The White Barn

I came to my grandparent's house for good at the age of five. If you're not familiar with childhood trauma, no worries, you don't have to pretend. I'll just leave all that mess by saying that being a child of neglect and abuse can make it difficult to relate. It's like I don't possess the "MS DOS" baseline programming; and finally, for as long as I can remember I've lived with severe panic attacks, mild to crippling depression; I didn't speak correctly 'til age nine, and I've always been sensitive to other's energy and intent. Couple that little uncanny talent with my Romani descent---and, well, it definitely helps cast a fantastical mystique. I've been painted with several brushes of nickname, nothing I'm offended by but I commonly get empath, lightning rod, dimensional fence jumper, traveler, third eye, gypsy, intuitive, and of course, psychic.

I just feel things from a different perspective. Rites of passage or peculiar one in a millions I've been blindsided by that would usually result in tragedy, I breezed through. But, on the other side, I struggle a fair amount more than everybody's local neighborhood favorite and the territory's top insurance agent "Jim", and I can't really explain why---even though I just did. I'm a depressive the majority of the time---at least that's the general outside consensus, to me, it's just me. Have you picked up on the contradictious San Andrus sized fault-line running down the middle of my existence yet? If not, give it a few minutes---I'm a firm believer that "in the ale of life the cream is all truth".

I've been wrong about people in my life before, those mistakes were all because I ignored my gut; because I wanted something so bad I was determined to will it into existence---the treachery's in the hubris of knowing you're a player at that high roller table, sitting with appreciative gods and monsters because they know and you don't---you're your own apocalyptic reckoning.

Now, I can speak from experience on hero parading into towering infernos---don't try that, it doesn't work. You can attempt to wholly accept each other or not; that said, making decisions on the future of your life with someone you love is not black and white. You hope for the best and prepare for the worst. The more you act with naïveté and recklessness the more collateral damage you won't possibly be able to prepare for. Finally, check your fire exits because the size of that damage you do have a certain amount of control over by learning to protect yourself from malevolence.

You can see it in their eyes if you center yourself in the moment and really look; be honest with yourself about what you see. You will see it. Just like the black, red, and yellow posted hazardous materials and warning signs. It's anything but a coincidence those are the same colors as the poisonous coral snake you don't see, slithering up behind you, in the grass. Nature has been prepping our survival instincts for millions of years to be prepared to protect ourselves from what's lurking in the shadows.

As I type these words I'm sitting in my grandparent's ancient white crop harvest barn; no one currently living can pinpoint it's date of raising, the only thing we know is that it's seen a few vastly different woebegone eras. It's housed hay and farm equipment, old furniture and other antiques, and way back in the day: vagabond migrant farm hands. Four to be exact, I know this because I've seen them. I'm looking at them right now. They tend to their work in pairs and regard me with fleeting curiosity---as an adult that is. When I first arrived here in the late 80's as a lost traumatized five year old boy that barely ever uttered a word, I didn't think the same could be said. Even at age 5 and riddled catatonic with PTSD, once I was on the property the pull I'd been feeling and the calling I was then hearing were coming from deep within it's keep.

I knew to hold on to my Linus blanket, knew when to bury my face and eyes in it, knew not to acknowledge the unexplainably chilling breezes wafting from it's alabaster painted iron fixture sealed doors in the heat of July, and especially knew to ignore the attention seeking cat calling creaks and knocks I'd hear standing in the loose stone driveway, just staring at it, in broad daylight, and knowing it was empty. I learned to treat it with a granite-like forbearance and I eventually started to adore her ivory hued oak walls, that with time became a sort of supportive set of flying buttresses for me. Yes, I call the barn a "her", like an old man and his hot rod. I even recently started calling this creaking stumpy monolithic corn field cube, "brassbound brag exempli gratia", officially the most pretentious title for the fithiest building in the county; it's a delicious juxtaposition---and I know for a fact it's the flyest handle a barn has ever had. "Brassbound" as it means "traditionally bound and inflexible"; "brag" but not unattractively obnoxious, the stoic side as in "excellent, first-rate", it's physiologically impossible to be a braggadocio loser. Finally, "exempli gratia", or "for the sake of example"---that's the most meaningful title because this white ghost of a barn is the example I look to when I need to remind myself that overcoming fear of what hides in the dark is about the daily grind of maturity; like weathering year after year of the harshest bitterly cold blizzards of the northern flat American plains. Where the entire paradigm is a wind tunnel, there is no hiding from the daily 35 mph "breeze" turning 20 degrees in January to - 20. Take that stoically, and you may be building a strength of mind that scoffs at being spooked---or possessed.

