A Bright House
Chapter 13

Ray knew... knew... that they would sit for a spell at the third of four picnic tables that had been pulled to the stony shoreline facing the city. This isn’t to say that the knowing came directly attached to his willing it so, for Ray had mastered the fluidity of becoming the river twig when such a free choice felt called upon. Part of this “knowing” existed in the flux realm of chance event; Jenny may have not wanted to stop walking, not preferred that distant picnic table that her companion of the day had already seen and accepted as a fragment of Saturday’s unfolding. She may have said “would it be alright if we strolled around the east side of the island and stopped along the south shore?“, which in fact Ray already intuited would be their ultimate place of communication, and he would have answered “of course.” Yet, when tapped in to the fullest of his potential, with the barriers blown open, Ray Townes made for a formidable twig in the river of flowing time and event. He knew and caught subtle glimpses of how the ensuing hours would elapse.

Interfering was natural, easy, too human. Becoming the twig and the river, when the indicators felt right in their resonance, was vital to using his gift to the best of his blessings. Is this to say that, were Townes to have a sudden vivid pull toward self destruction, he would carry it out if the pull felt “meant”? No, not at all. Losing his mother so completely, savagely, suddenly, had split Ray into countless elements of his previous self; the reassembly process had occurred and continued slowly, only through a willingness to accept his indicators. They two, walking down narrow charming streets lined with the cottage daydream architecture, spying startling glimpses of jutting skyline in breaks between tree, home, garden... they were both easy together and yet grew aware of the new tension that lagged a heartbeat behind what they were individually thinking.

“How long have you been psychic?” she asked as they approached the end of a tiny lane that would bring them to the picnic table resting spot. He didn’t answer right away, looking up into the slanted gold rays bleeding through downtown towers. “My earliest memories are of this... before grade school, I knew many of the typical things that you hear about; that a certain relative was going to call or visit that day... but many of my earliest visions were of things that didn’t make sense to me then; other worlds, visions of spectral figures wandering in the woods around our farm, things I didn’t ask my mother about until I became older”... they left the dirt lane to climb over large eroded stones, driftwood, where they both sat atop the picnic table with their feet resting on the north facing bench.

“I knew that my mother had given this to me” Ray continued. “Passed it along. Her moods used to change so suddenly, drastically, either way up or down beneath silence, and in her case it happened no matter her attempts to control it.” Jenny flinched emotionally, the vivid horror of that dream tumbling back unbidden; she saw the similarities between them for the pain of their travels. “I began to have meaning dreams” he went on, ”memories rather than visitations to astral events, or to me then they seemed to be recollections, and these would linger all day through school. Some of the worst dreams were about imminent death, and I would come to dread the hours of sleep during those times.”

“Death of people you knew? Loved ones?”

Ray turned slightly to look at her squarely, his eyes calm. “That’s the odd thing. Never. I never saw the death of a loved one or good friend. It seemed that I was somehow protected from that particular discomfort or burden, but there were times when...” his voice trailed off into her wanting to mention the dream even as she knew it wasn’t possible. “There were times when it would have been valuable to me...” he looked away toward the skyline. She saw the shine of a lone tear pooling in the lower lid of his right eye. Jenny had come to feel that tears were redeeming. For the species. For the souls. She wondered, sitting close enough to Ray to feel his energy, how it was that some people could lose so completely but carry on living in ways so much more productive, hopeful, when others fell and couldn’t get back up. How does one compare the abject emptiness of tragic goodbye? If her dream was true, his loss had been everything and more compared to her own, yet they were opposite paths from that nexus. The familiar loathsome feeling of being small, unworthy, meant-for-invisibility, found its home in Jenny’s chest. She knew it for a lie. Couldn’t defeat its power, sick comfort. She too turned to watch the water, the city, the boats between, and waited for him to speak more.

“When I say that I know something through the clairvoyance” he resumed, “it is with that word, know, in quotation marks. I have been wrong far more often than not, but when I sense very strong impressions, ones that have no words of description possible, I am hardly ever off... it is undiluted signal. I can’t receive it without the help of the sender, or sending force, whatever it may be. I used to believe that all souls continue to ascend upon learning, but that was based on mortal perceptions. As I grew into this curse and blessing and came to recognize the truth of immortality, for all of us, I further recognized the fallacy of adhering to the implied constrictions of this dimension we inhabit... or think we do.” As his words drifted quietly to her, Jenny found a refreshed “this is a memory” ambiance that arrived in dizzying pulsations. She swallowed. Felt chills like tiny pool ripples across her forearms. Then, Ray went to the place she had been trying to spare him from. Spare herself from.

