I seem to attract men who tell me about the darker sides of their lives, their shadow sides. They open up, seeing something in me that I myself do not see. Maybe it’s because I trained as a sexual abuse counsellor, or perhaps they are picking up on my history of abuse. Residual energy may still remain in my energy-field, sending out little signals on a similar wavelength, like an octopus. It all goes on beneath the surface, like streamers of coloured energy passing back and forth between us. To the conscious self, this movement of energies goes unnoticed, but sometimes it becomes glaringly obvious.
While living beside the Red Sea, I had an interaction with someone who showed me that we really do attract experiences to ourselves based on what we think about - or read, especially if we work with the energies of the collective unconscious. Experiences like this teach us something important. That we need to be mindful about what we focus our energies on, or, that more personal healing is required. It might also be suggesting we need more compassion, or patience, or something we are not aware of until much later.
The following experience in Egypt taught me that A) Stephen King’s books are better off left sitting on the shelf, and B) I still attract energies of a particular nature into my field of experience. I think this happened because I was living in a place that had only seen human occupation for the last forty years. Prior to that, it was desert, virgin land, except for a small fishing village a little way up the coast. This lack of human habitation meant no memory had built up, the way it does with older cities. Manifestation happens more easily in places where the atmosphere is clear, it’s like fishing in a river which has no human garbage floating in it.
During my second year living in Hurghada, I worked for a few months in a cat cafe run by two English women. The cafe also sold, in return for a few Egyptian pounds, an eclectic selection of foreign books. In Egypt, it was difficult to get hold of good books, so I learned to read whatever I could get my hands on. This proved useful because it meant that I read books I would not normally read. One of those was Stephen King’s, “Full Dark, No Stars”.
I was reticent about reading books by King again, the last one I read was back in the eighties, but, because I was learning to write, I thought it would expand my knowledge, especially as everyone was going on so much about his book of advice for writers. I took the book home to my flat, which was only across the road, and read it before going to sleep.
That was probably my second mistake. (The first was buying it).
There are four novellas in the book and the one that made the greatest impression on my subconscious, was Big Driver. (I didn’t know it had made such an impression until later, however). Big Driver is a story about a woman whose car breaks down on a lonely road and she is helped by a passing truck driver. But instead of helping her, he rapes her and leaves her for dead in an empty culvert close to his home. But she does not die, and when she comes to, she discovers the remains of his other victims.
She manages to escape and later discovers that the trucker lives close to where he tried to kill her. So she finds him and kills him. She then realises she has killed the murderer’s brother, by mistake, and has to go back again - to kill the right man. The right man was called Big Driver. His brother was called Little Driver.
All good so far.
I finished reading the book and a few days later, went to the cafe for the shared art day. I was the first one to arrive so I grabbed a tea, got my stuff ready in the art corner, and began to paint. The doorbell jangled, heralding the arrival of a new customer, and I looked up expecting to see one of the other members of the group. But instead, a big man in his fifties walked in. He had a large barrel chest and a shaven head, and he was wearing a tight, white t-shirt with cut-off sleeves. His arms, which once might have been quite muscular but which were now flabby and loose with age, were blue with old tattoos and as he walked towards the counter, he glanced over at me, then turned to talk to Rose, who was standing behind the cake desk.
As I watched him, I thought, He looks just like Big Driver. What are the odds? Feeling slightly weird, as though fantasy and reality were colliding, I bent my head and got on with my art, trying to put it down to coincidence, and the result of an overactive imagination.
I should have known better.
For some reason, I remained aware of the man, magnetised in some way by his similarity to the character in King’s book. A few minutes later he approached the art table and asked if he could sit there too.
‘Sure,’ I replied, not really wanting him to, but too polite to say, No, I’d rather you sat somewhere else, because this is just a little too weird…
‘Thanks,’ he said, putting down his apple pie and mug of tea. He pulled out the gingham-covered chair and sat down, nearly too heavy for it.
Now that he was beside me - I was sitting on the long side of the table and he was at the end - I realised just how big he was. His presence there seemed huge, nearly overwhelming, and he immediately began to chat, oblivious to how uncomfortable he was making me feel. I tried to remain open, but I also felt the need to guard myself.
He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was waiting for the rest of our art group. For some reason, I wanted him to know I was not going to be on my own for long; that I was expecting people. I was not unfriendly, but I did not want to appear too friendly either.
He was silent for a moment, and I continued to paint, or at least made it look like I was painting. In reality, I was finding it difficult to concentrate and was simply going through the motions.
