Once they were back in the big house Tyler started to show Markus and Holly what he’d learned and how to store up the energy from different things in the house. They began to practice on moving objects the owners of the old house had left lying in one place only to find it moved to another. They also practiced turning themselves into orbs and white mist.
Things were coming along pretty well for the three of them and they tried to stay out of the way of the angry demons, until one day they had no choice, but come face to face with the demons once again. When the demons saw them they began giving Markus a bad time, and for a short moment, Ty slipped away. Markus was looking around for support from Ty, but he was nowhere to be found. Holly immediately ran and hid in one of the closets. For an instant, Markus felt abandoned and alone. These guys were going to take out all their anger on him and he was once again, that cowering and afraid young kid that Ty first met hiding in the cubby hole, behind the closet. Markus was begging for them to not hurt him. Just before the demons began to attack Markus, Ty came to his aid and he was fully energized from the strength he’d gotten from some batteries in the other room. He immediately knocked one of the demons to the wall and pulled the other two away from Markus. As he did that, he knocked one of the other ones against the wall. Markus starting fighting back and helping Ty. They were knocking each other around the room for a few minutes, until the demons saw that Ty had been energized. They soon gave up their desire to fight back and they started to leave. As they left one of them said, “This is not over punks, we’ll be back.” One of the other ones repeated him saying, “Yea, we’ll be back punks, and we’ll kick your butts next time.” Ty said, “Don’t you idiots get it, we’re not going to take your crap anymore.” By then the demons were gone and Markus was thanking Ty for saving him. He grinned and said to Ty, “I thought you left me to fend for myself for a minute there.” Ty replied, “I’d never do that, I just needed more strength.” They went over to the closet where Holly was hiding and told her she could come out now. Totally fed up with demon confrontations, Ty told Markus and Holly, “We need to find another place to stay. I don’t want to keep running into those jerks. What do you think about us going to stay at my mom and dads for a while?” Markus had an apprehensive look on his face, but they all agreed it had to better than to keep running into those big ugly, and scary demons. Ty said, “Follow my lead,” and as they took Ty’s hand and in an instant they were back in his old room at his mom and dad’s house.
Ty hadn’t seen his mom and dad since the funeral and wasn’t sure what to expect. His dad William (Bill) was a retired local police officer and didn’t really believe in ghosts. He was a strong Christian and believed once a person dies that if they believed in God and followed God’s will, then they’d go to Heaven and have eternal life with God. He just wasn’t sure about ghosts and spirits. His mom, Cheryl was a retired teacher and unlike Bill, did believe there were ghosts or spirits or something that people could see or feel. She had done a tremendous amount of reading about the after-life and knew there was something else once our souls left our bodies. She and Ty had talked about the subject of spirits and eternal life once when a friend of his drowned in a boating accident at the lake. He was only thirteen at the time, but Ty still remembered his mom telling him that he would see his friend again someday in Heaven. He also remembered how much better he felt just hearing her tell him those comforting words. At the time, he just couldn’t imagine believing our time on earth was all there was and there was nothing to look forward to after we were declared dead. Just the thought of death being the end to Ty was like being thrown out into nothingness, like a meteors endlessly tumbling through space. He knew there had to be something after our time on earth. God had promised eternal life to all that believe in Him. It was written in the Bible. Now Ty was there in the other dimension and knew it was all true. He was going to take his time and see if he could contact his mom and then he could work on his dad to make contact with him.
Bill and Cheryl didn’t like change and for that reason they were still living in the same house as the one Ty and Justin lived in when they were still home, going to high school and college. The house was a tract home, in the middle of a nice neighborhood. It had a lot of shrubs and plants and not much grass in the front yard. Bill didn’t like doing a lot of yard work. When you first went in the front door to the house it opened up into a large den area with a huge kitchen and attached laundry room. The master bedroom was on the same side as the kitchen and the other two large bedrooms were at the opposite end of the house. Ty and Justin’s bedrooms still had the same bedroom furniture as it did when they were home.
When Justin got out of the local junior college, he moved to Colorado to finish his last two years of college at a four year school. Once he graduated, he got a job and stayed in Colorado. It wasn’t long after that when Justin got married and Ty didn’t see Justin very often from that point on.
