Chapter 22 #3
She’s not here. It’s just a halfway house, … if you want to call it that. We are people of the energy. We are workers of the light, Stefan said. We always have been, always will be, but you must make the journey back here to find it yourself. Having found it now, you can come here as you wish.
“And that is something I’ll take you up on later, … after we get her back, safe and sound. You were telling me—”
Origin is buried under the beauty. It’s a black hole.
“And this place?”
It’s more a sanctuary for energy workers, a safe space.
Stefan didn’t say anything more, but, as they pushed deeper, Eric sensed a hesitation inside Stefan. “Don’t bother,” Eric said. “I’m not going back. I am here with her, regardless.”
Are you sure that is something she’ll want?
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “She’ll take the low road and say she doesn’t need me, that she can do it without me, and maybe she can. However, I don’t think there’s ever been a time when that woman has had somebody watch her back. Maybe it’s time for that to stop too.”
Absolutely, Stefan agreed. Yet you also must understand that, for every step she takes like this, there could be a dozen you have to take to follow her.
She’s been walking in this world for a very long time.
I’m not even sure how she managed to get up so high and then drop so quickly to do the work she was doing.
It’s one thing to help someone. It’s entirely another to go up into this space and help somebody, while hurting someone else in the process, he noted.
“It shouldn’t be possible.”
I’m not sure how she was managing, but I suspect her grandmother had a lot to do with it—or her mother. Nothing we know for sure.
Eric shook his head. “I asked my partner to pull up her mother’s file, and he just sent back a message a little bit ago. saying that her mother committed suicide.”
Suicide? Stefan reared at that.
“I know. It makes no sense.”
Now that I’ve had a moment, it probably makes more sense than anything, he offered.
I suspect the grandmother was fighting a battle the daughter no longer wanted to fight, and watching her own daughter, Eden, be tormented by her mother was something Eden’s mother couldn’t handle.
It makes a certain sense that she took herself out of the game because she couldn’t stop either one of them.
They drifted deeper, and Eric felt Stefan become part of him, one with him, their energies overlapping, intermingling, sliding through and apart as they separated and thinned, as they went farther into the nowhere, the nothingness, where everything was just space and eternal energy.
“I feel. I know.” Then Eric’s words just stopped.
Don’t worry about what you feel. Don’t worry about what you think or don’t know, just continue, Stefan urged him. Don’t think. Let it go. Let it all go. Losing control is the only way forward.
Eric wasn’t sure what any of that meant.
Stefan probably wasn’t sure either, but, for everything he said, there always seemed to be something else he wasn’t saying.
It was both scary and irritating. However, Eric trusted Stefan to get him to Eden, and that was the important thing.
He felt Stefan in his mind as they drifted, their thoughts no longer cohesive.
There was an odd lightness, a nothingness to his existence.
There was no body, no frame, no sustenance, just a central floating sensation, and a weird sense of going home. That phrase almost knocked him out of place. Only Stefan’s steady guidance kept Eric in the same state as he floated on.
You are going home, Stefan confirmed. We all are going home, but you need to stop thinking so much. It’s sending you off track.
With that and half a smile, acknowledging that all thought meant he was conscious and aware, when he should be the alternative, Eric drifted back into the same state he had been, letting all of it slide over and around him.
When he came to with a sudden hard jolt, he opened his eyes and realized that he was somewhere now.
Where, he didn’t know, but there was something.
There, in front of him, standing in an odd-looking space, was Eden. She looked over at him, her eyes widening, and she shook her head frantically.
He realized that she couldn’t hear him. She could see him, and something was going on in her world that she didn’t want him to see. She kept trying to push him to leave, and then finally he heard her in his head.
“Leave,” she ordered. “You don’t want to be here.”
He frowned and asked, “Can you stop this?”
She stared at him, tears in her eyes, and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
He stared out. “I’m not sure what exactly went wrong or why, but … I don’t believe you. You are stronger than this.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not,” she cried out.
Yet now he sensed a little child’s tone to her voice, a sense of her having gone back in time, to where she was not able to do what everybody wanted her to do.
His heart broke for the little girl who was even now struggling for her autonomy.
“Yes,” he argued, “you can do it, for your sake, for everyone’s sake, but mostly for yours, so that you can have a life after this, so you can have something normal. ”
Tears filled her eyes, even though he knew she didn’t exist in a physical form. She stood in front of him, opaque, and yet, in a weird way, solid.
She stared at him and whispered, “I wish you hadn’t come.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “Maybe, … but I had to. I had to know you were okay.”
“Why?” she asked. “You think I’m a monster.”
He winced and shook his head. “No, I’ve never thought that.
You were a child being forced to do things other people wanted you to do, and you didn’t get a say in the matter,” he explained.
“And, since you’ve been released from that prison, you’ve done nothing but try to help everybody else, trying to atone for something that you weren’t responsible for in the first place. ”
“Yes, I was responsible, and so many people were hurt,” she cried out.
“Some of them were dying anyway, but some of them weren’t or might have had a chance at least. My grandmother would tell me which ones, and she wouldn’t listen anytime I tried to tell her that I couldn’t or that they wouldn’t or that it was too hard.
” Eden shook her head, tears down her cheeks now.
“She would get so angry, and I had no way to stop her.”
