Author’s note: This was written back in the Spring of 1998, so the ending will seem dated. I have chosen to put it up here in its original form instead of updating it.

I realize that this is not something which is normally written down. But it must be written down, and read by at least a few, so that when it all comes to pass I shall not be doubted again, because the written word stands as a witness for itself. But it seems that there is something lost in writing that is not lost in speaking. Perhaps it is the human aspect. You, my dear reader, will have no one to assure you that this story is either false or true. You will have neither facial expressions nor vocal intonations to clue you in to the veracity of this story. And yet you should believe it, as I too believe it. Not because it is a wonderful and frightening story (though, that it most undoubtedly is) but because it happened to me and I cannot… dare not, doubt my own experience; but even more than that, part of the prophecy, for that is what I now call it, has already been fulfilled. But we shall address that later. Alas though, once again you will have no way of proving the authenticity of that either, unless you were to trouble my mother in her home, though you would find her rather unintelligible now, after the stroke, with the pale, pasty left side of her face slumped in a perpetual frown, and her left arm dangling uselessly at her side, like the empty sleeve of a jacket or coat. But this all happened before the stroke, two years, in fact, before the stroke, in early October, 1989.

Indian Summer had marched across the land to settle in Tulsa in the last half of September. The stifling heat of August and early September fell away, leaving us basking in the low 90’s day after day. In, case you don’t know Tulsa, or Oklahoma for that matter, the sun shines every day during Indian Summer, even this year, as the rest of the world felt the backlash of “el nino” we sat baking in the sun until late October, when the fall rains came. But ‘89 was especially sunny, not a single cloud to mar the afternoon activities of a boy of 12.

Now, that is another thing which may give rise to incredulity, my age. I was only 12 then, and am only 21 now, but Alexander the Great conquered all of Persia by his 25th birthday, and Jesus taught in the Temple when he was twelve, so why is it so incredulous that such a story could come from one so young, I ask you. My friends were young enough to die, so is it so incredible that I would dream in such profound depths. Especially only three weeks after they found Rob and Steve in the dried rushes which flank the Arkansas River near our home.

It is possible, I’ll admit, that I had death on my mind. What with my father’s death only a year before, after his car wreck; and then so recently after having witnessed my two friend’s death as the rushing wall of water from the broken water main caught them in the storm sewer behind our house and ripped them from my grasp as I tried so hard to pull them out of the manhole on 21st street. You see it was a pastime of ours, sewer exploring. We used to venture through the subterranean tunnels that run like lifelines beneath the city. Hours, we spent exploring those seemingly endless labyrinths of damp concrete and tar.

It is possible that my mind became slightly warped after their deaths. Dr. Naufzinger told me that thinking and dreaming of death was common after such traumatic experiences and that was the most likely reason for the story which I am about to tell you. But she said something else, while I sat in her baby blue office staring out the big bay window, watching the cars drive past the two twin white pines which stand guard over the cracked sidewalk leading led up to her office on 51st street.
“It is not unusual for you to be dreaming about them, Adam.” She stated in a matter-of-fact tone, as she pushed a solitary strand of auburn hair behind her left ear. “You have nothing to fear from it. Unless of course your dream comes true.” She said with a slight chuckle, as if we shared a common joke, just the two of us. But it was no joke as you shall see.

It was mid-October, the time of year when the catfish roll on the surface of the water just after sundown, rising to the top and then swirling back into the muddy blackness of deeper water. And I slept in my room, in the second story of our red-brick house. Outside cicadas’ sang in syncopated rhythm, in low droning unison, and their song reached gently into our house through the seals around my windows, which Papa Granville installed when he built the house forty years ago.

Our house sits on the top of a hill, a mighty two story castle, in the middle of Tulsa, 21st Street and Lewis to be exact. As a child I always imagined it as a bastion, a major fortification that guarded the mighty recesses of our heavily wooded backyard from invasion. And there were times, especially after my father’s death, when I would wage war myself in the tangle of brush at the bottom of our one acre lot, defending our household from the invading grapevine and ivy that spread like Huns across our iron gate fence.

But my room does not overlook our backyard, since Papa Granville added it later, after my mother wanted a room which she did not have to share with either of her two sisters. Carved from the attic, the two windows of my room stare out, south and west, while our backyard stretches northward toward the oak-clad slopes of Reservoir hill and beyond.
On this particular evening, I slept; slept and dreamed of my two windows. In my dream the room was cloaked in darkness. But the darkness was more gray than black and my chest of drawers and nightstand appeared as silhouettes of black angular shapes on the gray walls. I sat in bed, tense and wary, for I had heard a sound, a low creak, that resonated like a thunderclap in my young ears. For the only thing in my house which would make that sound was a footstep, human or other, on the threshold of my door. So I sat, waiting for the slow jangle of the doorknob which would sound when it turned, and the sharp catch of the latch freeing itself from the doorframe.