Once they started to look around the house as they walked into Justin’s room Holly said, “If it’s alright with you Ty, I’ll take your brother’s old room.” Ty told her that would be great and he and Markus would take the other bedroom. The entire conversation seemed a little weird to Ty since they didn’t really have anything to be modest about and they didn’t have anything to hide from each other. In this dimension, they didn’t have the same sexual feelings and desires they had while they were on earth. Their entire existence was more about love and harmony with each other more than anything else. They figured Holly just wanted her own space so that was okay with them, besides some habits are hard to break.
After they moved cautiously through the house they found there were no demons or other spirits haunting the house. Ty had a talk with Markus and Holly and told them he didn’t want them to purposely trying to do something to scare his mom and dad. He told them he was going to try and slowly make contact with his mom somehow, but wasn’t sure just what he was going to do yet. Markus and Holly both agreed and said they would stay out of the way and at their end of the house, unless Ty requested their presence somewhere. Markus was just happy he didn’t have to cower in fear of demons, like he did at the big house.
Ty started spending a lot of time in the kitchen while his mom was there making the meals. Most of the time she had the radio playing, while she went about making breakfast, lunch or dinner. She liked the station that played the “oldies but goodies” from the 1950 and 1960’s. She loved the old Elvis Presley love songs and sometimes she’d sing along as the station played one of her old favorites. Ty first started trying to get her attention by moving objects from one location to another. He started getting a response from her after he moved things from place to place several times and over a period of several days. She was puzzled each time she found them out of place. She began to wonder if maybe she might be starting to have an early stage of Alzheimer’s disease because she believed her mind was playing tricks on her. After it kept happening over and over again and she realized she wasn’t losing her mind, she asked Bill if he had moved things in the kitchen, just to tease her. After he told her several times he hadn’t touched anything, the next time she asked, he just grumbled, “Why would I do that?” Cheryl was also getting glimpse of a shadow figure from the corner of her eye only to turn toward it and nothing would be there. Ty was trying to tell his mom that he was standing right in front of her on a lot of different occasions, but she just couldn’t see him.
He finally decided to try a different tactic while she was alone in the kitchen listening to the radio. He gathered as much energy as he could and said as loud as he could; “Mom, I’m right here.” There was short static in the radio and Cheryl heard the words “right here.” She was stunned because she thought she recognized the voice as Ty’s. She immediately stopped what she was doing and very cautiously stepped toward the radio. She had her hands over her mouth and it was open wide from the shock of hearing his voice. Tyler tried to do it a few more ti
mes but his voice wouldn’t come through. Cheryl went to the radio and waited for several minutes to see if she could here Ty’s voice again, but he couldn’t make it happen again. She began to turn the knob from station to station to see if she could hear it again and still nothing happened. Not getting a response, she went over to the kitchen table and sat down. She put her elbows on the table and had her head in the palm of her hands as she cried gently and said, “I know that was Ty’s voice I heard on the radio. I know it was.”
That night, when her and Bill were in bed and getting ready to fall asleep, she told him about all the things that had been moved in the kitchen and how she heard Ty’s voice come through on the radio. Bill thought she was losing her mind because she had just been missing Ty so much. He believed she was just imagining things. He pretended that he believed her and said, “Well, you believe in those sorts of things. Maybe he came back to visit you?” He didn’t really believe anything he was saying; he just wanted to give her some support and also get some sleep. Cheryl knew that he was just placating her, but it didn’t matter; she knew what she had seen and heard the past few weeks.
Tyler continued for several more days to make the contact. He would open the door when she could see it open; he would make footstep sounds and continued to move things. One day Ty saved up some of his energy made the contact on the radio again. This time Cheryl heard Ty say, “I’m right here.” There was no mistaken it, she knew it was Ty’s voice and she knew he was in the room with her. She immediately turned facing toward the radio and said, “I hear you Ty, I hear you, but I can’t see you.” Ty went over to her and put his arm around her and said, “Thank God it worked.” Although Cheryl couldn’t see him, she instantly felt a sense of comfort come over her body. Ty had used up all the stored energy trying to make the contact and wasn’t able to make any further contact that day. He was just happy his mom had heard his voice. He felt like he was making some head way.
