A Sense of Souls

A Sense of Souls

  by

  Michael D. Britton

  * * * *

  Copyright 2012 by Michael D. Britton / Intelligent Life Books

  Black.

  That’s probably what you think of – when you think “blind.”

  Well, no, I don’t see black. “Black” implies a visual experience. Black, the opposite of white.

  A shade.

  Darkness.

  None of that means anything to me.

  Maybe it would be different if I’d been born sighted.

  But my vision – the sense that doesn’t make use of my useless empty sockets – defies descriptions that you would understand.

  What I see, when I “look” at you – it’s like tasting the sun, smelling tomorrow, hearing the moment of conception. It’s like feeling the breeze of millennia.

  No pictures, as you call them, fill my head. Instead, I am embraced by a non-visual image as I sense the true reality.

  I call it the vibe.

  Many say, “seeing is believing.”

  I say, all you who rely on your eyes are deceived, and missing out on the fundamental haecceity of all things – that immutable truth which can only be perceived in what you call “the dark.”

  The dark is where the real light is.

  It’s where I see.

  Where I vibe.

  #

  I heard it coming, so it didn’t surprise me.

  I felt the molecular bonds stress as metal crunched against metal, heard the last gasp of life escape the unseatbelted child in the back seat, tasted the gasoline in the air, and smelled the fear in each individual – the driver of each car, the witnesses. Each with his or her own degree and peculiar quality of fear.

  And I saw the little victim as he entered the realm of my vibe.

  He was a sweet little soul. Confused at first, as they all are.

  He walked right up to me and started talking.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You – you were hurt,” I mumbled. Anyone watching would think I was crazy, talking to myself.

  “No I wasn’t. I feel fine. See?”

  He hopped from foot to foot, proving his wellness to me.

  It was always hard to help people understand – but kids were the worst. It’s one thing to try to convince a grown person that they’re dead, and a whole other thing to try to convince a child when they don’t even have any grasp of what death means.

  Not that adults really understood much better.

  When it comes down to it, we’re all just babes in the woods when it comes to all this life and death stuff.

  “Well,” I said, “you feel fine, because your hurt went away already.”

  “Hey lady, why don’t you have any eyes?”

  “I was born this way.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No, I feel fine.”

  “Just like me!”

  “Yes, just like you.” I heard the sirens approaching, though they were not yet audible to the distraught crowd that had formed around the wreck. “What’s your name?”

  “Gavin. What’s yours?”

  “I’m Brooke.” Beyond Gavin, I heard a moan come from his car. His mother was trapped. She realized her son was dead, was struggling to scream for him. The gasoline was about to ignite. Despite the best efforts of the bystanders to pull her out, she would be on fire by the time the rescue vehicles arrived.

  Gavin turned around to look at the accident scene. “That’s my mommy,” he said, pointing at the crushed vehicle, his voice strained. “My mommy’s hurt!”

  “The fire trucks are coming,” I said. “They’ll help.”

  I started to walk away. “Come on,” I said to Gavin. “We’ll need to get out of their way so they can do their jobs.”

  I just wanted to lead Gavin away from the scene. He really didn’t need to see his mother burning.

  Since I couldn’t take him by the hand, I had to just hope he’d follow. Sure, I could perceive the dead, but I couldn’t touch someone who had no body.

  “Come on!” I said once more. Gavin tore himself away and came with me, as one of the onlookers looked in my direction, wondering who I was talking to.

  As we turned the corner, I heard the fuel ignite. No explosion, just a slow consuming of vinyl seats, carpeting, clothing, and flesh. The trapped woman, too weak to cry out, began to succumb to the flames.

  Then the trucks arrived, and as crews worked to knock down the fire, a pair of firefighters implemented the “jaws of life” and extracted Gavin’s mom.

  I could smell the scorched skin and hair on the wind.

  She would live – but miserably so.

  Since she wouldn’t be joining Gavin, it looked like I was going to have a companion for a while.

  #

  Gavin felt to be about six years old at the time of his death. He was a bright little boy, and he asked me lots of questions.

  Some I simply answered, others I struggled to explain, still others I had no idea of the answer – and I told him as much.

  After all, I wasn’t an expert in life after death – I was just a woman who could converse with those who’d crossed over.

  “You said you’re waiting,” he said the next morning, after spending the night at my apartment. “What are you waiting for?”

  I enjoyed being around Gavin. Dead people were so much more real than the living – they were less . . . contained. They were vivid to all my senses, unlike the living with their masks and pretenses and lies, their styles and perfumes and habits, their secrets and passions and motives. Their obsession with their bodies and their fixation with time.

  The dead were straightforward and open. Honest. Patient.

  And children were the best of all.

  “Well,” I said, sitting down on the soft couch next to him, “you have some relatives who are going to come for you. They just need to find you. That’s what I’m waiting for.”

  “Relatives? Who?”

  “I don’t know – maybe your grandparents? Are your grandparents alive?”

