Posey Gilbert
Paranormal Maven
Ever notice how sometimes things unrelated in time do relate?
I guess it's true time is relative.
The Dream
As a child I used to get a terrible dream not often but one that happened every now and then in it I was being dragged to a window through which I could see a dull blue gray light.
The window was half covered on the outside with piles of garbage.
The window would be raised and I would be thrust through the window and up through the garbage and then the window was closed and locked behind me, leaving me standing amidst stinking rotting garbage over which ran rats, mice, maggots and water bugs then the dream would end.
Ralph's Amazing Disappearing Act
It had been a warm summers day and Ralph and I had been playing in front of the building as we were too young, me about five, and Ralph about four, to play around the corner out of sight of our parent's bedroom window on the top floor of 1530 Brook Ave.
We had been outside for most of the day and knew if we went upstairs we had a pretty good chance of being told that we could not go back out so we resisted our thirst as long as we could so we could stay out, but as the day grew hotter Ralph's thirst over road his fear of staying upstairs and he announced to me that he was going up for some water and relief.
I said I'd stay down and wait for him to come back before I would go up thinking that if he came back down I knew it would be safe for me to go up.
My wait for Ralph turned out to be longer than I expected for it seemed like an hour had passed before my thirst and bladder too forced me to risk going upstairs as did Ralph.
I resigned my self to the fact of being upstairs and playing with Ralph was much better than being out side without him.
As I was going upstairs I heard Ralph call me but his voice was distant but I heard it clearly. I walked over to the banisters and looked over and called him but saw no one and heard nothing.
I immediately thought Ralph had learned a new trick either how to throw his voice or greater still how to turn invisible or was looking at me through some magic portal.
As I raced upstairs thinking he would be in the house and would tell me how he had performed this marvelous trick.
As I reached the third floor I heard a baby crying and the voice of one of the tenants in our house a man called Jesse.
I panicked for Jessie was paralyzed on one side of his body and limped with his left arm raised and his left hand frozen in a claw like fashion.
He had protruding teeth in over sized gums and spoke with a speech impediment.
I was terrified of him from the time I first saw him for fear if he touched me I would become like him.
My first memory of him was as we were first moving upstairs he stepped out of his apartment and called to me,
" Hey little boy come here I got toys you want to see them? "
Over the years he became a friend of my fathers and had eaten at our table but I never got close to him for my fear that he could reach out and touch me with that crippled hand.
As I was going up the first landing to the fourth floor I passed the window, which was open and heard the baby crying again, saying,
" Let me out, let me out. "
And heard Jesse saying,
" You don't come out until you learn to behave yourself and do what I tell you to do. "
I walked over to the open window and looked out and saw Jesse sitting by his window looking out onto the lower roof of the bed factory and could hear the kid crying and Jesse was repeating,
" You gonna stay right there until you learn to listen to me. "
I thought to myself even then,
" Who in the world would let Jesse take care of a baby? "
Then he looked up and saw me and I raised my hand to wave at him.
He jumped back from the window and I felt awful for I knew he thought I was going to throw something at him as some of the kids in the neighborhood sometimes did, so I stood there and waited for him to come back to the window.
He eventually peaked back out and I waved to him and said,
" Hi Jessie "
He waved sheepishly back and said "Hi " and I continued on upstairs.
The next time I was to see Jessie he had went blind in his left eye and I felt better that I had waved to him in friendship the day before.
When I got up stairs I was surprised to find that Ralph was not upstairs and asked my mother where he was.
" I thought he was with you! " she said.
" Ralph left me downstairs about an hour ago, " I said.
" Well you go back down stairs and get your brother Chuck and find Ralph or I will beat you both!"
As I was going down stairs Mr. Sloan, the superintendent of our building came upstairs with Ralph.
My mother tore into him and told me to go get Chuck and come right back upstairs, by the time I returned with Chuck the smoke had cleared and the house was silent.
I asked Ralph where he had went and how had he been able to talk to me without being there but he was mad with me for getting him into trouble by coming upstairs and asking where he was, he said nothing to me in fact he was to say nothing to me or anyone for the next three weeks I assumed he got the whipping of a life time.
