The Path of The White Magus: A Supernatural, Metaphysical Autobiography

By Albert Jackson

I didn’t want to recognize or experience the realities normally left to the boundaries of the unknown, but at an early age, I was initiated. Forced at first ... to participate and later guided on a life long journey into the world of the supernatural. Venture into my world … chronicled with frightening and surreal true-life adventures that stretch out over the first half of a lifetime. A roller coaster ride that moves across continents and back again. A parade of life lessons stamped out on a stage filled with clairvoyants, psychic realization, past life regression, mediums, the tarot, demonic forces and premonitions. All of it coming to fruition as I move up the ladder in the London art scene. If I can help, other unknowing individuals manage the minefield of this strange and intriguing world thru my experiences, then my job is done. You may not believe in this world, but it believes in you. Reality is stranger than your imagination.
This book is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it covers a lifetime of fantastic experiences. Scary, dark and troubling days, and on the other side there is an undeniable metamorphosis taking place. An astounding personal continuum of growth evolves against spell binding odds. I have witnessed great joy and great pain and come out the other side whole. Duality is a common perpetual proclivity that was skillfully integrated into this book and many parts of my existence before I was born. The universe is all about timing. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that both my raising sign and moon are squarely placed in Gemini. Good and evil, positive and negative, Ying and Yang ... cause and effect, it’s the stuff of life. It must be there for us to transmute and transcend. Without fraction and polarity there can be no growth, no action, and no stage. We have inherited a world of suffering that must be transcended through the development of pointed direction, fostering evolution to a higher level of consciousness. Some might call this spiritual state inner harmony, but then once achieved that inner harmony of self, may very well become the discordant vibration in the room, and in a world of chaos and imbalance those in harmony are sometimes looked upon, as dissidents. That’s what I want people to walk away from when they read this book. We are so much more then religions and governments or social orders say we are. We are divine, unique creatures and the universe is a menagerie. Fraught with joy and danger, and that is life! Nothing is black or white that is the grand illusion. From my prospective, everything happens in the ubiquitous fields of fluctuating shades of gray. The structure of this book and its contents are unorthodox, as it does not conform to a standard chapter and section format. Instead, the book discusses or identifies a specific supernatural or spiritual issue first, followed by a story describing one of my personal experiences with that specific supernatural or metaphysical issue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9780578124667

Book preview

Gorgons

Apparitions and Spirits

In scientific or academic discussion, the term apparitional experience is to be preferred to the term ghost in respect of the following points. The term ghost implies that some element of the human being survives death and, at least under certain circumstances, can make it-self perceptible to living human beings. There are other competing explanations of apparitional experiences.

Firsthand accounts of apparitional experiences differ in many respects from their fictional counterparts in literary or traditional ghost stories. The content of apparitional experiences includes living beings, both human and animal, and even inanimate objects. Subjects of apparitional experiences are by no means always frightened by the experience; indeed they may find them soothing or reassuring at times of crisis or ongoing stress in their lives. Spontaneous apparitional experiences tend to happen in humdrum or everyday surroundings, and under conditions of low central nervous system arousal, most often in the subject’s own home - while doing housework, for example. By contrast, subjects who visit reputedly haunted locations in hopes of ‘seeing a ghost’ are more often than not disappointed. Apparitions tend to be reported as appearing either solid or transparent; indeed they may appear in more realistic forms and in a variety of ways in order to deceive the percipient as to their hallucinatory nature; in some cases the subject only achieves insight after the experience has ended. It is unusual for an apparitional figure to engage in any verbal interaction with an individual; this is consistent with the finding that the majority of such experiences only involve one sense (most commonly the visual). My first experience with a ghost or apparition was linked to a sudden and unexplainable childhood event. But the encounter itself would later prove to be merely the catalyst or an awakening to a lifelong series of events which seemed to escalate over a period of months. At the end of the eerie series of happenings my family experienced an episode with a dark and sinister specter, ghost, or demon. I’m still not sure which definition is the most accurate. Over the years I have had numerous encounters with spirits, ghosts, and apparitions. Many times, I have crossed the line into a known paranormal hot zone. Yet, none of them ever instantaneously materialized on command to face me in some powerful corporeal form, except one. In most circumstances my awareness to supernatural energies has always been immediate and tangible. At that point, my preference is to leave them alone. But just being in the domain of something supernatural does not ensure a substantial interaction. I have found that manifestations with supernatural forces can be as reliable as a poor or fluctuating mobile phone signal. One minute there is a connection and the next nothing. I believe as much in the relevance of these entities as I do in my cell phone. Although I don’t completely understand how either actually function. But there is no apparent rhyme or reason regarding the conditions that must be met prior to meeting a spiritual being. I do know that some of these beings can be very dangerous some even life-threatening and I take issue with some of these fake television shows that pretend to see and feel spirits that really are not there. These people seem to think that you can simply call these entities out of a wall or up from a floor and have a cup of coffee with them. Interview them, capture a scary sound byte and then move to the next mysterious haunting. If a dark force has found you there are few real sources to turn to. Even with help from ghost hunters, psychics and theologians, you will most likely be left to face such encounters on your own.

Flies in the basement

This is the beginning of my personal story.

