Gloria Rising: A Story of Hope and Survival In Dark Evil Places
Page 21
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 125
Sunday night
Hi again,
I have started this twice now and I can’t seem to write to make any sense – Gloria’s fingers keep cramping up. In our dream tonight what started out as a beautiful walk in the woods ended up in terror – unspeakable terror – it had taken a little girl too long to face the truth, she was living with a maniac.
She was running and got to her bedroom where she crouched in a corner her body trembling waiting for death – she knew she must not let herself scream or be found or the “Other” would return and kill her – it’s like a sponge, erasing the past and making up the future – all those crazy dreams.
The “Other” had been following us in the woods when he went into a rage because we stopped to pick some wild flowers – he had been telling us that he was a man with no background but he had imagination and intelligence but he said in the image in his mind he was successful and polished – by this time he was in a rage and saw us picking the flowers – after this the whole dream doesn’t make sense except for the little girl crouching in the bedroom so sure he was going to kill her – not much help tonight.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 126
Tuesday night
Dear Adam,
I was looking forward to writing with the new pens you gave me and it’s strange, that is, I can’t make them flow for this writing – I mean the pens don’t write smoothly although Gloria already enjoyed writing her grocery list and a card with the pens.
Well here goes for one dream tonight – it was a nightmare of fragments – at one instance there was a seven year old little girl who has been slapped hard by a large man for some minor trouble about homework and she started crying – this angered the man even more and he slapped the girl again and again screaming, “When you’re ready to stop crying, I’m ready to stop.” The girl didn’t understand but after half a dozen stinging slaps that made her head spin and her vision blur, and she had bitten so hard on his lower lip that she tasted blood. She (the girl) had stopped crying. She never cried again like that and after that not even when her mother had died.
The memory of that dream makes me very sad and unsettles me.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 127
Wednesday night
Dear Adam,
I’m not sure where I was tonight. But it was someplace beautiful. I had forgotten how crisp and buoyant the light of a place could be. It was as if the air wasn’t made up of oxygen but of something light such as helium. Everything was so clear, so sharp. Colors seemed to be more colorful here than anywhere else; outlines and details seemed to stand out. Although the air smelled smoky and funny it was thin and fresh.
There was a woman with three eyes that said, “Fulfillment of Your Dreams,” but I never saw the inside of the house. But the air – that was one of the reasons why I fell in love with this place in my dreams. It gave me a sense of inheritance of family lineage that I never had. Wish you could have been there with me.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 128
Monday night
Hi,
In the dream Gloria had tonight there wasn’t much sense. She’s a little girl walking in a house from school and she sees it is dark inside and she sees a dark afghan lump in a corner – she walks to it and starts to ask, “Did you have another bad day,” and then starts a meaningless form of communication from the lump and Gloria, “how’s school coming along – fine thank you – any problems – no – did you break any rules – no – yes you did – that’s not good – no that’s bad and again I’ll have to punish you – why? – because you didn’t put the dishes on the right side of the cabinets this morning – oh, I thought you said the left side – no, I said right.”
Two strangers who might be discussing the weather, neither listening nor caring about the other’s opinion – except that in this communication both cared about the others opinion and one opinion mattered more than another. Only that day at school the little girl made a list and practiced it on the way home – she was going to write it down and tack it on the wall
“Do not be a pest.
Do not break rules.
Do not complain about anything.
Be interesting all the time.
Do not let him know you are lonely.
Do not interrupt ever.
Be well dressed at all times especially at breakfast.
Laugh a lot so he can see how happy you are even if you’re sad.” So much for good intentions – after her punishment that night she lay in bed wide awake, too tired to go to sleep – she kept replaying the evening over and over in her mind – this was no made-up daydream – it had happened – she had been bad again – it was real – couldn’t she find a way to be good like other little girls – here I woke her up because I felt it was hopeless the whole thing. Well enough of this we’ll await some instructions. Thank you for being here for us.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 129
Saturday night
Hi again,
We had an adventure in Gloria’s dream tonight – we were in a car – Gloria was driving and we were going along smoothly till she came to a firebreak trail that had been cut through a rock going up a mountainside – she had to make a decision in a split second (something not too easy for a person driving a car who doesn’t know how to drive) anyway she had no idea where the trail led all she knew was that it went upward. Her car brakes were going and going on and upward might slow her momentum and give her a chance – and she took it. She felt the rear wheels start to skid as she swung the wheel hard to the right but the front wheels were on the gravel road and the momentum gave them enough traction to hold – then as the car hurtled forward and upward she was fighting to keep the car on the narrow road.
I looked ahead and to my horror I could see below – the path had led merely to the other side of a cliff – there was no safety here at all – she was getting closer and closer to the brink now, moving too fast to jump out of the car – the edge of the cliff was just ahead of her, the sea hundreds of feet below – as the car careered toward the edge – it went into a wild skid – and the last thing I remember is shaking Gloria awake with my shaking knees.
