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Blue House
By
Eos
Looking at the front of the house intimidates me. I think how odd it is that such an old house would be painted blue. Five stories worth of ‘family home.’ I get the feeling that the house knows that I am here and it wants me inside. I shake my head at the absurdity of it and climb the cracked concrete steps from the road to the yard. The barrier wall that is keeping the front yard from tumbling into the street is cracked too. The short sidewalk from the first set of steps leading to the steps on the porch is littered with weeds and grass popping up through the cracks. My shoes crunch on the year’s worth of bird shit decorating the sidewalk. I walk up the five, steep steps on to the porch and stand there to get my bearings. The closer to the house I get, the further away my mind seems to wander. Reality is being replaced with an ominous surreal feeling that is settling around me like cold, sticky fog. There is no use looking through the windows to the first floor. They are so dirty that they have darkened the rooms within.
I look at the railing around the porch that wraps around the side of the house. Several coats of old white paint are cracked and peeling from years of neglect. Some of the spindles are loose or missing. There are holes where bees have bored their way in to make their homes. There are still small piles of sawdust under the holes that the rain hasn’t been able to wash away. I turn and look back toward the street at my car. It’s still there and I know that I am stalling. I think how odd it is that none of the houses on this street appears to be occupied. Turning back toward the massive front door, I could swear that it got bigger since I turned around. The heavy brass knocker on the front is tarnished and I can see fingerprints on it. To the right of the door is a rusted, black, metal mailbox with an eagle on the front. The eagle is clutching stalks of wheat in its talons. US Mail. I lean toward it and open the top of the box to peer inside. Cobwebs and a sluggish spider, but no mail.
What am I doing here?
I do not remember how I got here. I do not know why I am supposed to be here. I do not even know where ‘here’ is. The air is chilly with an underlying bitterness to it, as if there was water close by. It feels and smells like late fall and the sky is overcast. I don’t know what time it is. It is one of those days where the overcast clouds create a daylong gloom. It is impossible to pinpoint the position of the sun through them.
I look at the mailbox again just to make sure I didn’t miss the numbers the first time. There are no numbers on the house, anywhere. I wonder how I found it. I wonder why I found it. I wish my husband was here but I know he is not supposed to be. I reach up with the intention of rapping gently at the wood of the door with my knuckles. I do not want to use the knocker because it would be excessively loud. I realize that I am hesitating because I don’t want to disturb the quiet surrounding the house. I get a sudden, electrical buzz of fear through my body and I lower my arm. I look around again. I guess I’m looking for help or maybe someone to explain to me what is going on. There is no one. I feel a familiar lethargy settling over me and I know things are about to get interesting.
Since I died, for a short time, during an operation six years ago, I have been able to do some really weird things. I had always instinctively known things about people without being told, but after my near death experience, I know a hell of a lot more. My lethargic feeling means that I am going into a light trance as if I was doing a session for someone. I have been called psychic, psychic medium, remote viewer, etc. All these names are used to describe people like me. I am suddenly aware that I am dreaming and that this is a lucid dream. I am told many things in dreams. All of my dreams are vivid and in color but some just have a different feeling about them and I know I need to pay very close attention to the message. Though I am aware I am dreaming that knowledge does not make the dream any easier or any less frightening. Whatever this huge blue house represents, I know that when I pass through that front door I will be immersed in the spirit world.
I take a deep breath and raise my arm again, hesitating to touch the door. My knuckles are just millimeters away from making contact. I hear two steps on the other side of the door and someone turning the doorknob. The door opens and my cousin Colleen is looking up at me from the darkness of the house. I can not see anything behind where she is standing.
“Oh my God. What took you so long?” she says.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Missy, please… please just get in here!” I wince at the use of the nickname that I was given as a child. I had always absolutely hated that name. I notice that Colleen’s color isn’t so good. Her face is an ashen hue and her eyes and mouth are pinched with worry. Whatever is going on within the walls of that big blue house is not good.