We sat dazed and exhausted. Sullen, mystified and inconsolable, I perched on the edge of the stairs leading down to the basement. We stared at the mass of tiny fractured particles which transformed the walls below us into a stark morose tapestry … they were all dead save a handful. It was impossible to fully recognize, comprehend or quantify our first real experience with a supernatural force … well at least it was for me. My brother and I were exhausted … only hours earlier we were arriving home from school. I stepped away from the carnage. Leaving my brother where he stood. I needed a moment to think. I went outside and sat down I was baffled and confused.

My day began as they always do filled with hope and anticipation. I wish I could say that was always true. Most of the time I was merely sleep-walking through various aspects of some boring weekly routine. How was I to know this wasn’t just another typical uneventful day. Nothing strange, odd, uncommon or sinister … no sign or omen to set the stage for what was about to unravel. Most things in life don’t come with a warning attached. They just come. They just happen. We were so proud of our new home, it was less than 6 months old. We were latchkey kids in those days. That’s how it was in the seventies. We were two out of thousands. We wandered off to school each morning and back again … on our own. We wore braided plastic key ring necklaces. It was the thing to do in summer camp. Everybody made one. They were mandatory. Our house keys dangled from the end of our key rings right below our chest. I wore mine under my shirt, concealed for safekeeping. My brother took the opposite approach. His necklace always managed to catch itself on other objects … bicycle bars, branches and random wandering fingers. I often wondered how he managed to survive that period without hanging himself. Like so many others fostered by the changing times of our parent’s generation. We were part of an evolving social movement. We lived in sprawling new housing developments. Everyone was migrating to the suburbs. Whole communities materialized in a matter of months. New homes seemed to appear and spring up over night as if from nowhere. New neighbourhoods stretched out for miles across wide fields. We settled in one of those modern communities just outside Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was the place to be especially if you were a military family. Just a few miles away from Ft. Carson army base, but far enough away to solidify the American dream. We rode in on the same wave as thousands of others aspiring for a better life. Home ownership, that was the dream and we got on board in a big way. We wanted to own our own home too. Coaxed primarily by my grandparents, my mother finally decided to put down roots. It was the first of two times in her life that she made a concerted effort to settle down. However, it wasn’t meant to be. We pinched pennies for over a year until we had enough money for a down payment on our first house. Utopia was just outside the city limits of Colorado Springs. In the six years since my parents’ divorce, we had lived in over a dozen cities, in several states from California to Kansas. We ended up on the open plains of Colorado; God’s country, surrounded by flat grasslands and riverbeds. Pioneers passed through what was now our suburban colony on their way to greener pastures in California. The austere Rocky Mountains towered over our western flank for as far as the eye could see. From the base of the mountains far off to the east, golden fields of grass covered the flatlands for hundreds of miles. Wide-open spaces free from ties to the city … that’s where we would live. Widefield … was in fact the name of this massive rural/suburban development. Large billboards called out to us, A world full of opportunity, a new life is waiting for you. Finally, the day came and we had our down payment. This time we arrived at the model home showroom to make a deal. There were five customizable family plans to choose from. We choose a plan under construction in phase three. The phases were strategically scattered across the horizon over gently sloping hillsides. Dwellings sprouted across the landscape in varying shapes, sizes, and colours. But there was no mistaking the continuity of these brick and wooden structures. Widefield was the archetype of the future … a contemporary atmosphere for the modern family. With a flavour and sensibility that proudly reflected the thinking of the late seventies. This was supposed to be the place where dreams were made.

I sat out on the small concrete step in front of our new home. I needed some air. I needed a moment to think. My mind was filled with chaos. I surveyed the street. They all looked so normal … row after row of brand new houses. Only a couple of houses on our street even had grass on their front lawns. Our house felt so out of place. I wondered what other mysteries and enigmas belonged to other houses on the block. Surely, we weren’t the only ones. A million questions lay unanswered before me. They would remain that way for a long time. I sat in a cloud for a couple more minutes. I was baffled and exhausted. Another minute whistled by then I got up. I made my way back inside the house. I closed the screen door behind me. Maybe it would have been better to have left it open. I joined my brother. We faced each other in silence. I looked at him and found company in our shared crusade as blood warriors. It was a miserable and dirty job. It didn’t feel like a job well done. Although I was thankful, the task was over. The long fight to defend our basement was finished. In truth, the battle royal was merely an inauguration.

