House of Darkness House of Light (49 page)

Considering the possibilities as well as the improbabilities in earnest, it was incumbent upon Carolyn to piece this puzzle together. If she wanted to solve the riddle it would require her rapt attention. As spiritual enigma, Bathsheba worked on Carolyn, consuming her mental and physical energy. The insult: Get out of
my
house. The injury: self-evident. A mortal soul felt increasingly imposed upon, clearly unwelcome in
her
home. She’d had wanted to inform her husband about it, needed to trust him enough to impart a message which might not be well-received. There was always a risk he would say the wrong thing but this time she thought it was worth the risk and one she should take. If only he would listen…

To tell or not to tell Roger: From injury to insult, he expressed himself in a way which would offend almost anyone except for someone who was just as obtuse. Thick-headed was not just for hair anymore. Beneath that ample load of locks on his head was a thicker skull. He just didn’t get it. He did not hear her. He did not listen. He did not know how, preoccupied by formulating his next argument against whatever position she had taken on any given matter. Make matters worse…she finally told her husband…well after the fact.

“That attack happened while you were away…a couple of summers ago. I told Lorraine. She says it is a significant encounter; a demonic manifestation.

“So, now you’re both assuming it is the spirit of Bathsheba Sherman.”

“It seems rather obvious to me. Yes. That’s my conclusion; hers too.”

“Want to hear my conclusion? I think you’re
both
out of your minds!” His response knocked the wind out of her. Wounded again; his tongue as sharp as any knife. No reason to go any further with a combative conversation. It had been snapped off at the point of impact: this time…her heart.

According to the wise Confucius, “Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and star.” If the shoe fits, Roger, then see if it fits in your mouth, along with your foot! Conflict: “Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.” (Laurence J. Peter) He had insulted her intelligence and integrity; she considered her words as pearls before swine and would not cast another. The conclusion logically drawn; them was fightin’ words…and this was war.

Breaking the icy tingle between them, a husband approached his wife.

“What could you possibly want from me, Roger?” The sincere woman was a little sarcastic, but that predisposition came quite naturally by this time.

“I want you to tell me what happened again.” Roger, equally sincere.

“Why? What’s the point? Other than a sharp implement at the end of your tongue, always ready to strike out at me. I mean, other than unleashing a host of false accusations, another one of your venomous tirades, tell me, Roger, what sense would there be in telling you what happened to me, again, when you didn’t believe me the first time; a waste of breath. I’m supposed to try to convince you? I have much better things to do.” Made her point! With that, Carolyn turned her back on her husband and walked away, abruptly ending the uncivil discourse. He had done the same to her for years. How insulting.

“He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing.

Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies

to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 
is this the party to whom I am speaking?

“There are no guarantees. From the viewpoint of fear, none are strong enough. From the viewpoint of love, none are necessary.”

Emmanuel Teney

No one dared presume the spirits were gone. Even though there had been a long period of relative peace in the farmhouse, this had been the case before. Something always shattered their silence. In fact, there were frequent periods of tranquility; respite from a disruptive influence everyone came to expect. A return to normalcy was always welcome…never taken for granted. The mood was lighthearted this night. Everyone had settled in front of the tube to enjoy another raucous, hysterically funny episode of
Laugh-In
; the family favorite.

Apparently, it was sock-it-to-me time…again.

The telephone had been an issue in the past. Those incidents seemed rather mischievous in nature, as the tampering committed by an invisible force with too much time and outer space on its hands, capable of manipulating objects; lifting it, dropping it, pulling it from human hands at inopportune moments, but this was different. It was around 3:30 a.m. when their telephone began to ring. Roger and Carolyn instantly arose from bed, each sprinting to a separate part of the house. Carolyn went straight to the parlor, Roger into the kitchen. Any call coming at that time of night is usually not very good news. Each of them alarmed, both jolted from sleep, they were equally anxious to silence an intrusive presence of noise before it woke their entire family. Arriving at her destination quickly, Carolyn expectantly answered the telephone. “Hello?” It continued to ring in her hand. Roger arrived in the kitchen and answered the phone, not realizing his wife had already done so. His receiver continued ringing as well. It seemed so loud; perhaps because the house was quiet. The normal sound of it became magnified. “Hello?” Husband and wife met in the dining room, each aggravated by a disturbance. “Mine’s not working!” then “Neither is mine!” “Try tapping the receiver!” and then “I did that already!” Both telephones continued ringing unabated with both receivers off of their respective cradles. Roger walked back into the kitchen and hung it up twice, trying over and over again to make a connection stick. Carolyn did the same, answering it again with certain trepidation in her voice. It kept ringing. Roger slammed the receiver down, unplugging it from the wall unit. It kept ringing. Carolyn disengaged the jack in the parlor. The telephones continued chiming. Roger pulled its wires from the wall, effectively disabling it; under
ordinary
circumstances. Not so. It became a mind-numbing alarm signal, torturous to mortal ears. Roger found his wife in the parlor, attempting to comfort their confused children. They had made their way downstairs, awaking with all the commotion as that monotonous ring tone continued to expand, reverberating within the walls of the old farmhouse, burgeoning with each passing minute. Children were nervous; their parents annoyed by an obnoxious and relentless middle-of-the-night wake-up call: Contact. Roger cupped his hands around Carolyn’s ear, virtually the only way she’d be able to receive this message: “
Someone
or
something
is trying to reach us
!” She nodded with its receipt. The frustrated man went into the center of their dining room, a spot where he could and would be heard throughout the dwelling. Forewarning his family in advance to cover their ears, Roger then deliberately unleashed a fast-rising temper, shouting an objection in his deepest, burliest voice…for
all
to hear. “
Stop it!
Leave us the hell alone!
” His caustic demand instantly snuffed out the sound. Dead silence. Roger had effectively scared away the ghost.

