A Bright House
Chapter 38

Ray pulled into the long dirt drive of his farmstead just as the waning light of Saturday lost its battle to planetary orbit. He’d stopped to eat at a greasy spoon just outside of North Battleford, chewing and thinking, picking up bits of thoughts and images from the handful of others around him. The sudden impact of change regarding who he was and where he came from had brought a strange fuzzy after-effect; almost a feeling of perfect imminent freedom. One of his regular psychic clients had lost everything he owned in a forest fire that ravaged a section of West Bank, British Columbia. A bachelor and globe trotting adventurer who was loathe to tie himself emotionally to anyone before it felt right, this client had described an odd feeling akin to relief as he watched his home burn to the ground.

He wanted Ray to see if he could “pick up” anything about where he should relocate, and was using the brutally efficient fiery eradication of his “stuff” as a springboard to possibly leave the country altogether. Townes had “seen” the young man in a vision that resembled Barcelona, said as much, and within a calendar year his client had moved there. Their last communication had been a terse postcard that stated in bold strokes of exuberant magic marker printing ” You were RIGHT.”

With the truck parked, clicking and cooling under its hood, Ray looked at the handsome old house that had been his only home. Now a house of mystery. The barn’s large sliding door was open by a few feet with a yellow rectangle of light spilling across the dirt. His tenant, Geoffrey, no doubt within, working on some manner of engine maintenance. Townes cinched up his medicine pouch and then climbed out of the truck, made his way down to the barn. Sure enough, Geoffrey was hunched over a huge workbench, performing maintenance surgery on a part of his riding lawn mower motor.

“Hey, Ray. How ya?”

“Can’t complain, aside from being under-slept. Quite a hail storm last night, wasn’t it?”

Geoffrey torqued a monkey wrench, looked across the hundred watt bulb halo. He didn’t speak.

“What? You were unaware through all that?” Ray smiled at him, glanced at his watch.

“Hail? At what time of night was this?”

“Oh, maybe between eight and eight thirty. I’m not sure.”

“Nope. Didn’t hail at all. Didn’t hear a thing.” Geoffrey refocused on the motor.

“You’re kidding. It was pelting the roof like buckshot.”

“Well now, Ray, I don’t want to argue it with you, but I was reading by an open window and there weren’t no hail.”

“Wow... well, I was asleep for a bit there. Could be I dreamed that part...” Ray’s voice trailed off.

“Prolly, but we did hear you at one point around then. Not sure what you were up to.”

“Shit. I hope I didn’t bother you too much. Had a loose floorboard to deal with.”

Geoffrey looked back up at his landlord and friend, opened his mouth to speak but Ray interrupted impulsively. “I’m thinking of listing the farm for sale. I’d like you and Stella to have first crack at it, if you’re interested.” Geoffrey looked like he’d been shot clean through with two barrels of stunned. Ray unconsciously hefted the medicine pouch in his grip, nodded grimly to himself and told his hard working tenant that he would know for certain in a couple of weeks, then said “anyway, you two think on it” and bid him a good night. He grimaced all the way to the front porch, wondering how he could have dreamt the hail falling, and of peering at it through his mother’s bedroom window. In that room the floorboard was still nailed down flat where he had left it. In the medicine pouch, the long feather, Delsin’s note, and the sweetgrass bound portraits were as real as Ray’s confusion. Things had taken a distinct turn into high strangeness.

In the shower, Ray looked down at himself when he worked the washcloth vigorously through his fingers as though extra scrubbing could remove his tattoos. The decades had been kind to his aging physique. He knew that women in general found him very attractive. He had seen it and deeply felt it from Jenny. There were times when Ray wished that he could completely switch off his clairvoyant receptors, for they often telegraphed something well in advance of what should have been a sweet surprise.

He stood with his feet planted wide, loving the hot water on his chest, coursing down his stomach, and couldn’t help but think of Jenny as she had appeared beside him not so many days ago. A red-blooded healthy man living a celibate existence by choice, not wanting to waste his or anyone else’s heart-time, Ray had taken to relieving himself on average once per week. This had become a necessity to avoid the uncomfortable build up of physiological pressure, and nocturnal emissions coaxed out of him by assorted goddesses of astral invention. Or perhaps they were real, in a nearby dimension, equally attracted to whatever it was about him that so beckoned...