We both felt sick in the pit of our stomachs. A sweet, sour wave of fear surfaced and punctuated our introduction to something dark. The puzzling scent of misfortune was starting to boil up from the ground unbeknownst to us. It began to well up from beneath the foundation of our basement floor. We went back to the unfinished room and stood on the last two steps on the stairway. Remains of the war lay below us. We both wanted to re-examine the carnage. We stood there silently — trembling. Our unfinished basement felt colder and unrecognizable from the day before. Neither one of us spoke. We just stood listing back and forth in a daze. Time passed unmeasured and unnoticed. We stared hypnotized by the graphic reality of our altered landscape. We looked on, wondering how it all happened, completely shocked by the outcome, until we heard the sharp sound of brakes squealing to an abrupt stop at the end of the driveway. It cut through the silence in our minds. We woke up, and pushed ourselves back into action. My mother’s car engine rumbled and died at the top of the driveway. The strange foggy connection was broken, and our bizarre meditation quickly faded away. Her arrival forced us back to reality, but the truth was really otherwise. She was about to receive a one-way ticket into ours. We struggled to compose ourselves. We turned and ran up the stairs to the front door … we listened for the familiar clatter of our mother’s footsteps. There was a swish and a muffled clap, as the car door crisply connected to the inner walls of the Dodge Dart’s chassis. We were still holding the tightly bound blood-ridden, frayed newspaper and old yellow flyswatter in our hands. Mom’s home, I said — as tremors of fear flashed through our respiration and worry washed over our faces. The door opened and she entered in her usual fashion. Tired and stressed out…! It was another hard day’s work at Mountain Bell. Hello she said robotically, without breaking her stride. One, two, three seconds was all it took. A deep awareness or primal survival instinct took over. Her somewhat indifferent demeanour changed suddenly. Her senses were elevated. In an instant … sharply honed intuitive mechanisms sprang to attention. Normally we had to allow her at least 15 to 20 minutes to unwind before approaching her with concerns related to the day, school … family matters, and the like. Most of the time our greetings were short and sweet, Hi — mom! Then she would pop up stairs to change clothes and de-stress. Later she would surface, and we would describe our day while she started dinner. Tuesday night was usually Hamburger Helper or a casserole. Shake & Bake on Wednesdays. However, this wasn’t one of those evenings … she broke away from her obsession for solitude. She came to an immediate — stop. She froze in mid stride. She scanned our faces … and saw the worry in our eyes. What have you two been up to? She said striking us both with laser beams. Queries and questions rang out in all directions. We also froze where we stood. Her face showed signs of stress. Curves and waves around her cheeks and brow projected directness and concern. At the same time, her voice began framing a collection of tones in direct pursuit of some kind of impending judgement. You never knew which way she might go. Sometimes she was an enigma. We did the best we could, Randy volunteered. Considering the circumstances, I said without meeting her gaze. Her eyes darted around us … she felt an odd sensation come over her. Then she knew something was very wrong. Without turning, she scanned the peripheral pockets of our living space. Next, she scanned the stairs and beyond the threshold leading to the dining room and kitchen. Why are flies coming up from the basement? A long pause filled the air … it lasted for an eternity. The fear of doom was upon us. We were afraid to speak. We were stoic; her gaze became increasingly demanding … she drilled holes through both of us. We were shocked by her sudden and accurate assessment of the situation. In seconds, she unearthed the primary source of the problem. I thought — we got — almost all of them, I said under my breath. I tried to answer in the most pleasing way possible. My brother and I stared at each other for a second. Our faces were sheepish and transparent. Then we lifted our weapons of execution, turned one after the other, and then pointed down … down toward the stairway. There was a curious look of surprise on her face. Slowly, she shifted her weight to examine the darkened steps leading down to the unfurnished, unfinished basement. Finally, we spoke up. We started to chatter at the same time … and we began to tell the story about, The flies in the basement.

One at a time, she insisted. We stopped talking then I began again. We walked home from school, like any other day. My mother listened patiently at first, then pressed me to move on. Alright, John … as if she was running out of time, let’s get to the bottom line. My mother always used business terminology to get her ideas across. She was a master at closing the deal. The hard sell was her style with a sweetheart smile at the end. She raised us to think like young businessmen. But this story was froth with twists and turns. Mom … if I skip any part of this you’ll be mad that I didn’t tell you. Her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes flashed urging me to continue and quickly fill in the gaps.

I had to walk half a mile each way to and from school. There was no bus for me. I was in the seventh grade, first-year freshman at Janitel Junior High. I was almost 13. My brother Randy was 11 … still in elementary school at Martin Luther King elementary. Randy’s school was just a few blocks away. Like I said, we were latchkey kids in those days. It was just the three of us. We had our single mother. She was a proud and strong role model. She made her own way through life, raising her two sons as a single parent. She never took a penny from anyone except maybe my grandmother on the rarest occasions. The family came to my mother when they needed money. She was smart and successful. We had recently moved in. Our new home was only a few months old. It’s funny … we saved up for a year to get a down payment on that house. The total price of our first house was $19,000 dollars. It seemed like a million back then … that was in the 70’s. My brother and I felt greatly protected by our single-parent mom. We were three against the world back then. I was the first to arrive home that afternoon. I opened the door and ran upstairs. My room was down the hall, second one on the right. My window looked out onto a weed-infested backyard. I put my books down and came downstairs to raid the refrigerator. Most days my desires drove me to consume cinnamon toast. It was an after school ritual. At some point, my brother walked in. We sat in the kitchen eating toast drinking milk and fooling around. A low humming sound kept breaking through our conversation. Soon the hum turned into a strange buzzing — rumbling — moan. We sat up on our bar stools and listened. In no time, the sound was everywhere, then the dining room table came to life. At first it was hard to tell just how many there were. Our dining room table was jet black with a highly polished reflective shiny top. What looked like small reflections or specks, were in fact — fat, hairy, lumbering flies. They popped off the shiny black octagonal dining room table. We shooed them away and kept listening for the intermittent buzzing. They zoomed around us and landed upside down underneath the Formica kitchen counter tops. We bent our ears to the sound. What is it, Randy said. Peering out the dining room window, thinking it must be coming from outside. We hadn’t yet connected the sound with the growing number of encroaching flies. Then a squadron appeared out of thin air. Streaming around us from multiple directions, they darted and spun around our heads. The buzzing sound consumed the air. We soon realized the flies were making their way out from the basement. They rapidly moved up the stairs and into the kitchen where we sat. They lit up and across the dining room wall. Their huge numbers became evident. Darting in every direction, they peppered the room like a shotgun blast. We raced down into the dimly lit basement … ready to confront the source of this strange and startling eruption. We ran head first into disaster.

