Southern Alternative Photography

 

Yes sir...

 

Little Red lost in the Woods

 

My favorite colors

 

Adoration eternal

He watched from the branches above. He contained a morbid ghost much like her own, and much like her stubborn refusal to relinquish the phantom, he held on for dear life. There was nothing which could remove him from the darkness-no colour of brighter things. The Raven was a beacon, watching over the tossing seas. He was a lovely dark thing, a forever imprint, even beyound this world into the next.

Feathershal

 

 

She’s back there waiting, me thinks. Nah…just kidding. She’s always been waiting with me and watching the winking stars. We lay together, on the grass, blades frosted with tomorrow’s maybes. Yeah, that’s us there - me, the shadow, and the faerie. 

I understand now. We die together.

She doesn't need a villain filter.

 

More and later and over time

The easy thing to do would be to admit that I am crazy. In ways, I am. But the truth is something else entirely. There is always something hunting me as I hunt them. There is always something there which whispers strange truths into my ear keeping me tormented by reality.

I can't stop knowing. With this knowledge, there is a desire to act upon this knowledge, but yet, I cannot always understand the big picture, you see.

I think I want to tell the truth of it all. I think I want to try so hard to explain what happens now. It's different than before. Now, I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, and I feel so sick. There's something bad coming and I cannot stop it. I cannot pinpoint it either...mostly. This is because I cannot connect one with the other in this knowing.

When they die, I feel it. When they're drawn away, I feel it. I feel when enemies are near. I feel when I am being betrayed. I feel that something is coming. I feel the energy shift and the air gets tight around me. I cannot remember and I don't know where I am. I shiver and shake, my heart races, my breath quickens.....I just know and hate knowing and being cursed with knowing. I hate this so much and wish I was dumb or ignorant or I don't know. I just wish I couldn't know that which I cannot grab hold to. Why do I have to know and not be able to fix it?

I always wanted to cover up the truth with vampires and werewolves, you know. Because, you know, fantasy is always much more interesting than the truth. I wanted to tell stories about zombies and even silly little love stories too.

I am tired. I am so tired of pretending that I don't see things and I don't feel a presence. I am tired of pretending I don't hear the words in my head, near my ear, and through the trees. For, these things are not stories. These things are why I cannot breathe anymore. They are why I cannot sleep. They are why I am allergic to all my food now. I cannot contain the knowledge and it's eating me alive from inside.

Look, I don't know why, but I know things.... a lot...quite often. They won't leave me alone. It's not just about my imaginary friends anymore. It's like the whole world is moaning in pain and expecting me to do something about it, and I can't. It's like they're screaming in my ear and I can't pick apart the voices.

I hate the dissociation afterward when knowing bombards my brain and strikes me that I am numb. There's just too much. There's just too much of this for me. It's only getting worse. I mean, what am I supposed to do with this? When I know, what am I supposed to use that knowledge for? If I warn people, they think I'm insane. If I attempt to reach out to the knowing, I get nothing. It's like this heightened intuition that comes to me when it wants to and all I can do is freeze and watch its weirdness happen.


Just tell me...why does it even show itself to me in the first place. I think I just can't utilize it. I just don't know what to do. :(

Natalie's truth

It's been a while. It's been a long while, to be honest. I haven't written because my life has shifted again. Jake left me alone with them, long after my aunt died and shortly after our relationship failed. I moved from the house on Graham, the one where she died, yes. I moved and they came with me. I wanted them to. I asked them to come the day I packed the last of my belongings into the car. I asked them to come with me because it was just a nice thing to do, you see.

 It was warm that day, not too hot but hot enough to kick up dust. I had one more load to carry over to my new rental. I packed the rest and sat down by my old flower bed. I was sad, to say the least. Oh god, I was tormented by the move and leaving my little brick home. Then I thought of them, the ones out in the mimosas. I thought about the children that I would leave behind and the others.

"Hello..."

There was a breeze there, in those frilly decorative trees I love so much. I realized that I would also be leaving the mimosas. A friend of mine dug up a root and took it with her. Claims she will grow her own mimosa tree. I didn't do the same. I think I had other things in mind.

"I know you're here. My heart hurts and it's because I'm leaving you."

For 6 years I held their tiny hands in mine, feeling the pressure left there from their energy. I believed and I didn't believe, and that's why I started hunting them. The disbelief crossed the belief when I couldn't hear them for a long while. Then suddenly they would run squealing from behind the Graham house and across the front yard. I could hear their tiny feet pounding the ground as they run. Then I crossed the threshold again into belief...faith.

