Part 1

I saw Amy standing there. Alone. In

front of her old farm house. Just the way I left her the last time I saw her. It was dark, but I could make out her form in the silver light of the moon.

She looked just as beautiful as I remember. Thick, long, straight dark brown hair, perfectly framing her slender oval looking face.  Her large almond shaped, amber colored eyes seemed to stare right through me.

Welcoming me.

With a hint of a smile and a wave of a hand, she beckoned me to her. Just like when we were kids, and I would show up at her house to ask her parents if she could play.

She would always stand at the top of the stairs, with that look of mischief in her eyes. As if to say, what kind of trouble shall we get into today?

  I couldn’t help it I got so excited to see her, I ran straight for her. Only the harder I ran the farther away she seemed to get. Always with that same hauntingly beautiful smile.

Finally, I stopped as I felt the sting of hot tears hit my eyes. Why couldn’t I catch up to her? When I stopped, she stopped.

We both just stood there staring at each other with tears in our eyes.  Suddenly, I was under water. My lungs were burning, and I couldn’t move. I looked over, Amy was there next to me.

We were stuck in a car that was plummeting into nothingness. My head hurt. The whole car was full of water, and the doors wouldn’t open. The numbers 523 kept flashing inside my mind.

When I looked over at Amy I could see the smile was gone, and in its place was sheer and utter terror. That’s when it hit me. We’re going to die!This is how Amy died!

I screamed a long silent scream, and just like that I woke up. The scream which turned out wasn’t so silent, died in my throat. I was back in my room. Back in my bed. Shaking like a leaf. It felt so real.

Why did it feel so real?

I looked at the clock. It was 3 am, and I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep tonight. I never can after I dream about her…

The next day I drove straight to Amy’s house. It was empty now. Her parents had packed up and left town just shortly after her funeral, four years earlier. It looked just how it did in my dream last night.

A small shiver went slowly up my spine. Was it all in my head, or do my lungs really hurt?

I shook the feeling aside and started to walk around the old farm house. Looking for what, I didn’t know.

I began to remember the last time I dropped Amy off here. We had just went shopping for our senior prom, and we were supposed to meet back up the next afternoon at our favorite diner.

I remember being so mad at her when she didn’t show up, that Saturday night. She wasn’t answering her phone either. Something that wasn’t entirely out of character for her. I finally ordered and ate alone. Sitting there all I could think about was how I was going to tell her off good, the next time I saw her.

The following day I got the call. Amy never came home that afternoon, or the following morning. She was gone forever. Ripped from our lives with no notice. She was nation wide news for weeks. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about her. She was famous but in the most awful way imaginable. 

  It was an agonizing three weeks before they finally found her inside her car, at the bottom of the lake. They classified her death accidental. They think she lost control of the car while on the interstate, and knocked herself unconscious on the steering wheel. Which caused her to veer off the road, into the Icy lake below.

They say she never regained consciousness. That she didn’t feel any pain.

It was hard to believe. It all happened so suddenly. And of course there was the nightmares. 

I had been having the same recurring nightmares since the day she went missing. I had no idea why, or what they meant. Maybe this is my mind’s way of dealing with the tragic events surrounding Amy’s death, I thought.

Maybe it’s just the guilt I feel for living, while she’s lying in coffin for all eternity, after such a horrific end to her very short life.

No matter how hard I try though, I can’t shake the feeling there’s more to Amy’s death then what we know. I don’t know how I know. I just do.  

                           Part 2

Weeks had passed with no nightmares. Was I just imagining the whole thing? That night I decided if I had another dream I would find someone to talk to about it.

After dinner I went upstairs to get ready for bed. As I was walking into my room, I noticed a picture of Amy and I had fallen of the wall. Where her face was, I noticed a good size crack as if someone had punched it. I picked it up and placed it on the dresser, as I turned I saw something move out of the corner of my eye.

Standing about five feet behind me was Amy. She was dripping wet and looked angry. I wasn’t sure what it was, but she was holding something in her hands. A piece of shiny white medal. When I looked closer I noticed it read Ohio Birthplace of Aviation. I knew what it was. I had seen it a thousand times before. It was the Ohio state license plate. What it meant I still didn’t know.

Just then Amy lunged for me, and grabbed my arm. I could feel her cold, wet hands digging into my wrist. Suddenly, my whole room vanished!

In its place was the inside of a huge truck, except it wasn’t one I recognized. It was old and smelled of rust. I noticed a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey was lying on the seat next to me, with half the contents gone. Again the numbers 523 were flashing in my mind’s eye. I looked to my left and noticed a man I had never seen before. It looked as though he had no idea I was in the truck.

He was middle aged with dark hair, brown eyes and a wide crooked nose. The stubble on his face told me he hadn’t shaved in awhile. The speedometer told me we were going much faster than anyone on this road should go. Faster than any truck this old should ever go.

The road was quiet. Not a car in sight. The slight rocking movement of the truck warned of the impending danger. A few seconds later in the distance in front of us I noticed headlights. As the car got closer I recognized it as Amy’s little Honda Accord.  Just as we got close, the driver of the truck I was in lost control, swerved into the oncoming traffic lane next to us, which caused Amy’s vehicle to swerve to avoid it. Her car drove off the road, and fell straight into the water below.

Immediately after that I was back in my room, and Amy was gone. The sound of my phone ringing broke the eerie silence that had settled over the room. It was my mom telling me to turn on the t.v. and find the local news station. She said she loved me, and she would be home soon.

Not knowing what I was looking for, I flipped the channels impatiently. Within seconds I found what I was looking for. My stomach dropped. There on a split screen under the words breaking news was a picture of Amy, and a close up picture of the man I just saw in my vision. He was standing next to the front of a rusty looking truck, with a license plate that read Ohio: birthplace of aviation. The first three plate numbers were 523. Immediately, a cold chill ran through my entire body. I knew then what those numbers meant. I wasn’t crazy! It was all real!

The news story went on to say that there had been a break in the case. A man came in to the police station earlier that day, and confessed to causing the accident that killed Amy. He had been drinking heavily on that night, four years earlier, and that was the reason he didn’t stop. He claimed to have been haunted by terrible nightmares of the accident, and the girl inside the car. The police arrested him on the spot. They charged him with vehicular manslaughter.

He would be punished and the world would know the truth of Amy’s death. I knew it was over.

I could breath again.

The next day as I got out of the car and walked down the path to the old farm house for the very last time, I felt a peaceful feeling come over me. I took the wildflowers I had in my hand, and laid them in the exact spot I last saw her alive. I felt a soft breeze come up from behind me, and watched it gently blow the flowers away.

Wild and free I thought, just like my Amy…