“Listen to me. None of that matters right now because we need to get you out of here. Your guilt is what’s holding you here,” he stated, knowing instinctively that her own negative energy was restraining her. “Whoever this is, whatever has been done here—”
“Helen Frankberg, a mother of thirteen children,” she interrupted and added, “and she’s done it out of love.”
He stopped and stared. Then he slowly nodded. “The mother of the boy?”
“Yes, the one from the fire.”
“I guess in a way that makes sense,” he muttered.
“It’s not her fault because it’s her reaction to what was done to her. Her children who burned in that fire? Helen’s just been trying to keep them safe,” she told him in a pleading voice. “You have to understand that.”
“I understand that,” he replied, “but do they? Do you?”
“They don’t,” she noted, “not any longer. They’re fighting, fighting against her, fighting against their prison,” she shared.
“Of course they are,” Eric agreed. “They need to be set free.”
“I know,” she acknowledged, as she stared around. “I feel as if Helen’s locked me up somehow too.”
No, the only thing she’s locked up is your ability to see through this. Stefan’s voice slid through them both.
Eden glanced all around, looking for Stefan. “Stefan, you’re here too?” she asked uncertainly.
Yes, of course I am, he said. We are all here in one form or another. You are here, but you are only kept prisoner by your guilt, by your fear, by your belief that you deserve to be punished.
“But nobody blames you for what happened,” Eric pointed out compassionately. “No one.”
Eric’s right. Nobody, alive or dead, blames you for what you did, Stefan confirmed. You were a child, and, as a child, you had no ability to fight your grandmother’s wishes. That’s what you must remember. You aren’t being blamed for this by anybody but yourself.
Eric saw her tears wash through her—literally, as if a light were passing through her.
In amazement, he stepped forward and whispered, “Sweetheart, we need to put a stop to this. We need Helen to see that she’s holding these people against their will, and her fear’s stopping everything.
Everybody would be free if she would just let her fear go. ”
Eden smiled. “That makes sense, doesn’t it? … If she would let them go, they would be free.”
Exactly, Stefan agreed. So, it’s something that we must help her to see. They need to be free, and if not—
When the resounding roar to the side buffeted Eric sideways and backward, he turned to face the new arrival. Sure enough, it was an older woman, worn out but still feisty. She looked exhausted from whatever she had been fighting, yet she was still willing to go on.
“This is Helen,” Eden explained. “And she’s petrified that any change will cause her to lose her children.”
“Of course,” Eric said, studying the woman, noting that she no longer had any reasoning ability and was literally living on her emotions of fear and distrust, all bound up in the love of a mother for her children.
Stefan reached forward with a calming energy, just giving Helen a slight touch. It sapped her energy, and she bolted backward, crying out. Then she lunged forward, as if looking to find the foe that had so easily caught her.
Almost immediately Eden grabbed her arm. “Please don’t.”
Helen turned on her, spitting with a fury that the others couldn’t see but could still recognize for what it was—an absolutely overriding terror of what would happen to her and her children.
Stefan spoke to her telepathically. Take it easy. Your children are safe.
Helen spun around, looking for the source, not recognizing where it came from, who it came from. “Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want?” But fear trembled through her words, and nobody could blame her for what she had done or why she was still here.
Eden called out to the ethers, “It’s okay. Come forward.” Slowly, other forms, other energies, just tiny overwhelming energy pockets, floated out of the dark shadows.
Eric was stunned as he looked around to see how many were here. Surely they weren’t all from the same house.
Eden explained, “Helen had thirteen children. Think of it. The bad men buying this property were gonna use all her children and even Helen, one way or another.” She shook her head, grimacing, her tears coming again.
“Thirteen children this woman has spent decades trying to protect. It’s literally the love of a mother that brings us here. ”
That may be, Stefan conceded, his voice ever-so-gentle.
Eden could see the energy around them lightening up, something within the space around them softening, gentling. She didn’t know what Stefan was doing, but some weird resonance was going on around him.
Eric glanced backward and then forward.
Helen seemed confused, yet almost more fearful because Stefan’s energy was new, was different, and was something she couldn’t explain. She roared, “Stop! Stop now or I’ll kill her.”
Eden stepped forward, approaching Helen. “I understand how you would react with fear when confronted by more strangers,” she explained, “but we are here to help you. You’ve been lost for so very long and exhausted from the fight, from protecting your family. We know that, and we’re here to help.”
“There is no help,” she declared, staring at Eden suspiciously. “How could you even think that you could help?”
“I can help,” Eden announced. “Your children are tired. They are also looking to be free.”
Many of them were around her now, most nodding in agreement. Some came closer. Some stayed far away, as if they wanted nothing to do with Helen. “I promise they will be safe,” Eden told Helen.
“You can’t promise that,” she snapped. “Nobody can make that promise. I did everything I could.”
“I know that,” Eden said. “I know that, and, in the process, you have done amazingly well. You have kept them safe all this time, but now it’s time to let them go. You can’t keep doing this. You’re worn out. You’re exhausted.”
“I can,” she cried out. “I will. Don’t you understand? … I must.”
“I understand. I know you will continue to do absolutely everything you can, but I’m here to tell you that the fight is over. It’s okay to let it go. The war has been won. Your house is gone, but those men never got it, and your children can now move on. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
She stared at her and whispered, “I want them safe.”