House of Darkness House of Light

by Andrea Perron

  As they passed through April’s room, Andrea ran to her sister and gave her a hug. A little body shaking uncontrollably, April clung on to Andrea with all her strength, afraid to let go.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I’m very sorry I was so mean to you.” Tears trickling down Andrea’s cheeks, April wiped them away with fingers, asking her big sister what was happening downstairs. Andrea could not respond. Cynthia snagged her by the hand, frantically jerking her arm. “Come on!” They were off. Andrea turned, kindly telling April to stay put but this time the child did not obey, rejoining them momentarily at the bottom of the stairwell to the parlor. Passing through the middle room, no one could believe that Christine had slept right through all of it, the noise and upheaval enough to wake the dead! As they tiptoed past her, there was no need. Christine was dead to the world. Peering through another crack in the door, Andrea still felt sick to her stomach but she was relieved to see their mother sitting safely on the sofa.

  Roger cleared the air and the house of mortals, telling everyone to leave immediately. Keeping his distance, Ed told techs to stop taking photographs, instructing them to retrieve their equipment from the cellar. Apprehensively descending a staircase, they returned literally a minute later, both distraught. Their expensive equipment, every device had been destroyed. All gone, but not forgotten; in bits and pieces, scattered all over the earthen floor. Tears flowed from two grown men. They went back down to gather whatever they could salvage, loading the van through the kitchen door. When these brave souls finished, they waited outside for the rest of the group to follow, too terrified to return to the parlor. They’d seen enough. Who knows what they had seen down the hatch! Lessons learned the hard way. There was no getting out of harm’s way in that farmhouse… no escaping unscathed. Any visitor who made a memory there took it with them. They may leave the place but the place never leaves anyone. As if by osmosis, it seeps in, creeping through a mind, setting up permanent residence.

  Mary collected her belongings from the table, her trinkets and a talisman, replacing all of these objects precisely where they had come from, within a velvet pouch. As she snuffed out the candles, Mary said a prayer, blessing their house. The parlor filled with lost souls, mortified mortals so anxious to accommodate the master of the house, they were ready to run for their lives. Andrea and Cindy went back through to the opposite stairwell, where they could observe it from a safer distance. April remained behind. As the parlor became more crowded, she quietly opened the door then walked among the adults, getting lost in the confusing frenzy of activity. Laying down on the love seat, April disappeared, blending into the woodwork. Nobody noticed her. Later when asked whatever possessed her to risk such a harsh reprisal, she recalled only wanting to feel closer to her mother. Bless her little heart.

  The room emptied quickly as if someone pulled the plug. They all drained out the door. Mary was the last to go. She walked past Carolyn then paused, leaned over, touching a wounded warrior gently on the head. Extending her best wishes, Mary spoke briefly, uttering a cryptic message from beyond, perhaps from within the grave.

  “Your answer lies beneath the bell stone.” It did not sound speculative.

  Carolyn’s head hung limply, appearing almost lifeless. Her hollow stare never wavered. Once everyone was gone, Roger slammed the front door and instantly turned to glare at his wife, in disgust. What sympathy he felt for her only moments before vanished. He blamed her for all of it. April heard it all. She’d heard her father rant and rave, assailing and regaling the victim of that horrific attack, his kick-the-old-lady-while-she’s-down approach, a veritable syndrome from which he’d apparently suffered. There was no doubt about it. Roger was hurting, too. He was more frightened than he had ever been in his lifetime. Unwilling to suffer alone in defeat, he took his fear and frustrations out on his wife, again. For her, the verbal assault was a rude awakening from a stupor, the place from which she had barely returned. Dazed, still confused, she slowly rose up from the sofa, practically staggering over to the fireplace. Arms flailing, the madman followed her across the parlor, out of his mind. Neither of them glanced in the direction of the love seat. Had they done so, it would have revealed April’s presence. They would have discovered a foot soldier downstairs. Instead, she remained unaccounted for… left alone, wounded on an active battlefield, taking more shrapnel by the moment as words flew like weapons through the air, scattering throughout the house: cluster bombs hurled from her father’s bully pulpit.