"I don't want to leave but I have to."

The sadness was palpable. I could taste the bitterness of it. I did not want to leave them and I think it was the worst part. I stared at the brick wall directly opposite of her death bed. I knew she would come with me, but what of the children?

"Come with me. I want you to come with me."

I cried then. Shortly after, I left Graham house for the last time.

I am you and you are me...

The solomn hypnotic

"Can you hear me?"

 I stood beneath the withered trees and the climbing castle towers, and I was here again to find him. Looking to my right, I saw a pathway winding through a thin cluster of trees. It was always a place that looked like madness. My soul gravitates toward darkened pathways, lonely sidewalks and avenues between churches and two-story southern homes left vacant and dusty. On the left, I saw the church and right beside it was the old two-story white house. The shadows between the two ran striped patterns across the grass.

 I was always here, moving between mimosas, oaks, and other spindly little trees. For, I have yet to leave my past behind and cannot grow old despite my age. I was hollow again, my heart ached as if I had lost something. Maybe I had lost something, a thing fairly tall and dark as everything around me. I could have been something that barely slipped across my fingertips and dropped away, or maybe I was just fantasizing. But I could not call out to the thing because I was terrified of the silence between us.

“I am imagining things again, aren’t I? It is lost but it doesn’t know it’s lost.”

I spoke to one who was holding my hand, the dark thing chirped and whirred like an insect. It was a culmination of all I had hoped for, the dark thing, she was. She was a compiled form that was taken away slowly, and with cold severance. But in quiet, while no one was looking, I whisked her away to myself.

 It was here, I thought. I looked at my hand again and it was gone. Turning my palm to my face, I saw nothing but remnants of black smoke gently gliding up into the navy blue sky. The tendrils of darkness danced between the withered fingers of the trees and then disappeared.

“Please.”

But I was too old for this. I was too old to play in the dark world that I had created. I brought her back to help me and she showed me that everything and everyone was gone now. She laughed despite my terror.

“You are there or you are here. There is no in-between, my dear.”

I rode the in-between like it was the firm stitch in the cloth of my ratted tattered gown. I was torn, torn as the hem of my gown. I wanted to lie in the crisp bright day, the sun warming my skin and the birds reminding me that I was smiling, but…

“You cannot ride the in-between.”

It was a revelation or sorts, but the same revelation heard over and over, years and decades before. Dare say I felt a few centuries in my soul.

“Shhhh, it’s a secret. Look between the church and white house. He waits there for you.”

A dark figure pronounced that my surroundings weren’t that dark at all, at least not as dark as he. I moved toward him but tripped falling to the pavement. An ebony bright puddle of water looked up at my me. But it was a cold white fabric face, stitched as well. I removed the mask and I saw her there.

“He doesn’t know who you are.”

I was pale, dark-eyed and framed with dark red hair. My face was my own, but it was hers as well. I had been crying and it marred thick bands of darkness around my eyes. I followed trails of blood to the corners of my mouth.  For a moment, I saw curtains of dark glitter fall all around my messy face.

“I have failed. I let the moment pass and now it was too late. Is he still there, dark one?”

I looked up from the puddle and the alley was bare. I saw movement in the trees and then figures weaving in and out from behind the church walls.

“Who are they.”

“They don’t know yet. They’re waiting for you to name them.”

“Stop this! Stop this madness! Help me!”

She reached pulling me from the road and from my shame. A distant bell sounded and I knew it was midnight. But midnight didn’t matter anymore and the moon was still large. All the things I had created were somewhere playing a role or waiting to exist again.

 I was standing between a school and a church glaring toward the soft grass by the old white house, and the castle loomed above it all. There were roads in all directions and the one I stood upon started to shift between gray and black.  Amidst the melancholy detail of my existence, I could almost see her form, solid. Flittering things made the air look blurry blue across her back. I could smell the rose scent coming from her skin.

“Why did you think I could help you? This is your doing. You are the one who cut it away. The fabrics of many colours-the coats, to be religious about it, you divided them, crumpled them and set them aflame!”

