Victorian Dreams Pt. 02

Haley doubted these assertions, for several reasons.

First the items were solid gold and jewel encrusted, not in keeping with the impoverished status of Christ and his disciples as her recent superficial studies of the Bible had revealed.

Second, if they were really of such significance historically and religiously surely an historic or religious organization or museum would have possession of them, such as the Vatican had possession of the Shroud of Turin. That cloth was said to be the burial robes of the crucified Christ, and was zealously protected. Surely goblets and the like from the Last Supper or from the travels and the ministries of the Apostles would receive equal protection from some religious or historical organization of museum.

Yet, Haley understood they did have Holy significance and might as a result serve her purpose. She immediately placed a bid for the items.

She was disappointed to later return to the web site and discover the bidding had reached 6 figures, well beyond her meager means. It appeared others had been fooled by the assertions of the seller the items were of Christ-touched significance.

A fortuitous event took place the next day as she was driving home. She passed an antique store she had seen many times and had sought to browse to perhaps complete the furnishings in her home as she prepared to open it as a B ‘n B. She was now beginning to think she might get her dream business open eventually as her confidence in her ability to evict the evil in the chamber in her home grew. Deep down inside she was reluctant to go home, as well.

At home she had to remain on guard all the time and she needed to relax. It had occurred to her she was pushing a bit hard in her attempt to derive a solution to the evil in her basement and that if she didn’t slow down and approach it a bit more methodically, she could end up making another mistake.

Clarice had warned her the attempt needed to be successful on the first try. Though she had failed in the first attempt, she was getting a reprieve of sorts in that she was going to have a second chance to rid her home of its evil occupants, so she needed to get it right this time. She might not get a third chance.

Though this was not to be her first attempt, the plan she was devising was sufficiently different from the prior attempt perhaps the danger of her first failure would be mitigated.

With Clarice seemingly unable to give her further guidance after answering a question rather than confirming an assumption the last time they had talked, she felt again she was probably on her own, and so needed to slow down and take things slowly. So she decided to stop and browse this day as she passed the antique store.

More to slow down the pressure of her planning than to prepare to finish furnishing her B ‘n B. She wouldn’t need to worry about finishing her home out until she was certain her unwanted guests had been permanently evicted.

Inside was typical of antique retail establishments. Multiple booths of dusty old stuff, some of it more junk than antique, but it was like they say ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’.

Haley browsed for a long while, going from one antique dealer’s booth to another and as she came down one aisle and turned the corner to start up another, the corner booth caught her attention immediately.

Chapter 46

There were enumerable religious artifacts ranging from crosses and crucifixes to chalices and goblets all apparently used in religious ceremonies.

A sign said ‘circa 1860’.

As she stood observing the items, the owner of the booth approached her.

“Interesting pieces aren’t they?”

“Yes, what is their origin?” Haley asked the question in an attempt to make it sound like she was a seasoned antique shopper.

“They were discovered when an old Puritan church was being torn down in New England. The church had been abandoned for decades and these items were in the basement. For safety reasons, the demolition crew didn’t enter the structure, but started to demolitish it from the outside."

"Once the super-structure of the building had been removed they discovered the basement. These items were tucked away in a cupboard there. The rumor is the Church goes back to colonial times, but my research on the style of the items and etc, puts these as more likely Civil War era, so mid 1800’s. They are mostly pewter though they are gold plated, in some instances. When I purchased them, I wasn’t sure there would be a market for religious artifacts and I have found my fears were justified. I have had these for several years now, and they are just taking up space and are pretty labor intensive in the polishing and maintenance they require.”

Haley was rather astonished the dealer was being so candid about the items. She had yet to realize real antique dealers are usually forthcoming about condition and the collectible nature, etc.

An idea was starting to percolate in Haley’s pretty little head, so she asked what he was asking for the lot. She wished her basements contents were friendly rather than what actually resided there.

