The Plum Tree

 My cousin Robert and I walked down the sandy dirt road. It was right after lunch, and since we couldn’t go swimming again for an hour by our parents’ decree – a lifetime to lively 10 year olds during summer vacation – we had changed out of our swimming suits and gone for a walk.

Robert claimed he had found a really neat place he wanted to show me, and since I was allowed to go much farther afield when we were together, I was game and ready to go as soon as our baloney sandwiches, Kool-aid and limp potato chips were finished. We grabbed three cookies each and raced out the back door, the screen banging behind us to the usual adult chorus of “Don’t slam the door!” It was too late. We were already halfway down the driveway and moving fast.

When we reached the small, little used dirt road we slowed down. The fine white sand of the road felt good under our bare feet, and we scuffed our toes deep into it, looking for the layer of damp cool sand underneath. The southeastern U.S. summer heat pressed down heavily and anything cool was welcome.

Robert led me under the big chinaberry tree and past the slough where a small spring surrounded by marsh oozed down to the river. Then we went past a few more houses and fields. When we came to a fork in the road, Robert led me down the wooded branch.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I asked.

“You’ll see. We’re almost there. This is where I got those plums yesterday, remember?Come on, it’s this way.”

Robert left the little dirt road, taking a path I hadn’t noticed deeper into the woods and away from the river. The path itself was clear, which was a bit unusual given the growth rate of wild plants in the hot wet summer weather, but I could clearly see the briars and thorny vines and stiff scratchy bushes growing close by the sides of the path. Well, if Robert could do it, so could I. Neither of us wore shoes, but at least I had a shirt on. Robert, like most of the young boys, only put on a shirt in the summer when he was forced to.

We carefully watched where we put our feet, as snakes were a real possibility, and followed the sandy trail deeper into the woods.

“There’s another way in, but it’s all the way around on the other side,” said Robert as we climbed over a fallen pine tree. We pushed past a last bush and suddenly we were in an overgrown clearing. I could tell that there used to be a house here, and a garden, but it must have been a long time ago. We walked into the area in silence. I stared around me.

There was the foundation of a house, with a chimney rising out of it, surrounded by overgrown bushes and with a pine tree rising out of the middle of what had been the house. There were several ancient crabapple trees and the plums Robert had mentioned. I saw the remains of daylilies about to choke themselves out and rose bushes running wild. The whole place was knee high in grass. Robert grabbed my arm. “Come on, over here!” He seemed a little bit antsy for some reason.

I shrugged and followed him. He led me over to a young plum tree heavily covered with ripe yellow- green fruit. There was no way it had been here when the house had been, so some wild creature must have accidentally planted it. Robert picked a plum and handed it to me.

“Here, eat this,” he said. I noticed that he didn’t have one for himself and was instantly suspicious. We were cousins and best friends, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t above a practical joke. He noticed my look and picked a few more.

“They’re good, really they are,” he reassured me. “Just take a bite.”

I thought about it for a few more seconds and then decided what the heck. I bit through the translucent yellow- green skin and tasted the tart yet sweet juice gushing out. It was very good, and I savored that first bite. I took another bite, and then, hearing Robert sigh anxiously, I looked up with plum in my mouth. Robert was eating his, too, and looking around the clearing. I followed his gaze, and my eyes widened.

The clearing had changed. We were now standing in the middle of a lovely old fashioned garden with carefully raked dirt paths. Roses grew everywhere, and I saw a huge camellia bush. The daylilies were in full bloom as were many other flowers in the bursting flower beds. There was still a plum tree beside us, though, and there were several others too.  The house itself was there along one side of the garden, two stories tall and painted white with porches front and back. A crepe myrtle grew by the house, along with several lilac bushes and there were pecan trees and walnut trees and young crabapple trees here and there. Peach trees dotted the yard and a grape arbor stood a little ways away. I could even see a sizable vegetable garden on the other side of the house where I had seen woods just a few minutes ago.

Robert said, “You see it, don’t you.”

“I see something…”

“The garden. And the house. And the yard. You see them, too, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Oh man.”  The relief was plain in his voice. “I thought I was going crazy. But if you see them, too, then it’s okay.”

