Brownstonelit's Blog

6/16/10
Charley wanted me to write about his death, but not until I had been acquainted with his life. The amazing thing is that Charley told me who his killer was up front. The journey of confirmation was for me. He understood I needed to be invested in this and you cannot invest in a thing without some sort of emotional exchange. The trick becomes in the balance… It is so easy to lose your soul in something like this. To trade emotions for information- to bargain with your sanity for want of just one more clue- one more definitive. I recall R telling me this was just the tip of the iceberg. At the time I thought, surely there could be nothing more important than finding out who the shooter was. But R was right… while that was indeed important; it was not the pinnacle of why I was chosen for this. This is a process- for me, for J and for you the reader… to read between the lines and to research our own lives as we research his.
I could tell you I know what OSTRICH stands for and while that will send some into overdrive- it is just a part of the larger puzzle. I could tell you now what MOT stands for, but that too simply adds pages to my report. I can tell you where and what #19 is- where and what #1545 is all about and that those still alive will shudder in their boots knowing these things are no longer secret.
I can tell you now that Charley’s murder had little to do with moonshine. Curious isn’t it??? An ATTD (ATF) agent is “killed in the line of duty” and it had nothing to do with his job, nor even necessarily because of his alleged mistress. I say alleged, because she never loved Charley– she merely played with him. She and her associates were incapable of love, but that is not to exclude her from this mess- for infact- she was just as Charley declared her; a manipulator, the suspected, the key to all this.
I can tell you in the beginning I could produce nothing but bile for this woman. Later as I saw her spend her femininity as commodity, I could muster only pity and shame at her associations. I could not understand how she as a female could be so disconnected from her heart or her integrity- but it was because she had exhausted both. Then in a later reading, R explained that there appeared to be a history of sexual abuse in this woman’s early teens; a father, stepfather, or an Uncle perhaps who forced sexual favors from her at a tender age. While one sin can never truly absolve an individual of committing another; the ‘good girl gone bad’ moniker seems to apply rather aptly here. So while G and her crew of boy-toys as Charley liked to refer to them, were emotionally unavailable, they were however capable of collusion and murder. Later you will learn Charley was murdered over the basest of human debauchery—
You guess which one.

6/14/10

I promised I would share more and I have been a bit tight lipped about a good many things of late, so let me see what I can pull from this pile and we will have a closer look together.
Do you remember back in the beginning when all this started? I had just finished my other book and it was off at the publishers awaiting final edit approval and cover art approval… I had watched the movie Julie and Julia and thought perhaps I too might write a blog about my experience. A blog about my researching a suspected homicide. J had asked me to write a book about what happened to her father that night back in 1966- even though she, her sibling and her mother had never been able to crack enough shells to make a pecan pie of the thing. To tell you the truth, I had no idea exactly how many shells I would be able to crack… or what path all this would take when and if I could. What I did know was me. And I knew from the git-go that I could write this story- but only if Charley would conscent and promise to be right there beside me. It never dawned on me that I would have to wait so long to begin in earnest. After all, I vomited 7 chapters right up front- then stalled. Those of you who know me, know I never stall. I never balk. So why the hesitation? Why the delay, I wondered and that was when the gravity of what I was about to do took me to heel. Charley wanted more than a story- he wanted the truth. Now, as a writer my genre is historical fiction. And the funny thing is, every time someone asks me how I plan to write this thing, I can still only reply… as a historical fiction. The kicker here is- the truth in this case is the fiction! Do you understand? Everything reported and allegedly proven in this case has been the lie…everything. So everything I might write when putting pen to pad must be the truth. Or, what part do I play as an author in this?
Unlike R, I am another kind of medium- I am the wordsmith-the conduit for truth from the grave to paper. And not just from Charley’s. There are so many who step forward and speak for themselves or on his behalf. We think we are an island and that what we say or do affects only those within our immediate grasp or confidence… and yet look at the reach of boney fingers so far in this case- or any case where the victim is never heard. Valdosta’s slumber must be heavy and besmirched with the souls of those who perished for the want of others silence. It is a wonder one can even breathe in such a place without coughing up the worms of truth.