We lived in typical Tri-level home. The floor plan was simple. Three levels tied together by a central stairway. You entered the house from the street and stepped on to the first floor. The main floor contained the living room, dining room and kitchen. On the top floor, there were three bedrooms and one bathroom. The lowest floor was of course the basement, which was divided into a recreation room and a utility space. After crossing the threshold, you found yourself standing in a small entryway about three feet square. The surface was bumpy and slick. The rattan and chocolate brown linoleum flooring never felt quite solid under your feet. Hazelnut brown carpeting spread out across the 14 by 18 foot rectangular living space. A light crinkling sound came up through the brand new padded carpeting as you travelled across the living room floor. The walls were spackled Eggshell white with textured popcorn ceilings. Earthy green and gold tones covered the puffy upholstered furnishings giving the dwelling a warm and cozy feel. A large wooden coffee table sat directly in front of the prized family possession. Our solid-state AM-FM, Stereo Record Player and TV console. The dining room and kitchen were on the other side of the living room wall … at the rear of the house. As I said, there were three bedrooms and one bathroom on the second floor. Just sixteen feet forward from the front door, and you reached the first half of the staircase. A sharp turn to the left, and you were up the short stack of steps in no time. One small bathroom for the three of us. It was really close to the stairs. The doorframes moulding connected with the outer edge of the top step of the staircase. That section of wood later became a dividing line. This spot was protected at all costs. The skirmish would float from the base of the staircase up to the last step, but never beyond. An unyielding spark of intransigence tempered by rage and stark defiance would come to dwell within every atom of that top step. It would become the last line of defence for the gatekeeper. When things got bad, nothing would breach that line until sunrise, once you passed that top step on the second floor. Three feet down the hall and to the right, was my brother’s bedroom. If you continued forward along the narrow-carpeted hallway, two more rooms appeared. To the right was my room. Like my brother’s, it faced the backyard. A dense forest of dark green spinney tumbleweeds had commandeered the expanse of our sizable backyard. When we moved in it was flat barren and brown. Fresh beautifully tilled soil gave way to an army of tall green and brown sentries. At night, they cast shadows that resembled strange creatures or totems. When we looked out the window past the parade of rooflines and fences, we always found inspiration from the picturesque views of the mighty Colorado Rocky Mountains. They were undeniable, powerful and majestic. It was the only section of our split-level house, which was perched directly over the unfinished basement.

There was never an incident of any consequence on the southern side of the basement. There were never any cold spots or eerie feelings on that side. One wall separated the basement into two sections. The recreation room comprised the larger portion of the space with the empty utility and storage room on the other side. My mother’s room and the bathroom resided above the safety zone (the utility and storage room). That section of the house remained unaffected almost as if it was immune or sacred. The infested section of the house was below my brother and me. It would turn out to be the harbinger of many things. It brought many unforgettable experiences, frightening bewildering episodes, and many sleepless nights. My mother’s bedroom was across from mine. The windows in her room always ushered in the first glowing rays of sunlight from each new day. Her room faced the front of the house. Like the space underneath it … it would remain unchallenged. The presence of that precious light each morning halted, for another day, an ongoing struggle with darkness. When the war began, it was an all out fight. Shear endurance — a battle of wills that went on for almost half a year. I never understood why my mother’s part of the house both upstairs and down, never seemed to manifest anything out of the ordinary. The washer and dryer were under my Mom’s room. They creaked and rattled on occasion, but the noise they made was obvious and expected. There were typical periodic shutters, followed by sporadic groans, when extra pressure sifted through the pipes. There was always the constant and soothing sound of warm air forcing its way through the heating ducts, safely sent from the furnace located in the safe section of the basement. There were of course normal environmental effects caused by wind and weather, which naturally forced the infrastructure of the house to expand and contract. All normal and understandable factors key to the integrity of any house. Nevertheless, even in light of that, every house has a soul or personality that makes it uniquely yours. Our home, like any other, was a living, breathing thing. The walls often echoed the soft rumbling vibrations sent from our hot water heater on cold winter nights. This was a brand new house. Two stairways divided the middle section of the Main floor. The first set, appeared at the far edge of the living room and went up to the second floor. As you stepped through the archway from the living room, you found yourself in the dining room. There was nothing remarkable about the space. It seemed more like an afterthought to me. A textured two-tone herringbone pattern accented the linoleum floor. Once in the dining room just past the archway you couldn’t help but notice the dimly lit entrance to the second set of stairs … leading you almost pulling you down to the basement. Beyond the dining room was a modest kitchen. A large L-shaped Formica counter-top sat underneath a solid column of low hanging wooden cupboards. They helped to create a formal division between the dining space and the kitchen. The dual kitchen sinks spread out along the exterior wall, mounted and centred directly under a large picture window, which offered charming aspects of a choppy disserted tumultuously overgrown backyard. Our small one car garage lay just beyond the kitchen door adjacent to the oven.

