3

We were walking hand in hand
in a field that was long and grassy, surrounded by a thick wall of
trees that didn't make a perfect oval but surrounded the property
making you feel like you were in your own little world. When I
looked back up the small hill we had just come from you could see a
beautiful River Birch with several trunks perched on top of it, its
snow white bark flaking off elegantly, and the leaves shimmering in
the wind, from here it loomed over us and looked like it could
touch the sky.

He leaned down and kissed me
on the forehead, then my temple, cheek and neck. He cupped his
hands around my face. I embraced him back, and then let
my hands fall to his hips.

My skirt was blowing ever so
slightly in the wind. The sun was out and the skies were blue. It
was a beautiful day. I said cheerfully "let's keep walking." I
slipped my hand into his and our fingers intertwined. He gave me a
peck on the cheek and we turned. Arms around each other, we started
walking across the field. When we were adjacent to the tree line he
stopped and pulled me close to him, I let my eyes flutter shut.
When I re-opened them I saw him place his lips on hers and pressed
hard, she jerked back and told him "Stop, be gentle." His hands
began to shake and then his whole body. I looked down at my hands
and all around me, I was alone. I looked across the field toward
the tree line where I saw them, kissing. 

She was wearing a white
gauze top and skirt with a shiny silver bracelet that sparkled
brightly in the sun. Her skirt was blowing in the wind along with
her long curly blond hair. He was wearing tan pants and a white
button down shirt with only a couple of buttons fastened. He had no
shoes on and his light long hair was messy from the slight breeze
cooling down the otherwise hot day.

His shirt blew open a little
and she placed her hand on his stomach and reached upward. He
trembled, looked up, and stretched his face toward the sky, it
changed. Then he grabbed her shoulders making her totter with him.
He looked down suddenly and backhanded her across the
cheek. She turned to run but he nabbed her shoulder. As she
tried to free herself, his nails dug into her shoulder. I
could see the blood trickling down her white shirt onto his
hand. He looked at the sky, howled and let her go to lick his hand.
She turned again, but only got a few feet when he wrapped his arms
around her and ripped her shirt from her. She kicked and screamed.
She kept looking to her left, into the tree line yelling “Help me,
help me.” He threw her to the ground; she's still looking over to
the tree line nearest her as she scooted backward.

I looked beyond her and saw
a pair of eyes glowing in the shadows. I tried to help but all I
could do was watch. I tried to get closer but I never reached them,
I started running toward them but I'm still yards away. He howled
again and put his face to her neck.

In a panic I sat
straight up, gasping for air. It was pitch dark. My eyes were
opened so wide I could feel them straining trying to see something,
anything. But the dark just held. I rubbed my eyes to get
a bearing on where I was – ‘it was a dream, it was a
dream, it was a dream.' I kept telling myself. I was in
my room, another bad dream.
I usually have dreams of
not being able to scream, run fast enough or other weird things,
but they are usually about me.
 I don't
think this one was about me this time. It was me at first, but
after they crossed the field it definitely wasn't me. I was
actually watching another couple.

Unfortunately, it was only
3:17a.m. and I usually can't get back to sleep
once I wake up. So I got my notebook and pen
out of my nightstand and wrote down everything I could remember,
leaving the light off so I wouldn't wake my sister. I was hoping it
would be legible in the morning. I have had a couple of
dreams before that I swear have come true but I'm never
really sure because the memory of them can fade so fast.
Although, some I have just never forgotten, no matter how much time
goes by.

Just this
summer
, our family went on a two week vacation. My
dad said it would probably be our last hoorah, as we kids were
getting older and probably wouldn't want to go anymore. We usually
only vacationed for a week at a time but this time it was for two.
He named it “The 1981 Gellar Family Extravaganza” and had his
itinerary labeled with it.

The week before we left, I
had a dream of a man on a silver shiny pay phone, he was on the
third phone of eight hanging on the wall, and on the other side of
the hall was a big family room with a lot of older people watching
TV
,
bizarre right?
But it was one of the dreams that just stuck with me. Mind you,
it's a very insignificant dream, I think, but the combination was
very odd. Eight pay phones next to a living room... Maybe that's
why it stayed with me. I can remember every last detail of it and I
didn't even have to write it down.

* * * * * * *

We were driving to South
Carolina not a far drive from my hometown Richfield, Ohio but far
enough that my dad planned stops on the way. I got an eerie feeling
at a hotel we stopped at in West Virginia. The outdoor p
ool
was located right next to a huge mountain, you could see clouds and
snow gathering at its peak. The water was ice cold even though it
was eighty degrees out and
none of us kids went in
until my dad called us all wimps. So I jumped in! Didn't even feel
the water with my toe or try to get in slowly – that's how you have
to do it, just jump right in, like ripping a Band-Aid off – you
have to do it quickly.

The water was worse than
freezing but my dad and I continued to swim and jump off the diving
board a few times. My sister asked me to do a double flip off the
board which I had just mastered recently and I did, plus a couple
other dives I liked to do. And that's when I got that eerie feeling
I get once in a while, I noticed some guy at the end of the pool
just staring my way. His hair was either greased straight back or
wet; he had a trench coat on and sunglasses. I brushed it off and
went to sit with Tori and Kit, my brother and sister. I'm only 21
months younger than my sister but four years older than my brother.
I'm stuck in the middle. When I sat down, that’s when the spooky
guy got up slowly and left but not without staring us down
first.

What I call my “eerie” feelings, I believe,
are when I experience “déjàvu” and I believe those feelings are
brought upon me because I have experienced the event before through
my dreams. I also believe lately, that everyone has dreams that
come true, but most people can't remember them an hour after they
wake. So they are forgotten. Some people dream more than others and
some people remember a lot more than others, like me. Maybe I'm
just hoping it's true so I'm not the only freak around who has
dreams that come true.

