The Sunday Paper Prophecy

I never considered myself haunted, not in the way movies portray it. No cold spots, no flickering lights, no spectral apparitions in the hallway. But I’ve learned that my mind has a way of showing me things before they happen, always in these strangely vivid dreams that stick with me long after I wake. They feel so real, so mundane, that I dismiss them as ordinary until weeks later when a moment aligns perfectly with what I saw. And then I realize it wasn’t just a dream; it was a glimpse, or maybe a warning.

The first time it struck me as more than coincidence, I was ten, living in a cramped apartment above my father’s secondhand furniture shop. Every Sunday, my mother would send me down to fetch the paper, and I’d always dawdle, peeking at the comic strips in the color section and hoping to spot a gumball from the machine at the corner store. One night, I dreamt I walked to the corner, but the gumball machine wasn’t there. Instead, a vending machine selling tiny toys stood in its place, glowing a sickly yellow under the flickering streetlamp. I remember the dream ending with me staring at a sticky, half-melted blue candy stuck to the machine’s glass, feeling an odd sense of loss.

A month later, my father announced a renovation, and the old gumball machine was swapped for a toy dispenser from a closing arcade. The very next Sunday, as I approached the corner, I saw it—the same yellow vending machine, the same flickering light. And there, on the glass, was a blue smear of candy. The feeling of déjà vu was so strong I nearly dropped the coins. I told my mom about the dream, but she just smiled and said, ‘Everyone gets those feelings sometimes, sweetie.’ I wanted to believe her.

But then the dreams grew sharper, more insistent. When I was twelve, we moved to a coastal town, and I dreamt of a girl with a birthmark shaped like a crescent moon on her neck, crying behind a pile of old fishing nets. Two years later, the summer before high school, I met Mira on the pier. She had that exact mark, and she was indeed in tears because her father had lost his boat that day. She became my best friend after that, and I told her about the dreams. She was the first person to take me seriously, but she also said something that chilled me: ‘Maybe you’re not seeing the future. Maybe you’re seeing what you’re meant to change.’

That notion took root, and I started to pay closer attention to the dreams, hoping to alter the outcomes. But then came the dream about the library. I was around fifteen, and in the dream, I walked into our town’s old Carnegie library and saw a shelf of leather-bound encyclopedias, but one book was missing, leaving a gap like a missing tooth. In its place was a note written in spidery handwriting: ‘The answer is in the water.’

The dream wasn’t scary, but it felt important, more urgent than the others. I began to visit the library after school, soon becoming a regular, and I noticed that one day, a book was missing from the shelf above the reference desk. It was a slim volume, no title on the spine, and the librarian, Mrs. Gable, seemed flustered when I asked about it. She said it was ‘misplaced’ and would turn up. The next day, her son drowned in the harbor. The police called it an accident, but I couldn’t shake the dream’s phrase.

I tried to warn Mira, but she just looked at me with worry, saying, ‘You can’t trace dreams to real events like that. It’s just your mind playing tricks.’ But I knew what I’d seen. The missing book, the water—it was too specific.

Years passed, and the dreams became less frequent, or maybe I just grew numb to them. I went to college, studied literature, and tried to forget the library incident. But in my junior year, I had the worst dream yet. I was in the dormitory, and there was a fire alarm. Everyone was evacuating, but I saw a man with a scar across his left cheek standing by the door, holding a red fire extinguisher. He wasn’t helping; he was just watching, grinning. I woke up in a cold sweat, and the next week, there was a small fire in the chemistry lab. They evacuated, and I saw that same man, the janitor, standing by the exit, holding a red extinguisher. He had a scar just like in the dream. He was grinning. He never used the extinguisher. The fire was quickly contained by the sprinklers, but I couldn’t shake his face.

I confronted him later, but he just said, ‘You dreamt of me, didn’t you? They always know.’ Then he walked away, humming a tune I didn’t recognize.

That encounter terrified me more than any ghost could. It suggested that these dreams weren’t just warnings; they were connections to something darker, something that knew I was watching. I started keeping a dream journal, recording every detail, and I began to notice a pattern. The dreams came true not as exact replicas, but as symbolic representations. The missing bus became a missed train. The blond girl with eczema became a boy with a skin condition. The library book became a missing person. It was always a translation, never a direct copy.

My final and most harrowing dream came last week. I dreamed I was walking through a greenhouse, the kind with misted glass and rows of orchids. In the center, there was a fountain, and in the fountain, floating face down, was a woman in a white dress. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew it was someone I loved. I tried to reach her, but the water was too cold, and I woke up gasping.

That morning, I called my mother, and she said Mira had come to visit, and they were going to the botanical garden. I screamed into the phone, ‘Don’t let her near the fountain!’ My mother was confused but promised to keep an eye on her. An hour later, my phone rang. Mira had slipped on a wet stone beside the koi pond and hit her head. She was alive but in a coma.

I visited her in the hospital, and as I sat by her bedside, I realized the truth. These dreams weren’t about me changing fate; they were about fate using me as a witness. I was a chronicler of horrors, a prophet of disasters, but I couldn’t prevent them. The only thing I could do was watch and remember.

That night, I had another dream. This time, I was in a library, and the missing book was back on the shelf. I opened it, and the pages were blank, but as I looked closer, ink began to bleed through, forming words: ‘The watcher is now watched.’ When I woke up, I saw a man standing at the foot of my bed. He had a scar on his left cheek, and he was grinning. He held a red fire extinguisher. He said, ‘You’ve seen enough, haven’t you?’ Then he vanished.

Now I’m writing this, sitting in my room, the lights all on. I haven’t slept in three days, because every time I close my eyes, I see the greenhouse, the fountain, the woman—but now it’s not Mira. It’s me, in a white dress, floating face down. And in the background, I hear the faint hum of a tune I once heard from a janitor, and I realize the dreams aren’t warnings. They’re invitations. They want me to join them.

I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but they know I’m here. They know I’m watching. And I’m afraid that soon, I’ll be the one in the dream, and there won’t be anyone to watch me.

This is my confession, my last record. If you find this journal, burn it. Don’t read any further. Because the dreams are contagious, and once you know they exist, they start coming for you too. But maybe it’s too late for me. Maybe I’ve already been dreamed.