I cannot start telling you my story until we get a few things out of the way and understood. Please try to be open minded as you read my account of what has been going on. I know a lot of it will be tough for you to swallow so bear with me as I trudge through my memories with you. I have a hard time with some of it and mind you I lived through these damn events, so please forgive me if you find some of what I’m about to tell you unbelievable.
Let me first start off by stating that no, I am not a Medium. I am Sensitive and yes, there is a difference.
A Medium is someone who can communicate directly with non-physical energies. By that I mean spirits, ghosts, and some other unsavory beings that may be about. True Mediums do not require channels like talking boards or voice recorders to communicate like non mediums do. There are varying degrees of ability amongst Mediums. Some are more powerful than others and their abilities are so acute that they can actually see these entities like they are on our physical plane, other times their abilities are limited so that they cannot actually see them but they can still sense and talk to the being.
Being a Sensitive on the other hand is a much bigger pain in the ass. We get all of the sensations of being a Medium with none of the perks. We can feel the energies around us but we cannot actually communicate with them. Just like with Mediums there are varying degrees of sensitivity, some of us being more sensitive than others. I call it “in tune”. The lucky ones who are not as in tune can feel that there is something there but not what or who it is. Other more in tune sensitives like myself get a little… more.
For me the only way I can describe it is a buzzing. Like I’m standing too close to where lightning is going to strike. The buzzing starts in my head and radiates down to my core in waves. As the waves of electricity crash down on me it feels like a surge. The surge sometimes makes the muscles in my neck tense up the way they would if you were standing in front of an oversized speaker at a concert and they had the bass turned up way too high, or if someone poked you at the base of your skull with an electric probe. The intensity of these sensations depends on how powerful the entity is, or what it is. I can usually tell if the energy was human at any point right off the bat. You may have questions about the way I worded that last sentence, and I assure you I will answer them in due time.
It is difficult to describe but the buzzing is slightly different for every energy I have ever come across and from this buzzing I can “read” what it is I am encountering. Human spirits mostly just kind of vibrate. I can feel them, I know they are there, but unless they are angry or really trying to get my attention I can usually ignore them. Not all the time, but sometimes I get what I call “impressions” from the entity. In my head I’ll see an image, or a word or phrase will pop into my head. Do not confuse this with something that would define me as a Medium. Yes, some mediums also experience something similar but they get much clearer and defined images, and actually hear what the entity is saying. This is not so for me, I just get quick flashes that streak through my head. Kind of like what you would see if you were looking at the screen an overhead projector is pointed at and someone is passing one of those clear plastic sheets over it. But the light in the projector is about to die and the clear plastic sheet has a poorly printed copy of a bad watercolor painting on it and they never quite put the sheet down on the lighted surface the whole thing is out of focus and won’t stop moving. Sounds frustrating right? It is. When I do pick up a word or phrase I don’t hear another voice in my head. I hear the word or phrase as if I thought it but I have no reason to suddenly think of the name Edwin, and aviation mathematics.
Unfortunately I will also sometimes pick up on the emotions of the ghosts I’m around. If say Edwin who was a mathematician for the air force is mighty angry that the new resident of his former home have redecorated and moved all of his belongings including his aviation books and notes to a dank corner of the musty basement and I happen to enter that home I will feel Edwin pacing upstairs where the residents complain of unexplained footsteps and feel suddenly angry for no reason. His name and the other details will come to me as I get closer but I never actually see Edwin with my eyes, I never hear him with my ears. All of this comes from senses science and myself cannot explain and fully understand yet. But let me tell you if any of this sounds like fun, or desirable to you, I would not wish this on anyone. Not even the person I hate most in the entire world for reasons I am not here to discuss.
The reason I say Mediums have it easier than Sensitives is because they can at least talk to what is in the room with them. They can see what is lurking in the corner and more importantly they can ask them why they are there and hear the answer so maybe they can actually do something about it whether that be helping the ghost move on, or banishing an unsavory entity. Myself and other sensitives are left with the guess work that comes with not being able to talk to what we know is there so it is usually a very strange one sided conversation on our parts. I’m sure they can hear us, but we can’t hear them.
