The Grocery List

I never thought much about the recurring dream. It was just another oddity in a life full of them, a life spent in the quiet backwater of Clover Creek, where the nearest neighbor was a quarter mile down a gravel road and the only sounds were the wind in the pines and the creak of the porch swing. My husband, Raymond, had been gone for over thirty years, and I’d raised our two kids alone in this old farmhouse. They’d long since moved to the city, calling every Sunday to check on me, their voices tinny through the phone. But the dream—it wasn’t something I could explain to them, and I never tried.

The dream always started the same. I’m in a kitchen, but it’s not mine. The countertops are a worn yellow laminate, and there’s a window above the sink that looks out onto a field of sunflowers, bright and impossibly vivid, even in the dimness of the dream. The room smells of fresh bread and something else, something sharp like cloves. In the dream, I’m not afraid. I feel a calm, a warmth, as if I’ve come home after a long absence. I find a scrap of paper on the table, a grocery list in my own handwriting: milk, eggs, bread, a can of tomato soup. The list is mundane, but in the dream, it feels like a prophecy. I read it over and over, and each time, the words seem to shift slightly, though I can’t catch them changing. I wake with the taste of copper in my mouth and a nameless sorrow that follows me through the day.

I’d been having that dream for years, maybe as far back as the early nineties, right after Raymond’s funeral. I chalked it up to grief, to the stress of raising kids alone, to the quiet that had settled in the house like a second skin. But last spring, on the anniversary of Raymond’s death, the dream became more intense. In the kitchen, I noticed a door that hadn’t been there before, a dark wooden door with a brass handle, tucked between the refrigerator and the pantry. The list in my hand now had an item crossed out: ‘bread’ was struck through with a thick black line. I felt a chill, the first time I’d felt anything other than comfort in that dream. I walked toward the door, my heart pounding, and just as I reached for the handle, a voice behind me said, ‘Don’t.’ I turned, but no one was there. I woke gasping, my nightgown soaked with sweat.

The next Sunday, my daughter, Claire, called, her voice bright. ‘Mom, I’ve been meaning to ask—are you okay? You sound different.’ I told her I was fine, just tired. But when I hung up, I looked at my hand. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a small bruise on my palm, in the exact shape of the door handle from my dream. I rubbed it, but it didn’t fade. That’s when I started paying attention to the other details. The recipe card on the counter had a different handwriting now, a spidery script that looped the letters. The tomato soup can on the shelf had a label that read ‘Cream of Belladonna.’ And the sunflowers outside the window had turned to black-eyed Susans, their petals curling like claws.

I began keeping a journal by my bed, writing down everything I could remember. But the journal entries, when I read them in the morning, were not in my hand. They were written in that same spidery script, telling me to remember, to come back to the kitchen, to open the door. I showed the journal to my priest, Father Michael, a no-nonsense man who believed in the power of prayer. He read a page and his face went pale. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked. ‘I wrote it,’ I said. But I knew I hadn’t. He told me to pray, to keep the journal away from me, to stop focusing on the dream. But I couldn’t. I needed to understand.

One night, I didn’t go to sleep. I stayed up, drinking coffee, watching the clock. At 3:33 a.m., the dream came anyway, pulling me under despite my resistance. This time, the kitchen was different. The walls were covered in peeling floral wallpaper, and there was a row of mason jars on the windowsill, filled with a clear liquid that seemed to glow faintly. The door was open. Beyond it was darkness, but I could hear something—a rhythmic scraping, like nails on wood. I forced myself to walk through, my bare feet cold on the linoleum. The light behind me flickered, and I saw a figure at the end of a long hallway, hunched over something, its back to me. I called out, ‘Hello?’ The figure straightened slowly, and turned. Its face was a blur, but I knew it. It was me, older, withered, with eyes like black pits. It held out its hand, and in it was the grocery list. ‘You forgot the bread,’ it said, its voice like dry leaves. I screamed, but no sound came out.

I woke on the floor of my kitchen, a cold draft blowing through the open window. The sun was rising, and the room was bathed in orange light. But the wreckage around me—broken jars, scattered flour, the remains of a half-eaten loaf of bread—told me I hadn’t been dreaming the whole night. There was a note on the table, pinned under a salt shaker: ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come home.’ I recognized the handwriting as my own, but a version of it I hadn’t seen since I was a child. I finally understood. The dream wasn’t a memory or a premonition. It was a place, tethered to this house, to this life. And the other me, the one I’d been visiting all these years, was not a spirit. She was the one who had always been here, while I was the one who had left.

I haven’t slept since that night. I’ve been awake for three days, and I can feel the exhaustion pulling at me, but I’m afraid that if I close my eyes, I’ll go back, and this time, I won’t be able to wake up. The house feels different now—the walls seem to breathe, the shadows lean in when I pass. And last night, I heard a knock at the door. When I opened it, no one was there, but on the porch lay a grocery list, still damp, written in my hand: ‘milk, eggs, bread, and the key to the back door.’ The back door, which I haven’t used in years, was unlocked. I stood there, staring at it, and I felt a presence behind me, warm and familiar, like a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t turn around. I just said, ‘Raymond?’ And a voice, soft as a sigh, answered, ‘Not quite. But I’ve been waiting.’

I’m writing this now because I know I won’t be able to resist much longer. The dream is calling, and part of me wants to go, to see what’s behind that door, to finally understand the story I’ve been living. But I’m scared, not of death or spirits, but of what I might find—that the me I’ve been running from is the only version that’s real. The grocery list is still in my pocket, and I can feel it warming against my skin. Outside, the wind has picked up, and the sunflowers are blooming in the field, though I never planted them. I know what I have to do. I just hope someone finds this and understands. The door is open. The bread is on the table. And I’m going home.