—Khalil
Marnie
I don't know if I believe in alternate realities but I certainly am spooked by strange occurrences that upset my view of the universe.
I try not to reflect on things too deeply, not because I'm shallow, but for me, over-analyzing anything can quickly lead to a bout of fear and trembling.
Some people have itchy ears and want to believe the most bizarre conspiracy theories, but I'm the opposite—I want to debunk them because if aliens and ghosts exist, then the world is no longer a safe place for me.
I prefer a steady-state universe, devoid of catastrophic events—and yes, in the interest of full-disclosure, I'm not the adventurous type. I like things calm, predictable and boring.
"What are we doing here?" Marnie complained, as we walked across the darkened campus. "This is totally unlike you and far outside your comfort zone."
We were on our way to a weekly meeting of the Mandela society, an eclectic and eccentric group of social misfits who delighted in investigating mysterious phenomena.
"I belong to all sorts of weird groups, like *The Cloud Appreciation Society. It's probably an approach-avoidance thing."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," she joked drily, "you don't believe in these pipe dreams and just want to expose them in one of your articles."
I shook my head. "I'm not that cynical and I don't have a closed mind. If there's any truth in what these people uncover, I'd like to see it. But am I eager to believe it? Hell, no! I prefer living in a dependable world the laws of physics govern. Uncanny occurrences unnerve me and metaphysics gives me heartburn."
She arched an eyebrow and stared at me in disbelief.
"You know you're a mass of contradictions? You say one thing and do another. No wonder you're scared of an unpredictable universe—you can't even depend on yourself because of these vast discrepancies in your character."
I nodded, "Yeah, you're right. I don't really know myself."
She laughed in spite of herself, "You definitely are mad, boy, but it's kind of endearing. But don't let what I just said go to your head. I don't find helplessness charming."
"I get that," I smiled, "but you've got to admit, it's a different way of spending a Friday night."
She rolled her eyes, which was my signal to back off.
Note to Self, I mused inwardly, don't vex Marnie—she has a low threshold for men that are high-maintenance—like me, I could have added.
The meeting, if I could call it that, was actually an informal get-together of a dozen people from different walks of life.
The leader or organizer of the group was a university Psych Prof named Eliot Granger, but the main contributors were a computer technician named Stan Hendricks whom they called Static and a beautiful grad student named Ember Snowdon.
Ember had been detailing several time skip events she experienced and was struggling to come to terms with these.
Static, the computer geek, was fascinated by a few missing time events she described, or he was fascinated by her, but mercifully, no mention of aliens.
Inevitably, the focus narrowed on me, the new guy and Eliot Granger asked if I had any mysterious experiences I cared to share.
Marnie shot me a menacing glance that made clear she wanted me to respect her boundaries, but fortunately I did have a couple of unique experiences I could recount. I wisely chose one of them.
“I can share one eerie experience that happened to me when I was a child,” I replied.
“When I was six or seven I’d suffer from nightmares and I used to get up during the night and creep into my grandmother’s room and sleep with her. She understood my fears and I felt safe sleeping beside her.”
“One night, something woke me and I noticed a man in evening clothes and top hat admiring himself in the mirrored vanity opposite where we slept. I was terrified and though I pinched my nanny to alert her, she was in a deep sleep and I couldn’t wake her.”
“I slipped out of bed and crept behind him toward the door leading to my parents’ room. The man noticed my reflection in the mirror and turned and glowered at me. He had a reddish beard and had been pruning it.”
“You better get out of here,” I warned him, “Or I’ll tell my father.” The man didn’t move and I turned and fled to my parents room, woke my father and brought him back but the man had gone.”
”Sounds to me like you were sleepwalking and were still dreaming,“ Ember observed.
“I might have dismissed it that way too, except for one thing. A few days later I heard my mother explain to my aunt that she had the same experience as I did when she slept with her mother as a young girl and she recognized the man in evening clothes as her father.”
“That still may have just been a coincidence,” Ember contended.
“It may have been,” I replied, “except she commented on his red hair and beard and how he had been pruning his moustache and admiring himself in the mirror—all details I hadn’t divulged. And she added that these events always happened around my grandmother, a detail I also noted.”
Ember’s eyes grew huge and she stared at me with mild surprise.
“Very interesting,” she said, “perhaps your grandmother was a seer.”
“I know she read tea leaves and her fortune telling was so precise, people would line up around the block to get an audience with her. But she never charged anyone. She believed it was a gift and passed it on to others.”
“I’d like to know more about her,” Ember said, just as Eliot Granger interrupted to say our time was up and we’d have to continue the meeting the following week.
“I think that girl wants to know more about you,” Marnie hissed in my ear.
I was surprised by her reaction but shrugged it off. She was quiet on the way home, but when I dropped her off she said, “I’ll go back next week. It’s easy to get roped into a cult or aberrant group. I’ll watch your back.”
I think I discovered what was missing from my life—excitement. I was looking forward to going back the following week. I couldn’t remember feeling this way in a long time.