Then there is the bothersome business of being followed home by someone, something that used to be a someone, or just something that was never a someone in the first place. I have a theory that Mediums and Sensitives are like beacons to what resides on the other plane. They are drawn to us because we can sense them and potentially do something for them. So from time to time we’ll be followed home by an energy that just hangs about, being a distraction, trying to scare us out of boredom, trying to get us to help them move on, or trying to relay a message.
I’m just guessing, I don’t really know because being a Sensitive, albeit a very in tune Sensitive, my knowledge and contact with this plane is limited. Mediums likely know more than I do because their connection is much stronger and reliable. But then, I don’t know any Mediums. Actual, True Mediums often keep to themselves and hide their abilities from “normals”. Balancing all of the trials and tribulations of a normal life is hard enough when you have a connection this plane without heaping fame on top of it. No “medium” you see on TV is legitimate. It’s all an act for money. Like I said, true Mediums don’t flaunt their abilities. The less attention they get from the people on this plane, and the entities on the other, the better.
Usually my life is pretty quiet. I live in a small house on a lake in New England that was never meant to be a year round home with my fiancé, our two dogs, and a 30 gallon fish tank that I am obsessed with. My fiancé Patrick owns a construction business that I office manage from home. There isn’t a whole lot for me to do so I have an abundance of free time that I generally waste being unproductive often starting paintings and crafts that I rarely finish. We are in a small time band with big dreams and a shitty production company that gigs occasionally. We only have the one truck that Patrick uses for work so I don’t go anywhere during the day. I largely keep to myself and don’t have any friends save for one that is studying in college so she’s busy with her classes and her girlfriend. I understand, I don’t hold it against her. We don’t see each other much since I moved out here on the lake almost an hour away and we are talking less and less every week that goes by but I know she’ll always be my best friend.
I never get visitors at the house, so it was quite unexpected and a little unnerving when there was a knock on the door yesterday afternoon. Patrick was away at work installing a patio, which left me alone with the dogs all day. The morning was clear and the windows were open, the house was a mess but I was trying to ignore it despite the fact that we had band practice at our house the next day. My dogs are very needy. They love to cuddle and think they are lap dogs but they are both large pit bulls. Maebh, pronounced Mave, is a black short squat tank of a thing built purely of muscle with a broad chest and neck splashed with a blotch of white punctuated by dashes of black giving it a dappled appearance. Her head is broad and flat, eyes a deep warm brown, fur stiff and glossy. Faelan however is tall, lean, and slate gray. His legs are long and slender, fur soft and silky, with big radar ears that perk up at everything. Where Faelan is pure guard dog going mad at every noise, thump, car door, bird or squirrel he hears with his gigantic floppy ears, Maebh is a potato. She’s almost always sleeping and can only be bothered to throw in a pathetic whine to Faelan’s cacophony before she gives up deciding she doesn’t care flopping over and falling back to sleep almost before her head hits the couch cushion. We had a mouse in the kitchen briefly that found a way up through the oven into the gap where the burner mechanisms can be found to grab food that had fallen through the grates. Every time that damn mouse came up through the stove Faelan would lose his mind circling the island the stove was in trying to figure out how to get to it.
I was sitting on the couch with Faelan sitting next to me, his two front feet balanced precariously on my thigh digging in with his nails which I must remember to trim. I was trying to browse imgur on my phone but he was having none of it mumbling to himself and pushing his face into mine. Maebh was fighting for her place on the couch trying to push Faelan out of the way so she could be pet as well. This happens all the time, the scratches and bruises on my legs a testament. Nothing seemed a miss, the sun was shining through the windows, the filter on the fish tank was gurgling, Patrick was texting me throughout his work day, I was wasting time and getting mauled by the dogs, everything was as it should be, until it suddenly just wasn’t. It was the strangest feeling.
