Leaves

The sun had set and Kelly prepared for her nightly meditation ritual as she usually did. She bathed herself in warm water, scented ever so slightly with lavender and rose. She clothed herself in her favorite gauzy garments, savoring the sweet comfort they gave her. All the while, a delicate piano sonata played gently in the background. Conditions were perfect, and the time had come at last to begin.

As she lit the candles around the perimeter of her room, Kelly tried to keep her mind clear. Still, excitement kept creeping in. Her meditation had become so much more fruitful lately. Just as she managed to pass out of waking consciousness, shapes and colors had begun to form. Nothing was clear yet, of course, but she was sure there was something there. Something for her to see. Something that would change her forever. Enlightenment, perhaps? Would the Buddha himself be waiting there to guide her to a state of Nirvana?

Sitting on her bed, Kelly breathed out the excitement, letting the floral scent of her own skin lull her back into blankness. When at last she felt ready, she lowered her head onto the pillow and began her silent count backward, starting at one hundred.

Counting was the last thing Kelly remembered. All at once, she felt as if she'd awakened suddenly from a strange dream. Her eyes were compelled to open and she saw that she was no longer in her room. Sight brought with it other sensations, and Kelly could soon make sense of her surroundings. She sat cross-legged in the middle of a shallow and gently-flowing stream. On either side, the banks were green. Bursts of colorful flowers dotted the bushes that lined each bank, and butterflies flitted from petal to petal. The water itself was wonderfully warm. Kelly sighed and felt a peace like she'd never known before.

But the greatest source of awe stood directly before her. Standing tall with twisting roots that straddled the little stream was a gigantic tree. Kelly explored it with her eyes, starting at the roots and moving up the the massive trunk and finally to the branches which where thick and heavy with leaves.

As she looked up, Kelly saw a single leave shake loose from its place and drift slowly downward. It landed silently in the stream and the water carried it to her. As it came closer, she could see that there were some strange markings on one side of the leaf. Eagerly, she picked it up and turned it over in her hands. There on the underside of the leaf were written three words: "Kelly Jane Meyers." She laughed, amazed to read such a thing. It was her own name.

Kelly turned her attention upward once more to the tree's branches. Do all of the leaves have names? she wondered. Gingerly, she rose from where she sat, expecting to find the act more difficult, but to her surprise, as soon as she left the water, she was completely dry. Thus, she made her way toward the tree and inspected it for any easy means of climbing. To her delight, there seemed to be growths and bumps that would prove very helpful to her cause, if they were not in fact specifically designed for the purpose of climbing.

And so up Kelly went, higher and higher, until she could finally sit among the great tree's leafy branches. There, she reached out and plucked a handful of leaves, looking at each one carefully. Indeed, they all seemed to be marked. "Norma Louise Radison," "James Aaron Webster," "Laurel Barbara Tarantino." These were all people she knew and interacted with regularly. Norma was a woman who worked at the supermarket Kelly frequented. She was nearly seventy, bent over, and had trouble walking, but insisted that she would keep working until the day they carried her out on a stretcher. James was Kelly's neighbor, a friendly man in his thirties with a wife and two young children. Laurel was a classmate of Kelly's with whom she had been friends since undergrad. How strange! Kelly thought, and yet she was filled with a kind of childlike excitement to see so many familiar names.

She let the leaves in her hand fall to the water below as she reached out for more. "Fernando Luis Gomez," one read. That's the man who runs the laundromat, Kelly noted. Another said, "Ellen Elizabeth Chalmers," the name of Kelly's landlady who lived downstairs from her. Kelly, amazed, kept plucking leaves and letting them fall. Each one bore the name of someone she knew in her waking life.

Having sated her curiosity at last, she let the last handful of leaves float down to the water below her. This time, she followed them with her eyes as they hit the water and were carried away.

That was when she saw it. Lying in the water was the form of a person, completely motionless except for the occasional rocking caused by the flow of the water. The sight filled Kelly with dread. A chill suddenly swept through the air, worked its way beneath Kelly’s clothes, and left goosebumps on her skin. How could she not have noticed the person before?

Her terror only intensified when she realized she knew who it was.

"I've never seen this place so busy," Sheriff George Davidson quipped to Reggie Pankhurst, the country coroner.

"You can make light all you want," Reggie snapped back, wiping the sweat from his brow and shaking his head in disbelief. "I've got at least twenty fresh bodies in there and no idea what the hell's going on. I mean, sure, you expect someone like Norma Radison to die, but some of the others are young. Perfectly healthy. Like Jim Webster. I mean, what the hell?"

"I feel sorry for his wife," said the Sheriff, shamed into submission. "Those kids who have to grow up without their daddy."

Reggie looked him square in the face. "I have a sick feeling you're going to feel sorry for a lot more people by the time this is over," he said. "I'm worried about what this might be."

At that moment, the Sheriff's radio sparked into action. "Sheriff," said the officer on the other end, "we've got another one. You're going to want to get here right away." The two men stared at each other in horror as the officer rattled off the address.

"I'll be right there," said the Sheriff, never taking his eyes off the coroner. "What is going on in this town?" he asked, as much to God as to anyone within earshot.

"I wish I knew, George," said Reggie. "I wish I knew."