Category: Mystery of Unknown

Country folk, you know, they play the long game. You won’t see them posting incriminating pictures or videos on Facebook or Instagram.  No Twitter feeds for them.

No, they see you, catch you dead right or wrong, in some compromising circumstance and they file the indiscretion, in their Dirty Deeds Bank so that they are one up on you, like a Guaranteed for Life Threat, hovering over your head, but hey, who is counting?

Still, this was top-secret…..so secret that one of your family or even you, may be aware of its existence, but you never divulged your knowledge not to your mother, father, sister, brother, best friend, the local police or even the parish priest.  You had the burden of the secret because the powers that had been given you….. the gift of scrying (or the curse),  the ability to see what was and will be,  depending on which way you tipped the kaleidoscope.

And so it came to be that when Misfit Mollie passed on, the bucolic country doors were flung wide open,  by the volumes and volumes, meticulously  written in cramped handwriting about the art of scrying and the members of the community who were involved, like the church deacon, the kindergarten teacher, the family doctor and the judge, who put your second cousin, twice removed away for twenty years on trumped-up charges.

Maybe the poor judge had been under the influence of the mirror image pool. Maybe, when he gazed in to the pool, he saw strange, inexplicable moving shapes. Maybe he thought his real calling in life was to help the hopeless move to a looping netherworld to await rescue by the Secret Society of Scryers and Oddballs.

 

It was shocking, unbelievable but…..where was that mirror image pool? Maybe it was time to take a gander, to see what all the fuss was about, you know…..because no one really believes in those back woods ways, do they?

Misfit Molly, well, that was understandable, no one in the town had much to do with her.  She needed something to fill her days…..but the judge, the deacon, the teacher, the doctor.  ‘What is this world coming to?’ they wondered.

Once the town police got a hold of the story, it was up to them to decide if a crime had taken place.  Could charges be laid? Did money exchange hands?  On the surface, it looked like no harm, no foul, but what about the judge and the second cousin twice removed?  Was his sentence more divination than interrogation?

The first step was to approach the SSS (Secret Society of Scryers ) listed in Misfit Molly’s ledgers and ask for the location of the mirror image pool.  It was like the members had all been struck with amnesia.  They all gave a different location and none of them led to a pool, a brook or a teaspoon of water.

Seemed they had taken an Oath of Silence (that’s what Secret Societies do) and would rather face the local jailhouse than betray the cause.  Oh, there was a lot of digging to be done in impregnable territory before the truth (if the truth) would rise like a Phoenix and satisfy  the largely curious, yet mystified inhabitants who could not believe such chicanery had taken place without their knowledge.  But even more important….Could anyone actually see their past, present or future in a pool?

If it were so, just get out of my way.  Oh, lots to learn, lots to tell.  Country folk can be so conniving!

 

 

It came to pass that Momma and RIP Daddy took vacation, back to Momma’s place of birth, where things were not always what they seemed or even explicable, at times.

The baseball game was always a Right of Passage, separating the Men from the Boys, that you must endure (word chosen to relay Daddy and Momma’s poor attitude) at least one night of their vacation on the ball diamond or they may not be invited to the

Bonfire which could happen any moon lit night on whatever beach was chosen by the organizers, but kept secret to the last-minute (kind of like the Raves in Toronto where kids get on a bus with windows covered in order to keep the location a sworn secret from helicopter parents, who inevitably turned in to snow plow parents, as their kids mature). It was no normal game with teams.  Each person came up to bat, like live looping disco music and the guy with the most home runs for the night won. Lucky for Momma she was so bad they didn’t use her as a catcher or an outfielder.  She could not hit or catch a ball to save her soul but it was not for naught – at least Momma gave her fellow players something to laugh about.

Somehow the subject of ‘remember whens’ turned to the night Starlight hit the ball out of the park.  Like a winged angel, she seemed almost airborne as she passed the bases, her long blonde pony tail flying behind her.  At home base she collapsed in shock because all these years and all those times up to bat and she hadn’t come close to connecting, before that night.

