Chapter 4

On Saturday morning, the 12th of March, I arrived at 9:00. My life was about to change for the better (?), but I was blissfully unaware of that at the time. It was a very nice March morning. The sun was out with a light breeze and the ground would soon be dry enough to resume work in the garden and later the fields. I was whistling when I passed the Carriage House on the way to the stable for a day's work on the tractors. I had even brought my portable radio and some CDs with me to listen to some music while I worked.

"Mark, can you help me?" Mary Margaret called from the Carriage House, as I passed it.

"Yes, just let me put these things up first, OK?" I answered. After putting my things on a shelf in the stable, I returned to the Carriage House to find Mary Margaret in a skirt and blouse over by the 1912 Cadillac Touring car doing something.

"Can you help me with these?" she asked, as she tried to move something in the rear seat area of the old car. I went over and saw a couple of large old leather suitcases in the back seat. I didn't remembered seeing them in there before, but they were there now, and she wanted to move them. I reached in to help move them.

Mary Margaret came into my arms, leaned in and kissed me. I immediately noticed how soft and warm she was and then our lips touched and everything changed. Our lips had only touched for a second or so, and I had just become aware of her perfume, when a kaleidoscope of images invaded my mind, leaving me stunned for a time.

There were flashes of images of three coffins being lowered into the ground; there was an old woman in a ram-shackled cabin with a flaming fireplace and Mary Margaret and her sister. There was no sound with the image but it was obvious that the woman was furious with the sisters. This was followed by a series of men's faces, and finally a small green glen and several indistinct, shadowy figures speaking Gaelic.

Mary Margaret screamed then, went limp in my arms, and the images faded. I was back in the Carriage House with a passed-out Mary Margaret in my arms. Mary Kate appeared within seconds of her sister's scream. She was very upset, but it didn't appear to be with me.

I deposited Mary Margaret on the back seat of the Cadillac touring car, throwing the suitcases out the back of the car, and Mary Kate started attending to her sister.

"Oh Margie, what have you done?" Mary Kate asked, as her sister came back to consciousness.

"I only meant to kiss him, Katie! Just a small innocent kiss," Mary Margaret answered in tears.

"But what happened?" Katie asked.

"I don't know!! Suddenly he was in my mind and ... and ... the images ... images I thought I had forgotten were coming out and ... and ... he saw them!!" Margie wailed in tears and fright.

"Oh, Margie, we agreed to go slowly with this one. He is obviously much stronger than we first thought," Katie told her distraught sister.

"What happened?" I asked after a bit. "Is Mary Margaret going to be all right?"

"Yes, my sister will be all right," Mary Kate said in a resigned voice. "She shouldn't have tried to kiss you. She has ruined everything now."

"Ruined what?" I asked.

"You are more powerful than even we suspected!" Mary Kate said, confusing me even more.

"Powerful? What are you talking about?"

"Even now you don't suspect!" Mary Kate said, as she rose from beside her sister and turned toward me.

"Kiss me," she invited and came into my arms. Mary Kate was as soft and warm as her sister had been during our brief encounter, and she pressed her body against mine, but she also had a different feel than Mary Margaret had. Where Mary Margaret was soft and dreamy, Mary Kate was firmer and more focused. In an instant it was apparent to me that Mary Margaret was the romantic, whereas Mary Kate was the realist.

Our lips touched and Mary Kate melted into me even more for an instant, and then the images came flooding back. They were still pretty much the same images, but from a slightly different perspective. Also where Mary Margaret's had been somewhat diffused, these were sharper with more detail and some sound; there were the sounds of ropes straining as they slid through men's hands to lower the coffins into the graves, along with men's heavy breathing. There was the crackling of wood in the fireplace as it burned and the crackling voice of an old woman, but the words were indistinct; there were grunts from the various faces of the unknown men; finally there was the Gaelic being spoken in the glen. I nearly understood it, but it was still just outside of my comprehension.

Mary Kate didn't scream or pass out, but did go limp in my arms for some time before coming back to herself.

"How can you do that and still not understand or know?" she asked quietly in wonder, and I still had no idea what she meant.

"Help me get Margie back to the house," Mary Kate asked, still in my arms, but back to herself again.

We helped Mary Margaret up and while all three of us were touching, the images returned again, but much sharper and as vivid as real life. It was like the two sisters were each a part of a stereo picture set. Separately most of the detail was there, but it took seeing both of them together to make the scenes come alive. This time it was better than watching HD television compared to looking at single photographs on paper, that it had been previously. The visions were alive with sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations. There was now the wind blowing at the graves; the smell of smoke from the fire in the fire place; grunting sounds from the faces of the many men, and a low moaning wind in the trees in the glen. It was as real as being there.

Both women screamed and collapsed, dragging me down with them. The vision had only lasted a few seconds, but both women were crying soulfully.

"It's too real!" Margie sobbed still in tears.

"Please! ... Please, Mark! Don't touch both of us together again, not for some time anyway. We can't stand too much of that. How did you do that?" Katie pleaded, also in tears.

What had I done? What had they seen that I hadn't? I was more confused than ever by this.

"Can you make it to the house by yourselves?" I asked in concern.