“Actually, anything is probably a loss considering what they cost and the upkeep I have put into them over the years, make me an offer.”

“Would you take $200 for the lot?”

The dealer seemed to ponder a moment before answering then he said.

“That is a big loss actually, but if you are willing to buy the lot, I will accept.”

They loaded the items into Haley’s SUV. It came to three small pasteboard boxes full.

She drove the rest of the way home the primitive idea she had starting to take shape in her mind. The next evening on her way home from work, she stopped at a machine shop. She asked the owner to grind the items down into a small fine particle dust.

He was a Hispanic man and likely a devout Catholic, and refused to destroy religious artifacts in that manner. He probably figured Haley was attempting some blasphemous or perhaps nefarious activity and it became apparent he wanted her out of his business rather quickly.

She left disappointed, but got another idea on the way home.

She would get a small welding torch. The exothermic reaction when you supplied oxygen to the burning acetylene produces temperatures in excess of 5000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Pewter would melt at around 750 degrees and gold at about 1950. She would reduce the items to a blob of metal and then have them ground to a fine dust. She would find a different machine shop from the one she had just visited and they wouldn’t know what the metal had been before it was reduced to blobs of melted metal.

She decided to give things a couple of more days before proceeding with her plan. She felt she needed to ponder it through a while longer and take a more slow methodical approach or risk the danger of having her plan fail again.

It was the week following the full moon and if the schedule proved accurate, she wouldn’t need to worry about a visit from the concubines for a few more days. She was also hoping her discovery of religious paraphernalia’s affect on them wound inhibit them as well.

Saturday morning she drove into town and purchased a small torch kit and two large cast iron kettles. She put the items into one of the kettles and started the torch to supplying the heat.

There were numerous flare-ups at first, none severe, as paint, paper and other combustibles that adorned the items reached their flash points. Then the pewter got hot enough to start melting. Most of the items were gold plated, so they tried to hold their shape since the melting point of the gold had not yet been reached, but the layer of plating was thin, so many turned into indistinguishable blobs of gold as the pewter underneath liquefied and the malleable gold followed the shape of the collapsing form.

After several hours of torching the contents of the pot, a molten mass was all that remained. She had set the pot up so working with it was easy and tilted the pot pouring the metallic river of liquid into the other pot, which she had filled with cold water.

The water in the receiving pot quickly began to boil as the river of molten metal in the neighborhood of 2000 degrees hit its cooling presence. After she had poured about half the liquid metals into the water, she stopped and added more water to the receiving pot. Then she finished pouring the molten metal into the receiving pot.

She knew she would need to wait for the water to cool before she could work with the metal any further. So she got a glass of tea and Clarice diary to read more on the trials the girl had endured. She needed to have all available knowledge when she attempted what she was planning, and the diary was the best source considering Clarice spirit was probably incommunicado, now.

Chapter 47

As she started to read the words carefully chronicled in Clarice diary she picked up at her planning to try to destroy the house as her mother had implored her to do before she let the ray’s of the sun, dispatch her spirit to wherever spirits in her situation are sent to.

Clarice felt she must do things quickly, before the Child Welfare agency came for her. She wasn’t sure if she would be able to get back to the house if she was incarcerated in an orphans facility.

Incarceration was the only word that came to her mind as she wrote of her dilemma. She started outlining a plan in her diary, to burn the house to the ground. She figured to be successful she needed an accelerant. She thought to try to get some gasoline from the tank of the Model A, but wisely decided gasoline was too volatile.

Clarice wrote of driving to town and getting a gallon of coal oil. It was flammable, but not nearly as volatile as gasoline. When she arrived at the house, she fixed herself a bite to eat and sat and pondered on the activity she was planning.

She would likely get in trouble for Arson, but as the sole heir of the house, if she didn’t file an insurance claim, hopefully it wouldn’t be too bad. She wasn’t even sure if there was insurance on the house. She hoped as the owner, she could dispose of the house in any manner she chose.

