The Sojourners

Well, this month has certainly flown by as I am getting ready to post my last paranormal yarn for Halloween Month. “The Sojourners” is a story that was first published in Dragonflies: Journeys into the Paranormal. It is the tale of a mother and daughter living in a turn-of-the-century haunted Virginia homestead. “The Sojourners” is a piece I wrote some time ago when I was in rural Virginia, as it was, living in an old Virginia farmhouse that I have little doubt was indeed haunted. I do hope you enjoy it, and I want to take the opportunity to wish everyone out there peace and calmness of mind during these trying times. After all, there is no greater treasure in all the world than peace in one’s heart.

Take care and enjoy the rest of this Halloween season.

Everything leaves behind an impression — a footprint, the pressure of someone’s hand, fingerprints, scratches on a floor, reflections in a mirror, voices raised in anger. Somehow, an impression remains, and if it is strong, there is no erasing it except by wiping the slate clean.

Without understanding, there can be no growth. But I’m not sure that there is any understanding here. So starting at the beginning seems impossible, perhaps improbable. The beginning began long ago, long before me, most of us, I think. But the ending came just two days ago. The paper said that the storm came relentlessly, pounding along the Virginia coast. The devastation to its small counties had not been seen in over half a century. And I didn’t have to read it or hear it to know that nature’s rage had completely enveloped that farmhouse and reclaimed it utterly. There could be no other end, I think. And now, perhaps there can be hope again. What had been has been wiped away.

But our beginning there, or shall I say interlude, was less dramatic but perhaps intense enough in its own right.

My daughter Cathleen’s eyes were as big as saucers and as blue as the sky. They took in everything and, at the tender age of twelve years, took no prisoners. “As you can see, Mrs. McCallister.”

“Ms,” I stated abruptly. It wasn’t a correction I had to point out often in the city. But here in the heart of rural, although granted coastal, Virginia, I shouldn’t be surprised at the chauvinistic attitude directed at a single woman with a young child.

“Sorry, then, Ms. McCallister. As I said, my wife and I are very interested in preserving the integrity of the homestead.”

“Homestead, Mr. Hawkton?”

His gaunt face stretched wider with the perpetual grin that seemed forever planted on his visage. “The house was my parents’ and has been in the family for over a hundred years.”

I attempted a smile, but I was hot and irritated by our new prospective landlord, no matter how much I wished it were otherwise. “Well, that being the case, I wonder why you would want to rent it at all.”

His grin dimmed a bit. Hadn’t he mentioned something about being a salesman of some sort? He certainly had that demeanor. Everything appears pleasant, but all is a thin veneer beneath a much coarser core. “Well, you know how it is, Anna.” It was irksome that he’d taken liberties with my name. “Necessity drives us all. Candace, my wife, and I need to supplement our incomes, so we rent out my parents’ home. But only to people who we feel will care for it in the same way we do.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Cathleen perched on a stack of boxes. Her arms were crossed with an expression screaming how bored she was. She flipped her long reddish-blonde hair behind her ears and rolled her eyes. With reluctance, I refocused on Samuel or, rather, Sam Hawkton. “Well, Cathleen and I are rather quiet people.”

Again, the insincere grin and then that heavy Virginia drawl that I found difficult to decipher at times, “Yes, I know that, Anna.” And then he paused, almost hesitantly, and I was alerted by a keen awareness that had plagued me ever since I was a small child. “There is one thing. The third bedroom upstairs.”

I nodded. “The one with the furniture in it?”

“Yes, we’d like to keep it just as it is.”

I paused for a minute, trying to soak in his words. “You mean you won’t be clearing it out for our use?”

There was a substantial awkward silence. Even Cathleen, on her stack of boxes, straightened up, sensing something of interest had popped up. “Well, Anna, if it becomes a problem for you, we can store the furniture later. But right now, seeing that there are only two of you, I’d prefer to leave things as is.”

I frowned, feeling an anger boiling up. But then, moments on its heel, the pragmatic side of my nature stepped in, informing me that I didn’t want to take the trouble of tracking down another house at this point, rebooking a moving truck, and so on. “Well, I have to tell you, Mr. Hawkton,” struggling to modulate my voice. “I find this highly irregular, but at present, I suppose, I’m willing to leave things as they are.”

Again, the veneer of pleasantry. “I appreciate that, Anna. I thought you’d understand. This is a special place, and I know you and little Cathleen will enjoy your time here.”

