Full Circle

I would like to start this story off by asking that you read my story "It feeds on panic and fear" - as this story follows that one.

As a courtesy to readers unaccustomed to my stories, I live in a house with 3 known entities. One is a little boy called Adam, he is between 4 and 5 years old, and died in the room he sees as his sanctuary now. The other two are respectively, my maternal grandmother, Monta, who was a murder victim, and my very good friend, Charlie, who tragically died far too young (he was only 28), and unfortunately, not unexpectedly.

I had been feeling very strongly since the beginning of October that it was time for a visit with my friends, Tim (who is a medium) and his wife Elaine. When I told them I wanted them to come visit and they asked when, I immediately suggested the weekend of the 19th of October.

They arrived on the Saturday morning and as we walked into the passageway by the bedrooms Elaine just about froze solid. She had a broad smile on her face and then looked into "thin air" and said "Hallo ouma" - "Hallo Gran". She looked at me and said that is the first time that Gran actually came to her as she arrived and made her presence clear, as if she was saying hallo.

Tim chuckled and walked off to the lounge where the kids were playing. Elaine and I went to my bedroom and sat on the bed for a while, chatting about life and generally just catching up. At one point Elaine's daughter came into the room and Elaine dismissed her a bit too harshly, and Gran made her feelings clear. She had come right up to Elaine's face and made it clear that she did not approve of ladies dismissing their daughters in such a manner, and Elaine apologised.

Before confusion creeps in, neither Elaine nor I can see the spirits, we can feel them, but lately Gran has been able to give Elaine mental images of what she wants/needs her to see, as she refuses to communicate with me through Tim.

I told Elaine about my friend, Jay, who I have grown extremely close to, and since Tim has an uncanny way of "reading" people by simply looking at them, she insisted that they'd like to meet him. I had obviously told him about Tim and Elaine, as he himself has a few gifts with the paranormal and he ran ghost hunting trips in Pilgrim's Rest for quite a while, he was very keen to meet them too.

He arrived within half an hour of me asking him to come over. He immediately hit it off with Tim and Elaine, she gushed every chance she got about how very attractive Jay is and how she cannot understand why I am not dating him - of course, only when we were alone. This just made me laugh.

Tim and Elaine took turns asking Jay all kinds of questions about himself and his life. I knew Tim was doing it to get a reading off him. He told them about his life and his experiences, and Elaine later told me she did not actually believe he had done the ghost hunting trips until he got his laptop and showed us the pictures. Amazing stuff. Tim told me at a point when Jay had left the conversation for a minute, that Jay had a lot of pain in his life and he was a good person. He also said Gran still thinks he is too much of a smooth talker. When I asked about Charlie's opinion, Elaine said to me she could sense Charlie being between Jay and me as much as possible. She and Tim both said there is a level of jealousy because I suddenly have another man in my life that I can rely on. I never thought Charlie was a jealous person, it was news to me.

As the day wore on we chatted about the year's big moments, and then Tim made me aware that, in his opinion, we seem to have come full circle. I asked him what he meant and he enlightened me to the fact that exactly a year ago I had a dark entity in my home, breaking things and freaking me out to the point of hysteria. I was dumbstruck, I had not thought that there was a valid reason why I chose that weekend, it had not been something I had planned, but someone did. And since then, the dark entity has left and not returned, and another very strong, good person, had come into my life. Out with the bad, in with the good.

Tim told me the boy causing the fear in my house a year ago is actually Adam's brother, and that he had always been terrible to Adam. Adam had reason to fear him, if he realized Adam got any type of attention, he made life very difficult for him. Clarity as to why Adam was so scared of him and why he was hell-bent on getting into Adam's room. Pure jealousy. It also explained why he targeted me, I was giving Adam attention. What still scares me about that experience is that the boy was not driven away, he just left, he may very well come back...

As the sun set and we were chatting up a storm, I sat and rubbed my right shoulder. It has been burning for a few weeks and was really getting uncomfortable. Tim told me to sit forward for a second and told me the cause of the pain is not in my shoulder, it's lower down in my back. He found a spot about ¾ down my back, to the right of my spine, and firmly pushed his fingertips down on the muscle, and the pain shot up all the way to my shoulder. It was such a shock I yelled. Tim told Elaine she had to help me later to rub out the pain in my back.

She and I headed into the house to check on dinner and the kids, and I detoured through the Jacuzzi area and into the front living room to close the curtains and close and lock the front door. As I turned from the door to head to the kitchen, I had the very clear sensation of a hand firmly rubbing my back, from where Tim jabbed his fingers, up to my shoulder. It did not stop as I walked right back out to the pool where Tim and Jay still sat. I was overrun by goose bumps, head to toes and I was squirming a little. I asked Tim who this was, and he smiled his usual exasperated smile and said, "Charlie's trying to help".

We sat and talked until past midnight and Charlie was around me that entire time. For the first time not he nor Gran communicated through Tim or Elaine, seeming quite content with how things are. And Adam enjoyed having the other kids around, coming out of his room and playing with them.

Here's to hoping things stay so calm.