A Nightmare Come True

Chapter 1

I might as well start by describing myself. My name is Michelle. I’ve never considered myself special or pretty. Just kinda thought I was average. There’s nothing noticeable about me. I’m five foot six, with long naturally curly and wavy brown hair, dark brown eyes, fair skin, not exactly skinny but not heavy either … a healthy one hundred and thirty five pounds, give or take a pound or two. See? Pretty average, nothing special about me. Well, I don’t know if this qualifies as special, but I have these dreams. Every now and again, I dream about something bad that’s going to happen, and they usually come true.

I grew up in a small town in Michigan called LeRoy. Nothing special about the place, either. Just your average, everyday, middle of nowhere, small town. My family liked to travel around the US, so I’ve seen my fair share of the tourist traps and national monuments. For example: The Grand Canyon, The Hoover Dam, Yosemite National Park, Disney World and Land, and several other places. We drove everywhere, but it wasn’t the worse thing in the world to travel for hours and hours in one of those full size family vans.

Each trip was to somewhere new, so at least there was something to look forward to, except for my dreams along the way and to try to persuade my parents to take a different road or to skip a place altogether. When we would hear later that there was some accident or disaster, they would say something along the lines of Guess it’s a good thing we didn’t take that road, or Wow, glad we skipped that place.

It got harder and harder for them to ignore the fact that I would throw a fit about going somewhere, and then later hear that something bad had happened. We had a lot of fun most of the time. When I wouldn’t want to go somewhere, they knew that we shouldn’t and would plan to go some other time.

I’ve never really had many dreams that didn’t come true, but there were a few in there that were more normal. You know just regular dreams. There were so many little ones that didn’t really matter, too. Like so and so is going to ask so and so to the dance or out on a date. You know, simple things like that, but those would usually involve my closer friends and family.

There were also ones that scared the hell out me, too. For instance, there was one about an accident happening right in front of our house. Every night for a week and a half I had the same one. My sisters and me where outside in the front yard, and a little, blue, beat-up, old Ford Ranger lost control and hit the trees across the road. It rolled into our front yard and hit my sisters. I couldn’t let that happen, and I had a really hard time keeping my little sisters and everyone else out of the front yard. When it actually happened, I couldn’t stop shaking for two days. I knew everyone in the truck was going to walk away from it, but it still scared me. It was also a little to close to home for comfort.

There were so many important ones like that, so I gave up keeping track of all the little insignificant dreams. I tried pretty hard to have a clear head, when I went to sleep at night. Trying not to have any wandering aimless thoughts, so the important dreams would come. It didn’t seem to matter though, and all I could do was try to do something about them. From time to time, I would have The Dream, and that scared me to tears almost every time.

After a while I started to get use to The Dream. Don’t get me wrong. It still scared the hell out of me, but it did get easier to see it over and over. I never thought it would come true, but we’ll get to that later. Just think … that’s been floating around in my head since I was about ten years old. All through school and most of my adult life, I’d kept it a secret.

As far as anyone was concerned, I was pretty normal. It wasn’t like I was going to go around telling anyone what I dreamed about, unless it involved them getting hurt. Even then I would simply suggest they did something else instead of whatever I saw them doing. I’d never tell anyone what I actually dreamed, though.

Sometimes I’d bet with people to gain a little favor or laughter at their expense. When I say bet, I mean little things. I’d bet someone something like - Who’s going to win the next high school football game, and I’d bet whoever that if I was right they would have to drive me to school for a week. I never bet for money. It just didn’t feel right. Other than that I was pretty good at keeping what I knew hidden from everyone. Well, except my family. They knew that I had some kind knowledge, but didn’t really know how I knew. They never asked me about it, and I never said anything that I didn’t need to. It was a silent understanding between all of us.

I remember one dream, when I was eighteen and about half way through my senior year of high school. It really freaked me out, and I had a really hard time trying to figure out when or if it would happen. I dreamed someone had broken into the house while we were sleeping, and stole a bunch of things. While they were there, my dad had gotten up and seen them, and they shot him. I barely slept for a month, until I saw the date on the clock in my room. When I figured out what day it was, I suggested we went to a late movie after dinner. When we came home, the house was trashed and half our stuff was gone, but my family was safe and unharmed.

I did my best to make sure everyone ended up safe, but there were several bad things that happened that I never had a warning about. The worst one involved my whole family, and I had no idea that it was coming.

****

I was three days away from being twenty. I had a bad feeling all day and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I bused tables and hosted at this kinda ritzy restaurant about a thirty minute drive from home. I wasn’t even supposed to work that day, but one of the other girls called in sick. At first, I thought maybe the bad feeling had something to with her, but it didn’t. When I asked what was wrong with her, the feeling didn’t even lighten up. Everything went pretty normal at work, but my stomach was in knots about something.

I was on my way home, when the feeling got even worse. It felt like my insides were shrinking into a ball. As I made the last turn to go home, I saw the smoke, and I couldn’t drive fast enough. When I got to the driveway, I barely remember putting the car in park. I jumped out and ran inside. I remember telling myself find everyone. I found my mom first and drug her outside to the fence in the front yard about five yards from the house.

When I ran back in, I found my youngest sister, Sue, and carried her out to the fence by my mom. When I found Leeann, I was starting to have a hard time breathing. I could feel the smoke and heat taking a toll on me, but I knew that I still had to go back inside to find my dad and brother. When I was bringing out my brother, I heard the sirens in the distance. I told myself Find dad.

I couldn’t find him upstairs, so I ran downstairs. He was at the end of the hallway near the furnace. It looked like he might have been trying to relight it, but I wasn’t sure. When I got him to the bottom of the stairs, I felt myself getting weaker, but I knew that I couldn’t stop. When I looked up the stairs, I saw a firefighter coming down toward us. I yelled as loud as I could “I can’t get him any further! I need your help! He’s the last one inside!”

As the first fireman brushed at my leg, I saw two more coming down the stairs. While the other two grabbed my dad and carried him upstairs, the first fireman held me close and gave me his spare mask. He had to pretty much drag me up the stairs and out the door.

When we were outside, I pointed to where the rest of my family was and tried to yell “Everyone else is over there! No one was moving, when I got here! You have to help them!” My voice was so scratchy that I barely heard myself, but the fireman holding me did.

He quickly shouted “There’s people over by the fence!” As he me led toward the ambulance, I knew they would do what they could for my family, so I let myself give up.

When I woke up, everything was really bright and blurry. I had to keep blinking to get my vision to clear up. I could hear voices and could feel that there was others in the room. I wasn’t sure how awake I was, so I tried to move. Big Mistake!! Everything hurt, even my hair and nails. I groaned in agony, and the doctors and nurses were hovering around me in an instant.

Some were asking me questions, while others checking me over. I couldn’t really hear or understand what they were saying. I tried to tell them that everything hurt, but I could barely hear myself. I could hardly breath through the pain, and wasn’t sure if they heard me. I saw someone quickly put something in my IV, and that was about it. Before I passed out again, I tried to asked “My family, are they okay?” No one said anything, so I knew it probably wasn’t going to be good news.