VISIONS - IN MY MINDS EYE by ARTHUR HOWE (story read aloud txt) 📖

There’s no perspective, no dimension to what you see when you look at the inside of your eyelids with the sun shining through, but if you focus carefully, you can see all kinds of objects floating around inside your eyes. Little black bits, translucent shapes, amoeba-like object, which follow your eyes around as you move them within your sockets. I asked my Mum once what they were and she very cleverly told me that they were the cleaners, put there by God to destroy any harmful bacteria that tried to get into your brain through your eyeballs. The black bits, she said, were those objects, bits of sand, grit, and poisons in the air, hell-bent on getting to your brain and making a zombie out of you. It’s funny what you’ll believe when you’re that age.


VISIONS – IN MY MIND’S EYE

I first started to have visions when I was about nine or ten years old.

This was about the first time my Mom allowed us to go down to the beachfront without her. Before my brother and I became responsible enough to walk the half mile from our cottage in Brally Road, to the steps which led down to the beach.

Before that, my brother Tim, who was two years older than me, was considered just a little bit too irresponsible, having once been struck by a car, albeit not too seriously, when he was around nine years old.

My Mom said Tim walked around in a world of his own. Maybe he was having visions too? He certainly never spoke to me about them.

It was on the beach when I first saw the pictures inside my head.

My Visions.

Quite a few people who read this will be familiar with the build up to the visions, and maybe some will even realise what has happened to them, once I’ve explained what is really going on.

I was lying back in the sand where I’d scooped out a depression for my body and laid a towel down neatly inside it. I closed my eyes and shuffled my body, forcing the sand to mould to my shape.

It was a warm day by British standards with temperatures expected to get into the seventies.

The light permeating my eyelids glowed a golden orangey-red.

There’s no perspective, no dimension to what you see when you look at the inside of your eyelids with the sun shining through, but if you focus carefully, you can see all kinds of objects floating around inside your eyes. Little black bits, translucent shapes, amoeba-like object, which follow your eyes around as you move them within your sockets.

I asked my Mom once what they were and she very cleverly told me that they were the cleaners, put there by God to destroy any harmful bacteria that tried to get into your brain through your eyeballs.

The black bits, she said, were those objects, bits of sand, grit, and poisons in the air, hell-bent on getting to your brain and making a zombie out of you. It’s funny what you’ll believe when you’re that age.

I must explain here that my state of consciousness was 100%. I wasn’t falling off to sleep or dozing. I could hear everything going on around me, kids playing in the sand and the surf. I could smell the sea air and Ice cream and even someone’s egg mayonnaise sandwiches, which I could hear being unwrapped from their greaseproof paper.

No, I was fully conscious, aware of everything going on around me.

At the same time, I was focusing on the amoeboid like objects inside my eyelids, trying to see if they were really moving or if it was just my eyes relaxing that made them appear to move.

There was no flash of light or suddenness to what happened next.

In the bottom right hand corner of my vision, a shape materialised, complete in its form. I could clearly see a girl maybe twelve or thirteen years old, a knitted hairband holding back her long plaited hair. I wasn’t looking directly at this image but rather seeing it in the periphery.

I turned my inner gaze towards the little girl who was smiling to someone. She suddenly stopped whatever it was she was doing and turned her head and looked straight towards me. It was as if she had felt me intruding upon her private world and didn’t like what was happening.

She looked straight towards me, a look of shock on her pretty face and then she faded away.

Even though the actual image had gone, I held on to that mental image for quite a while trying to recall exact details of what she looked like and what she was wearing, hoping later to recall where I had seen her before and to work out why she suddenly materialised inside my head.

That didn’t happen until about three weeks later.

This time, I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep at about nine thirty that night.

In the darkness of my bedroom, I’d been rubbing my eyes rather hard, trying to work away the tiredness. When I closed my eyes, the area where I had been rubbing was much lighter and brighter than the rest of my darkened eyelids. Like little stars inside my eyes, I watched as they too, followed my drifting eyes around inside the sockets.

There, in the bottom right hand corner, it happened again.

The little girl, hairband and all, was now standing out vividly inside my eyelids, only this time, she was very different. Her eyes wereleaking tearsand were scrunched up. Her mouth was bound by some sort of flower-patterned cloth that had been tied tightly causing her chin to hang down, probably by her trying to get more air in her mouth.

Or to scream maybe?

She had on the same blue cardigan and white blouse that now looked a little dirty and crumpled. Her eyes held a look of tortured fear.

