Moment in time -1963

 WALES, UNITED KINGDOM - 22nd November 1963 

The storm outside was masked to those within the darkened room by heavy fabric curtains swung across to shut out any external light. The fire, burning furiously in the grate, crackled intermittently as the flames overcame resistance from the rich Welsh coal.  Being the only source of light within, it cast swirling shapes on the walls and silhouetted the occupants sitting in the gloom.

Settled in an armchair by the fire, Elizabeth Lewis felt snug, warm, and comfortable. She also felt bored and, not for the first time, a trifle foolish. From past experience, she knew that little was likely to happen to disturb this soporific atmosphere other than some amateur theatrics when the mood took someone. The weather at least was playing its part, she decided, by providing a perfect backdrop for this sorry excuse for a seance.  In her eyes, only a full-blown manifestation would really make the evening a success. However, she would settle for any kind of supernatural happening to break the monotony of sitting in the dark. At that particular moment, she could not decide whether it was preferable to be frightened to death or die of tedium. She didn’t really believe that contact could be made with the afterlife and only attended these meetings to keep her husband company.

Dear old Bob! How predictable he was to her. Once he became interested in anything, he involved himself wholeheartedly. Now his current craze was spiritualism. Had it only been six weeks ago that he had asked her if she would go with him to these seances? She remembered what she said at the time. 

“Oh, Bob, it’s a lot of Mumbo Jumbo! How can you believe in such things?” but he had remained persistent.

 “Look, love, if nothing else, it will at least give us an opportunity to meet a few people around here. You’re the one that’s always saying you miss your friends in London. Besides, it may be interesting. Anyway, what about those dreams of yours? Maybe someone on the other side is trying to get in touch with you.” He smiled at her as he spoke for he knew that she thought he was being somewhat puerile. 

“Bob, you haven’t told anyone about those dreams? People are going to think I’m a bit of a loon or something!”

“Nonsense, Frank was very interested in them. Besides, he’s probably a warlock himself so why worry.” He threw the last statement in for good measure to bolster the impression he was trying to convey.  That of mock curiosity rather than abiding interest,

Elizabeth knew from past experience that if she let him have his head, his interest in spiritualism would eventually peter out as it had with his other many pursuits. As for her dreams, she could picture Bob in the ‘Brown Bear’, one of three drinking holes in the Welsh village where they lived, telling all and sundry about them. At the best of times, he was inclined to embroider his stories and with a few drinks to sustain the narrative, her dreams would take on apocalyptic significance. If her dreams were premonitory, surely they would be accurate in their content she had reminded Bob of many times in the past when the subject cropped up, but he chose to ignore this minor detail. 

Her dreams were disturbing, she had to admit, but she took some comfort from the fact that they were so imprecise. Take for instance the passing of her grandfather who had died a week after she had foreseen it in a dream.  In the dream, she had seen him drown in a boating accident. In reality, he had drowned after falling asleep in his bath following a too-liberal nightcap of rum. 

Another dream she often brought to mind was the one involving both Bob and her in which their car with them in it had exploded in a ball of flames.  Sure enough, days after that dream occurred, another vehicle ran into the back of their car, but neither she nor Bob had been injured and fire had not occurred.  There were other dreams too that could be loosely tied into the events of her life, but they were vague and inconclusive. They all had a common theme though - death. 

Since her dreams had started in childhood, she put them down to some sort of trauma that may have occurred then, but she could not recall what it was, if, indeed, that was the reason. So far, despite Bob’s suggestion, she had resisted seeing a psychiatrist. Perhaps she was afraid of what she might discover. Whatever, for now, she would put up with the dreams. Besides, the two dreams that had persistently dogged her throughout her life had not reoccurred for more than a year now. Those dreams were so weird, in fact, that it took her some time after their marriage before she could bring herself to tell her husband about them.  Finally, when she had told him, he predictably tried to read some significance into them. 