The following day we drove
until we got to the bed and breakfast where we were staying. I
stepped into the lobby and had that eerie “déjàvu” feeling again. I
knew what was coming next and gasped “Oh my gosh!” I took a few
steps forward and turned to my left to see very peculiar
mirror-like pay phones and a man just turning to use the third
phone! I looked down the hall and there were five more, all
spotless and clean – shiny silver pay phones..... The man had on a
trench coat, sunglasses and a blue baseball cap - - everything was
just like my dream. He had longer hair than most, wavy and dark; I
could only see him from behind though. In my dream his coat was
white; here it was tan, but still....

My eyes were wide, I was
standing in the same spot that I saw everything from in my dream.
And I said “Oh my gosh!” out loud again. It was pure
adrenaline and I was happy my dream had come true. I
turned to the right and it was set up just like a living room with
a bunch of older people staring at the TV!

My dad asked me “What?
What's going on?” So I told him about my dream and then
pointed to the man on the phone and then pivoted to my right still
pointing explaining about the living room. I was very excited when
I was explaining what I saw to him, that I saw all of this in my
dream last week.

Then my dad said “Yeah
right!” with a half chuckle and asked “Then what are they watching
on TV?” From where we stood you couldn't see the TV, and of course
we couldn't
hear it because the volume was turned down.
With all the confidence in the world I said
“Golf.” I paused, “Water and sand on the left and a green hill on
the right.” He walked over looked up, his mouth dropped open and he
didn't close it. Then he came back and said “Addie you almost had
me going...” 

I walked over to see
the TV and golf was on – there was no hill or water or
sand. Then they showed two guys on the next tee and a guy hitting
his ball over a green grassy hill on the right and water on the
left, but I saw no sand...until the helicopter went over
the green to view from the opposite side and there it was! Sand on
the beach....believe it or not!

I was excited, I bet I had a
goofy grin on my face too, so I looked at my dad and pointed to the
TV and he just shook his head. I let my hand drop to my side, I had
mixed emotions, happy because I was sure my dream really had come
true and yet disappointed because my dad disregarded it so fast. I
was hurt because I believe I'm an honorable person, very honest and
trustworthy. Plus, I’m like a vault of secrets.

Why would he think I was
lying? I had nothing to gain from lying about some people on a
phone and watching TV. Then I started to doubt myself, maybe I was
wrong, maybe I just had a similar dream and I’ve convinced myself
it was real. It kept bothering me all day. So I snuck a call
to Nicole and told her the whole story; Nicole Newland is
my best friend and has been since fourth grade. I call her Nic most
of the time though.
She was a strawberry blonde and had
hazel eyes. She’s
taller than I but only by a
couple of inches. She's thin but not too skinny, and has nice legs.
She is very outgoing and adventurous, no qualms about doing much
and a good listener. She tells me I am too, but I'm not, at least
not to the extent that she is.
We were told we looked
similar; truth is I don't think so, although my brother, sister and
I look alike. I have brown wavy hair some of it curlier than the
rest, blue eyes, and I'm medium height and plain looking and my
legs are just okay, I wish they looked more like Nic's. I do have a
birth mark that I think is pretty cool because it looks like a
butterfly on my left shoulder.

She told me she remembered
me telling her about the shiny phones but not much else. That day,
was the day we decided I should start writing my dreams
down
.
That way when I find myself in the
midst of déjàvu, the prominent flash of memory that brings upon me
that alienated and peculiar “
eerie
” feeling, I can call Nic and
double check it by reference from my journals or notes. Maybe
that's what déjàvu is, your memory trying to access information you
have already received, but you just can't put your finger on
it.

Nic also suggested that I
date and sign them, and she would do the same in return after she
read them. Plus, to make sure I use pen so nothing can be erased,
this way we have an official record. I dated this dream July 16,
1981 and it’s my first official recorded dream.

Our parents were strict with
us, we had to do all our chores and we had to get good grades or we
couldn’t do stuff with our friends; well my sister and brother got
good grades A's, B's and C's, I was a bit below average.
Chores included cleaning the house top to bottom, weeding the yard,
cutting the grass, washing dishes, setting and clearing the table
at dinner time and doing homework.

However, during our summer
break, our parents Sean and Lynn, have us in a lot of sports
programs to keep us busy and out of trouble; so we rarely
saw anyone from school anyway. My dad, due to his job in sales,
belonged to the Country Club. To take full advantage of the Club
our parents had all three of us siblings into, Golf (yes, golf
it was a country club with a full golf course), tennis and swim
team. My sister and I were also in synchronized swimming and I was
also on the diving team.

We did a lot of things
around the pool because we grew up swimming. Our mom was a swim
teacher and life guard when we were younger. As long as I could
remember, we would go to the pool every day in the summer. And when
I say every day I mean “every day,“ rain, shine, horrible storms,
whatever, we were at the pool every day. As soon as we were old
enough, my mom quit her job and we switched over to the Club pool
and then my mom would just drop us off there every day, and as I
said we were at the pool EVERYDAY.

Our neighborhood was awesome
as a kid, everyone had a minimum of one acre of land; playing
football or flying kites was easy to do, you could pick anyone’s
yard, all of them were large enough. Our street
was
a big soft shaped “C” with two hills, great for
riding bikes. We lived in the country so no curbs or sidewalks and
only one street light at each end of the street.

None of the houses were
fancy; we had a three bedroom ranch with a full walkout basement.
Our house sat at the bottom of a small hill and the backyard had
plenty of room and the side yard even larger. Our driveway went
down the hill, and ended in a big circle that wrapped around to the
garage. Our garage opened up from the back of the house, which my
mom loved. The huge circle made for an excellent basketball court.
We also had a two story deck.