As he stood under the shower head, Jenny’s mind-image sharpened into a very present feeling, as though she was at that moment thinking of Ray. He felt himself responding, thickening, with that center of gravity ache so familiar, and gripped himself with the washcloth. He thought of the thin fabric of her night shirt, barely able to conceal the sweet detail of her nipples. He noted that of the many imaginary lovers he had concocted to assist him in the ritualistic offloading of his pent up desires, the vast majority of them resembled Jenny with her unruly waves of hair and those delicate features. The realization of it, then and there, lit him up inside. He responded fully. Looked down at himself, took a deep breath against the overpowering want that welled up. Another crossroads, yet another choice. My whole life can change in one planetary rotation. She is attracted to me. I find her so beautiful, with such potential to blossom outward. Is she why I have waited this long? And so is it meant for us, for me, to arrive at precisely this point on a question mark curve?

Townes had the brilliantly clear vision of them as lovers, as two sharing the rest of their earthly time together, and it arrived with all the comfort of hot water cascading over his body. He draped the washcloth over a small bar at the back of the shower enclosure, closed his eyes to revel in this delicious vision of he and Jenny making love, and began to use his soapy fingers to stroke away the manly ache.

In Ontario on a Sunday, the day before a clairvoyant is to arrive, the man in charge of the baffling missing persons case has returned home from another visit to the strange site of the vanishings. To his perception it is an unremarkable area, visually identical to hectares all around it. Where other investigators have felt slightly nauseous, some suffering a lingering headache, this man is affected only by the disturbing details of events that mock his pragmatic and meticulous methods of problem solving. Bringing in a psychic does not sit well with him. It seems an admission of imminent failure. Why bother with investigatory procedure at all? Just dial up the most accredited word of mouth crack-pot, and have at it. People simply disappearing is an open wound across the breadth of Bruce and Grey counties, however, due to three cold cases that hang open still. Of the three, all women living alone, two are still raw in the communities affected.

The worst one involves a middle-aged widow who was a pillar of her small town, Kincardine. She was well loved and, after the heart attack departure of her husband, a much desired potential partner to several of the town’s lonely men. Two years after the passing of her spouse, she was adamant about living alone in the house of their matrimony, having her children visit from the big city during Christmas and often for the weeks of summer.

As the manager of Kincardine’s CIBC bank, her not showing up for work on a Monday morning was immediately noticed and acted upon. Several phone calls went unanswered. An employee drove ten minutes out of downtown to the manager’s hundred acre property just south, and her knocking on a front door also went unanswered. The employee walked around the house, peering into windows, and became alarmed at the sight of lamps still on in several rooms even though the wintry morning was bright and sunny. This led to a call to the local police station.

A half hour later, with five minutes worth of heavy knocking on front and back doors not responded to, it was a judgment call by the police officer whether or not to forcibly enter the home. His gut told him that something was awry, and because he knew the woman quite well he decided to kick the door in and pay for the damages should everything turn out fine. It didn’t. He entered the hallway and called her name. He walked into the kitchen first, where its ceiling light was still on, and discovered an immediate cause for concern.

In front of a pulled out chair at a small table, a teapot and a three quarters full cup sat in mute testimony. He felt the ceramic pot and it was cold. Kincardine’s weekly newspaper was open to page three, indicating that she had not sat for long prior to whatever had happened. The officer quickly examined the main floor, noting the lamps, turning them off as he went with his leather glove should there be fingerprints... he climbed the staircase and hoped to find her alive and perhaps unconscious for one reason or another, but in his gut sensed something far more serious.

Three bedrooms were empty but at the back of a long hallway, the bathroom door hung ajar, the light from two wall sconces casting diffused orbs into the morning’s golden shine. It was a large bathtub filled to the halfway point with cold water, a mat and folded towel with washcloth ready on a wicker stand nearby, that bespoke the woman’s fate.

It was assumed that she knew the person who had interrupted her evening tea with a knock on the door, for no sign of struggle in the house or around the property could be discerned. Her last known whereabouts had been at a Lions Club bingo game, and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary. Her spirits were high, with the usual group of friends enjoying a simple happy ritual... and she had left for home without a single event alluding to something amiss.

Soon into the investigation of that morning it became apparent that the only footprints to be found and read were from the bank employee and first officer on the scene. A thorough examination of the fresh four inch deep blanket of snowfall from Sunday evening revealed no other prints, aside from the obvious one-way track of the missing woman’s boots when she left her car to enter her front door.