Both dreams were very similar except for the horsemen in them. They would start the same way with her walking through a barren valley. Ahead in the distance, she would see a horseman galloping towards her. The rider was a man clad in ancient golden armour with his head bare, and long flaxen golden ringlets reaching to his shoulders. He would then rein up before her on his pure white horse. In one of the dreams, his face was youthful and handsome with eyes the deepest blue that were truly beautiful and a countenance that was completely benign. She always had the distinct feeling that she knew this man. Looking down at her, he would smile before rearing up on his horse and pivoting around. A puff of wind would lift the white tunic about his legs, and she would see something emblazoned on the skin of his upper right thigh. When she woke up, she could never recall, try as she might, what it was she saw there although she felt that it was of some significance. 

In the other dream, the horseman that reined his horse up before her had a face of pure malevolence.  His eyes were blood red like balls of fire, and small snakes adorned his head like the snaky locks of Medusa. His face was a sea of maggots that flayed his skin before her eyes until just a skull remained. Elizabeth always awoke screaming and afraid.

The fact that the dreams had now ceased didn’t stop Bob from mentioning it to Frank Morgan, the publican of the 'Brown Bear'. 

Bob, for once, had found a ready listener. Frank’s wife, Wynn, was a spiritualist and held seances, or circles as she euphemistically called them, at their home on Friday evenings. Inevitably, Frank invited Bob to come along to one of these seances to see for himself.  Elizabeth, despite her misgivings, eventually decided to go along with him conceding that he was at least right about getting out and meeting people.  

It had been almost eleven months since Bob had taken up his appointment as a lecturer of English at Cardiff University.  At the time they had willingly deserted their small flat in South-East London for the rustic life of Wales. However, she was finding it difficult to settle, missing her friends in London and the part-time job in a shipping office that had filled her days. Here in this Welsh village, ten miles from Cardiff, she was just a housewife tied to the home and finding it increasingly tedious. Bob had his work at the University and his cronies in the ‘The Brown Bear’, where he whittled away some of his spare time. With his infectious nature and gregarious bent, parochial Wales held little fear for him. She on the other hand had always been a little introverted and found it hard to make new friends easily, shying away from meeting strangers if she could. Realizing that she would have to make an effort, she had agreed to accompany Bob on his latest venture.  After all, what had she to lose?

The meetings, seances, circles, whatever one chose to call them, proved to be pleasant affairs.  The people that attended although motley in nature were a friendly bunch and as ordinary as could be. Other than Bob, there were no professional people there, just local farmers, housewives, shopkeepers, and the like. Perhaps necromancy held more fascination for those with mundane pursuits, Elizabeth surmised. She, herself, had been surprised at the number of people in the village interested in Wyn’s sessions. The meetings sometimes attracted twenty or more at a time. 

Through these meetings, she and Bob had been able to mingle freely with the village community so the exercise had proved worthwhile. However, to Bob’s disappointment and, she had to admit, to her own for she was just as curious as most, the seances themselves were a real letdown. She had envisioned a séance as being one where a little old lady, the medium, sits at a table on which a requisite crystal ball is placed. Spirits would be evoked by the medium while the true believers sat around the table holding hands. Wynn, Frank’s wife, who was the incumbent medium, was neither old nor stereotypical.  She must have been in her late thirties and dressed in a stylish way. Her manner was pleasant, and down to earth, and gave no hint of her supernatural leanings. However, she did have that knack, like most obsessive individuals, of taking herself too seriously.  Over a period of time, this had begun to irk Elizabeth who had seen no tangible proof to date that Wynn had any psychic ability whatsoever.

Wynn always opened the seance with a short prayer, usually the Lord’s Prayer. Bob, by now a self-taught authority on the subject, had explained to Elizabeth that the prayer was to ward off forces from the dark side; those denizens of the underworld who presumably sat around all day conjuring up ways of breaking through the ether.  Elizabeth couldn’t help but give an involuntary laugh when Bob had first begun to explain the meaning of the prayer to her for he had been so intense.  Sheepishly, he had added,  “You might laugh my girl but if Old Nick drops in on you because you didn’t say your prayers, don’t blame me!” 