And I did. I was coarse, hard and unrelenting. The dark figure embraced me and I screamed until every shadow disappeared and the earth was heaven counterfeit. I watched the shadows move away, handsome in features, dark eyes, dark hair and a softness that cradled my heart. I couldn’t see it, nor could I feel it and so the complacency of it all gave way to false hope and comfort. Did I kill it? No, but surely there was no difference between death and this wretched agony.

“If only I could touch his fingertips-the one that surely waits within the trees.”

“No.”

“Please.”

Her dark figure was the only one before me. All around the little houses and the winding roads-they were silent.

“ Help me find him, please.”

She leaned close and wrapped her own filmy form around about me. She pulled my stitching tawt and wiped the dark blood from beneath my eyes. Her eyes were mine and mine were hers, as everything else about us. I cried again.

“Open your mouth.”

She bent forward as if to kiss me. I saw it, there in her mouth, a winged thing. It fluttered, passing from her lips to mine and I gasped. The dust from its wings coated my tongue and the roof of my mouth. She closed my mouth and pressed the palm of her hand against my lips. I felt the thing flitter and flop inside my mouth. I whimpered.

“Shhh”

She kissed my cheek and felt her smile against my skin as well.

“Now, close your eyes.”

Come in. Have a seat

Hello darlin'. Nice to see you. It's been a long time.

What I am thinking now August 1, 2016

My mind is a-swirl with some of the same things and yet, difference has made an appearance as well. As you may or may not know, I am medicated for the most part, but this is what I have done:

I have stopped taking the spirit killer because I couldn’t breathe. There was no motivation to leave the couch and there was no fire to fight with. I wanted to sleep most of the time and my chronic physical pain helped with that as well.

Oh this is so boring, so boring! Basically, I am holding tight reigns on her and it’s more difficult than you think. She burns within, bursting through every layer of my defenses. Somehow I manage to keep the outer gate closed.

How much more? How can it be so damning to yearn for release. I am so tired. So unbelievably tired of having no pasture for my fairy to run, no ocean to swim and no forests to frolick. I am in pain, literal pain. This restraint is breaking me in two.

Just my thoughts, I should sleep

If she lets me.

Natie and Jake, she's here now

He took several pictures of the outside wall while I stared into the mimosas. The blooms were gone now, and large pods covered the ground beneath the trees. As I stepped into the foliage, carcases of seed pods crackled and shifted with the weight of my feet. I was pulled away from my grief momentarily by the speech of their dry dead bodies. Dead, they were dead too, come and gone so fast and no one cared. Does anyone really care about anything after its dead for a while?

 “Natie look!”

 I turned toward Jake who stood directly in front of the back brick wall of my house. He was staring at the pictures he had taken just a moment ago. Something was obviously stealing his attention.

 “What is it, Jake?”

 He turned to me and smiled. His shaking hand revealed that he wasn’t altogether happy, part of him was terrified. “Look at this.”

 Jake pushed the camera toward. I took a look for myself. The picture was nothing special at first, just a brick wall with a high window. Then I saw what he was talking about. It was a face, or at least, it looked like a face.

 “It’s her, right?”

 I didn’t speak for a moment. I stared at the window with the image smeared onto the glass. It wasn’t that clear and so I handed the camera back to Jake.

 “I’m not sure. I cannot tell who that looks like, if it’s really a person at all. I think it’s possible that you could be grasping at things. My son could have pressed his face against the glass and made that impression, you know.”

 But I did notice the face and I didn’t remember my son pressing his face against the glass, yet I didn’t want to get too excited or frightened, not yet.

“Natie, that’s a face, and see…” Jake clicked through the images. “Here’s another one, but the face is gone. Oh Natie, that ghost is in there, and it wants to contact us.”

 I stared at the clear window in the photo. I was terrified by the fact that my aunt could be in that room, the room where my children sleep every night. The nightmare images flashed momentarily through my mind and I shivered. The thought of Franklin was completely gone now, only the thought of coming face to face with a dead thing prevailed.

 “Jake, do you think we should stop?”

 Jake put his undivided attention on my face, then my chest and then my face again. “I…I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

 I took the camera from Jake and looked at the images again. There in one image was a face, and in the next one, nothing at all, Just the edges of the curtain. “Take another one, Jake.”

 Jake took a couple more pictures of the window and then took pictures of the wall, the mimosas, and a few pictures of me.

 “Smile babe.”

 But I didn’t want to smile. I wanted to cry and go somewhere else, but I had nowhere else to go. “Let me see the pictures.”