  On pins and needles she laid, bundled beneath a quilt, watching, awaiting her turn. There would be no escaping unscathed; her time for retreat long passed, she had to play dead. The damage done was irreversible; collateral damage manifesting as childhood trauma.

  As far as Roger was concerned, this whole thing had been a sneak attack. He bitterly resented the intrusion, the theatrical farce of a pseudo-intellectual endeavor: ritualistic nonsense. Fake. Roger went on and on in mind and with his mouth, pre-and-post-judging a grudge match. No stranger to ritual, he had been an altar boy for years. He knew the aroma of incense, the weight of a scepter in his hands. It wasn’t the spiritual endeavor as described. Roger continued to resist what he perceived as a mockery, fraudulent and deceptive distortions of religious practice… oh, but she had forced the issue by inviting more than one demon across his doorstep, without his permission. For Roger it was a personal affront; an overt challenge to his authority. He felt usurped, manipulated, foolish and ashamed. She was supposed to understand that he was upset; that it was not about her… not at her… so he tried to convince her that, in spite of her ordeal, this was really all about him; about something she could not even recall happening. She was supposed to get it, not be upset by his fear and agitation. Roger considered their little side show a charade, an essentially inauthentic practice perpetrated upon two unsuspecting souls; an artificial make-it-up-as-you-go-affair possessing all the earmarks of satanic worship, far more dangerous than any Ouija board, providing more than one wet-your-britches moment for everyone involved. She allowed it to happen, inviting disaster. She was selfish. She was self-absorbed. She was delusional. She was a witch. He could not help himself. The subject of his tirade stood motionless, muted. She had not heard a word of it. Lifting her face to meet his, Carolyn gazed into his twisted features, eyes on fire, to ask him a simple question: “What happened?” Dispirited, Carolyn’s voice seemed a whisper in comparison to her husband. Roger appeared to be terrified of her, staring at the woman as if he didn’t know her at all.

  Subjecting her to his wrath, treating her as if she were his mortal enemy, he could see Carolyn was defenseless against further attach. She had to lift her head to feel the heat of his gaze… less heat, more light called for in the moment, it seemed he had regressed to childhood, behaving like a scared boy, a little kid throwing a temper tantrum. He was absolutely blown away, knocked back from the woman of his dreams… and his eventual nightmares. He stared at her, realizing what had just transpired. The vacant stare in return was a message received. The enraged man took a sudden turn for the worse. Spinning around, away from his wife, Roger saw their baby daughter curled up on the love seat. His heart nearly stopped.

  “How long have you been down here?” His booming voice shook the rafters. April did not answer him. “Get your ass upstairs to bed… and close the door!” The child ran all the way to her bedroom and never looked back. Caught in the act on both fronts, poor, sweet little April had taken shots that frightful night, double-barrel. She was wounded. Laying in bed, alone in the dark, she was too scared to go to her big sister for fear of being heard. Instead, she cried herself to sleep.

  Unyielding in his position, the man stood firmly, rigidly in place at his post as his wife retreated to the sofa and promptly fell asleep. Eventually he covered her with a quilt then sat with her for hours, watching the Red Sox, a welcome and necessary distraction. Staring at the screen, volume off, he’d been deafened by the noises in his head which would not subside. He too had been exposed to th
e darkest side of existence. He could still hear the clicks of the camera shutters, the incessant voices chattering around him and a distant scream echoing through his deeply troubled mind. Roger closed his eyes. It was over. All he craved was a normal life, the peaceful sound of silence.

