Agnes and the “Gift”
Agnes was born into the world just like everyone else. Only she had a guardian angel right from the start. Agnes was named after an aunt who at six year old had died. That aunt Agnes was with her now at her birth and vowed to make sure she was protected.
Her Aunt Agnes was born in the early 1900’s in a very small town and no one knew exactly how Aunt Agnes died. Back then things happened and instead of finding the answers, people just faced the truth of the death and let it pass. Aunt Agnes’ parents, found her out in the backyard one morning looking all blue and swollen. They claimed she was probably bitten by a snake and died. An autopsy would have proven them wrong!
Aunt Agnes was there to protect this child.
Agnes grew up in a family that couldn’t understand her. They thought something was wrong with her because of her ability to see things more clearly than they could. Her family teased her a lot, they just didn’t understand. Why one time, Agnes had saved her Daddy from being hurt, by keeping him from going to work. She knew there was going to be a pile up on old Decatur road. She wouldn’t let him go out the door to work and ended up being spanked! Agnes didn’t care because she knew what she was doing, even though she couldn’t sit down for a week and her mother called her a real idiot!
When she was old enough to go to school she was very shy, afraid to talk to people, afraid of what she might say.
As a child she had moments where she felt so alone. She would go off by herself and cry because of all the things she saw and heard. Imagine being the only one who heard and saw things and couldn’t explain them to anyone! She knew to be silent.
She was slowly realizing that her “gift” was not so bad. Like the time she saved Little Billy Thompson from breaking his arm on the monkey bars. Agnes had lied to the teacher about Billy so he wouldn’t go out for recess, but after school, Billy waited for her and punched her in the face. How could she explain to Billy the voices that told her how his climbing would end that day? So she took the ridicule and the violence and kept it deep inside her.
Agnes was an OK student, but her fear of people was not of the people around her, but of the people that showed themselves to her in a dream, in her head.
Her only real companion was a dog the family had. She would sometimes just sit on the porch and talk to the dog, knowing the dog would not answer back - but she at least had someone to talk to.
She became very artistic. She painted and excelled in that, but they took that away from her too. Her family made her feel like she was unwanted and could do nothing of importance. She decided not to try out for Chorus or Acting Class, she had been teased so much by her parents, when she did speak she would start crying, waiting for the ridicule to start. So even her classmates thought Agnes was weird. When all she wanted was a friend.
Agnes was about to enter high school, when things started to take a turn. She started having nightmares. She knew she couldn’t go to her parents, but she saw the scene over and over again. A man entering the house, taking a young girl into the backyard, strangling her and disappearing. (Little did she know it was Aunt Agnes she was seeing.) In fact her family never even told her about Aunt Agnes, they just didn’t talk about those things.
When she asked where she got her name, they would just say “Your grandfather named, you. “
And that was that.
One day she and some friends decided to go to a fortune teller who was in town. When she walked in the first thing the fortune teller told her was that she had a beautiful soul and that she had the “sight”. She was told that she had a little girl about six years old standing beside her and protecting her.
“Do you remember anyone in your family dying at a young age?” the fortune teller asked her.
“No, no one at all.” she replied. Little could she tell her that her family didn’t talk to her at all, unless it was to make fun of her or criticize her.
“Check into it, I thing you’ll find some answer?” the fortune teller told her as she was getting up to leave.
“How much to I owe you?
“Nothing” the fortune teller told her as she walked out the door.
The next day after school she couldn’t wait until the got home to ask around about her family history. Finally she found old Mrs. Greshon, the town gossip in the telephone book and called her. Mrs. Greshon was very glad to talk and talk about her grandfather and grandmother and the mystery of the little child, Aunt Agnes. She thought she’d try to go to the cemetery to find her grave. The family plot would hold no tombstone for Aunt Agnes. She went to the court house and looked for death certificates. No luck. Finally in a Census report she looked down the row of names and found it, Agnes Gerard b 1930 d. 1936. This was it. Now to find some answers.
“Mama, do you know anything about daddy’s sister Agnes that died when she was six years old?”
Her mother was shocked, “How did you find out about that?’
:“Why in the Census report of 1937.” She knew not to tell her mother about the fortune teller’s words.
“Well your father did have a sister who died young. No one knows what happened, she just died.”
She went about all day and the next week asking about this relative, but none of the family members, uncles, aunts, cousins knew anything of this Agnes. In fact, when she tried to find her grave and couldn’t , she then remembered that they had burials at the Church, Macedonia Church. The Church would have records of it.