I continued to stammer and backtrack. There was so much to say. I had a hard time telling the story. I was afraid she might be very upset once she got down stairs. What the hell is going on, her curiosity had firmly gotten the best of her. We pointed to the basement again. I continued to ramble. She stopped at the foot of the stairs. Something foreign stirred her emotions and called out to her … strangely taunting her. Something dark was present! It made her heart race a little. The sensation was startling. She slowly marched down to the lowest floor. Carefully moving and analyzing the scene as she went. When her eyes adjusted to the room, a cold chill ran up her spine. She stood in the middle of a bloody fly infested landscape. Oh — my God, she whispered. Johnny … Randy … are you two alright? She turned to find us at the top of the stairs. Her face was sullied and fraught with disgust. Reality set in quick. Marion had squashed countless numbers of dead flies when she hit the floor. They were stuck to the soles of her fashionable brown leather, platform high-heeled shoes. She looked down at the concrete floor and wanted to scream. Thousands upon thousands of flies covered the floor. She immediately felt unclean. She would never wear those shoes again. Her internal constitution was queasy. Her skin started to crawl. We followed her down the stairs and stopped on the last step. We went no further. Marion inched back towards the stairs, hating each and every step as she went. This time she studied us more closely. She surveyed the landscape of our bodies making sure that we were unharmed. Alarms were sounding all around her. Marion’s life was a constant fight for survival. Whatever this was, it was not welcome in her home. Closer observation of her two sons only unsettled her more. We were covered from head to toe. Bits, specs and particles were everywhere. Fractured broken wings, severed heads, and crushed abdominal sections were stuck to our shirts and trousers. Repulsed, she insisted we go to the garage, remove our clothing, and shake off as much of the fly remains as we possibly could. Randy stormed halfway up the stairs. I thought we got them all, he said in soft but notable tones. His frustration whistled between us. He looked at me and realized I was probably a mirror image if himself, and sunk back into the shadow behind me. Normally my mother would be screaming. On any other day, we would be in deep trouble. However, this time her temper was held in check. Take — that — shit — off…! She spoke slowly and quietly with her teeth gnashed together. Her eyes were gleaming and stern. Then go, put on an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and meet me in the kitchen. She used her most inspired motherly voice in the last sentence, but we knew her emotional stability was lost. Her dismay was radiating out from her pores. The lines around her face betrayed her. She was unable to disguise the disgust that was churning in her gut. Her babies had wrestled with vermin. We’ll all wash up later, after we get this mess under control. She turned back to face the carnage as she made her decree. I was instructed to follow my brother up the stairs. This was a perplexing mystery, one she couldn’t fathom. It was getting late. The last moments of the day were burning away. Our new adversary was time and daylight. Both were quickly slipping past us. The sun’s comforting glow was steadily dissolving around us. The oncoming absence of natural light just made the basement feel even stranger. Marion itched all over. My mother overrode her compulsion to scratch every inch of her flesh. She wanted to submerge into a bathe of disinfectant, and scrub the germs and filth away. This event had a long-term effect on her constitution. Many years later cleanliness would almost become an uncontrollable phobia. Nevertheless, she had work to do. She stuffed her discontent into the back of her mind and followed me upstairs. She left her prized strapless platform shoes next to the step where she stood. She changed out of her work clothes, and we rendezvoused in the kitchen. We had a family meeting. The endeavour became a military operation. We discussed the best course of action. It wasn’t exactly a democracy, but she was more than willing to integrate the most effective ideas into her battle plan. After sizing up the problem, solutions were worked down to their lowest common denominator. My mother quickly barked out a series of commands. My brother and I collected all the items she requested. We were ready to conquer the basement. However, before that happened she wanted to know more. Randy and I were ready to get on with it. We were just as itchy and uncomfortable as she was. This seemed like an odd time for a re-cap, but I really hadn’t delivered the goods. Before we get started, let’s hear the rest of the story. Neither one of us moved. What happened? This time my mother voice was soft and patient. It was just what I needed to put me at ease. She dismissed her strange inclinations. She fought off the warnings from her higher senses. She backed away from her initial perceptions. She refused to give in to any creepy awkward feelings. Changing her approach, she listened with more of a matter of fact demeanour. Her mannerisms were now more controlled. Demonstrating a more straightforward and logical perspective regarding this unusual situation, I continued from where I left off. We ran down the steps to the basement, I said, reporting the story as clearly as I could remember it. There were flies everywhere. They were swarming throughout the basement — the strange thing was, the vast majority stayed in the basement. These weren’t regular flies. They were weird … strange even! Not those annoying little fruit flies you see every day hovering around a fruit stand, you know? The kind you find wiggling around apples and pears. No — not like gnats either. My mother leaned slightly forward. She listened intently trying to unravel the mystery as if it was some kind of cipher. Her facial features never changed. These were the biggest flies … I’ve probably ever seen, I said. Angry horse flies. They flew at Randy and charged at me, buzzing around us, tormenting us, biting us. Their actions seemed controlled and somehow deliberate. They flew at our faces, and covered our hands in seconds. They flew inside our clothes and landed in our ears. Oh my God, Marion interjected. Her stoic facade was starting to crumble. Sounds of distress sifted from my mother’s wooden face, slowly cracking the thin veneer of her self-imposed iron composure. We were stunned … urgency and disbelief ran through our heads. I’m not having this, not in our new home, I said to Randy. We fought back as best we could, while pursuing a hasty retreat out of the basement and up the stairs to the kitchen. How could this have happened? I broke away from the story.