I must have finally figured she had no business driving us in a car with no brakes since she doesn’t know how to drive anyway – but for a while there, it sure was one wild drive – I’m glad I didn’t stick around to see the outcome. (Ha. Ha. Ha.)
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 130
Wednesday night
Hi,
Tonight before Gloria fell asleep I decided to do what you mentioned that of changing the characters in the dream and it didn’t turn out as I thought it would. The dream wasn’t too pleasant. In this dream I saw a nice beginning anyway. There’s a father walking with his son and the boy is telling the father how proud he is that he’s a teacher and his father replies that he’s proud too because even his wife never went to school, she had a tutor or a school mistress who came at the house to give her teachings.
Then the father said, “But son there’s one thing you didn’t mention and this is that all my students respect me,” and the boy responded, “That’s because they don’t have to be afraid of you – well just a little bit.” The father wanted to know what his son meant “by just a little bit afraid”. So the boy told him all about Mr. Black. The boy said that everyone who hadn’t had punishment by Mr. Black wondered if it hurt a lot when he used the switch or ruler he had hidden in the top drawer of his desk. The father laughed and laughed and his character changed – altogether – he snapped a large twig from a tree and said to his son, “Well now let’s try this on you and when anyone wants to know how much it hurts, my son can tell if it hurts a little or a lot.”
The boy laughed too because he thought his nice father was playing a joke – he was even laughing when
his father took a rope out of his pocket and tied him to a tree but he didn’t laugh when the switch hit his legs hard three, four times. Angry tears came to his eyes and he yelled, “Daddy stop it – it’s not funny anymore.” The father said, “A good scare will make a better person out of you – and oh yes, by the way there’s a nest of bees at the top of that tree so don’t rattle it too much or the queen bee may get annoyed and all the bees will get disturbed – well, I’ll stay here and watch out so it doesn’t happen. If I see just one bee coming out I’ll untie you so stop your yelling and crying.”
The little boy got scared – a hive of bees buzzing above him – maybe watching to get him and he started crying again – then he heard a buzzing sound and yelled to his father to untie him. His father had gone and was nowhere to be seen – and I woke Gloria up. What a strange dream – it didn’t help to change the character did it? We still had a horrible nightmare but we’d know what to answer if one of Mr. Black’s pupils asked if it hurts to be hit by a switch – “yes – a lot!”
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 131
Sunday night
Dear Adam,
What a mixture of dreams we had tonight – first there I was in my room and someone had brought me a large, tall stack of papers and several pens and I was to write down all the wrong things I had done to help Gloria arrive to her present state of mind and told not to lie and I answered, “Don’t worry, I have enough trouble sorting out truth from nightmare, I haven’t the energy to keep track of lies too.”
I looked up and there were two people watching me – I didn’t feel able to write, I didn’t feel strong. I felt weak, useless, foolish like I was hiding myself from reality behind a wall of irrational fears and I started to say this out loud – then I saw more people had come in the room and the woman with three eyes was there. She spoke up and said, “Forgetting can be looked at in many ways – a gift of a kind God – survival reflex – a fountainhead of nightmares – all of these or none of these but till you get rid of it all, fear is always there, in shadows, waiting for night – there are horrors that you don’t imagine even in a nightmare.”
After she said all this, I started writing because it all made sense but I knew that nothing could be worse than not trusting my own mind, my own sanity – and I looked around for Gloria to help me to remember – she had always been the strong one, the one who saw what had to be done and did it – but she wasn’t in the room, but every time I looked up more people were there watching me trying to write. I knew I had to hurry so I began to write in earnest but people began to come over and pull on my sleeve and I was beginning to make mistakes. I know they wanted me to come with them but I wanted to finish – I was writing about how some people can’t deal with their feelings of weakness – can’t accept that all any person can do is their best – then they began to hate themselves – if they can’t accept the fact that they can be afraid, be hurt, even be broken and still be a fine, brave, worthwhile human – beings – then they tear themselves apart and my job was to help these survivors accept themselves, their own humanity and their own limitations. I was supposed to write enough to help them accept themselves because otherwise I just would lose them.
Well, I looked up and the room was surrounded by people and I showed the person closest to me what I had put down, and he said, “What nonsense! All you had to write was that you want to know all that’s happened so you can protect yourself once more – a dream to banish your nightmares – love waiting instead of terror.”
I looked at the Pyramid Lady and she was crying very softly at first and then sobbing, as if her heart was broken and it scared me very much. I gathered all the pages I had done and hurriedly took them all to her – would that be enough? I wished there were twice as many pages – but she smiled when I gave her the pages and then said, she had lost Gloria, that she had gone in the opening through the lattice, and I told her, that was Gloria’s way of getting to her secret place at the other side of the porch behind the trellis with its climbing roses. Then she stopped crying and I was glad – I was desperately afraid of tears – tears were the biggest sign of weakness, failure, softness and childishness.