It was as if everything just kind of stopped. I know how cliché that sounds but there is no other way to describe it. Both of the dogs froze, ears in radar mode which is weird for Maebh. Her ears are usually plastered to her head. In unison they turned their heads towards the windows to see something outside by the street. Every muscle in their bodies tensed up to be at the ready, for what I didn’t know. All sound seemed muted for just the briefest of moments and the world seemed to be at a standstill before it all erupted into chaos. Faelan flung himself off of me using my thighs as a spring board before crashing into the coffee table knocking damn near everything off of it including my cup of coffee which pooled on the carpet. Maebh also hurled herself into action racing after Faelan who was in route to the front door. The pain from Faelan’s crawls on my leg and the most intense buzzing I’ve ever felt came simultaneously. After a few seconds there it was. The knock.
Thud…. Thud… Thud…
It was not a friendly knock. It was long and drawn out. Punctuated, like the knocker was raising his clenched fist high and far behind his head before slamming in on the door with all their weight behind it. To be frank it was a frightening knock in itself, never mind the buzzing. I sat for a moment before getting up to answer the knock for several reasons. For one my leg hurt. A lot. Faelan dug in hard with his claws as he usually did but something about the adrenaline intensified it. I know most people say that it’s the opposite but not for me, not on this day. For another, I was scared. I’ve never felt anything this intense before and it was at my door. I wouldn’t be able to see, and the plan was to open my door to it? Lastly, I was still in my pajamas. What if an actual person was there?
The dogs screamed and circled at the door like the devil himself was behind it. After a few seconds of grappling with myself about whether or not I should go see if there was someone at the door or just sit and hide and ignore them until they went away the second set of knocks came. This time there was no punctuation. No pause. It was a series of harsh, powerful and intimidating knocks, not unlike the kind the police use when they’ve come to arrest someone with a warrant.
The most unsettling part of this was that the dogs both stopped barking and started to growl deep in their throats at this set of knocks. The kind of growl they would use if they were ever going to snap and bite. I’m unashamed to admit that I was shaking a bit as I struggled to get to my feet, my knees now feeling very unsteady beneath me. I gathered my sweater closed and took a deep breath as I made my way to the door. The blinds were closed on the window directly next to it so I had to part them to see who or what was outside. I parted the blinds just enough to see from about their chins down to their waists.
Children stood on the stoop waiting for me. Three of them. Two boys and one girl all of which looked exceptionally ordinary. Clean, clothes in good shape, they almost reminded me of Jehovah’s Witnesses. There seemed to be a leader, a boy who looked to be about nine standing in front of the other two. This struck me as odd because the other two children looked to be a bit older perhaps around twelve or thirteen but this didn’t strike me nearly as odd as what I noticed next. All three of them were staring at the door motionless. Something kept me transfixed watching them, their stillness was unnerving and deeply unnatural. It seemed as if they didn’t breath.
I must have twitched the shade too much because the girl snapped her head to look at the window. My heart was already pounding as it was but this made it felt like my chest had imploded and my stomach dropped out. My whole body kind of tensed up and twitched in a convulsion making me lose my grip on the shade. Damn it… Now you have to open the door. I thought to myself. The buzzing was so intense I didn’t think I could handle it much longer but I gathered my courage, locked the dogs up in the laundry room much to their protest, squared my shoulders, smoothed my hair that was likely a disaster, and opened the door.
The second I opened the door I felt dread. This was a separate feeling from the buzzing. This was deep in my heart, a despair that was bottomless and all consuming. Hope didn’t exist any longer and the end to everything I have ever cared for was imminent.
My gaze traveled up from the floor to the faces of the children and this was the moment I had to grip the frame of the door to keep myself from collapsing. Their eyes.
Their eyes were an absolute, inky, wet, black. There was an absence of iris, or whites, just a pool of liquid abyss. I could see my silhouette reflecting in sheen of each set. And they were smiling in the most serene pleasant way like they had the most wonderful message to deliver. The dogs were snarling and snapping at the door I had locked them behind furious at the visitors before me.
