Crossroads

A plaque beside the path we’d strayed from memorialized the meadow as a Civil War battlefield. A spring storm blew through the wildflowers like a ghostly vendetta.

“There’s no meaning but what you make it,” she said, tattooed arms folded over her sundress.

“But something’s guiding me...my dreams...”

“Your intuition, nothing more.”

The sky darkened. Rain.

“Let’s go get high.”

That night, on my rented sofa, paralyzed between waking and sleeping, I saw a spectral girl in a tattered, 19th century dress crawl from the shadows. I screamed awake.

A warning—or just a dream?