All this has nothing to do with the feeling of doom – I feel right now. Please why doesn’t somebody come – why doesn’t anyone stop this – a terrible thought – is he going to kill me – I’m so cold – the most frightening part – he hasn’t said a word yet. I know deep inside he hates me. I sense he’d enjoy killing anyone – and I have to get out of here.
I’m tired, exhausted, I’m leaving now.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 32
Monday night
Dear Adam,
The shutters are drawn from the outside world to remember more easily. Something about an experience that Gloria had. She just had a nightmare and is relaxing. I can help her better when she relaxes and let’s go of the tension. It’s about something I overheard it may not be important to recall it but no one knows better than I the circumstances which leads to the fears a little girl had when she listened to what I overheard. It was a bad situation the little girl was in – I can’t remember what was said exactly. I’m frightened still going up the bare wood steps that lead to the green linoleum. The little girl is frightened too every moment for her life – it has become something precious – life – something to be guarded. I’m forcing myself to go there again knowing even as I do that it is a mistake something I should not do – it’s the only way to observe and to listen if I’m to be able to help. I take a deep breath open the door and step inside. I see the little girl – something is different – a towel jammed deep – wrists and ankles bound – “Do you know why you are being punished?”
Falling through space – pain – searing heat – when doing a very hard thing it helps to know that someone you care about and trust is close to you so I’m making believe that you are close to me to help take some of the fear away.
I’m hearing someone who is talking to the little girl. “I like to use my hands – an operation in an operating room is a great place for everybody except the patient – I mean there are times when things don’t end up right – other times it’s a high like today. I’ll go out of here whistling.”
I’m not feeling so good – there’s more I’m remembering – “Did you know there’s all kinds of openings in a skull for instance – you can do anything you want. Here let me show you.” He’s sitting down beside the little girl and he has a skull, he’s resting it on his knee using the forefingers of both hands to trace the surface. He’s saying excitedly, “You can make a window over here or a window in the back – take out a big piece of bone – both sides sometimes even leave something here in the middle – you can take off any part that you want. You have to do it from start to finish – if you don’t do it right well what kind of vegetable do you want to be a radish or a pepper just in case. Well, never mind it’s not important – it’s important that you don’t scream – that’s why the towel.
First you have to shave the head – then you start with a scalpel to open the scalp to get down to the bone – you make sort of a horseshoe because you have to pull the scalp over the face. Your face is small it shouldn’t be hard to do.”
Stopping, I’m tired.
Later
Have to get this conversation I overheard done – it’s important – pull scalp over face – face small. “Will have to be careful drilling the holes – have to go clear through the skull but not too far or I’ll be going into your brain – don’t worry first the holes then the saw – it’s like a wire with teeth on it – as soon as I pull it through these holes I’ll drill out and cut out anything that’s between them see – now the best part soon I’ll be down to your brain. I can take a lot of that out – but too much and you’ll be blind. If I take too much from the front you won’t die but you’ll wish you had because you will be dumb all the time not just sometimes like now. No need to get all shook up the same thing could have happened when you fell on your skates except you would have been in a coma then and wouldn’t know what was going to happen like you will now. You have nothing to say. I think you’re being hysterical – things I never thought you capable of – you’re scared and I haven’t even started yet.”
Have to stop here – I’ve been paying close attention to experiences the little girl receives in life my basic job is her survival – please help.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 33
Wednesday night
Dear Nice Person,
Nightmares again. A dream that would not come clear. Not this time. Cross images, I didn’t understand – something horrible and bloody was waiting hidden behind a curtain. Something with sharp teeth that would eat up the house and everyone inside, “Don’t turn your back,” the dream said – but just a nightmare.
Taylor, a friend of Gloria’s called, he was all upset having spent the day at the Veteran’s Hospital and Gloria listened (so did I) to how bad he felt, he didn’t care if a truck ran over him. It felt good to hear her say maybe he could change his thinking that after all, if he was an archaeologist he couldn’t have felt this way all the time – all in all she’s to write to him and he’s going to cheer up. Gloria is cheering people up again – too much. It’s like when Stephen died only now it is worse.
With so many changes coming about in her life she’s likely to be feeling very tense and nervous – she’s not – I’m wondering –
Here I am again – really relaxed – I had good intentions to put plenty of work and energy to allow Gloria to follow her instincts so she could reach a major goal – now it’s a muddle – a friend who came by tonight suggested we watch “Sybil” the story of a woman with multiple personalities – we did. I don’t know who is more upset now – me or Gloria – it’s like the end of the world. Gloria feels like she’s sitting on a volcano again – as for me my being keeps giving a spasmodic jerk of remembered shock and every so often I look up trembling, waiting for someone to leap out of the darkness – no night light – writing by flashlight.