The youngest boy closest to the open door straightened the collar of his white polo shirt and cleared his throat. At this point my own throat was dry and useless, my lungs collapsed and were unable to draw in another breath. I felt frozen in place as if I had stepped on a live wire and now volt after volt was raging through me. I couldn’t have moved if I tried. I was paralyzed with fear, shock, and number of other feelings I don’t think they have names for.
“Can we please use your phone?” the youngest boy asked polite as can be, his voice deep for what you would expect from a boy who looks like he’s about nine. The older boy behind him, who had an olive complexion and long shaggy dark hair, shifted from foot to foot while I tried to regain control of my voice. Their bottomless black eyes bored into me making my upper lip prickle with sweat. I shook and began to stutter a reply scrambling for every reason why they couldn’t come inside. I knew deep in my core that to let them in meant certain doom. Needles danced across the back of my neck and into my hair line to the top of my skull.
My voiced sounded like gravel crunching under tires and felt about the same, “n-no I don’t have a ph-ph-phone” I managed to force out. The girl tucked her sandy stick straight blonde hair behind her ear and piped in, her voice sounding like wind chimes. “We just have to call our school and let them know we finished canvasing this neighborhood. It will only take a second.” She made it sound like the most reasonable thing in the world. Behind me I could hear the dogs scratching at the laundry room door in a fever pitch, Maebh screaming and Faelan snarling.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead and tried to catch my breath. The knuckles of my hand bleached with the strain of bracing myself on the door frame. I stood in silence, they waited for an answer, to be invited inside. The youngest boy took the tiniest of steps towards me making the buzzing grow so intense I thought I would surely shake apart and shatter. My jaw was clenched so tightly it amazed me that my teeth didn’t crumble away to powder. But it is what the boy said to me next that made a part of me shut down and retreat in cowardice. He leaned in close to me and gestured toward his female companion “She can help you take care of that nasty scratch on your leg. You really should trim Faelan’s nails more often.”
You know that over used phrase “my blood ran cold”? As unfortunately tired as that saying is, it’s painfully accurate to how I reacted to this.
I’ve never seen these kids before in my life. How did he know my dog’s name and how did he know Faelan had hurt my leg? I was wearing long pajama pants that went down to my ankle, my thigh and the fresh marks hidden. I looked down at my leg in astonishment just as I heard the door frame that was holding the dogs back splinter and rupture away with a mighty c-c-crra-acckk releasing them. The door crashed down with a heavy thud as it fell unsupported to the floor. I turned my head to see them bursting from the laundry room teeth bared, eyes locked on the children on the stoop. My instincts kicked in and I slammed the door in the children’s faces just before the dogs would have been upon them, the buzzing ever present.
My knees finally decided they had had enough and gave way beneath me leaving me slumped on the floor breathless. I heard the boy call through the door “Okay! Another time then! We hope that leg heals alright!” I scrambled to the window but did not see them anywhere. They weren’t by the door any longer and I couldn’t see them walking down the driveway. Dumbfounded I rushed to one of the other windows but they were nowhere to be seen on the street. Panic overtook me as a crushing realization came to my mind. The back door. They were going to try and get in another way while I was distracted by the front of the house!
Patrick is always worried about my safety and has a habit of leaving a heavy hurly bat that was his grandfather’s in the kitchen by the door for me. The feeling of dread and buzzing was subsiding now but I was still on edge from the encounter so I gripped the hurly bat as tightly as I could and rushed through the house to the back door weaving my way through the tiny rooms that made up the lake cottage. The dogs were calmer now but followed me their heads low, ears perked and swiveling searching for any indication that the visitors were still nearby.