The Church was long ago deserted. Agnes went around to the back where the cemetery was but the graves were overgrown with weeds and briars and time had faded all names and dates. It was of no use.
She knew in her soul what had happened. Why she was dreaming the nightmare over and over again . Aunt Agnes was just an innocent child when someone came into her house and strangled her. She would just have to keep this secret for the rest of her life.
Agnes knew what she had to do, she had a “gift” of sight and had to use it to help other children, even though she couldn’t help Aunt Agnes. Aunt Agnes was there to help her.
When she got home the next day after school, there was news about a little girl who went missing. They didn’t have Amber alerts back then. So no one knew all the details about this abduction.
As Agnes laid down that night, her thoughts went to another place. She saw a man take the little girl, Penny from her bed. No one had mentioned her name, but Agnes knew it was Penny. Agnes watched as this terrible event took place in a pocket of her brain. Agnes watched as the man took her outside, his hand over Penny’s mouth. Agnes saw Penny’s look of fright and tears rolling down her face. They went into the woods and then Agnes stopped. She didn’t want to see the rest, she knew it was something that would hunt her forever. She stayed awake the rest of the night, not wanting to shut her eyes, knowing the scene would replay itself over and over again. She knew Penny was dead now, but she had to go back to that horrible place in her brain, to try to see who did this to such a lovely little girl. Agnes softly cried.
The next morning in the paper the picture of the little girl was there, showing her name as Penny Rogers, 6, found in the woods, strangled. The police had no clues. The family was in seclusion and trying to heal. Funeral arrangements ………..
Agnes went off to school tying her best to get her work done. The visions kept coming to her all day. She failed a test in Biology and couldn’t keep up in Algebra. Her face turned red with embarrassment when Mrs. Witcher called on her to solve a problem on the board. She hated walking in front of her classmates and she didn’t know what Mrs. Witcher was talking about since she had not paid attention. She was near tears from exhaustion. She was so tired but was so afraid to close her eyes.
When she got home she had a confrontation with her mother.
“I had a call from your teacher, Mrs. Witcher today, claiming you were not doing your homework! What am I going to do with you. I don’t have time to help you, you are so stupid . How did you get so stupid. You’re not going to amount to anything in life!“
“Mama, I don’t understand anything in the classroom Can you help me?“
“I finished school. I did my time. That’s what teachers are for, ask them to help you! They’ll help you!”
She didn’t need this, she ran to her room and cried. Agnes just sat on the floor where she patted her dog and cried. She never felt so alone. As the laid down, she was asleep before she knew it. This time the dream had started at the dinner table.
A happy family including Penny were eating hamburgers and laughing. Her father looked at her with such admiration. He must be really hurting over the loss of his little girl.
Agnes went through the whole scene again, this time waking up as HE carried her into the woods. Once again, Agnes was up with a start. She needed to see his face. She had to find out who this person was.
Maybe she could help the parents if she could only see His face.
Another morning, and she watched the sun rise out her window. She slowly dressed. She couldn’t go another night without sleep. She knew the day would be another day of embarrassment and bad grades, but what could she do, she slowly walked down the stairs to breakfast. Her mother was waiting.
“Agnes, don’t tell me you were crying all night again?” she spitted at Agnes.
“Yes mama, you wouldn’t understand, I wish I could explain, but I can’t! Hardly holding tears back, she ate her eggs and became very silent.
Her mother just sighed, “I don’t know how to help you, I just don’t know how to help you!”.
“Mama I just don’t want to go to school today, Please can I stay at home?”
“Agnes, no.” As her mother looked at her with finally some love in her heart, “Ok Agnes, go upstairs and try to get some sleep.”
Agnes knew today she had to finish the dream, she had to find out who this person was, so she could help the family. She walked back up the stairs taking the paper with her. She undressed, put her clothes up and threw her PJ’s back on. As she laid down, she reread the whole article. On the inside was the picture of the family.
She drifted off to sleep and was at once in that place where no person would want to go. Her mind was like a reel to reel slowly picking up pace as she saw the family once more at the dinner table enjoying the meal - laughing and talking.
She then shifted to the scene in the bedroom where the little girl had slept. Agnes saw a shadow pass over the little girl and someone had picked her up from the bed. Penny shook her head, the hand firmly over her mouth.
