It's been a long trip, criss-crossing the state in my car. I've been a salesman all my life, selling farm equipment. I love the selling part. It's easy when you have a good product. It's the long drives that kill me. Another small motel for the night and it's back on the road again.
As I pulled into the parking lot of the motel, all I could think about was the bed and hot shower waiting for me. I've never been a superstitious man but I have a fascination with the number seventeen and always ask if that room is available. As luck would have it, I got my wish this time.
I wheeled my overnight bag into the room and plopped down on the small bed. The motels I stay at lack frills but they serve my purpose and it makes my boss happy to see how little I write on my expense account.
Although I close more sales in person than on the phone, maybe it's time to let the younger guys make these trips. Today I seem more tired than usual and wonder if I'll even have the energy to grab a bite to eat and take that hot shower. Perhaps there's a place nearby that delivers. Knowing that there's usually some information in the nightstand by the bed, I check but all I find is the usual bible and what looks like a journal, something a fellow traveler must have left behind by accident.
Curious, I open it to see if there's any mention who the owner might be and immediately notice the name Dylan Roberts and the date August 5, 2024 written on the inside cover along with a disturbing message.
To the person holding this journal:
I don't expect you to believe me but, as of the date above, I exist, no matter what the authorities tell you. Unfortunately it's only a matter of time before I'm no longer a free man. As you read this I am probably either dead, confined to a mental institution or being kept in a secret government research laboratory because I'm not the only one who believes what I'm going to write in these pages is true.
As I read those words one thing becomes evident. Whether this journal was written as a prank or by someone in real trouble, it was not left by accident. Now, I may have been tired before, but I was fully awake after reading the first sentence.
Death is an experience I hope not to repeat for many years.
My name is Dylan Roberts, at least that's the name on my birth certificate. Until recently I believed I was born in a small Texas town but lately, I'm not sure of anything anymore.
Growing up, I was just your typical kid. My early childhood could be described in four words... family, school, television and sports and my friends were primarily male since my hormones hadn't kicked in yet. Now, my life is anything but normal.
My life was nothing special, at least until the age of nine. Growing up in Texas, if you were interested in sports, you basically had two choices, baseball and football. I had no interest in having my body subjected to the punishment that football involves so I chose baseball.
I'll admit that the beginning I was pretty bad. From the age of eight until the age of ten I played right field in a Little League program. Right field is where they put you when your skills are limited but, in time, I did improve and that position was given to someone else. I was moved to left field and later, when I was much better, to second base.
Playing right field did have a huge impact on my life but it has nothing to do with baseball. We had a game scheduled on my ninth birthday and the town had a meteor shower the night before. When I walked to my spot in right field, I spotted a tiny remnant of that event in the grass. A little smaller than the size of a golf ball, it was black with streaks of orange running through it. Thinking it was a cool souvenir, I put it in my pocket.
My parents were usually too busy to attend my games but my mom always drove me to them and picked me up at my friend Tommy's house when she finished work. Dad would always be waiting for us at home and we'd have dinner together. Invariably, his first question was "How was the game?" It was never really about whether we won or lost, he wanted to know if I had a good time. His attitude was that if you weren't having fun doing something, maybe you should be doing something else.
Most days I had only bad news but besides finding that rock, that day did have one bright spot. Although I struck out twice I did hit a triple when a checked swing drove the baseball over the first base bag into right field where the right fielder, an even worse player than me, had a tough time running after the ball and throwing it back into the infield. That earned me a big smile from my mom and a high-five from my dad.
With dinner finished, a chocolate cake was brought out and we had a very small birthday celebration. Unlike most of my friends, I never wanted a big party. Marking the passing of another year with my parents was all I needed.
It was during that celebration that I showed my parents the rock I'd found. I planned on keeping it on the nightstand next to my bed. We all thought it was cool that I had something from outer space.
I remember two unusual things about that night. It was then that I had the first of my strange dreams. It was also the first time that I noticed the orange parts of the rock glow a little in the dark.
I said the dream was strange because nothing in it was familiar to me. I remember riding in the back of a pickup truck traveling through cotton fields and past a large sawmill. Eventually, the truck stopped in the middle of a small town and I hopped off. The whole business section of that town couldn't have been more that a mile long and I doubt that there were more than two hundred people in it but the weirdest part of the dream was that nobody seemed to pay any attention to me. It was as if I was invisible.
Dreams about that town lasted a few more days and then, just as quickly as they had started, the dreams stopped, leaving me to wonder what caused them. I've been told that dreams are issues the brain is trying to resolve but those dreams felt real as if they were memories more than fantasies.
It would be a year before that town entered my dreams again. In an effort to make some sense of the dreams, I placed a pad and pen next to my bed to record them after I awoke while they were fresh in my mind. I also decided that if I had another dream about that town I'd try to make my character search for a newspaper in the hope it would tell me where I was and what the date was. It was obvious from the cars in my dreams that they took place in a time before I was born.
During the day I tried to be the same person I'd always been but I had an uneasy feeling that things would never be the same again. Even as a kid I could sense that something had changed but there was no way I could have imagined by how much.
I had a difficult time trying to go to sleep the next night. If I did dream about that town, I worried about what my next dream would reveal. It must have been around 3 a.m. before sleep would finally come, and send me back to that town. The good news was that I did have some influence over the actions of my character and I went in search of a newspaper.