I think about Charley’s family. J was an individual I had known for years on a much more casual basis- now well voiced in this matter I realize how she had contained a heartache so grievous and so well- that I never suspected her life to be anything but happy-go-lucky. In my unawareness, I have made that mistake about others as well. As time goes on I realize that I too must present to others as even and blessed… and yet what is real and what is image for any of us? How well we come to know ourselves and yet how ignorant are we of others- even those closest to us? I think back to a year ago and the murders here in Athens at another theatre in town and now see the breadth of the wake that horror wrought amongst friends and community. I think about the information that freely danced from salacious gossip to blatant truth and think of those families as I think of Hazel- Charley’s widow. How too in the blink of an eye her world was changed forever.
Of how the morning found her baking a chocolate cake, the afternoon, arguing with her husband and the night someone coming to her door to tell her that her husband was dead. No piece of cake to say I’m sorry, no make-up kiss to navigate the lonely night. No resolution to the argument, or salve for the marriage placed eternally in limbo. No chance to salvage one’s dignity or repent one’s sins. No cup of coffee to break the ice. Nothing for him but loss. Nothing for her but doubt.

Can you image the internal hell suffered on a hourly basis without the luxury of release? This broken woman had two small children to survive for- to comfort, to embrace. Two small children to explain to that daddy never meant to leave them. I go over in my head the first session where Charley disgorged his venom first, then immediately with compassion and remorse redirects R to his loss. How R is overwhelmed by his emotion and emptiness. Even now I find I am hard pressed to find words to convey to you the impact of this man’s grief as it pierced the veil of time and the rim of my heart.

I know you want the name of the shooter. I know you want details and identities. I know you want to know the whys and the wherefores of such a villainous act… and if I told you now, your heart would sink at the depravity of those whose hands were in this. The crime in and of itself is a disgrace; the reason is beyond deplorable and the shame is without margin. What I want you to remember in all this, is that aside from the adrenaline and the intrigue— these people were and are real. Not just to me- but to each other. This is about a man and a wife who were denied the luxury of private emotional combat. Children who became collateral damage and coffee table fodder for those who held their breath, but not their tongues… lives that were traded and ransomed for people’s ego’s and reputations.

Let me quote you from one of my own works… The Knot…

“Jane: The memory of that morning would divide and define the way I saw truth for the rest of my life. Fact! I saw the end of my world in the end of that cigarette in more ways than one and…
Ryan: You took that saw…
Jane: Yes… I did. I took that saw and like the man on the horse, I cut the truth in half. Two halves made a whole and I … and everything innocent I had ever known, along with the memory of Emory’s face… crawled right through it and escaped. Until today.”

Ignorance may be bliss… but Knowledge is power.
signed,
No longer ignorant

6/13/10

Today is a time for reflection… for making notes and for sending them off…
Oh, sorry! That was last week!

6/11/10
So my fine feathered friends—what shall we sing about?
Let’s sing a lovely little ditty about Valdosta, back in 1966. Let’s sing about a broken chandelier and the little blonde-headed girl, under 9 years of age who fell into a ravine and got trapped. Let’s sing about her mother… or the man who drives the fire truck… or the man with the small fishing boat who liked to fish alone out by the VPD lake house. Or how about, let’s sing about the man from Tifton. You know… the man who liked the softer side of Sears, all things “insurance” and loved to make documentary films.

Or how about my personal favorite… the man with the crooked teeth who could swear upon the bible that he will always tell you the truth and not bat an eye—but can’t quite seem to do it over Charley’s dead body. The man Charley likes to refer to as, “The Grim Reaper”.

I have information for you my friend. Live birds aren’t the only birds that sing- dead birds sing too! Lots and lots of beautiful songs and you cannot even begin to imagine the lyrics!!! But even more amazing… you cannot even begin to count the people who are now carefully listening to that bird sing on tape for even as I speak to you today.
Oh… what kind of bird you ask?
Why that’s simple… that would be a most awkward beast; the OSTRICH.
Crazy isn’t it? And I thought they could only run and hide! Apparently they sing too! I didn’t know they could sing when I began this, but boy oh boy! If you listen closely, you can hear him sing ever so softly… just above his grave. It’s not very pretty—but he sure has an awful lot to squawk about!
People are listening… people are watching… very closely. Lots of people- the kind that like to put lots of letters behind their names!
Enjoy…

6/11/10
What is it they say about a caged bird?
That even a caged bird will occasionally sing?