When I flung open the back door, hurly bat at the ready to swing, the absolute normality of the backyard struck me. The sun was shining bright and happily on the blades of grass struggling to meet each other in the dirt to form a lawn. Birds were calling to each other, insects were flying about pollenating, I could hear the gentle whisper of traffic up the road. Everything was as it should have been. There were no unsettling black eyed children. No monster or boogie man at my door.
I’m not sure how much time passed by while I was standing there with the bat but it must have been a least a few minutes because I didn’t lower it to my side until my arms ached and the buzzing fully subsided. The dogs grew bored and went about their usual business of sniffing everything on their level, the ordeal with the visitors forgotten.
I stood and greedily sucked in breath after breath perhaps in the hope that a new set of air in my lungs would somehow clarify what had just happened.
The buzzing is something I am accustom to. I’ve been dealing with it my entire life so it is a very familiar sensation. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am comfortable with it, I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable, but it is something I’ve experienced many times and I thought I knew what to expect. But on this day, this particular buzzing was foreign in its intensity. Nothing I have ever crossed paths with has made me buzz that violently. Not the angriest ghost, not the most depraved spirit, and not the most malicious entity. I’ve never felt like I would vibrate apart at the seams. And the despair. That was also new to me.
I mean, I’ve battled with depression my whole life. But you could weigh the worst day I’ve ever had when everything was hopeless and I didn’t think I would ever climb out of the quagmire that was my life much less the bed, against the feeling that was forced upon me at the front door and the despair would outweigh the depression consistently, no contest. The despair was suffocating, all encompassing, absolute.
All of this was just too much. I dropped the hurly bat where I stood just releasing my grip and letting it fall and lay there. I made my way to the living room, the dogs in tow. I opened the cabinet in the corner and gathered a few small items that I balanced in my small hands precariously and brought to the coffee table stepping carefully to avoid all of the things that Faelan knocked off when the children knocked the first time… My toes found the spilled coffee in a cold surprise that made me almost drop the things I carried. I made a mental note to clean up the coffee in a little while. After I had recovered a bit.
Carefully arranging my things I laid down a small beige marble mortar and pestle that had an ashy residue in its bowl, a small bundle of dried white sage, a stick of Palo Santo incense that was small and unremarkable, and a lump of oblong unpolished black tektite.
I sat and just looked at the array for a moment taking a deep breath before I picked up the tektite and gripped it firmly in my hand. Maebh and Faelan took their respective places at either side of me and settled in. I closed my eyes for a minute just to breath before retrieving my lighter from the floor and setting the white sage and the incense. I folded my legs up underneath me and sat for a long time.
I suppose I should take the time to explain the significance of these items. The mortar and pestle I use to safely burn the dried sage bundle and the incense and from time to time when I am forced to banish persistent entities in a ritual where I draw a picture of what I’m trying to cast away and burn it grinding the ashes into a fine powder where I then take the ashes and add them to the soil in my flower pots.
I know how odd that last bit sounded but stick with me for a minute. Remember what I said about true Mediums not needing channels to communicate? Well they don’t need channels to banish entities either, the lucky bastards. I on the other hand do need tools with which I can channel my energy into to perform tasks with my will. I hope you’re still there.
This likely sounds like some sort of spooky Wiccan ritual where I call on the elements and the moon or something of the sort. This is not like that. Let me repeat that. What I do has nothing to do with Wicca or any other religion you may find a resemblance to. I am not religious, I don’t affiliate with any god. What I do is purely an exercise in manipulating my own energies and will to a task. It involves a lot of meditation and concentration, it is not an easy thing and I wish I didn’t have to do it. I suppose I’m lazy.
The sage and incense I use supposedly have some sort of purification abilities and assist in dispelling negative energies but I have never noticed a difference when I use it verse when I don’t. I guess I just like the smell, maybe it helps me focus? The scent of the sage is warm and earthy with an almost spice to it, and the Palo Santo incense is light and citrusy. I’ve never just burned these items and had it have any effect, I’ve always had to do the leg work so to say. You could make the assumption that these items are useless but they have to hold some merit when the properties of these items are renowned right? I think I’m trying to convince myself here more than you, and for that I do apologize.