Colleen turns and walks away from the door and I follow. I stop just inside that first room and close my eyes immediately. Sometimes I can ‘see’ better with my eyes closed. I let the living energy of the house envelop me, and I listen to what it has to say. When I open myself up like that, I usually see pictures in my mind's eye, like snippets of a movie. I ‘hear’ words and sometimes even whole sentences. Most of all, I experience a knowing. If someone asks you your name, you automatically know it. There is no thinking involved. That is how I receive most of my information. The feeling I get when this happens is as if I am having someone else’s memories. With that, I can describe a place I have never been, I can relay feelings someone had about that place, I can see people that I’ve never met and automatically know their names and personalities. And I know that this house has a lot to say.
I am hit, slammed, and engulfed with it. It is so severe that I feel myself sit up in my sleep. I fight to keep calm because if I wake completely up, it will take me a while to reenter the dream. “Get hold of yourself, girly.”
It is immediately overwhelming that I am not sure how to filter all of it. At first, there are no pictures. Just ephemeral brilliant flashes of color that are so intense, I can feel the stinging of my pupils contracting from the brightness while my ethereal self leans back from it. I put my arms in front of me, hoping to slow it down. I hear a methodic, hollow, booming that feels like it is coming from everywhere at once. Again, I feel my body react to it. I can actually feel my heart shaking from the vibration and I feel as if I have to void my bladder.
The progression of the dream can wait a minute, I decide. I need to filter these things and I have to do it now. I take a deep breath, in dream and out. Needing to isolate the feeling of the sound, I pinpoint the texture of it and put a wall between my spiritual body and it. I surround myself with a glass bubble and dictate that the bubble’s only purpose was to protect me from this noise. The sound is instantly muted but I can still feel the vibrations from it through my barrier. “Wow, that’s big.”
The colors are still swirling violently and I have to try to catch one to make sense of it. I have to concentrate on one color at a time.
Red.
Red, to me is not ‘danger’ as it is to many people. Red is urgency and importance. Red means ‘first.’ I bring the feeling of Red to me and embrace it. I have to refine that one color, along with every tint and tone of Red that has broken away from the center of it. I will it to me. I call every shade of it that I can perceive and I realize that I have never seen so many Reds. I ask the Red to come in to the safety of my bubble so that I can give it my full attention. That is a mistake. I feel as though I am drowning in Red. Urgency from every side, filling my bubble to bursting and it is still coming in.
Nagging voices, plaintive whispers, pictures of past and future flashing so quickly that it is making me nauseated. There are many different levels of spiritual consciousness and I have never experienced so many and certainly not at the same time. “STOP!” I yell. I am dimly aware that my physical body yelled it as well. I feel my dog stir from sleep and stand up to look at me. I try to reach out to her to assure her I am okay, while still fighting to keep the rest of the Red outside the bubble.
It is so loud. Too many voices here and even more voices, there. The Reds slow somewhat but do not stop nor do any of them lose their sharp insistence of being heard.
In self-defense, I throw a question at the Reds. “What, where, and why is this house?” The response is immediate and painful. I hear shouts, whispers, accents, children, adults, dogs, horses, crying, laughter, felt pain, joy and sorrow. I hear, “Maine house.”
“Main house?” I ask.
“No, no…pay attention! Maine house.”
“Okay. Maine house.” I feel myself standing and looking out a second story window. I see horses and a carriage that I know are waiting for me, but I am afraid to go out there. I hear the shouting and do not want to see what is going to happen. “Goddamn Nigger!” someone yells. I hear a sharp crack and feel the burning of a whip across my back as I hear a man cry out in pain. I cry out in sympathy. “Please don’t do that to him any more.”
“Shhhhh! Just watch,” another voice whispers from behind me.
I will not watch any more of that. I turn in place and face another time.
I walk out of the service kitchen into the yard to see a large black woman running toward me. “Miss! Miss! Dear God! Rachel’s in the well, Miss!” I feel an immediate nauseating panic. I scream and men are running toward the back of the property. Flash forward to Rachel as an adult, giving birth in one of the bedrooms upstairs. She birthed a stillborn son and died from complications a month and a half later. I know the crushing sorrow of holding your child as a newborn and holding your adult child as she passes from this life. I name the house “Bluebell”, after Rachel’s favorite flower, and I have it painted the same color. Blue house. I hear footsteps on the stairs where there was no one. I walk through cold spots where there should not be. I died in Georgia many years later in the winter house. The last thought I had was that I would rather have been in Maine, with Rachel.
