Her eyes are beautiful.

Synopsis:
"Can we pinpoint experiences within the a person's life as being particularly influential or significant? This is a question I intended to answer originally. The focus then became a significant experience within my own life, and so became a retrospective, an exploration of my own feelings and thoughts during this event. I wrote it with the intention of creating an analytical piece, but it resulted in a reflective work. The audience is not specific, but I recommend an older audience capable of understanding spiritual development or integration of experiences by individuals in a psychological context. The piece also explores individual approach to fantastic or impressionable experience, with a focus on (confusion) denial".


Her eyes are beautiful
I expected her to be someone much taller, more youthful. I had imagined her as someone striking, extravengent...beautiful. The fact that she was noone special was a shock. She had to look different, but I was crestfallen when I opened her front door. She was nothing extraordinary. And yet I was visiting her due to her reputation, the magic she possessed I had heard of, and so had come to experience myself. She was a spiritualist, a medium, and I had come to speak to the dead.
"Hi, Danny Kelly, I spoke to you on the phone" I leaned forward and looked straight into her eyes, trying to get a sense of her character, without staring or taking a threatening posture. I was dripping wet, as it had started to rain as I walked, so I started to remove my coat.
"Oh yes. Please, come in". She turned away and started walking up her passageway. I stopped at the door only a bit longer, then followed. I felt I should remove my shoes.
I caught up with her in what must have been the loungeroom. She already had guests, and I suddenly felt that I was intruding. But they were leaving, I could tell by the way they moved slowly toward the door I was now standing in. I moved to the side behind my host. Her guests were an old woman, who was looking at me continuously. She smiled and her eyes shone, I returned the gesture as her companion spoke to my host. The other woman was in her thirties, very tall, and wore glasses. They walked out, the old lady turning at the last minute to say goodbye. She followed them out. I was left in the loungeroom watching a little girl play on the computer. My host's daughter I was to discover. She sat on a wooden chair swinging her legs backward and forward playing a game I have on my own computer. In fact, the computer was exactly the same model as my own. On the printer sat a book titled The Secret of The Runes, and a velvet pouch tied with yellow string sat under the monitor. A delicate bag of rich marone. I stepped forward, intending to flip through the book, but stopped myself. My curiosity was ignited, and my passion for researching such texts burned, but I didn't want to appear insolent. A fire snapped and crackled in the furthest wall. She came back in.
"Okay, follow me out the back. Honey, I'm just going out the back for a while, okay?", the little girl nodded and the computer squealed. My host began to walk towards a door of glass opposite the passage door. I could see it was still raining outside. A little, plastic, ride-on motorcycle sat in the backyard. I used to have one of those...red. I followed her out, holding my coat over my head. She ran to a tin shed down the back, and, opening the door, turned to watch me catch up.
It was a small room, lit by a flourescent light on the middle metal beam of the roof. Chairs lined the opposite and a raised bed was sitting against the wall to my left. It reminded me of a doctor's office, just a little gloomy, and simple in decor. It even had a desk. She leaned on it. I put my jacket down on one chair and took another on the opposite side of the desk.
" I hear you've been having some problems, and you may have seen something you couldn't explain". She looked at me over the desk. I looked at the floor. It wasn't carpeted, it was woven straw or something like that.
"A lady. I saw a lady in white. She, uh, came into the corner of my vision, and then was gone. I turned, but I was in my bedroom, and the only things to my left were my bed and my desk. Thing is, I've seen her before, when I was about six or seven". I was rubbing the surface of the desk with my fingertips.
"Well, I don't feel that this is our main concern. There is another isn't there? Someone you see in your dreams " She is not moving. Looking at me. I look at a heater on the wall above the bed. It grows fiercely red: light crimson. Hums slightly.
