The Eagle and the Rose Page 2

  I never met my maternal grandmother, as she passed over when I was only six weeks old, nor have I ever “seen” or “spoken” to her in my capacity as a medium. She was only in her early fifties when one day she collapsed and died, apparently without warning. Her name was Eliza, and although I have never seen a photograph of her, I am told that I look very much like her. My mother was her only child, and from tales that I have been told, Eliza must have had a difficult time bringing her up. My mother was, as a child and as an adult, a very strong-willed and determined person.

  But Eliza had another problem, one that must have seemed too great to overcome. She thought she was mad.

  Grandmother Eliza used to hear voices whispering in her ear and all around her. Voices of people who weren't there. Voices, but no people. These voices would speak to her—and only her, for nobody else could hear them. So persistent were they, so clear, and so afraid did Eliza become, that she signed herself voluntarily into the local psychiatric hospital—The Towers, in the middle of Leicester.

  How often she had treatment for her mental state I don't know. I do know that not only was Eliza convinced that she was on occasions mentally deranged, but my mother was of the same opinion.

  Now, here I was, a young girl with what? A vivid imagination? Perhaps seeing faces or hearing voices was my way of getting attention, or could it be that in addition to my grandmother's features I had inherited her madness? Even as I write this passage I can still hear my mother's voice screaming at me—whenever she was frustrated because I hadn't perhaps behaved “normally,” or when I had done something that was, to her way of thinking, “strange”—“You'll end up like your grandma … in The Towers!”

  Although this was said partly as a threat to make me “behave,” I think my mother believed I would indeed end up in this notorious mental hospital. Even as I grew older and learned not to tell people about the things I saw and heard, my mother's suspicions about my state of mind remained with me. The threat of madness was there, always in the back of my mind.

  It is true that things said often enough, particularly in childhood, stay with you for the rest of your life, and my mother's words, “You'll end up like your grandma,” were to haunt me for a very long time. Whenever something strange or inexplicable happened, this specter of madness would rear its head. It was only my involvement with my church and my belief in God and in Jesus Christ that helped me hold on to my sanity. There were many times in my life that those dreaded fingers of fear would clutch my heart and squeeze tight, taking my breath and making me believe that I must surely be insane.

  Growing up was torture, always being afraid, never daring to tell, and, naturally shy and sensitive, I grew timid and more nervous as the years passed.

  At sixteen I fell in love. My John was twenty-two, gentle, loving, and a dream come true. We were engaged to be married on my seventeenth birthday. My father disliked him intensely and had thought in the beginning that as I was so young the relationship would fizzle out. It didn't. But then one year after we were engaged my father banned John from the house and made our lives together impossible.

  John had been my protector, my strength. Now I was alone and afraid again. Afraid of my “gift,” afraid of my father, afraid of life.

  I was nineteen years old when I met and married my husband, a man my father approved of. He seemed stable, secure. He told me the things I needed to hear—and he seemed also to be my best means of escape. I couldn't have been more wrong.

  Still I hadn't told him or anyone of my gift, not even John, whom I had loved dearly, still loved; still I had explained to no one about my visions and voices, those voices that would come to me in the night.

  Less than one week after I was married, I discovered my husband had taken a girlfriend to bed just two days before the wedding. That set the scene for the next fourteen years, and although there were some happy times, I knew that I had escaped one emotional prison for another.

  In my early thirties, with a ten-year-old daughter, many things in my life had changed. I had been deserted—perhaps “abandoned” is more exact—by my husband, who believed that responsibilities were all right as long as they weren't his. Responsibilities included me, our daughter, the house, financial affairs, and so on.

  In all those years, I had never spoken to him of my experiences with the spirit world, or of my fears concerning my sanity. I had worked so hard and for so long to live a “normal” life, to be a “normal” human being. I just wanted to “fit in,” to be like everyone else, and had I talked to him or anyone else of my gift, which to me at that time was not a gift but a curse, I would have been admitting to them that I was not normal at all, but some kind of freak. Many times while I was married I would wake in the night, shaking and terrified and needing the light on, having had yet another scary “nightmare,” but only one time in all the years that we were together did my husband witness more than this.

  I had arranged a small dinner for my husband's boss—they were in the fashion business—and a friend of mine, Susan, who made up the foursome. It was a simple affair, relaxed and easy. I had known Maxwell, my husband's employer, for some time, and this was not the first time he had been to our home. It was over coffee that he began to tell a story, unbidden by the rest of us, of how a few years earlier he had visited by chance a “spiritualist” church. He told how he had stood at the back of a small room filled with people, strangers he had never met before, and how a man at the front of the crowd had pointed him out and told Maxwell of his life and of his grandfather, and how he had revealed some of the more intimate details of Maxwell's life that no one there could possibly have known.

  We listened, intrigued but skeptical of his story. Then he turned his attention to me. “Do you believe in life after death?” he asked.

  Wary, but wanting without knowing it to talk, I said very carefully, “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you believe that someone is watching over and protecting your three-year-old daughter?” Maxwell then asked.