If you have anything you wish to sing about… now would be a really good time to get it off your chest. Later will not only be later… it may be too late. You know how to find me.
TA

6/9/10

I promised that I would let you in on a few of the twists and turns in this case and so I shall. First you must understand that in order for some of these things to make sense, you must have followed along from the beginning. As you have learned thus far; Charley and whomever help guide me through this all tend to speak rather cryptically. It is a series of numbers and phrases. I never get complete sentences or images given to me- save for very rare circumstance. The #’s 19, 1510,1545…1439, 14…
In my eagerness to learn the shorthand, I have obsessed about this case and little else the last few months. When my daughter had her paranormal event; the stakes went way up for me and I began to campaign for resolution. In the previous blog, I spoke much about silence and it bodes well of what I am about to release to you.
When you watch a movie or read a book… you must learn to pay close attention to those things which appear within the first two pages or the first two scenes. Why? Because the ending is always encrypted there. Everything else becomes background, filler and/or explanation for the character’s actions. The homeless man the lead character passes by in the street on his way to meet his mistress may later become the only eye witness to a crime of passion. A church bell that tolls just as the lovers kiss- marks the time the two were last seen together and may become the time line to prove someone’s guilt or innocence. Like I always say- the devil is in the details! It is much the same when speaking with the dead. Everything that is of great importance to them comes through within the first few minutes- the vomiting of information. Telling you what is most importance first. So let us return to our first reading with Charley and try to weigh the nuggets of information upon the scale of importance.

Some key points from that session are;
…two energies
…the female energy “G”
…the younger male energy- law enforcement
…at the front tire
…energy to the left side of the head
…alive-dry
…dead-wet
…one lures- one taunts
…kicking and screaming, but he doesn’t even know me
…red truck
…sitting up, being dropped
…younger energy relocates
…no recognition of second wound-chin
…throws things around the car
… in front of the car…G- the manipulator
… 1439 blue oak

And so on. The curious note is that when all these things are gathered; weighed and measured for their worth, 5 words become the final flag- the beacon of light that no cover-up of lies can dim. You see, the twists and the turns that wound me round and round and kept me forever moving forward eventually brought me back. It is much like wisteria vine. Tiny tendrils twist and curl and climb upon the backs of other stronger rigid vines and then suddenly- one day you have a canopy that covers you. Go back dear readers. Read the first session again in its entirety. If you have read in between the lines then you know; and if you know- then you know I now know.
And if you don’t… then you must go back. You must follow the yellow brick road again, brick by brick, clue by clue–for they will eventually lead you to the place of your heart’s desire.
Remember Dorothy.
There’s no place like home… there’s no place like home.

6/8/10
You ever wonder what happens the day after D-day? When all the gauntlets have been thrown down and the lines in the sand have been crossed and battles have been fought and either won or lost?
There is silence. Haunting silence.
The kind that hangs thick and ominous, like Spanish moss in the moonlight on a still, hot summer’s eve.
Silence…thick as molasses that stiffens in the cool breeze of an autumn night. Silence…as each party pulls back from the edge and waits for the next move. Each not knowing what the other has left in their arsenal yet to fire.
Can you hear it?

That is the deafening sound of my silence!

6/7/10

Today is deadline day and when you think about it, it is both prophetic and closure. Why? Because Charley is the one who told R three weeks ago that I would give him a deadline. He knew his deadline, before I even knew I needed to give it to him. While I would love to tell you everything I know, I cannot– nor will I– but know this, that now the effect of knowledge has been set in motion and the ripple will eventually become the swell, and the swell the wave that shall reach the shoreline in its own time and bring with it, its own repercussions. There are still those shadows in between the ripples themselves that have hidden issues tucked within the curled lip of the wave. But even they with patience and review will bare fruit. In the absence of disclosure, I was desirous of still granting you all some favor of my efforts, so I went back to the beginning of this blog and found a passage that speaks to the heart of where I now stand.

“…It is very interesting how this all happened. An aside note: my personal belief is that God places people in our paths at the direct hour of our necessity. I have been trying to outline and research this case for months in between my real job and in doing so, found a lack of clarity in my path. At first I was concerned that it might be the famous writer’s block we all hear tell of, but no…That makes little sense as I tend to vomit in ink on a daily basis. I decided it was for a much more important reason. The delay was not in me, but in the character. And since this is based on a real individual, I realized the delay was his—the deceased. There was something or someone that needed to be introduced to me before he could find his voice through me. Being a firm believer that if a story refuses to tell itself, it is for one of two empirical reasons. Either someone is not ready to tell it, or someone is not ready to have it heard! Now on the face of the thing, you might say aren’t they one in the same? The answer is… no, they are not. A story is the life of a character who is allowing a writer to channel his autobiography and until consent is granted by the character… nothing moves ahead. Charley was not talking to me and it bothered me. Was I an unfit vessel for such a thing, I wondered. And yet, after all these years… had not the stars aligned just so, to place us all in each other’s paths in an attempt to elicit such results? Once I had decided that– it became tolerable. I was listening, but he wasn’t speaking. I picked up the proverbial pen many times and yet he refused to speak and I did not understand why until I met these two people. I have an appointment at the end of this month with them and I cannot tell you how enthralled I am to find momentum once again to this project. Through the insights of these two, I am certain I will find my path and his pain and know what direction the winds will carry us both…”

They did help.
I found his pain and now know the direction it will take us all.