The Hawkton family lived some miles away from us. We rarely saw them, which suited Cathleen and me, for in truth, we craved solitude or at least the company of those who thought and felt as we did. This actually was harder to find than most would imagine. Cathleen and I lived somewhere deeper than the level most perceived. Even we didn’t realize the extensive scope of this truth until this particular winter had passed.

But the first month in the house was pleasant enough. Cathleen worked on her studies. I had begun home-schooling her several years before. And after quite a dry spell, I began to paint again. The whole aim of this exercise in isolation was to find new, more internal inspiration for my work and perhaps to take time to heal from old emotional wounds that had long been neglected. In any case, it was an adjustment for both of us to make, but my daughter was adaptable, loyal, and brilliant, as she had shown time and time again in the years after the structure of our lives had fallen apart. And me? Sometimes, I felt more like the child trying to figure it all out.

Then, in a very short span, as the Autumn descended upon us and the leaves began to change, everything that seemed constant and reliable also began to change.

September 22, 2004

Cathleen is asleep in the next room. I read her journal entry today. She wrote of the dull color that the leaves had changed and the small black dog from the house on the other side of the church. The dog has sort of adopted us, often accompanying us on our afternoon strolls. I know Cathleen is lonely, and I feel guilty, but right now, I don’t know.

I put my pen down. My daughter and I had made a bargain to each write a journal entry every day, but mine just seems to dribble down into maudlin sentimentality or, worse, deep parental guilt. Painting was definitely my medium, not writing.

This certainly wasn’t the life I intended for us. And I didn’t plan for Cathleen’s father to betray and abandon us, so much for good intentions.

In that instant, almost as a reply to my destructive thoughts, I felt a coolness rush through the room. I imagined it was probably the air conditioner kicking on. But it startled me, perhaps more so because, at the moment, I was sitting in the third bedroom—the one with the old walnut furniture.

And then there was more. A scent drifted in like old pressed flowers lingering about with just a tinge of fragrance. My hand began to tingle, and without thought, I picked up the pen again, not having a clue what I could write. I let it touch the paper, and it was the first time, I believe now, that I felt the contact of another’s mind.

The script that emerged from this experiment was not my own but contained and precise.

It bothers me that he is so handsome with his lively dark hair and sapphire-colored eyes. I do not like not having a choice, but that is how it is with him. As though he is the piper, and I simply follow. But nothing and no one is like him, and everything I want fades away when he is near. To be so caught when all my family tells me it is wrong. It is not fair, but I cannot stop.

I let the pen drop down onto my journal. I could see him clearly in my mind, his dark blue eyes and longish hair. And he was laughing, laughing at us—or I mean me. The next day, I began to paint him.

“I don’t know, Mom. He looks like trouble to me.”

“Finish your math.” I had set up the dining room as my studio, and Cathleen had a table in the corner where she could study while I worked. The preliminary sketching of my mysterious portrait was done. I had begun to paint the face. His eyes sparkled with merriment as I recalled the words: He is the piper, and I simply follow.

There is a small graveyard not far from our house. It is still well kept and tended to, but not readily seen unless you happen upon it as we did. And Cathleen and I, being rather curious, although some might describe it as morose, decided to explore it.

Cathleen first noticed the peculiarity of one very old gravestone set apart from the others. Kneeling beside it on the damp grass, “There’s an inscription, Mom, but I can’t read it.”

Running my hand along the rough granite of the top of the stone, it was cool, nearly chilling, beneath my fingertips. “Christopher Foster,” Cathleen’s sweet voice sounded as high and pure as a musical note to me at times. But she is my child, and I am hopelessly enamored of her. “He died at 33 years. That’s so young.”

And then I read the inscription at the top of the gravestone. “For my beloved husband.” Was it a breeze whispering through the trees overhead? But nothing and no one is like him, and everything I want fades away next to him—how wonderful it must be to love someone that much. And then I was suddenly propelled forward as a pain shot through my back. Cathleen blocked my fall with her small body as we tumbled hard onto the moist ground.

My heart raced with fear as I tried to get back on my feet with trembling knees. There was no reason for it, but it had seemed exactly as though someone had kicked me, someone who was not there.

It rained on and off for the next week, and we did not venture far from the house except to the grocery when it was critical. We didn’t speak much about what happened in the graveyard, nor did we return there. It took a few days before I began to work on the portrait again. But once I did, Cathleen and I began to call him Christopher. “How is Christopher today? Have you finished his suit? It sort of looks like a military suit.” There were so many questions, but we didn’t rush to answer any of them. Everything comes in its own time. There’s no point in trying to push it. It won’t do any good. Someone had told me that once, but in the moment I could not remember who.

