Life Surprises Read online

  However, around two o’clock the dream returned. For the third time, the sensation of drowning got more intense and crushing, while the experience of floating at the end was so powerful and almost joyful that it erased the trauma of his death and left him at peace. He woke up but this time didn’t feel the need to call his mother. Yet, he desperately wanted the dreams to stop, even though something told him that they held an important message for him.

  When he told his mother about it in the morning, she dismissed the dream as well as his concern about it.

  “We all dream,” she said.

  “But we don’t all die every night. It scares me.”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, you need to stop worrying about it. You’re not going to drown, and obsessing about it just makes it keep happening.”

  On Tuesday, he forced himself to put his feet in the water while his butt was still on the sand. That was a big step, but his feet felt like they were burning and he didn’t keep them in very long. Other than those mandated swimming periods, he enjoyed the week, except for the fact that the dream recurred every night. The family went boating, took in movies, drove through the mountains to sightsee, and continued their walks around the lake, alternating directions every day. But toward the end of the week, those family walks began to take on a strange kind of urgency for Sean. He begged his father to go with him every day and to walk farther each time. It was as if something was pulling him around the lake, some goal, some destination which he didn’t understand. It felt as though there was something that needed to be discovered.

  On Friday afternoon, he found out what it was.

  They woke up on Friday, the last day of their vacation, to discover that it was pouring rain. That shattered their plans for a picnic on the island in the middle of the lake. It also cut out boating, taking another of their walks, and cancelled their final trip to the kiddie park. But in addition, it made swimming out of the question! Sean was secretly glad he didn’t have to spend another day listening to their demands that he go into the water.

  However, there was still that insistent urging from somewhere inside him to complete their hike around the lake. They had gone partway in either direction, but the opposite end of the lake remained unexplored. They had seen it at a distance from lakeside, but Sean had a restless desire, almost a gut need, to walk the trail on the back side of the lake.

  He was going to start begging his father to drive them over there when, to his astonishment, his father suggested the very thing. “Since we can’t play outdoors today,” he said, “why don’t we do a little more exploring in the car? Sean has been begging to see the other end of the lake, as though there is some buried treasure there waiting for him.” They all agreed, so they loaded up the car after lunch and took off.

  It was their intention, if the weather didn’t moderate, to take in another movie after their jaunt around the lake. His mother was hopeful, however, that the rain would stop, in which case she wanted to drive up in the mountains to a well-known scenic overlook. So they set out full of anticipation.

  The lake was only about ten miles in circumference so it didn’t take long to drive around it. But as they followed the curving shoreline, Sean began to feel the same kind of panic building that he had experienced on their first day. This time it was accompanied by a muffled roaring in his ears, which made it increasingly difficult to hear what was being said in the car.

  They were driving clockwise around lake, and he was sitting on the right side of the car looking out the window. The panicky sensation and the noise in his ears served to narrow his field of vision, so that all he could see was the water flashing past, partially obscured by the trees that crowded the shoreline. As they approached the back side of the lake, the area which had been silently pulling him toward it for the past two or three days, he started to have trouble breathing. It was as though an invisible hand had been placed over his mouth and he had to breathe through his nose. As he struggled for breath, the panic turned to a burning pressure in his chest, and he was about to cry out for help.

  But at that moment he saw the rock.

  It was a huge boulder, perched on a high slope above the edge of the lake, just to the right of a dense stand of trees. At that instant, the roaring ended and there was total silence in his head.

  “Stop!” he shouted to his father. “Stop the car!”

  His vision was riveted to that large rock and, as he stared at it. another layer was added to what he was looking at, as though someone had slipped a transparent slide over the scene. Two people were moving alongside the boulder, carrying what looked like a body. Suddenly, Sean knew what was happening, remembered seeing it happen; it was happening to him!

  He jumped out into the drizzle and started to run toward the boulder. But his mother was out of the car an instant later, demanding in a stern voice that he stop. He turned to look at her. “This is where it happened,” he shouted. “I know what happened here.”

  His father was standing by the driver’s door, telling him to get back in the car. Sean walked around behind the car and said to his father, “You have to let me go down there. I have to see it.” Then he added, “Come with me!”

  “Go down where?” his father asked in a bewildered tone.

  “To the water,” Sean said impatiently. “I have to see something.”

  “What is there to see? It’s all muddy down there.”

  “I have to see if it’s there, if the pipe is there,” he shouted. He was getting more frustrated by the moment.

  “What pipe?” His father was totally confused by Sean’s behavior and was beginning to lose patience.

  “The pipe where it happened, where they put me,” he said, stamping his foot in exasperation.

  “Where what happened? Will you please make sense?”

  “Where I died!” he shouted

  Silence. His mother had come around and the three of them stood by the open car door, the shock of that statement echoing between them.

  “What did you say?” his father started to ask. But his wife cut him off.

  “What nonsense,” she said in a huff. “Get back in the car. You’re getting soaked.”

  He turned pleading eyes to his father. “Please come with me. I have to see it. I’ll go by myself!”