Glancing at his head, I noticed beads of sweat on his sunburned scalp. He was not dealing well with the heat in Hurghada but neither did he look like the kind of man who came to the Red Sea for a holiday. He looked like a Costa del Sol kind of tourist. (I had grown up in Torremolinos, so I had seen many of these English tourist-types there).
I wondered why he had chosen to come here.
It was his wife’s idea, he said, as if he knew what I was thinking. Normally, they went to Spain for their holidays, but this year his wife wanted a change.
So where was his wife now? I asked.
On the beach. He did not like the beach - too many distractions.
My stomach tightened because I understood immediately what those distractions were. Feeling uncomfortable, I continued to paint and then asked him what he did when he was at home, back in the UK.
‘I drive lorries,’ he said. ‘All over Europe. Been doing it for years, but I’ve had enough. Going to retire next year.’
‘A truck driver,’ I said, ‘Wow. That must be interesting.’ Then I excused myself, holding up my water pot to show him I needed a change and went to the bathroom. Holding the container beneath the tap, I thought, What the hell is going on? He looked like Big Driver, he drove a truck like Big Driver. Was he a murderer too, like Big Driver? Don’t be ridiculous, Ann, I told myself, turning off the tap. It’s only a story. Yes, I argued, but a story which is fast becoming a reality.
When I returned to the table, he had finished his pie and was washing it down with a long swig of tea. I sat down and resumed painting. Then the conversation took an even stranger turn. He divulged that he had, until recently, abused children and then went on to say that he had been in therapy for a while and was now healing his own childhood abuse - because his abuse of children stemmed from his own abuse. Which, of course, it often does.
I asked the trucker about his wife, steering the conversation into safer waters, and asked him how she managed it. He went on to tell me she had been a great support to him in his process, even though he had made her life a living hell. He had been abusive to her too, he said, because of his own childhood abuse and was surprised she had stayed with him. I wondered if he had children, hoping he did not. But I really did not want to ask.
It was such a dark conversation and he was talking about it as if it was something one spoke about over afternoon tea, which effectively was what we were doing. I kept an eye on the door, glancing up every time someone came in. But the group members were late today. Maybe they are not coming, I thought, hoping I was wrong. I also wondered if he was planning on joining us when, and if, they did.
He went on talking until the first of our group arrived. When she did, he immediately stood up and said quietly, bending over so no one else could hear him, ‘I’d rather not talk about this in front of the others so I’ll head off now.’
I smiled and wished him well and he left the cafe. To go back to his wife, I presume.
‘Who was that?’ my friend asked, taking her place at the table.
‘I have no idea,’ I answered, truthfully. ‘He just sat down for a chat.’
‘Strange man,’ she muttered and then got up to order her breakfast.
Strange man, indeed, I thought. You don’t know the half of it.
But later on, I wondered about him. In a way, it was brave of him to talk about such a delicate and shaming subject so openly. How many men would talk about something like that with a complete stranger? And how many would admit to being a child abuser? He did not know I had five daughters. But, if I had been a man, I wondered, instead of a woman, would he have felt so comfortable talking about such a delicate, and potentially triggering subject? Would he have even come near my table?
Or, perhaps there is a less healthy reason why he wanted to talk about it. Abusive men often test women to see how they might react to the information they share with them. It is a form of grooming. They want to see if she will be shocked and whether she will reject him. If the woman does not react with anger or disgust, but with sympathy, they may feel encouraged to go on and little by little divulge more, hoping thereby to get her to collude with him - eventually.
Except that I was never likely to see this man again, therefore he had nothing to gain by sharing his story with me. Although I did worry that I might run into him on my way home. Thankfully I lived only a hundred meters away and there were no culverts nearby and, even though he physically fit the Big Driver character, he was not aggressive enough to be Big Driver. Neither did he have the completely dark, threatening energy of someone who was likely to rape and murder women. But then again, my friend in Waterford, all those years ago, hadn’t come across in that way either.
What this experience showed me was that there are some books I just shouldn’t read. Stephen King’s in particular. They go too deep, burrowing like hungry maggots into the softest flesh of memory and experience. I had seen the effects before, and here we were again, except this time the story had become real - to me.
I decided, that evening, that I would not read another of his books. I had tried again, after a break of thirty-something years, and come to the conclusion that it was the right decision, back then, to leave well enough alone.
Now, I was absolutely sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Dark,_No_Stars
Leaving the darkness to one side (but wanting to acknowledge it), I absolutely Love your sketch of the palm trees! So delicate… you've inspired me :)