The tektite I mentioned is a small unremarkable, unpolished, black, lumpy and cratered chunk of rock. This particular piece is oblong and tear shaped depending at what angle you’re looking at it. If you were to find this rock in a field not knowing what it was you would overlook it, kicking it aside and dismissing it as ugly. Tektite is made when a commit smashes into earth propelling bits of itself and other earth rocks that fuse together in the heat thousands of miles in a radius from the impact site. As the story goes, tektite is not a repellant against negative energies but it does act a sling shot, which is just fun for me to imagine. So when negative energies or spirits are about the tektite will fling them out and away, and if they return, the tektite sling shots them out further. Again, I’m skeptical as to the legitimacy of this, but what I can tell you is when I hold it and I concentrate on what I am trying to be rid of, it does seem to help me focus and send the unwanted energy away.
I hope I haven’t lost you in this. I know it all sounds a bit outlandish. I bet you’re imagining me to be some variety of witchy woman complete with head scarves, rings with large gaudy stones in them, and a crystal ball. I am far, far, from this let me assure you. Although I do occasionally consult a deck of cards. Perhaps this doesn’t help my case. If it helps the image of me, they aren’t tarot cards. My cards are an affirmation deck, and before you ask, yes there is a difference but that’s another discussion for another day.
I must have sat there gripping my tektite and burning my incense for a few hours because when I snapped out of my meditation it was to the dogs pacing and whining, and the rumble of Patrick’s truck getting louder and louder as he drew closer down the street. The sun had gone down now and I sat in darkness. I was unsure of what time it was but Patrick had a very long day. I was sure he was exhausted. I cursed under my breath remembering the state the events had left the house. I continued to sit for a moment as I heard Patrick’s truck pull into the driveway, the dogs progressively getting more and more desperate to see him. Finally he finished rummaging around the cab and came to the door. I smiled to myself as he completed his nightly ritual of scratching at the door to torture the dogs into a frenzy. I heard the click of his keys releasing the lock and the door creaking open.
“Babe?” he called crossing over the threshold. I could hear the crinkle of plastic bags. He must have gone shopping. He put the bags down on the kitchen counter and flicked the switch turning on the ceiling fan lights in the living room where I sat. The air escaped his lungs in a rush and his eyebrows stretched to reach each other in an expression of confusion followed by crushing concern. I looked up at him from my seat on the couch. I must have been a sight. Still in my pajamas, more than likely a bit pale. Stepping carefully around the array of various items on the floor he made his way towards me and inquired “What the hell happened? Are you alright? What the hell happened to the god damn door?!” He had spotted the splintered frame and felled door of the laundry room that the dogs had broken down. I took a deep breath before I launched into what had happened earlier that day. As I went on his eyebrows knitted closer and closer together until I feared they would never be separated again. He slowly sat next to me as he listened to my account. For once he let me just get it all out before he started asking question. It was truly a strange day.
When I had paused for a long while and he was sure I was done he wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close in an embrace. He didn’t say any words, but the way he held me said it all. I could feel a gentle snap somewhere in myself and I started to cry, letting go into his chest. The terror and anguish from earlier came pouring out of me. I don’t know how long I shook and cried but Patrick waited there patiently holding me tight. When it seemed I would never stop he pushed me upright and locked his hazel eyes with mine. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I understood. He was wishing there was something he could do, but we both knew he was powerless when it came to these kinds of things and it was something that he was never going to understand but he was going to stand by me regardless of how much it scared him, or me.
I wiped my tears away on the sleeves of the sweat shirt I had confiscated from his side of the closet finally feeling cozy in his clothes again. He rubbed my back in small circles, his voice rumbling deep with the love he had for me, “So you’ve never encountered these kinds of thing before?” I rubbed my eyes hard until I saw stars sparkle on the insides of my eye lids. “No, I’ve never even heard of something like this.” I replied feeling very defeated.