Gaining momentum, he went on, “The linking of the hands whilst the prayer is said is done to complete the circle. The unbroken circle constitutes a ring of fire through which Satan and his cohorts cannot penetrate. Apparently, however, it doesn’t prevent intrepid spirits with good intentions from parachuting in for a visit.”

“You don’t really believe that rubbish, do you?” she chided. “The last ring of fire I experienced was after eating that Indian curry on your birthday!  Remember?” He laughed as she went on, “Anyway, I’m not so worried about anyone parachuting in from above! I’m more concerned with those that might come up through the floor!”

Bob laughed again. “Well, it should be interesting. You’ve got to admit that,” he jested as he turned once more to the book he had been reading.  A book about the occult, what else!

She had been happy enough to leave the finer points of spiritualism to him for she had little interest or belief in it herself. Reflecting back now on her experiences of these séances to date, they were completely different from her preconceived notions.  Once the opening prayer had been said, instead of sitting around a table as she had imagined, they all sat in various parts of the room where seating presented itself. The light would be extinguished and they would be left to meditate and wait patiently.  How patient could one be though? During the first few meetings, she had sat in eager anticipation. After all, her curiosity was as acute as most. She soon learned, however, that rather than being treated to a paranormal extravaganza, she and the rest were subjected instead to, what appeared to be, rather indifferent acting performances by various individuals within the room as they were supposedly taken over by their spirit guides.

It hadn’t taken Elizabeth long to decide that people with hyperactive imaginations and a desire for attention richly attended these gatherings.  Further, all the so-called spirit guides seemed to be Red Indian chiefs. "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians", she concluded.  Once, she questioned Wynn as to why these spirit guides were all Red Indians and chiefs at that.  In hushed, reverent tones, Wynn had informed her that Red Indian leaders in the past had tended to be very spiritual in nature which gave them the credentials to return from the other side and communicate with the living. 

"General Custer and a few others might disagree with you!", Elizabeth had thought at the time but considered it prudent not to present this argument to Wynn.

Ensconced now on this stormy evening, in one of the Morgans’ comfortable armchairs, Elizabeth became drowsy.  The tempest outside was starting to abate and the steady light tapping of rain on the windowpanes rather than the harsher sounds that had proceeded was, with a hypnotic cunning, lulling her to sleep. The warmth from the fire also participated in the conspiracy. Her eyes closed and her head began to drop towards her lap until she fell slightly forward and woke with a start. "It would never do to be found asleep," she thought. Wynn would never forgive her

She tried to remain alert by focusing her mind on something. The light from the fire played on the outline of various objects on the low coffee table in the center of the room. They were not clearly defined in the dimness but she knew them to be a crucifix, a Bible, and a trumpet. Not a conventional trumpet for producing musical notes but rather a cone of thin metal, a foot or so long and some eight inches at the front and one inch at the rear; its shape being very similar to that of an ice cream cone. The theory was, she had been informed, that visitors from the other side would herald their arrival by levitating the trumpet through which, if the skeptics could be convinced, ectoplasm would be emitted to form some form of manifestation.  Ectoplasm was, it had been explained, a whitish vapour of smoky-like appearance that blossomed into an observable apparition. Sometimes, when the séances had been concluded, a fervent believer or two would examine the trumpet assiduously for traces of such ectoplasm, an exercise that never ceased to amuse her.  

No one to her knowledge had ever seen the trumpet levitate. Nor, for that matter, had anyone found even a vestige of ectoplasm despite the fact that these séances had been a regular occurrence over many years. However, this did not seem to dampen the group’s enthusiasm. "They might do better to connect the trumpet to a radio. At least that would provide some entertainment", Elizabeth mused. "What a shock though if a disembodied entity did pop out of the trumpet one evening!"  She gazed long and hard at the shape of the trumpet in the semi-darkness. Its outline did seem to have a whitish haze around the edges and she strained her eyes in concentration.  