"He is black. I feel his presence behind me, have for years. No matter where you are, or what your doing, someone always stands over your shoulder". My shoulders are tense and a shiver runs down my spine. "He speaks to me every six months in nightmares, usually three in a row. I don't know why its so ......periodical; why he does this." I turn back to her "So I came to see you. You see , this fascinates me. I've read the literature, the case studies. I have a fantastic interest in the paranormal, psychology, and spirituality. I see my life as quest to experience, to know. I heard of you and knew immediately I had to see you. What I've seen, what felt and dreamed... it might just be me. I wanted this in a way ... to experience what I read about. I'm imagining this because I want it to happen. I immerse myself in books on the paranormal and wish it was happening around me. I've just wished to the point that I'm creating the experience... fabricating it in my mind.. The dreams themselves could also be due to something biological, like a foodstuff. I know my Dad has some nightmares after eating pork, maybe I'm eating..."
"Danny..." she cut me off, I was starting to go off at a tangent. "Everyone says that, 'It might just be me' or 'maybe I'm just making it up'. Let me just say that you are not. Danny just open up to what's happening, both in the past and now. Do you have a good imagination?"
She was desperate for a truthful response here.
"Live in my head" I responded, smiling slightly. That's the truth.
"Good, then we'll start. Please get up on the bed there". She picks up the chair and moves it to the centre of the room to face me as I get up on the bed and lie down. The bed is raised considerably from the ground, almost on a stage. The warmth of the heater is tremendous, I feel it on my face. It's still raining outside, light drumming on the roof of the shed.
"Okay, Danny, I want you to relax. Breath in through your nose..." she paused. Her tone was instructive, yet patient. I followed her instructions, "...and out through your mouth". I exhaled loudly. "Now I'm going to count to ten. At ten you will be completely relaxed". Wait, this sounds like hypnotism, I suddenly feared her credibility. Was she hypnotising me in order to fill my head with a fabrication of what was about to take place? I was familiar with a great deal of literature that dealt with hypnotic states and suggestions and commands that can result in the psychological manipulation of people. Brainwashing. I tensed my muscles and she must have noticed this because she repeated her original instructions a little more forcefully.
"Relax!". I had my eyes closed but I knew she was watching me. Our bodies often communicate subconscious information without our permission, she must be taking full advantage of this. She started to count, so I breathed, and relaxed. I would cooperate.
"Now, Danny, I want you to imagine you're standing on a hill, a grassy one. The sun is above you. Can you imagine that?" The heater above me becomes the sun, I feel its glowing warmth. She says to imagine but the images spring into my mind almost before she says them.
"The grass is green, and fresh. Neat". I see a town below, a clock tower in the middle which tolls ominously. It echoes like I'm standing right underneath it. The sky is clear, and I suddenly realise that I'm somewhere else other than the shed. I'm paralysed. Shocked. But I tell her none of this, looking back maybe I should have.
"Beside you on the hill is an elevator, a big..." she stops, and I'm tempted to open my eyes and look to see why. "Oh, okay. Doctor Who's time machine, the police box". What was that pause, then the acknowledgement? I want to look to see if she was talking to someone else but I don't open my eyes. I'm admiring the view. How did she know I'm a Doctor Who fan? "But this time it's white, brilliant white. The doors are open...", I see it beside me "...go inside". I do.
Suddenly the number twenty-five pops into my head, I dismiss it. "Above the door inside the white box is a set of numbers, the numbers you see in an elevator. The numbers go from zero to infinity. One number will stand out to you right now though. Can you see it?". Twenty-five, I see twenty-five.
"No". I see the number twenty-five again, brighter. It's just me.
"I suppose...twenty-five", the fact that I saw the number before she asked for one made me ignore it as a possibility, for it was just a thought of my own. She had not asked the question, and given me direction to think, and so I must have made that up myself.
"Okay, I'm going to count to twenty-five. The doors on the white elevator will close and the numbers above the door will follow my speech, lighting up". Easy enough. I always watch the numbers light up above the door when I'm moving in an elevator. This will be no different. The doors close and the hill is gone. The bell no longer tolls. She counts and I stare. My eyes are closed.
"The doors open now, Danny, what do you see?" I hear her move. Is she leaning closer to me? She will be disappointed, because I see nothing. What will I tell her? The truth?
"Black. Like space without stars". I feel that I have let her down. The blackness I see is nothing. I think she wanted objects, color, places.