 Jake chuckled softly and looked down at the camera. He clicked to the viewing screen and nodded. “You are beautiful in front of the Mimosas. The green of the leaves contrasts with your red hair…sexy.”

 “Jake, can you get on with it. Do you see anything?”

 Jake clicked and clicked until he stopped. I saw his face change, his smile dropped.

“What is it?”

 Jake looked at me and then back at the screen.

 “Is the face in the window?” But the face wasn’t in the window, and the face wasn’t looming within the mimosas.

 “Look, don’t freak out.”

 “Give me that!” I snatched the camera from the idiot who thought it was better to drag things out.

 Maybe a face wasn’t in any of the other pictures but there was a face in the image on the view screen. It was a picture of me standing by the wall, and there within the bricks were the contours of a face. Rounded surfaces pulled the hardness of the wall into a bulging image. It seemed to be scowling. Dark brick eyes were glaring at me. I didn’t mean to, but I dropped the camera. Thanks to the dead pods from the mimosa, Jake’s camera was cushioned and safe.

 “Jake?”

 “Yes Natie.”

 “Don’t leave. I’m scared.”

 “Okay, sure.”

 Later that night, as Jake and I sat at the dining room table, I retraced everything we had done. We tried phantom writing, we tried EVP, Pictures, and video and checked for temperature changes. We even kept a close check on the electromagnetic readings. I was exhausted and the hard chair was hurting my butt. I stood to give my tailbone a little relief, and my chair moved backward of its own volition.

 “Jake! Did you see that?”

 Jake’s mouth was hanging open so I assumed he saw it too. “Yeah, I saw that.”

 A soft tapping started somewhere near the refrigerator which was behind Jake and across the room. The tapping grew louder and then cereal boxes, and a cake plate flew from the top of the refrigerator and across the room. I screamed and tackled Jake in his chair. One hand was full of Jake’s leather jacket, gripping just as his shoulder, while the other hand hugged him for protection. He pulled me off him and stood to face the clutter.

 “wow. I think we’ve started something.”

Natie and Jake should take inventory and counsel

Even the cheap gadgets worked. Those little phone apps were more than I had bargained for. Now Jake was angry at me about Franklin, and I did sleep with Franklin. I just wish that Jake wasn’t right and I had to figure out a way to get his attention off the whole ordeal. Because I wasn’t cheating on him now and Franklin had been out of the picture for weeks.

 “Jake, stop being a jerk.”

 “I will stop being a jerk when you tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you’re not sleeping with my best friend.”

 I didn’t want to lie but I wanted to lie to Jake. How would I do it?

 “Listen, you know that app is full of crap, right? It’s ridiculous, Jake, please stop being so jealous. It’s just a name, it could have been any name, for that matter. Come on, I need you to help me contact my aunt.”

 Jake wasn’t convinced and I knew he would come back around to this topic sooner or later. I just wanted to buy some time and try to smooth things over. After all, Jake and I weren’t really together when I was seeing Franklin, so I didn’t understand why the app would say his name.

As I struggled to get a hold on my situation, I felt the goosebumps rise up on my arm. I realized it was cold in the living room.

 “Jake? Can we check the temperature readings now?”

 I didn’t know what he was thinking, but he stood and gathered his camera and EVP metre. Then he put them down again. He was confused, running his hands through his hair. He picked up his equipment once more than looked at me. Even an adulterous girlfriend couldn’t keep him away from his ghosts. Even I, as complicated as I was, could not drag Jake from his own reality. Jake wasn’t a jerk, he was magnificent. It’s just bad timing for us and I knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant as pie from here on out. But I was desperate. Jake looked at me and he could see the desperation and sadness in my face.

 “You really need this don’t you?”

 I was caught off guard by his words, but I caught on. “Yes, she died in there and going in the closet isn’t good enough.” I motioned toward the back bedroom. “ That corner has been dark ever since. I think she wants me to come to her, the cold place, you know.”

 “I got it. Let’s go. Grab the other camera. Oh and, bring your phone too. Make sure that ghost hunting app is still on.”

 “Are we going in there, in the room?”

 “No, I have an idea.”

 I never heard Franklin’s name again as we walked behind the house. I heard a few other strange words like ‘syringe’ and ‘number’, but no ‘Franklin.’ I guess the ghost was done being comical and devious. I guess it’s fun for the dead to watch the living squirm under pressure. They were the real jerks. Suddenly I felt bad for calling my aunt a jerk because my aunt was among that throng of the dead. I wondered if she was playing havoc with me and enjoying the torture.