  Sam stared at Sean for a moment, then sighed, told his wife to wait in the car, and followed Sean who had started to run toward the large rock. Sean shouted over his shoulder, “When you see the pipe, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

  There was a path to the right side of the boulder winding its way down to the water’s edge. Sean stumbled along it, frantic with excitement and fear, but knowing that something important was happening. When he got to the water’s edge, he turned left onto another trail that ran parallel to the water. Fifteen feet further along, he came to a little stream flowing down the hill and emptying into the lake. Heedless of the fact that he was standing in the stream, he turned to look back up the hill. And there it was.

  His father caught up with him and, finally out of patience, told him to get out of the water. But Sean just pointed up the hill. Sam looked in the direction that Sean was indicating, and saw the opening of a large metal drainage culvert, four feet in diameter.

  “See!” Sean shouted triumphantly. “I told you it was here.”

  His father shook his head, mystified. “So there’s a pipe here. What difference does that make?

  All the boy could do was smile. Oblivious to his father’s irritation, he asked, “Don’t you want to know how I knew it was here?”

  “You saw it from the lake,” Sam said, throwing up his hands.

  “No,” he said, excited to be able to put the thought into words. “This is where they put me before I drowned.”

  “What? What on earth are you talking about?”

  “But back then,” he added, “I was a woman!”

  From the moment Sean left the car, the whole scenario was playing in his mind, its details as sharp as any T
V program. But he needed to rewind it and watch it from the beginning, just to check his memory of the event. It was as though he had always known what had happened here long ago, but it had been covered up. The sight of the boulder seemed to knock that cover loose, and it simply slid off and exposed the truth.

  He walked up near the pipe, ignoring his father who was demanding that he quit his irrational behavior and get out of the water. Several feet from the opening, Sean turned and faced the lake. What he really wanted to do was to climb into the pipe, but he realized that his father would drag him bodily back up the hill if he tried something like that.

  With his back to the metal culvert and his feet in the short stream rushing down from the drainage pipe into the lake six feet away, he stopped for a moment and closed his eyes. Pushing some kind of mental switch, he let the memory roll.

  His name was Mildred and it was late at night because the only light came from the moon. He was in terrible pain and kept fainting. His hands were tied behind him and there was tape over his mouth. Two men were carrying him, and he recalled seeing that boulder as they struggled past it down toward the lake. They shoved him into the drainage pipe feet-first and left. Then he was in the water and he couldn’t breath. At that point the mental replay ended, and the scene seemed to blend into that dark night from somewhere in his past.

  As he came back to the present, he heard his father yelling at him, demanding that he come back to the car. Sean hurried to join him because he had learned what he needed to know.

  His mother threw a fit when he got in the car alongside Anita. “What were you thinking, young man! You’re soaking wet; now we’ll have to go back to the cottage and get you changed. I hope you’re happy that you’ve ruined the last day of our vacation.”

  Then, fixing him with her eyes, she asked, “What on earth caused you to jump out of the car that way? I’m beginning to get worried about your erratic behavior!”

  She was waiting for an answer, but he knew how she was going to react. He tried to defuse the tension: “There was something down there I had to see.”

  His mother started to say something, but his father broke in. “He ran down there to see the open end of an iron culvert.”

  “But I knew it was there,” Sean protested.

  His mother was shaking her head. “If you already knew it was there, why did you have to go see it? And how did you know it was there? And,” she said, her tone getting harsher, “what does a drainage pipe have to do with you, anyway?”

  When he didn’t respond, she turned back around and said to his father, “I guess he’ll have to spend the rest of the day in his room. This is an awful way to end our vacation.”

  They had arrived at the cottage by this time, and his parents made him take a shower and put on his bedclothes. They left him alone in his bedroom for an hour or so, which gave his mother a chance to calm down. She came into his room late in the afternoon in a slightly more reasonable mood. Sitting on his bed, she looked at him with concern and said, “Your father has been telling me some of the things you said to him. I want you to repeat them to me.”

  “What part?”

  “The part where you told him what you think happened there.”

  “You won’t believe me,” he said defensively.

  “It’s not about my believing you. It’s about finding out what you believe.”

  Sean thought for a long time about how to say the right thing. “Will you just let me tell you what I saw? And not tell me I’m crazy or lying?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I will do that.”

  He took a deep breath. “I know that I drowned there. Bad men put me in that pipe and I landed in the lake and drowned.”

  His mother, trying to be patient, said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me the whole story as you think it happened.”

  Sean searched her eyes for a moment and then began. He said he saw himself walking up a dirt road which led to an old filling station above which was a sign that read “Evans Gas and Oil.” Sean described the appearance of the place as he walked through the large overhead garage door, then turned right and went into the office area. Taking a deep breath, he told her his memory in the present tense, as though it was happening just then.

  Sean/Mildred is behind the counter at one end of the office. S/he understands that she is the daughter of the owner, that her name is Mildred Evans, and that she is about thirty years old. It is late at night, she’s alone and in the process of closing up. Two men come in and start asking questions, but she tries to get rid of them. She sees their car outside and thinks it’s odd that they have left the motor running even though the car is empty. It’s an old car like those in the 1930’s.

