That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
― Sylvia Plath
Blackout
A crushing heaviness settled over me making me feel I couldn't breathe.
Up until the moment the lights went out, I thought I was dealing with a nameless fear or a prolonged emotional depression, but hearing Brooke recount the terror caused by her fanatical religious aunt gave me more insight into what I was experiencing.
I was struggling through spiritual darkness, a condition brought on by a combination of world events and my gut reaction to an impending catastrophe.
And it struck me as ironic because I was suspicious of Angelica as a clairvoyant and her psychic 'vibes', but here I was perceiving much the same thing except through a different lens.
The closest I could get to making sense of what appeared to be mystical was to compare it to the UFO phenomenon which also seemed to be associated with the paranormal.
Now, there are the countless Youtube sites and books dealing with the subject based on anecdotal evidence of believers and their subjective experiences but then, there's the secret UAP study undertaken by the government that is a serious and scientific analysis.
So, I saw myself as identifying more with the latter group. I reasoned that as a reporter, I prided myself on being an objective observer, so although Angelica and I were experiencing much the same thing, we were seeing it in entirely different ways.
Of course this could all be a facile rationalization for distancing myself from mystics―tantamount to saying, my explanation was better than hers, which in truth, it really wasn't.
While I was intent on these musings, Brooke was sitting staring at the fire looking very sheepish. I figured she was embarrassed about having divulged too much personal information.
Neither of us spoke until she finally broke the ice and confessed,"You must think I'm a head case, Zach, going on about my unhappy childhood."
"Not at all," I reassured her. "What you told me about your aunt's religious extremism is very pertinent. Actually, I'm sensing that right now the world is going through a period of spiritual darkness and this will precede either a great catastrophe or a spiritual awakening―I'm not sure which."
Her eyes grew huge. "Really―you're feeling that too? Then maybe I'm not eccentric in what I'm feeling."
I patted her hand to comfort her. "You're not a nut case, Brooke and you're certainly not an Ancient Mariner type telling everyone your life story. Honestly, I've also been going through my own dark night of the soul and I think anyone who's sensitive to what's happening in the world will sense the same things we do."
She began to weep and I saw the tears rolling down her cheeks for what they were―tears of relief, relief at knowing at least one other human being could confirm the very things she was seeing.
She leaned in close and rested her head on my shoulder.
It was then I realized I was still holding her hand, but now it was no longer just a gesture of comfort―I felt as if an electrical charge was passing between us.
It startled me and caused me to draw back and she sensed it too. We stared at each other in shocked awe, feeling we were both high tension wires suddenly thrown together.
It was plain the situation we were in was not simply happenstance but orchestrated somehow by whatever powers brought us both together.
But I also felt the same thing with Angelica too and knew for certain neither of these situations was a chance occurrence.
If we were playthings in the hands of a force greater than us, it remained to be seen if it was benevolent or malevolent.