Better try to relax – will talk to you later – I’m too pessimistic to make sense. Tonight I’m far more vulnerable than Gloria’s body. I retain memories and imprints of events too long – depression and weariness has me down – of course there is hope – isn’t there – please be there – don’t give up – I won’t – I hope.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 34
Thursday night
Dear Adam,
No sleeping pill last night or tonight. Gloria has been contacting me to ease her to sleep and believes I can help her more than the pills. Nightmares continue but now I know that Gloria’s body tension is her signal to let me know to let go of my feelings of tension and anxiety so that an adjustment of balance can be made between us – it works – I did let go of feelings of panic when there was a robbery two houses past here and Gloria didn’t get upset. I didn’t either – not much – also when the woman died that Gloria had psychically known would die and the other woman had the accident and died too. I saw to it that she remembered one was 88 years old and the other 82 and being psychic was set aside. Something I hope Gloria will tell you about her scarlet fever when she was a child. Things are falling apart in one way for Gloria. She is filled with mixed feelings but with your help and mine we’ll get there – you’re there – you’re always there – honest and open – you let me lean on you – no matter what – so reassuring – so comforting – you’re there solid and unshakable – it’s very important and it allows me to say that I still have some feelings of fear and panic when I know that some things must be said and put away once and for all.
The little girl we talked about – so many times she was told, “Come now, try not to show your feelings you’ll make people unhappy if you do.” So she didn’t but she didn’t see what happened when she’d be leaving – I did – those who told her not to show her feelings once alone would sit and weep – at the sight of this as I see it now the confusion of my feelings can only be composed by tight control. All, I can do is push the anxiety down but I won’t pretend that it is not in me. I am tel
ling you it was a terrible nightmare tonight unlike anything before – half awake from a nightmare trying to rouse myself only to lapse into sleep again – only to go back to another horrible nightmare. I fought desperately to wake up but I simply could not till I half roused and thought of you and to take it one step at a time – and so I’m here.
Gloria is trying very much to shut off feelings again – now she knows her life is changing a lot she is charged with new ideas – her heart with new feelings but she isn’t ready to face up to all this. She is in retreat from it all – sometimes I want to do the same thing. I create walls – I do a lot of things – I’m always busy. I seem like the healthiest person in the world, always solving other people’s problems. Although, I touch people all the time I’m afraid to let them get close to me – but it’s not always – before it was something I lived with all the time – but I feel so guilty for living. People don’t feel lucky for being alive they just accept it. There is a lot of unfinished business in Gloria’s life – in mine – it’s been avoided for too long – it’s time to straighten out loose ends – personal feelings are hard to know if you never talk about them. It’s like the heroes in books who go on trips to places to fight and walk away in silence no one ever said he was scared – no one ever cried – you could be a hero in books but you couldn’t cry – it’s like survivors in the Holocaust – he was always weak helpless or crazy – no survivor came out all right. Well I disagree with all this. The survivor must have had enough common sense to keep at it when others perished and let go to die so he must have been anything but weak and even stronger after. I end on this note before I change my attitude.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 35
Saturday night
Dear Adam,
Dreams tonight were cruelly slow – there was time to see and feel and there was the horror of reliving events that moved to a conclusion – as helpless as a person trapped in a car going over a cliff. Portions of the dream repeat themselves. Only a dream, the familiar drunken shouts – sounds of a blow delivered by a fist, followed by another, then another – a door opens – someone storms into the room – violence – horrible noises. The person leaves locking the door behind him.
Another nightmare and now as I try to relax other images that I see puzzle me. I see a little child walking in a park with a dark-haired woman whose face I’m unable to make out yet whose presence makes me feel warm and protected – as the two come out of the park and walk toward a car, the warm protective presence with the indistinct face says, “Be careful we’d better check the time,” a chill runs through me. I’m looking at the face – I’m unable to see and the features become clearer, it’s a pretty face but it has an ugly blue and green spot on it – something terrible is happening and the face is turning red – the face is all red – it’s gone. All of it is gone and I can’t see it anymore.
Now, I see the little child, he’s alone and approaching a road, he’s turning up the walk and heading for a cottage that has lots of flowers and big shady trees. His life isn’t perfect but the threatening parts seem distant at the moment and here is contentment, home – the child reaches for the doorknob then hesitates – contentment? Home? The two words don’t belong together – something is wrong here. The sunshine is gone, the sky is full of black clouds – the warmth is replaced by a cold breeze that makes him shiver – “go inside, get out of the cold” – again he grabs the knob pushes the door open – instantly the terror is back. The lump in the corner in the dark is inside waiting for him. He feels cold so very cold, the tears trickle silently down his checks remind him that some part of him is still a very little boy incapable of dealing with all this and he longs for the day when the loving presence with the blurred face will come again.
