With my heart pounding and sweat stinging my eyes, I tore through the woods as quickly as I could. Whoever was behind me was closing in fast. My foot hit something hard, and I fell to the ground with a thud. I struggled to get back on my feet. My fall had closed the narrow gap between us, and I knew I didn’t have a second to waste.
Thump!
I couldn’t move. Something or someone pushed me down again. As I lay there thinking that this was the end, in the distance, I heard someone scream, “Help me!”
Crack!
The thunder jolted me awake and I sat straight up in my bed. My heart was racing and sweat covered my face. My legs felt weak and shaky, as if I had just run a race. Lightning flashed, lighting up the room and the yard outside, and I glanced out the window. Someone was standing in my yard! I blinked and looked again, but I couldn’t see a thing. Without the lightning, it was pitch black. Another flash lit up the yard, and I realized that the “person” was actually a shrub.
The wind howled, causing the trees to sway and creak. This moaning, and a faint scent of pine sap lingering in my nose, reminded me of my dream. I remembered the whispers I had heard in the wind. Was it a woman’s voice? What did she say? She had screamed, too. Help me? Yes, I had definitely heard, “Help me!”
What a terrifying dream. Giant pine trees, darkness—it was so dark there. Someone else was there—but who? Where was I? It seemed familiar. I lay in my bed, listening to the thunderstorm, and tried to recall every detail. It felt different from other dreams, so real, like I had really been there.
I tossed and turned as the dream played over and over in my mind. Eventually I must have fallen back into a dreamless sleep, because the next thing I remembered was my mom yelling, “Taylor! Taylor! Wake up!” My alarm blared in the background. “This has been going off for ten minutes,” she said, hitting the snooze button. “You have to get up now or you’ll be late for school.”
I groaned and said, “Okay, I’m up.” Then I dragged my aching body out of bed.
“How am I going to make it through school?” I thought as I dressed. I was exhausted, and all I could think about was my dream.
I met my three best friends, Kaycee, Elle (short for Gabrielle), and Amy, when I got to school, and I told them about the dream. They listened for a little bit, but I could tell that they were blowing me off. I was trying to tell them how different it was, how real it was, but they wanted to talk about other things.
“Taylor, don’t let it get to you. It was just a bad dream,” Elle said as she handed me some makeup. “Here, you need this under your eyes. Man, you look tired.”
Geez, she was right. I gasped when I saw our reflections in Elle’s locker mirror. I looked awful while she looked perfect. Her long, blonde hair was straight and flawless, and my unkempt ponytail—a mess of frizzy, dark blonde curls—looked ridiculous. I had just thrown it up and walked out the door. I hadn’t even tried to straighten it today. What was I thinking? To make matters worse, the dark circles under my eyes made me look like a raccoon!
Kaycee, Elle’s identical twin, rolled her eyes, and said, “Oh, Taylor, it just seemed more real because of the thunderstorm. We all know how much thunderstorms scare you.” She laughed playfully and punched my arm. “Remember that time we all slept over Amy’s and there was a storm? You were so scared you put the blankets over your head and wouldn’t come out until it was over.”
The three of them burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself; I laughed, too. They were right. I’m a chicken sometimes, and I was making too much out of this. It was only a dream, so I brushed it off.
After school I had soccer practice and a ton of homework. When I was finally able to crawl into bed, the dream popped into my head for a second, but I quickly dismissed it. I was too tired to think of anything but sleep.
“It was only a dream,” I thought as I drifted off. Boy, was I wrong!
I found myself back in the same forest, under the same tall tress, feeling the same terror from the night before. I was running through the trees again, and I was lost and scared. I stopped running and tried to calm my racing heart.
“It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream,” I repeated in my head. I listened to the wind. Nothing—no voices, only the wind rustling the trees.
“It’s only a dream.” Suddenly the wind blew harder and I heard a woman’s voice again. It was soft and sweet, as if she was singing, but it also trembled with fear.
“Hello! Hello! Please help me! Help me! Help me!”
I ran into the forest in a panic, searching for the woman. My heart pounded so fast I thought it would explode, and tears streamed down my face. I stopped and screamed, “Where are you? I can’t find you!”
“Right here,” she said. She was right behind me. I turned around to face her.
