House of Darkness House of Light (12 page)

“Wow! Thanks, daddy! It’s better than Twinkies!” Roger was delighted; he didn’t even care how much it would cost to heat those cozy comforters.

“As long as we don’t lose the electricity you’ll be nice and warm tonight.” Roger said goodnight to all the girls then rejoined his wife downstairs. She’d been preparing for the worst. Dozens of candles laid out, sprawled across the dining room table, several oil lamps placed on the sideboard in the kitchen, each one an excellent source of light and heat when everything else around them went cold and dark, all but inevitable based on the sound and fury of a howling bitter wind. It proved to be quite a snowstorm; perfect for cuddling. They sat together quietly, listening to the raging storm striking the house like a battering ram. Roger had been sure to catch the evening news. Relaying the blood-curdling message, he bluntly stated, “It has already dropped over three feet in Buffalo…the same in Syracuse. The Berkshires are buried.”

“What will it do for us?” Carolyn’s sarcastic inquiry required no response. Both knew precisely what it meant for them: digging out, again. Gusts lashed at their house from every direction. Snow was setting up like Plaster of Paris; whiteout conditions beyond windows and doors meant they would play hell getting out of it in the morning. Forget about the shovels; try a chisel instead! Roger’s concerns had less to do with a snowstorm and more to do with some snuggling up with his wife. His mood was jovial; his touch, sweet and gentle. She did not want to spoil the moment but Carolyn could not disguise her own legitimate concerns any longer.

“What’s wrong?” Roger sensed her distraction.

“Maybe it’s nothing, really.”

“Really?
Something
, I think.”

“Could we just talk for awhile?” Her ardent appeal was lost on the man.

“Well, talking was not
exactly
what I had in mind!” He might as well have been holding a cigar. Having inadvertently married Groucho Marx, his wife pulled away as he rubbed his moustache into her neck, thinking it a far better distraction. Resisting overt advances, Carolyn remained ardent. She hesitated then stared into his eyes as she spoke, searching for an open, honest,
serious
reaction from her husband. She could read the thoughts behind his gaze.

“Roger, I’m hearing strange sounds in the house and seeing strange things. Maybe I’m getting paranoid but it feels like I am always being…watched.”

“Maybe
Perronoid
!” A disapproving glance instantly settled his silliness. “The light
is
strange here. It plays tricks with your eyes. I’ve noticed it, too.”

“It’s not just the light. Sounds I hear…as if there’s someone in the house.”

“What do you mean?” Roger was now paying proper attention to his wife.

“Something invisible…like some presence…I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to explain…impossible to put the
feeling
into words that make sense.”

“You spend too much time alone…and
way too many
nights alone.”

“Not
last
night…April was so scared she slept with me. I think
I’m
the one who scared her. I heard noise from upstairs. I searched the house and thought someone was inside the chimney closet.” Roger listened. “I could’ve
sworn
I heard someone. There are no keys for this place. We can’t lock a single door and you’re gone all the time.” Her voice began to tremble. Averting her eyes to hide the fear, Roger tilted his wife’s head upward with a lift of the chin.

“You lived in Cumberland too long. Remember what Mr. Kenyon said: no one will bother us here.” His voice was reassuring. The words were vacant.

Carolyn regretted saying anything about it, considering it her responsibility to “hold down the fort” whenever Roger had to be away from home. She did not want to complain or worse, to be perceived as some weakling. A subject dismissed as quickly as it had been addressed, Carolyn smiled her reluctance away, reminding herself to relax because
finally
her husband was home. She felt safe in his presence; a pair of muscular arms wrapped securely around her torso. Gazing up into his eyes, admiring a confident grin with which she was so familiar, she plucked at the corner of his moustache. Talk over.

