I was 7 when I first saw her in my dreams. I told my grandmother about the beautiful woman in my dreams and she told me that it was my guardian angel. I knew that was wrong even at my young age, but I smiled and nodded anyway. It wasn’t going to do me good if I were to question it. Besides, these dreams only seemed to happen when bad things were about to happen. The first time was when my dad got into a car accident and had to have intensive surgery. The second time my mom was put in the hospital by my step-father after a drunk fight. Needless to say, I never brought the woman up again. But the dreams would always be the same. She would be standing in my room while I laid in bed. I couldn’t move or speak but just felt her presence, which was alright to me. I never felt threatened or anything like that. Being around her in my dreams was a calming sensation despite the omen it brought along with it.
She was beautiful. She had these long braids with gold beads that cascaded down her bare back. Her skin was tawny and glowed in the light that was emitting from the windows of my bedroom. She wore this simple gold dress that fell loosely around her. I was jealous of her beauty but also attracted to it, especially during my teen years. I kept that to myself, not even my friends knew about the woman that occupied my dreams. I knew they would think of it as something normal and natural, maybe blame my anxiety. Especially if I mentioned that she only showed up when bad things were about to happen.
When I was 20, she stopped appearing all together. My initial thought was that maybe it was because I had entered a new phase in my life. I just had come out as a lesbian to my family, and some of them weren’t taking it so well. My grandmother especially, she told me that she didn’t feel like she could attend my wedding if it were with a woman. I was heartbroken. My relationship with my grandmother was everything to me. I found solace in other family members but this one hurt the most. So I chalked up the woman’s disappearance as one because of shame, perhaps. Shame that I was into women. Shame that I had ruined my relationship with my grandmother.
That was until I saw her again, but this time not in my dream. In real life.
She was exactly how she was in my dreams, except she didn’t know me and I didn’t really know her. I remember sitting in my college class and suddenly she walked in. Everything went absolutely quiet in my mind and I definitely wasn’t breathing. I literally had no idea what to do at this moment. She didn’t even give me a glance, so what was I supposed to do? Go up to her and say, “ Hi, hey, this might sound strange but you were in my dreams for 12 years. Do you want to get some coffee?”. For some reason, I didn’t think that was going to end well for me.
So instead I sat there numb with my whole body in shock. She proceeded to sit in the row in front of me but close enough to my seat where if she turned out she could easily talk to me. I was suffocating. How was this possible? How was this woman from my dreams all of a sudden in my college class? It really did not make any logical sense, at least in the standards of what is “logical” in this society. I didn’t know what to make of it, I was open to the idea of the supernatural but never thought that things like this would happen to me of all people.
Class began to start, the professor talking about the upcoming test. I didn’t take notes or listen to what the professor was instructing, instead I was staring at the back of the woman’s head. I desperately wanted to know her. I wanted to hear this woman’s voice after just seeing her image for so long in my dreams. The thought of her being my friend filled me in a way that made me realize that I needed this. And I realized the only way to do that was to suck it up and talk to her. So I did.
When class ended, I walked up to her and asked if she could help me study for the test coming up. She seemed happy to offer her assistance and we met up at the library two days after our first encounter. After that, we were attached to each other. At first it was very friendly, but soon turned into flirtation, which turned into dating. She was everything I could have possibly hoped for. Her name was Thea and I thought it suited her well. She met most of my family, excluding my mothers side of the family, and everyone adored her. Even with the high expectations of my father who hated everyone that I dated. Our personalities were very compatible and we did absolutely everything together. We finished college and ended up moving into a house a few months after we graduated.
Thea had this knack for knowing when something was wrong or going to happen. I remember when she told me to take this other way home one time from work because she felt off about my usual route. I obliged, realizing that taking that way home was actually faster than the normal one I took. I got into work that day and saw on the news that on my usual route there was an out of control semi truck that smashed 8 cars, and had been deadly. There was another time where I was out drinking with a few friends and she called me crying for me to come home because she felt as if I was unsafe. At first I was going to tell her that I wouldn’t be much longer because I really felt fine. However, the desperation of her voice made me get my jacket and tell my friends that I was taking the next bus home. I left 5 minutes later. I got home and she ran into my arms sobbing. I scooped her up and got her a nice warm blanket and a cup of coffee while we switched through the TV channels. The news channel briefly crossed our screen where I saw that there had been a shoot up at the bar I was at with my friends. 4 dead. I immediately stopped and went back to the channel. I was frozen in place. If I had not listened to my girlfriend I would have still been in that bar and possibly dead. I called my friends I was with and thankfully they were okay but quite shaken up. My wife was gripping onto me while I was making these calls, putting her head onto my shoulders and breathing lightly. I really didn’t put the pieces together then.