 “What about here? Is it this window or the one on the other side?” Jake stopped and looked around the yard.

 I looked up at the high rectangular windows and shivered. “It’s these windows. Why are we outside the room, Jake?”

 “Because sometimes the spirits lurk outside the room they died in. They are scared of that room, almost as much as you are. She could be wandering anywhere outside these windows, even in the woods behind us.”

 I spun around and gazed into the darkened center of the woods. Vines and saplings invaded the yard and high limbs from trees tickled my head with dying leaves. I jumped back by a sudden scratch from above. “The woods are too close here, Jake.”

 “Why do you say that?”

 I leaned against the brick wall and whimpered. “I’m scared, Jake. What if she is still mad at me?”

 “What do you mean, mad at you?”

 I looked at him, pouring every fiber of sadness into the air between us. I wanted him to read my mind, but I forgot that he couldn’t do that. I wanted him to hold me then and I wanted him to forgive me about Franklin. Jake knew why I was scared. He kept telling me that it wasn’t my fault, but I knew better. It was my fault.

 She was coming for me, pushing through the fabric between purgatory and the living. She was already in my dreams, along with blood and exorcisms and screams. I saw knives cutting flesh and I saw a door opening. There behind the door was her face. There on the table, being rid of his demons, was my father, who was also dead. My aunt and my mother, both dead as well, were holding him down while my son took a knife to his throat. I instructed my son to kill him, and he did.

 “I am not your father. You cannot kill me.”

 “Hey! Natie, are you okay? What do you mean? Why would your aunt’s spirit be mad at you?”

 I couldn’t speak. I kept seeing her face coming back to me. She kept coming back.

 “Natie, why would she be mad at you? What did you do?”

 “I killed her, remember? I killed them all.”

Jake and Natie, sleep will never come

He left me in the closet with a pen and piece of paper. It was an exercise, he said. It was a way that she might choose to come through for me. All I had to do was close the door and be silent. It was dark and I could not see the pen nor the paper, and this was how Jake wanted it. I was to place the pen against the paper and wait for her to write for me.

“How long does this take, Jake.”

“Be quiet, Natie. I don’t know but I’m sure it’s not going to work if you are talking.”

I waited. I tried not to will my hand to move or not to move and it was weird. It was no different than the Quiji board, no different than holding that little plastic thing together with everyone else’s shaking fingers. In the closet, all I could do was listen to my breath and forget that my fingers even existed.

“Jake, I don’t like this.”

Jake ignored me. He refused to carry on a conversation during the serious exercise, well, he thought it was serious. I was growing weary of all the tricks and exercises and I wanted something real. I wanted to get out of the dark closet and sit in the living room. I just wanted to use the recorder or take pictures. This phantom writing stuff was crap.

“Jake please….”

He opened the door. It was obvious that he was peeved at me from the look on his face. His dark hair was disheveled and his forehead was creased. Jake reached in and took the piece of paper from my hands. He froze.

“Did you do this? Did you write this?”

Jake held the paper in front of me as I climbed from the closet. There was a word scribbled at the top of the page. I looked at him and then back to the page.

“I didn’t write anything, Jake.”

Jake pushed the paper into my face.

“What’s this then?”

At the top of the page was the name ‘Franklin’.

“Whose Franklin, Natie?”

“I…I don’t know, Jake. I didn’t write that.”

Jake’s eyes grew wide and he smiled. “Natie, do you know what this means? If you didn’t write this, then someone else did and you were in that closet alone…but you weren’t really alone. Do you see?”

I realized that I was never alone in that closet and so I jumped away from the closet door immediately. I looked back inside only seeing my clothes and shoes. There was nothing or no one else.

“Jake, I was alone.”

“No Natie, you were in there with a ghost, babe. It was her! I just don’t understand who Franklin is. She never talked about anyone named Franklin.”

“How do you know it was her, Jake?”

Jake was silent. We both walked back into the living room and sat down. He picked up his phone, which was set on the Halloween ghost meter app.

“Jake”

The ghost meter spoke Jake’s name and immediately got his attention. Jake stared at the screen watching the radar needle spin around and around. He looked at me and smiled.

“How’d you like that, Natie. It said my name.”

The ghost detector spoke again. “Franklin”. And again, “secret”.

