Prophetic Dreams

Chapter 1

James awoke in his own bed to the light music of Kenny G. playing on his bedside radio.  His bed was in shambles and everything was soaked with sweat.  He walked to the bathroom of his two bedroom apartment.  The clock in the hall read 2:30 in the morning.  He was exhausted, but there was no way he could go back to sleep.  James looked at the man in the bathroom mirror; he was five foot ten inches tall, 180 pounds, 3 days worth of stubble on his face and bags big enough to shop with under his eyes.  He was a 25 year old freelance writer and traveled the world writing about anything he was hired to.  Two months ago he was hired by a private party to travel to Israel and try to dig up some information about the war between God and Satan.  Since his return the same dream had plagued him almost every night. 

James walked into the kitchen to start some coffee.  He figured if he couldn’t sleep he might as well work.  As he sat down at his desk a light knock came at the door.  It was Mary Elizabeth from across the hall.  She was an insomniac.

“Morning Mary”, James said as he opened the door.

“I thought you would be awake”, Mary said, holding a plate of fresh muffins in her hands, “I heard you screaming and thought these would go good with your coffee”.

“That bad huh?”

“Yeah, to be honest I am surprised I am the only one that heard”.  Mary had been a good friend for the last three years.  She was twenty-three years old and very sweet.  She was a petite thing at five foot three inches tall and weighed little more that a thanksgiving turkey.  She was the type of person who never wore make up, and didn’t need to either.  Her hair was always the same, drawn back in a simple ponytail held in by a velvet scrunchy.  James had on several occasions thought to ask her out, but had never managed to get up the courage, not that he figured she would say no.  “So, what was it this time?” Mary asked.

“Same.” Said James with a mouth full of muffin.

“This is crazy!  You need to go see my friend Shirley.”

“She’s a nutter!”

“She is not a nut.  She is a clairvoyant, and she studies dreams.”  Shirley Gates was a self-proclaimed psychic who worked out of her home.  She rarely traveled because she said she had seen her own death and it happened while she was out of the house.  She was in her mid sixties and lived out of town in the middle of nowhere in an old house that most people considered to be haunted.   “Look, you don’t have anything to loose.  Just try it.  Who knows maybe she can help, and if not then you can say ‘I told ya so’.  It is a win, win situation.”

“I suppose I can try it, I mean after all it is worth the chance to rub it in your face that she’s a nutter.”

“Thank you, now lets eat these muffins,” she said smiling.

****

James pulled up to the old house in his beat up little Ford Pinto.  The whole place gave him the creeps.  The house was a civil war era colonial that some millionaire had paid to move up here and looked as if it had been vacant since.  No paint could be seen on the outside, just old rotting cedar planks.  The ivy, long since dead, covered nearly all of the walls at least ten foot up.  The shudders that remained in tact on the windows swayed in the light breeze, occasionally slapping into the side of the house with an eerie smack.  James walked around the old fountain in the driveway and wondered how long it had been since it had seen water.  The front porch creaked with every step on his way to the front door.  The door was a four foot by eight foot monstrosity of solid oak with a big brass doorknocker in the shape of an elephant’s head.  James wondered to himself if an ivory hunter had once lived here back in the day.