I was looking around the former clearing some more.  Beyond the garden, washing hung on a line and I could see a barn with a faded grey exterior. I could smell pigs, too, and as I swallowed the next bite of plum, I realized that I could hear things as well. A mule braying, the pigs grunting, chickens and guinea hens, and last of all, children laughing and shrieking in play - the sounds joined the buzzing of the cicadas that had been there all along. Robert said, “It  all just fades away again after a little bit. I guess the plums wear off or something.” He smiled wanly.

I finished the plum, and Robert handed me another. Without any discussion, we walked away from the plum tree and wandered through the garden. It was fragrant and lush. Insects hummed and buzzed and birds flew everywhere. After a few minutes, we came out of the garden near the house.

There was an old hound dog lying under the porch, but he didn’t seem to notice us. We came closer to the sounds of the children playing and found them playing tag in the shade of a big old hickory nut tree. They were five of them. The oldest ones were about our age and they were strangely dressed. They boys wore faded overalls without shirts and the girls had different looking dresses on. The dresses were very wrinkled, like they were made all of cotton, and just looked strange to my eyes.  I looked again and realized that the youngest one, a toddler, was actually a boy wearing a dress. I thought back to the stories my grandmother liked to tell and remembered that little boys used to wear dresses until they were out of diapers. I turned to Robert and whispered, “I think this is the past. This is like when our grandparents were little, like the stories grandma tells, in the twenties or thirties.”

“I know. It’s really weird, isn’t it?”

The children still hadn’t noticed us, even though we were standing quite near them.

“I don’t think they can see us,” Robert said. “Yesterday, I tried to tell someone ‘Hey,” but they didn’t notice me.”

While we watched, a woman in an old-fashioned dress and apron stepped onto the porch and called, “Dinner!”

The children ran squealing towards the house, and a man dressed in overalls came from the barn. We edged closer to the house and peaked past the lace curtains in the window. The family, including several older children who hadn’t been outside, was seated at a long dining table full of food. Fried chicken, biscuits, dishes of vegetables, all were being passed around the table with gusto. Soon everyone was tucking in. The scene began to fade and I bit into the second plum.

We stayed for at least an hour before we decided we’d better get home before we got into trouble and weren’t allowed to go for walks anymore. We agreed to come back for a while that evening before it got dark.

We spent our afternoon swimming in the river with Robert’s younger brothers. It was nice and cool, and we had fun, but our minds were elsewhere.

As soon as we could, we finished our supper, made some excuses and ran for the road again. We had two free hours before it got dark and we intended to use them.

Since we both knew where we were going, we made good time to the clearing and were soon licking plum juice off our fingers. This time we could hear clinking and clanking in the kitchen along with the sort of argument that children get into over dishwashing. A boy was at the pump on the back porch, filling buckets. An older boy came from the direction of the barn carrying milk buckets. A girl was feeding the chickens. On the porch, an older woman was rocking the toddler and singing to him as his head drooped sleepily against her. We watched the family settle down for the evening, doing chores and just settling down. By the time we left, everyone was relaxing on the porch with newspapers or books and the littlest one had been taken in to bed.

The next few days saw us at the clearing every free minute. Our parents warned us that we were going to get belly aches from all the plums we were eating, and we had some trouble getting away without Robert’s younger brothers, but we still managed to get there twice a day. We learned the names of the children and a little about them – the chores they did, the games they played, the books they read. The littlest one, the toddler boy, loved to run to our plum tree in the garden and beg for the fruit. Usually some indulgent older sibling would pick one for him, and he would sit contentedly in the shade and eat the pieces they sliced off for him. We watched as the mother and grandmother tended the flower garden lovingly, and taught the children to do the same. It was a beautiful, special place that everyone loved.  The whole thing was like watching the stories our grandparents told coming to life.

Our constant munching was threatening our plum supply, though. We had tried other trees, both plum and crabapple, but none of them had the same time travel results that this plum tree did. We knew that we were going to be out of plums soon and our adventures would be over. Finally there were enough for one more day, and that was it. We were really upset by this. We had come to know the family well and were going to miss them very much. Somehow, it didn’t seem like they lived so long in the past; to us they were real and they were now.

That night we were grumpy and cranky. Our parents decided we were overtired and sent us to bed early, saying that we would have to stay home tomorrow because we clearly needed the rest. Robert retired to his house and I to mine next door as our parents sat on the river bank and talked. I fell asleep thinking how unfair life was.

