Rushed (4 page)

He turned and looked behind him, but there was nothing there.  It was just an ordinary dirt road winding through an ordinary cornfield.  Again, the only thing out of the ordinary was the sickly-looking corn. 

The cell phone buzzed to life in his hand, startling him so badly that he almost dropped it. 

He took a moment to curse at the stupid thing before answering it.

“What happened?” asked Karen.

“Nothing.  I just lost the signal for a minute there.  Like I told you would happen.”

“That was kind of scary.”

“Just a lost signal,” he repeated.  He had no intention of telling her about hearing something in the corn.  He didn’t want to worry her.  Besides, he still had no idea what it was or how much of it had only been his imagination.  It was probably nothing more than a deer hiding in the field. 

He turned and began walking again.  Ahead of him, the road was curving to the right and beginning to slope a little downhill. 

Despite the chill he felt when he was in the strange area with the sickly corn, he now found himself sweating a little.  It was going to be a very warm day.

“How goes the cake?” he asked.

“Still cooling.  I’m getting ready to whip up the frosting.  Strawberry pies are done.  I have three caramel apple pies just about ready to come out of the oven and two blackberries ready to go in.”

“See, it’s probably good I’m not there.  I can’t behave myself around your blackberry pie.”

“It does have an effect on you.”

He followed the road around the curve, his eyes still searching the corn for signs of movement.  Why didn’t he hear it anymore?  Where had it gone? 

“I kind of wish I’d come with you.”

“You have pies and cakes to make.  And you hate long car rides.  They make you sick.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think you’d like cornfields, either, actually.” 

“I guess I probably wouldn’t.”

“Besides, I’m on an adventure, remember.  You can’t expect me to take a
girl
on an adventure.”

“Oh, right.  What was I thinking?”

Eric emerged from the corn into a wide, weedy clearing and stopped, his eyes fixed on the structure that stood before him.  All at once, the mysteries of the field were forgotten. 

“Karen…”

“Huh?”

“I just remembered something from my dream.”

“You did?  What?”

“A barn.  A big, red, wooden barn with peeling paint and a sagging roof.  …And I’m looking at it right now.”

Chapter Four

He recognized the monstrous red structure as soon as he saw it.  It was not merely a vague recollection, but was instead perfectly vivid in every detail.  It was exactly as he had seen it each of these past three nights, right down to the gaps between the boards and the rusted-through tin roof. 

The memory of the barn from his dream—
this
barn—came rushing back to him in an instant, and with it came that awful feeling of gut-wrenching fear and foreboding with which he’d awakened each night.  Though he could still remember no other details about the dream, not even the reason why this barn filled him with irrational dread, he was sure that he had seen this very same barn in his sleep. 

But how?  He’d never been here in his life.  How would he even know that such a place existed? 

“What do you mean you’re looking at it right now?” asked Karen.  “You mean it’s real?  It’s
there
?”

“I’m looking right at it.  It’s here.  I’m standing right in front of it.”

“Are you serious?”

“Uh huh.”

“How do you know it’s the same barn?”

“I just do.”

“But you didn’t remember
anything
from your dream until just now.”

“I know.  But this was in my dream.  This exact barn.  I know it was.  As soon as I saw it, I remembered it.”

“Send me a picture of it.”

“What?” 

“Send me a picture.  I want to see it.”

“How do you expect me to—?”

“The camera on your phone, goofball.”

“I have a camera on my phone?” 

“Yes.  You know that.”

“No I don’t.”  But he realized even as he argued with her that he
did
recall her telling him about the camera when she first gave the annoying little device to him.  At the time, he thought the phone was an utter waste of money even without a camera in it.  It was just one of dozens of extra features he’d never had any intention of using.

“Send it to me.”

“How do I do that, exactly?”

Karen talked him through the process.  He had to hang up to do it, but soon enough she was looking at the very same barn on her phone, seeing precisely what he was seeing. 

He refused to admit that that really was kind of cool. 

“That’s a really creepy barn,” agreed Karen after calling him back.

“Yes it is.”

“You’re sure this was in your dream?”

“Positive.”

“That’s really weird, Eric.”

“Well, yeah.”

“
Scary
weird.”

“I know.”

“What if…”

“What if what?”

For a moment she was silent.  Then she surprised him by saying, “What if it’s all real?  You’re…
feelings
.  The things that old woman said.  All of it.  What if it’s real?”

“You don’t really believe any of that stuff, do you?”

“Do
you
?”

There was the real question.  After all, if he didn’t believe any of it, why would he be out here?  Some part of him must have expected to find
something
.  Otherwise he would have turned around long before he reached the county line.  And he certainly never would have left his car. 

“I don’t know,” he confessed.  “I really don’t.”

“I can’t decide if it’s really scary or really kind of cool.”

Eric found himself leaning toward “really scary” but perhaps that was just him.  “Listen, I’m going to have to hang up for a little while.”

“Don’t hang up.  I want to know what you find.”

He was surprised to realize that he was already walking toward the door.  “Even if I don’t, I have a feeling I’m going to lose the signal again in a minute.”

“Okay.  Just…  Please be careful.”

“I will.”

He hung up the phone and approached the barn.  He thought he might find the huge, double doors locked or otherwise blocked off in some way.  Given the condition of the barn, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find the hinges sagging or broken, leaving the heavy doors weighted hopelessly into the dirt.  If he were to tell the honest truth, he
hoped
that he would find his way blocked.  But one of the two doors stood ajar, almost as if it were waiting for him. 

