in the parlor as a permanent fixture, placed in a position of prominence directly across from the fireplace. There a watchful mother could keep an eye on it. What’s that old adage say? “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Front and center, present and accounted for, a wood box stood vigil, like a hatchet on the hearthstone.

  “There was no air left in that box. I was suffocating!” All these years later there is still alarm in her voice as she recounts the story, revisiting the past. It qualifies as a traumatic childhood event. Cindy remains grateful to Nancy for bailing her out of that hell hole, for hearing her when she was so exhausted, down to a whimper. To this day, Cynthia believes if she had not been found when she was she might have died. Perish the thought! According to her, she was super/naturally saved, rescued “just in the nick of time”. That phrase applies. Adamant her life was threatened, first and foremost, she is sure this episode involved some suspension of time, at the very least, a distortion of it. Her memory is of being angry that nobody came, as if time itself had been notched out of the public record and she was left alone to fend for herself, all alone in the netherworld. Chris claims she had been missing for about twenty minutes or so when it occurred to them to check the woodshed. Cindy insists she was banging and screaming for help for that long or longer but then time itself seemed to stop so she couldn’t tell how much of it had lapsed anymore. It was remarkable that Nancy heard her at all. Safe and sound, four decades hence, Cindy still shudders at the thought of it. Nancy interjected a memory, prompted by her little sister’s comment:

  “I still can’t believe no one could hear me!” Cindy’s frustration returned.

  “We looked everywhere for you, even in the summer kitchen. You were nowhere to be found. We didn’t hear a sound coming from the woodshed.”

  “But I was making so much noise, at first anyway. I don’t know how long I banged and kicked and screamed… someone had to hear it!” Someone did. Whoever or whatever held a hinged lid closed on an otherwise safe haven for hiders must have heard the child, felt her panic as she tried to escape a living tomb. Cruel and unusual punishment… an evil act perpetrated against her.

  It occurred to Cindy while revisiting this episode that she could not recall feeling the way she later would, during other manifestations. Reflecting upon this event, sharing revelations, Cindy continued to pick it apart in her mind. Then aloud, surrounded by her sisters, she made a startling declaration.

  “I don’t remember feeling like I was stuck in the bubble, you know, that vapor lock we always felt when the spirits came around us in a circle then no one could hear or see anything going on inside of it from outside of it. Even though I’d been trapped in the wood box, I really don’t think I was caught in the bubble… not that time anyway. It didn’t feel the same.”

  “You were in a very dangerous situation.” Carolyn’s demeanor was grim. As the talk tended to bring her back to a dark place she didn’t want to revisit, a past life she’d sooner leave behind, a heartsick mother recalled her version of events, remains of the day. “Thank God Nancy heard you crying.”

  “That’s another thing I can’t explain! By the time Nancy and Chris got to the woodshed I wasn’t really making any noise… not anymore. By that time I was exhausted, forced to focus on trying to breathe instead of trying to yell. I don’t know how she heard me or even knew to look inside the wood box.”

  “But I did hear you! I could hear you crying!” Nancy—chiming in again.

  “I don’t know how… I was barely breathing when you opened it.”

  “No one put it together. I don’t remember anyone saying it was some sort of supernatural thing. We’d only been there for, what, eight months?”

  “I knew.” Carolyn glanced over at Andrea.

  “I did, too.” Laying pen and paper aside, the eldest had something to say. “I remember you signaling me to follow you out to the woodshed. You were defiant. We never said a word. I knew what you intended to do before we got there. You checked the lid, closed it then brushed it off. We carried it into the summer kitchen. You got the hammer and nails and two pieces of wood. We cleaned it out then you nailed the lid open. We put it in the parlor against the wall next to my stairs then I went to get wood to fill it up, about four or five armloads, as I recall.” She s
miled and flexed her muscles; anything to lighten the dark mood of the moment. Too late. Carolyn was lost in space and time, lost in a memory… sucked into a black hole in the cosmos.

  “You’re lucky you survived.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it, mom. My prayers got answered.”

  “You were in danger… all of you… all the time.”

  “Oh mom, it wasn’t that bad.” Nancy attempted to yank her mother back from afar. She was too far gone, lost in thought. Even on the speaker phone, calling from Florida, she could sense the despair in Carolyn’s voice.

  “Yes, it was that bad!” Cindy could not concur with Nancy’s opinion. She had been through too much in that farmhouse to ever agree with her sister on the point being made and downplayed. One thing everyone agreed on, Cindy had been in terrible trouble that day. She’d prayed for help and help arrived. By all accounts, this was an anomaly; not the standard fare served up by the spirits they would all come to know better and in some cases, even love. Or, in Carolyn’s opinion, it became a classic love/hate relationship.

  In retrospect, Cynthia thinks this was a supernatural episode, with a twist; not like having her hair knotted, being dragged to the floor in the borning room, but incapacitating nonetheless. She believes it was a warning, perhaps a power play, a cruel joke or a forceful assertion of strength. Though she had not sensed the actual physical pressures of being trapped inside the bubble, state-of-being was no reliable criteria for an accurate determination of cause. Their family had been at the farm for eight months when this event occurred. It was still too easy to explain away the inexplicable. There was so much left to learn. One lesson learned long ago: leave ’em laughing! Cindy had to go, but wouldn’t leave on such a sour note. It was both: Darkness and Light.

  “Remember the time Joyce came over and we were doing our homework upstairs? We came down Annie’s staircase and just as we got to the bottom, the hatchet you always kept in the chopping block popped up! It came flying at me and went spinning across the room then landed in the wood box in front of me. Joyce freaked! Remember, mom? You were standing on the hearthstone when it happened.”