Ty knew he had to do something to get his dad’s attention so the next day he went into the living room where Bill liked to sit, watch television and read the newspaper. He had a pair of favorite eye glasses he used while reading because they helped him with the small print. He kept the glasses on an end table next to his reclining chair. On this particular day, Ty moved the glasses onto the fireplace mantel about fifteen feet away. The first few times it happened Bill didn’t say anything to Cheryl because he thought she was just getting even with him for what she thought he was doing to her. After it continued to happen several times, he finally confronted Cheryl and said, “Okay, I give up, you got me on this one,” as he held up the glasses in the air. Cheryl looked at him in total surprise and said “What do you mean?” He told her that her little joke had gone on long enough and she could stop now. She walked up close to Bill and looked him right in the eyes and said, “I swear to you Bill, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He turned around and started to walk away as he said, “Okay, you win.” He was a man that only believed in what he could touch, smell or see and he still didn’t believe Cheryl. He was convinced she had just tried to get even with him for not believing her.
A few days went by and Cheryl called her best friend, Martha on the phone and told her about Bill’s experience. Martha and Cheryl had been friends since grade school and she was a huge believer in the after-life connection to the spirit world. Cheryl had already told Martha what had happened with things being moved in the house and Ty’s voice on the radio, but now she was able to tell her what had happened with Bill. After hearing everything Cheryl had told her, Martha was convinced Ty’s spirit was there in the house. She told Cheryl she would come over when Bill wasn’t there and they would talk all about it. They agreed to meet on Thursday at 9:30 am while Bill went to play golf with a few of his friends. Cheryl told her she would have coffee and a few cookies waiting when she got there.
Martha arrived Thursday morning and was cautiously enthusiastic as she met Cheryl at the front door. As she stepped into the living room she sheepishly looked around and said, “Okay, where is he? Cheryl smiled and motioned for Martha to follow her into the kitchen. Cheryl already had an assortment of cookies in a plate on the table. As she poured Martha a cup of coffee she pushed a creamer with half and half and the sugar toward her. Cheryl said, “Okay tell me everything you know about the physic mediums you mentioned to me on the phone.” Martha had already told her people seek psychic mediums for contacting souls that have passed over for healing, wisdom in decisions, changing directions and realization of their dreams or to find out if their loved ones that have passed on are okay. She had suggested to Cheryl that she contact a local well-known psychic medium by the name of Carla Johansen. Martha said she had read about several people in town that had consulted her and she seemed like the real deal. Cheryl said, “Can you tell me more about how she works? I would really like know as much as you can tell me?” Martha began to tell her everything she knew about psychics. She said, “They’ve been around since the beginning of civilization. They’re people who can communicate with the spirit world, they’re the messengers. A great number of people in the world believe the spirits of the dead can be contacted by mediums to lend an insight to the people still living. Some of the more famous psychics are Edgar Cayce, Michel de Nostredame (Nostradamus), Uri Geller, John Edward, Sylvia Brown, Lydia Clar, Allison Dubois, Nina Kulagina, Elizabeth Baron, just to name a few. Many others claim to have the power to communicate with spirits. Some can and some can’t.” Cheryl knew there was more than one biblical account of psychics she’d read about in the bible. Martha told Cheryl, “We just have to be careful of greedy scam artists who are just pretending to be psychic mediums to get your money (psychic readings and advertising for psychics where readings were offered for a fee and given in settings or over the phone, in homes. Psychic fairs became popular in the 1990’s). We are going to stay away from all of those types of “so called” psychics. I’m recommending Carla because she uses her ability to connect deceased loved ones to the living, and also to help law enforcement agencies solve crimes. She is not like some psychics because she does not ask questions from people but rather she answers them in order to make the connection.” During their meeting Cheryl agreed that she should contact Carla Johansen and see if she could set up an appointment. They called several times until they finally got in touch with Carla’s office. She was booked up for six weeks and couldn’t see Cheryl until then. Cheryl was disappointed it was going to be such a long time away, but agreed to a date and booked the appointment.
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Chapter 10 – Mr. Potts, the Nonbeliever