Jake put his phone on the couch and turned to me. His eyes traveled from my eyes to my hands. He noticed how I wrung my hands and scratched at my jeans because I did. He looked back into my face and silently wondered who Franklin was, silent until he asked me again. And he should ask me because I do know a Franklin, a few of them actually. What he wanted to know was why did my aunt want to talk about a guy named Franklin. I don’t even know if this was her or not. It could be a demon, they say that demons masquerade as loved ones to draw us into their trickery. This could be a demon, yes, a demon. But I did know a Franklin and he was going to ask me, I just know it and ….

“Whose Franklin?”

What I'm thinking- July 7, 2016

The aftermath is never filled with writing fodder. Honestly, I don’t know why I came here at all. I guess this is the last frontier. I saw the beauty of Jupiter and I wanted to go. It’s creamy milk clouds swirled with dark brown storms and winds making its moon stand out in detailed glory. Lo and behold the splendor of the artist’s rendition of the Great Red Spot. Excuse me while I capitalize whatever I please.

So I sit there, growing fatter by the hour because of some strange sleep hormone and all the posted signs. I hate this torture, this caged bird mentality that my sleep holds me sway. Tomorrow, I shall try again to put one foot in front of the other in a neighborhood safari, but the forest still calls-oh God! The agony is too great and call me ungrateful if you wish. Say that I am spoiled because I have everything that I want! Say it!

So the aftermath of all this death is still not affording me something to talk about. I do feel another one coming on, another premonition of some great legend dying and some injustice waiting in the wings. But it’s just like always, from the time of my birth until now and it will never change. It’s like the calm face of the woman whose husband was gunned down in front of her, it’s life and life to me is this.

I will take two steps to your one but I will never know where I am going.

Do you understand?

What I'm thinking--June 25, 2016

I came across my anger, as if I had never seen it before. It was alien and unstoppable. All around the room, their faces made me mad. It was the inconsistencies, the lies and the ignorance which set my mood aflame. I wanted to say “I will not suffer fools”, but that would be too cruel. I love them, all of them, I do. It’s just that sometimes I have to be hard to stand my ground. They tell me to express my inconveniences and my issues, but do it in a civil manner. Whenever I try to be civil, I am met with this arrogant threat. It is hypocrisy

It’s all a myth. When you disagree, you cannot be civil. No matter how calm you are, to some, they will never be able to accept that you disagree with them and that you wish to tell them no. I wish to tell them no, all the time, just for the fun of it and just to make it even with my decades of yes’s. I want to say no and with that no, stand straight and tall in my convictions.

Some of them want to instill fear as a means of control and then say that you are trying to control them. IT’s a form of manipulation, old really, and when first introduced with this manipulation, it can be startling to the senses. Once you encounter this trick, you can conquer the symptoms of fear. Fear, fear fear, they love to use the tool of fright to deny they have an allegiance with fear at all.

I came across my anger and at first I was ashamed by it. I prayed against it and I held it down with all my might and 200 stacks of books that I read week to week.

“Be kind”, “Don’t make assumptions” and “Control your temper.”

These are supposed to be sage words. These words are supposed to remind you that you are not a slave of fear and anger any more.

So, why, when I finally get angry, do I feel like I’m finding my worth? It’s confusing at times, it’s hard to not get angry at ignorance and evil. And yes, there is pure evil out there, it’s the pride of mankind.

I came across my anger and I was reminded of my savior in the temple, driving out the vile. To anger is not to sin.

There is a time and palace and my anger is mine. I am not a slave to my anger, nor anyone else.

The only name I remember

To know a name is to command power. I wonder about this sometimes and the wondering leads me back to sleep. How can a name entrap a human being and force this human being to bend?

“I call your name and you must do as I say.”

This doesn’t always work, you know, so how shall this work on demons? You’ve seen the movies, the exorcism flicks and horror based movies. In the story, the name of these spirits holds dominion. Once you know the demon’s name, you can cast it back to hell.

“In the name of Jesus, I bind you and cast you out!”

Yes, that works in the movies. It works in reality as well, as long as one condition is met.

Faith.

This is where my wondering stops, right before I fall from the cusp of sleep. I drift into another place, filled with impossibilities and communions with the dead. I follow a path to a land where names mean nothing and faith is like the blood in my veins. Here I have faith but no name and there I had names with no faith. My quest, within the dream, was to fuse the two together so that I could fight my demons.