I woke up around midnight, sweating and trembling. I had had a nightmare in which the house in the clearing was burning. I could hear the screams and shouts of the family, see the flames against a stormy night sky as lightening flashed and thunder boomed, hear the timbers crumbling and crashing. It took me a long time to go back to sleep. I was heavy eyed and groggy the next morning, and when I met Robert after breakfast, he was the same.

“I had a dream…” he began.

“The house burned down.”  I said.

“Yeah.”

Our parents’ decree that we stay home all day suddenly was all right with us. We had no desire to go to the clearing today, and maybe not ever again.

Over the next few days, we tried to worm information about the house in the clearing out of our parents without being too obvious. It didn’t do any good, though, because they hadn’t lived here then, and no one knew anything.

Finally, a few days later, we decided to go back and visit the house once more. It seemed silly, I told Robert, to be so upset. After all, they had lived a long time ago. They’d all be grandparents or dead by now anyway, fire or not. He agreed, and we set off. It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon with the threat of a thunderstorm hanging in the distance as we set off down the road one more time.

We were silent as we approached the house. The plum tree was empty, the birds having enjoyed the last few fruit in our absence. We were wandering around the garden area, remembering where things were, how the flowers had looked and smelled, the way the children helped in the gardens, when we heard someone coming. An old pickup ground to a stop at the far edge of the clearing, and an elderly man climbed out of it. We turned to run, but he saw us first and waved to us. “It’s all right!” he called, “I don’t care if you’re here!” Then he ignored us and went to the back of the truck to take out one of those brush mowers. Feeling cautious, we snuck over to the edge of the clearing and hid, watching him for a while. He mowed part of the clearing and cleared away some of the extra growth. At least that explained why the whole thing hadn’t gone back to woods.

Then he stopped by our plum tree. He looked at it for a minute, and then went back to his truck. He brought a large flat stone back to the plum tree with him.  We crept closer, wondering what he was doing.

The old man looked up at us and saw the questions in our eyes. “It’s a memorial stone,” he said in a quiet voice. “For my baby brother.”

“Was he in the house when it burned?” Robert asked all in a rush.

“Yes, he was.”

“Was he the toddler?” I asked with my heart in my throat.

“Yes…” the old man was clearly puzzled as to how we knew these things.

Robert and I looked at each other. I began, “This is going to be really hard to believe, but, well, when we ate the plums from this tree, we saw things.”

“The past, she means. We saw the family here, only they couldn’t see us.” Robert shrugged. “I know you won’t believe us, but it’s true.”

The old man looked at us consideringly. Then he asked a few questions about the family which we answered quickly and correctly.

He nodded. “Well, when you reach my age, you’ll know there’s awfully strange things in life that are real. I believe you. And that fits. My little brother was the only one who didn’t get out of the house. Me and my sisters and brothers, we took his favorite toy that he‘d left under the big hickory tree the night before, and we buried it here, because this was his favorite tree. I don’t know why we did it – I guess it just seemed like the thing to do. I’ve kept a plum tree growing here ever since. I guess he didn’t want to be forgotten, or us to be forgotten, and he gave you the memories. It’s fitting. I’m the only one left, now, and I can’t get here as much as I’d like or do as much as needs doing. I’m glad you can remember the house and the garden and us kids, the way we used to be.”

We stayed there for a long time that afternoon, talking and listening, living in the past in a different way, sitting beside that magical plum tree in the old forgotten garden.

-She Wolf (c)2007

The Woods

 ”Oats peas beans and barley grow, Oats peas beans and barley grow…” Jonathan sang softly under his breath as he wielded his hoe and weeded the vegetable garden. Peas and beans grew here, certainly, but no oats. Instead there were carrots and corn and tomatoes and cucumbers and five different kinds of peppers. The plants were tall and bountiful. The peas had been producing for weeks and the tomatoes were ripe and red. When he was done weeding, Jonathan would take the big woven basket and fill it will all sorts of good things for the kitchen.