"My God! Now they’ve got me at it! A real live ghost would be something to behold though or should that be a real dead ghost?" she pondered. "Whatever, I'm out of here if one does appear!"

Turning her attention to the other objects, the crucifix, and Bible, her thoughts meandered on. "What would Mum think if she could see me now?  No doubt, being a staunch Catholic, Mum would tell me that I was on the path to perdition. Maybe I am!" 

Although Elizabeth was not a practicing Catholic, she had some qualms about involving herself in what her mother would have described as evil doings. She felt uneasy dabbling in matters that were probably best left alone, but her curiosity and Bob’s persistence had outweighed her reluctance. Anyway, nothing had happened so far that could even mildly be construed as nefarious.  Even so, she knew the Church would see it differently.  

"If old Father Frost from my local parish in London were a fly on the wall, he would probably arrange for my ex-communication. On the other hand, I haven’t been to church for so long, I have probably been excommunicated anyway."

“Good evening! How are you all this evening?” the grandiloquent voice boomed out through the murk.  It was more an entrance than a question begging reply.

"Oh no!", Elizabeth inwardly exclaimed as everyone dutifully answered, “Well, thank you!” She knew from past experience that it was Frank Morgan. Frank, who, no doubt, found it hard to be upstaged by his pseudo-medium wife, had invited Red Cloud to the party. Peering through the darkness, Elizabeth made out the portly shape of Frank sitting bolt upright in his chair, inhaling and exhaling great gulps of air reminiscent of a goldfish.  For some reason, he always seemed to require a considerable amount of oxygen for his performance.  He was good though because his Welsh accent could only be detected when Red Cloud became angry; something he was prone to be quite often.  What seemed to raise Red Cloud’s ire the most were questions posed by the group regarding the afterlife.  For one that had presumably been dead a long time, Red Cloud seemed to know very little about the other side and would become agitated when pressed, often departing in a great wheezing of air like a balloon suddenly deflated. Funny thing though, strain as she might, she could never see Red Cloud, only Frank sitting at attention. Frank in one of his off-duty-from-Red-Cloud moments had informed her that regrettably, she did not have the gift, hence, her inability to see Red Cloud. No one else seemed to be able to see Red Cloud either but that didn’t seem to faze Frank.

As Red Cloud opened the show, the rain renewed its fury, pounding on the windows as if it too were objecting to Red Cloud’s harangue. Red Cloud, not to be outdone, increase his volume to stentorian proportions so that he could be heard above the protests outside. Despite the cacophony of noise topped by Red Cloud’s strident monologue, Elizabeth’s eyes began to close once more and the movement of her head as it sank to her chest failed this time to forewarn her.  She began to doze.

....His armour was Greco-Roman and she could see his golden ornate breastplate gleaming in the sun. Mounted on a white horse, he held a bow in one hand and the bridle in the other. The horse stood motionless in tune with its rider as she made her approach through the valley. Drawing close, she could see that his skin was the colour of ivory and his eyes were brilliant blue. His shoulder-length blond hair adorned his handsome face and he wore a wreath of laurel leaves on his head She recognized him at once and was not afraid.  He called her by name and said....

She awoke with a start.  Red Cloud had departed and the room was quiet once more. The rain had ceased as if approving of Red Cloud’s evaporation, and the final hissing of the coal as it burned low in the grate was the only audible sound to be heard.  The dream had seemed so real, so vivid.  Unlike before when her dreams of him were hazy, this time she could remember every detail.  The wonderful thing he had said had uplifted her even though she knew it was not possible. Whatever technical terms the doctors had used when explaining it, it all boiled down to one thing - she was barren. She had learned to live with the fact and accept her condition for what it was. However, it had been the one blight on her marriage for she had so wanted children. Now the warrior in her dream had told her she would have a son!  Although it had only been a dream, for once it had left her happy rather than apprehensive.