Thea had health problems and doctors that made it very clear that Thea was not to last till her 20’s. But here she was at 21 and thriving alongside me and working a full time job. We thought the doctors were all wrong. Thea’s family were very adamant that Thea was going to have a long life regardless of what the doctors had to say. But Thea secretly knew that she was going to die young. So she intended on getting married to me as soon as possible. I agreed, because I knew I loved her and I would for the rest of my life. Her parents were hesitant to the idea, but soon they were on board once they saw how happy she was about this. How happy we were. We married when we were 25 and had a small wedding at a cabin that her family went to- where we went to- for vacation. It was only family and a few friends, but it was perfect. We spent the honeymoon traveling all across the United States because it’s what we could afford. But she enjoyed it. She was happy. And that is what mattered.
We had a happy marriage and just spent most of our time traveling when we could get away from work. We finally were able to make it out of the country and visit Greece and many other countries in Europe that were on our Ancestry DNA tests. My wife Thea could always be found planning our next trip no matter how far in advance. We even had times where we had three trips planned in advance. But it made her happy. And I lived by the motto of “Happy wife, happy life”.
I made sure to spend almost every moment I could with her, knowing that her days here were numbered and that she was way past due. I would have nightmares where I woke up to find her dead next to me. I would be so startled that I would stare at my wife while she was sleeping in order to make sure she was breathing. These dreams plagued me right after we got married, as if our legal union was causing me to worry more about her death. However, I wasn’t going to let it bring me down completely. Not when my wife needed me to be there for her and to experience whatever life threw at her together.
Thea passed away when we were 38. It happened the same way I feared for all these years. I woke up one morning and she was gone. Now it wasn’t sudden, she had been having some complications for a couple of years at that point, but it still hurt all the same. I had gotten 18 years to experience her. I was grief-stricken, of course. I couldn’t leave my bed for what felt like years but were actually just a few weeks. I stopped traveling, because my traveling companion was gone. I especially missed her voice, the way she called for me and the way she laughed. I cried myself to sleep for months. I knew this was bound to happen, although it didn’t make it hurt any less. She was the love of my life, and I was convinced that my life was over after she took her last breath.
My family and hers surrounded me with all the love I could possibly imagine. Even my grandmother offered her condolences while I cried on her shoulder. Thea’s family were the best at comforting me, since they knew the pain of losing her to her illness. They were in her life for longer than I was, they knew what would eventually happen for many more years.
I tried my best to leave the house so I could get some fresh air, but the thought of leaving Thea and I’s shared home made me feel like a part of her was being taken away. I would sit in her study for hours, not touching anything, just so I could pretend that she was coming home any minute. I would sit on the couch, where a funny part of a show would come on and I would half-heartedly laugh and turn over to share my laughter with Thea, but she wasn’t there. Everything at this point in my life came to a full stop. I started drinking a lot more at home and would wake up with no recollection of the previous night. Life wasn’t the same without Thea. I didn’t even think it was worth living without her.
I was being really careless. I started going to bars and clubs at late hours in the night and staying until the early hours in the morning. I would dance and dance until my feet started forming blisters. I don’t really remember what I was thinking honestly, going from sullen and never leaving my house to full on partying and spending less and less time in what was once Thea and I’s home. I started flirting with every woman I could see at these bars and clubs, but I would never go home with any of them. Despite being in this weird state of seeking thrills, I would have never disrespected Thea like that. Not that she’d care, I guess. She was dead and I didn’t know if I really believed in an afterlife.
There was one night in particular that always sticks out to me after all this time. A moment that changed my grieving and my life.
I was at a club flirting with this woman when I realized I was being stared at. You know the feeling, the hairs standing up on the back of your neck. That sense that you just know that you’re being watched. I didn’t turn around at first, I just kept talking with this woman. It was actually her that pointed it out to me that there was this man staring at me from across the room. I waited a few minutes and then flipped over to go towards the bathroom, to get a glance at who’s looking at me. Once I turned around and started heading towards the bathroom, I saw him immediately.
He blended in pretty well, but I knew what I was looking for, eyes that were staring at me. He looked like someone who would come clubbing and had dark curly hair atop his head. Once he saw that I was looking back, he quickly shifted his gaze to another person in the club. I thought it was strange, however I figured that it was just some man wanting to take a shot and flirt with me. I chuckled to myself slightly and headed towards the bathroom anyway, needing to relieve myself. After that, I decided I had enough of this club and wanted to head on home. I walked to the bus station and waited for what seemed like forever, but once I got in it was only a matter of time before I was home again, alone with my thoughts. I dreaded it more than anything but the thought of not sleeping in my-our-bed made me push through and continue on my journey home.