As he weeded, Jonathan kept an eye on the area outside the fenced garden. He thought he saw something moving out there. There were always little creatures around, waiting for him to get done so they could try to get in. Cotton tailed rabbits, little ground squirrels, even deer hoped to come in and taste the bounty. A good secure fence that extended two feet under the ground and then six feet up helped stop some of the marauders. A few still managed to get in, but there was enough extra for that. And Jonathan had his own little system, too, because he enjoyed it. Each time he filled the basket, he put in twice as much as he needed. Then he dropped off half of it in the kitchen and took the other half with him as he took a long walk in the woods. He kept several different stations filled with garden goodies for the wild creatures to eat. They couldn’t eat their fill, of course, but then they would clean out the garden all by themselves if they could.

Weeding finished, and basket filled, Jonathan started off on his daily rounds. He put his share on the kitchen counter and pushed through the brush into the woods. When he was a short way in, he heard something crashing through the trees behind him and chuckled to himself, imagining a startled deer.

Carrots went near the thicket where he suspected quite a few rabbits lived, and some lettuces near the field where a large colony of ground squirrels lived. A few ears of corn in the meadow where he saw deer in the early mornings, and a few other stops and then he was ready to go home. His basket was empty, so he decided to look for herbs in the last little meadow he visited. As he stepped into the clearing, he could hear bees humming and cicadas buzzing wildly in the nearby trees. Something fell to the ground with a thump beside him and he looked around, startled. There was a branch on the ground beside him. It must have fallen, that was all. A few birds sang and called. It was so very peaceful and the shade at the edge of the clearing was so inviting that Jonathan decided to sit down for a rest before he did anything else. He intended to have just a small rest, not a nap, but as soon as he pulled his cap down over his eyes and put his hands behind his head, he was sound asleep and soon the sound of his snores joined the buzzing of the cicadas and the humming of the bees.

The afternoon shadows grew longer and the shade grew deeper. Finally, as the afternoon turned to evening, Jonathan woke up. He let out an exceptionally loud snore and awoke with a start. He sat up suddenly, arms and legs flailing, with that peculiar sense of being disoriented that comes after a long nap in a strange place.

As he looked around and realized that he had slept all afternoon, Jonathan knew he would have to hurry if he wanted to make it home by dark. It was a good hike and the little trails he followed through the woods would be hard to walk in the dark, full of foot-catching vines and roots and lots of stones to stumble on. He picked up his basket and set off down the path. It was little more than a game trail, and rather narrow. It was already growing darker, and Jonathan was very much afraid that he was going to have a rough walk home. He was concentrating so hard on where he was putting his feet that he didn’t watch where the path he was on was taking him, and took the wrong fork. It was quite a while before he realized that he wasn’t on the right path and in fact, had no idea where he was. He was lost. He turned around to retrace his steps and did fine until the path branched. He took what he hoped was the correct branch in the gathering darkness. A short while later, he had to admit that he was not only lost, he was hopelessly lost, with no idea of how far from home he was or anything else. It was a bit of a puzzle really, because he knew these woods very well, and had explored almost all of them. It must be the late dusk that threw him off. With a sigh, he sat down on a fallen tree to take stock of the situation.

On one hand, no one would be worried about him because he lived alone, except maybe his chickens since he wouldn’t be home to feed them, and since it was late Friday, no one at work would notice his absence right away. And since he often just worked from home on his computer, they might not notice for a few more days anyway. He had no close neighbors and his mother didn’t expect him to call until next weekend. On the other hand, these were just the woods near his house, which he had been exploring for the last five years, and when it was daylight again, surely he could find his way out easily; the darkness was what was confusing him. But that meant a night in the woods, with the snakes and all the biting insects that came out at night. It wasn’t like he had a choice, though.

He got up to walk a little farther to see if he could find a slightly more comfortable – and possibly safer – place to spend the night. If he only had some of the veggies left in his basket! In the dark, he couldn’t even see well enough to collect some wild greens. There would be no moon tonight, so it would be very dark indeed.

Finally he came upon a large tree with a nice fork in it high enough above the ground to make him feel safer from centipedes and snakes, large enough to wedge himself into and small enough that he would be wedged and wouldn’t be likely to fall out in the event that he should actually fall asleep. He clambered up into the tree and was soon ensconced there, his cheek pressed against the rough bark. He felt better about the situation than he had ever since he awoke late in the afternoon. He sat there, listening to the night sounds until he finally drifted off to sleep.

