Victorian Dreams Pt. 03

Another interesting fact was the west wall of the house required other repairs than had originally been indicated in her notes. It wasn’t significant, but the attempts by Clarice to burn the house, somehow masked when the evil was in possession of the house had been revealed, once the evil was vanquished. Her notes showed no need to repair burnt places on the west wall, but the signs of a brief touch with fire were now apparent and Haley had to scrape and sand burnt boards before applying a fresh coat of paint.

As a B ‘n B it was immediately successful. Besides the pristine beauty of the Victorian styling, and the panoramic view afforded on the hilltop overlooking the valley below, the west side of the house continued to bloom in the Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brush.

Photographers and artists that waited each year for the advent of spring and that ever so brief explosion of color on the Texas landscape when these two species normally bloom, kept the house booked with a waiting list to paint or photograph the explosion of flowers on the west side of the house.

Chapter 65

Haley hadn’t had to have the other sides landscaped. The flowers that had appeared spontaneously on the west side soon spread to the other three sides, so it seemed appropriate she call her B n B ‘Bluebonnet House’. She had the small area of woods on the west side pushed back to create a meadow for the beautiful blue flowers to flourish in. Driving by on the state highway that fronted the property, even in the dead of winter, it was like you had passed into a time warp and the clock had been moved back to some spring in an earlier era of time. A mantle of freshness always cloaked the place.

She had built her gazebo around the well Chirsty Johansson had drown herself in rather than deliver her virgin daughter to the evil Master, and called it a wishing well. Some said they had sipped the sweet waters from the well, and their illnesses had been healed. Soon it became a Mecca for those who were ailing and sick.

When dealing with some of these folks, she thought of the research she had done on demonic possessions and how modern Christian-thought considered them symptoms of mental disease rather than actual evil-influenced phenomena. Evil induced or psychiatric, Haley didn’t care, she just felt good seeing her guests come in troubled because of this or that, and suddenly feeling alive after a visit to the well. There was nothing unethical she felt about them chunking a quarter into the well and making a wish. The disheartened look on their face replaced with a smile and hope after doing so.

First she figured, a quarter was well worth the result. She realized the healing powers of the human mind, and that if someone feels positive on an outcome, that outcome is usually likely to be achieved. Lastly, she never intended to ‘harvest’ the quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies the walls bottom held. She felt the dreams were attached to those coins and they must stay forever in the waters that would supposedly deliver those dreams to fruition.

The success of the B n B had been so tremendous, Haley paid the note off the first year it was open.

Haley came to enjoy the company of her guests.

She had always been a ‘people person’ but never really a ‘social butterfly’. Now though, she loved sitting on the massive front verandah, sipping iced tea with her guests and ‘swapping’ stories about important events in each others lives. She never could bring herself to tell the story of the battles she had undertaken to make Bluebonnet House a reality.

Even when asked how she managed to keep Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brush in bloom year-round. She sloughed off any queries by just telling a portion of the true story.

She would tell her guests, she had painted the house with Holy Water based paint, and the only thing she could figure is the Lord was pleased.

These sessions of the front verandah were commonplace, lasting well into evening in the summer months when the sun refused to set until nearly 10 at night. So it wasn’t unusual that Haley was sitting there when she next got the sign her battles with the forces of evil were not yet concluded.

Chapter 66

It was one summer afternoon a couple of years later, Haley sat on the massive verandah sipping iced tea with some of her guests when a young boy came up from the yard, carrying a dead puppy in his arms and crying. The small dog was drenched in blood, and when Haley enquired about the puppy, the boy replied,

“We were playing in the yard and I lost sight of him in the tall flowers by the house. Then I heard him yelp. When I went to find him, he was laying in the flowers wrapped in these stickers.”

The puppy was wound tightly in what Haley immediately recognized as the ‘thorny vine of evil presence’ the boy had identified as stickers.

She went to the side of the house to investigate and discovered a resurgence of growth along the west wall of the house that resembled the tight symmetrical spiral of the bramble that had existed when the evil had been in residence before, intertwined deep within the growth of flowers that had lived there since her success in ridding the house of its evil. She noted the flowers that contained the bramble were appearing weak and instead of the luscious blue of the Bluebonnet were pale and faded in comparison to the others in the meadow.

She instructed her manager to make signs saying the west side of the house was off limits and to alert all the guests the house would be closing for renovation that weekend and everyone must be checked out by noon on Sunday. Then to call all those who held reservations and alert them their reservations had been cancelled because of structural defects discovered in the house, which would require repair before the house would be safe for occupancy again.

He looked at her in astonishment, he knew of no structural defects, and as general manager he had his finger on the pulse of everything that went on in the house. Seeing the determination in her eyes, he didn’t question the instructions he had been given, or press the point in any way. The structural defects and the fact the house wouldn’t be safe for occupancy weren’t too far from an accurate description in reality, so Haley wasn’t really lying.

Haley went to her closet and retrieved the alter vestment from the shelf where she had placed it all those years ago. She removed the dry cleaning bag and draped the vestment over the same chair she had used to hang it from to dry after soaking it in Holy Water, and began to prepare to once again to do battle with the forces of evil.

That night she wore the familiar garment to bed as a muffler as she had before, not leaving anything to chance in her understanding of the powers that appeared to have returned to her home.

In the wee hours she once again felt the familiar chill on her left cheek that signaled a visit from the spirit friend Clarice. She opened her eyes and the girl spirit hovered in her customary place just above her bed.

“Hello, dear friend.” Haley exclaimed as she saw her friends face and the deep blue pools of the girl’s eyes.

“My friend, I am sorry to have to say it is time once again for you to do battle with the Master and his evil.”

The End