I didn’t want to look directly at the image for fear of losing it again, but this time, I could feel the little girls eyes, trying desperately to call to me, to get my attention.

I looked slowly towards her and she looked directly in front of her using her eyes to direct me, telling me to look, not at her, but at what she was seeing.

I followed her gaze until a new image formed in my head.

A man was there, in the same place with her, tall and broad, balding at the back of his head. Only his back was visible as he scratched at something on the long table he was working at. He was standing as he worked and I could see the texture of his tweed jacket and worn collar of the shirt that sat above it. I could see there were spots, yellow pimples on the back of his neck and a ruddy, patchy, sort of complexion running from the back of his neck, around to his ear.

He turned around suddenly, mouthing something through broken and stained teeth, as his hand swung forward and smacked the little girl hard across her face. I almost felt the smack as it connected and tensioned my body where I lay in the bed. The vision faded completely.

I must mention here that I was pretty good with a pencil or crayons and in fact, always got very good marks for my artwork at school.

I sat up, switched on the bedside lamp, and eased out of bed so as not to make too much noise.

From my dressing table desk, I took out a set of pastel crayons my Aunt Myrtle had given me for a birthday. She said she saw my artistic talent and handed me a whole bunch of pens, inks, crayons, and different types of paper. “ Maybe when you get famous, you’ll remember me” she’d joked.

I first started sketching my Mind-girl, taking care to get the eyes and facial colouring just right. The position of the hairband and the gag around her mouth took a little longer to recall, but eventually, I was happy with the results.

I then sketched the Baldy-man who was in the room with her. I couldn’t quite get the face rightand focused more on the hair, lank and greasy, as well as the blotchy patches on his neck and side of his ear. I wasn’t entirely happy with this one but decided to fine tune it, next time I got one of my visions.

Eventually I fell asleep, my mind confused by what I had seen a few minutes earlier and thought about the abrupt ending. I decided that I must not react physically if ever I saw something that shocked me like that. I didn’t want to lose contact with these visions.

There was nothing more for the next few weeks.

I’d gotten up early that Friday, wanting to get to my Friend John’s house to trade some D.C. comics. I had gone downstairs to rush through my obligatory bowl of cornflakes and two slices of marmite toast.

My Mom’s portable black and white TV was in the kitchen nook, tuned at this time to the breakfast show, which later became Coronation Street and Top of the Pops.

I glanced at the screen as the news rambled on.

There she was! My Mind-girl! Right on my TV, right in my Kitchen! They were showing what looked like a School photograph of her, complete with the very same hairband I’d seen in my visions.

I leaned over and turned up the sound, trying to catch the balance of the story before the article ended.

“………….Police are working around the clock in the desperate search for Annie McLachlin who disappeared from her parents home in Barrydale last Thursday evening. Fourteen year old Annie had gone to the local shop to get a loaf of bread for her Mom and has not been seen since. Anyone having any information as to the whereabouts or circumstances surrounding Annie McLachlin’s disappearance, should contact their local Police station or dial 0272 26692 and ask for the case Officer. In other news today…”

I switched the sound off.

“That’s her, Mom,” I screamed. “That’s the girl who keeps coming into my head.”

My Mom turned around and looked at me as though I’d gone stark raving bonkers.

“What’s all this nonsense about a girl inside your head?” she asked doubtfully.

I realised then that I hadn’t told anyone, probably out of fear of being mocked about it and agreed to myself that I must have sounded half mad shouting at the top of my voice like that.

“I didn’t tell you Mom, because I thought no one would believe me,” I explained.

I then told my Mom all about the visions I’d had and how the missing girl had been identical, right down to the hairband she wore in the T.V. photograph.

“And where did they say this girl was from then” she asked.

“A place called Barrydale, wherever that is” I replied, expecting some sort of acknowledgement from my Mom.

“Never heard of it. Did they say which County it is in?” Mom said with just a hint of humour in her voice.

That’s right, humour me, I thought. That’s exactly why I didn’t bring it up in the first place.

“No they didn’t,” I said sulkily into my chin. “but let’s get an atlas out and have a look shall we?” I perked back into action mode.

I found the big Collins Atlas on the bookshelf in the Dining Room and immediately turned to the index of place names.

I scanned down the “B’s” until I came to “Barrydale” and saw four entries. Two were outside of the U.K. and two were inside, one in Ireland and one in County Durham, almost two hundred or more miles from where we lived.

“If this all happened nearly two months ago, how come this girl has only gone missing a few days ago?” My Mom asked, suddenly showing an interest.

“Why would you see things happening months