No one knew what happened to Starlight.  She had not been home, must be over thirty years now, the players all agreed. They all pondered and wondered what life had rolled out for her because everyone has their ups and downs, no doubt about that.

All of a sudden, from the players at the picnic table, there were gasps and excited voices, ‘Look, look out on the field. I don’t know if you can believe this, but I am told it was like a white light bathed the field.  There was, Starlight at bat. She connected with that fastball and sent it out of the park, over the trees to an unknown destination, and made her famous run once again, pony tail flying behind her, around the bases, home safe, to a cheering crowd.  And as quickly as the show started it ended, leaving all the players, Momma and Daddy as well, in the dark once again and speechless.

What had just happened?  Was Starlight still alive? Had she astro traveled when she heard the reminiscing?  Was Starlight a Starbright in Heaven twinkling down upon them and thought that it would be fun to once again entertain them with a home run?

Please, if anyone can figure this out, let Momma know because it drives her crazy not being able to come up with a logical explanation.

And you know those Right Wing, Born again, No-Booze for Youse (but still fun) all-related-to-you-somehow-types never would talk about it again.  No, they all took the Fifth Amendment.  It was, like erased from their memory bank.  But Momma knows…. it still haunts them.

It was an old house, a sad house, a dilapidated house, sitting high up on the hill, the doors sagging, the glass panes broken.  Sometimes, when we were out for a walk, Momma and I would pass by and I would beg her, ‘Tell me that story again. Momma’.  You know Momma.  She loves spinning tales.  I have long ceased trying to separate the Fact from Fiction because we all know how strange the truth can be.

Many, many years ago a middle-aged couple moved from the city to our home town, bought a piece of land on the hill, built a house with the mountains behind them, the ocean in front of them.  They appeared gentrified and uppity to the local folks, as well as reclusive, so no one knew much about them, where they came from, if they had children. No, no one knew.

Somehow Mr. and Mrs. Uppity lived among them without blending in, which was unheard in this part of the country, where the neighbor’s knew if someone cut a tree down on your property on the second concession, without your permission.

It was like an invisible fence ran around their property that shielded the privacy of the Uppities and kept the locals out.  Sometimes you’d see the locals just standing on the road, staring up the hill, saying, ‘It’s a strange, strange world, we live in, when you may not even know who lives beside you.’.

Time passed. Mr. Uppity went to his  greater reward.  And Mrs. Uppity?  No one knows what happened to her.  Did she run away in the middle of the night? Did she head to the mountain for a stroll, take a wrong turn and become disoriented, entrapped forever in the deep, dark forest? Is Mrs. Uppity somewhere in that rambling old house, like down in the cellar, scrounging for potatoes, harvested the past fall or  up in the attic, digging through trunks of memorabilia? 

Or… was Mrs. Uppity from outer space conducting an experiment to understand human relationships, like marriage?  Was she one of ‘them’, in human form? Did the space ship come and ‘Beam her up, Scottie’, to report to the Space Alien Commander and Chief, once Mr. Uppity died? And could it be the Extraterrestrials that hold parties in the lonely mansion on the hill? What is that Momma? I never heard of Extraterrestrials before.  Later, Jakita, I’ll tell you what I have heard and saw, later.

Finally after many years, the locals scaled the invisible fence and peaked in the windows.  The supper dishes were on the table, dinner still on the plate, as if Mrs. Uppity left in a hurry. The closets were full of clothes, the beds made meticulously. Like here one moment, gone the next.

Over the years, things happened, no one will lay claim to.  The dishes were all broken and flung across the floor. The furniture has been ravaged whether by the Two Footed or the Four Footed, who knows? All the locals can say for sure is that it has been said every few years on a moonlit night, the lonely  mansion on the hill is flooded with g;owing lights.  Sometimes you can hear music and loud voices coming from the open windows.  Then as quickly as it started, it ends abruptly, and the very silence can deafen you.

We never knew what to make of it, Momma told me.  No one could figure them out in life so it is a sure bet, we don’t understand them in death.

What a strange story Momma.  I got to tell Gen, Ruby, Tigger and Babby about the lonely mansion on the hill. We’ll wrap our heads around it and figure it out.  I promise.