Had someone shown up from thin air? Levitated to the front door and whisked this poor widow away on a tractor beam to the mothership? Was she taken millions of light years away, enjoying life on the leading edge of a wormhole, gasping in human awe over nebulae and quasars? How did this popular kind-hearted woman, whom no sane soul would wish to harm, happen to have her evening pre-bath tea interrupted so thoroughly, permanently, mysteriously? Why was her cold file so mirroring to that of another similarly aged woman who simply disappeared during a grocery run in Owen Sound, a small city ninety minutes up lake Huron’s shoreline where Georgian Bay had formed an ideal port location?

Kincardine’s vanished woman was a true puzzle, and very sad making for the five thousand locals in and about town. Investigation protocol proceeded along its usual methodical path of detail elimination : any known motives? Anyone who carried a torch for her was quietly investigated, was watched; two men were brought in for questioning as a shot in the dark, testing for reactions and signs of tension to reveal guilt.

Both were highly regarded active members of the community, and each had witnesses to support their whereabouts on that fateful Sunday evening. Hotel, motel, bed and breakfast ledgers were checked for the names and contact information of visitors to the small town in its brutally cold off-season. To no avail. For two weeks prior to her disappearance, no one from out of town had stayed in Kincardine and not one local who was interviewed could recall a stranger frequenting any of the retail and restaurant establishments. This is cottage country, summer’s playground, Michigan’s international vacation destination... but those slicing winds and mountainous snow dumps of winter? No way.

There were moments on that case where hands were thrown into the air. She had fucking vanished. In her bathrobe and slippers, a partially sipped cup of Red Rose tea, and her bathtub awaiting. Without leaving a single print in freshly fallen snow, without being seen by anyone in the closely knit small town of her existence, and without any signs of struggle within the home, she had been there one moment and gone the next. Never to be seen again.

Investigating officer sits, sequestered in his home office with the warm sounds of his family back there in that wistful distance between their reality and his profession, and thinks of the frightening numbers. The stunning amount of humans who simply become erased. All around this planet, every day. If anything ever happened to his... he sighs and flips open a thin folder beneath the desk lamp, rubbing a temple with thumb and index finger... these goddamned photographs. What the hell are those things?

Humanoid diffused pale white motion blurs, quite clearly lower appendages. Opaque and Other Worldly. His next sigh comes straight up from his stomach where acids bubble and churn. Monday, then. A psychic. A prima donna of renown for his previous assistance in missing persons cases. He wants to go out to that parcel of land, alone. Without knowing a thing about Ray Townes, the man, he stares down at the ghostly images on his desk and mutters “maniac.”

Sunday was Ray’s calmer day. He settled into the packing of luggage and pushed aside his urgency to immediately find out everything that he could about Delsin Shacapot, and how he had come to meet and love the married Melinda Emma Townes. There would be ample time to investigate and unravel this long hidden life altering secret. He packed his bags, then caught up on his laundry, and carried with him through the day both a blood buzz for Jenny and a true intuition that all of his new questions would become answers, inevitably. His mind would open its channels to incoming details if he relaxed into the massive changes as discovered regarding who he was from conception and into childhood’s formative arc.

With all psychic sessions postponed and rescheduled until after his trip to Ontario, Ray gave himself the afternoon to read. He sat in the front parlor in a favorite Art Deco era armchair, a large mug of coffee at hand, to go through the faxed particulars of those who had gone missing so mysteriously. Rather than allow his clairvoyant channels to open up, he read the information as one would read an interesting book. Dispassionate, taking in background details. The laying of a foundation for his in-person visit to the bizarre scene of these events. After an hour he tucked the sheets of paper into a brown folder for placement into his carry-on bag, then decided to pull a few titles from his library. He had amassed quite an assembly of paranormal texts, case studies, and hard to find books that covered all manner of esoteric investigation. There were so many threads to be followed.

Thunderbird legends alone could have taken the rest of his Sunday, but Ray opted to read up on disappearances... on time shifts and bizarre but genuine occurrences of unexplainable relocation. He poured his final mug of the day, feeling a reduced tension and more focus on the task at hand, then settled back into his chair to lay the groundwork for what was to follow in one Earth rotation’s time span. The opening chapter of a book written by Jenny Randles contained case studies that pertained to mystery clouds, mists, and residual evidence.