“The day after my mother passed, I spent a few hours in her bedroom. I am not a medium by definition and most of my impressions seem to revolve around the emotions of others, or events in ordinary lives, sometimes the health of a person I am reading for... but I hoped to contact her. I had so many questions.” Ray, absent minded, wiped the tear from his eye, causing a massive maternal ache within his nearby companion who felt a literal battle to keep her hands down atop the picnic table slats. His tone was matter of fact; “I had come to believe that when a soul departs by its own hand, with work left to do, never mind the wake of pain and damage left behind by what is usually unclear thinking processes, that soul cannot move. It remains. I was sure I could reach her. I sat in that room all afternoon, into the evening, and then had the idea to connect with some of her most valued things. Hard to believe, but I’d not yet connected the extra depth of some of my visions to the times when I held personal objects. I wasn’t the type of child who displayed outward affection, and I didn’t like being touched by anyone other than loved ones.”

“Because you knew you were, different?”

“Yes, exactly. I was replaceing my way. I wasn’t sure that I was entirely sane. I could see that other children were not affected like I was. So, this day after my mother died, I began to go through her jewelry, holding various items and closing my eyes, concentrating for all I was worth.” He stopped speaking, going back to the room, she could feel it... slices of her dream visuals returned, unwanted, pushed back by his steady voice, not quite a monotone but the filter of restraint audible. “It was a watch... a pretty watch given to her by her mother, a granny I had never met because she died in Europe during the second world war, that undid me. It heated up in my hand as though a glowing chunk of coal, and I almost dropped it, the vibrations were so powerful and immediate.” He paused to shake his head in remembered wonder, looking down at his shoes on the picnic table bench.

“At first I seemed to be feeling my mother’s thoughts, her final thoughts in body... I can’t go into details about how she passed, not now, but beyond those initial emotions there came a flood of, how do I say it? Information? Something that had the character of being common higher spiritual knowledge but still out of reach to human consciousness. Epiphany is the word that comes closest to what I perceived, but one after another, as if I had stumbled into a mind of a god lost in thought, lost in philosophical god thought...” even here, amidst words that could have otherwise left her in a fog, Jenny experienced a heightened awareness of having sat precisely at this table with him, during this conversation, and the hinted what-next fired off rounds in her skull. As rapt, as caught up in being with him like this as she was, Jenny fell into the headlong cognizance that she contained her own form of “sight”. She wondered then, internally battling the distraction of it, whether he knew that she had dreamed of him and his tragic mother.

Suddenly he asked, “are you relaxed right now, being here with me?” She nodded, and the yes of her response was truthful and more than a little startling. “I know it, Jenny, but wanted to be sure, to hear it from you. Would you mind if we walk again? Is there a spot where we can sit that will offer up a less distracting energy?” He nodded once toward the city’s vast profile of bombastic conflicting lines and heights. Jenny cleared her throat, replaceing the words dry and invisible, touched his shoulder briefly so he would look at her, and echoed his nod with a little smile.

During the same hour of a conversation between two new friends, and not very distant, a double-crested Cormorant among many thousands is curious enough about the massive intruder in the upper reaches of the stripped tree, to investigate. The Cormorant takes flight, circles the canopy, smaller rotations, eyes watching, closing in on a section of the tree halfway up its trunk. It lands. Now there are two birds in the otherwise ignored Cottonwood. One is as still as a photograph. It remains with eyes affixed to the eastern wooded shore and buckling cement pier edge of Ward’s Island, as if in waiting. The Cormorant speaks Cormorant speak, first to the others of its kind in hundreds of trees all around this section of the spit, and then addresses the strange new visitor with a tilt of its head. The query in avian language falls flat, not known, not welcome. Very slowly, without shifting its posture on the limb, the huge taloned one twists its neck around to afford a clear eyes glaring view of the inquisitor below.

The energy not visible to humans passes between the two. The two sets of eyes lock up and freeze. Wind shakes through the branches but the limb beneath the massive raptor does not move, nor do its feathers. Deliberately, with more glare now in the angry gold of its eyes, the huge visitor unfolds and flexes a stunningly broad wingspan, just once. The flexing is soundless but all eyes in every direction turn toward the motion and, immediately, thousands of feathered bodies take flight away from the vicinity. Trees quiver, the air becomes sound filled by a thick wash of avian throats in various forms of retreat exclamation, and moments later the intruder is alone once again in its chosen perch. Its eyes become less vivid, the wings tuck back into position, the head turns toward Ward’s Island where two human figures have appeared out of a break in the bush near the northwestern tip of the pier, where an aging chain link fence holds a sign emblazoned with large red letters: “Caution!”