"Imagine a light switch on the wall of the elevator near the door". It is there, to my left. "Flick the switch, then tell me what you see outside. It will be lit". I flick the switch. I can almost really feel it beneath my fingers. There is something there.
"It's a tunnel leading away from the elevator door. The walls and roof are...trees. Withered trees, brown, smooth. Thicker than a grapevine but of the same texture. No leaves. The ground is dirt, dark brown, solid, packed soil. It's still very dark. This is amazing" I step out of the elevator without her voice to tell me. Suddenly I'm somewhere else. "Wait! Now I'm at school".
"School?" she asks. She seems puzzled, I no longer have to look at her to know what she's feeling.
"Primary school, St.Mary's" I explain.
"Danny! Step back into the elevator". She knows now. "There is a mirror on the elevator wall, a full-size mirror". I see a dresser drawers, a mirror that shows me from waist up. This was in my grandmother's house, this particular piece of furniture. "Who do you see in the mirror?", I look, my mouth opens in surprise.
"Why...that's me! I'm in school uniform. Primary school. I have my grey jumper on, I'm wearing one of those skivvies we hads to wear in the winter. They itch". I'm amazed at the little boy I see. I haven't seen him looking back at me for years.
"Now, step back out of the elevator and tell me what you see again". Her voice has not changed much throughout this. But I listen for her movements in the chair.
"I'm at primary school, but not where I was a while ago. I'm in a different position in the yard. The church is behind me. The garbage skip is over a fence covered in green shadecloth to my right. The other children in the yard are like smoke. I guess I wasn't paying much attention to them that day" If I had of been, my memory of them would have been more solid wouldn't it? Suddenly I'm back in the tunnel, and I tell her this.
"Okay. Now this is where things become a little more complicated. If you want to stop, just tell me and we'll finish. I'm going to ask those who are with you to step in front of you so that you can see them". Now I'm waiting. I look down the tunnel, it stretches further and further, ending at the light. I think I saw someone move down there. A shadow in the light. Then I see them stepping forward, one from the left and one from the right. One is so vivid I doubt that she is my imagination, the other is a cloud, no form, but black. "Describe them, Danny".
"There is a woman. Her eyes are beautiful. It is her. She is slender, dressed in a white robe. Her hair is golden, blonde, and she's wearing a ring of flowers around her head. She doesn't stop smiling at me. She looks like a hippy" I laugh as the woman makes a face at my last comment. I have never felt more comfortable with another.
"Ask her if she is from the light". I do, and she responds. I hear the answer but the woman's mouth does not move.
"Yes", I pass it on.
"What is her name?"
"She...I can't really hear it. Gwen, I think. Yes, I'm getting a 'G' and an 'N', but I don't really know". Her voice sounds indistinct at this point. But I know now that her name is definitely Gwen.
"Ask her if she's your guide". I know of this. Guides are spirits assigned to particular individuals to provide information, support, affirmation, prophecy, knowledge and occasionally conduit to the other world. I remember something that a man named Lawrence LeShan once said about guides, or controls, being unlikely characters, that must be accepted the way they are. I also recall something about controls being contrived from the same creative energies that actors and writers possess. It's a symbiotic relationship. The Genius Loci. The Guardian Angel. Numen. The Gatekeeper. I've always wanted to meet my own, so I ask.
"Yes. Yes she is" I am smiling now.
"Look at the other now". I look at the other. Nothing but a curling, swarming mass of black, like a thundercloud.
"I cannot see him"
"So it's male?"
"Yes"
"Is it him, the one in your dreams?"
"Yes"
"Ask him is he from the light". I ask, and suddenly a swarm of answers are said all at once. I can hear at least five answers.
"Yes...No, Yes. I don't know. I can't understand, he's saying both at once".