Someone in the room started to moan and Elizabeth turned her head to see who it was. It turned out to be a Spanish woman named Maria who had invited her spirit guide to the party. This in itself was unusual. Maria, unlike some of the others in the room, was painfully shy and did not freely promote herself. In fact, she had always been a silent participant during the séances themselves, until now. Yet, of all those in the room, Maria was the only one who did seem to have some real psychic ability. She had demonstrated this to Elizabeth weeks before when Elizabeth had quite by chance shown her a necklace of sentimental value that her grandmother had given her.  Upon handling the necklace, Maria had been disturbingly accurate in her account of who had given it to Elizabeth, why it was given, and who had worn it before. At first, Elizabeth suspected that Bob had conspired with Maria, as he was the only one other than she who had prior knowledge of the necklace’s history. However, Bob swore that he had said nothing so, if this were so, Maria could certainly lay claim to having extra-sensory perception. Bob had been quick to point out that the term for this was precognition, the ability to form impressions from the vibrations given off by objects. Whatever it was called, Elizabeth had been impressed. Therefore, Elizabeth now waited in eager anticipation for Maria to do or say something of interest.

Maria was breathing deeply now and it wouldn’t be long if past performances from other members were any guide before Maria’s alleged spirit guide would speak. However, when the words eventually came, they were a man’s.  Elizabeth felt her skin crawling and the hairs rising on her neck like a cat that had been cornered by a dog. The man was speaking to her and the voice was that of the warrior in her dream.

“Fear not, Elizabeth, for I am with you. Your son will be branded with the Word of Yahweh. When he joins with Michael, the guardian of Israel, together they will judge and smite the wicked in the name of righteousness”

Elizabeth, who had been leaning forward intently, suddenly found her head swimming. The last she remembered was a sense of falling into a black void as she slumped forward onto the floor.

“Are, you all right, Mrs. Lewis?  Can you hear me?”

To Elizabeth, it seemed as though Wynn was speaking a long way off.  She could hardly hear Wynn’s words and for a while was unable to comprehend them.  Slowly she came to and found Bob and Wynn leaning over her.

“What happened?” she heard someone in the room ask. Someone else answered, “She appears to have fainted.” The lights had been turned on and the group were all peering at her anxiously.

“Are you all right, my dear?” Wynn repeated in a motherly way, as she thrust forward a tumbler of water.

“Yes! I’m okay, thank you,” she replied embarrassingly. “I don’t know what came over me!” Then she remembered and she trembled.

“Better get her home,” Frank Morgan suggested to Bob.

Bob studied her ashen face. He had never known her to faint before and he was concerned. “Come on love, time to go,” he said to Elizabeth as they helped her up.

On the drive home, he could see that she had not yet fully recovered. Maybe these meetings were getting too much for her.  Perhaps it was time to give them a rest. He had begun to find them somewhat boring anyway although he thought Elizabeth enjoyed them.  It would be no great hardship for him to give them up.  Besides, if someone like Marie could go completely overboard, who’s to say where such nonsense could lead He knew she was a Bible nut but this time, she had gone too far. Word of Yahweh indeed! Whatever next?

He glanced at his wife as he parked the car in the garage. Masking his concern, with raw humour, he murmured,  “A check up for you my girl. Can’t have you collapsing on people’s carpets!”

Still preoccupied with her, he made a pot of tea and turned on the radio to hear the news. Sipping their tea, they were about to discuss the evening’s events when Elizabeth motioned to Bob to listen.  The newsreader was talking about a shooting in Texas.  They stared incredulously at one another. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas only hours before; just about the time they had arrived at the Morgans’. It was Friday, the 22nd of November 1963, a date that would live in the collective memory of millions around the world.  For Elizabeth though, it had another significance. It was the night she was told she would bear a child. Some weeks later, her local doctor confirmed the impossible and was quite amused when she then declared categorically that it would be a boy.

“My dear, there’s no real way one can be sure!” he said patronizingly.

She smiled knowingly as she replied, “I am sure, Doctor! I am sure!”