by Dale Mayer
Then he said, “She recommends no more today, but if you want to try again in the morning, she can pull another one.”
Hannah lay there and thought about everything he’d said and didn’t say. Then she said in a very low voice, “You just talked to her, didn’t you? Without using a phone?”
His laughter rumbled up his chest and past her ear. It was such a joyous sound. So fun and free. “Absolutely I did. Like you noticed before. Stefan can do the same thing. We often speak that way. It saves time and effort and cell phones are not always convenient. Nor do we always want people to hear what we are saying.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.”
“Oh I bet you have,” he said with a warm smile, dropping a kiss on her nose. “I suspect your mother was very talented too.”
“Too?”
“Too? As in, you are as well.” He reached up and placed a finger over her lips. “You are talented. You couldn’t walk in grayscale if you didn’t have these abilities. You’ve clearly been surrounded by energy people if they have placed these blocks into your mind all these years.” She felt the intensity of his gaze right to her toes. “Someone likely started out helping you deal with trauma then it changed. Either they didn’t know what they were doing and kept adding in more to help, or someone else came along and did the same thing but for a different reason.”
Her mind kept turning the issue over and over again. “I guess I can see the initial one. I was incredibly traumatized after my mother’s death.”
“And that might not have been the first time,” he cautioned her. “Maybe something happened earlier, and that led another to repeat the process after your mother’s death.”
“To think of one person having access to that part of my psyche is one thing, but to imagine that there could possibly be more than one digging around in my head – I can’t see it.”
“That’s the point,” he said dryly. “You can’t see it. You can’t feel it. But you need to understand that you allowed it to happen. In some way, you were okay with this happening. If you weren’t, you’d have fought it. Now the first time, was likely to help and you’d have been okay with that. The second time could have been the same and by the time more were placed in there, you probably couldn’t tell one block from the other.
“So I might have known but wouldn’t really have understood as by then it was common, comfortable.” She shook her head. “The things we do to people in the name of what’s good for them.”
“And it likely was good for you,” he said. “It’s just no longer good for you, and the process of removing them can get painful.”
“No can about it.” She stroked a finger along his jaw. “You helped me get through this time, so can’t you help me on the others?”
“Hopefully, but I don’t know what might be released each time, and the blocks could fall when I’m not here.”
She pursed her lips. “Another reason to do this right here and now so that you are here and I can find out whatever information someone was keeping from me. Maybe it’s what I need to know for my father – to get him to back off. Hell,” she added in disgust, “maybe he’s the one putting the blocks in.” She studied Trevor’s square jawline. He was a protector and a damn good one.
“Can’t Dr. Maddy find out who did this?”
“She said it was more than one person. Female and one male and there could be more. Beyond that you have to realize you are both male and female energy yourself. We all are,” he said simply. “Our energies blend with those of the people we live with. If we care about them we incorporate their energy into our systems, and if we don’t like them we don’t let it become quite as close. Over time it’s almost impossible to see who did this. Until you go in and look. And to do that you have to open up messy and very difficult memories.”
She winced. “As more and more blocks are removed, does it get easier?”
“It gets easier to remove them yes, but the memories being held behind them are likely more painful.”
“Right. That makes sense.” She pursed her lips. “Are these something I can remove?”
“Absolutely. As soon as you became aware that they are there, they became something you can deal with on your own. You just need to be ready.”
“Sounds horrible.”
“No. The stronger and older you get, the more the pain of whatever is behind the walls will be easier to bear. The blockages, at least originally, were never intended to be there forever. Only until you got old enough to deal with the trauma.”
“So likely the blockages were installed by someone who cared about me.”
“Exactly. And yet you were thinking that the first one was there to help you deal with your mother’s death. And in that case, who would have put it inside with her gone?”
“I don’t know,” she exclaimed. “I had a nanny when younger but I was always with my mother. And the guards.”
“The nanny might have done it. If she’d been with you for a long time, she’d have loved and cared for you.”
“True enough, but at the same time, I don’t remember her after my mother’s death.” She frowned, trying to dredge up a picture of her old nanny. “I can’t even see her face, remember her voice, except when I see a photo.”
“Those memories could be behind the blockages.”
“Those feel warm and cozy. Like I want them back.”
“Of course you can have them back. When you remove the blockages you’ll have access. The memories haven’t disappeared. They are there for when you are ready.”
“And if I said I’m ready now?”
He studied her face. “We can try another one but you’re already tired. You’re energy’s frayed.”
She nodded but couldn’t leave it alone. “Do we have any idea how many blocks there are?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Three bigger ones and a couple of smaller ones for sure.”
“Then let’s zap the smaller ones.”
Silence.
“How about you zap the smaller ones,” he said slowly.
She blinked. She got to her feet and walked to the window then turned to face him. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? If I’m ready, then I should do it myself.”