“And how are you liking the country life?”

The lady smiled at me, her face quite tanned, well-weathered by living largely in the outdoors. She had caught me unaware. I had come outside to stretch my legs, seeing a brief reprieve in the weather. Cathleen had refused to accompany me, being involved in an online internet chat with a friend from back home. The lady who approached me was named Leah, Leah Sampson, and she lived next door, although we had already been in the house a month and had not seen her.

“I’m sorry we’ve been a bit antisocial. I live with my elderly aunt. She’s an invalid, so we are in and out with medical situations.” She smiled solemnly, striking me as a very likable, down-to-earth sort of individual. “Sammy told me you were renting the place. He’s my nephew.”

I laughed, “Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Yes, most of us are related by one thread or another around here.”

And then it occurred to me to ask, “I have a question for you. My daughter noticed a gravestone in the cemetery behind the church.” Her eyes were watching me, an unflinching green. “She was curious about it. It was separate from the others. I think the name was Foster.”

She nodded. “Yes, I know it. That was an old family in the area. But they left sometime around the 1900’s for Tennessee, I think. After he died, their youngest son. At least that’s what my aunt told me.”

I smiled and noticed the storm clouds seemed to be gathering again overhead. “That’s sad.”

“Yes, from what she told me, it was quite a blow to a lot of people.”

“To his wife, too, I imagine.”

Leah Sampson looked at me a little strangely. “Well, from what Aunt Laura says, that was a brief marriage.”

“Oh, well, from the inscription, I thought—”

“No, the two of them were married no more than a few months, I think.”

“That must have been very difficult for her.”

She shrugged and looked upwards at the rumbling sky. “I suppose, though, she married again, to the Pasteur at a local church. Sam’s great-grandfather.” I stared a little dumbly at her with surprise. “That’s right. They lived in your house for all of their marriage.”

There are always select moments of disbelief in life where you look around, and all looks the same, but you know that it is superficial and has become merely a thin veil covering a foreign, untried aspect. I heard myself speaking but did not consciously form the words. “Are you sure, my house?” My lips spoke. Yes, you know this—my core whispered to me. This is the key to all that is senseless.

I think perhaps she felt something because she looked at me with an expression that was strongly uncomfortable and too near to fearfulness. “I’m sure,” she spoke softly in her Virginia drawl. “But I understand they were happy there.” I nodded, but I dismissed her notion. There was nothing concrete to support me except an instinctual rejection of what felt like a deception.

I sat in the living room on our futon sofa that we had moved from our little house in Richmond, staring at the wall that covered where the fireplace had been. The house had a chimney outside but no fireplace within. It had no logic, no sensibility, and made no sense. The fireplace was the heart of the house, and now its heart was walled up.

Cathleen’s tiny hand touched my arm, startling me terribly. Jumping sharply at the contact, her wise, young face looked concerned. “What is it, Mom? You look so upset.”

I shook my head. I hadn’t made it a practice to lie to her. She was too smart for that, and as far as I was concerned, it was a waste of time. “I don’t know. But I feel very bothered.” I touched her strawberry-blonde hair. She had some of her father’s features, but oddly, while they were molded into softness and vulnerability on her, they seemed harsh and brittle on him. “Do you like living here, pumpkin?”

Shrugging her shoulders, “I’m not sure. It seems complicated.” Her eyes were wide and serious.

“Yes, that’s a good word, complicated. I just hope I didn’t make a mistake in bringing us here.”

And then she laid her head on my lap, and I stroked her glistening hair. Perhaps we should leave. Perhaps that was best. But at the same time, there was a pull to stay as though someone were wrapping their arms around me in desperation.

Cathleen hummed with contentment as she worked on the art assignment I’d given her while I struggled with the finishing touches on Christopher’s painting. I couldn’t quite get that sparkling expression in his dark eyes—the one I’d seen last night in my dreams.

Grimacing as I struggled with the fine brushwork, I wanted to paint him with the love—I rubbed my forehead. It ached with a headache born of my compulsive tendencies. I wanted to paint him with the passion she’d felt for him, his wife, the one he left behind.

In the dream, they’d been beneath a huge tree, sitting on the perfect glistening green grass. She couldn’t help putting her hands on his arms, trying to hold onto him. And he whispered promises, those that he shouldn’t, because it was only a dream, and he was lost to her.