The darkness said no, but I kept trying to remember names when I awoke.

One morning I remember a solitary name and with it, faith of a mustard seed. I called to the father with the name on the tip of my tongue. My faith was burning like a grain of hot sand.

“In the name of Jesus, I bind you and cast you out!”

I spoke sternly, with one name on my tongue. It was a name I could never misplace.

It was my own.

“I cast you back to hell.”

Jake and Natie....I cannot sleep

“I know you want to see her, hear her or whatever, but it takes time.”

“Do you think we will get something tonight?”

“Maybe”

Jake had new equipment. He explained it to me but I have already forgotten what it was. Seems like he called it a spectrovolumizer or something like that. These devices are special made to detect things like cold spots and electromagnetic fields or whatnot. I guess I’m mutilating the names and processes of this equipment, but I wish to learn more. I want to do what Jake does. Jake talks to the dead.

“Jake, did you say that was a voice extramologer?”

Jake laughed way down in his belly. His smile was huge. He would have been cute if he wasn’t making fun of me.

He could barely speak through his guffawing. “It could be a prestidigitator working through the flabnoid erupter.”

I wasn’t impressed. Our neighbor had already said those ludicrous words while banging on his alternator with a screwdriver. I wasn’t the only one who was clueless. Heck, the world was infested with ignorance.

“Jake, I’m sorry. I can’t pronounce those words and I forget all the time. I just want to talk to her.”

He took my hand and lead me over to the couch. There, lined up against the edge of the rug was three devices. One was large and the other two no smaller than a cellphone. He was making a list of what he needed for the trip. Apparently, these were his ‘prime babies’ as he called them.

“You see this?” Jake picked up something that looked like a calculator. “This is my portable ‘spirit box’. You wouldn’t believe how important this thing is.”

Jake took the little electronic and sat down on the couch, pulling me down with him.

“So, how does this work? Is it complicated?”

“Okay, when we get there, we will first use the infrared thermometer to detect cold spots. You see, where there’s a ghost, the air will turn icy. The temperature will drop so suddenly that chill bumps will appear on your skin. It’s true. Then, we use the other devices in unison-EMF meters, ion detectors and cameras. You know you want the good old fashion photos as well, huh…”

“Wait, slow down, Jake. What is an ion detector?”

“Natie, you wouldn’t understand if I told you.”

I hated it when he assumed that I was an idiot. A good hard frog on the arm would fix that. I punched him and punched him hard.

“Ouch! Okay, look. An Ion detector is another way to detect a form of energy. Except this one detects radiation or static electricity.”

“Oh, so why does a ghost make static electricity.”

“It doesn’t. Let me explain something to you. When a person dies, they do not go away. Nope, never, they simply transform. I know you’ve heard bunches of people talk about this before. It’s not new. Anyway, we are energy, plain and simple and when we die, our energy persists. It weakens but it does not cease to exist. We no longer have a body and therefore, we cannot speak, see, hear or anything of that nature. Are you following me so far?”

“Yes Jake. Clear as mud…I mean a bell.”

I take this opportunity to roll my eyes because I grow weary of waiting.

“Okay, so imagine your loved ones who have passed into this different state of being. They may be trapped here or simple have no interest in going somewhere else. Don’t ask me about God or anything because I want to approach this from a secular viewpoint for now. So, you’re dead, bear with me and pretend a moment, Natie. You’re dead and you wish to talk to someone who is alive. What can you do? If you cannot talk because of lack of vocal cords, then how do you get the message across?”

“I don’t know. I would have to do something or just wither away in desperation-if withering of anything was even possible.”

Jake smiled. “If you were dead, you would take that energy you had left, which was you, and you would push that energy toward the object of your communication. That is what you would do.”

“But you said the energy was weakened by death, right?”

“Right, but think of all the electronic devices! This is what they do. I have no idea how these entities learned to do this, but they did. Whatever is left of you could have a consciousness, somehow, maybe an electric powered soul or some sort which was so thin that it was vapor. I have to stop before I get to a place I am unfamiliar with and get lost trying to show you the way. Listen Natie, all this stuff serves an important role in what we are going to do. If you want to talk to her, just you wait.

“Do you think it will happen, Jake? Do you think she can come through to us?”

Jake brushed my hair from my eyes and kissed my forehead.

“I hope so. I cannot stand to see you suffer so.”