Suddenly I was awake.
“No!” I shouted. I wanted to find her, and she had been right there. Why did I have to wake up just when I was finally going to see her?
My feet ached, my shins stung, and my sheets were damp with sweat. I flung them off to look at my legs, expecting to find scratches all over them. The breeze from the sheet sent a whiff of pine into the air. My legs were fine, but I wasn’t. My body shook with cold and fear. This time I was convinced that the dream was real. It was not my imagination, not just a dream—it was real. I smelled the pine. I heard the voice. I knew there was a real woman in that forest, and she needed my help. I desperately wanted to fall back to sleep and dream again. I had to see her, to help her, and the only way to do this was to dream. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t fall asleep, and without sleep, I couldn’t return to my dream.
School was a blur the next day. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the dream. I looked awful, and everyone kept asking me if I was sick. I have no idea how I made it through the day. Soccer practice was even worse.
All I cared about was getting home and getting to sleep; my mind was on the dream, not the scrimmage we were playing. Kaycee passed me the ball and I dribbled down the field and put it in the goal, but then everyone started laughing at me. Kaycee ran up, patted my back, and said, “Way to go, Taylor.” She rolled her eyes and smirked. “You scored for the other team!”
I buried my face in my hands and wished I could disappear. I was mortified!
“O’Neill!” Coach screamed from the sidelines, throwing his hat on the ground. “Get your head in the game or get off of the field!”
Elle ran over to us as the rest of the team continued to point and laugh. “Taylor, are you all right?” she asked. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about the dream.”
“Oh, that again,” Kaycee said, shaking her head in disbelief. “You have to let that go. We have a big game coming up, and we need you here, not in dreamland.”
“Yeah, Taylor. That’s only a dream,” Elle said. “This is real. If we lose, we might not be district champs again. Stop letting it get to you, okay?”
“Are you three going to chitchat or play soccer!” Coach yelled again, and we all ran back to our positions. I muddled through the rest of practice and was so relieved when Coach blew the final whistle.
When I finally got home, I was exhausted. I didn’t have an appetite, so I skipped dinner. Miraculously I didn’t have any homework and was able to crash early. When I fell into bed, sleep and the dream came quick.
It started out the same as it had two nights before, with me lost and searching in the deep, dark, pine forest for a woman who needed my help. I had to find her—she sounded desperate, and I was afraid something bad would happen to her if I didn’t. As expected, when the wind began to blow, I heard the same familiar, frantic voice.
Her cries for help whipped through the forest and echoed off of the trees. “Help me, please! Help me! Help me!”
“I’m trying to help you!” I yelled back. “Tell me where you are! Tell me who you are!”
This time she answered me. “I’m here in the woods! My name is Sarah! Please help me—I’m so frightened! Oh, please help me! He’s going to kill me!”
I felt my chest tighten, and I looked around to see if anyone was there. “Who is going to kill you? Is he here now?” No one answered. Sarah was gone. I ran again, looking for her, calling out her name.
“Sarah! Sarah! Please come back! Where are you?” I thought I saw the shadowy figure of a woman behind every tree, but nothing was ever there. Sarah started yelling again, and I followed the sound of her haunting voice, but we couldn’t find each other. It was as if we were in the same place, but time or space separated us, as if we existed in parallel universes. I had read about kind of experience once in a book, but I hadn’t really believed or understood it. Now I was living it. We were both desperately searching for each other, but it seemed like it would be a hopeless, endless search.
I suddenly woke up. The same sweat, the same smell of pine, the same aches and pains from running were there, but tonight, I could still hear Sarah’s voice echoing in my ears.
“Help me! Help me! Help me!” It was so loud it was deafening. I covered my ears with the pillow and willed it to go away. Then I sat up, threw the pillow, and screamed.
I looked out the window, searching for what I couldn’t find in my dream, and there, standing in the center of my yard, was a woman dressed all in white, glowing like a dimly lit firefly. I blinked my eyes in disbelief and shook my head. When I looked again, the vision had vanished. There was no storm tonight, so there was no lightning. No shrubs or trees were planted in that spot. It had been a woman. I blinked a few more times, hoping she would reappear, but like my sleep for the night, she was gone.