I hadn’t cried since I was eight or nine years old and I was always afraid that someone bigger and more powerful than I would force me, to my knees in front of people and I would cry. Well, this is enough, there were other dreams but I’m too tired to go into it – any suggestions or ideas will be appreciated – I don’t know now if it’s a good idea you’re going into our dreams in Tahoe City, it may bring back too much, best forgotten.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 132
Thursday night
Hi again,
A strange thing has been happening to me for four nights now. I’ve been awakened at an ungodly hour each night or morning sometimes as early as four o’clock by a weird sound in my ears. The world is still dark outside my window and I don’t seem to mind this early return to reality. Sometimes I have terrible nightmares from which I’m glad to escape. It’s an actual relief to recognize the familiar surroundings, the feel of my own bed but I keep listening to that sound and can’t make sense of it.
I dreamed of the Pyramid Lady tonight and she said many things. She started with, “Okay you want me to be your analyst? Well, I’ll tell you what I think. Gloria just about said it a moment ago. You’ve spent your whole life trying to be what you think everybody expects. You’ve tried to be the successful child your parents lost; the mother your husband required; the image all women look up to. I think you’ve always acted a part. Gloria dear. Not that you’re not good and kind and dependable. You are. But you’re not perfect. You’re fallible and mortal, a fact it’s taken you sixty-two years to discover. Something, or somethings, have happened to crack that perfect shell, and the realization is throwing you. It’s too much, too suddenly. Too much is demanded of you – you think. Too much you demand of yourself.
Why don’t you consider yourself a change? A good dose of selfishness might be the best thing in the world for you. Goodness Gloria, even the best actress in the world can’t play a role seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year without taking time off. I’m not angry or scolding you dear Gloria – you have offered the world so much and will give so much more, give some to yourself too. Think over what I’ve reminded you of and whenever you need a friend I am one of those.”
Well that’s about it, I wrote it down quickly so I wouldn’t forget. See you soon.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 133
Monday night
Hi again,
During the dream Gloria had tonight we went to a funeral. First though we were looking out the window of a house when we saw a little boy going by and he stopped in front of the house and said out loud, “Yeah, this must be the place, see the black wreath on the door.” This puzzled us because we hadn’t noticed a black wreath when we entered and the little boy who came in to attend the funeral bothered us too. He sat on a chair between two nuns and he took out a pair of scissors and kept opening and closing these till one of the nuns made him put them away – then he told a nun one of his teeth had fallen out, next, during the funeral service the little boy kept looking curiously around the church, and just before the service ended, he tugged at the black robe of the nun next to him and she leaned down to put her ear close to his lips but she needn’t have because the little boy said in a loud voice, “Where’s Gloria? Isn’t she coming here?” “She can’t be here,” the nun said finally. “You mustn’t think of her or talk of her anymore,” and we were sitting right close by Gloria and me.
“Why can’t I talk of her or think of her anymore?” the little boy asked. “Never mind about that, your sister has to be forgotten, she did a very bad thing but it’s best not to talk or think of it at all – just pray it doesn’t run in the family.” Then she added to the other nun, “In years, he’ll forget how they had found him huddled in the corner of the c
loset, his knees under his chin, his arms wrapped around his legs. He had heard other noises too then the closet door was being pulled open and a man like a policeman had picked him up – it was then that he started crying and he started, he cried for a very long time – he’d never forget how he was kept in the hospital for two days and the nuns took care of him and asked him a lot of questions but he wouldn’t answer any of them because of his throat hurting so much and he thought of his mother and father, but they didn’t come to see him so he knew he had done something bad but couldn’t remember what it was. He remembered how on the second day the nuns came and took him to the convent but he didn’t know what a convent was only that it was a big building and there were other children there – children who lived there and the ladies in black fussed over them a lot.
The little boy wondered when his parents were going to come to get him or was he so bad and naughty that his mother and father had decided he was going to live there with the other children, so he watched the children very carefully to see what bad things they did and he was more afraid than ever because these children were all good children and they obeyed the nuns. Then he was afraid once they knew he was the bad one he would be put in a place all by himself – then a little boy came to ask him to play “jack stones” and he figured that none of the children knew about him yet so he went off to play and he heard on of the nuns say, “See he’ll get used to it,” and she continued to the other nun, “I told you it was best not to talk about it, that in time he’d forget the whole gruesome thing.” – but the little boy knew he’d never forget a sprig of flowers on a front door with a black ribbon – getting very tired and filled with all kinds of emotions – time to stop, I guess.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 134
Thursday night
Dear Jolly Green Giant,
Thank you again for the nice pens you gave Gloria, especially this one – hope it will improve the writing – it sure flows good. Gloria had one dream tonight that was an anxiety one – she was trying to escape a gunman and she had a gun and shot him and really hit him with the bullet but he refused to even fall or drop his gun – she kept firing but the bullets had no effects on him and she wasn’t firing at “Superman” either. He was just a plain person – guess his time to die wasn’t up but it sure wasn’t a good dream for sure, finally he caught up to Gloria and he grabbed her braids and yanked the gun out of her hand and he wrapped her braids around his hand and holding her that way, he hit her again and again – then he tied her up and dumped her on a rock ledge by the lake.