“Not necessarily. We all need help sometimes.”
Although she nodded, she felt like she’d opened up a can of worms she wasn’t ready for. And yet she’d brought it on herself. She just hadn’t realized this was going to be something she’d have to do. She couldn’t rely on everyone else all the time. Given the strangeness of her circumstances, she should only call for help when she really needed it.
“Okay. Let me try.” She turned to face him. “How do I do this?”
*
He was really proud of her. He wished she wasn’t going down this pathway but success and a little bit of freedom made everyone want more of both. In her case she’d been caged mentally for a long time. He couldn’t stand the thought of such a thing himself, so he could just imagine how she was feeling right now.
“It’s a fairly easy process, but as you’ve never done it before, I can’t tell you which method will work the best for you.” He stood up and motioned to the couch. “All I can say is that you need to lie down and visualize the blocks and find a way to mentally zap them out. If you’d played video games any time over the years, I’d say do a mental seek and destroy process. As you haven’t…”
“So.” She walked slowly toward the couch and sat down. “What you’re saying is finding them is likely to be the bigger problem. Destroying them not so much.”
“Exactly.” He smiled and walked over so he could stand in front of her. “You can mentally zap away a block, and it will disintegrate under your own positive energy.”
“And finding them?”
“Yeah, you have to look for something that feels normal but isn’t actually yours. That’s more difficult.”
“Nice. Not.” She sat back and closed her eyes. But thoughts just kept tracking thr
ough her mind. She opened her eyes and stared at him. “I can’t even see into my memories, how am I supposed to find anything in there when it’s not accessible?”
He sat down and reached over to grasp her hand. “That’s the thing. You have to think yourself there. You can’t sit in this space and try to access the thoughts. Because the effort to do that is going to come to you as thoughts. You have to think your way into your memory banks. Visualize that space in your head and see what kind of image you get.” He laughed. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll follow along and see what you see.” She shot him a look of disbelief then shrugged, “Why not? Maybe you can help.”
Chapter 21
Obediently she closed her eyes and said in her head, “Show me my memory banks.”
Instantly she was in a room full of filing cabinets. She had no idea her imagination was so literal. But lined up in front of her was wall-to-wall filing cabinets. Walking to the wall of file drawers she read the years on the front of them. But how to know which had the blocks? She wandered the room throwing out the command, “Show me where the blocks are. What years are they in?” The drawers didn’t move.
She stood with her hands on her hips in frustration. Damn it. There had to be an easier way to do this. “I know you’re here somewhere, Trevor. Can you help? Can anyone help?”
Silence.
Then she got a shock as a tired voice answered.
“There is someone here,” the voice said. “You are asking as if you need permission to see into your own world. You don’t need that. As long as you act like you don’t own that space, then you don’t. But it is your space.”
“Stefan?” She could feel Trevor’s laughter but as she spun around she realized she couldn’t see him. Yet she knew he was there. In the background. Like Stefan.
“Yes.” This time the tired voice was ringed with humor. “You called. Even though apparently you didn’t know you called. Could you tone that ringer of yours down please? Some of us are trying to sleep.”
She gasped. “I woke you.”
Trevor’s laughter rolled free. “Yes, you did, sweetheart. Sorry, Stefan. She’s trying to find the blocks in her mind and is having to learn this on her own.”
“Right,” Stefan said, his voice all business. “Then stop making it linear. There is nothing linear about time. If you want to see a block, demand it show you its location regardless of the time of your life it was placed in. And do start small please. I haven’t slept all night. No rescue mission for me if I don’t have to, okay?”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice.
And his presence winked out. She wasn’t sure where he’d come from in the first place, but apparently he was there all the time.
“He is there all the time,” Trevor confirmed. “But we try to avoid calling on him if we don’t need to.”
She took a deep breath. “Right. Do this on my own, and if we have a panic, he’s there if need be.”
“Exactly.”
Armed with the knowledge she wasn’t alone and with Trevor in the background, she tried again. Stefan had said she didn’t need to know what year the block had been in. “Remove the years and just show me the blocks. Arrange them from largest to smallest.”
There was a stillness to the air then a sudden whoosh and her visualization completely changed. Now there were large cement like walls in front of her. Of various sizes. But all were menacing.
“They can look however you want them to look,” Trevor murmured. “If these scare you, turn them into purple balls of lint.”
She gasped. “Purple fluff balls?” She laughed. “Really? I can do that?”
“You can do anything you want to in here.”
Instantly the huge menacing walls that looked insurmountable shifted into purple cotton candy. She laughed again. “Oh my gosh, this is so much fun. I had no idea.”
“It takes energy to do what you’re doing,” he reminded her. “As you’re not used to this I suggest you get on with getting rid of the smaller ones as fast as you can before you become so fatigued this all disappears.”