In fact it took a whack in the head with a doll from my baby sister Janet enraged because he wouldn't speak to her to get him to start crying and then start talking again.
We would not speak of the events of that day again until over thirty years later when I was telling Ralph the story of Theresa through the keyhole.
Theresa Through The Key Hole
One day as I was coming in from school I found that my older sister Theresa had locked herself out of the house and was sitting on the steps.
Janet was just an infant and was in the crib locked inside of the apartment.
I as usual had to go to the bathroom and was hungry began to cry and she told me that she would show me a magic trick if I didn't cry.
So I agreed she said that what I had to do was to lean against the front door close my eyes and count to ten very slowly and she would open the door from the inside.
When I asked her why didn't she just do that in the first place she said she needed me to help in the magic by leaning against the door closing my eyes and counting to ten it was part of the spell.
She insisted I do it exactly like she said to do it or the magic would not work, so I did just as she said and counted to ten when I opened my eyes she was gone.
I called her but received no answer and ran to the banisters and called down the stairwell again no answer, suddenly our front door swung open and Theresa stepped out of the apartment and called me inside.
" How did you do that? " I gasped.
" I turned into a puff of smoke," she said "shrank down and went through the key hole. "
" Show me how to do it." I begged her.
" Well " she said "I'll try but you can't tell anyone about this not even Mother she told me not to do this any more and I don't want to get in trouble OK? "
" OK " I quickly agreed.
" Now then, " she said "you may be too young now you can only do these things when you get big like me, but lets try."
" Close your eyes real tight and think yourself real small that's all. " she said.
I did as she told me but after several tries she said,
"Forget it you may be too young or be like Chuck and don't have the power maybe when your older we'll try it again."
Of course any skeptic would say she obviously had a key opened the door and went in right?
But I was leaning against the door I would have felt it open would I not?
For years I was at a loss to figure out what she had done to get into the house.
Then one day as we were talking I remembered the incident and asked Theresa,
" Tee how the hell did you get into that house that time we got locked out, and why the hell did you tell me to close my eyes and count to ten? "
She laughed and said, " I didn't want you to follow me."
" Follow you where? "
" I went down to the second floor and climbed out of the window onto the lower factory roof then climbed up the ladder to the roof across from our apartment and leaned across the air shaft and climbed into my bed room window.
I didn't want you to follow because I thought if I fell I didn't want you to see me do it for you would think of it for the rest of your life.
The fact of it is I still think about it....
The Mutes
Ralph and I were very close, so close at times we were thought to be twins by those that did not know us, though in truth for six months out of the year we were at times only a year apart in age.
There had been times in our lives when people referred to us as The Mutes for they said they had never seen or heard us speak to each other, but I know we spoke to each other all the time only in hindsight did I realize it may not always have been orally.
This was demonstrated to us when we were nearing our teens and as we got on to the crowded "rush hour elevator" as we called it when the adults were all coming in from work.
I had got on first and was pushed to the back of the car; Ralph wisely so had waited and let the others push in and then got in.
As we went from floor to floor I realized I had not pushed the button for our floor and called out,
" Ralph, push ten I forgot to! "
The people in the car jumped as if I fired a gun and turned to look at me.
" You can talk? " one lady gasped as if it was a miracle.
" Yes we can talk. " I said puzzled as to her comment "We talk all the time. "
" You have lived here for three years and no one has ever heard either of you utter a word to each other or any one else, we thought you both were deaf. "
" Well we can talk and hear." Ralph said as the door opened to our floor and we were getting off.
" That's obvious to us all now," the woman said and the rest on the elevator laughed as the door slid close.
Being kids we just shrugged it off as a "grown up thing" but neither of us forgot it, and it would take years for us to finally understand it.
The Lady In Red
Once I was telling Ralph about something that I had seen as a child but did not know if it was a dream or a real event but it was amusing so I thought I'd share it with him.
It had come up because we had just taken my God children to the Bronx Zoo and it triggered a memory of something I had seen or dreamed somewhere.
