by Becky Durfee
“So when are you going to give up on this?” Greg asked her as one of the so-called psychics drove away.
“As soon as I find one that’s real,” Jenny proclaimed.
“And what if that never happens? How many times are you going to do this before you decide that none of them are real?”
Jenny had already been frustrated by the inability to find someone genuine; Greg’s pessimism was not helping her mood. “I’ll do this as many times as Elanor wants me to.” She turned away from Greg and consulted the list that she and Elanor had created. The next name was Susan Leichart, and her phone number was written down next to her name. As Jenny dialed the phone, she did hope for the best, although even she had to admit she wasn’t very optimistic.
The following day while Greg was out running errands, Susan Leichart rang the doorbell right on time. Jenny was surprised to find that she looked more like a soccer mom than a stereotypical psychic. She was in her forties, had short brown hair, and was dressed in a basic shirt and khaki shorts. “Hi, I’m Susan Leichart,” she said when Jenny opened the door.
“Jenny Watkins.” The women shook hands, and much to Jenny’s surprise, she got the distinct impression that Susan was for real. Jenny stood awestruck for a moment, leaving Susan hanging on the doorstep. Realizing she was being rude, Jenny shook her head rapidly, “Oh, I’m sorry. Please, come in.”
“Thank you,” Susan said, eyeballing Jenny suspiciously.
Feeling the need to explain, Jenny said, “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve had a lot of whack jobs over to the house lately, claiming to be psychic. Somehow I get the feeling you’re actually legitimate.”
Susan smiled knowingly. “Yes, I’m legitimate.” She cocked her head to the side. “Tell me…why, exactly, did you call me?”
Jenny sighed, feeling an inexplicable need to be honest. “There have been some strange occurrences around here. I think someone might be trying to send a message, and I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me what that message is.”
“What type of occurrences?”
Jenny hung her head. “Voices. I’ve been hearing voices.”
“I see,” Susan said in a strange tone. “So…what exactly do you think I’ll be able to hear that you haven’t been?”
Jenny wasn’t sure what Susan was getting at. “I don’t know. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me who is communicating with me. And why.”
Susan had a maternal smile on her face, looking at Jenny as if she was a child who had just done something cute. “Tell me this, Jenny…how do you know I’m for real?”
Jenny shook her head. “I-I-I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Intuition?”
“Well,” Susan said, leaning forward and speaking in a whisper, “It takes a psychic to know a psychic.”
It took a moment for Susan’s message to sink in. Jenny’s eyes widened and she took a step backward. “You’re telling me I’m psychic?”
Susan smiled. “I could tell the moment we shook hands.”
Jenny stood silently, paralyzed with shock. Thoughts swirled around her mind so rapidly she could focus on none of them. Susan broke the silence. “I take it this is your first time…”
Jenny only nodded.
Susan reached her hand out to Jenny’s shoulder. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go inside, sit down, and we’ll have a nice chat.” She rubbed Jenny’s back. “I’ll tell you what,” she joked, “I won’t even charge you for my time.”
Chapter 7
Jenny and Susan sat at the kitchen table, each with a glass of iced tea. “So,” Susan said, grabbing the helm, “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about these voices you’ve been hearing?”
“Actually,” Jenny began, “It’s only one voice. I hear it at night, right as I’m about to fall asleep.”
“That makes sense,” Susan observed.
“It does? Is that…” Jenny searched for the correct word. “normal?” As if any of this was normal.
Susan laughed knowingly. “Well, at night your mind is at rest, which enables the spirits the opportunity to take over.” Susan shook her head and waved her hand as if to wipe the conversation clean. “This is how I’ve explained it to people in the past. The psychic mind is just a vehicle…like a car. You don’t drive; someone else drives you. During the day, your mind is racing at a million miles an hour. It’s as if your car is going really fast in circles. The spirits don’t have the ability to get behind the wheel of a car that’s constantly in motion…But…when you lie down to sleep at night, your mind slows down and eventually stops. Then the spirits are able to get behind the wheel and take you where they want to go.
“Now,” Susan continued, “what happens when you hear the voice?”
“Well,” Jenny recounted slowly, “it wakes me up. It scares me.”
“That’s understandable.” Susan folded her hands on the table. “How much do you hear before you wake up?”
“Not a lot,” Jenny confessed. “So far I’ve heard the name Steve O’dell twice, the name Elanor Whitby once, and the phrase good day ma’am.”
“Do those things mean anything?”
“Come to find out they do.” Jenny recounted the history of the house, how she found Elanor, and the story of Elanor’s relationship with Steve. “So what do you think it all means?”
Susan shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. You’ll need to allow the spirits a little more time to communicate before your mind starts racing again. It seems all they get to say is a word or two and you boot them out of the driver’s seat.”
“I guess I boot them out when I wake up?”
“Exactly. What you need to do—and it isn’t easy—is learn to stay in that relaxed state, even after you’ve been contacted. I know hearing the voice is startling, but you need to resist the urge to jump into wakefulness.”
“How do I do that?”