It was around 1 am when I got back home. I immediately kicked off my shoes and headed to bed, forgetting to lock the whole house up because of my exhaustion. I climbed the stairs that hung portraits of me and my wife from across the years. I attempted to dart my eyes away every time they came across one, but I couldn’t hold myself to that. I wanted to see her, even if it was in a picture on the wall. I made it into my room and I got under my covers and twisted and turned before fully being embraced by the sweet nothingness of my sleep.
Except it wasn’t nothing. It was her again.
Thea was standing at the end of our bed, looking the exact same as she did in all those dreams prior. I was startled and happy to see her again and I found that I was able to move during this dream, which was odd. But as I tried to jump out of bed and give her a hug, something stopped me.
I looked down at my foot on the floor, a hand was wrapped around my ankle.
I started screaming. Thea was standing there, with her mouth wide open in a silent scream. Her fingers were clenched at her side and she seemed to be in agony. The hand started to pull at my ankle, to pull me underneath the bed with whoever the hand belonged to. I grabbed the bedposts trying to keep still, but the force of the hand was way too much. I was being pulled faster and harder. My ankle thrummed with pain as the hand’s nails were digging into my skin. Finally, I was forced to let go of the bedpost and I was sucked underneath the bed, into the darkness. Thea was nowhere to be seen. No one was. I was in the dark and it was cold, unbelievably cold. I felt sharp pains all over my body and I could hear my yelps in echoes across the darkness.
That is when I woke up with a start. I started breathing really hard and fast but quickly realized it was just a dream. However, I hadn’t had a dream from Thea since I was 20 years old. It didn’t make sense to me why I was having these dreams in the first place, but now that they were back I was even more confused.
After my mini freak-out, I realized that my bladder was hard and heavy like a rock. I knew I needed to get to the bathroom ASAP. I swung my legs over the side of the bed but stopped midair, my dream fully coming back to me. I looked over at my window, cracked. It was never cracked. I have anxiety, so I made sure to lock up everything before I go to bed. I made sure every window and every door is locked and closed.
Then I realized. I was way too tired coming home from the club. I didn’t lock up everything.
Fear hit me fast, and I felt frozen and cold. I had to act fast. There could be someone in my house. There could be someone under my bed.
I looked over at my door and made a plan. I was going to jump from my bed to the door in hopefully one jump, and then get the hell out. I placed my feet on the edge of the bed and began to press down so that I could stand up. I rose with unease and kept myself steady by using the bed post. I flinched at every creak and groan the bed made. There was many times where I thought whoever was in my house would just come and grab me because of the noises I was making. But I was lucky.
I finally launched myself off the bed and sprinted to the door, running down the stairs as fast as I could and finally running out the door to the neighbors.
All the while I heard running behind me.
I didn’t look back until my neighbors ushered me inside their home, 911 already on the line. I didn’t really see anything, except for a man running down the street, a little ways from my house. The police came in 10 minutes but by that time whoever was in my house was gone. However it didn’t take long for the police to find someone. His name was Craig and he frequented bars and clubs late at night in search of his next victims. According to the police, he had already killed 4 women and was on the run. That was when he spotted me at the club, and figured that I was worth the risk of potentially ruining his hiding.
When the police showed me his mugshot, my suspicions were confirmed. Dark curly hair was protruding from his scalp. Same man.
They ended up finding him due to a tip that came in anonymously over the phone. He was hiding under a bridge with a collection of “trophies” from his previous victims. Alongside everything else in that collection was one of Thea’s bracelets that I gave her for her 28th birthday.
I was obviously shaken by this whole experience. I got new alarm systems and cameras and installed them all over the house. I was not going to let this happen again. That brush with death made me realize that I did want to live after all. And these cameras and alarms were going to help prevent something like this ever happening again. But I knew who my real protector was.
After that night, I stopped having dreams of Thea all together. I missed her image and hoped that every night she would grace my eyelids for even just a moment. A part of me wanted her to come back in my dreams, however I don’t know if I can handle the consequences.
I don’t know much about the paranormal, or anything like that. Like I said I am open to it. I don’t have the answers to everything, however all I know is that Thea saved me that night, just like she had saved me countless times before. And for that, I am thankful.
I think its time to turn my life around, for her and for myself.