“Right.” She turned to study the smallest. “They don’t look bad.”
“They aren’t.”
She zapped the first one and it kind of slowly sagged in front of her but still existed. “I want something more permanent than that. Don’t I?”
“Yes. I’d say so.”
Cotton candy was just sugar so she visualized water pouring over the first flattened mess, and sure enough it dissolved in front of her. “Yay,” she cried out, dancing around. “One gone.”
“How do you feel?”
“Exuberant. Happy. Free.”
“Then how about another one?”
And she realized he was serious. His tone of voice wasn’t lighthearted or teasing. He wanted her to do what she could and get out. There wasn’t urgency in his voice, but a forcefulness to keep her on track. He knew so much more about this than she did. She got down to work and found that every one after the first one was harder. But she persisted until she had the four smallest blocks done. There were another half dozen and they were all bigger. She’d have to take them one at a time – and not likely today. But maybe she could do one more.
She turned to the first of them and took a deep breath. It had grown in the time she’d been destroying the others.
“It’s bigger.”
“It is.”
“Why?”
“Either it’s got its own self-preservation instinct or someone else is feeding it.”
She gasped. “Feeding it?”
“Someone put this in here. That means someone has access to it. And that means if they feel the block is in danger then they will pour more energy into the block to keep it there.”
“So you’re saying someone is consciously keeping this here?” She didn’t think she liked the sound of that.
“Not only keeping it – but preserving it. Feeding it. Quite possibly on a daily basis.”
*
It was a lot to take in. It was also an experience for him to see her explore her new world like a child. When she’d flipped the imposing blocks visual into cotton candy he’d wanted to dance and cheer with her. He was in her space with her permission, but outside of communicating with her he was limited to what he could do to help her. He used the same technique with his patients. It allowed him to see their progress and their difficulties without him being able to affect them. That was important. This was all about them regaining their power. About learning what they’d given up and what they could grab back and control again.
So many mental disturbances were at their root – a power issue. Once people let go of their power, often in childhood, they were unable to regain it. Or what they regained they felt apologetic for instead of realizing it was their right. Their integrity as a person that they needed to honor. Sacrificing something like that did no one any good. It was damn important to remember that.
“Is this right?”
“It looks good to me.” He watched as she approached the first of the bigger blocks, buoyed by her success so far. He knew these would be different animals altogether. He studied the six and could easily see there were two creators behind them. Some blocks were older.
She was working on a new block. He chewed on his lip while he considered the problem of doing that. “Hannah, try the block that is two over.”
“Why,” she said as she turned the bigger block into an ice cream cone and proceeded to apply a welding torch to it. He wanted to laugh, but inside instinct said this one was dangerous – that it would cause more problems at the moment than they needed.
“It’s working.”
“Well, you’re melting the ice-cream but I’m not sure it’s disappearing.” That was a concern. With his instinct prodding him to pull her out of there, he had to stop and wait…and watch as she tried to dissolve away the first of the bigger blocks.
The melted ice cream pooled at her feet.
“Hannah move back,” he snapp
ed. “Don’t let the ice cream touch your feet.”
She jumped back. “Why not?”
But the ice cream seemed to have locked onto her whereabouts and was following her. She raced further back, but the faster she ran the faster the ice cream followed.
“What’s happening?” she cried.
“It’s your visual,” he responded, trying for a calm voice but knowing she needed to change this visual now. “Turn it back into a stone block.”
“Why?” she asked, retreating further, trying to torch the melted ice cream. But it seemed to continue to run underneath it’s crusty surface. Then he understood.
“The person who placed this block there has noticed your attempts to remove it.”
She spun to stare at him in shock. “They can do that?”
“He already has.” While she’d been looking at him, the ice cream puddle slithered even closer. “Hannah, look out.”
Too late.
Helplessly watching, the ice-cream touched her foot and instantly shot up through her body.
Her curdling scream terrified him.
In a move he hadn’t thought possible in this dimension – hell – any dimension, she shattered into small pieces in front of him – again.
*
She couldn’t have done that. Please say she hadn’t found the block and tried to take it out. ’Cause that was never going to happen. Not as long as he lived. Jesus. He sat at his desk and held out his hands. They were trembling in shock. Then there was the headache pounding in the back of his head. That had been damn close.
He hadn’t prepared for this day.
It hadn’t occurred to him it was even possible. So why prepare? It was a waste of energy. Energy he couldn’t lose.
She’d showed no signs of personal power since she’d been a child. No signs of even being aware there was more in her life than the simple world she lived in. Of course she lived poorly in that world as well. She wasn’t whole. But that damn splintering bullshit was something else again.
For the longest time he’d thought he’d been responsible for it, but he’d come to wonder if it wasn’t a defense mechanism instead.