This Changes Everything, Volume I, The Spanners Series

"This Changes Everything"

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This Changes Everything

Volume I, THE SPANNERS series

by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

Copyright 2013 Sally Ember, Ed.D.

CHAPTER ONE 

First Contact between the Many Worlds Collective (MWC) and  

Clara Branon, Ph.D.,  

in northern California, December, 2012 

The clear, cool, northern California night of December 21, 2012, I go to bed at around 8 PM as I usually do. I always meditate in bed at the end of each day. As I near the end of my meditation, about to go to sleep, I hear several voices in a kind of chorus, speaking my name: "ClaraBranon... ClaraBranon... ClaraBranon... ClaraBranon..." They sound expectant, insistent, and are saying my names as if they were all one word. Not loud, not scary, but right in my bedroom.  

Ridiculously, my first reaction is not fear but bewilderment, and a bit of resentment. Again? More interruptions of my sleep? What, now? Who are you and what do you want? Go away! I project expulsion images.  

Here are the reasons. 

Ever since I am about five years old, I've had nighttime experiences that go way beyond strange. Objects in my room or on my walls take on new identities, shapes, purposes. My radio's numeric display seems to pulse, move, change: it seems to be trying to communicate with me, but I never know what it's trying to say. I sense and sometimes "see" creatures moving along the ceiling or walls or right through them. Posters and pictures assume new positions with changing contents, colors, or designs which then open up or move around.  

Often, when I live near a cemetery, as I do for eleven years growing up and now, for six years in Kirov, I get "visitors": newly-dead spirits. They are confused, wandering and pausing at the first dwelling they find. They don't seem to want anything from or even see me. They're just passing through.  

I often talk to them aloud, as I do tonight: "Who are you? What do you want?" Or, I try to command or inform them: "Go away! You're dead." In recent years, I also chant mantras, burn incense and sing to them.  

As soon as I turn on a light, all of these apparitions and occurrences, objects and fixtures return to normal and the specters and creatures drift or scurry away. All is right, again.  

However, none of them ever speaks aloud or seems to know my name before this evening.  

So, although being visited or having other odd events at night isn't all that new to me, hearing anyone speak my name is. I am tired and not in the mood, so my first reaction is to eject them.  

They do not leave. They keep chanting.  

"ClaraBranon..."ClaraBranon..."ClaraBranon..." 

As I turn on the light, fully expecting them to disappear/go silent, they repeat their request for my attention.  

"ClaraBranon..."ClaraBranon..."ClaraBranon..." 

I become increasingly curious while aware of a flutter of fear. "How do you know my name?" I ask.  

As my eyes adjust to the light, some shapes begin slowly to appear. They do not materialize, exactly: they are translucent, insubstantial.  

The light should have returned everything to normal. I'm beginning to have a sinking feeling that my life never will be normal, again. My bedroom is getting stranger by the moment and I'm starting to feel a bit more scared.