  Again, warily, I answered that I did, and when he asked me who I thought that this might be, I replied that it could possibly be my husband's grandfather who was taking care of my child.

  With that he jumped up from the table and asked for a pack of cards. He took hold of my hand and led me into the sitting room, my husband and friend following, and told me that he could help me find out who my daughter's “guide” might be. Now I was nervous, but Maxwell was my husband's boss, a guest in my home, and I was naturally respectful toward him. I allowed him to continue with what I thought was his silly game.

  He sat me do at one end of the sofa, and he sat opposite me at the other end. In one hand he held the pack of cards and in the other he held my husband's grandfather's wedding ring, which he had asked my husband for. As I watched, now quite intrigued, Maxwell cut the cards and placed the two halves of the pack facedown, side by side, and then he placed the wedding band between the cards and just in front.

  “Now,” he said, glancing up at me, “I want you to concentrate hard on the ring. There will be on the top of these”—he tapped both piles of cards with his finger—“either a jack, a king, or a queen. The ring,” he continued, “will tell you which pile to choose, and if, when you have chosen, the top card is a king or a jack, you will know that it is a male spirit who watches over your daughter. If, on the other hand, I turn up a queen, well then, that will tell you that there is a female spirit, possibly a grandmother, who watches over your child. Concentrate on the ring,” he said again, “and it will show you which pile of cards to choose.”

  I thought he was mad. I had never heard such rubbish. Did he really expect us to believe this, or was it a joke, an elaborate hoax, and I the unknowing “straight man”? Well, I thought, he's the boss, so just humor him. So it was with these thoughts that I looked at the ring.

  Only seconds passed … and the ring moved. I blinked my eyes shut—imagination, I told myself—and opened my eyes again. Seconds passed and again the ring moved �
� or seemed to move, over to the left. This is ridiculous, I thought, angry with myself for getting caught up in Maxwell's drama. Then the ring moved again, and before I knew what was happening I was caught up in a drama all of my own. Something, some power, had seized hold of my body, and a huge weight seemed to be crushing down on me, pushing me down into the sofa. I was paralyzed, just couldn't move, couldn't escape this tremendous force, but my mind was screaming out in sheer terror. Slowly then, very slowly, it began … that creeping feeling I had had so many times before when, as a child and as an adult, I had lain terrified, unable to move, as some unseen force tried to pull my face away from me. I sat on the sofa, tears pouring down my face, unable to move, even to blink, trying desperately to lift my hands to my face to protect myself, screaming in my head, God help me, please someone help me!

  My husband and our friend Susan had both leapt up from their chairs and rushed to help me even though I had uttered not one sound; they had watched as my face had drained completely of color, and my distress was obvious to them. Maxwell's arm shot out, his voice commanding that I not be touched.

  I could see and hear all of this even as I sat, my terror mounting, as the terrible weight seemed to increase and push me down even farther. Maxwell's voice was coming across to me, quietly but insistent, trying to reassure me that I was all right, that he would help me … but the truth was that he was totally out of his depth. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, but he remained calm, although my husband was yelling at Maxwell to “do something.” I was totally involved now with my own struggle as I tried yet again to lift my hands to my face, which seemed to be being peeled off like a mask. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the force was gone. The pressure left me and my hands flew to my face. Now I was so scared that I really cried. Susan fetched me a drink, and slowly I forced myself to “feel” normal. Maxwell took me for a walk around the garden, and the fresh night air brought me round and I felt so much better. But when I went back indoors and everyone wanted to talk about what had happened, I was so scared that I just could not bring myself to tell them. Twice more during that same evening I momentarily had that awful creeping sensation, as if my face were slowly being peeled away, and I just burst into tears.

  My husband, Maxwell, and Susan had all been witness to an unexplainable and paranormal experience. They had all noticed that the temperature had dropped and the atmosphere in the room had changed dramatically during the hour that this event had taken place. The next morning Susan called to see if I was okay and told me how strange I had looked and how scared she had been; but apart from that one time neither she, Maxwell, nor my husband ever mentioned the incident again. It was brushed away, too difficult to deal with, too scary to contemplate, and the possibilities of what “it” might have been, oh no … no one in his right mind would ever want to consider.

  And of course, it could just be that I was more than a little crazy, more like Grandma Eliza, than I dared think. When would it be my turn … when would they take me for treatment … when would my inherited madness be discovered? Never, I resolved, never; so I too swept the incident away, along with all the others that I had had over the years. It was just a game that had gone badly wrong, and I was never to talk about it again … until much later—much, much later, several years, in fact. And it was even later still when I came to understand what it had all meant.

  After fourteen years of my husband's womanizing and continual financial messes, I was driven to seek a divorce. Not being able to understand that I had simply had enough of a one-sided marriage, he swore that he would see me starve before he paid me a penny to support either me or Samantha, our daughter.

  He very nearly succeeded … but not quite. We didn't starve, but it was no thanks to him.