Adelaide Island, Antarctica, 1966. A team of meteorologists led by Eric Wilkinson witnesses a dense white mass some one hundred feet across and floating at approximately a thousand feet in altitude. It is seen to pulsate, contract and expand in density. A loud noise begins to sound out, an electromagnetic buzzing not unlike a bee swarm. Suddenly a dark “tube” shoots out of the mass at a 45 degree angle to create a second “reflected” beam at 75 degrees which rises from the point at which the dark tube has struck the earth. Snow is tossed upward from the impact, appearing as a whirlwind. Wilkinson manages to capture several photographs of the diminishing phenomena and the disturbed snow surface. The event remains entirely unexplainable.

Minehead, UK, September 1977. A computer programmer named Patricia Cater is driving her van through a cow pasture near Kilve in Somerset, at 7:36 a.m. on her way to work. She sees a strange floating mass near ground level, just above a distant hedge. She stops her van and gets out for a better look. Upon reaching a gate into the field, she notes a huddle of several cows in a state of near panic. The mass is a dark grey egg-shape, yet despite her fear Patricia is more curious than anything else. She begins to make her way across the pasture but encounters a sudden and very intense electromagnetic field : “I entered a region where my skin prickled and my hair stood on end.” The floating mist is emitting an audible humming sound and she wisely decides not to continue with her approach. Backtracking, she is struck by the sudden “sharp cut-off” where the strange energy field ends abruptly. When Patricia returns to her van, the time that has elapsed does not jibe at all with the reality of what she has just experienced. Twelve minutes.

Ojebyn, Sweden, 1971. At 10:45 p.m. on a cool late September evening, engineer Sten Ceder is driving under a clear starlit sky. Approaching a crossroads, he reports that the sky lit up in a strange manner that reminded him of an aurora borealis display, but the sudden shimmering curtain of light that illuminates the road ahead of him is comprised of odd vertical beams. They terminate in mid-air, just above the ground. Within seconds of seeing this, his vehicle enters the anomalous light and is encircled. Sten will later describe a strange accompanying force that seems to push down on his vehicle; “a sense of discomfort”... “a kind of atmospheric pressure”... he applies his brakes but the car doesn’t respond and feels propelled forward.

Next, mister Ceder reports “Everything became black around me. The blackness seemed to be a dense floating mass of smoke that lay around me so that it was impossible to see anything.” This black mass then seems to begin totally absorbing the previously viewed light curtain, and more... his headlights which were on high beam then seem not to be illuminated. Ceder turns hard left in the hopes that he might swerve his vehicle away and down the crossroad, panicked and unable to even see it through the dark engulfment. The very next thing that Sten Ceder remembers is a sudden emergence into the strange light and quite some distance from where he expected to be. With his car finally stopped, he notes both the beams and dark mass lifting away, seeming to absorb all ambient light as it leaves the site of this event. He returns to the area where he is sure to find tire marks, and none are there to support his story.

Rapt as he read, and wondering why he had not previously cracked open that particular book long since purchased, Ray found himself transported into the emotional fields of these witnesses. He reached for the lamp chain next to his chair and continued to delve. Names and dates slid beneath his eyes, one page after another.

Nemingha, Australia, 1976. A couple traveling a remote highway at 5:45 a.m., who have pulled over to consult a road map, witness the approach of a white car that is suddenly engulfed in a strange hazy yellow-green light that has manifested above the vehicle “from out of nowhere”... the car’s driver appears to lose control and crosses into the empty opposite lane, where the weird light transforms into a smaller patch of localized mist. Next, the white car coasts to a stop in the middle of the road, seemingly drained of power.

The stunned couple watches over the span of approximately one minute as the white haze dissipates and a woman wearing a blue dress steps from the deadened automobile. She uses a yellow cloth to wipe a thick white dust which has coated her windshield, and as she does so the car’s lights come back on, startling her. She throws the dust coated cloth into the road and jumps back into her vehicle, driving away speedily.

Simultaneously the cloth bursts into flames. The shocked couple notice that a trucker has pulled up beside them and is staring in amazement as the white car drives away toward a town called Nundle. An investigator named Bill Chalker has attempted to locate the woman and her accosted vehicle, to no success. The valuable eyewitness testimony of three sober adults has lent credence to the veracity of this case, and it is a common occurrence that anomalous mists and UFO sightings result in strange powdery residue. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FindNøvᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Townes read on, shaking his head, feeling the truth within these testimonies. If this 3D world was exclusively a nuts and bolts “I will believe it if I can prove it” place, Ray could not possibly subsist on a profession so “out there” as clairvoyance. He checked his watch, stretched his legs into a deep full body yawn, and bookmarked a new chapter (case studies of time shifting and disappearances) for further reading on the flight to Toronto.

And to Jenny.

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