The Clearing Revised

There’s A Signpost Up Ahead And It Reads…
By DocWalton


Consider, if you will, the small town of Arboles, Colorado and the inhabitants thereof. Nestled in a remote southwest corner of the San Juan Mountains, Arboles was, at the turn of the Twentieth Century, a player in both the cattle and mining industries. But now at the dawn of the Twenty First, few reminders of its heyday remain. With less than two hundred mail boxes adorning its Post Office walls, it is said that Arboles has more ghosts than people. For some, this will prove fact, not fancy.

One Sharman Alto is the prime mover. She is the first to suggest the existence of the ghosts. It is she who says they are there, in the store, and nothing will bode well until they are sent on their way. The others just nod in agreement and ask what has to be done. All but one that is, a lone skeptic named Doc Walton, who along with his wife, Charly, are The Arboles Store’s new co-owners. His attitude is simply that there are no such things as ghosts, but even if there are, why would we rile them up? His will be a small but critical role in the mysterious events to follow.

We begin then, with Sharman, the town’s foremost New Age personality. She looks like no one else in this rural region where denim rules the fashion roost and clothes suitable for outdoor work are worn by both men and women. Sharman sports instead colorful dresses or skirts, often Native American inspired and tops with intricate patterns. Around her neck there are strings of beads or necklaces faceted with shiny stones. Magic stones she says, with life and secrets to tell. She speaks in quiet tones of auras, vibrations, shifts in consciousness, crystals, angels and spirits. She is said by the locals to be in touch with elements on the periphery of ordinary reality and even, perhaps, of other dimensions. She is a noted healer who has treated nearly everyone in town at one time or another and is a frequent invitee and participant in Native American rituals. She has danced with both the Hopis and the Utes, for rain and abundant harvests. She is in short, what has come to be known as woowoo, a euphemistic term for all things New Age. If Sharman says there are ghosts in the store, she will be believed. At least, we note, by some.

Charly is the first of Sharman’s converts to the idea of “clearing” the store’s unwanted spirits. After her, the other two are easy. Charly is a stable, usually rational woman who seldom makes decisions without first acquiring as much data as possible. She is a self-described information junkie and a quick study who devours books at a prodigious rate. Where her rationality takes leave is wherever magic appears. We speak now not of the slight of hand, divert the eye magic of stage magicians, but rather the woowoo concept of miracles in nature and beyond. We cite for example, that dancing and chanting can make it rain, animals are psychic, auras are readable, and ESP is merely a sixth sense that few people choose to use and even fewer to enhance like the blind man whose hearing becomes acute. Naturally she and Sharman have become fast friends. And naturally when Sharman says the ghosts have to go, Charly is fully in favor.




The plan to “clear” the store is then presented to Doc and Charly’s oldest daughter, Laura, and her boyfriend, “Big” Brian. Both are nature disciples who have fled the closeness of urbanity to find comfort zones in the rural wilds of southern Colorado. There they have thrived and professed to be familiar with life’s “exceptional” moments. Laura is an attractive, high energy woman in her mid thirties who has heard Bigfoot up close, seen ghosts previously and believes much of the supernatural is natural. Brian, tall and thick and thus deserving of the appellation “big” that precedes his name, has traveled some and witnessed guru magic in India and elsewhere. Both, when approached, are easy converts to Sharman’s plan.

It is summer in Arboles, the tourist season. The store is open late to accommodate boaters, campers and fishermen straggling in from Navajo lake. At its close, the group of four assembles inside. Lights are extinguished to discourage would be late shoppers from banging on the door. For several minutes they sit and talk quietly, getting accustomed to the dark. When Sharman feels it’s time, they rise and walk to the center of the store’s largest of two rooms. They link hands and as they jointly visualize a crystal staircase rising from the floor and ascending to the heavens, they also link minds.

It is necessary now to take you away for a moment to a hillside where Doc and Charly’s house resides. Doc is positioned there, leaning on a fence rail, staring idly at the stand of trees on the far side of Seibel’s farm that blocks his view of the Arboles Store. He has declined participation in the “clearing” noting that he prefers his spirits in a glass. He sips now on a tall scotch, his second, as he imagines the scene at The Arboles store.

The atmosphere there as he sees it, is electric, charged, crackling like small bits of random lightning. There are flashes of images, hazy and indistinct; ghosts perhaps, blipping in and out like white neon. There is a sound of radio static turned up abruptly then dimming to shadowy corners. The air is pungent. It smells of burning leaves, old rags. It is dry, smoky, raspy to inhale. All four of the intrepid ghost busters are feeling fear, adrenaline, the urge to run. Their hair prickles, they sweat, they fidget crazily, but they hold fast, hands locked tightly together. Each can be heard to emit small choked- back sounds when the tension rises and peaks. But as if of one mind, when they can bear no more, they pull themselves into their own circle and there, in that brief moment of terrified clinging, comes a sudden flat explosion of noise like the pop of an air gun magnified tenfold, and the room…the room…is suddenly empty and still. They remain linked for a time after, breathing deeply and exhaling long sighs onto each others ears. When at last they separate, three move about the store chuckling and making small jokes. They are not exactly sure what they have done, but they are feeling successful and even a little pumped. It is Sharman who remains motionless and says nothing. She seems to be listening to something else, something the others can’t hear. “We are not finished,” she finally whispers, “there is still more to do.”