The diary ended at that point, and at first Haley was at a loss as to why. Later it occurred to her, when she had researched the history of the house, it had been noted that Clarice had burned to death in her attempt to destroy the house, so no further entries in the diary would have been possible.

Late that afternoon, after the water in the kettle had cooled. Haley poured the kettle’s contents through a makeshift wire strainer she had built. The metal was now in little teardrop-sized ingots, the gold plating and the pewter had separated out so there were two distinct colors as she strained the water off the mass. At first she thought to try to separate the tiny chucks of metal and to save the gold out and perhaps in saving it help to recoup some of her expense, then she realized the effort would probably be more labor intensive than the return would justify. In the end, she bagged all the metal into canvas bank bags she had obtained for the purpose.

That night as the hour grew late and Haley lay in bed, dressed in her religious armor and trying to drift off to sleep, she called for Clarice again.

“Are you here Clarice?”

When the spirit didn’t appear instantly as she had the nights before, Haley at first got a sense of loss of not being able to talk to the girl again, then a sense of foreboding, thinking perhaps it meant she was about to be visited by the evil spirits. Then she felt the familiar draft on her face.

“Clarice. I am so glad to see you. I didn’t think you were going to return.”

“I am here, but I have been reminded to watch how I respond to your questions.”

“Why can you not speak freely and openly?”

“It is a part on the power struggle that has existed through all eternity, that is all I can say.”

“My question is what happened when you tried to burn the house down.”

“Oh that, I was foolish. I underestimated the powers and the wiles of the evil ones.”

“In what ways?”

Chapter 48

“First, I wrote what I was attempting and they probably knew exactly what to expect. Then like your earlier excursions into the chamber in daylight to avoid contact, I thought burning the house in the afternoon would prevent them trying to thwart my attempt.”

Haley felt her heart skip a beat when she realized she had probably been in danger in the chamber on her two previous visits. She realized she must proceed as if there was no respite afforded by the daylight hours. She must consider the evil was present in one form or another at all times.

“I got the coal oil as I said in my diary. I felt to start the burn on the west side since that seems to be the closest point to the evil. I know now I would probably have succeeded had I started it anywhere else. I doused the west wall with the coal oil, from a bedroom window on the second floor. Then I went outside and tried to light a match. I tried several times to light a match and each time a gust of wind would blow them out. Finally I built a small torch, and put a few drops of coal oil on it, all that was left in the can, and lit it in the sheltered protection of the house so the wind couldn’t blow it out again.”

“Is that the burnt smell I detected when I came in the house that first day, and the smell when the concubines are present and the burnt smell in the chamber?” Clarice queried.

“No that is brimstone. When the evil ones return to the underworld each day, the smell of burning brimstone is absorbed in their vaporous being.”

Clarice continued in her explanation of failure in burning the house down.

“I touched the burning torch to the coal oil running down the side of the house, and it lit. I stood there and watched as the flames crept up the side of the house. For the first time in a long time, I felt safe again. Then the vines that grow the thorns under the Agarita reached out and grabbed me around my waist and slammed me into the flames on the side of the house. My clothing caught on fire as the oiliness of the coal oil rubbed off onto my clothing. The vines hurled me to the ground and I rolled trying to put the flames out, but I couldn’t with the fuel oil being the source of the fires combustion. I was thinking, ‘I might die, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice for destroying the evil in the house.”

“As I lay there burning, just before the agony of the flames forced my mind to shutdown because the pain was too unbearable, I watched the house seemingly extinguish itself, and knowing I had been thwarted. Then I burned to death. But even then when I knew I was going to die, I thought I must do something to protect those who follow in this place.”

Haley was aghast at the tale told by the spirit of the young girl, and gained a new level of respect for the cunning of the adversaries in her basement, as well as, for Clarice personal courage.