Time for bed: the way to stay warm in a storm on such a bitter winter night. Whatever threat she perceived had subsided with a few words uttered by her fearless husband. No bluster or bother, at least not inside the house. At the time Carolyn had no way of knowing, contrary to appearances, her husband’s inability to assist in a crisis would play a leading role as the drama unfolded. Even when he
was
home, laying beside her in the darkness, he would possess no capacity to intervene on her behalf during an ungodly ordeal, one destined to change her life. Abandonment issues abound: his reassurances, no matter how sincere, were utterly
meaningless…when push came to shove.

***

What had been merely an anomaly, the absence or magnification of sound in the house would, in time, take on a fever pitch. There would be incidents; serious and terrifying incidents that precluded screaming children from being heard by parents in the next room. It would come to be described as a
sound barrier
and a
force field
; a state of being imposed by the spirits so they could communicate privately with their own mortal of choice: being
in the bubble
. Though sounds they created were solicitous of attention or acknowledgement this uncanny ability to nullify
all
sound within the realm of their presence, including their own, would prove to be miraculous in Nature. Turning off the stereo, lights out, Carolyn went to bed with a favorite song still ringing in her head.
“Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again, because a vision softly creeping left its seed while I was sleeping and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains…”
Ah, Sounds of Silence. In a moment of recognition, she smiled…the words finally made some sense.

“One need not be a chamber to be haunted;

One need not be a house;

The brain has corridors surpassing

Material place.”

Emily Dickinson

 
a matter of time

“How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable

antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Timeless beings; lost in the Cosmos, suspended in the ether. No concept of their own hereafter-life; not even aware they are deceased. No need to mourn them…they’re not really gone. It was all too much to take in, to absorb into a mind unprepared to receive their message. A quantum leap in consciousness had to occur for seven mere mortals to comprehend what they’d witnessed, to accept the existence of spirits in a shared space; disbelief in the concept of time was a prerequisite to its understanding. Human beings seem to process information linearly. The new paranormal required a substantial adjustment; thinking in an entirely different way about an otherwise commonly accepted system of measurement. Each member of the family was being forced to step across the threshold, beyond their comfort zone; an acknowledgment of truth. It was only a matter of time.

***

TIME: There is no adherence to the notion in the netherworld. Either
they
come and go as they please or else they have never left…but the spirits in the farmhouse were, at the very least, capable of manipulating the continuum. If time and space exist together or they are mutually exclusive,
whatever
exists in Nature allows them a certain freedom to manifest at will. Perhaps in death they no longer suffer this narrow interpretation of a far greater concept. Yet, these spirits seemed to manipulate mortal time with purpose and reason; the stopping of an antique clock, seeming to be specifically intended to coincide with their arrival: apparitions coming and going under cover of darkness then dissipating with the light of dawn. There had to be some logical connection. Their behavior appeared to be deliberate.

When the girls began divulging and withholding various experiences, each had already come to terms with the fact: not everything in life is at it appears or disappears; each understood she was seeing and hearing some phenomena unlike anything she had ever encountered before. This fundamental shift had to occur before they could begin describing what they were sensing to others. Once the pervasive skepticism subsided in their father, he too was obliged to acknowledge the truth. His tedious, often obstinate denials made disclosure much more difficult for his family. The girls would turn instead to a sister or mother, but their father was off limits in terms of discussing whatever scared them. The one they needed to protect them did not believe them and he was rarely home long enough to see for himself. Abandonment issues abound.

When they discovered what was happening in the house, in their lives, the Perrons had to make the critical decision of whether or not to remain at their farm. They were all in love with a place which also frightened them. As they watched events transpire in their home each sought refuge away from it and each was blessed with complete comprehension of time as we know it based upon the Nature unfolding around them, season by season, year after year. They lived in a house which divulged secrets of its own as a series of “ages” revealed themselves: a variety of entities dressed in the apparel of another era, another time in history, as if in the Colonial period when their house was built; or as some esoteric apparition appearing to be the same man at various stages of his life. The lines of time were blurred and then erased. The family began to see an open path existed in their home, a passageway; a portal to the past as well as to the future. Essentially, the house is a time machine through which everything passes to everywhere else.