The sun was just coming up when he woke up, stiff and sore, with a deep bark imprint on his cheek. Climbing down, Jonathan set off again to find his way home. All morning he wandered through the woods, and after he came upon the same landmarks several times, he began leaving little trail blazes for himself to mark his way. Finally, just past noon and with his stomach growling with hunger, he found himself on a path that was familiar, although far from home. He followed it gratefully and about an hour later he was nearly home. As he stepped out of the woods and into the brush surrounding his house, he stopped in shock. Someone was in his garden and they were singing “Oats peas beans and barley grow…” just as he had been singing it yesterday before he left. He crept over to the edge of the garden, careful to stay hidden, and peeked out from behind the beans growing by the fence. He stopped in shock.

He was behind the beans, but he was also standing in the garden with a hoe, doing the weeding and singing. A basket of fresh vegetables was beside him.

It was Jonathan himself. It had to be. From behind the beans, Jonathan looked down at himself. He was wearing the exact same clothes and carried the same basket, raveling at exactly the same place on the handle. The patches on the jeans were the same and his cap was the same. There was the same nick on the side of the neck from shaving, although his was healed up a bit since yesterday.

How was this possible? What was happening?

As he crouched there, scared and puzzled, the Jonathan in the garden picked a few more things and headed for the house. He came back out moments later and walked purposefully towards the woods with the basket in his hand. The Jonathan hiding behind the runner beans waited until he had left and crept over to the kitchen window. There was a pile of fresh vegetables on the counter, just as he remembered leaving them the day before. There was even one tomato that wasn’t quite ripe, just as he remembered.

Jonathan rocked back on his heels. This must be a dream, except in a dream, his stomach wouldn’t be hurting from hunger. Maybe it was a hallucination, then, brought on by hunger and lack of sleep. He decided that this must be it and the best cure for that was to go in, eat some of those lovely vegetables and get some sleep. He let himself in the door and on the way to the kitchen, booted up his computer. He made himself a salad with the vegetables and took some leftover stew from the refrigerator and went back out to check his email while the stew heated in the microwave.

Jonathan glanced at the date and did a double take. It said that it was still yesterday.

He clicked to a couple of websites and they all said the same thing. He checked his email. All of it was familiar, mail he had answered yesterday, but the inbox showed it as still being the same date, and there was nothing new.

He snatched up the phone and dialed the number of a friend. All he got was an answering machine – and his friend, out of town yesterday, was supposed to be home all day today. Unless it was still yesterday. Somehow.

Jonathan ran out of the house and into the woods, crashing through the brush frantically, trying to catch up to himself. He remembered hearing the crashing from behind him yesterday – or today. He realized that he wasn’t sure he wanted to catch up to himself. Who knew what might happen? He decided to go to the clearing where he fell asleep instead. He got there in time to see himself step into the clearing, and chucked a fallen branch into the area, trying to scare himself away from the clearing and the nap. The Jonathan in the clearing looked down, and the Jonathan outside the clearing realized with a start that he remembered the falling branch.

As he stood there wondering what to do, the Jonathan in the clearing settled down and pulled his cap over his eyes.

The next thing Jonathan knew, he was waking himself up with a loud snore in the dusky clearing. He sat up, feeling confused and remembering what had happened, and shook his head in relief. Clearly, he had had a very, very strange dream. Perhaps hunger had something to do with it, because he was as ravenous as if he had been out in the woods all night.

He grabbed his basket and carefully followed the correct paths to get home. Even though it was nearly dark, he was careful to take his time and go the right direction. There would be no getting lost for Jonathan today. Maybe that dream had been a warning to watch his path.

Relieved, Jonathan found himself at the edge of the clearing where he lived just as it became fully dark.

He put down the basket by the door and let himself into the house. He stopped to boot up the computer on the way through; oddly, it was only in sleep mode. He shrugged. He must have forgotten to turn it off yesterday. As he walked towards the kitchen, he saw that the message light on his phone was blinking and he stopped to check his caller ID. There was one call from the friend he had called in his dream. He poked buttons and the message played: “Hey Jonathan, what did you want? I just got back into town…”

Jonathan didn’t hear any more of the message. He ran into the kitchen. Instead of a pile of fresh vegetables on the counter, there was a salad, wilted and dried out. He opened the microwave. It held a bowl of stew, congealed and old looking. Jonathan raced back out to the computer and checked the date. It said it was tomorrow. He sat there by the computer with his heart racing. He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew one thing. He wasn’t going to go out into those woods again anytime soon.

