T
HE STORY
I know
this will sound crazy; and I’m the most skeptical, grounded, logical person I know, so if you’re reading this, I have to defend myself. This is what happened to me. As crazy as it’ll sound.
If you’re reading this, I didn’t burn these pages for some reason. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe he came back for me like he said he would.
Maybe I’ve been institutionalized for losing my mind.
The following is my recounting of what I remember happening to me. I have decided it might be therapeutic to get it down on paper, out of my head. I’ll probably write the details down and then burn these pages. And then maybe I’ll be able to go on with my life. Or at least put it away in a locked place in my mind, and then try to move forward.
I am filled with nausea at the notion of writing all of it down. I’m also filled with nausea for a different reason. A horrifying reason.
Each night when I close my eyes, I pray I’ll dream of something else instead. Or dream of nothing and just sleep.
But, that’s not what happens. Instead, I experience that night again in my dreams, as if it’s happening again. As if it’s now.
It’s been a full four and a half weeks of the same recollections, night after night. And each night when I dream it, it feels like the first time again. All over again.
I’m in a loop.
As the dream begins, I’m clueless about what’s about to happen.
It’s only in the morning when I wake that I realize I’ve had the same dream yet again.
Each morning when I wake, I’m greeted with reality. And the reality is that they’re not just dreams. They’re recollections of what happened to me on October 31
st
in Drowsy Hollow.
It didn’t start out as a dream. I know this.
I have the mark on my body that proves it and I may also have a baby in my belly to make it irrefutable.
“And the soldier lost his head when the cannonball sounded with an enormous ear-splitting explosion and struck. It is said by some that each Halloween, he hunts for a new head, taking the first one he sees. But, some with more romantic hearts believe he may actually be hunting for the one true love a fortune teller had told him he’d find, when he was instead killed just before being sent off to go to war…”
“I think he wants a new love,” Misty sang out in her tiny voice.
“I think he wants to eat brains,” Jarod shouted.
“Then you better not go walking in the woods or he’ll wind up starving,” Misty’s twin sister Lana snapped.
The classroom broke out in giggles.
I waited for the giggles to fade, finished sharing the rest of the tale, and read them the epilogue about the carnage being stopped by local witches. I then placed the closed book on the shelf behind me and clasped my hands together.
“Okay, little ghosts, goblins, headless horsemen, headless horse-women, and assorted other creatures of Halloween, ten minutes until the bell rings and that signals the start of the party. How about if you practice your printing? I think there’s time…”
I heard groans as I turned to the chalkboard.
“Math then?” I called over my shoulder.
More groans.
I hid my smile as I lifted a piece of orange chalk and wrote out
Just joking. Happy Halloween! Who wants candy?
in large orange letters. The room broke out in giggles, me’s, and I do’s. I turned around to face seventeen very happy seven-year-old faces.
“How about a game of duck, duck, goose, instead? I brought so
much candy to get us all started on the festivities! Let the sugar rush begin!”