The children were not afforded the luxury of growing up simply accepting the parameters of existence. Instead, they were all compelled to reconsider concepts they had been taught. Prior to moving to Harrisville the lessons they had learned, something as innocuous as how to
tell time
, suddenly seemed so complicated and incomplete in comparison to the information they required to navigate a treacherous voyage through time and space. It was stressful for them as what these girls strived for was some semblance of normalcy in their otherwise chaotic lives. Imagine being tucked in by a spirit! Imagine being forced to listen to voices telling secrets in the darkness; where to look to find their bodies. Imagine getting up in the morning to have breakfast then go off to school, as usual, where what occurred the night before cannot be revealed; a rude awakening, to say the least…and that was all they could say!

To describe these children as isolated is only a small part of the story. They had no choice but to adjust then adapt to an ethereal environment, one totally contrary to what each discerned as
reality
; what they knew of the world had changed abruptly, compelling them to reconcile heady concepts for ones so young. It took time. As human beings have a tendency to tick ~ tock through life, they did the same. Whenever
IT
happened and a youngster felt her body trembling from inside out, time was suspended. It ceased to exist…if it ever did. During these moments, what Cynthia describes as being
in the bubble
occurred; that certain icy tingle, a surge of energy or synergy charges in and everything becomes one thing, frozen in time. No matter how frightening or ugly it is, what is there is amazing. That this happens is miraculous. Stepping through time, feeling its irrelevance is awe-inspiring, a powerful emotional experience. It challenges all former beliefs; questions everything presented as fact, accepted as law. In these mesmerizing moments life feels surreal, like a drama being played out on an infinite stage; its characters showing up at will out of nowhere. Any mortal with a leading role is at once captivated yet free to drift into third-person narrative. As body and mind separate temporarily, so to watch from above, a principle player transforms into audience, as well. As the newly introduced element of reality, it was difficult to discern why the supernatural world intermingled, overlapping with present reality; how could this possibly occur? To comprehend the manifestation of these apparitions, friend or foe, one must first endure a wholly consciousness-altering event.

A wise friend once said: “If you can only speak Chinese then you can only speak Chinese.” One cannot understand what one cannot understand. That’s how it was for their first few months; inconceivable. It was difficult enough to believe one’s own eyes; like an existential nightmare. Initially, all of their encounters were terrifying, simply because they occurred. There was no way to factor in their true significance, the extent of their power or its source. An unknown quantity did not fit into a specific mold or any construct with which they were familiar. An anomaly persisted: Now for something entirely NEW! This aspect of their existence would consume the attention of all concerned mortals, precluding any deeper reflection. They were blown away.

It was only a matter of time before Roger’s consistently belligerent refusal to acknowledge or accept their predicament festered into a poisonous pocket of disease in the heart of a marriage; only a matter of time before these spirits became an ordinary part of life at the farm. In time everyone would learn to measure precious moments on Earth according to the sunrise and sunset, the depth of the darkness and lilt of the light. Theirs would not be a conventional pathway to enlightenment; no ordinary journey. It all began with the singular realization…time is not the tick ~ tock of a clock marking the minutes of life but rather an exquisite nothingness; acceptance that time is not what it seems and may not
be
at all. It was an expansive concept for mortals to embrace but it was necessary for each one to do so before anything else could make sense. The mother often reminded her daughters:
“To every thing there is a season and a time for every purpose under Heaven.”
Actually, she sang it to them. This realization defined a collective childhood, causing girls to seek time in Nature; going forth into the woods where any concept of time is irrelevant, as when being visited by an entity capable of stepping across this threshold in time and space, through a portal, in much the same way children hop across a creek; a quantum leap into an alternate reality, there to behold the wonder, to marvel at the antiquity and newness of Nature; to worship it as God.