The Knowing: Awake in the Dark

For my children who constantly amaze me with their inner strength and self-awareness. May this book help you heal and grow. Thank you for your love and support.

For my husband, I love you so.

Special thanks to Carly Kite who helped me find direction always encouraging and guiding me.

My deepest gratitude to John DeDakis who’s editing inspired me and demanded that I be a better writer.

I had a group of listeners who let me read paragraph after paragraph to help me get it right. Thank you. 

Nita Lapinski has been a working clairvoyant-medium for over three decades and offer’s meditation classes and workshops on forgiveness, releasing judgment and finding one’s intuition. She is a certified hypnotherapist and studied integrative breath work and bio-energy. Both are modalities of healing emotional issues using breath and moving energy.

She resides in Arizona with her husband. THE KNOWING is her first book. Visit her website at http://
www.windowsoflightaz.com
. Or  on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bornintuition

A courageous story of one woman's journey from hell to healing and the intuitive gifts she discovers along the way.  - 
Sunny Dawn Johnston

Author of
Invoking The Archangels - A Nine-Step Process to Healing Your Body, Mind, and Soul

"Nita Lapinski has written a powerful story. The Knowing is raw and gripping. It is a book for our great era because it asks us all to see through the veil of pain and struggle to reveal our true gifts. Ms. Lapinski weaves a tale so compelling and honest that readers will identify with the struggle immediately. Ultimately, it is a story of liberation, healing and joy. What an honor to welcome Nita Lapinski into the fresh tribe of world-changing authors now coming forward to share their work"  -
Jacob Nordby

Speaker & Author of
The Divine Arsonist: A Tale of Awakening

"This book grips you with intensity and momentum. Nita paints a bold picture with a few quick strokes; incredibly skilled, she captures a character and a moment with luminous detail.

The book is sublimely honest, frank and relateable. You like the lead character from the start. It is difficult not to like the characters who are most heinous and cruel, because Nita presents them with such richness that they become familiar and loved."   -Lily Garcia

The story you read here is true and about a painful period in my life. It feels as though the events happened to someone else, a lifetime ago.

In the telling of my story, I have not altered the events or how they unfolded. Don’t be fooled by my tumultuous past or the story of my unique gifts and how they molded my life. The sole message is not about tragedy or triumphs. No, my story isn’t about the obvious, it’s about something more.

I am a person whose life is easily judged and if you feel anger or resentment, screaming your displeasure into the pages, I’ll understand.   You may discover a piece of your own life or someone you love and through it, you may just decide to forgive.

I have changed the names of everyone in my story to protect their privacy. I take creative liberty when speaking in the voice of the victims other than myself and rely on my intuition for insight into what may have occurred during their attacks.  When describing the assaults, I use court documents and police reports.

We’ll discover together how I learned who the perpetrator was and witness how he came to be a man so full of rage. My voice of him is based on actual knowledge and experience. The crimes he committed and their circumstances remain unchanged and authentic. 

• Prologue
  
• The Boy
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• The Boy Abandoned
  
• Chapter 3
  
• The Boy - A Father's Legacy
  
• Chapter 4
  
• The Boy - Accident
  
• Chapter 5
  
• The Boy Becomes A Man
  
• Chapter 6
  
• The Man in the Mask - Sweetheart Rapist
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Sweetheart Rapist - A Family Man
  
• Chapter 8
  
• The Sweetheart Rapist Gets Practice
  
• Chapter 9
  
• The Sweetheart Rapist And His Castle
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  

Falling mist floated sideways on the breeze, its evidence visible in the soft yellow glow of the street lamp.  An invader with malicious intent hid behind a truck with equipment fixed on its back bed.  His face was covered with a mask. Only his eyes shone through the carefully cut out holes embroidered with bright orange thread on a black knit ski mask.  He was parked at the end of a building that offered a clear view of an alley where the rear doors of its businesses sat firmly closed to the dreary weather and darkening night.

Rain began pooling in the asphalt’s potholes, its fresh scent mingled with the pungent smell of wet rubber rising up from the tires. The man craned his neck to see around the back of the truck.

His neck muscles pulled and I felt the ache in his arm and knee and dryness that filled his mouth. He was antsy and impatient hiding in the dark. His heart pumped steadily with excitement. I heard his thoughts as if they were my own as they rambled in his mind.

That bitch better hurry up
, he thought. 
I don’t have all night
.

The man’s jaw muscle popped as he ground his teeth and rubbed his elbow to relieve the throbbing there.  The alley was dark and deserted. A hollow echo could be heard in the steady rhythm of water dripping from the roof to the blacktop below.