For you Charley… all for you.

6/6/10
The deadline…
Three weeks ago R gave me information in a reading.
One of the redirects was for me.
She asked if I understood the 7th?
I said the 7th of what.
She said she did not know.
She asked; do you understand the deadline for something?
I said I did not.
Wednesday of last week I finally understood.
I gave Charley a new deadline.
June 7th I would have to seriously get back into my own head. Too many projects at work- that I could no longer play at this thing.
I needed to go back to living my life and not his.
I needed to be able to put it all to rest.

It is 2 minutes after midnight on 6/6/10.
Do you remember what happened the last time I gave Charley a deadline?
You guessed it.
Right under the wire as usual… he came through.

Trip to Valdosta:

We left for Valdosta on a Thursday night in mid-May. Friday morning at approximately 3:30 a.m. I received a panicked call from my youngest daughter M who was in the process of trying to take care of my middle child, K who has an unknown pseudo-seizure disorder referred to peripherally earlier in this report in a personal anecdote between RS and myself about my daughter having a severe allergy to sulphites.
My youngest daughter called to tell me that they had had company spend the night, so they were both asleep in my husband’s and my bed as the other kids were occupying their beds and the couch downstairs. Somewhere shortly before she called –K fell out of bed and began to seize- then stopped. My youngest could not figure out how K fell out of her bed landing 4 feet away and 3 feet closer towards the end of the bed and closer to the door. She said it was bizarre- She didn’t fall out of bed and roll away. It was more as if something had picked her up – carried her the several feet away from the bed and nightstand and then dropped her to the floor in one big thud. Shortly after, she got her bearigs back- she crawled back into bed with M’s help and then drifted off to sleep. Minutes later K began to speak as though to something in the room- she kept staring in the corner and asking her sister, M to make it stop growling. When M looked, there was nothing there. K continued to worry about the thing in the corner and then shot straight up in bed, slamming herself back against the headboard and begged her sister to turn on the lights and call me. (She did) K said it would not stop growling at her- it was death- she described what she saw as the grim reaper- she could see him- dark image with burning eyes, smell him (she described as a sour , sulphourous smell) and that he had a message for me. That he (death) had come for me but that he would take her if he could not get to me. That it was a warning. That she had a weakness- her seizures, and that he would use it to get to me. Then she was shown Charley’s body and bloody head, blood pouring out of his skull and the body being dragged about. It was a warning to her from another source that I needed to finish it! I had to get it done- that I needed to finish things! That I was in danger and that it would not end till I ended it- that I was to stay. It was not a garbled message- I listened to K tell me things they were conveying to her for over 30 minutes while my husband packed to return.

She continued to tell me the entity was showing her terrible things, everything that happened to Charley- telling me I had to stay in Valdosta and finish it. That this was the message for me- that I had to stay and figure things out. That I was very close- that I was right there at it- to stay at it. She tried to draw what she was seeing, but I instructed my youngest M to get K’s medication and get her to take it. To keep her as calm as possible so as not to throw her into uncontrollable seizures. I kept K on the line and we said prayers that the entity and/or entities would leave as she continued to tell me what they were trying to show and tell her. M gave K her medicine but K continued to draw on my dry erase bulletin board* with markers as though in a trance (*referred to bulletin board and magnets for it, by Charley in a personal anecdote mentioned in this document prior) and talk about the warnings and telling M and me what I was to do about the grim reaper and Charley’s murderer. Over an hour went by with this via phone and then she finally fell asleep downstairs with everyone in the room and all the lights on.

This event did not present as any other medical event we had ever observed with her. Usually she is completely unconscious and incoherent through a seizure episode, as can be confirmed from Kenestone Hospital who did a 18 hour seizure study on her in April of this year. We believe this to have been a paranormal possession and/or psychic episode. When she awoke hours later, she had no memory of the event at all. He sister does and will attest to what is written here. There are others who can confirm as they were in the house and room through most of this event. I notified RS of this event as I had no margin for comparison and was very frightened by what I had experienced with K over the phone during its duration.