“Practice.” Susan smiled. “It’s easy for me now. At first, though, it was tough to do.”
“When did you first discover you were a psychic?” Jenny asked.
“Back when I was a teenager. I kept having this recurring dream that I was a confederate soldier in the civil war. At first I thought it was too much homework getting to me, but the dreams seemed so real. And the same characters kept appearing in my dreams, over and over. I felt like I knew them. It’s like the guys in my dream were my friends.” Susan shook her head. “After a few months of that same recurring dream, I knew something was going on…something huge and amazing and scary. I knew these dreams were more than just dreams, but it took me a long time to confide that in anybody. I was afraid people would think I was losing it.”
“Who did you tell?”
“A friend, of course. I was fifteen. I would always tell things to my friends first at that age. The funny thing is I didn’t tell any of my best friends; I didn’t think visions of confederate soldiers would fit very nicely into their lives, which centered mostly around boys and clothes at the time. Instead I told one of my lesser friends who I figured would be the most likely to take me seriously, and fortunately for me, she did. In fact, I only told her about the dreams. She’s the one who suggested I might actually be a psychic receiving contact from one of those guys.
“She advised me to try to get the names of the soldiers in my dream, and I was able make a note of who they all were. I even found out the name of who I was. I’ll never forget it. I was private first class Alexander Burkett. We did a little research, and we found out those people really existed. It took a lot of research, actually…there was no internet back then, keep in mind. But we were able to eventually find out that Alexander Burkett was killed in the battle of Antietam and was buried where he lay. A lot of those boys were.” She lowered her eyes in sadness. “There were so many dead that they just buried some of them in trenches, all together. That’s unimaginable to me. Those were people’s sons.” The look in Susan’s eye led Jenny to believe she must have had a son of her own.
“Anyway,” Susan cont
inued, “there were efforts after the war to go back and identify all the soldiers and give them proper burials. Obviously, that would have been a daunting task, and some of those boys would inevitably be missed. It appears Alexander Burkett was one of the soldiers who got overlooked. His remains are still right there in the cornfield.”
Jenny was mesmerized by her story. “So did you ever figure out why he contacted you?”
Susan sighed. “Well, he was never overt about it, but I figured he was suffering from unrest of some kind. Maybe he didn’t know he was dead? Maybe he wanted to see his family again? Or maybe his girlfriend? I didn’t know for sure. I just knew that anyone he might be looking for would be long dead by then, so if he wanted to find them, he’d need to cross over.”
“Wow.” Jenny said, “That’s pretty intuitive for a fifteen year old.”
“Well, I put a lot of thought into it. Those dreams were taking over my life. God, some of the things I saw in those dreams…” Susan shuddered. “I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.
“Anyway, I eventually trained myself to have some control in my dreams. I knew I needed to get the message to Alexander that it would be okay to cross over. It took a lot of tries, but eventually it worked, and he did cross. And can I just tell you how amazing that was? When he reunited with his loved ones, it was one of the most unforgettable feelings I’ve ever experienced.”
“I’ll bet,” Jenny replied, captivated.
“You know, I have found that reunion is one of the most powerful feelings you can experience. Even in this life, it’s so emotional. Did you ever notice how much people love airports or watching footage of soldiers returning from deployment? That stuff can make you cry. You don’t even have to know the people involved; you can still feel the power of their reunion.
“Well, the reunion phase is the best part of my job. On the cases where I guide someone to cross, I get to experience the joy they feel when they meet up with their loved ones again. And let me tell you, I sure felt that reunion.” Susan locked eyes with Jenny, “I mean, imagine…Imagine how it felt to be Alexander, being separated from everyone he loved for over a hundred years. Imagine wandering around aimlessly like that—in limbo—not quite living, but not quite dead. He clearly wanted to see his loved ones, but he didn’t know where to go to find them.” Susan shook her head, as if she couldn’t quite wrap her head around the thought of being that lost for that long.
“But then…” Susan’s expression immediately changed, “Imagine the moment when you find everyone again. After all that time, you finally find your way home.” She sat back in her chair, beaming. “Well, I felt that. I got to experience that joy with him.” She let out a little laugh. “It made up for all of the horrors I had to witness, and all of the chaos his presence created in my life.”
Jenny’s blood ran cold at Susan’s last statement. “What kind of chaos did he create?”
“Oh, God.” Susan said. “It would be easier to list the aspects of my life that didn’t get affected by Alexander.” She sighed. “Well, first of all, I became reluctant to sleep. My dreams were so often about war, I reached the point where I didn’t want to sleep at all anymore. I’d try to stay awake all night sometimes, which obviously had a profound effect on me. I lost a ton of weight. My grades went down dramatically—and suddenly—to the point where my parents accused me of doing drugs. In hindsight I wish I had just told them the truth, but the teenage brain is a strange creature indeed. I preferred my parents thinking I was a druggie to telling them I was having visions.
“But my circle of friends also changed. I started spending more and more time with Kelly—the girl I had confided in—and less time with the girls who had previously been my best friends. I spent my Friday and Saturday nights in the library with Kelly instead of at the mall with my old friends, who eventually wrote me off as being weird and started to want very little to do with me. It was okay with me, though, because at that point my focus had changed.
