the chickens."

I have a fleeting impression of Abby dusting, and an arm that sweeps across a bureau sending all the ornaments and objects angrily to the floorthis is connected psychologically to the swing of the axe; and before the murders, Lizzie fantasized at times about breaking Abby's figurines.

There is now a painful tightness in my chest around my heart and my throat is constricted. Lizzie equated this with her father's predatory sex, his climbing onto her. But, she also converted it to payback: Abby did not cry out when she was attacked and as Lizzie struck the silent woman she thought, "Now you know how it feels."

There is a white cloud shape of a woman, her arms held out at shoulder height, but she has no head. This, too, is a psychological reconstruction of the way Lizzie felt about her stepmother: foolish, irrational. It is perhaps why unconsciously she delivered the blows to Abby's head.

At one point during the murder she also imagined Abby looking up at her and seeing the blade descend. Later, Lizzie decided that she saw herself as victim, and she was killing the part of herself that she hated. I also see her pulling something long and white up from the floor where Abby's body lies. A sheet? A thin coverlet, perhaps?

Someone is dancing and I would guess on a very deep level Lizzie was thrilled when Abby was defeated later in her life, she danced with a woman and kissed her, and Lizzie remembered the elation she felt (at first) at Abby's death.
I have pressure and pain in my sinuses, and I believe Lizzie did too, later in life and I keep seeing eye slitsI think she experienced guilt over the denuded skulls and damage inflicted and she dreamed about them sometime sespecially Andrew's skull staring at her.

She also saw herself as wearing a mask almost like a close-fitting black silk hood and she wished to take it off before she died, and thought seriously about taking it off and revealing her true self on her death bed-but did not. The mask image is also consistent with the way incest victims see themselves; in Lizzie's case it is also connected to the murders and her need to keep her guilt secret. She craved attention, but felt invisible, overlooked. She saw (felt) everything filtered through a haze of red: Anger. Flames. Blood.

And, there we will conclude the psychometric reading.and draw our own conclusions about who or what inhabits the Borden House. Perhaps since we are living, we supply the energy that brings the spirits there to half-life again, that allows them to get our attention through touch, temperature, furtive movement or fleeting glimpses in photographs. I'm sure Lizzie wants be noticed, to matter. "I'm here," she wants to say, "I'm real and I'm here!" Isolated, earthbound perhaps she craves connection with our humanness.

The dark brown front door of the house on Second Street is wide and imposing. It will not stay closed. Unless a human hand fastens the brass lock, it swings open; a spirit is its true keeper. inviting some of us in, following some of us out.

Learn more about this author, Lisa Mannetti.
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