I put down the paintbrush, leaving the strokes unfinished. I couldn’t capture what I wanted, and it depressed me. Outside the picture window of the dining room, I could see the huge Maple tree was losing its leaves. We were well into fall, and it would be an early winter. The season that usually invigorated me now felt like a shroud of grayness that was approaching. From across the room, I could feel Cathleen’s eyes on me. I turned around to greet her with a smile. But all I was met with was a look of concern. My lack of groundedness, as my ex-husband was apt to call it, had forced her to grow up much too quickly. It surely wasn’t right for such a young girl to be her mother’s anchor in the storm.

As the days passed, the dreams became more frequent, and all intentions of abandoning our temporary home early melted away into the everydayness of life. I continued with the journal writings, but I could not shake the feeling that they were taking on the shape of another’s will outside of my own.

“I hear crying at night.”

I clasped Cathleen’s hands in mine. They were chilled. The first substantial blast of winter had passed through the Virginia coast yesterday, and we sat on my bed bundled up in flannels and heavy plush robes. Neither of us liked to turn the heat on very high. I’d always thought it was the artistic blood that ran through our veins. We’d rather tough it out and bundle up. But the cold here was a different kind. It didn’t surround you. It sliced in like jagged little knives and simply didn’t stop until it cut right into you.

“What do you mean?” I asked her, trying not to show too much concern.

She frowned in that somber way that always made me feel just a touch guilty that I had stolen her child-like security away in some measure. But then again, even as a baby, she’d had that solemn, contemplative streak before the marriage began to crumble. “When we first moved in, it was just once in a while. I’d wake up and think I would hear someone crying. But then, I just ignore it and go back to sleep. But now it’s almost every night, quiet sobbing like someone doesn’t want to be heard. But they do. Do you know what I mean?” Her eyes were wide, and they reminded me of James. He wasn’t awful. In fact, in some things, I think he was quite smart, smarter than me. He was always smarter about the way the world worked. I just didn’t like the way it worked and refused to deal with it.

“I’m not sure. What do you mean someone doesn’t want to be heard but really does?”

“You know, like Grandma. She doesn’t think it’s proper to throw a fuss about things, but she gets very quiet and stiff as a board when she’s mad. She doesn’t want you to know she’s mad, but she does.”

I smoothed out her long hair. It needed a trim. But hairdressers that weren’t set up in someone’s house were scarce around here. “I get it.”

“So, you’re not going to tell me I’m imagining things?”

“What would be the point?” I said to her, then quietly to myself.

Our first snow came in November, just after Thanksgiving. Before it arrived, we’d driven into Tappahannock, about a half hour away, and spent the holiday there. We ate lunch at a local restaurant, attended a Welcome Winter parade down Main Street, and wandered around a local festival, sampling the wares and sugary confections of the townspeople. It felt good moving amongst people again. I had no idea how isolated we’d been until we’d escaped from it for a little while.

Cathleen’s cheeks were rosy from the fresh air, and her shirt marked with powdered sugar from a funnel cake. We wandered around, murmuring greetings to those whose eyes we met. But there was no shaking the reality for both of us that we were apart. There was something intrinsically different about us from those we passed. It was oddly as though we walked in a fractionally different dimension. Not perceptible to the eye but just minutely altered enough that we felt it, and perhaps subconsciously, they did too.

I’m sure James would have said that I wanted to be apart. But being here, watching my child, and those around convinced me he was wrong in this.

I was moving in her skin. I was in the kitchen, just peeling potatoes and letting myself and my thoughts relax, when this very odd revelation came to me. Sensing it, feeling it, frightened me at first. I shivered, breaking the calmness that had let me slip, just for an instant, into that altered state. Did I really want to go there, somewhere uncharted? Could I come back?

My eyes focused on the wall clock, and my hands rhythmically returned to my task. It was harder now, and I pushed, seeing the scars on my hands from unrelenting labor. And then the peeler that I grasped grew heavier, cumbersome, and not sharp enough. But I didn’t move to find mine. I just continued.

I heard my breathing, deep, concentrated, but I didn’t feel it in my lungs. My eyes glazed, but I continued working. It was the anchor, the link binding the three of us together. There were three of us now.

“Why do you work so hard for him?”

“What else is there for me to do?”

“You could leave. Leave him and the child.”

“It’s my child too.”

“Do you love it?”