They went out the backdoor very quietly as he walked into the woods and Penny was crying. When they entered the woods, Agnes knew she had to look through Penny’s eyes to see who this person was.
He sat her down, she cried “It’s cold out here, please let me go back home.”
She seemed to know Him.
Suddenly Agnes’ mother was there, gently shaking her. “Agnes wake up wake up you’re talking in your sleep, are you alright?”
Catching her breath, “Mama I’m fine, just a dream. I’m OK. “
“Well, it ‘s lunch time, you’ve been asleep the whole morning. Come down and eat some lunch.”
Agnes went downstairs in her PJs and had a sandwich. She went over the incidents she’d seen that morning. She was so close to finding out who this person was. Family or friend? What was she going to do when she saw this person, how could she tell the police about who he was? Thoughts raced through her mind!.
Finally finishing her lunch she went back upstairs, she didn’t need to go to sleep anymore. She needed to go to that place she shied away from and once more look through Penny’s eyes to see the person.
As she laid down and stared up at the ceiling she started seeing visions. Penny was once again in the woods and was being gently placed on the ground.
“Please let me go back in, I won’t tell Daddy anything, please let me go back inside!”
“Shut Up!”
Agnes slowly looked up at the face and realized who it was. She screamed as this episode flashed into another of Aunt Agnes being strangled. Seeing both incidents, she screamed.
Agnes was screaming not Penny, because Penny knew her assailant her whole life as Aunt Agnes had known hers. Penny had been hurt by this person before only this time it went wrong.
Penny started to scream as hands went around her neck, squeezing the innocent life out of her and quieting her forever.
Agnes was awake now, shaking, she slowly picked up the paper and looked at the family. How can she tell this family that Penny was murdered by her own brother! Aunt Agnes…
Agnes mother runs into the room. She tried to wake Agnes up from this spell that has her staring straight ahead. She slaps her. Agnes curled up into the fetal position and just stared into the space which held the nightmare.
****
It has been some years since Agnes was taken to the hospital.
No one understood what’s she had been trying to say. “ Bro… Bro…That is all they ever got out of her.
She’ll always keep the secret of Penny’s death deep in her brain along with Aunt Agnes. Where the scenes kept repeating themselves.
Over and over again.
Agnes was born into the world just like everyone else. Only she had a guardian angel right from the start. Agnes was named after an aunt who at six year old had died. That aunt Agnes was with her now at her birth and vowed to make sure she was protected.
Her Aunt Agnes was born in the early 1900’s in a very small town and no one knew exactly how Aunt Agnes died. Back then things happened and instead of finding the answers, people just faced the truth of the death and let it pass. Aunt Agnes’ parents, found her out in the backyard one morning looking all blue and swollen. They claimed she was probably bitten by a snake and died. An autopsy would have proven them wrong!
Aunt Agnes was there to protect this child.
Agnes grew up in a family that couldn’t understand her. They thought something was wrong with her because of her ability to see things more clearly than they could. Her family teased her a lot, they just didn’t understand. Why one time, Agnes had saved her Daddy from being hurt, by keeping him from going to work. She knew there was going to be a pile up on old Decatur road. She wouldn’t let him go out the door to work and ended up being spanked! Agnes didn’t care because she knew what she was doing, even though she couldn’t sit down for a week and her mother called her a real idiot!
When she was old enough to go to school she was very shy, afraid to talk to people, afraid of what she might say.
As a child she had moments where she felt so alone. She would go off by herself and cry because of all the things she saw and heard. Imagine being the only one who heard and saw things and couldn’t explain them to anyone! She knew to be silent.
She was slowly realizing that her “gift” was not so bad. Like the time she saved Little Billy Thompson from breaking his arm on the monkey bars. Agnes had lied to the teacher about Billy so he wouldn’t go out for recess, but after school, Billy waited for her and punched her in the face. How could she explain to Billy the voices that told her how his climbing would end that day? So she took the ridicule and the violence and kept it deep inside her.
Agnes was an OK student, but her fear of people was not of the people around her, but of the people that showed themselves to her in a dream, in her head.
Her only real companion was a dog the family had. She would sometimes just sit on the porch and talk to the dog, knowing the dog would not answer back - but she at least had someone to talk to.
She became very artistic. She painted and excelled in that, but they took that away from her too. Her family made her feel like she was unwanted and could do nothing of importance. She decided not to try out for Chorus or Acting Class, she had been teased so much by her parents, when she did speak she would start crying, waiting for the ridicule to start. So even her classmates thought Agnes was weird. When all she wanted was a friend.