  There are many kinds of loneliness in the world, but living with someone and being lonely is for me the worst kind. To lie in bed next to somebody and not be able to reach out and touch that person, not to talk or share the little things in life, seems a worse fate than having no one at all.

  One day I came home to find him gone, and the money with him. All that was left of this tattered relationship was a string of debts and a ten-year-old child. The debts took years to settle and caused me much worry and heartache, but it was worth it just to be free at last. Although at one time I must have loved this man, to be rid of the weight of unrest and insecurity caused by his lying and cheating was wonderful.

  My now ex-husband kept his word about not supporting us, and neither my daughter nor I have seen or heard from him since that time.

  But I am the lucky one. Samantha and I have a very special and close relationship, and there is a tremendous feeling of love and affection between us. If I had to go through the pain and sadness of that time again in order to have my daughter, I would do it gladly.

  So living now in the north of England, where I had moved with my husband some five or so years earlier, I found life was by no means easy. I was an emotional wreck, everything seemingly in tatters around my feet, and struggling financially. On top of all that, my visions, voices, and strange sensations, which had followed me through my life, started to become more vivid and to occur more frequently than before. I was once sitting alone in the living room at home, reading a book, when I looked up to see a man sitting opposite me on the settee. He didn't say a word, just stared at me intently. I heard myself talking to him, quite naturally, and remember thinking later that I must be mad. I knew that he was what some would call a ghost, even though he looked just like you or me and not as one would imagine a ghost to look. No wispy bits around the edges, not a bit pale or illuminated, just very ordinary. I knew with that telling instinct born to me that he was of another world, not because of his looks, but because of a recognition I find impossible to describe, the recognition of a soul free of earthly restrictions, of a soul born free.

  Another time I woke up in bed to find two strangers, men of the spirit world but so real they could have been burglars, standing just inside the bedroom door. Again, not a word was said; they just looked at me. I scrambled up, struggling in my terror for the bedside lamp, which I switched on. When I looked back they were gone, and I was left shaking and alone.

  My terrible fear of the dark stems from my childhood experiences. I still remember how I would hide underneath the bedclothes, sweating and trembling with fear, to escape from those awful faces. My mother refused to give in to what she considered to be my overactive imagination, and never did she allow me the comfort of a light. I was never to recognize those faces; never to know if they were the same or different each time; never to recognize the voices, whispering, calling; never to understand what was being said or what they wanted. I could only pray that they would go away. After I left home I always slept with a light to comfort me.

  This particular night, when my two “visitors” came, the landing light was on and the bedroom door was ajar. But instead of the light giving me a feeling of security and comfort, it seemed to add a ghostly glow to the whole scene, and I was really scared. I remember scrambling around in the direction of the bedside table, trying to locate the lamp, which I knew was there … somewhere. When I eventually found it and switched it on, the men had disappeared and I was left all alone, wondering, Was it a dream? In my heart of hearts I knew that it had been much too real, that I hadn't been dreaming. I lay awake for the rest of the night, terrified that “they” might be back—and what then?

  Many times I have been awakened in the early morning hours, experiencing a sensation I can only describe as a feeling of having two faces—as if I were wearing a mask that someone, or something, was attempting to pry from my face. The physical sensations are so real as to make my face seem misplaced or lopsided. Always I was left shaking and terrified.

  From childhood to adulthood I lived with uncertainty, never knowing when the shadows would loom close or if they would overtake me. No matter how much I tried to understand what was happening to me, I was confused. No matter how much I then tr
ied to ignore these strange visitations and happenings, I couldn't.

  I grew up in two worlds, one a world of ghosts and specters, as real as I was, the other a world where what was real was always something you could explain, or touch or see and show others so that they too could see. One world was terrifying, the other cruel and unhappy.

  I can remember as a child my mother saying, about herself, quite often and usually from sheer frustration, “I must be going mad!” I know that many people, including myself, have used the same expression either in jest or frustration or perhaps for some other reason. One thing I found during this strange and lonely period of my life was this: If you genuinely believed, as I did, that you really were cracking up, that your mental state was such that someone might just turn up to “put you away,” that you were in fact “going crazy,” you didn't tell a soul!

  I was now thirty-four years old, and from the first time I can remember I had been “haunted.” Real or not real, debate as you will, I was caught up in a dimension of life that exceeded that which was considered by most as normal. Afraid and alone in my confusions, misunderstood and misunderstanding, my reality was different from that of anyone I knew, my judgments clouded and my sanity definitely in question.

  Now on top of all else, my husband had disappeared. Apart from my youngest sister, my family was totally nonsupportive as I struggled to raise my daughter. My state benefit was low, and I was forced for a while to work part-time behind a bar, where I had to ward off the constant and unwanted attentions of the lecherous landlord until I could not stand it any longer and left.

  With a very limited education, having left school at age fifteen to work in a ladies’ dress shop, I had no job qualifications and no time to go back to school or train for anything. The year was 1980, my daughter was now ten years old, and I was not yet divorced, as no one could find my husband. I was separated and “crazy” … most definitely, to my mind, crazy.