Everyday for years I further clarified; further colored in and defined my imaginary imagery palace of the filth festering within this barn. The obsessive thoughts spiked my childhood blood pressure---shook up my insides like a Krampus Christmas soiled snow globe breed incestuously with a black as night Okie dust bowl storm from '35. Some kind of "Island of Dr. Moreau" monster gone off the rails, wallowing in it's foundation. Summer after summer, the intensity of this recurring diseased nightmare had ratcheted up to a volume I could no longer ignore; an invitation I could no longer ignore.

When I made the decision to enter it's domain---dead silence finally rang out. It had been inside my mind, mocking me the entire time, and it wasn't just dirt. I creaked the door open to a welcoming 20 degree spike in what I can only describe as a dusty bone dry humidity. I'd never felt damp dust before or since---I swore I'd dreamt it up but I could feel my pores open, instantly lubricating the whole of my skin with a sweat layer just in time to defend my front line as waves of ectoplasmic charged field dust attacked. This full stale onslaught so overwhelming that it took all my might to hold back my triggered gag reflex---all this before my eyes had adjusted to see anything. Tilting my head back to stand up straight and manly strong gave me my first sight of what had frightened me so torturously. I began gagging convulsively, this time violently rejecting the hideous sight of those pinkish open boil sores oozing down the poltergeist's pale sheer face standing in the far corner---this cantankerous specter who, besides the veil-like face seeping, remained mannequin still gawking at me. He was fixated, wholly consumed by me like a starving morbidly obese man drooling all over himself standing in front of his first all-you-can-eat buffet---inviting me in further with thirsty eyes. Scanning my surroundings, I quickly realized he was standing in every charcoal shaded corner and crevice. I was standing in the center of his demonic hall of mirrors funhouse; all his faces weren't dark enough to hide the emptiness behind his eyes---nothingness inside his smiling well-pit mouth; this was something much older then any farm hand spirit.

Then the warmth of a lit candle ignited in my gut, the image of a lighthouse residing in my stomach is still with me today; frantically flashing signals to my brain. Like warnings bombastically growing to broadcasted billboards with blurry words coming into focus with the speed of tintype photography, minutes felt longer than hours waiting for the translated morse-coded locations of jagged rock outcrops when I was already intimately aware something had surfaced. A towering inferno of a sea monster dead ahead and this slithering phantasm was intent on drinking me and keeping me as a host---inumbrating me in his caged darkness of shadows. It was then that I realized he'd been hiding himself and his intent from me by psychically broadcast his hideous homing beacon, psychologically torturing me. But now, too all consumed by his thirst for my life-force his guard was gone---I could see what he was, and what he is---is completely empty of essence---aester. Cursed forever empty, to be driven by a constant heroin addict-like agonizing hunger, he can never satisfy. Similar to a vampire, a damned parasitic demon that feeds off the life-force of living animals---the best hosts being the youngest and most vibrant. This is the most terrifying and yet most pathically sad thing I've ever witnessed.

Nowadays, I stare at him, still squirming in agony---I don't know how to help him, that's what this letter is about. You're the last vestige of our ilk that I've heard has any experience with something like this. I've been reluctant to reach out as this is such a peculiar case of the archaic but this ancient umbra is bound here purposely to suffer eternally in the "in-between". Whatever all this is, it's massively powerful, maybe older than writing, and heavily concealed.

Thank you.