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Copyright © by Shera Eitel-Casey
Published by Shera Eitel-Casey at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Library of Congress-in-Publication Data
Cover design and art by CoeyTech.com
eBook format and publishing by CoeyTech.com
The characters, places and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 9781310370816
Acknowledgements
I want to give a big thank you to everyone who took the time to read my book and give me feedback. I want to give out a special thank you to Tracey Stapleton, Makayla Stapleton, Christine Drover and Carol Raabe who took the time and helped edit and fix plot changes.
Karen Eitel really hung in there with me through the rest of all my edits and my dad, Bob Eitel, through the final. If wasn’t for their support and help I would have never finished.
I can't tell everyone enough how much I appreciate everything they’ve done for me.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue - Jett
About Shera Eitel-Casey
Other Books by Shera Eitel-Casey
Connect with Shera Eitel-Casey
PROLOGUE
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 pool 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.
The houses on our side of the street had a ravine and tons of land behind them that extended all the way down the block. To access the ravine you have to run down a steep hill or go down our “dirty slide.”
Our dirty slide is a path my sister Tori started when we were smaller, some older kids were taking us for a hike and they ran down this steep hill located directly behind our house, but my sister and I just stared at it and said no way were we going to run down that hill. They were yelling at the bottom of the hill for us to follow so Tori got down on her butt and slid down and I followed. The older kids thought it was a hoot and ran back up to try it out. One of the neighbors said “
How fun you guys just made a slide!” and Tori replied “a dirty slide,” hence its name. Once you get into the ravine there is great hiking, a creek and discoveries to be made.
Tori was shorter than me and thin as a rail, but shapely. She has the bluest of eyes and freckles dancing across her nose and cheeks in the summer, like me, though our freckles would fade by Columbus Day. She had long blonde hair with bits of darker colors in it too; the kind people pay to have their hair look like. I on the other hand have dark wavy hair. She always dressed nice, hair styled and make-up on. She never over did it in the make-up department though. Tori is unlike me, I always wear jeans or shorts and tees, who cares what my hair looks like and make-up takes too long to put on, so I don't wear it. The only time you'll catch me in a dress or skirt is if we have to dress up.
CHAPTER 1
It's mid-summer and my siblings and I were golden brown with freckles running across our faces. All three of us were on swim team; however none of us played tennis this year. Although I love to play tennis, swim team, golf and diving were enough for me. I was having a very good season this year, faster in swim team and hitting the golf ball much straighter and farther than before. My diving coach's confidence in me had magnified and she asked to work an extra hour a day with me and me alone. Usually the whole team practices together. I'm getting leaner and faster and I've noticed the coaches keeping a closer eye on me.
As it was getting closer to school starting Nic, my best friend, wanted to have a last summer adventure; where we almost get into to trouble but not quite. She always walked the line, like my cousin Peyton; I assume that’s why they got along so well. Of course, they both got along with me because I had no issues following along with their hair-brained ideas. This year Nic wanted to talk to the dead, it of course involved candles, herbs, a ritual, chanting, a dead person and in our case, a cemetery. My idea, flash lights and gym shoes.