It was then that I felt the buzzing again. This time light and timid, nothing nearly as intense as what I had felt before. Human. It hovered in the corner of the room silently watching. It felt more curious than anything else and I dismissed it not wanting to acknowledge that I knew it was there. The image of a creek gurgling through a young forest as it lightly rained in the autumn, leaves on fire with the season came to me for a split second before fading away.
Patrick leaned in and gave me a kiss on the forehead before rising with a sigh. “I guess we should clean this up” he remarked gesturing at the chaos around us. I silently agreed and rose to help. After we had put everything back in order and righted the fallen door leaning it against the wall until we could fix it another day we preformed our nightly ritual preparing for bed. He held me closely and the dogs snored in their beds on the floor.
Sometimes if I ignore an entity long enough they will get bored with me and move on elsewhere. This was not the case with the someone I had noticed earlier in the night. The buzzing told me it was a she and she didn’t mean me any harm. I don’t know why she hung around, but there she was coming up the stairs to our bedroom. She settled herself next to my side of the bed and I could feel her looking down at me. The buzzing was rolling through me, more intense with the close proximity in which she stood to me. Her face swished through my mind. Long straight brown hair, fair skin with freckles, pale lips and even paler eyes. I could feel her smile as she watched us and I felt a longing deep within her. She was missing someone she could not be with and it was what kept her from moving on from this plane. There were no words, these were all things I just knew to be true.
The gentle roll of her energy and the rise and fall of Patrick’s heavy breath lulled me into a deep sleep. I had no dreams last night at all. In the morning it was overcast painting everything in the room a shade of dull gray. It must be early I thought to myself. Patrick’s imprint in the bed was long cold, the sheets gathered on top of me when he got up flinging them off of him. The room felt cold and damp and I felt very unmotivated to get out from underneath the covers.
Maebh and Faelan stood at the edge of the bed, chins resting on the mattress staring at me, their tails wagging in unison. Faelan let a deep, soft, and playful “boof” escape him, his tail increasing in speed. I stared back at them with squinting bleary morning eyes knowing I didn’t have too much longer before they were both in the bed mauling me awake. They had to be fed breakfast after all and had been undoubtedly keeping a close watch over me waiting until I stirred even in the slightest to start the new day. I could still feel the ghost from the night before standing watch, but now she stood by the stair case as if she was waiting for me to follow her down. I lay for a second wondering why she was still around when Maebh had finally had enough and decided now was the time to jump into the bed with me and snuffle around my head in my hair. Faelan followed suit but instead decided that laying on top of me was a much better idea. She laughed from the stairs.
Just because she wasn’t a threat doesn’t mean she was welcome. I like living alone with Patrick. We don’t have any kids, no roommates. It’s just us and I prefer it that way. Just because she was a ghost did not mean her presence was not an invasion of privacy. I didn’t plan on being cruel to her because let face it, it’s a stupid idea to be rude to something that can literally haunt you. It’s best not to piss these things off regardless of how harmless they may feel at first.
I passed by her without a nod or any other indication that I knew she was there. I patted my leg enticing the dogs to follow me so I could serve them their meal. All four of us descended the stairs and much to my frustration I felt two more energies in the kitchen. One was standing by the sink, the other seemed to be by the refrigerator. I couldn’t say for sure. When there are multiple entities about it gets confusing to read the buzzing. Everything gets muddled together and it’s difficult to discern between them. To be honest it’s a bit overwhelming and not the first thing I wanted to deal with in the morning before I can even use the bathroom. Even if you’re alive don’t talk to me before I’ve had the chance to pee and have a cup of coffee. I am not a friendly sort.
I ground my teeth making my way past them trying to act as oblivious as possible but I’ve been told that I wear my heart on my sleeve so to speak so I’m sure the annoyed nature of my mood was painfully evident. I suppose another way to say it is that I have absolutely no poker face.