It involved a woman I thought she was my teacher but I did could not remember her name.
She was dressed in a bright red poodle skirt with a red polka dot white blouse wearing a ridiculously large matching red bow in her red hair.
She wore white socks, red shoes, had red button earrings and wore matching red lipstick and was very pale in color.
She was talking to the class about the elephant that had walked over to the gate and was stretching its trunk toward her as she was speaking.
" See class, " she was saying "how Mr. Elephant uses his nose to reach? "
She gestured toward the undulating truck, which was raised in anticipation of a treat.
" See that Mr. Elephant thinks I have a peanut for him but I don't sorry Mr. Elephant," she said looking cow eyed her head tilted and shaking no toward the raised trunk.
At that moment the damned thing sneezed right in her face.
She kept a momentary cool until one of the girls shouted out,
" Ewe, the teachers covered in elephant snot! "
At which her facade broke and to the glee and delight of the class, her disgust and revulsion overwhelmed her.
At that moment Ralph jumped up and said,
"How the hell did you know that happened that was Miss. Passaic?" The moment he said it I knew he was right the lady was Miss Passaic the kindergarten teacher I never went to kindergarten.
He told me I had described perfectly everything about her outfit as if I had been standing where he had been standing when the event occurred.
The Dove's Tale
It was late in 1987 that Ralph and I sat talking about the weirdness of our lives and I told him of the story of Theresa Through The Key Hole.
How we got on it I really don't remember but as I reached the end of the story he asked me how did Theresa get into the house?
I told him how she had said that she had went down to the second landing on between the second and third floor and climbed out the window onto the lower factory roof then climbed the ladder to the upper factory roof and then entered the house through her bed room window.
The moment I explained it he said,
" That was it that's why y'all did not answer me, all these years I thought you knew but you didn't,"
" Didn't know what? "I asked confused
" Jessie, " he said, " that bastard tried to rape me. "
" What... When... Where? " I stuttered shocked,
" When I was a little kid I was going upstairs to get some water and he told me Pop was in the basement and wanted to see me.
I went down there and he tried to rape me but he could not hold on to me because he couldn't use that other hand.
I climbed up into that old coal shoot and when he reached for me I took a hand full of that old stinking coal and ground it into his eye, but he grabbed my leg and pulled me down, drug me over to the window on the other side and pushed me up through all that garbage over there and locked me out there with all those rats, mice, maggots, and water bugs.
I kept calling up to the window for Mother, you, or Aunt Gerlene"
(Our aunt who lived on the second floor but on the other side of the building, our side of the building.)
" That's why I was mad I thought all of you knew what he had done, that is why I stopped speaking until Janet hit me."
I thought you stopped speaking to me because I had got you in trouble for coming upstairs I thought you got a beating and was mad at me." I said.
" No I was mad at the whole family I thought you all knew I was down there I thought it was no way you could not hear me calling you.
Then Mr. Sloan heard me crying and came to the window and saw Jessie looking down at me and asked him what the hell was he doing, he then came down and got me.
When he bought me upstairs mother thought he had taken me and threatened to call the police on him and had him fired from the building.
" Ralph I heard you calling I was in the window right above you if I would have looked down I would have saw you," I said "I saw Jessie sitting in the window talking but I thought he was talking to some kid the was taking care of in the house, that's why that bastard ran from the window when he saw me."
As he was waving at me upstairs he had Ralph locked in the ally right below me.
I grew furious and said that I still thought I knew where we could find Jessie, but Ralph said,
" I have forgiven the family and Jessie along time ago." Ralph calmly said,
" Butch, if I can forgive him and seek no vengeance, so should you."
Theresa may not have turned into a puff of smoke and went through the keyhole that day but her story had supplied a key that unlocked a door that had been sealed for over thirty years that night.
As for how I came to dream of what had happened to Ralph those many years ago my only explanation is probably the same way I came to dream of the lady in the red dress, Ralph and I were close, very close.
Ever notice how sometimes things unrelated in time do relate?
I guess it's true time is relative.