“The more I realized that my visions were true, the more I realized that I was not destined for a traditional life. Grades meant less to me because I figured I wouldn’t be going to college anyway. If I truly had this gift, I wouldn’t need college. The mall and boys and clothes and all of those other teenybopper obsessions seemed trivial compared to what I was dealing with.” Susan let out another sigh. “That episode changed my whole perspective about life. Nothing was the same after Alexander.”
For a brief moment, Jenny acknowledged to herself that nothing was going to be the same for her, either. Horrified at the prospect, she felt the need to change the subject in her own head. “So should I be trying to tell this…spirit…to cross over?”
“Not necessarily,” Susan said. “Sometimes people contact you because they are trying to send a message. They’re not lost—they know they’re supposed to cross, but they don’t want to until an issue gets resolved.”
Jenny made a face and contemplated that last statement. “That would make sense here,” she thought out loud. “Steve and Elanor’s relationship was unresolved…”
Susan nodded. “Now this is by no means fact, since none of this is an exact science, but based on my own experiences—and the fact that Elanor said no one else could possibly know about the code--I would surmise that the person contacting you is Steve, and he’s trying to explain to Elanor what happened all those years ago. Since Elanor doesn’t have the gift, he needs to use you as a go-between.”
Jenny nodded slowly, deep in thought. She would love to be able to tell Elanor what happened and give her some peace in her final days. In order to do this, however, she would need to quickly master the art of receiving messages. She wasn’t sure just how much time Elanor had left.
“So…what exactly do I need to do in order to allow the spirits to communicate with me?”
“Well, first you need to expect periodic contact,” Susan said. “That should be easier now that you know you have the gift. Correct me if I’m wrong, but until now you’ve been surprised by the voice every time you’ve heard it.”
“That’s an understatement.”
Susan laughed. “Well, now you are aware that it can happen, so hopefully you won’t be quite as shocked by it. And now that you know that the spirits are most likely to make contact when your mind is at rest, you can get a feel for when to expect it. You can even facilitate it, or at least try to, by achieving that state of relaxation during the day. There’s no guarantee that if you meditate you’ll get contacted, but you can pretty much guarantee that you won’t get contacted if your mind is buzzing a mile a minute.
“And,” Susan continued, “you also need to understand that the spirits can’t hurt you. Now, don’t get me wrong, you are going to be exposed to some disturbing visions. You may hear messages that are a lot less pleasant than the ones you’ve been hearing. You may feel pain—excruciating physical pain—but be aware that it only lasts the duration of the vision. It isn’t your pain that you’re feeling—you are feeling vicarious pain to give you a better understanding of what the spirit has endured.”
Seeing that Jenny looked rather uncomfortable, Susan continued. “Now I told you before that you’re not in charge of the visions, but I don’t mean to imply that you have no control. While you can’t control when you get a vision or how long your vision lasts, you can control how short it is. In fact, you’ve been doing that already.” Susan reached out her hand and held Jenny’s. “If ever a vision gets to be too much, you have the ability to snap yourself out of it. After you become seasoned you’ll probably find that you don’t ever want to snap yourself out of a vision, no matter how awful, simply because the most awful visions are usually the most telling. But until you get a handle on this gift, only do what you’re comfortable with. It is a gift, but if not handled properly, it can feel like a curse.”
Jenny rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “I’m so glad you are here telling me all of this.”
Susan smiled. “I’m actually very happy to do it. I am still frie
nds with Kelly, the girl who first helped me with my gift, and I am glad to be able to finally pay it forward.” She let go of Jenny’s hand.
“I’m a psychic,” Jenny stated with disbelief. “You’ll have to forgive me, but this is an awful lot to swallow. This conversation has just turned my entire life upside down.”
“I know,” Susan said, “which is why I want you to program my phone number into your phone. Please, please, please feel free to call me any time, day or night, if you need anything at all. I know some of the things you can experience are disturbing or downright scary, so if you need some help sorting it out, or even just to vent, please call.”
“I don’t want to call you in the middle of the night,” Jenny said.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Half my visions come to me in the form of dreams, so I often get out of bed at 3 a.m. to write down everything I experienced. My husband is used to it by now. He says it’s like being married to an OBGYN who’s constantly on call.”
“So your husband is on board with the idea of you being psychic?”
“Oh, sure,” Susan said. “But I already knew I was psychic when I met him. He actually found it fascinating. I think it was part of the attraction.”
“But what about other people?” Jenny was dancing around what she really wanted to say, which was my husband thinks I’m crazy. “When you tell people you are a psychic, do most of them believe you?”
“Some do, some don’t. I actually don’t care if people believe me. My clients believe me, which is the important thing. My gift has been able to provide a lot of people with answers, and that’s been very rewarding. If other people don’t believe me, that’s their problem.”
Jenny let out a little laugh, jealous of both Susan’s and Elanor’s ability to not care. Perhaps that did come with age…