I stared into my mother’s eyes asking for answers. She made no attempt to appease me. Her eyes pushed me forward. She just couldn’t get her head around it. There hadn’t been enough time to formulate a plausible and convincing, logical hypothesis. There wasn’t one fly in the house yesterday. Not one. My mother replied in agreement. That was one absolute fact, she thought … but it wasn’t enough to illuminate the enigma. She interjected several times as I went along. And suddenly the basement was filled with tens of thousands of fully grown, enormous flies, she said under her breath. This was an uncanny puzzlement. It all seemed impossible and unreal. Yet there it was everywhere. She was a witness. An unwilling observer to the violence stamped out in vibrant hues all around the room. We ran up the stairs as fast as we could, and stopped when we got past the dining room. Only a few dozen followed us on. What were we going to do? I looked at my brother. Randy was eager and animated. There are so many of them, thousands of them. Let’s kill them all, Randy said. I nodded in agreement. I told Randy to go upstairs and get some Long-sleeved shirts. I ran to the garage. I found an old newspaper. I twisted the thick cumbersome section of an old Sunday newspaper into a mallet. I formed a tight handle at one end and secured it at the bottom with duct tape. Hanging limp against the far wall of the garage was an old yellow fly swatter. I pulled it off the nail and finished working on my weapon, Randy met me with the protective clothing we needed. We dressed in the garage. The buzzing echoed up the stairs and spilled out into the kitchen. The sound persisted, passed the cracked garage door, straight out to us. It seemed to grow louder and louder. I handed Randy the fly swatter. We swung the door wide open. We ran through the kitchen, down the stairs, and into the basement. We had no idea what we were doing. Without thinking we raced head long into the blurry, swarming, frenzy of flies. I continued to recant the weird tale to my mother. Randy chimed in as I went along. We splattered their bodies all over the floor and against the unfinished walls of the basement. Exposed beams of two-by-fours stretched out along the framework of the unfinished recreation room. Thick puffy layers of pastel pink and brown insulation were tightly stapled together between consecutive beams of wood.

We blindly struck down our enemies, never stopping to rest … not even for a moment. Cutting straight through the spiralling mass, attacking the centre of the storm, we pushed the buzzing cyclone to one wall and then another. For a while … time seemed to stand still. So focused on the fight with our adversaries, we never noticed how drastically the room was changing. We hammered and crushed them against the wooden side panelling, which covered the lower half of the concrete foundation. They zoomed and spun around us. Unrelenting, they continued to engage us. Layer after layer of squashed and dismembered parts accumulated over the rough, uneven surface areas of the unfinished room. What didn’t stick to the walls or panelling fell to the floor. My brother and I were oblivious to the consequences of our handy work. As we pressed on, strange and horrific mosaic patterns emerged. Like some dark homage to Jackson Pollock … only with blood, guts and wings, instead of paint. Our canvas was the room itself. The basement took on an unmistakably … morbid beauty. Somehow our hands had been strangely guided in their fury. A black and menacing statement, had been forged — through us. Something dark and unknown was communicating with us. Presenting itself, letting us know, that it, had arrived. Over and over again … we struck the walls, floor and panelling. The buzzing swarms lasted — persisted for what seemed like hours. At last, we were done. The war was over and we put down our weapons. Then we saw what we had achieved through our aim to protect our home. Somehow, we had destroyed or vanquished all the purity and warmth that only hours ago had existed in the biggest room in our home. It was supposed to be a space of peace, comfort and recreation. We stood confounded, horrified and amazed by the results. A nasty mess lay all around us. An avalanche of despair consumed us. This wasn’t a proper event for two young boys. What at first glance looked like random patterns and markings, seemed to conform to some bizarre structural perspective. It was a tapestry littered with waves of composition and meaning. Dark faces saturated the background. Eerie shapes and mangled forms stood out … then jumped back into the mire again. Perhaps it was all in our heads. A trick of the imagination, it all seemed real enough to me. It left an indelible impression on my mind. After that day, the basement was never the same. As I said, the flies were fat … heavy … grotesque … and fast. We struck them with great force. Like fingerprints of death, they covered every inch of the basement. Thousands and thousands of flies; they stuck to the walls or settled in random piles scattered across the floor. Dead flies lay everywhere … blood splattered out across every open beam and wooden plank. Large sections of exposed type R-13 pink fibreglass insulation … were transformed. What remained, resembled gigantic strips of gooey, matted weeping flypaper. Death was all around us. Fragments of fly parts adhered to our clothes … skin and hair. We tried to shake it off. Our clothes were powdered and stained. Bits and pieces fell to the floor as we made a path towards the stairs. A strange sensation fell over me … what a sick and unnatural site, to trudge through so many flies. Too bad, we didn’t have any bug spray, I thought to myself. Then I realized we would have suffocated from the amount of repellent needed to do the job. We stood at the top of the stairs wriggling like snakes, trying to shake off the remaining muck left on our shirts, — hands and faces. This is a bad sign; an omen, I said to myself. But what did I know of omens? I was only 13. My overactive imagination stretched out trying to contemplate the meaning of this seemingly supernatural and strangely un-fortuitous occurrence. We heard your car pull up in the driveway, And we ran up to meet you.

