Chapter Three

The rest of the day was committed to trying to figure out where that damn field was, or if it even was real. Based on the logic that I couldn't dream about someone I had never met, I bet I can't dream about a place I've never seen. 

But as I scrolled through the three million search results for "gorgeous field" I began to realize how impossible this was.  

I was almost two in the afternoon before I finally gave up. 

I closed my laptop, that I'd had to plug in while I used it from draining the battery, and tossed it on the foot of my bed. I had let my dog out hours ago. She had no interest in research, only in frockling in the back yard. 

    I left my room, shutting my wooden door a bit forcefully behind me. The house was cool and quiet, all I could hear was my cats padding around. 

    I stood there in the hallway for a moment, staring at a picture of my dad that hung on the wall, along with various other pictures. We had gone on a fishing trip; I was only four and the small perch my mother had photographed me holding had felt like a shark in size to little me. 

    My dad died when I was eight, from a heart attack. I loved him, and I miss him every day I walk down this hallway and see these pictures of him, smiling and frozen in time. 

That gives me an idea. 

    My legs and mind kick into gear with the fresh idea seared into my mind. 

Maybe I dreamt about the field, because I've been there before. 

Maybe. Just maybe. It even got photographed. 

    See, my mom used to want to be a photographer, before my father died. Afterwards she became more practical and got a job that could support us once all his life insurance money was used up. 

    But for the first part of my life, she was always lugging around her camera, taking at least a hundred pictures a day. Sometimes of us, sometimes of nothing in particular, like pretty fields and trees.

    I came to the tall wooden bookshelf that was pushed against the corner wall in the living room. The bottom half opened up, and stuffed inside was literally every picture my mother had ever printed out. Some were neatly organized in boxes and specially made containers just for pictures, some were rubber banded together and stacked to the top. 

    I sat back on my heels and took in all the pictures. There had to be at least a thousand. 

This was going to take a while. 

"Dee?" My mother called out into the house the second she walked through the front door four hours later. 

    I heard her coming into the living room, her heels clicking on the wooden floor. 

She gasped as she took in the sight of me. 

I knew I looked as insane as I felt. I had taken each box, each stack of pictures out of the bookshelf and looked through every single one, except for a few dusty ones that I didn't need to look through. 

Because I had found what I was looking for. 

    About fifty pictures of the field. 

These were taken during the day, but there was no mistaking the fact that this was the very same field I had been visiting. The grass was a bit shorter, the trees just a little younger looking and lacking the frayed tangles of rope. In none of the pictures could you see the man built house in the background, but I was sure. This was the place. 

"Dee, what in the hell are you doing?" She exclaimed, kicking off her shoes and walking over to look down on me. 

"Where is this mom?" I hold up one of the better shots. She's perfectly captured the forest and sky in one shot. 

She stares at the picture, and I can see tears welling up in her eyes. 

"Why are you looking through my old pictures?" She asks, clearly avoiding the question. 

I stand, and a few stacks spill over the floor. I hold the picture tightly in between my fingers, as though it's going to disintegrate and my whole day will have been for nothing. I look her in the eyes, and the truth gushes out of me. 

"I've been dreaming. Dreaming of this place, of a boy in this place. For days now, I've been trying to figure out where I've seen him and this place before. I still don't know where he came from, but these pictures, are very clearly the same place,"

She stares at the picture, as though what I'm saying is irrelevant. It's a good minute before she says anything, and when she does, it's like she's talking to herself rather than to me. 

"Your father and me used to live in Arkansas, in a nameless town surrounded by racism, drugs, and trees." She turned and sat down on the couch, staring at the wall as she remembered. "We moved there to get away from people, to be by ourselves. But it just caused trouble for us. At first, everything was perfect. Like a fucking fairy tale." I swallowed as I remembered those had been my exact words when describing the place. "We lived an hour away from town, and only went when we needed to buy something. We didn't talk to anyone, not just because we were trying to get away, but because everyone that lived around us still hated black people and thought cooking meth was a profession. One day, your father went into town for some basic stuff. Food, light bulbs, whatever. He didn't come back for three days." She looked up at me, her eyes filling with salty tears. I sat down beside her, entranced in the tale she was spinning. "When he finally did come back, it was obvious he had been doing drugs and drinking. I didn't know why or with who or give a flying fuck, I wasn't having it. I packed my camera, some clothes and cash, and I left." She shrugged her shoulders. Her eyes looking like this had just happened yesterday, not more than twenty years ago. "I didn't take the car, didn't know how to drive anyways. I just tramped off into the forest. I guess… I guess I thought he would come after me, like he always did when we got into it real bad." She sighed, pausing before continuing. "But this time he didn't. I don't know if it's because of the drinking and drugs, or what. But I was in those woods for a week. No food, drinking water out of a stream. I had abandoned my clothes days ago, fearing I was going to die out there. I held onto my camera though, for whatever reason. Only I would have to go full Bear Grylls mode when there was a town four miles south of me. 

