A Halloween Story...

That didn't happen at Halloween.

This is a true story. If you believe it, great. If you don't, that's fine, too. I know what happened to me.

This happened when I was 24. I had just started working for a large multi-national company, headquartered in Plano, TX, but I was working at Ft. Hood, TX, doing mainframe data processing for Civil Service. I didn't work for the government, I was just doing work for them. Kind of a consultant, really.

The company that employed me had sent me to Plano for some in-house education and orientation. Another employee and I were driving the company van up there, so I had my parents drop me off at the datacenter to meet him, then they would drive my car home from there.

As I had just bought a new Beretta(car, not pistol), I had hoped my dad would drive it home, but he got into the passenger side and told my mom she could drive home. They left, and the other guy and I climbed into the van and left, also. The drive up was uneventful, and so was dinner in Plano that night.

We were staying in Corporate apartments, a two bedroom near the company. That night, I was awakened by a horrible dream. In the dream, what I thought was my grandmother was lying in a hospital bed. I was speaking with her and she said that she wanted me to come home. I told her I couldn't, that I had a week of classes there in Plano and I couldn't get out of them. She then said that if I didn't come then, that I wouldn't see her anymore, meaning that she would die. I woke up with a jolt, and had to get up and get a drink of water to calm down. The dream upset me. It upset me very much, but I finally calmed down and went back to sleep.

The next morning, we went to the company education buildings and found our class. I was sitting in the classroom before class started, when I saw my cousin-in-law at the door. He worked at the same company I did, but I didn't know he was up in Plano at the same time I was. Looking back, I knew he wasn't there for class, but I was blocking the real answer from my mind. He asked the instructor if he could speak to me, and I followed him out into the hall.

He then told me that my cousin was in the car and that I needed to go talk to her. I asked him what was wrong, and if something had happened to my grandmother. The only thing he told me was that I had to go talk to my cousin, his wife. I followed him down to the parking lot and out to the car, where I found my cousin with bloodshot eyes, like she had been crying. I jumped in the car and asked her what was wrong, fearing for my grandmother. What she told me shocked the hell out of me.

She told me that my father had suffered a heart attack in the middle of the night, and that when my mother went to wake him up at 04:30, so he could get to work(he was a gravel truck driver, and started very early every day), he was laying on the floor in the living room. The Paramedics had come, but there was nothing they could do.

I'm convinced that the dream that night was my father coming to say goodbye to me, and that my brain had changed it top my grandmother because, well, because she was the next logical person to pass, not my father. You know, parents are not supposed to outlive their children, and all that. That one tore me up pretty good, much more than the time I saw a ghost at the age of five, but that's a story for a later time.

Walrilla