  One of the men pulls a gun and demands money. She reaches into the register for the shop’s pistol, but he sees her do it and shoots her in the right shoulder. She falls on the floor as the other guy hops over the counter and cleans out the register. Then they grab her and throw her in the backseat of the car and drive off.

  Her hands are tied behind her and they have put tape over her mouth. They carry her past a large boulder and down toward a lake. There they shove her into a drainage pipe feet-first and leave. She lies there for a long time until she hears it start to rain. It is a terrible downpour and she is relieved at first that they have not left her out in the open.

  But then the water starts rushing down the drain pipe. As it gets deeper, the flow picks up speed and power and eventually flushes her out into the lake. The force of the discharge dumps her about ten feet out into the water, where it is four or five feet deep. She struggles to stand, but her ankles are tied together, and in the pitch dark she isn’t sure where the shore is and she keeps falling, totally disoriented. The tape is forcing her to breathe through her nose, but every time she falls she gets more water up her nose. She can’t spit it out and begins to panic.

  And then the vision ended and the screen of Sean’s mind went black, as if someone had turned off the television.

  His mother looked at him awhile, started to speak several times, then finally asked slowly, “And why do you want to tell us this story?”

  “Because it’s true,” he said deliberately, “because I saw it all happen.”

  She nodded slightly. “And who did you say you were when all this is supposed to have happened?”

  He knew he had lost any hope of convincing her. But she kept prodding and he finally said, “A lady. Her name was Mildred.”

  She smiled a kind of superior parental smile, and said, “Do you know how crazy this sounds, Sean? What would you think if I told you a story like that?”

  “I would believe you,” he shot back, “if you told me it was true.”

  “Well,” she said, muttering half to herself, “I don’t know what to do about this imagination of yours. Maybe I’ll have to take you to the doctor.” Then she stood up and left the room.

  The following morning after breakfast, when his parents were packing, Sean appeared in the living room in his bathing suit. His mother gave him an exasperated look. “Get your clothes on, Sean. We’re ready to leave. What do you think you’re doing anyway?”

  “I’m going swimming,” he shouted as he ran out the front door. He jumped into the water, swam out twenty yards, then turned to see the three of them standing on the porch, their mouths open in disbelief.

  Sean’s mother made an appointment for him to talk with a friend of the family, Dr. Fielding, who happened to be a psychologist. They met in his home one evening soon after. When they had filled the doctor in on some of the background story, he looked at Sean and in a friendly voice asked, “Why were you willing to swim on Saturday when you were so scared to do it all week?”

  Sean wasn’t sure how to explain it. “After I saw the pipe and remembered drowning, I knew why I was afraid. And I wasn’t afraid anymore.” Then he added, “I knew I wasn’t going to drown now because I had already drowned a long time ago.”

  Dr. Fielding asked Sean to tel
l him the whole story in his own words. Sean repeated as many of the details as he could remember, while the doctor sat looking him in the eye and nodding. He sensed a sincerity in Sean that made his story seem less of a fabrication.

  When Sean had finished, Dr. Fielding told him to stand up and take his shirt off. Sean thought it was an odd request but he complied. The doctor called him closer and put his hands on both of the boy’s shoulders. Then he leaned forward and peered closely at the area just below Sean’s right shoulder.

  “How long have you had this dark spot?” he asked. Sean looked down, trying to see what he was talking about. There, five inches below the top of his shoulder, Sean could see a round spot on his skin, faint but unmistakable, the diameter of a large pencil and maroon in color.

  “That’s always been there,” Sean told him. “Why? What does it mean?”

  Dr. Fielding didn’t answer. “Turn around,” he said with a motion of his head. A moment later Sean heard him whisper, “My god!”

  “What?!” Sean asked, feeling a little scared.

  The doctor took him over to a big mirror on the back of the hall door, holding up a hand mirror so Sean could see something on his own back. The doctor pointed it out, a somewhat darker spot, also maroon, but more jagged and about an inch across. It was directly opposite the spot on the front of Sean’s shoulder.

  Sean still didn’t get the significance of all this. Dr. Fielding went back to his chair and thought for a moment. When Sean pressed him for an explanation, the doctor said, “Tell me the part of the story where you got the gun out of the register. What happened next?”

  “The man saw me,” he said, “and he shot me before I could shoot him.”

  “Where did he shoot you?” the doctor asked quietly.

  “Right here,” the boy said, pointing to his right shoulder. But when he looked down, he saw that his finger was resting right on top of the birthmark. Their eyes locked and Sean froze.

  “What…how…?” he stuttered.

  After a moment, the doctor said, “Well, if you had been shot in this lifetime, I would say that those were the scars of the bullet wound.” He wiggled his finger for Sean to come closer. “This,” he said, pointing to the mark on his shoulder, “looks like an entrance wound. And the mark on your back is clearly an exit wound.”