She wiped the sweat off her forehead. Her fingers ached from the work, but she didn’t care. She never let herself look for him when he spoke, afraid he would go, and she would be alone here once more. She was almost sure he spoke to her out of her own madness, but again, she didn’t care. What other joy did she have? Reverend Hawkton didn’t care to be a friend to her. He just cared that she fulfilled her role as his wife. And he took extreme measures to see that she did. The scars on her hands reflected these truths. But she’d found it only took a sort of shell to satisfy his expectations, not a real person at all.

Again, she asked, “Can I come where you are?”

There was a silence. Had he left her again? “No, it’s not time.”

“I don’t want to stay here.” She looked down at the knife she was using. It was too dull, but others were sharp enough.

“If you do that, I won’t be able to find you. Is he cruel to you?”

“He’s nothing to me. That’s cruel enough”. Her heart ached, and most of the time she didn’t feel at all. But he could do that, make her feel again.

“Please, Mia, hold on. It won’t be forever.”

“It already has been.”

Another shiver, and I saw the blood all over her hand. Somehow, I had cut myself. I watched it bleed, and it took a long time, much too long, before I went for a bandage.

Was it a sin, only caring for what had passed, biding the time, waiting for her lover to return to her? Was it a sin? Would she be consigned to the flames of hell? Or was there any mercy for poor lost souls?

I had stopped dating these journal entries. Again, what was the point?

Candace Hawkton had bright red hair of a questionable shade and a flawless smile. I was jealous of her, though not because of her well-kept good looks, which were exceptionally so. She had to be in her late thirties at least. I was jealous of something else altogether: her sense of place. She seemed content, knew where she belonged, and, from a superficial inspection, had no real desire to venture beyond those parameters. How lovely to be so certain. I couldn’t recall ever feeling that rooted about anything except perhaps Cathleen. But what was painfully obvious was that she didn’t like me, and I couldn’t quite fathom why nor muster up too much interest to care.

I’d been out on a walk. For just a brief reprieve, it seemed the snow had stopped. Drawn in that direction for some odd reason today, I was passing through the cemetery when I almost stumbled across her walking a small black lab I hadn’t even realized they possessed.

What passed was inane at first.

“How is the house?’

“Fine.”

“I hope this weather clears up soon.”

“Yes, but the snow is lovely.”

And then there was an awkward silence, who said what afterward seemed interchangeable. She was anxious to leave, and even the dog seemed oddly uneasy. And then, on a lark, I asked, “You know Cathleen and I were out here not long ago. And we were taken by that one tombstone. The one set far apart. We read the inscription, as much of it as we could. I was wondering, curious, really about Christopher Foster. Do you know anything about him?”

Candace stared at me a little blankly, her bright smile fading ever so imperceptibly. “Christopher Foster?” she echoed.

“Yes, I thought I understood that he was married to your husband’s great-grandmother, her first husband?”

Her brown eyes sharpened a bit. Had I trespassed on the solidity of her existence in some way? “Oh yes, I think I remember something about that.”

I waited. She wasn’t forthcoming in any way. I laughed, “I didn’t mean to pry. I was just curious.”

She shook her curly red hair that I was sure had been painstakingly styled this morning, “No, no, it was a long time ago. I just don’t know that much. I think he died not long after they married. Got sick, I think.” She shrugged, “It was pretty much like they hadn’t been married at all.”

And I remembered the inscription, For My Beloved Husband. And the words reverberated deep inside me: Can I come where you are? But I smiled and said nothing to Candace Hawkton. I felt sure that there was no room in her world for such things.

The next few weeks brought heavy snow, and Cathleen and I became resigned to being housebound. Luckily, I’d stocked up sufficiently to cover such a possibility. The grayness of the sky began to weigh on me. I was fairly certain now that staying so long had been a mistake. Cathleen had taken to sleeping in my bed at night. We were banding together against something. In more lucid moments, I thought it had to do with holding on to our presence and not allowing ourselves to be sucked into the cataclysm of what had come before. We concentrated hard on mundane activities that anchored us to our existence. But every night, every night like clockwork, we heard Mia’s crying, her pain flooding through the very walls of the house, and we wondered how it all would end.

“When I came out of the bathroom, I saw her.”

She didn’t look afraid, just matter-of-fact and that in itself was disturbing. “What was she doing?”

“She was just staring at me like she was lost. And her hands were bleeding. She’d cut them.” I nodded and pulled her to me.