  “No – they died when I was little.”

  “Then it’ll probably be them.”

  “But they went to heaven.”

  I sighed. “I’m sure they’ll explain everything to you when they come.”

  “Well, can’t you just call them?”

  “No. It doesn’t work that way.”

  To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure how it did work. But I knew they would come – it was just a matter of time.

  The dead occupy our world – at least, they are located in the same space, albeit their existence is . . . shifted. To my senses, this world is a lot more crowded than it appears to most people.

  But I don’t know how to contact specific dead people. Most of them ignore me, as they’ve become accustomed to ignoring most living people. Some watch over the loved ones they left behind. Others struggle in vain to influence the world of the living. Some sit around like mental patients clawing at their own reality, rejecting their circumstance, dancing with denial. Some seem to have it together, others seem desperately lost.

  I’ve never met any leaders or organizers among the dead – they seem to mostly be independent beings – except some do gather into families.

  And that was my hope here – that some dead relative would come for Gavin.

  “So we just sit around and wait?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wanna play a game?”

  “Like what?”

  “I dunno. D’ya like checkers?”

  Checkers would not work. We needed to play something that did not involve Gavin having to manipulate the physical world. It would be a very long time – if ever – b
efore he learned how to do that.

  We needed a no-touch game.

  “Nah,” I said. “How about I Spy?”

  “Okay. But wait – you don’t have any eyes – how can we play I Spy?”

  “You’ll see,” I said.

  “Okay. I’ll go first.” Gavin slowly turned around, examining the room. My vibe perceived his eyes resting on several items before he finally said, his voice taking on a sing-song quality, “I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with . . . R.”

  “Hmm,” I said, absorbing the room’s contents, sifting through the inventory like I was digging through a sock drawer. “Radio.”

  “Aww, how did you know?”

  I shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  Actually, I knew the moment he chose the radio. I felt it inside. The radio was my best friend – my link to the world. As soon as Gavin focused on it, I felt a little tickle in my gut, and recognized it as my precious radio.

  Besides – there were only three things in the room that started with R.

  “Okay, your turn,” he said, sounding a little disappointed at how quickly his turn had ended.

  “I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with – oh!”

  I was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a man and woman, standing inside my front door. I could perceive they were elderly – and kind.

  “Gavin!” said the woman, smiling. “What are you doing here? We’ve been looking for you.”

  “We thought you’d be at the accident,” said the man, glancing around, looking right through me.

  “I was. But Brooke brought me here to wait. Is Mommy okay?”

  “You mother is going to, uh, she will be fine. In time,” said the woman.

  “Who’s Brooke?” asked the man.

  “She’s my new friend,” said Gavin. He turned to me. “Brooke, this is my Gramma and my Grampa.”

  Gramma and Grampa looked my way, seemed to see nothing, then squinted and concentrated. “Oh! Well, hello, Brooke,” said Grampa. “Didn’t see you there.”

  “I understand,” I said. “That’s because I’m living.”

  Gramma looked shocked. “You’re living? And you – you can see us?”

  Grampa stepped toward me, staring at my face. “But – you don’t even have any eyes.”

  “I’m sure that’s why I do perceive you,” I said.

  “Hmmph.” Grampa shrugged. “I’ve heard of your type, but never met one. Certainly never heard of a blind one, though.”

  “There are others?” I asked. “Others like me – who can see the dead?”

  “Sure,” said Gramma. “I know people who’ve been seen by the living. It’s uncommon, but it happens.”

  “Well, I’m glad you found Gavin,” I said. “He’s a wonderful boy, but I think he was starting to get a little bored here.”

  “You do this a lot – lead little boys away to your apartment?” asked Grampa.

  “No, no, of course not. I just – well, I didn’t want him to, uh – to see what was happening at the accident scene. You know.”

  Gramma nodded in understanding. “Ah. Thank you, dear.”

  “Anything we can do for you?” asked Grampa, taking Gavin’s hand and shuffling back toward the door with his other arm around Gramma.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “All right.” They kept walking.

  “No, wait! Actually,” I said, “Is there any way you could put me in touch with other people like me – people who can see the dead?”

  Grampa smiled. “I think you misunderstood, Sweetheart. There are those who have seen the dead, but not those who see the dead. It’s a one-off phenomenon. Folks who are close to death themselves, people in traumatic situations – even some crazy people. The occasional little tyke. But it’s always temporary for people. Nobody sees the dead all the time.”

  “I do.”

  “You do? Oh. Well. As far as I know, you’re the first.”

  “But it’s possible, right? There might be others – others like me?”

  “Anything’s possible,” said Grampa.

  And then they left – walked right out through my closed door, hand in hand.

  #

  My conversation with Gavin’s Grampa pushed me into an emotional corner for a while.