But, suddenly my room lit up; stabbed by a rectangular beam of blindingly white light. The light crashed through the west window, charged across the gray carpet, and stuck in the center of the room. Then, just as suddenly my room was plunged once more into the gray blackness of night as the light died.

In that split second between light and darkness the door opened with the familiar jangle and click. The dank odor of stagnant water and the pungent odor of decay assailed me as I turned to gaze at the open door. Beyond the threshold a coal-blackness enshrouded the hallway as a curtain hides a stage. But slowly, almost methodically, the silhouette of a boy cloaked in shadows, detached himself from the darkness of the outer hallway and walked, straight-legged into my room. The utter darkness that pervaded the hallway outside my room slid like water from him with each step he took inside. And out of that shadow I began to see Steve in the gray light. His black short cropped hair and sunken eyes emerging from beneath the retreating shadow, exactly as he was that fateful day just three-weeks before.

But, unusually, I was not filled with fear, or sorrow, rather a warmth began in my stomach, burning its way upward into my chest and head. This warmth seemed to give me courage and consolation as I looked upon my drowned friend, standing, now, in the center of my room, in a rigid almost military-like stance. I believe that I sat there for a full minute staring at Steve, his long pale white arms held tightly at his sides, head forward, chin tilted up. Then suddenly he spoke, in a different voice, far more melodious than I was used to hearing, with the deep tones of a church organ played in solace for the dead.

“Come with me my friend.” His said with a voice that sang, as he raised his right hand and beckoned me towards him with stiff slow movements. “Come with me.”

Then he swiveled sharply on his left heel, waited till I had risen, then advanced out into the clinging blackness of the outer hall. I followed. There are no words for what a state his voice and movements had placed me in. I saw a hypnotist once, who placed people in a trance with the sound of his voice, the magnificent Mr. Mephesto, he called himself; and I am sure that I looked as if I too were in a trance, as I followed Steve out of the comforting grayness of my room.

As I passed through the threshold of my door, I felt the onslaught of a chill on my outer skin, like being dunked in cold water, that only the warmth of my chest and head kept from my heart. Once I crossed the doorway, the gray light of my room winked out and I was left in total darkness. But there were sounds, like a thousand men whispering to each other, with the undertone of a faint echo that sounded like footsteps in an empty gym. In this darkness I walked straight, marching forward to a cadence of seemingly bodiless voices. For even though I could not see, I trusted in my friend to watch over me. I am not sure why, it was simply a feeling of complete trust that could not be explained in the waking world.

After only a few moments I emerged onto the screened-in porch which juts out from the eastern side of my house and overlooks the sloping hill of our backyard. There was light here, brighter than my room, but still gray, and illuminated by some unknown source for there seemed to be no shadows across the leaves of the twenty or so potted plants my mother kept on an old dilapidated card table in the center of the porch. And instead of the whispers and footsteps I heard the faint rustle of wind through the leaves of the cottonwood that flanks our house on the west.
I saw Steve turn and disappear down the steps to the backyard, five feet below. I waited. Steve paused at the bottom, to look up at me. Once again he beckoned with his arm, calling me towards him. Obediently I swung open the screen-door, and carefully, with my eyes on the stairs, descended. When I reached their base I paused and looked up at Steve. In the gray light I could make out his profile, sharp and defined in this strange light. Then he swiveled and swung his right arm out, like a general presenting the sight of his greatest battle. At his gesture I turned my head and looked out upon the expanse of my backyard.

My breath caught in my chest as I gazed out, northward. As far as I could see, people sat, cross-legged, with their arms resting on their knees and their faces raised to the sky. Where the pecan grove stands in the northwest corner of our yard overshadowing the ivy-clad fence, there were people, not trees. On the east side of our yard where the compost heap has festered for two generations, there were thousands of people. The wildeberry bushes and tangled hackberry trees that abutted our yard in the far north had disappeared, making room for hundreds, maybe thousands of people all seated and staring intently at the sky. Thousands upon thousands of people, covered the hills to the east, north and west, all staring patiently at the sky.

Out of the corner of my eye I watched as Steve joined the seated masses, crossing his legs and raising his head towards the sky. I stood, as if my feet had become roots, holding me to this small point of earth at the base of the sideporch. I did not sit, but I raised my eyes heavenward.

What I saw was the full moon, standing watch, an ivory guardian in the center of the sky. But there was an absence of stars, a total void of everything but the moon. Then, suddenly out of the east and west billowing black clouds came surging in, born on the breasts of some furious wind. These clouds charged forward until the entire sky was engulfed in the onslaught of these apparent storms. But, as the fronts reached the edge of the moon, they began to swirl in an intense spiral, like a whirlpool, which hid the moon from sight. Yet the gray light did not lessen, and the broiling, spiraling mass grew and grew until the center began to dip downward, like the tail of a tornado descending to earth. From this tail a small section of cloud separated, and moved out so that it hovered in the northern horizon about one hundred feet above the ground.

