Apparitions

My father says I was a good baby. I never cried, except when it was time to go to bed. I haven't thought about these apparitions in years, now I wonder just how far back did they go.

At some point in time, every night, when the lights went out and I was in bed and closed my eyes, I saw apparitions. The apparitions were already as familiar to me as my own voice. Were they that old? Were they even older? I only know that they didn't stop until I was in Junior High School; was I twelve or thirteen?

They are hard to explain. Imagine driving a car at night in the snow. The snow flakes come out of nowhere; head straight at you in a strange curve from out of the sky and then disappear. They were faces of sorts. Hideously distorted faces in bright colors coming at me like a hard snow at night behind a windshield. Each was as unique as a snow flake. They came and they came and they came. I would try to sleep with my eyes open, but that always failed.

Sending kids to bed always seemed cruel to me. All throughout the day there is some adult around. But after it gets dark, they tuck you in; make you repeat some prayers (as if rote has any power over passion), then they walk away and turn off the light and shut the door. All alone, in the biggest world imaginable, alone in the dark. In darkness there is no wall a few feet away; darkness goes on forever, and in all that distance something bad must be happening somewhere. I was so afraid of the dark.

I discovered some tips along the way. First, put the covers over your head. Nothing bad can get you under the covers; you're safe there. Covers not only hide you, but nothing can hear you breath under there, and they can't smell you. Keep your eyes open under the covers, that's very important. That way, when your mammal lungs come up to breath some fresh air, the room isn't nearly as dark. You can actually make out normal objects.

It took me years to establish this next tip as a rule. There is the question of where to keep the top of the covers once you come out for the night. Over your shoulder? or under your arm? I knew this fact would make the difference between surviving the night alive or not. And every night I couldn't remember what I had done the night before. The weight of this decision, the disappointment in myself for not remembering , or even coming up with a simple way to remember, and trying to figure out what to do, and trying to retrace all my steps until I had gone to bed the night before wore me out. But not enough to shut my eyes. It wasn't until after I'd seen a few vampire movies that this question was settled once and for all. Vampires can't bite you through your blanket. Keep it around your neck.

Some nights, Mom would stay up late and watch TV. TV was young enough in those days that it didn't have permission to stay up all night either. I always stayed up with her. For one reason, I wanted to be with Mom as much as I could. Second, I never wanted to go to bed. We must have seen every scary movie ever made from the forties and fifties. I promised that they never gave me nightmares, but they did once in a while. Yet, those brief dreams where I was prey for "The Beast with a Thousand Eyes" or Werewolf didn't posses me like the hours of nightly apparitions. Those nightmares I can't recall. I'd also have nightmares about being trapped in a large nest of snakes, or spiders. Even then I noticed that horror movies weren't nearly as scary as what was real, or that the possibility of being real.

Years later, I found out how to stop having nightmares. We had the largest Crown of Thorns plant I've ever seen. All I had to do was lay down facing that plant and ask Jesus to keep me from having a nightmare. I wouldn't, but the apparitions always came.

Childhood seemed to be an endless search for explanations. "Where are the streets of heaven that are paved in gold?" They are the cobble stone type clouds at sunset. That's when God looks down at us. "How can outer space go on without ever ending?" Well, one night, while I was trying to keep my eyes open, an angel took me to the edge of outer space. It was a jagged metal strip like the ones on a box of aluminum foil. I noticed that both side of the strip looked exactly the same, black space. For my apparitions, there was only one explanation: I was evil incarnate. Satan owned my soul.

It didn't matter how good I was during the day; at night, when I was as alone as a bone before creation, I was Satan's own soul.

Some days I'd think about this a great deal. Some days I was reminded how bad I was by my parents, my Dad did it with every meal. Some days, if I could manage not eating with my father I'd not think about it all.

One afternoon, when my Aunt, who never learned to drive, rode with me in the back seat of our old 48 Chevy, she took my hands and examined them. I had little white lines in my fingernails. She claimed that telling lies made those. I must be a big liar. I hid my hands for days. I was ashamed of being evil. I started paying attention to the truth. That's when I noticed that grown-ups lied all the time. They would say things like: it happened the other day when we were at the grocery store. Well, it didn't happen 'the other day'; it happened exactly three days ago and we were in Krogers. I learned quickly not to correct grown-ups, especially parents in front of other grown-ups. I knew Satan didn't own my parents, like he did me, because they were always trying to get me to act right and good. And they decided what that was, so they must be good.

My lies, (and I did lie) just made the world more interesting. When Mom would ask me where my brother was, I'd say, "A donkey stopped by, and they went off to California to prospect for gold." I think I got my mouth washed out with soap for that one.

Some days, I would worry all day long, or so it seemed, that I was going to Hell the moment I died. Satan already owned me, and there was nothing I could do about it. My nightly prayers didn't stop the apparitions any more than praying for it to be bright and sunny when you driving through a blizzard. . My pleas to Jesus didn't stop them either. Then one day, I came to terms with it. What would the Devil want with a six year old kid when he could have Kings and Presidents? That comforted me. The apparitions kept coming, but they no longer scared me. I could lay back and watch them come at me.

Maybe children have been put to be alone to prepare them for being an adult. My future has often been black distances where hope is some object infinitely far away, where a million bad things can happen before you can get there. It has been my children who are my sun, the day, birds singing in flight, wonder and awe. There is nothing evil, or even bad in their souls. I hope I told them this often. Maybe by laying down with them until they fell asleep has made them weaker adults.

Looking back, through the lens of what children mean to me, I realize that Satan would love to take the soul of a child; what could be more evil? What could be more sad than to think that your life isn't worth Satan's spit? I struggle with that still. I've been going bed alone for years, for a very long time, and I still think its cruel. And I can't fall asleep without something, even if its only a towel, or an old t-shirt over my shoulder.