I found one of those boxes that hold newspapers for sale but being a ghostly observer, there was no way I could buy one myself. I felt like Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" being shown the past, only it wasn't my past.
It took a while, but a man put twenty-five cents in the coin slot of the box and took out a paper. The banner across the top said "Arkansas Democrat-Gazette" and the date was October 17, 1978. If there actually was a newspaper with that name, there was no way I would have known it.
The alarm on my clock abruptly ended that night's dream. With barely four hours of sleep I had to quickly write down its details and get ready for school. While having breakfast, I asked my mom to take me to the local library although I never told her the real reason why. I couldn't explain to myself what was happening so there was no way I could explain it to her. To hide my true intent, I told her I wanted a library card but the real reason was to find out if my dreams were more than just dreams.
I closed the journal. Like the person I'd been reading about, I had to get some sleep so I grudgingly put the journal down and closed my eyes. I hadn't eaten or showered but I'd do both before I hit the road again in the morning.
It was difficult keeping my mind on my driving. Whether the story in the journal was real or not, it had captured my imagination. I know I should have handed the journal to the clerk at the front desk but I didn't. It was packed in my suitcase. I had to read the rest of it.
The business meeting with Allied Farms didn't go as smoothly as planned. My mind was elsewhere and I lost the sale. That journal was screwing with my brain and I had to remind myself that my career was more important. With a renewed sense of purpose, I drove to my next appointment, confident that the last meeting was just a temporary setback. The next clients would see my "A" game.
That day I met with a group of ten farmers who'd formed a cooperative. This time my mind was focused on the sale and this time the outcome was different. An order of combine harvesters was secured. I was back on track to be the best salesman in the company.
My usual routine after a big sale was to find a fancy restaurant and celebrate with a good meal and a good whiskey but this time the reward I chose was to read another part of the journal. With that in mind, I picked up some sesame chicken from a Chinese takeout place and settled in for the evening at another roadside motel. You might be asking why I don't stay at big hotels. It's simple. It's an attempt to stay connected to the people I deal with. Staying at a fancy hotel I might start to feel that I'm better than the farmers I deal with. I never want that. Through the years I've learned that they can figure out very quickly who's real and who's bullshitting them. I used to work with a partner but ever since I watched him try to smooth-talk some customers into buying equipment they didn't need for the sake of a bigger commission I decided to work alone.
This time I remembered to take my hot shower before starting to read. Refreshed, I crawled under the covers and opened the journal to the page where I left off.
My trip to the library was shocking to say the least. The librarian informed me that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was the name of an actual paper. Whatever was happening to me was beyond coincidence.
It's strange but my "special dreams" only happen during the week of my birthday. The other thing I noticed was that the rock only glowed at that time. Looking back, I should have considered that the rock was connected to the dreams but I was just a kid. It's funny. I often hear people complain when a television episode ends on a cliff hanger and they have to wait a few days to see the next episode. Imagine what it's like having to wait a full year.
In the beginning, my dreams centered around events of the 70's and early 80's. At the time I didn't understand what the older people in town were talking about, things like Watergate and the death of John Paul I. It seemed everyone had an opinion about his death. Some people said his death was the result of natural causes while others had wild conspiracy theories. The children in town were more concerned with music and sci-fi movies after the popularity of Star Wars and a few years later, E.T.
Whether it was puberty or something else that brought it on, my dreams soon changed. Instead of giving me an overview of the citizens of the town, they centered around a particular family and got more detailed. The family consisted of a father named Pete Landy, his wife Lisa and their three children, Mark aged fifteen, Jennifer aged twelve and an infant named James. Pete worked at the sawmill while his wife took care of the children. I don't remember how I knew but the year was 1984. I can say that although my dreams did follow in chronological order, there were times that they skipped years within the span of a week.
By the age of thirteen, I knew the family as well as if they'd been neighbors. Mark and Jennifer were no longer living at home although still living in town after each got married. James was already my age and attending middle school. At that point I still hadn't discovered where they lived if they lived at all and I had no idea how to find out the answers.
The sound of my cell phone jolted me back to reality. Caller ID indicated the call was from my boss.
"Hi, boss. Everything okay?"
"Same old, same old. Just checking in. I haven't heard from you in a few days. How's it going?"
"I made some money for the company but I didn't do so well with Allied Farms. Not sure why. Maybe they got a better deal from someone else. How are the wife and kids?"
"Janice is fine. As for the teenagers, who can tell these days? I barely understand what they're talking about."
"I should be able to wrap up this business trip and be back at the office fairly soon. Hopefully you'll give me a few days off to rest these old tired bones."
"Old tired bones? What are you... forty-one... forty-two? Wait until you're my age. Then you can talk about old tired bones. Seriously though, are you ready for a desk job?"
"I don't know but I'm thinking about it."
"We'll talk about it when you get back. In the meantime, drive carefully. I can't afford to lose my best salesman."
"Will do. Give my best to the family."
When the call ended, I decided it was a natural time to pause the reading and pack the journal away. I still had another week on the road before I'd be able to return home but because of the crazy life I led there was no wife and kids waiting for me.