Agnes was about to enter high school, when things started to take a turn. She started having nightmares. She knew she couldn’t go to her parents, but she saw the scene over and over again. A man entering the house, taking a young girl into the backyard, strangling her and disappearing. (Little did she know it was Aunt Agnes she was seeing.) In fact her family never even told her about Aunt Agnes, they just didn’t talk about those things.
When she asked where she got her name, they would just say “Your grandfather named, you. “
And that was that.
One day she and some friends decided to go to a fortune teller who was in town. When she walked in the first thing the fortune teller told her was that she had a beautiful soul and that she had the “sight”. She was told that she had a little girl about six years old standing beside her and protecting her.
“Do you remember anyone in your family dying at a young age?” the fortune teller asked her.
“No, no one at all.” she replied. Little could she tell her that her family didn’t talk to her at all, unless it was to make fun of her or criticize her.
“Check into it, I thing you’ll find some answer?” the fortune teller told her as she was getting up to leave.
“How much to I owe you?
“Nothing” the fortune teller told her as she walked out the door.
The next day after school she couldn’t wait until the got home to ask around about her family history. Finally she found old Mrs. Greshon, the town gossip in the telephone book and called her. Mrs. Greshon was very glad to talk and talk about her grandfather and grandmother and the mystery of the little child, Aunt Agnes. She thought she’d try to go to the cemetery to find her grave. The family plot would hold no tombstone for Aunt Agnes. She went to the court house and looked for death certificates. No luck. Finally in a Census report she looked down the row of names and found it, Agnes Gerard b 1930 d. 1936. This was it. Now to find some answers.
“Mama, do you know anything about daddy’s sister Agnes that died when she was six years old?”
Her mother was shocked, “How did you find out about that?’
:“Why in the Census report of 1937.” She knew not to tell her mother about the fortune teller’s words.
“Well your father did have a sister who died young. No one knows what happened, she just died.”
She went about all day and the next week asking about this relative, but none of the family members, uncles, aunts, cousins knew anything of this Agnes. In fact, when she tried to find her grave and couldn’t , she then remembered that they had burials at the Church, Macedonia Church. The Church would have records of it.
The Church was long ago deserted. Agnes went around to the back where the cemetery was but the graves were overgrown with weeds and briars and time had faded all names and dates. It was of no use.
She knew in her soul what had happened. Why she was dreaming the nightmare over and over again . Aunt Agnes was just an innocent child when someone came into her house and strangled her. She would just have to keep this secret for the rest of her life.
Agnes knew what she had to do, she had a “gift” of sight and had to use it to help other children, even though she couldn’t help Aunt Agnes. Aunt Agnes was there to help her.
When she got home the next day after school, there was news about a little girl who went missing. They didn’t have Amber alerts back then. So no one knew all the details about this abduction.
As Agnes laid down that night, her thoughts went to another place. She saw a man take the little girl, Penny from her bed. No one had mentioned her name, but Agnes knew it was Penny. Agnes watched as this terrible event took place in a pocket of her brain. Agnes watched as the man took her outside, his hand over Penny’s mouth. Agnes saw Penny’s look of fright and tears rolling down her face. They went into the woods and then Agnes stopped. She didn’t want to see the rest, she knew it was something that would hunt her forever. She stayed awake the rest of the night, not wanting to shut her eyes, knowing the scene would replay itself over and over again. She knew Penny was dead now, but she had to go back to that horrible place in her brain, to try to see who did this to such a lovely little girl. Agnes softly cried.
The next morning in the paper the picture of the little girl was there, showing her name as Penny Rogers, 6, found in the woods, strangled. The police had no clues. The family was in seclusion and trying to heal. Funeral arrangements ………..
Agnes went off to school tying her best to get her work done. The visions kept coming to her all day. She failed a test in Biology and couldn’t keep up in Algebra. Her face turned red with embarrassment when Mrs. Witcher called on her to solve a problem on the board. She hated walking in front of her classmates and she didn’t know what Mrs. Witcher was talking about since she had not paid attention. She was near tears from exhaustion. She was so tired but was so afraid to close her eyes.
When she got home she had a confrontation with her mother.