Just above the doors, someone had mounted a bronze eagle with its wings spread in flight.  The instant he looked up at this decoration, he recognized it.  He’d looked upon it in the dream, just as he did now. 

An eagle…

The only thing he’d been able to remember of his dream until a moment ago was that there was something about a bird.  And here was a bird now, blatantly emblazoned right above the entrance of the rundown barn.  Even if he could somehow convince himself that this barn wasn’t really the same one from his dream, that it was just his mind playing tricks on him, he couldn’t possibly deny the image of a bird so obviously placed above the entrance. 

Eric tucked his cell phone into his front pocket, looked back one last time at the cornfield and the little dirt road that brought him here and then stepped through the door and into the shadowy interior of the barn. 

Even the inside was familiar.  The way the sunlight filtered through the gaps in the boards and the holes in the tin roof was exactly as he had seen it in his dream, down to the last detail.  Even the weeds that were reaching through the many sunlit openings near the floor were the same.  Every place his eyes fell, he found details he remembered.  It was as if he’d been here a million times before, as if he’d spent his whole life here. 

Except there was nothing as warm and comforting as a memory of home.  A deep and churning dread was rising in his gut.  Something was very, very wrong here.

He began walking through the barn, toward the door on the far side, his eyes searching every crack and crevice for the slightest sign of danger.  But the building was deserted.  The stalls on either side were empty, with no evidence remaining of whatever animals they may have once housed.  There weren’t even any birds roosting in the high rafters above his head. 

He wished he could remember more of his dream.  What happened to him in the barn?  What did he see?  What did he find?  Every surface, every beam of sunlight, every creak and groan of the aging lumber was familiar to him, yet he could not seem to remember anything beyond what he was looking at.  It came back to him only as he saw it with his own eyes.

But some part of him, buried deep down in some far corner of his brain, must have still remembered it, because that awful, gut-churning fright remained.  Whatever it was he’d found here in his dream, it wasn’t pleasant. 

An odd noise startled him and he stopped to listen, his skin prickling with gooseflesh.  It came from somewhere on the other side of the far door, a sickly bleating sound, like nothing he’d ever heard before.  He was no expert on farm animals, but to his ears, it was like the utterances of a wretched, starving animal. 

That nauseous feeling in his belly grew. 

Slowly, he crept toward the back of the barn, his eyes fixed on the second set of large, double doors that stood partially opened, just like the first.  But while there was brilliant sunlight cutting through the shadows where he had entered the barn, the space beyond those far doors was dark and shadowy. 

He felt a chill creep through him and realized he was holding his breath.  He had to force himself to breathe normally.

Why was he so worried?  What had he seen within these walls while he was dreaming?

When he reached the doors, he felt a cool draft flowing across his sweat-dampened skin and was reminded of the strange moments back in the cornfield, where the corn had withered.  This was like those areas, he realized.  It was connected somehow. 

His eyes swept across the ground as he again wondered if some invisible poison might be soaked into the soil, undetectable fumes rising around him, invading his body, poisoning and twisting his mind. 

He forced the unpleasant thought away and peered through the open doors. 

For a moment, he was confused.  He turned and looked back toward the sunlit front doors.  The barn was big.  Each set of double doors was more than large enough to allow entry for a sizable tractor, but it could not have been much bigger than this room when he stood staring at it from outside.  Yet through this door waited a second room easily twice as long as the first.  Empty stalls lined the walls on either side of a wide walkway that reached far past where the barn should have ended given its exterior dimensions. 

It was impossible.  It was like stepping inside an M. C. Escher work. 

It had to be an optical illusion of some sort.  There was no other logical explanation. 

But then again, why would anything here be logical?  Nothing he had done today was logical. 

And even as he tried to make himself accept what was happening to him, he realized that he recalled discovering these same impossible dimensions in his dream.

Movement drew his attention to the far end of the second room.  Something that appeared to be some kind of chicken was making its way across the floor near the next set of double doors.

Another bird…

As he watched it, he quickly realized that there was something wrong with the creature.  Though small and plump, like a chicken, it wasn’t moving like any barnyard fowl he had ever seen.  It didn’t hold its head up as it walked, surveying the room in lively jerks.  Instead, it looked as if it were hanging its head in a curiously forlorn manner.  Also, it didn’t strut like a chicken.  Instead, it moved in slow, lurching motions, as if on the verge of death.  It was either the most depressed little chicken he had ever laid eyes on or there was something very not right about it. 

Again, that awful bleating noise came.  It seemed to come from beyond the far doorway.  It reminded him a little of a lamb or a calf, but it was gruff and choked, like something slowly strangling to death in the jaws of a steel snare. 

The chicken-thing continued its labored lurching, unfazed by the terrible sound. 

Still standing in the doorway, Eric checked his cell phone.  He wasn’t remotely surprised to see that he had no signal.  He returned it to his pocket and looked around again.  The sunlight drilled through the holes in the rusted roof and the gaps between the boards in the walls, just like in the last room of the impossible barn, but it did not seem nearly as warm and bright as it should have been.  The air felt cold against his skin.  Even the sound of the gentle wind outside was muted.  Only that awful bleating noise disturbed the stillness. 

And yet, even the weirdness was familiar.  His dream unfolded before him, promising to reveal to him in vivid detail why he had awakened breathless and afraid these past three nights, but only if he continued to walk in the footprints of the nightmare.

Glancing over his shoulder at the bright strip of sunlight once more, he braced himself for whatever horrors his nightmare still had in store for him and continued toward the far doors and the mysteries that waited beyond them.