It seems my attempt to exorcize all the cobwebs of the worst summer ever has worked, as I am now able to document some more appealing events, appropriate to my claim of having crazy crap happen to me nearly every day. So let me return to quasi-normalcy with a tale quite befitting the season.
Some of you may recall a past episode which made my hairs stand on end. Dear friends, I admit, I love a good ghost story. I love thinking there's something mysterious there, just out of reach--something pointing to larger spheres we can't even imagine.
But let me be the first to say it: I am not one of those invested with the gifts of a sensitive. Besides occasionally thinking of someone just as the phone rings with a call from that very same person, I am utterly non-psychic. Profoundly so. I do not feel creepy presences. I do not sense "being watched." I do not glimpse eerie movements out of the corner of my mind which cannot be dismissed.
And yet, just the other day, I had an experience of such sheer uncanniness, I've been unable to shake its sense of otherworldly ookiness. And since it's nearly Halloween, it seems more appropriate share the wealth than keep it to myself.
So here it is: Kay's Uncanny Experience
Let me preface by saying, as revealed with such endearing candor in my previous post, I'm in the recovery phase from a good-old-fashioned, Valley-of-the-Dolls style nervous breakdown. So, goodness knows, there are some funny, funny chemicals oozing around my synapses. And I'm recovering quite nicely, thank you very much. I typically awake sometime between 6 and 7:30am, pop a soothing doll, and snooze for a few hours more. I chalk it up to my body really, really needing sleep, and am simply reveling in it.
So this morning, this typical transaction occurs. Pop a doll, back to bed.
At some point, I think I'm awake, but so woozy and sleepy, I don't want to get up. I'm absolutely certain I hear someone come in the room. My brain decides it's my mom, who is concerned that I need to get up, but doesn't want to wake me. I make sure not to move, and hope she'll just leave, because I just want to sleep and don't want to be roused further--kind of the way you lay very still when you've fallen alseep in the car on the way home so your dad will carry you in.
At this point, I should add that I'm currently sleeping in one of our guest bedrooms. It's dark and quiet, and allows me to flop about without disturbing Eamon. It's a disheveled little room, with a threadbare carpet and a kind of sad-making patch of plaster on its cracked, robin's-egg blue walls. Because of its dreary condition, I've always jokingly referred to it as "the haunted bedroom."
The haunted bedroom opens out onto the second story of our disgracefully dilapidated porch. When we first viewed the house, the door was marked with a sign that said, in daunting letters, "DO NOT STAND ON PORCH." We do not.
So back to our scene. I'm still drowsing, eyes shut, head under pillow, my usual sleep mode, and I sense that my mom is moving toward the door to the porch. It crosses my mind I should tell her not to go out there, as it's dangerous.
But I'm drowsy, and if I stop her, the jig is up, she'll know I'm awake, and I'll have to get up. At the very least, the sheer effort of exertion will rouse me past returning to sleep, and I really want to sleep. I let myself off the hook, thinking the odds of the porch suddenly collapsing as my mom puts her tiny frame on it are infinitesimally small, and she'll so enjoy the view. I swear I hear her going out there. She steps out for a minute, then comes back in. And I think, see, she was just curious, and everything's fine.
I remain as still as possible, as I just want her to leave so I can go back to sleep.
Then, at some point, something weird happens. It almost feels like the quilt by my face is jerked up slightly, or maybe it was that I had one of those weird sleep shudders one sometimes has--where you're drifting off to sleep and you suddenly jerk to action. I'm not sure if this happened right away or later ... but I do recall looking down toward my chest as I lay on my back, and seeing that my quilt was tented up so I could see under it. And what I see/sense is a kind of dull yellow glow. And I remember thinking, "That is just not right." And thinking I should really investigate further, but just being too sleepy to do so.
I also recall, and have no idea of the chronology in terms of when I was sensing all these things, realizing that there is no way my mother could not possibly be in the room. My mother lives in California. And I get this strange flash -- not really a vision, not really a thought -- a sort of weird sense of just "old lady" -- a stooped, white figure. Maybe white hair. Dolores, my recently passed neighbor, I muse. Or maybe Babe O'Malley. But those are really the most deliberate logical thoughts I had in the whole experience. Like that's the label I'm putting on the generic "old lady" essence that was the original impulse.
Later after this, not sure if it was few minutes or longer, I became aware of really loud irritating sounds that I couldn't make out. Eventually, I decided it was my brain trying to process the noise of workmen working on my neighbor's house ... only I realized later that those guys finished the job weeks ago. So I don't know what the hell that was.
And then, at some point, I am dead certain that someone hear someone else coming in to "check on me." I am sure it is Eamon, and again, I stay quite deliberately immobile because I don't want to get up. I want to go back to sleep.
But I give up. At this point, I think, what with the loud, irritating noises earlier, and the weird sensations, I might as well get the hell up. Besides, I can just catch Eamon to say goodbye before he leaves for work.
Only his car is gone. And when I look at my computer, I see he's online, which means he's been gone for at least a half hour.
So that's my creepy story. Serotonin run amok? Grandmotherly figure from the Other Side worried that I'm oversleeping. Who's to say?
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