“I had a call from your teacher, Mrs. Witcher today, claiming you were not doing your homework! What am I going to do with you. I don’t have time to help you, you are so stupid . How did you get so stupid. You’re not going to amount to anything in life!“
“Mama, I don’t understand anything in the classroom Can you help me?“
“I finished school. I did my time. That’s what teachers are for, ask them to help you! They’ll help you!”
She didn’t need this, she ran to her room and cried. Agnes just sat on the floor where she patted her dog and cried. She never felt so alone. As the laid down, she was asleep before she knew it. This time the dream had started at the dinner table.
A happy family including Penny were eating hamburgers and laughing. Her father looked at her with such admiration. He must be really hurting over the loss of his little girl.
Agnes went through the whole scene again, this time waking up as HE carried her into the woods. Once again, Agnes was up with a start. She needed to see his face. She had to find out who this person was.
Maybe she could help the parents if she could only see His face.
Another morning, and she watched the sun rise out her window. She slowly dressed. She couldn’t go another night without sleep. She knew the day would be another day of embarrassment and bad grades, but what could she do, she slowly walked down the stairs to breakfast. Her mother was waiting.
“Agnes, don’t tell me you were crying all night again?” she spitted at Agnes.
“Yes mama, you wouldn’t understand, I wish I could explain, but I can’t! Hardly holding tears back, she ate her eggs and became very silent.
Her mother just sighed, “I don’t know how to help you, I just don’t know how to help you!”.
“Mama I just don’t want to go to school today, Please can I stay at home?”
“Agnes, no.” As her mother looked at her with finally some love in her heart, “Ok Agnes, go upstairs and try to get some sleep.”
Agnes knew today she had to finish the dream, she had to find out who this person was, so she could help the family. She walked back up the stairs taking the paper with her. She undressed, put her clothes up and threw her PJ’s back on. As she laid down, she reread the whole article. On the inside was the picture of the family.
She drifted off to sleep and was at once in that place where no person would want to go. Her mind was like a reel to reel slowly picking up pace as she saw the family once more at the dinner table enjoying the meal - laughing and talking.
She then shifted to the scene in the bedroom where the little girl had slept. Agnes saw a shadow pass over the little girl and someone had picked her up from the bed. Penny shook her head, the hand firmly over her mouth.
They went out the backdoor very quietly as he walked into the woods and Penny was crying. When they entered the woods, Agnes knew she had to look through Penny’s eyes to see who this person was.
He sat her down, she cried “It’s cold out here, please let me go back home.”
She seemed to know Him.
Suddenly Agnes’ mother was there, gently shaking her. “Agnes wake up wake up you’re talking in your sleep, are you alright?”
Catching her breath, “Mama I’m fine, just a dream. I’m OK. “
“Well, it ‘s lunch time, you’ve been asleep the whole morning. Come down and eat some lunch.”
Agnes went downstairs in her PJs and had a sandwich. She went over the incidents she’d seen that morning. She was so close to finding out who this person was. Family or friend? What was she going to do when she saw this person, how could she tell the police about who he was? Thoughts raced through her mind!.
Finally finishing her lunch she went back upstairs, she didn’t need to go to sleep anymore. She needed to go to that place she shied away from and once more look through Penny’s eyes to see the person.
As she laid down and stared up at the ceiling she started seeing visions. Penny was once again in the woods and was being gently placed on the ground.
“Please let me go back in, I won’t tell Daddy anything, please let me go back inside!”
“Shut Up!”
Agnes slowly looked up at the face and realized who it was. She screamed as this episode flashed into another of Aunt Agnes being strangled. Seeing both incidents, she screamed.
Agnes was screaming not Penny, because Penny knew her assailant her whole life as Aunt Agnes had known hers. Penny had been hurt by this person before only this time it went wrong.
Penny started to scream as hands went around her neck, squeezing the innocent life out of her and quieting her forever.
Agnes was awake now, shaking, she slowly picked up the paper and looked at the family. How can she tell this family that Penny was murdered by her own brother! Aunt Agnes…
Agnes mother runs into the room. She tried to wake Agnes up from this spell that has her staring straight ahead. She slaps her. Agnes curled up into the fetal position and just stared into the space which held the nightmare.
****
It has been some years since Agnes was taken to the hospital.
No one understood what’s she had been trying to say. “ Bro… Bro…That is all they ever got out of her.
She’ll always keep the secret of Penny’s death deep in her brain along with Aunt Agnes. Where the scenes kept repeating themselves.
Over and over again.
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