Sending their children back up to bed, the couple sat together in the parlor discussing what had just happened. There was no sense to make of it at all. The intention of the call seemed obvious; to disrupt the peaceful, quiet home. A restless night after such an unnerving incident, they both stayed up until dawn, waiting for it to happen again. Waiting and watching, listening as one, they sat in silence as deafening as sound which preceded it: keeping vigil.

***

So far removed from those troubling times, it is now much easier to make Light of such spirit matters. Carolyn recalls the irritating episode with clarity; quipping in jest about something which struck her years later, a notion she still finds amusing. “It’s too bad we didn’t have an answering machine. Had it even been invented yet? That would have been one
hell
of a message!” A sense of humor can be quite a valuable asset when reconciling incidents such as these; encounters which would otherwise plunge a somewhat less pliable mind into a black hole: the pit of depression. Ah! Levity! In homage to Lily Tomlin: either laughing in or crying out loud, mortals found a way to cope.

one ringy-dingy…two ringy-dingy…

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Philip K. Dick

~ Can you hear me now? ~

 
a pain in the neck

“I reached for sleep and drew it round me like a blanket

muffling pain and thought together in the merciful dark.”

Mary Stewart

Carolyn had taken a sudden turn for the worse. The pain she’d endured was more than distracting. It was relentless. There was no time of the day or night when her neck did not throb. Sometimes sharp and stabbing; at other times, a low, dull ache, but always…always, it hurt. It was not something attributable to any injury she’d sustained. To her knowledge she had not done anything to disturb the bones and muscles of her neck, but she had disturbed the Cosmos.

***

A theme was emerging; there had to be a direct connection to an apparition whose neck appeared snapped, a head hanging off to one side. Why Carolyn? Why had she been repeatedly attacked on the neck? First, it was the scythe in the barn and then the coat hanger wielded as a weapon in the warm room and now the sensation of her neck being literally broken. As she had never before experienced such severity of pain, not even during childbirth, it was beyond a mortal imagination. Ice packs, hot compresses…nothing provided any relief. She could not turn her head without turning her entire body along with it. As a serious predicament worsened with the pain, Carolyn sought the assistance of the doctor in town. He ordered x-rays and blood tests then kindly provided the prescription for an equally serious pain killer. It made her face itch like a sonofabitch; a small price to pay for a break from the pain of a broken neck. No rest for the weary…Carolyn was exhausted beyond mortal measure.

Certain these films would reveal the true nature of her problem, as it turned out, the Nature of the problem was invisible to modern medicine. There were no signs of arthritis or any obstruction; no swelling or attributable causes for the excruciating discomfort. The doctor was as stymied as his patient. When the results came in and the conversation altered, it was enough to plunge this dispirited woman into hopelessness. No exit. No way out. Perhaps over time it would heal: the only suggestion he’d offered; Darvon, the lone remedy. For Carolyn, it was like putting a bandage on cancer, in the hope it would heal by benign neglect. Huddled in front of the fireplace, she wondered if she would ever sleep soundly again; wondered if there was a legitimate affiliation to be drawn between the way she had been targeted and this chronic pain. Was it an outcome of assaults she’d sustained at the hands of a demon? Why was no physical sign of this kind of agony evident? What had a hold on her? If there was no logical explanation, should she consider an illogical cause? The root of it had to be supernatural in origin, yet she refused to accept the notion of the affliction occurring to her physical form as a psychic attack. It seemed so implausible. It was actually one element of her transition: Transformation.

In retrospect, Carolyn now believes that period of time was reflective of an assault on her person and her personality. She has listened to her children and knows what they witnessed was real; including her metamorphosis endured a few decades before at the hands of a presence which was literally attempting to usurp her being. Looking back, it makes more sense as a manifestation of the apparition who appeared to her. Which one was it? Boo! Who was it that came to her and then her children? So many women have died there; Arnold, Richardson and Baker: only a few of the family names she would discover associated with the property. Records indicated multiple deaths had occurred there and relatively few of these documents were complete with any details. In fact, some certificates seemed to be deliberately vague and non-descript, especially regarding the cause of death. Was there something to hide?

However, Carolyn had yet to learn of the long, rich and infamous history of the Arnold family at their homestead. Mrs. Arnold hung herself in their barn. There was no way to determine if she’d been the one appearing in the night; no way to know for certain who this entity had been in life. Mrs. Arnold was into her nineties at the time she committed suicide. The form and substance it assumed appeared young and well-preserved. As for Bathsheba, she lived to be an old woman as well, so who could it be? According to Mr. McKeachern she was well into her eighties when he was just a boy. What about the young woman who appeared in the kitchen? Who was it that died inside the pantry?