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The Link – Matthew Manning

…….. the blackness was replaced by a growing lightness, as if dawn was breaking. I found myself standing in our hall, but everywhere it was as though it was broad daylight.

I noticed how flat and clean the stone floor was. It was not worn away as I knew it to be in1971. When I noticed a heavy door opening onto a cobbled courtyard from this hallway I realised that I must be viewing the house as it was when it had just been built in 1731.

Furthermore, standing in the open doorway was a young child being supported in a circular cane framework on wheels which was holding the child, in a full-length dress, and helping her to learn to walk by preventing her from falling over. She wheeled around but did not see me. In the courtyard I could discern through the doorway a pile of new-looking red bricks in front of a yellowy-brown wall of a cottage, that I knew to be white.

There was no noise, and on the stairs was a man who appeared to be a carpenter, kneeling in a corner on the second flight of stairs hammering silently. His hair I noticed was gingery and he wore a long leather apron. Like the child, who was no longer visible, he took no heed of me.

The plastered wall above the panelling on the staircase was a striking blue.

Moving from the hallway into the dining room, I was immediately struck by the difference between this room and the one with which I was familiar. The fireplace that I knew to be bare bricks was now plastered and it was noticeably lower. A dog sprawled across the hearth on the floor and did not seem to be aware of my presence.

The windows which now have wooden frames, were all leaded; one window now in the dining room appeared to be missing. A large refectory table was circled with small chairs, which looked particularly rustic, uncomfortable and bare.

Suddenly, I found myself back on my bed fully awake. I wrote this experience down straight away so that it did not become distorted.

….Sometime later, when we had the hallway and staircase decorated, a piece of plaster dropped off the wall near the ceiling. The wall beneath this area was found to be a bright chalky blue colour, the same as I had seen that night. The area where I had observed the child near the doorway was now blocked in and covered with shelves.

Subsequently, this section of the wall was opened up again, and the frame of the door I had noticed was found.