"I don't even know if we can stand by ourselves!" Katie said quietly. "Give us a few minutes more to recover," she asked. I watched Katie and Margie sit there in the back of the Touring car, breathing hesitantly for several minutes while they recovered.

Why was I thinking of them as Katie and Margie now, I wondered? Then it struck me; that was how they thought of each other and not their more formal names. No, these were their personal names for each other, but how did I know that?

After a short time, Katie got to her feet but wasn't very steady. Margie couldn't even stand by herself, and needed assistance.

"Mark, please help Margie up, but only touch her clothing. We're both much too sensitive to you now for you to touch our skin," Katie told me, but didn't explain her remark.

"Oh, God," Margie managed to tell her sister, "I need him soo. I can't wait much longer." She was speaking Gaelic, and yet I now understood her completely.

"We must wait yet," Katie responded, imperatively, "He isn't ready yet, but you're right. We will both need him and soon. Can you make it to the house, Margie?"

"Yes, I'm feeling better, but I still need help. He's so strong, and I can smell his sweat. I can't wait too long, Katie!" Margie complained in tears.

"You must wait, Margie!" Katie implored her sister.

"What do you need and what must Margie wait for?" I asked, and it came out in GAELIC, but I don't speak or understand Gaelic. At least, I didn't used to.

"NO!!" both women screamed in horror.

"You said you didn't speak Gaelic!" Katie said in protest.

"How long have you been listening to us?" Margie asked in fear.

"I don't speak Gaelic, and I have no idea how I understood what the two of you were just saying, or how I asked that question in Gaelic."

"Oh dear, this is much worse than I ever suspected," Katie said, again. "Please just help us up to the house, and give us some time to regain our senses. Then I'll try to explain everything," Katie told me, as we neared the house.

"All right," I agreed. "There is some work that I can do for a while."

"Can you stay for dinner?" Margie asked in a quavering yet sexy voice.

"Yes, I could probably stay for dinner," I told them.

"I will try to explain things after dinner," Katie told me, as I helped Margie up the stairs to the house. Both women seemed to gain strength when we reached the house, and they went inside, while I returned to the stable to continue working on the tractors.

I found it very difficult to concentrate on the work necessary to change out the Touch-o-Matic assembly. I managed to get the hydraulic lines disconnected on both units but that was all. I kept thinking about what the women had said. Why were Margie and Katie so worried and what did they mean by 'I was more powerful than they thought'? What did they have to wait for? What was it Margie needed, and how in the world had I understood and spoken Gaelic, a language I had only heard sparingly as a young child? There were too many questions with no answers.

I finally gave up on doing any work for a while and sat with the music playing while I tried to resolve all of the questions in my mind. It was a hopeless task, and I eventually went back to the job of removing and replacing the Touch-o-Matic assembly.

There were many links and connections that needed to be disconnected and marked so they could be put back in the correct locations. I wrapped blue tape around each piece as I disconnected it and put a number on it. I attempted to number each location on the assembly that they came from, but wasn't always successful. I resorted to drawing a picture of each side, the ends, and the top of the unit and numbering the locations on the drawing. It was slow tedious work and I needed to stop often when I found my attention wandering back to the incident in the Carriage House.

At some point Katie brought me some lunch on a tray, but she stayed well back from me, as if she were afraid of me.

"Here is some lunch. Come up to the house about 5:00. We have some clothes you can wear after you shower," she informed me before leaving.

After lunch, I again tried to work on the Touch-o-Matic unit, but gave up after a time, as I now wondered why Katie seemed so afraid of me when she brought my lunch. They had never served me lunch before, either.

They had also not asked for the remaining money back, or for the receipts for the trailer or the lubricants and oil that I had purchased yesterday afternoon. I was truly confused at this point and much too distracted to work on the tractor. It would just have to wait until all of this was straightened out.

At 5:00 I closed the stable and headed for the front porch. Margie answered when I knocked on the front door.

"Hello, Mark!" she said in the sexiest voice I had ever heard. "Come in. I'll show you where to change and shower. There are clothes on a wooden valet near the bed for you to wear to dinner."

She proceeded me up to the second floor but was very careful not to touch me. I did notice that her breathing was more rapid than usual and her eyes were red, as if from crying. What was the matter now, I wondered?

The room that she showed me to was a medium size bedroom with a queen size bed, a nightstand, a dresser, and a small writing desk with a chair in one corner. In addition there was an old fashioned armoire, or wardrobe for the storage of clothes. All were made of mahogany. I noticed that there was no closet in the room.

There was a rather expensive man's suit and dress shirt hanging on the wooden valet, along with socks, shoes, and a handkerchief.

"I don't know if the shoes will fit you. We have others if those don't fit," Margie told me before fleeing without saying anything further. The bathroom was next to the bedroom I had been shown to, and I found a bathrobe and underwear on the bed.

The fixtures in the bathroom were very early 20th century. The bathtub was supported on feet; the tank for the toilet was four feet above the fixture. The sink was small and there was a razor strap hanging on the wall near it. There was a straight razor with a brush and cup of soap on a shelf above the sink but below the small mirror on the wall, and everything was very neat and tidy.