I stomped my way to the bathroom and noticed all three someones were close in tow. I stopped just before the bathroom door and pivoted around on my heels so that I was facing their presence. I felt them jerk back a hair in surprise I suppose. I pointed finger up in the air to punctuate my point and stated sternly to the seemingly empty space “So help me if any of you follow me into this bathroom!” My finger hung in the air as I tried my best to look intimidating, which is pretty difficult for me I might add. They weren’t impressed… I could feel it in the way they just buzzed there.
I’m just grateful the shades were closed on the windows. If any of the neighbors happened to walk by and see me yelling at empty room… I don’t like to think about the rumors that would spread.
I turned my back on them and closed the door behind me. I waited for a second to ensure no one was trying to sneak a peek before I used the facilities and brushed my teeth. I stumbled back out into the living room when I had finished to find Maebh standing outside the door, underfoot as per usual. She stood like a stone with her tail pointed at the ceiling. She was staring at the spot I had left the ghosts where I could feel them waiting in anticipation. But anticipation for what?
All of this had ensured that my mood matched the dreary conditions outside. It looked like it would be cold and misty all day, never quite raining but never quite dry either. The world washed out in tones of muted gray. I frowned more to myself than to the people in the room and shoved my way around Maebh to storm through and past the endless source of buzzing.
The lake house we live in is more of a cottage than anything else. Drafts are not out of the norm and the construction of the thing is questionable, to put it nicely. Nothing is level and none of the angles line up quite right giving it all a lackadaisical Dr.Seuss quality. There is no basement and very little in the ways of storage save for a cabinet under the stairs leading to the loft style bedroom that has two more small cabinets built into the walls by the gabled windows. It is cramped and we own too many things making navigating the house a constant sideways shuffle. It was never meant for year round residence and is therefore mostly uninsulated. Today it was cold and damp and I shivered down to my bones.
I pulled my sweater tightly around myself and made my way to our tiny kitchen. The window over the sink used to have a lovely view of the neighbor’s house but since moving in we’ve covered it over with one of those vinyl sticker type things. It was a cubist style stain glass window design that I had grown very fond of. The ambers, blues, and greens don’t usually block the light significantly but on a day like this one it made the kitchen feel wintry and dismal. Maebh followed me into the room and Faelan took his post on the stairs by the window watching sentry over the yard and driveway.
The dogs have grown accustom to the things that follow me home. When we first adopted Maebh and brought her home I was uneasy about how my life would affect her. Would she be frightened? Protective? Her first experience went as you would expect, barking and growling at the space an entity was in, staring, apprehension. But after a while she got used to it and mostly doesn’t pay them any mind unless they are mischievous or otherwise threatening. She’s never been confronted with more than one entity at a time and her discomfort was obvious as they followed us to watch me make a pot of coffee. Faelan on the other hand is an oblivious idiot. I don’t think he picks up on anything, and if he does he doesn’t show it, the exception being when those eerie children were at the door and as my luck would have it, just as I was pulling the creamer from the refrigerator.
The buzzing from the three was bad enough but when I righted myself it shifted.
There is a trick you should try at home that will help you to understand what this felt like. Take a bowl of water, doesn’t matter how deep the water or large the bowl. Sprinkle enough pepper into the bowl so that it clings to the surface tension of the water. Now coat your finger in liquid dish soap and dip your finger in the bowl of water. The pepper will rush away from your finger and the dish soap in one solid whoosh. It is pretty fun, entertains children, you’re welcome.
I stood by the refrigerator, door still ajar. The three had arranged themselves around the room to hover and make me uncomfortable. Picture it as if the three were the pepper, the room was the bowl of water, and I was an innocent bystander floating in a bowl of pepper water for whatever reason. Something materialized in the room that inspired a reaction in the three the same as the pepper to the dish soap.
The story doesn't end here but reddit has a stupid post cap so you'll have to wait to know what happened next.
Submitted June 05, 2015 at 10:30PM by ibetthisnamestoolong http://ift.tt/1RQ7b7S nosleep
No comments:
Post a Comment