text: My life was going well. I have a great family, an occasionally annoying younger brother and I lived in an average house (picket fence and all). I didn’t think there was more out there, or that maybe it was a little boring until I met the stranger. To tell you about her, I need to back up quite a bit. To a Tuesday night in late September. ~September~ I had my hands stuffed deep into my pockets. To say that Midwest winters are cold is a drastic understatement. Midwest winters are brutal. It’s so cold that when I stepped outside the wind made me cough and it whipped across my face. The snow crunched beneath my feet, icicles were hanging from porches and roofs. Even though it’s only 5:30 p.m. it’s already dark outside. The early nights make the world seem unfriendly. It’s on this night that a flash of red flits across the corner of my eye, so quickly that I thought perhaps I had imagined it. I turned and noticed a woman in a coat so long and billowing that it looked almost like a cape. She turned around a corner and was gone. Something about her stuck in my mind. Or at least, I think it did. It’s hard to say if I just remember it that way now because of all that came after. It wasn’t until February that I saw her again. I’d had a craving for brownies and stopped at the store to pick up a mix. Like last time, I again caught a flash of red. When I looked around I saw the same majestic coat as it fluttered around the corner of an aisle. The hair on the back of my neck went up and I had goosebumps. I wasn’t sure why my subconscious was reacting this way but I had to find out. I followed her quickly down the aisle. She was moving fast and besides her coat, all I could see was her long brunette hair. She turned right and I kept going but when I walked around the corner I saw tons of shoppers (more than normally frequented this store) and the mysterious woman had disappeared. As I stood there perplexed a chill went through me. But I was being paranoid, Chicago is a big city and it probably wasn’t the same person. I definitely wasn’t being followed. More likely, it was someone with a similar coat. I shook it off and walked out of the store. It wasn’t until I arrived at home that I realized I had completely forgotten my cart and the brownies. After that it was hard to shake the feeling that I was being watched. Every time I would check (surreptitiously looking over my shoulder) there was no one there. I tried to tell myself that I was imagining things, that it was just a coincidence or someone who lived in my neighborhood. But deep down I knew that something was up, I just wasn’t sure what. When I saw her again, it was months later. School had let out for the summer and between hanging out with my friends and working a part time job at a local restaurant I was training for a half marathon. It was an August day, hot and brutally humid. I had to do a ten mile run and was kicking myself for not dragging myself out of bed earlier to beat the heat. All I could picture was an ice cold glass of water (and I was only three miles into my run). That’s when I saw a flash of red ahead of me. I had been seeing red out of the corner of my eye for months and had been trying to dismiss it. Every time I turned or tried to focus on it there was nothing there. I was beginning to worry that I was imagining things. So it wasn’t until I got closer that I realized this was real and I truly believed my eyes. It was the woman with the flowing cape and long brown hair! This time I caught up with her quickly, it felt as though she was waiting for me. I stopped by her and she turned toward me, in that moment I wasn’t sure what to say. I’ve dreamt of this moment but it’s dawning on me that I’ve never thought past seeing her face. She’s looking at me intently, so deep in my eyes and there’s something familiar about her but I just can’t place it. It seems as though she's come to some sort of conclusion because she shakes her head slightly nad says, “No, you’re not quite ready.” “What do you mean?” I ask but at that moment there’s a screech and a loud honk behind me. I whip around and see that a car has ran a red light, another car has stopped just in time - narrowly avoiding a collision. I look around towards the woman, to ask again what she means and why she’s following me. But she’s gone. I have chills again and I’m beginning to think that this is very, very real. I’m not sure what to do now. The woman hasn’t been dangerous, or at least she hasn’t been threatening me. I’m not sure what, exactly, I would report to the police or my family. I keep running into a weird woman in a red cape/jacket (even though it was 80 degrees out) and she said something cryptic. I do mention it to my best friend who agrees that it’s a little strange but that there are types of people in this world. Although she’ll also keep an eye out for the lady. I become obsessed with finding her again, I need to know what she meant. A few months later I’m passing by an intersection and