“So when Olaf, my mother’s cousin, inherited the house and came to stay here, I appeared to him, but instead of comforting him and trying to get him to devise a way to destroy the evil here, I only scared him into erecting the doorway on the stair and vowing never to return. Again I failed.”

“Then you came. I saw strength in you when you discovered and started reading my journal, just as mother saw strength in me and so I thought I could help you do what I couldn’t and Olaf refused, to do. I tried to approach you slowly so as not to scare you as I had Olaf.”

“I don’t know what you are planning, and you should not tell me or write it down or make your preparations too obvious, but I think you are on track to succeed where I have failed. I only wish I could help you more”

Haley wished the same thing and told Clarice she was afraid her plan would fail. Clarice sought to allay her fears.

“If your plan was so far off you were endangering yourself, I would be allowed to tell you that, for though I don’t know your plan, there are those with me who do. Take heart in knowing they think you are going in the appropriate direction and proceed. Just be cautious as you go forward. Don’t do as I did and underestimate the power of your adversaries.”

“If some of those who are with you can see my plan, what prevents those who are evil or opposed from seeing it too?” Haley asked, her question a valid concern.

“Those with me can see the good intent in your heart not the idea in your head. The evil can only see material things that would represent your idea. Though they are aware of your acquisition of the things that represent the Holy Father, they cannot see your intents in the use of these items. Considering how you have used these items up to now, they are probably not overly concerned about you doing things to protect you, and in their arrogance probably haven’t conceived you are looking for a permanent solution to their evil intent, for down through time man has rarely succeeded in thwarting the evil they do, primarily because man is so easily corrupted.”

Haley thought to ask more, but Clarice headed her off.

“Sleep now. Store your strength for the trials that await you. I will be here for you throughout the night so you can rest.”

Haley took note of the fact Clarice had stroked her hair again, and relaxed and prepared to sleep a restful sleep under the caring watchful presence of the friendly spirit.

She awoke the next morning invigorated and ready to pursue her preparations. As she sat sipping her morning tea, she pondered her plan in her mind. Once the morning got late enough businesses would be starting to open, she went to one of those huge chain hardware stores and spent an hour talking with the man in the paint department on the techniques, and the why’s how’s and wherefores of mixing paint. He was of some help, but she ended up with more questions than answers when all was said and done.

Next she went to the discount store and bought 3 cases of water, each with 6-1 gallon jugs per case. Then she went by the Catholic Church hoping to time her arrival after any masses they might be conducting had been concluded.

She found the priest that had agreed to help her and he blessed the three cases of water, turning the liquid to Holy Water. The blessing was a rather short invocation, and this worried Haley.

The 23rd Psalm and the Prayer of St Michael the Archangel were both of considerable length and when the priest’s invocation over the water was brief, Haley became skeptical of its efficacy.

Chapter 49

On her way home she decided to test the water. If it was truly Holy Water and the thorny growth on the West side of the house was evilly inspired, then pouring some of the water on the growth should produce an effect she assumed.

When she arrived at home, she removed one gallon of water from each of the three cases, and poured some in a large cup. Walking out to the West side of the house, she got to within a few feet of where the bramble grew in a tight geometric spiral.

She kept her distance, clearly respectful of the thorny mass after the story Clarice had related to her of the growth’s part in her burning to death.

Standing about 5 feet from where the mass covered the basement window, she tossed the contents of the cup onto the thorny growth. The mass began to move as if it had come to life and Haley retreated to a safer distance.

Returning to the house, she refilled the cup from another of the gallons and retraced her steps to the point a few feet from the mass. She tossed it again. Again, the mass started to move and she retreated a few feet further back to safety. This time a low eerie wail could be heard as if the mass were crying out in pain. Haley went back into the house to complete her tests.

She refilled the cup from the third gallon, and returned to the shrub. The places where she had thrown the two other applications had shriveled to a mass of seemingly decomposing organic plant matter. Haley was still respectful of the other healthy growths on either side of where she had apparently successfully destroyed the evil vine, so kept her distance.