I knew about the hands from the kitchen and from the other night when I was washing my face. I had looked down in the basin to see the water had turned vividly red. Closing my eyes in panic and then opening them again, I could see that all was clear again. Mia wanted so much to leave her life, her hell. I had promised myself that when the weather cleared, Cathleen and I would go from here as far away as we could get.

For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.

It was a quote from Psalms. That was Cathleen and I, sojourners passing through. I had taken to reading the small bible that the Hawktons had left on the small bedside table in the third bedroom. I wasn’t the church-going sort, but over the last days, I had desperately reached out for anything to bolster me. The snow was relentless, and I could not shake the realization that some inevitability was closing in. What did they want? What could they want from us? And as soon as the thought crystallized in my mind, I was to know.

The door to the third bedroom slammed shut, and I heard the lock click that never worked.

There are moments of fear that seem to slow everything down and distill priorities into their purest clarity.

My solitary thought was that Cathleen was alone downstairs watching television. I rose from the rocking chair on trembling legs and forced myself to the door. One forceful turn of the locked knob convinced me of what I had suspected. My head swirled with dizziness and nausea.

I was sweating with panic, and then I was not alone. Our hand remained on the door. It was our hand, and we wore a long, cotton nightgown. The sleeping form on the bed was turned away from us. We were trying to decide.

If we killed him, it wouldn’t stop our pain. If we killed ourselves, how would we find him? He said he wouldn’t be able to find us.

I could see him, as could she, across the room where he stood, holding out his arms. The blue eyes were so solemn, so sad, I think. I picked up a pillow. I would smother him and end it that way. Was that what he wanted, was it? No, no, it was not. I could see. Then I dropped it softly.

We walked to the door and turned the knob. This time, it opened. We looked down the stairs. They were so steep. We had warned her, the little girl, about them. The little boy was asleep in the room, but we didn’t go to tell him goodbye. He wasn’t ours, not really. We closed our eyes and walked forward into nothingness.

When I woke up, Cathleen stood over me, tears running down her face. Every part of me seemed to ache, and my arm was sharply twisted beneath me. My daughter was shaking and sobbing almost hysterically.

I swallowed. I’d gone down the stairs, or had we? “Mia,” I whispered. “She killed herself.”

She shook her head. “But you, what happened to you?”

My vision was beginning to clear just a bit. “I think I went with her.”

It would be nice if I could tie up our story with a tidy bow with a happy ending, but in life, it seems there are rarely absolutes nor perfect resolutions. I came out of my fall reasonably intact. To me, at the time, a fractured arm seemed to be a small price to pay for falling down that horribly steep stairway. Before we left the house, I did find out at the local library in genealogical records that Margaret Hawkton died of an accidental death, an unfortunate fall, they said, down a flight of stairs. Why it was important for me to know differently, to share even so briefly in her pain, is still a mystery. Perhaps, as the Bible passage had said, I was a sojourner, passing through, just a witness to what had been.

I donated my picture of Christopher Foster to the library, and they seemed pleased, albeit a little confused. And when the coldest weather had passed, Cathleen and I packed up again to make our long-anticipated departure. It was February. And I took one last walk around the house the morning we were leaving. On that day, I noticed that a rosebush on the east side of the old Hawkton homestead had begun to bloom. Perhaps it was fooled by a brief snap of warm weather. But there was a single pink rose amongst its still brown branches. And I could not help but think that this was a symbol of hope, hope for Mia, for Christopher, hope for all of us. For in the end, that is the only resolution any of us can strive for.

Dragonflies: Journeys into the Paranormal

In every form of creation, there is a blueprint for living, for experience, for interpretation. In flight, they can twist, turn, alter direction, pause in midair, and even fly backward. The dragonfly is the master of adaptability. They are a living prism, refracting light, and color, seemingly shifting their essence.

The lesson the dragonfly gives is that life is never what it appears to be.

In “The Wizard,” as a novice practitioner of magic, Aurora Finn finds herself battling against the illusions of a powerful wizard intent on separating her from the world she knows.

“The Sojourners” is a gentle story of a mother and daughter whose tenancy in an old Virginia farmhouse uncovers the trials and sorrows of its former occupants.

A bookstore clerk gets an extraordinary customer on Halloween night in “Late One Night at Berstrums Books.”
In “The Tear,” a woman coping with her fatal illness unknowingly begins a track on a mystical journey that will entirely restructure her vision of the world.

These stories follow the path of the dragonfly imbued with the momentum and energy of change, taking a winding and treacherous journey that ultimately leads to truth buried beneath perception.