A Bright House

Strange brew. Anticipation relaxation. The place Jenny occupied directly after speaking with Ray, and for each day until he would return, reappear, affirm that the universe hadn’t selected her for special harsh treatment. She luxuriated in the bathroom prior to bedtime. Filled the tub to the base of the ornate circular drain just below its gently beveled upper lip, hummed softly as she disrobed to climb in. The ensuing days would alternate between a crawl and sprint, but it was the falling away of emotional weight that held her rapt. Down into the hot water Jenny submerged to her shoulders, tilted her head back against the porcelain, closed her eyes.

She let go a deep exhale that seemed born from the moment she realized there was a resilience to hope that she had given up for dead. When was that realization? The kitchen window hug after Ray had uttered his impossible “I could love you”? Their quick comfort in the morning after sharing her bed? She soaked into the sensation of soothing water warmth and knew there would never be a pinpointing of the moment that she let go of the anger that had flourished within her.

Afterward, as Jenny drifted between states of consciousness on her bed, she fell into a vision that crept up behind her eyes to overtake their view of the darkened room. It was sweet to the point of painful. Ray on his right shoulder, turned to face her on the pillow beside him. Jenny in a mirror image of his posture, her eyes open and his closed. They both had placed their respective right and left hands, palms up, beneath the cheek of the other. Where their forearms touching radiated a wonderful warmth that bespoke “safety”, it was the palms of their hands she admired. The simple loving tenderness. In the vision, Ray’s eyes remained closed at first when his tears began to glisten and slide free. She reacted instantly, strongly, crying eyes-open with the greatest relief and joy she had ever lived. It was the hot touch of their first tears, both upon upturned palms in one kiss of time stilled, that caused him to open his eyes into her gaze.

Another long exhale, straight from the heart, and Jenny’s exquisite vision fluttered away like a promise about to be kept. She sent out a passionate thank you to no particular entity and bid Ray Townes a spoken “good night”.

For Ray in his childhood home on the belly of the vast Canadian prairies, Jenny was less on his mind than the missing persons case he would soon be deeply involved with. They were the most difficult of his professional tasks. Emotions ran at fever pitch and because he was an empath, they took a toll on him. Even a “safe” country seemed to crawl with monsters who were always ready to pounce when a window of opportunity opened. It festered within Ray’s psyche, he being essentially a loving gentle soul, that his fellow man could go so awry. These were the cases that he hardly ever refused but always regretted. He didn’t enjoy his “vision”, could never take solace in that his being correct might lead to “closure” for those left behind to suffer and forever ask “why?”

One particular cold case file had driven Ray to the brink of halting his clairvoyant work altogether because the mother of the missing child had ended her own life on the day of what would have been her little girl’s birthday. Townes had just been invited to look at the case... had seen visuals of an industrial park locale with a wide muddy river flowing sluggishly behind it, and began to feel very strongly that he could pinpoint the area where a monster had hidden a monstrous act... but to what avail? The mother finally cracked under a strain that few can know, and in doing so she triggered all of Ray’s own fissures.

Weeks later when the tragic tangible evidence was found where Ray had described his visions, there would be no closure. “Closure” was an entirely lame combination of letters forming a word without heft or healing for the haunted who remained behind, riding the rail of bloodlust rage and ruthlessly emptied hope for such a world. These monstrous once caught, then housed and fed, given reading materials and television to watch, able to obtain recreational drugs, able to go on living, having sex, feeling pain-free hours, still knowing a modicum of freedom even behind bars... and “out there”, the trail of their rotted souls indelibly etched across landscape and family hearts broken.

This opened an inner abyss for Townes. It forced him to look past his shield, down into depths that were fathomless. He was a proponent of give and you shall receive. His life’s work would be to use the unusual abilities of his mind for the betterment of others. That his farm realized enough profit to give him time and room to act as a spiritual philanthropist, fed his desire to continue along that path. His fees for assisting in cold case files were always donated to various charities, most of them set up to benefit the loved ones left in an awful wake...

Not to suggest that Ray Townes bore the ingredients of an angel. When that abyss was shown to him, drawing him back through his own loss and childhood mysteries wrapped around his mother’s curious behavior, Ray knew the taste of his own darkness. Foul, bitter, rancid darkness. Into that vacuumed space between who he wished to be and who he could easily become, Ray recognized that he could kill the beasts. He could sit next to their cell doors and feed them visuals out of their own malfunctioning brains until they willed their own hearts to stop beating. The toll it would extract from Ray, however... the meaningless finality in it. This was what terrified the loving spirit of Townes; that monsters threatened the very fabric of why we live.

Though it has been known to happen, what hope is there to reform demons? The ones with contrition only for their having been caught and taken from the trajectories of sickening waste. Where so many choose to look away from these bleaker aspects of the human condition, simply because they must, Ray Townes had chosen a path that would place him directly into the morass. There were, of course, so many more prominent upsides to how he used his “gift”... immediate positive energy exchanges.

Helping another to see, comprehend, manage the self-opening potential, carried a rich reward for him. It settled down his unquiet half. The deep-set voice that whispered from its wellspring of pain and loss, a seductive rasp aimed at vulnerable moments. Hearing Jenny over the phone had soothed his unrest over the upcoming trip back to Ontario, and into the cold brutality of the lesser aspects of humanity and its place on Earth. People had simply vanished. Within close proximity of one location in an otherwise nondescript tract of rural land, they had left the face of this reality. It was already disturbing to him. He had the gut intuition of it being highly unusual within the context of his professional experiences.

Ray looked at the phone and his mind returned to Jenny. Her energy was very appealing to him; sweet, and vulnerably so. He was suddenly as attracted to her trust of him as he was the way she carried herself. Because he was a mind always seeking the tethers of connection, seeing the importance of synchronicity, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering about this improbable bolt from the blue of chance that was a call from the Ontario Provincial Police seeking his assistance. What odds. He finds himself returning so soon, mere days, after the visit to Toronto?

The presence of metaphorical doors so vividly felt as he went to crack a beer that would hopefully take off enough edge so that he could sleep. There were new or perhaps ancient routes of possibility lying in wait for Ray and Jenny, some created by their energy of choices, others always there and quite possibly occupied by their union even as he tilted the cold beer bottle. Ray had little doubt that his nudge to eat at the Toronto diner had been of huge importance. He was thankful to be obedient to the pushes from within, for often when he ignored them or lacked emotional energy to follow, it became quickly apparent that he had missed something vital. “Here’s to what happens next” he spoke to the space around him with a raised bottle and an open heart. A heart that had been broken but not once defeated.

Elsewhere along the strings and strands of all that is and ever was, the lost man in Goderich has fomented a fixation upon the dreams and answers represented through the thunderbird. “Rich” continues to make polite minor friendships, does his job diligently, retains a deep gratitude for the lifesaving generosity of Roy “Over Easy”, and sinks into a deep quiet despair. His true identity is linked to a vast unknown. He vows to follow any sign that may be sent to this world of the walking. The astral dimension has unlocked what must surely reveal itself in the realm of his control, where he can physically step through the doorway and back into who he was and wants to be again. These months flow into each other. Spring becomes Summer becomes the threshold of Autumn. Rich goes through the motions and senses to his core that answers are imminent.