Before the crows came to be

My first encounter with the Unusual was when I was 4 years old. My family used to live in Ohio, which meant there were places that had open land. Well, we lived in this old school house that was renovated into a house. Across the street was forest, behind the house was a corn field and beyond that was more forest. We literally lived in the middle of nowhere. So naturally, we had animals.

One day, I was playing with our two dogs and our 10 cats outside and came across a snake. It was just a garden snake..I think. But I wanted to chase it. From out of nowhere came this voice that told me, "Leave the snake alone." I looked around for the voice but couldn't see where it was coming from. It wasn't a voice that I recognized. But I decided that the voice must know something that I did not know, and chose to leave the snake alone while it hurriedly slithered off to the corn field. I've never seen a snake move so quickly.

Months later, my family was visiting a man who ran a little shop on a hill. I recall that the weather had turned sour and that the wind had picked up. For some stupid reason, my parents and this guy never noticed. But "they - the voices" told me that we were in danger and had to leave. I began pulling at my mother's shirt to get her attention and she persistently shushed me. Finally I stopped listening to her and made a ruckus. "MOM! LOOK!" and I pointed to the metal sheets upon the roof. As I did that, one of them flew off the little building. We immediately gathered into the car and moved back away from the building in time to see a small tornado touch down and wipe the place out. If anyone has ever lived in tornado alley, you'd know that tornadoes typically don't touch down on hills nor do they dip into river beds. But this time, it did. How did I know?

Since then, many many unexplainable things have happened to me. And that left me searching for answers. Well...that along with my mother's insistence that "hearing voices was evil". I wanted to know where this was coming from. Who was talking to me? Why did I "know" things?

As I grew, I found that I had the ability to "make" things happen or NOT happen. I had an uncanny ability to read people as well as their intentions. This left me dumbfounded but even more curious as to what was wrong with me. By 8 years old, I was convinced there was something wrong with me because even the church was in on this whole "evil" thing. Music was evil, TV was evil, being gifted was evil.

When I was 9, I was at a park with my cousin. He was all wrapped up in talking to some girl and I was having fun playing on the swings. But after some time, I heard that voice. "It's time to leave. You have to go home now." I remember that I was staring at a tree and wondering why I was hearing this voice from above me. Regardless, I knew the voice was always right and decided to leave. Good thing I did. My folks had no idea where I was at. Apparently my uncle forgot that I had left with my cousin.

I remember when I was in 5th grade, my best friend took me to have my palms read by her neighbor. That woman looked at me, looked at my hands and said, "You have a light. You're going to be traveling....oh yes. You are going to travel a lot." I had no idea that she meant that I'd be doing some other types of traveling besides holidays and vacations.

And so it went on and so forth......the voices never left. It wasn't until I was 16 years old that I would find out just what I was made of.

The first day of my junior year in high school, Shane showed up. He was dressed in all black and wearing a black trench. Naturally, this was humorous. My thing was older rocker guys, booze and pot. This guy had none of it. So....why was he even trying? I ended up be-friending him anyway. He was kind of cute and in some weird way, mysterious. I can never put down a mystery. Months later, he told me about the coven. "My mom is a witch." My first question was, "What kind of witch?" To which he replied, "The grey kind. She wants to meet you."

Now, I had never been around a coven so the idea of it was interesting. But more so, perhaps I could finally get some answers. I met Karen and was pretty floored by the short little round woman who greeted me. She did not look like a witch. But I could feel that she was way more then just a plump woman. She was powerful, and dark. The voices told me, "This is bad. Walk carefully."

Most of the time, I didn't believe half the shit she was selling. Sure, she had some interesting ideas but really....it was a bunch of hogwash. Where her strength came from was sort of a mystery to me. But there was no mistake about Shane. He was exactly everything he claimed to be. And the two of us put together was like fire and ice. Polar opposites with the ability to change time. And that is exactly what we did.

One night we had come down the hill from one of their friends/coven members house and made a stop at his house. No one was there and so we decided we were going to screw around. I lit all the candles in his room, threw on some soft ambient music and then sat down on his bed. He sat down and we looked at each other, feeling the moment, feeling romantic. We began kissing and then for some reason, I felt....different. I felt like someone else and the voices had urged me to stop. When I pulled back and opened my eyes, the room was not the room, but a stone hut and he was not him but a dark haired green eyed man with a much bigger build. I tried to ask, "What the hell is going on." But it came out Gaelic. With a smile, he responded in the same language, "We transcend time. Our path always has been and always will be." I stood up and caught my reflection in a piece of metal. It was then and in a very quick flash that I saw who I was and where I was at. Not only was I not me, but I was in another time and in another body. I closed my eyes and thought clearly about moving from another time. I wanted to try England. When I opened my eyes, it was as it was meant to be. I was in England, surrounded by trees and a rugged brown haired man stood there smiling. In a thick accent, I asked him, "What year is this?" "1562." he responded with the same type of accent. I looked around.....marvelled by what I was seeing. "Together, we are indestructible." he said but in a different tone - different accent. When I turned around, we were back in his room. I could see my reflection in the window. I somehow looked much different then I had remembered being 5 minutes before yet, I was back to the way I was.

"How did that happen? How did we just do that?" The residue of the previous two lives still simmering within me and their knowledge had been recalled into my existence. I sat down to try and take in what my sober eyes had just seen.

"No one else but you and I can do this. Shapeshifitng rooms and traveling through time is only the beginning." he was coy.....as usual. "You're the only person who's strong enough to do this with me. Not my mom or anyone else in the coven can do that." That's when I was hit......like a giant sign was slapped square in the middle of my forehead....."Michelle, you open portals. You have the ability to manifest energy, shape it, change it and create with it. There's no telling just how much you can do if trained right. You're the one my mom has been searching all her life for. THE ONE."

"Yeah right. She said the one would change water into wine. She's talking Jesus shit right there. I'm not that."

"If you weren't the one, we wouldn't have made that happen."

That was the pinnacle of our power together. Shane's hunger for more power and the need to keep up with his black art was what began his demise. He became addicted to meth and in short, chose to walk a road I wouldn't follow him on. And when I made the decision to not follow, we became natural enemies. It was the division line between light and dark, fire and ice, life and death. I couldn't stop him, therefor I couldn't save him.

The end of the story between Shane and I is black and ugly. He and I fought a hardy battle. The drug addiction by Shane and two other coven members consumed and destroyed the coven. And in the end, Karen passed away from a freak sulfur burn while being treated for asthma. One regret that I lived with for many years was that I never said goodbye....even though she did. To this day, she sends me signs.

Working with Shane taught me many of my most powerful tricks. But as time passed, everything I had learned from him, though extraordinary, paled in comparison to what I was actually fully capable of. It wouldn't be for another 12 years that I would actually be able to label it as something......rather then live with it as the Unusual.