Although what Doc imagines in his scotch fertilized mind is probably more cinematic what actually occurs at The Arboles Store on this warm summer night is no less dramatic and has the added virtue of being a sworn to reality.

As we journey to that reality, it is of interest to note the mindset of each person at the Arboles Store.

Sharman, as one would expect, brings certainty and determination. She has done this before and is sure of the outcome. She places lighted candles about the room, and waves a white sage, smudge stick through the air while chanting something incomprehensible, probably American Indian in origin. She gives each participant a small crystal to hold and does these things in a way that inspires confidence in the others.

Charly, for her part, is excited. She senses something thrilling is about to happen, an adventure, an opportunity to experience and acquire arcane knowledge. She can’t wait to get started.

Big Brian is wary, perhaps a touch fearful. “How can you be sure” he says turning to Sharman, “that we won’t do something harmful or bring something bad into the room?”

“That’s why I’m here” Sharman answers, staring him hard in the eyes, “they won’t dare.” It’s enough for Brian. He relaxes. He’s known Sharman for a long time.

Laura is simply last minute reluctant. “Why” she wants to know, “don’t we just leave them alone?”

“Because you are an important part of the reason they have gathered here” Sharman tells her. “They are attracted to your energy, your living spirit. They are looking to you for release. These are not happy ghosts. These are souls trapped on an earthly plane from which they should long have been gone. They have lost their way. They want you to free them.”

And with that said, they begin their deliberations in earnest. Each in their own way with their own inner voice begins to urge the spirits to move to the staircase, to climb it and be gone to wherever is next on their eternal path. They promise that in the dark above there will be release, and there will be peace.

At clearing’s end, all four will say they felt the peculiar sensation of something moving through them and on to the staircase and that was the tip off that Sharman’s plan was working. Charly when describing the experience says it was a little eerie, but not bad at all. Brian declares it intense and disturbing, while Sharman and Laura take it as a necessary matter-of-fact. “Of course we felt them” was their attitude. “Ghosts don’t bother to walk around things.”

We would be remiss if we didn’t tell you that where Doc’s made-for-TV version of events and reality coincide is at the very end. When it is clear that the deceased humans have all departed to the light or wherever it is they truly go, Sharman turns to the group and says quite exactly what Doc had imagined, “we are not finished, there is still more to do.”

We take you back to the hillside where Doc now stands staring at his scotch-less ice cubes. He is mindful and present and as such determines that a refill is in order. As he turns to go he hears in the distance what sounds vaguely to him like a flock of noisy birds coming from the direction of the Arboles Store. He pauses and looks into the moonlit sky as the sound draws near. Almost at once he hears an outrageous cacophony overhead that seems so close he is startled by his inability to see anything. He finds himself stooping and ducking from a crazy, joyful ruckus that sounds like a grade school recess gone berserk, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing visible above or anywhere else that Doc can see. He turns for a moment and stares after the din receding in the distance and then sprints to his house.

They’ve done it, he thinks. They have actually spooked away the spooks. There is no other explanation for what he has heard and he needs to get to a phone and tell the group forthwith. No point in their hanging around the store after the ghosts are gone.

But, of course, no one answers his ring. The ghost chasers have again locked hands and formed their circle, beginning anew their quiet deliberations. They are not about to be interrupted by a late customer saying, oh great you’re still open, I’ll be right there. Theirs is serious work.

Doc puts the phone back in its cradle and grabs his truck keys off a hook. He is excited, there is no doubt, and he wants to share his excitement with the others. He wonders as he starts carefully down his long drive, if the others know what they have done. No matter, he thinks, they will when I get there.

Inside the store there is complete certainty the human souls have departed. What remains are animal spirits and they are proving reluctant, frightened, downright stubborn. Animals in life are creatures of instinct and habit and now, even in death, they are leery of changing their routine. Sharman tells the group to concentrate on the horses first as they are the most psychic and intuitive. If they will leave perhaps the other animals will follow. But in the end it is no use. “We are going to need help” Sharman says aloud. “We need someone with stronger animal mojo. Someone who can move these creatures along. Who is that saint, the famous animal one?” she asks.

“Francis of Assisi?” Charly offers.




“Yeah, that’s the guy. Let’s all concentrate and ask for his help.”

At the very moment they lower their heads, close their eyes and begin to conjure old Francis, Doc comes blustering through the back door. “Guys” he announces, to the circled group in his pent up excited voice, “they’re gone. You can give it up, they’re all gone.”

All four again feel the strange rush of things passing through them.

Sharman’s eyes open wide in astonishment. “Yes” she says, “they ARE all gone.”

“That’s what I came to tell you” says Doc. “I heard them leave.”

“I don’t mean the people Doc,” Sharman tells him. “I mean the animals. They wouldn’t leave until you got here. Now, I don’t know what to think. Her voice trails off as she whispers, “can you possibly be…?”


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There’s an old signpost in front of The Arboles Store that appears empty to most who pass it by. But for the few who look closely, the few with open minds and sharpened senses, a story is written there; a story of ghosts, people who believe in them, and a new father of all animals. At least, that’s how the Woowoos tell it… here in the Twilight zone.



(Our writers group assignment was to write something abot a picture that was sent to us. The picture was of a signpost with an empty sign hanging from it.)