Marion quickly analyzed the facts as they directly related to the situation. She searched her mind for a logical explanation. She couldn’t find one. So, she put the question on ice for a moment. The three of us descended down the stairs and into the basement. We watched as our mother made no dramatic display of emotion. However, we knew she was clearly disgusted with the outcome. Only God knows — she said … and then she went silent. She muttered to herself, accidentally uttering censored sections of dialogue still churning around in her head. What happened in here? Where did all these flies come from? How did so many flies get in this house. And why did they only remain in the basement? What does this all mean? There were so many questions and not one plausible answer. In the midst of her preoccupation with the how and the why, something shifted. She switched gears or shuffled her priorities. This was not the time for questions. She channelled her energies and adapted to the situation. Our course was set into motion. Set towards a purpose, she instructed us to move. Her tone felt more like a mission, or perhaps a crusade. We can’t worry about that now, she said to herself. Marion repeated her statement to us. She often sounded more like a captain then a mother. We need to clean this mess up. Throw away that nasty newspaper and fly swatter! After receiving our orders, we collected brooms, dustpans — plastic bags and buckets of hot water with soap, Clorox bleach and Pine-Sol. Everything we needed came from the utility room next door. We swept up the mounds of twisted bodies. We washed the walls and floors, filling several tall kitchen trash bags with insect waste and soiled paper towels. We cleaned every inch of that unfinished basement. It was a hateful mess and we laboured in it for hours. The three of us worked as fast as we could. Pails of soapy water were now pink from the blood of flies. Our sponges were caked with a thick pasty residue. The pungent smell of Pine-Sol and Clorox filled the air. We extracted the stains and particles from almost every surface. It took some time but eventually we washed away most of the bloody, broken material. Some of bloody spots were impossible to remove. Enduring, permanent reminders glared back at us. But, they too, would soon be forgotten. The basement was scheduled to be finished by the developer the following week. No matter how clean the recreation room looked and smelled, we all knew something unsavoury remained. Who knows why we were chosen from all the other residents of Widefield? The three of us were already hypersensitive to our environment, and to each other. I thought this was something all families shared. I didn’t realize until many years later that our particular mental bond was not commonplace. Perhaps it was born out of fear. Some early survival mechanism encoded into the three of us. Whatever it was, we all noticed the shift and measured the disturbance as a feeling. We felt other emotions, which couldn’t be defined. We were simply bewildered. There was now a noticeable and distinct difference in the temperature of the room. Our sanitation work was finally finished. We collected our cleaning materials, returned them into the utility room, and headed upstairs. Our eyes darted around each other as we moved forward. Sensing … and knowing … exactly, what the other two were thinking, but none of us chose to justify our feelings with words. We stripped out of our cloths once we reached the main floor. Phase two of the clean up began. In truth, the process more closely resembled a hazmat decontamination protocol. We repeatedly scoured our extremities in the tub. Hot soapy water and mountains of thick foamy suds washed through every nook and cranny. Marion supervised the operation and insisted on scrubbing both of our heads thoroughly, herself. Then it was her turn. She washed the tub with Soft Scrub and Lysol twice, before starting her own cleansing regiment. Randy and I got dressed, and quietly watched television in the living room. The basement was off limits until she could figure out what was wrong with it. Thirty minutes later, she emerged and made dinner. It was tuna casserole night, and she stuck to the schedule. She opened two cans of ‘Chicken of the Sea.’ Some water was added to a box of Tuna Helper, thirty minutes in the oven and you had a meal. We ate in silence. Randy inhaled two portions of ‘Tuna Helper casserole,’ and returned to finish an episode of Gunsmoke. I didn’t care about the TV. I heard it in the background, and I wasn’t compelled to move. I couldn’t get the basement out of my head. My mother wasn’t really hungry either. But the idea of wasting food never set well with her. I just sat there, pushed rehydrated peas around my plate until she let me up from the table. Thirty minutes later, it was time for bed. Mom was obsessive compulsive long before there were terms like OCD. Each night we checked the stove, all the doors, windows and locks, twice. Sometimes three times before climbing up the stairs, and getting into bed. The truth is, single women just have so much more to be afraid of. Men aren’t worried about cracking sliding glass doors or windows. Single women face hazards men just don’t ever comprehend. I was programmed with lots of those fear based survival strategies. At any rate, to our good fortune, we all slept that night. However, that would not be our fate in the weeks and months to come.

