The Strangest Dream (part 29)

if she wanted to come in and look around, and at first, she declined, but something inside told her that she needed some sort of closure.

When she entered the house, she was surprised. Nothing in there looked the same. "We changed some things. I bet you would never think it could look like this." The man said, all proud. "My son built this house with his own two hands." She replied. He looked at her like he said something wrong, "Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." She interrupted him by telling him that, that old house needed a change. She walked over to the only original wall left standing and said, "There was so much love in their home." He invited her in to sit down, and his wife brought her a cup of tea and sat down next to her. "Where are they now?" His wife asked her.

Marie looked out of the back sliding glass door and told her that they were no longer with us. The mood in the room changed as she told them what had happened and how nobody understood why. "I am the only one left in this town," she said, and with that, she told them that she had better be getting on her way.

"Before you go, I think we have some things that were left behind up in the attic." He went up the stairs so his daughter, who was sitting on the other couch listening, asked her who the little girl in her room was.

Marie looked confused, "What little girl?" she asked. "The little girl in my room with the doll." Her mother hushed her, and Marie looked at the lady like she was keeping something from her. "What is this, you say?" She asked the girl.

Just then, the man came downstairs holding an album and a book, "I think this is yours, it was left here. I'm sure by mistake." Marie opened the album, and Clyde and Autumn's wedding picture fell in her lap, revealing the photo of Evelyn and Charlie that she took on the farm. "That's her!" the girl exclaimed, "That's the little girl in my room!" Insensitively, the man added that he had seen her too when he came home from work one day, but saw the shock on Marie's face and promptly apologized for blurting that out like that.

Marie asked if they had experienced anything else, something evil, perhaps? He went on to tell her that one day he came home, and the word EVIL was scribbled on every wall with a red crayon, so we went out and bought an ouija board. "Did anyone talk to you?" she asked. "No." He said, but I think something came through that was not too happy, so we threw the board away." Finally, everything almost made sense. Evelyn was a sensitive child with the unique ability to see things in her dreams that hadn't happened yet. Maybe what came through the board was a demon.

She remembered asking the minister about demons after the incident with Evelyn at her house, and he told her that evil transcends time.

The man then handed her the book. "This was Evie's favorite bedtime storybook," she said. She opened it up to a folded page that read:

From breakfast on through all the day. At home among my friends I stay, But every night I go abroad, Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself, I have to go, With none to tell me what to do- All alone beside the streams And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me, Both things to eat and things to see, and many frightening sights abroad Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day, Nor can remember plain and clear The curious music that I hear.

Written by Robert Louis Stevenson.

She closed the book and shut her eyes. At that moment, she felt them, and in her mind, she felt peace.

Marie stood up and thanked them for their hospitality. Before she got to the truck, she turned and asked the man if he ever had a mustache, in which he replied, "Yes, for a long time, but it was time for a change."

Looking up at the crescent-moon window and below that Evie's room. She could almost see her standing there with her hand pressed against the glass and thought to herself... Yes, yes it is.