She Wolf (c)2007

The Abandoned

Cars- they never do what they are supposed to, unless what they are supposed to do is strand you in inconvenient places or eat your money. I was very unhappy with my car as I tapped on the peeling paint of the door in front of me.  This place looked so abandoned that I would swear no one could possibly live here, but you never know.

When no one answered, I pushed on the door, found it unlocked, and went inside. The inside was as derelict looking as the outside. I thought I saw someone in the kitchen, though, and I said, “Hello?” and went in that direction. There was no one there. Funny, it had looked just like a guy with a well-oiled duck tailed hairdo, blue jeans and a white t-shirt. But, well, I just caught a flash out of the corner of my eye. Maybe I had caught my own reflection in the window- I was wearing jeans and a whit shirt, and my imagination is legendary.

The kitchen only held a rusty sink with a dripping tap, a slightly dusty oil-cloth covered table, and an old- fashioned refrigerator with rust spots all over it.  I could see out the back window, though, and it looked like a junkyard out there. There were at least a dozen old cars back there, with vines growing all over them and  weeds knee-deep around them. Funny, though, how none of them looked smashed. They were all whole, just rusty and tied in place by Mother Nature.

The house was completely silent, and I decided that there must be no one here. As I walked back toward the front door, I glanced up the stairs, For a moment, the dust that was swirling around from me walking on the floor looked like a man in a driving duster, cap and goggles from the early 1900’s. It looked weird, but was gone as soon as I thought I saw it.

This place really had my imagination going.

I heard a slight thumping from upstairs and decided to make one last try at seeing if anyone was home. Maybe the owner of the house was elderly and had fallen or something and needed help. That would explain the dust and neglect.

I went up stairs. The stair carpet was so old and dirty that the pattern was completely obscured. Clouds of dust came up with each step I took, and I was sneezing by the time I reached the top of the stairs. I turned down the hall. There were several open doors lining it, and I looked in each one in turn. Empty rooms, dusty old dressers and rusty bedsprings- there wasn’t even anything here to interest a flea market salesman.

I was thinking that what I heard must have been a rat or maybe a bird caught in a room, because there was nothing here. I turned around to leave and saw a flash of dark blue suit and fedora turning into a room. This place was starting to creep me out seriously, but I had to pass that room to get to the stairs, anyway.

I trotted back down the hall and peered into a room that I had already looked into. From this angle, I could see what I had missed earlier. The owner of the suit and fedora was nowhere to be seen, but there was an old man, sitting in a rocking chair looking out the window. My car, stalled out on the main road, was in plain sight. He was just sitting and rocking.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “But my car has broken down. I need to call for help, and I didn’t know what else to do. I did try knocking.”

The man looked at me and smiled toothlessly. “I know,” he said in a quavering voice. “I was watching you come up.” He kept on rocking.

“Ah- do you have a phone so I can call for help?” He was making me even more nervous.

“No, I never felt the need to call out to the world. It just comes to me.” He gestured to the window.

I looked out, and saw a collage of images from the road to the house. There were all the cars I had seen in the back, but fresh and new looking. There was even a horse and buggy and a farm wagon. The 57 Chevy, the Cadillac with tail fins, a car that looked like it would belong to a mobster in the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition Thirties, were all there. I saw a Model T, a Model A, and a beautiful candy apple red Mustang, all souped up and looking ready for a race. A hot rod was up close to the house, and as I looked, a man with a well-oiled ducktail and blue jeans with a white t-shirt got out of it and walked towards the house. People were getting out of the other vehicles now. I saw a man with a duster, cap and goggles, and another man with a blue suit and fedora. There were a flapper, an old fellow in overalls and straw hat, and a man in a dapper suit with a high tight collar and bowler hat. They were all flooding towards the house, now.

Panicked, I turned and ran. The old man was laughing maniacally as I pelted down the stairs and out to my car. The lane was dusty and empty as I ran back down it- none of the cars, none of the people were there now, just dust and weeds.

My car started as soon as I turned the key and I sped away.

I made it home safely, and everything seemed normal, but, well, my days seem kind of foggy, and not quite real. Maybe it’s because I’m not sleeping well, because of the dreams.

I keep having dreams about that house and all the people. They seem to be living in it, and I seem to be living there with them. It’s awfully crowded.  Funny, huh?