    On the final day I was in those woods. I was ready to give up. I was just laying there, hungry, dirty, and sick from drinking dirty pond water. I was literally laying there on the ground by the pond. I remember, I had my legs in the water, enjoying the last time I'd ever stare up at the sky or feel cool water on my legs." Her voice trailed off, and she stared at the wall for a minute before inhaling and finally looking at me. "Just when I was ready to let go, something dragged me into the water. I wasn't scared, not really. I let it. I layed there and let it drag me, hoping my death would be quicker that way. I didn't even hold my breath once my face was underwater. But after a minute of it dragging me under water, I began to feel weird. My brain felt like it was melting in my head and my muscles tensed up. And then, I was breathing in air again. I don't remember a whole lot after that, other than a woman had helped me." She stopped talking then, and I stared at her. Was that it? The best part and she couldn't fucking remember? 

"You can't remember a thing?" I ask, my voice shaking. 

"No. I always think they may have done something to me to make me forget." She shook her head, staring off into the distance. I remembered the boy telling me "he would let me remember this time." Was it possible that he and others could take away your memories? I don't see why my mother would hold back now. She was already telling me everything. 

"Okay, but then when did you take these pictures?" I asked after a moment of silence. 

She looked back at me. "I woke up a few days later at home. Your father had gone out looking for me, said he found me and my camera by that pond. I laid around the house for a while, depressed, sick, and wondering what had happened to me. Your father went somewhere again one day. I would later find out he was looking into moving away from that god forsaken place and was checking on the new house. While he was gone, he suggestively left my camera on the kitchen table. He knew taking pictures always made me feel better." She smiled softly at the memory of him. "I got it, and was going to go take pictures of the moss that had been growing on the outside of the house in an attempt to make myself feel better. I checked the battery and noticed the roll was full, but I had changed the roll before I had gotten lost in the woods and hadn't taken any pictures since. Turns out, I had taken pictures of a field while I was in my daze in the forest. I don't know where the field was, I don't remember even taking the photos. I chalked it up to me being sick and confused. But to this day, I dream of that forest and going under the water every once in awhile. Sometimes I'll go months without a dream, and I'll think i'll never have another one. But they always come back." 

"I dream about this field and the people in it." I say, staring at the picture I was just clutching. "The boy told me it was real, and that I needed to find it in real life."

Suddenly my mother was jumping up, and snatching the photo away from me. All feelings of peace and mother daughter bonding from before were gone. 

"You can't." She spits out, walking away and to the bookshelf. She squats down, and begins cleaning up the mess I made of her photos. "I forbid it."

"Seriously? You forbid it?" I too stand, and come around to her. "I'm eighteen, I can do what I want." Her head snaps up at me, her eyes filling with anger and passion. 

"You may be an adult but I am your mother, and I would be a fool to let you go to that fucking place. It brought nothing but destruction to your father and I. It almost killed us both for fucks sake. And you want to go back?" She's practically screeching now, hurriedly stacking and rubber banding the pictures back together. 

"I tell you I'm dreaming of this place and you expect me to not want to see it?" I screech right back. "Why the hell do you think I was asking about it? Did you really think your little story would satisfy me? Did you really think that would be enough?" Suddenly my mother was leaping to her feet, her face red and contorted with pure rage. 

"If you go, you will not come back." We stared at each for a minute, the smell of anger thick between us. 

Finally, I broke the spell by spinning around and stomping to my room.  

I grabbed my big green army backpack off the hook on my door and began stuffing things in it. Five pairs of underwear, a pair of jeans, a pair of shorts, my laptop and charger, a handful of socks and t-shirts. I grabbed my tip jar and hurriedly counted the money, just shy of a thousand dollars. I stuffed it into a little pocket in my bag. I pulled on my tennis shoes, threw my bag on my back and left my room, slamming the door behind me. I made a quick stop to the bathroom, shoving my toothbrush, toothpaste, brush, fash wash, a couple bars of soap, and the biggest bottle of shampoo I could find all into my bag. I stared at myself for a minute in the mirror. I looked a lot like my mother. Small nose, sharp jawline, tan skin, and dark hair. But my eyes looked just like my dad's. Almond shaped and dark as the night sky. I blinked away the tears, and slammed the bathroom door behind me.

"What are you doing?" My mother asked as I stood in the living room where she was stuffing the final box of pictures back into their bookshelf tomb.

"I'm going to that place. Something is obviously happening with me. And if you won't have me back when I'm done, than so be it." I say, standing my ground. 

She looks away from me, trying to hide the pooling tears in her hazel colored eyes. 

"I wish you luck." She said after a moment of thinking. 

I stare at for a moment longer. This was the woman who raised me. Gave me life. Drove me to school and work and took care of me when I was sick. She taught me to read and ride a bike and to love. She helped me through breakups and bad days and dad's death. We go shopping together every Sunday, watch movies on the couch together when we're tired after a long work week, and we support each other. 

    But now she was telling me if I left, I wasn't welcome back. 

And I was leaving anyways.