The next day my mother called the contractors, the Colorado building association, and the Widefield housing development group. She gave them an earful. Her voice rang out to every corner of the house. There were two phones in our home. The olive green hammerhead, push button desk phone. It sat on the nightstand in my mother’s bedroom. The second, a brand new canary yellow upright glowing push button model. It was mounted on the kitchen wall next to the refrigerator, beside a large pushpin riddled, cork information board. An incredibly long sixteen-foot elastic cord dangled underneath it. It easily stretched out to reach the centre of the living room, down to the middle of the basement, or into the garage. Most people in our neighbourhood only had one phone, and that was a cumbersome outdated rotary model. But, since my mother worked for ‘Mountain Bell’ we had cutting edge technology. My brother and I sat at the top of the stairs. We overheard some of the other party’s dialogue. My mother had a habit of repeating her opponent’s side of the argument during critical part of the conversation. Words like shoddy workmanship and use of poor materials were forcibly projected through her end of the phone. How could thousands of flies hatch over night? The phone conversation continued in earnest. I don’t have a logical reason for the fly infestation, my mother replied. That’s your job, this is a construction issue, you figure it out, her patience had dried up. She continued to define aspects the event in graphic detail. I have several plastic bags of that shit in my garage! There was a short pause. She took a deep breath and gathered her thoughts. Someone is going to fix this mess and finish my basement on time. The developers claimed that what she had described was impossible. There was another pause. Marion shifted her stance and prepared to fire back. The official on the other end immediately recanted, realizing that he was only adding fuel to the fire. Another short pause invaded the air. He rephrased…. Unless, or quite possibly by no fault of our own, Miss Jackson, this all happened by some strange compulsion of nature. My mother listened only because she needed a rational answer. She hated unsorted situations. Perhaps Miss Jackson — thousands of eggs were laid inside the insulation while the house was still under construction. My mother weighed the explanation in her mind. It sounded somewhat logical and more plausible than something supernatural. The voice on the other end of the line continued. Marion had nowhere to go with that conclusion. It sounded possible. Maybe he was right. On the other hand, maybe it was just some bullshit that fell off the top of his head. She paced back and forth across the floor … kneading her feet into the carpet as she went. Turning his theory over and over in her head. Mr. Wilson, she said, coming to an abrupt stop. Obvious question marks in her voice filtered back to him. You can call me Bill — Miss Jackson, doing his best to smile over the phone. Alright, Bill — how the hell — could that happen, she replied. Marion was still upset. Bill quickly recognized her softer, more metered tones. Marion needed answers, and gave small concessions to his quick-witted, calculated guess. Some of the wind had fallen out of her sails. But, her rebuttals remained righteous, angry and sharp. Yes, she was anxious to fix the problem. However, it was more than that. Her wonderful new house suddenly felt wrong. Marion swallowed hard and defied a considerable portion of her internal intuition. She reconsidered the developer’s assessment. She hoped she would find an answer that equally suited her head as well her heart. The conversation was winding down. A more suitable explanation was out of reach for now. She sat down in the living room, on the far edge of her favourite green and gold stripped couch. With both hands pressed against her head cupping the phone. Marion replied. Someone’s coming out to look at my property. The developers agreed and the conversation was over. Why and how they all happened to hatch on the same day forever remained a mystery? Contractors from the housing development came out the next day and they had no plausible explanation for all the flies in our basement. No one could explain why the flies were so big … full-grown … the size of horseflies. None of them had ever seen a sudden infestation of this magnitude. Bill’s nesting theory was a joke. They knew it, we knew it. In the end, Widefield Homes brokered a deal with my mother. That was a mistake. Making deals is what my mother did for a living. We got an upgraded tile floor and their premium ceiling package for the basement as a consolation. As far as they were concerned, the fly mystery ended on a happy note.

It’s hard for everyday people to imagine these days, just how scary the presence of something so unknowable can be. I wasn’t one for demonic movies like the Omen. The very idea of such things gave me nightmares. I did not see the movie ‘The Exorcist’ until I was eighteen. I did my best to back out, even then it was peer pressure, not curiosity that got me into the theatre. None of that mattered. I was still affected by it none the less. I did hear the theme music to the movie, but not by choice. Strangely, it found me. I will never forget the name. It was Tubular Bells. I can still see the album cover in my head. The first time it played on the radio, the haunting melody drifted down to me from the kitchen … like a cloud of smoke. In those days, the radio stations played a mix of everything. Everyone listened to our local novelty, solar powered daylight only radio station. They crammed Country, Rock, R&B, and Pop all together. Every variety of popular music was sampled and expressed. Our small beige rotary dialled radio sat on the kitchen counter against the wall next to the sink. It spread the music across the house. The tri-level design of our home seemed to enhance the acoustics of all manner of sounds. I was downstairs in the basement on the other side, the safe side. In the utility room, that’s where we had our washing machine, dryer, water heater, and furnace. It’s also where we stored all of our extra stuff. Boxes filled with this or that, old clothes, broken toys and Christmas stuff. My mother’s room and the bathroom were directly above my head, hovering soundly on the neutral side of the basement. I remember hearing the melody tumble and dance throughout the house like spider webs, up one wall and down the next. It travelled through the air as if it had a purpose. Down the stairs across the dark side of the basement, it collided with the wall