  ***

  Mortal strength was no match for what they encountered that night. One cannot vanquish what one cannot identify. Part of any fight is in knowing when to surrender, for the sake of self-preservation. Embrace the inevitable. Let go and let God take over. Roger had looked into Carolyn’s eyes. He didn’t even recognize his own wife. It was as if something had died inside her then come alive again. She was different, altered by an experience she could not recall. It was, and still is, a stunning recollection for the man. He now admits that the spirits controlled and manipulated the visible world around them by invisible means and he too was altered in the process. Physical strength should not determine or define a battle where immortals are concerned but it required all the strength Carolyn could muster to make it through this ordeal. It was not a fair fight. No warrior should be felled by invisible forces. There is a proper weapon for every conflict. Mary was Lorraine Warren’s weapon of choice the night an incipient presence claimed the form and substance of a mere mortal it had occupied. Following the ugly vision back in time, Roger regretfully recalls what comes back to haunt him in the night. Its existence is not in question. As it appeared, communing with the mistress of the house, an unholy ghost had its way in the Netherworld; it got what it came to claim, if only briefly, making its presence known through another. For many years, Roger put it out of his mind, woefully aware that he’d been out of his mind at the time. Enlightenment is a very painful process, no easy feat. Coming to terms with his own immortality required a quantum leap of faith for the man.

  The spirits enlighten us with their darkness, no matter how difficult it is to behold. With wide-eyed wonder, images impaled in memory which cannot be shunned take up residence in any mortal mind exposed to the presence. It is impossible for Roger to reconcile what he’d witnessed that dreadful night. In time, he may make his peace with it but there is no denying the fact that it was a test of wills, a struggle, a battle… a war. For awhile, Carolyn lost her will to fight on. Yet somehow, in the midst of its madness, she reclaimed her own certain sanity. Somehow, in the midst of war she lost and found the will to go on, having discovered what it means to be immortal. Not a fair fight. She would succumb to a presence which meant her harm but she had to fight her way back for the sake of five children she had inadvertently left behind.

  Some would call Roger’s outlandish behavior reprehensible and utterly self-indulgent. Some would accuse him of off-loading on his wife when she was most vulnerable. Others might suggest he is a man who lives in a rage. There are those who will hope that he suffered, too and a likely few who will hope that he still does, but there is more to the story. A psychologist may assert that his outbursts were caused by merely compensating for a sharply heightened level of fearfulness, an inordinate amount of stress with which he was unfamiliar and equally unprepared to handle… a volatility brought on by circumstances clearly beyond his control. Roger did not always attempt to control his temper but that night was different. There were witnesses: three of them. Each asserts that this explosion was fueled by toxic venom. This was not their father. This was not the same man who placed a quilt across his wife’s cold body, tucking it in at the shoulders. No. It was something else… something wicked had a grasp of him that night and only the stunning sight of his baby was enough to break the evil spell; a shock to the system. His words had been malicious, hurtful in the extreme to anyone listening, especially for children who had grieved on behalf of their mother, berated in ways she did not deserve, even though the subject for which his wrath was intended has virtually no memory of the event or its aftermath. It would be easy enough to say “no harm done” if it had not been for the sad fact that his children were listening intently to every word, shuddering with every wild gesticulation. As for Roger, he was adversely affected; an incident reflecting so badly on the man he could not look into the mirror for days, unable to forgive himself. According to his children, upon thirty years reflection, there is nothing to forgive. The duress he was under existed, no doubt, but each is convinced there was another explanation, nefarious forces at play, forcing them to wonder if the presence, its influence was yet gone or a force to be reckoned with further. Evil has a face. Stick to your guns.

  Weeks later, when Carolyn began to come round right, she discovered that a paper bag of treasures, the simple gifts the farmhouse had bestowed upon her were missing… gone but not forgotten. The items were stored inside a brown bag, wedged in a corner of the china cabinet in the dining room. What a farm surrendered to its caretakers had been taken but no one can steal a memory.

  “I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here;

  and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.”

  Kahlil Gibran

  “Life begins on the other side of despair.”