I’ve taken myself away from all this and I’m calmer now. I see the child again but he’s much smaller now. He’s playing on a threadbare green carpet – across the room his father sits on a couch reading. He looks at the child, he smiles and the little toddler feels his own face break into a grin because he loves this man – he loves him more than anyone else in the world.
The father speaks, “Look at you, you’re beginning to make friends with the whole world. What a pleasure you are.” The father moves to the child who lays his head in his father’s lap. The father strokes his back and arms and walks his fingers like little feet to the underside of the little body and tickles him – the little boy giggles and hunches himself into a ball – each move bringing the father and child into closer harmony. After meals the little boy climbs on his father and flops over his shoulder, the father stands up and spins him around while he laughs a deep and hearty chuckle. The father embraces the child and asks, “How’s my favorite little one,” the little boy rests his head on his father’s shoulder and runs his little fingers up and down his arm.
He lives for these moments – now the father swings him in giant circles around the room – the child laughs his face radiant – his tenderness and unearthly calm leaves an imprint on me and I find myself feeling alarmingly sentimental. Even in his sleep this little child’s laughter sometimes interrupts me – he cackles and giggles when dreaming and I giggle quietly with him.
Now, it changes – the boy is whimpering in his sleep, he cries out, then bolts upright in the bed wide-eyed, he scans the darkness alert like a frightened animal holding himself in a primitive state of readiness – very tired must stop.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 36
Monday night
Dear Nice Person,
So thankful you’re willing to listen. Nightmare real bad tonight – am not sure that it’s not more than a dream though – whatever it is – emotions about it are really deep – will put it down as I remember it even if it doesn’t make sense.
It’s about a little girl who is sitting in the front seat of a car with a person next to her – I see her hands held behind her with some kind of green plastic strap that encircles her wrists. She’s watching houses passing by where families must be doing what normal people do, like putting children to bed, wishing them pleasant dreams, kissing them goodnight. People who help their children with love and warmth – for this little girl those people may as well be in another world for they are completely unreachable, the car is going too fast and the person has been telling her, “Don’t try anything you can’t get away, they’re all gone out to get Carol out, that’s where I got this idea and if you try anything, I’ll just as soon kill you.” She doesn’t look at the person anymore because in his eyes before, she saw things that she didn’t understand, frightening things.
When the car stops with the two people there’s grass that changes to pavement – I see them standing at a door, an entrance to a brick building, its dark, the person is doing something in the dark – a door opens – “Get inside” the man says, the door closes and a penlight goes on – as the girl is shoved forward, she is asking why is she here and what’s going to happen to her and she’s terrified because the man won’t answer he just smiles. His hands are on one of the panels that make up the wall, he slides it aside – it’s about four feet high and there’s a ladder – when the man orders, “Move up there.” The little girl feels panic – she’s afraid if she ever goes in there she’ll never come out again even though the man said it was only to punish her – she wants to run but she knows the man is a lot bigger and she won’t get far and she can’t afford to make him angry again. The man is pushing again and after climbing the ladder, they’re moving again passing through a narrow door where a passageway continues – overhead are all sorts of pipes and things like that – as little as she is she has to crawl to keep from hitting her head – now they’re at a spot where a pipe runs up from the floor and joins above their head – the man tells her to sit down.
I’m sorry but I can’t continue to remember or to tell you anymore about this little girl because I’m confused and afraid of the mixture of emotions that I can’t put into words – guess i
t’s not important to mention anymore.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 37
Wednesday night
Dear Adam,
Nightmares one after another – time to put some of this down and get rid of it. Tonight the dream was different – that is the house and was a small brick house rather than a cottage – I see the boy walking toward the place only this time he’s trying hard to turn away because he’s certain something horrible is inside but his feet refuse to turn direction – he’s at the door, it opens a few inches – don’t go in there, he thinks – just don’t! Run! He’s unable to make himself run – his feet take him inside – he’s not in here – and then he sees him throwing a turkey leg on the floor, grabbing someone’s hair pulling it until someone screams, cranberry sauce sliding off the table – a terrified scream fills the air – the carving knife to her throat threatening to kill her for what? Have no idea – there never seemed to be any reason. Just violence. Always violence. Now he’s standing on a chair putting an electric cord around his neck saying he’s going to hang himself and don’t forget, “to cut my body down gently after or I’ll come back to haunt you, hear me.”
How I hate Thanksgiving and Christmas and summer and holidays – how I wish the calendar would take them off – all it means is celebration with violence and cruelty – who ever would think of Santa Claus as Santa “Claws” except someone who wants to destroy a child. How I hate a mind so small – he got like this so often and no reason for it which is dumb thinking there had to be a reason but I’m too tired now to figure it out – besides summer will pass and it will be all right again.
Gloria Rising: A Story of Hope and Survival In Dark Evil Places Page 6