I turn away from that memory to watch a succession of families move into and out of the Blue House. Years flash by and the adjacent land is sold. Other homes spring up around the Blue House. A road is constructed right in front. Nothing looks the same. Nothing feels the same. Neither Rachel nor I are happy. We try burning it down twice. Families move in and families flee, very often leaving possessions behind. I ask The Reds what the significance of this house was. In unison, they answer that the land had been bought back by the same person over the years until it all belonged to the owner of the Blue House again. No family would stay there and it soon fell into such a state of disrepair that it was burned, along with the houses around it. Maine winters on the Canadian border were just too harsh to live through. Nobody wanted it.
In an instant, I understand why I am seeing this house. Just yesterday, my husband had sent me pictures of 185 acres of land for sale in Maine. We both fell in love with it instantly and had discussed going to look at it and putting a bid on it. I understand that even though the Blue House is gone, the land, water, and trees still hold that energy. There would be many residual things going on from that stored energy and if we actually buy the land and put a house on it, our home will be active as well. When that realization became clear, the Reds simply winked out. Their message was heard and understood. Rachel and her mother would move in with us.
I open my eyes to see Colleen watching me closely.
“What are you seeing?” she asks.
I look at her incredulously and laugh. The irony of her asking me a ‘psychic type’ question is just too rich to ignore. I have been shunned by my entire family for what I am, even though every single one of them have gone to see a ‘card reader’ at one point or another. I understand that every person in my biological family was dreaming the same dream at the same time. In addition, they were all inside that house. Colleen, not waiting for an answer says, “Nobody knows what to do, Missy. We’re all scared.”
I look at her and say, very unkindly, “I told you before, do not call me ‘Missy.’” I push past her and walk into the main parlor of the house. The whole place smells like a burned-out attic.
As I feel my ethereal body stepping the two steps down into the service kitchen, I feel my soul step up. I move into a completely different form of energy than I have ever felt before. I feel as if it is a much higher energy than I was ever allowed to experience. The reason for the higher energy is sitting at the kitchen table watching me enter. My great grandmother, Evelyn, smiles a huge welcome and says, “Hello, Love!” She must be in her late 40’s or early 50’s and her eyes are a brilliant blue. I never realized her eyes were so bright. I am rooted to the spot, speechless with awe. She is positively luminous with an aura of such radiance that I feel it on my skin before she even gets close enough for it to touch me.
“Come, sit down,” she says and steers me toward the table. She settles herself across from me, leans over the table, and grasps both my hands in hers. “Love, I would love to sit here with you for a long time but we can’t do that, okay? Even though you are asleep, just you being here is going to tire you out for a few days so we must make this quick. Understand?”
I nod.
“This land that you and your man are talking about, Love, you are doing the right thing. That part of the world is where you will be happiest when you retire. Just be aware that when you purchase it, that you will be inheriting everything that comes with it.” She raises her eyebrows at me in an unspoken question.
Did I understand? I nod again.
“Good!” she says. “It’s absolutely nothing you have not dealt with before, but it will be a constant and those souls are not ready to leave yet. Just make sure to set your boundaries from the get-go and you will be fine.”
“Okay,” I croak out.
“Now,” she continues, “the reason for my visit with you is that I will be leaving soon.” I feel alarm at her words even though I don’t understand them. “No, Lover, it’s not a bad thing at all! I have one more time to go on earth and then I’m finished!” She smiles with delight and I grin back at her. Just one more life to go through on earth… how awesome that would be? “Now listen, Love,” she says, “I just need to tell you one more thing before I go, and listen carefully.”
I say, “Yes, ma’am.”
“You and your man have talked about adopting a baby and I know that.”
I nod at her again.
“You have already seen what this child will look like, correct?”
“Yes I have.”
“Excellent!” I can feel myself moving gently back into my body and I fight against it. She smiles and touches my cheek. “You are so beautiful, Just remember, Love, eyes are the window to the soul.” She says as she fades completely out.
I cry out and reach toward where she had been. “Grandma Evelyn…” I say, but she is gone.
- - -
I sat straight up in my bed. A vision of the child that my husband and I had talked about adopting and had already named, floated in front of me. Her dark hair shimmered and her brilliant, lucid, blue eyes looked back at me with a secret wisdom.
“Eve,” I whispered into the darkness.
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