Without warning, the sound of metal scraping against the pavement rang out as the shop’s exit door cracked open.  I saw the dark tip of a woman’s high-heeled shoe and felt her toe wedged between the heavy door and its frame. Her breath floated in the mist as she struggled to leave.

In that moment, beneath the mask, the man smiled, his teeth exposed as they rubbed against the stretchy fabric tightening across his lips.

In the next moment, I became aware of where I sat squeezed onto the corner of the couch. I clutched a worn paperback book and fingered the frayed and dirty edges of its pages absently. I realized I was having a vision. A sick feeling of dread lodged itself in my swollen, pregnant belly. The man in the mask felt familiar.
Do I know him somehow
? I thought as my mind searched for a clue. Fear restricted my ability to breathe.
This is not real,
my mind repeated again and again,
I’m imagining things again. I always do
.Just seventeen and five months pregnant when I had the vision, years would pass before I sat sweating and afraid interviewed by a female sheriff’s deputy. She was short with dark hair and eyes, her gaze demanded my attention. She leaned forward pushing a tape recorder toward me and said, “Please state your full name.”

“Nita McKenna,” I’d said feeling stupid and uncomfortable.

Her purpose was to establish my connection with a serial rapist who, it would turn out, I knew very well. We would talk about his crimes but I would not reveal my vision, afraid to admit I
knew
.

By the time I sat with authorities revealing my part in things,
pictures,
as I called them or visions, had been happening randomly since early childhood. The vision of the man in the mask was not my first and it would haunt me when I realized what I had seen. I was young and disbelieving when the vision came and I’d rejected it. I was afraid. I couldn’t cope with the truth of it. I would eventually realize who I saw but it would take two decades before I fully understood what the details meant.

Before the man in the mask, became a man with anger that burned in his ears, he was just a boy. He was sweet and sensitive and had a father who was as mean as a rabid badger.

The boy was seven the day his father came home drunk and angry that his lunch wasn’t waiting for him on the table. His father was a giant man with long arms and meaty fingers and redness in his cheeks that never left. His meanness was as dense as swamp water and his breath reeked with bitterness and rage.  The man glared hatefully at the boy and thumped him hard on the back of his head and yelled, “Now you get outside, boy and clean up them weeds! I don’t want to see no weeds in my yard. Now get a move on.”

The boy’s stomach was teaming with things that squirmed as he hurried outside. In the glaring mid-day sun, the boy did his best, but was unable to complete the job to his father’s satisfaction. 

The father stumbled onto the covered patio and threw open a chest filled with the treasures of boys. He dug like an animal throwing baseballs and mitts, mallets for croquet and wooden bats pitted and dark. He shoveled wildly until the contents of the chest lay scattered and meaningless across the cement porch.

He picked up the empty chest and slammed it down hard beyond the shade of the overhang and left it in the sun. “Is that the best you can do, boy?” he said as he spat tobacco juice in the dirt.

In two strides he reached the boy and snatched him by the back of his shirt hoisting him easily off the ground. The red and white striped fabric pulled tight against the child’s narrow chest.  The father dropped the terrified child into the footlocker and slammed it closed. His breath came in hard gasps as he spotted a curved wire and twisted it through the shiny hardware clasp ensuring the chest couldn’t be opened from the inside. 

“That’ll do it,” he growled as he wiped the spit from the corner of his mouth.

The boy whimpered and cried, “I’ll do it better, Daddy, I swear. Please, let me out. Daddy, please, I’m scared of the dark,” he whispered.

By the time the boy’s mother, Bernadette, got home and rescued her youngest son from the dark and sweltering chest, the boy was limp and nearly unconscious. She carried him into the house and cradled him in her lap, wiping his head with a cool cloth and giving him water. She whispered in the boy’s ear, “You got to stay away from him now, you hear me? Oh my lord,” she murmured, “please God, don’t let him kill my boy.”

But it wouldn’t be the last time the boy was locked in the chest and with each cruel encounter with his father, the boy would grow meaner.

I was skeptical, I knew I shouldn’t go, my stomach churned with warning but in the next moment I heard myself say, “Okay, Aaron, but just for a talk and that’s all. Mom!” I called, “I’m going out with Aaron, but I’ll be right back. Raine’s asleep for the night.” Not waiting for her reply, I quickly left the house with Aaron.

At seventeen, I’d taken my baby, Raine, and moved back in with my mother. I hadn’t lived at home since the age of fifteen and I was surprised at the comfort I felt. I’d been living with Aaron for about a year and half and really, it was all I ever wanted.  Aaron was Raine’s father who I quickly discovered had a volatile temper and vulgar tongue I could no longer live with. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Aaron since the morning I left him weeks before.