The house came into view around the bend of the road. It rested on a sea of emerald green that was closely clipped and spongy when experienced by bare feet.
I t had stood there for centuries. It had existed in her dreams long before she
had seen it for the first time.
‘All houses are haunted. All persons are haunted. Throngs of spirits follow us everywhere. We are never alone.”
ATTRIBUTION:
Barney Sarecky, and William Beaudine. Agatha Brewster (Minerva Urecal), The Ape Man, explaining her spiritualist beliefs to a reporter (1943)
The house stood against the darkening sky, lit up with a hundred candles and bright to behold. It should have been welcoming, but she didn’t feel greeted by it, she felt threatened. There were memories in that house. Things that she couldn’t quite remember, but knew that the aftermath of them haunted the house. Sometimes it felt like she haunted it rather than it haunted her.
Behind it was another house, an older house. She didn't understand at first the reason for another house being so near, but then again her visions had come from dreams and when we dream we don't always seem to fathom the whys and wherefores.
Her first memory of dreaming of ‘the house’ (as she referred to it always), was when she was around five years of age. She’d woken up from a dizzy dream of seeing the house loom up at her and then seeing the torture of slaves. Her mother had come immediately and soothed her with soft spoken words and a promise to stay there until she slept again. The dream stayed with her for months.
The second time she dreamt of it, she’d been a bit older, probably around nine or ten years old. She didn’t remember that she’d dreamt of it before until later on that day. The dream didn’t have the horror of the first dream. It was a curious dream. She'd been a witness, a bystander really. The dream began with a young woman....a beautiful young woman...walking in the field toward the house. Radiant and alive, with dark and wavy hair, who wore long skirts. What century or age this dream took place in, she didn’t know. For some reason she didn’t question things like this. Anyway, the woman had seemed to sense her there and had talked out loud, as if to herself. During this soliloquay, it was learned that the older house behind was a house that had belonged to the young woman's family. When her father had died, her aunt had still lived and this aunt had been mentally unbalanced. So, as to not send her to one of those awful insane asylums, they had hired a nurse and contained the aunt to the top floors of the house. The house was maintained by money that her father had left to assist in the care-taking of her aunt. When she had married, they'd built the new house nearby. That way she could be there if things happened, but they would be by themselves. The newlyweds.
The things that happened on the lands and buildings and, later on, inside the house weren’t the fault of her or her husband, actually. They were the fault of the men who had been hired to oversee these areas. Regardless, they were to blame ultimately because they should have seen or somehow figured out what was happening. Especially as slaves came up missing and/or disappeared. Not just one or two, many of them.
But when you are involved in a newly married life and have other problems to deal with, perhaps it is to be allowed that you might have blinders on when it came to areas that you felt were being managed competently.
The dream ended as the tour of the older home and the offering of this explanation came to a close. For years, she had these dreams. Each one of them a continuation of sorts of the one before. She was a unseen although acknowledged entity to this young woman’s life. As time passed in her life, the young woman got older too.
It was when she was twenty four that she saw ‘the house’ for the first time outside her dreams.
When John Gideon is transported to the extraordinary world of Illúmaril, he’ll soon discover that his entire existence has been leading up to the shocking destiny he’ll soon fulfill.
The first instalment of The Tales of Bowen unfolds a mesmerizing anthology of narratives intricately woven together by a grand overarching storyline, set against the enchanting backdrop of the mystical realms of Dagonfell.
