Remembered by E. D. Brady Read Free Book Online

mistake, she took a step through
anyway—into complete darkness.

Chapter 6
     
     
     
    She could see nothing.
    In the darkness, she felt oddly calm. She should have been
petrified. She knew that would have been the logical reaction, but she felt no
fear.
    Perhaps this was some kind of reaction to King Fisher beer;
like those expensive bottles of tequila with the worm that makes people
hallucinate when consumed, but with a delayed reaction. No. She knew that was
not so. This was something else entirely. Maybe she’d finally cracked under
pressure.
    She threw her head back and looked straight up. A million
stars covered the sky. Then she noticed a purple streak to the far left. Dawn
was approaching. As impossible as it seemed, it was the start of a new day. It
had just been a beautiful sunny afternoon, now it was somehow a cold early
morning.
    She untied her sweatshirt from around her waist and pulled
it over her head, grateful that she’d brought it. She sat on the grass, placed
her hands over her face, and squeezed her eyes closed. “This is not happening,”
she said aloud.  Her voice sounded eerie in the stillness; there was not
another sound anywhere.
    She took a deep breath, slowly raised her head, and opened
her eyes. Why didn’t she feel terrified? Any normal person would have. Why was
she just sitting there calmly instead of freaking out?
    She remained sitting on the grass until the sky became a
light purplish-blue, until she could see forward clearly.
    Another fact slowly seeped into her consciousness: this was
not the same field that she had been in earlier, and there was no trace of the
wavy doorway.
    She felt suddenly dizzy, slightly short of breath, mildly
panicked. Where was the hill, Glastonbury Tor? Where was the road, the one that
she’d walked on, the one with the cars speeding past? She stood and turned a
complete circle, her heart pounding against her ribs. This was definitely not
the same field, but as strange as that was, she was still too calm, still had
no sense of fear—that fact alone disturbed her tremendously.
    As the sky brightened, she began walking in the direction
that she had come from, to where the road should have been, but the road was no
longer there. Instead, there was a forest in the distance. Her legs kept moving
in that direction. Some strange compulsion came over her, and she gravitated
towards the trees.
    Birds began chirping, which was a welcome relief from the
disturbing silence.
    When she approached the forest, she could see that it wasn’t
very dense, but she didn’t want to walk through until the sun had fully risen.
Then she questioned why she would want to walk into it at all. But she had a hunch
that this was the direction she should take, an overpowering intuition that she
couldn’t ignore.
    A very narrow stream bordered the forest, and when she was
confident that it was light enough to see her way through the trees, she jumped
over it.
     Déjà vu overwhelmed her.
    “I’ve done that before,” she said out loud. As impossible as
it seemed, she knew she had jumped that stream hundreds of times.
    Then somehow she knew that if she walked through the forest,
she would come to a small cottage that was very familiar. Her logical mind knew
this could not be true. How could she know what lies beyond a forest she’d
never been in? Nevertheless, a buried memory, a part of her that defied logic,
coaxed her forward.
    She started to walk quickly, knowing beyond any doubt the
direction that she had to take, not flinching when she heard rustling near her.
She was so sure that nothing dangerous lurked in this place.
    After a short walk, she emerged at the far end of the forest,
and there it was, the cottage that she would have recognized anywhere.
    Her head was reeling as she walked down the grassy hill
towards the back of the little white stone house. She knew she walked on what
should have been a vegetable garden, but noticed, with disgust, that it had not
been tended in