  Jean Paul Sartre

  inner sanctum

  “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Carolyn’s self-reflective journey was not at an end. In many ways, it had only begun. She had been to the precipice and some would say she had taken the plunge. Others would claim she was pushed. Regardless of who or what was responsible for that treacherous excursion, Carolyn survived it. In fact, she had no memory of it at all: A blessing born of a curse. Her body was stiff and sore for days after the séance but it was her mind which struggled most. Assimilating the messages received by her husband, a horrific description of the events as they occurred, the woman was grateful she had no recollection of the episode; no memories preserved for posterity. It was obvious by his upset it had been surreal and deeply disturbing for her husband. His reaction, targeting the victim, was standard operating procedure for the man who often disguised his raw emotions by projecting other emotions over them… bigger, louder emotions… loud enough to muffle the cries of the scared little boy. Roger was as frightened as he had ever been in his life; not so fearless, after all. The bravado was a façade. Compounding the distance between them was a quiet and uncomfortable scrutiny. Carolyn saw it in her husband’s eyes, making her squeamish, forcing her to look away. He talked of it incessantly as if talking to himself, awkwardly expressing his distress about the Warrens and the séance; a fiasco, according to him. Whenever Roger addressed her directly, which was rare, Carolyn couldn’t help but notice him looking at her in a different way than she’d ever seen before. Roger was afraid of his wife. Carolyn withdrew. During this time she underwent a holistic transition. She reconnected by hiding in a protective shell where she could not be reached for comment. Their house became deathly quiet, a morgue-like existence for all hands on deck. It was safe to heal in the dark and somber environment, a good place to begin. A mother embarked on a journey home to her children.

  When we cease resisting the inevitable we are freed from its influence.

  This does not necessarily mean that we accept it.

  It means only that we no longer fear it.

  “We acquire the strength we have overcome.”

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  fear the living… not the dead

  “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary;

  men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.���

  Joseph Conrad

  There is good and evil. There is darkness and light. Each manifests in acts, motivated by an intangible force which can only be distinguished then labeled based upon the nature of the act. Helpful is good. Hurtful is bad. First, do no harm. Do unto others. Simplistic forms of comprehension, to be sure, but the existence of both is fundamental to the human condition. Everybody living is subject to ethereal forces beyond the visible world, our corporeal existence. Random acts of kindness are common. Expressi
ons of pure evil are far less prevalent and always shocking. Few in a lifetime escape unscathed. Whether victim or victor, life presents us with a series of challenges and obstacles to overcome.

  An integral component of the ongoing war between good and evil is the endless battle of wits waged by those who seek justice. Retribution requires a strategy. Some would viably argue, because the longing for vengeance exists as an essential element engrained in human nature, we do not seem to trust in God or the concept of divine retribution. We can’t tolerate the thought of someone “getting let off the hook” in the physical realm, hoping our prayers for their demise will be answered from beyond. All will be made right in the end? We can only hope. Mortal tendency is to take matters into our own hands. We pursue the culprits, sentence and imprison them. The “witches” suffered a trial by fire. Those who commit crimes against humanity, real or imagined, when discovered, are destined to be punished by the society striving to consequence unkind souls for their abhorrent behavior. In principle, it would be heartening to think those who embody evil receive their just rewards right here on Earth. Truly, that is not necessarily the case. Many throughout history who’ve committed horrible, unspeakable atrocities have done so with impunity and without remittance. They got away with it… or did they?

  Such knowledge offends common sensibilities. Justice-minded souls can’t abide the notion. Human beings as intelligent, complicated creatures capable of immense cruelty are instead predisposed to acts of astonishing kindness. It is our predominant characteristic. Whatever compels us to decide how to behave as we create our own reality is a matter for those who study the human mind to ultimately determine. What motivates us, as good souls, to wish ill on another who has committed a heinous offense, is best left to the psychologists; this duplicitous dichotomy for them to discern.