someone flags me down to help them cross the street. They link their arm through mine and we head across. When we’re almost to the curb there’s a commotion, some irritated driver is honking at the car in front of them. As we step over the curb I turn back to the person whose arm is linked in mine only to see that it’s the woman in the red coat. She’s peering at me closely and, speechless, I return her gaze. “Now,” she says, “you’re ready. You’ve done enough good deeds to come back to the realm.” And then she disappears. I blinked one second she was there and the next she was gone. At this stage I thought about going to the police but wasn’t entirely sure what I would say. She didn’t seem like she was going to harm me, if anything it was like she wanted to give me a message but just couldn’t quite get the meaning across. I was flummoxed. What was the realm? When was I a part of that? Why don’t I have any memory of it? When I went to bed that night I had a really vivid dream. It was a technicolor whorl, it felt familiar but I couldn't recall what any of it was the next morning. This went on for months with nothing changing. Each night I would have the same dream, there was an intense feeling of deja vu, but nothing was clear enough in it for me to know what any of it meant. But then, one night, I had the same dream. However, this team (while the main details were the same) the angle was different. In this dream, I was floating above the whirling multicolored mass. It slowly came into focus, it became clearly more of an oval. I squinted and realized that it was the pond in my backyard. I gasped awake. No wonder it had felt familiar this whole time! It was close to me all along! Of course, the version in my backyard is a drab shallow pool. It isn’t deep enough for fish or any fun plants. It’s a small water feature, really just for decoration. It’s 3am but I have too much energy to fall back asleep. Quietly, I pad down the stairs in PJs and socks. I slip out the door and into the yard. The pond looks the same to me as it has always looked. Frankly, I don’t understand my subconscious’ obsession. I head back to my room hoping that I’ll get a few more hours of sleep before I have to get up for school. I find that I’m exhausted the next day. In class my mind wanders back to the dream, the pond and what it all means. I find myself obsessing, drawing images from the dream in my notebook, daydreaming when I should be studying. This isn’t like me! I have goals, big ones. I want to go to an Ivy league (preferably Brown), study international law and then go on to become a human rights attorney. For that, the groundwork starts here, in high school. So I need to be focused. And yet, today I can’t seem to make myself listen to any of the lectures. I’m drifting back to the dream (both awake and asleep - I doze off in history class). At the end of the day I decide to end this once and for all, I’ll explore every inch of the pond so that I’ll be satisfied there’s nothing there and it will stop haunting every second of my life. As soon as I get home I make a beeline for it. I walk around it quickly, which only takes a couple of minutes. Then I go around again, studying every detail. At my next pass around I’m crawling, hoping that being on the ground will help me to catch things that I might’ve missed form higher up. I’ve been around it three times and have still found nothing. I’m completely baffled. Hands on my hips I spend a full twenty minutes staring at it. Wind ripples the water and the light dances across as the sun sinks lower in the sky. I’m at my wits end, there must be an answer here, a reason that I’ve dreamt of this pond for months. Yet I can find nothing here. Out of ideas and options, I put one foot in and then the other. I don’t think I’ll find anything but I’ll try anything at this point. Step after step the cool water seeps into my clothes, weighing me down. It’s not a deep pond and, with the water only at my waist, I’m almost in the middle. It’s when I take the last step, when I’m directly in the middle, that things seem to shift and change. The water whooshes up like a fountain and then I’m falling down through a tunnel. A tunnel that I know for a fact doesn’t exist and yet here I am, falling. Panicking, I hold my breath for as long as possible but then I simply can’t anymore and gasp a mouthful of water in what I assume are my last moments. But I don’t die, I’m breathing normally even though I’m far underwater, below the Earth’s surface, below the bottom of the pond. I’m slowing down, falling less precipitously, and then I’m floating down. My feet find purchase on solid ground and I look around. It’s a gorgeous, technicolor world. It’s not earth but I’m not sure where or what it is either. Where I should be scared I instead find that I’m feeling as though I’ve landed in a long lost place - comfortable and familiar. I turn and there’s the woman in the red coat walking up to me. She greets me by simply saying, “Welcome home.”