"Yes, he is a liar". The Devil is a liar. "I'm going to get him to step forward, closer to you, so that you can see him. Your guide will help". I don't think I want to see him. I've seen so many different faces for him in my dreams. Sneering, evil, massive Demon, The Reaper, a distinguished gentleman. That time he drank wine with me at an enormous oak table. The goblets we sipped from were silver and fashioned into images of death. He sat at the other end of the table, and I peered at his faceless black form through the flames dancing on the candelabra. That night he spoke of the evil in men's hearts, the thoughts they hold back and dare not speak of. Evil truths. I did not see the horrors that night. I heard them. He has names too. Dybbuk. Eudemon. The Erlking. Mephistopheles. Thanatos. Suddenly, he is there. A head and arms floating in the black. I see him as he truly is at last. He materializes further. He is wearing a black shirt and trousers. His sleeves are rolled up past his elbows. He is no demon, he is a man.
"I see him"
"Yes, so do I". What did she just say? "Ask him why he's here". I do. He fills my head with answer upon answer again. Mumbles, screams, roars and whispers.
"He...I can hear so much. He's hear to control. He says that I am his. Yes, that's it, I am his to control". I fear him, I have since I was little. I learn later that the vision of the schoolyard was given because that's where he latched on to me. He is one of those spirits I read of that are classified as 'low spirits'. Those trapped in materiality, activated by malice or mischief. Poltergeists are thought to come from the same category. They are trapped in this world, refusing to believe that they must move on or transmogrify. This poor soul has not 'evolved'. My only relief is that I now have a face to the horror.
"We're going to get rid of him, Danny. He's not here for good, he does not come from the light. He has your mind in a scramble, your emotons in a twist. Stay with me."
"I...I don't hate him. I sympathise. He has no power over me unless I submit to him, which I have done sometimes"
"Danny, do you see the light?"
"Yes"
"Tell him to go to the light". The evil turns to look at the light. He puts his hands in his pockets, turns back to me, and sneers. I remember. I remember the demons jaws, drooling. Black scaled skin. Narrow eyes that burned so red they smoked. He dressed like a harlequin once. A sneering demon in a jesters costume. A parody. I am faintly aware of the fact that the rainjust got a little harder on the roof of the shed.
"No. No, you don't look like that. You're a man. Help me. He doesn't want go".
"Danny, imagine that angels have taken him by the arms". Angels? It sounds so childish. But then I see them, like white shadows. I am not imagining this. The angels have no wings?! The demon had wings. Big, slippery, black bats wings, almost the size of his body. "They're dragging him backwards toward the light, Danny". He still isn't moving, he just smiles.
"He hasn't moved a muscle. He's not moving at all"
"Now a white net comes out of the light and entangles him, Danny. Can you see that?". Suddenly, the man in black moves. He threads his fingers through the net like a prisnor at the bars of a cell. His sneer becomes shock.
"Yes, I can see that".
"They're dragging him in".
"He's screaming", I laugh. She asks why. "Persistant bastard. He doesn't want to go". I stop smiling, because it suddenly dawns on me what I'm watching. A soul being dragged into the afterlife. I'm sending him to death. I watch him scream, hear the surreal howling. He is afraid. I suddenly pity him. I pity a demon. My face is a frowning mask. The rain is thundering on the roof.
"Imagine a white horse, like Pegasus, has now taken him up and into the light". I watch the horse sweep in and pick him up, flying into the light at the end of the tunnel. It is done. He is gone. The rain stops. I look at Gwen again, still here with me, now standing right in front of me. She smiles. Her eyes are beautiful.
"He's gone", I breath.
"Good. Now I'm going to count to ten and I want you to sit up and look around the room". She counts and then I get up, opening my eyes. My head swims a little and I feel a little tired, but I smile as my eyes adjust. Noone stands behind me.
"You okay?", asks my host. I look at her and smile.
"Yeah. He's gone".

* * * * *

Gwen is with me all the way home, as I tell my mother what happened. And I continue to speak with her for several hours. She introduces me to others, one of whom is my dead grandfather. I pass on what he is saying to my mother and she cries. I see this and I begin to doubt. What if I'm making this all up? Gwen says I'm not, but she'll back off if I want her to. My father must never know. My siblings when they're ready. I tell her to ease off and she understands. I have called on her many times since, and I still do.
She has beautiful eyes.

"I have considered forming a cult based on The Musings of Dan"
or
"I take refuge from the harsh reality of life in The Lair of Dan"