  Being born with no eyes had always made me an outsider – subject to the judgments of others. Some considered me a freak, and chose not to hide their ignorant fear and distaste. Others unsuccessfully tried to hide their revulsion, their good intentions unable to cover their unkind thoughts. None of them realized that I could see right through them – that I could perceive their souls in all their dark swirling illness or bright happy glory.

  Rebel that I am, I chose not to wear sunglasses or use any other methods to hide my different appearance. I refused to be another mask-wearing zombie. I am who I am, like it or not.

  But that was a choice that contributed to a lonely life.

  Stubbornly, I insisted that if I couldn’t be loved and appreciated for my own specific beauty, then they didn’t deserve to have me, anyway.

  So I became more and more isolated from the world. Sure, I got out. But I felt best right there in my apartment, with my beloved radio.

  After talking with Gavin’s Grampa, it struck me that maybe there was someone out there who could understand me. Someone who didn’t care about my appearance, who didn’t need to gaze into a pair of eyes to experience the real me.

  Someone who wouldn’t consider me a freak for seeing the universe as it really is.

  Someone I could share my special reality with.

  But how could I find such a person?

  Unfortunately, the first answer to pop into my head seemed idiotic.

  Funerals.

  If I was already considered a freak, surely an eyeless woman loitering at burials would get me labeled a downright menace.

  But it made the most sense – funerals seemed the most likely place to run into others with my abilities. When I first developed a sense of souls – in my teens – I crashed a number of funerals. I wanted to discover just what it was that I could do, figure out how and why, learn more about myself. Like a pubescent kid experimenting with her developing body, I was curious, a little ashamed, and had no one I could talk to about it.

  So I cruised the cemeteries on Saturday afternoons. I’d stand off a ways, out of sight of the mourners, and after the final stragglers wandered back to their limousines, I’d go visit with the dearly departed. I got to meet some great people that way. It was during that time that I started to prefer the company of the dead.

  I found them refreshing.

  None of them judged me or looked at me oddly. They were often confused, sometimes sad, but mostly they were just people trying to make their way in their new existence.

  But after a couple of years of graveyard get-togethers, I realized I needed to return to the land of the living. One kindly old woman who’d lived an incredible life of love, pain and sacrifice, talked me into getting on with my life.

  Her name in life had been Ada Moulson. She’d emigrated to the United States from England as a little girl, and her family had struggled hard to carve out a good life. She explained to me that I needed to make the most of my time – she convinced me to live my life.

  “You’re young – full of vibrance,” Ada had said. “I’m sure those who’ve passed away appreciate having you around – I know I do – but Dear, people who are yet to pass on could certainly use what you have to offer as well. And they can offer things to you that we – the dead – cannot.”

  So, I stopped visiting funerals, and, for a time, I made a go of it in the mortal world. But gradually, I withdrew into my own space. Disappointment after disappointment pushed me down. Before too long, I found myself listening to the radio most of the time, only leaving the apartment to buy my essentials with my disability check.

  But now, it was tim
e to return to the cemeteries. I needed to find some friends – maybe even one special friend.

  Only this time – I’d be searching among the living.

  #

  Now that I was seeking it, it was easy to find.

  At the second funeral I attended, I vibed her.

  She was standing back, wearing a dark dress like the other grieving people in the crowd.

  Only, she wasn’t grieving.

  She was just . . . waiting.

  When everyone left, this tall, slim woman with a fuzzy, stuffy aura that made me choke a little, slowly stepped toward the grave. She leaned down, and instead of placing a flower by the headstone, her lips moved, and I heard her whisper, “Yes, that’s right – I’ve been here all along.”

  I started to walk toward her – to introduce myself – to let her know that we shared a kindred ability.

  Then I vibed him.

  The dead man she was talking to.

  He was sitting beside his own marker, gently rubbing his hand along the edge of the dark gray granite.

  He was melancholy.

  As I approached, I could perceive that the woman wasn’t really seeing him. She was just talking for her own benefit.

  “That’s right, Sterling. You may have been too clever by half, socking away all the money so can’t get to it – but I got the last laugh, didn’t I? And while you’re rotting, I’ll be figuring out how to unlock those investments. So long, sucker.”

  I stopped in my tracks.

  I was still far away, and out of her line of sight.

  With her last statement, Sterling spoke up, smiling slightly, his chin raised defiantly. “You’ll never be able to touch it, Marcia. And I hope you spend the rest of your pathetic life trying.”

  Marcia seemed to get a chill. She stood up straight, stared down at the grave with disdain, and attempted to spit on it. A brief gust of wind redirected her spittle onto her shoulder, instead. She wiped it off with her cuff, then marched off toward the parking lot without looking back.

  I waited until she had driven off before moving to the grave. The head stone simply read STERLING M. REEVES 1976 – 2012.

  “Hello, Sterling,” I said.

  “Hmm,” he said aloud to himself. “I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Sterling,” I said. “I’m not just talking to a grave, like Marcia was. I’m talking directly to you. I know you’re sitting there, beside the marker.”