On that cloud hovering on the horizon, I beheld a dark-haired woman, who seemed to shimmer with the blue light that surrounded her. She was clad in a billowy dress that flowed out across the cloud, like a bride’s gown before an altar, awaiting the sacred vow of commitment. Her arms were raised, palms opened outward, in a gesture of embrace. Around her head, in a halo of sorts, were nine planets rotating in unison with the whirlpool above.

At the sight of her, I knelt, unbidden; knelt before this woman who could only be the Virgin Mary, with her billowy dress and celestial halo, come to embrace the people gathered in my yard. Suddenly, from around me the sound of wind through the cottonwood died, and the voices of the seated masses spoke with a sound like the rumble of the very earth upon which we stand.

“Seventeen seventy-five, Eighteen Twelve, Eighteen forty-six” they bellowed in a deep, rhythmic chant like Catholics at Mass.

“Eighteen sixty-one, Eighteen ninety-eight, Nineteen seventeen, Nineteen forty-one” The masses continued, without pause. The only movement was the shifting of lips as the people spoke.

“Nineteen fifty, Nineteen sixty-two, Nineteen ninety-one, Nineteen ninety-eight.” Then the voices stopped, and in unison, the multitude of people that sat upon the hills behind my house, slowly bowed their heads, and with ceremoniously slow movement, crossed their arms over their chests and were silent…

…With their silence my dream broke, and I awakened in my bed upstairs. The morning sun was evidently stealing across the eastern sky for small rays of light lay across my southern wall. I raised myself slowly, pushed the covers from my body, and felt their warmth retreat as I stepped barefoot onto the hard wood floor of my bedroom. I walked to my closed door, opened it to the familiar jangle of the doorknob, crossed the threshold and took the stairs down to my kitchen.
My mother, already awake, sat at the kitchen table, a steaming cup of coffee in her right hand.

“What are you doing up so early on a Saturday” she questioned as she tilted her head slightly to the right.

“Had another dream” I managed to mumble as I sat down opposite her.

“Same one?” she asked.

“No,” I said as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, “different one.” And I began to tell her my dream.

When I had finished telling the story of the dream I stared at my mother, there sitting in the light of that early Saturday sun that streamed through the double paned storm windows: her green eyes shining, and her red hair pulled back, away from her face and tucked behind her ears, the small creases that fanned out from the sides of her eyes, where she squinted when she laughed with a strong aroma of coffee on her breath when she spoke.

“Michael, those sound like dates.”

“Yeah, I think they are.”

“Maybe you should write them down.” My mother remarked as she looked over her shoulder at the digital wall clock.

“Maybe,” I said, nodding in agreement.

“What were they again.”

“Seventeen seventy-five, Eighteen Twelve, Eighteen forty-six, Eighteen sixty-one, Eighteen ninety-eight, Nineteen seventeen, Nineteen forty-one, Nineteen fifty, Nineteen sixty-two, Nineteen ninety-one, Nineteen ninety-eight. That was all of them.”

“Those are wars, granted all American wars,” my mother suddenly exclaimed as she took another sip from her coffee, “but wars nonetheless. Everyone of them from the Revolutionary war up till Vietnam.”

When she was silent I turned my head to look out of the double-paned storm windows, north into our backyard, where only moments before, in my dream millions of people had chanted dates to the Virgin Mary, dates of wars. I sat there watching the sun crest over the tops of the hackberries and the compost heap, lighting up even the ivy clinging to the iron fence beneath the pecan grove at the bottom of the hill, but the sun brought no warmth to me that day, even when I walked out and stood looking up into the sky, where the moon and clouds had met.

Now, you, may ask, so what? What is so important about a young man’s dream of dates and the Virgin Mary that could conceivable steal the warmth from the sun. Well, I will tell you this: the second to last date that they chanted was 1991, the year of my dream was 1989.

On a burning August day in 1990, Saddam Hussein, leader of the fourth largest army in the world invaded Kuwait, freezing America’s oil interests in the Middle-East. The stand-off took five months, but war came. It came in January of 1991. Now, 1998 was the last date. Perhaps the date of the next war. But you may still wonder what is so important about possibly knowing the dates of wars. Well, though war is something harsh and brutal, it is not the idea of another war which bothers me, it is the quiet that followed, when the people bowed their heads, crossed their arms and were silent, which haunts me now. What the silence may indicate I do not know, but I can imagine.

Once again I know that there are those among you who will not believe me, such a tale simply cannot be true, you might say; and you have no way of proving either its veracity nor its falsehood. Well I will state once again, I do not, and cannot doubt my own experience, especially after 1991. So I leave it up to you to decide whether such a story as this will be believed now. But should you doubt it, this written account shall stand as a testament to the truth of my dream, long after this year ends and we have seen why the millions went silent.