After Caroline

July 1

I
T WASN’T MUCH
to cause such a drastic effect. Not much at all. A small spot on the road, maybe a smear of oil that had dripped down when some other car had inexplicably paused here where there were no side streets or driveways or even wide shoulders to beckon. She never saw it. One moment, her old Ford was moving smoothly, completely under her control; the next moment, it was spinning with stunning violence.

She was jerked about like a rag doll, and clung to the steering wheel out of some dim conviction that she could somehow regain control over the vehicle. But the sheer force of the spin made her helpless. It seemed to go on forever, the summer green of the scenery revolving around her wildly, the anguished scream of tires on hot pavement shrill in her ears. Other cars cried out in response, their
tires shrieking and horns blaring, adding to the cacophony blasting her.

And then there were actual blows as the whirling car began to strike stationary objects, the overgrown shrubbery that lined the street at first, and then small trees. Harsh shudders shook her and the car again and again. The spinning slowed, she thought, but then the undercarriage snagged something that refused to give or let go, there was an ungodly wail of tortured metal, and the car flipped—not once, but over and over, as violently as it had spun on its wheels.

She didn’t realize she had closed her eyes until the car jolted a final time upright, rocked threateningly, and then went still with a groan.

In that first instant, she understood the phrase “deafening silence”; all she could hear was her own heart thudding. Then, as though someone had turned up the volume, the sounds of people shouting and car horns filtered into her awareness. She opened her eyes cautiously, blinking back tears of fright.

The sight that met her gaze was appalling. The windshield’s shatterproof glass had simply vanished, and she could see with terrible clarity the long hood of her car now crumpled back toward her like some monstrous accordion, with unbroken headlights pointed bizarrely toward the sky. The passenger door had also been forced inward, so that she could have easily rested her elbow on it without even leaning to the right. And though the driver’s door seemed amazingly whole and unharmed, she knew without even looking back that the rear of the car had also folded in, so that she was encased in a tight box of collapsed metal.

She forced her hands to let go of the steering wheel and held them up to eye level, warily examining her fingers one at a time until she could convince herself that all ten were present and working properly. Then, as the voices came nearer to what was left of her car, she shifted a bit, carefully, waiting for a pain or some other indication of injury.
She even managed to feel down her legs, bared by her summer skirt, and searched for damage.

Nothing. Not a scratch.

She wasn’t a religious woman, but staring around her at something that didn’t even look like a car anymore, she had to wonder if perhaps something or someone hadn’t been watching over her.

“Lady, are you all right?”

She looked through the glassless window into a stranger’s concerned face and heard an uncertain laugh emerge from her mouth.

“Yeah. Can you believe it?”

“No,” he replied frankly, a grin tugging at his lips. “You ought to be in about a million pieces, lady. This has gotta be the luckiest day of your life.”

“Tell me about it.” She shifted slightly, adding, “But I can hardly move, and I can’t reach the door handle. Can you get it open?”

The stranger, a middle-aged man with the burly shoulders that come of a lifetime’s hard work, yanked experimentally on her door. “Nope. There isn’t a mark on this door, but it’s been compressed in the front and back, and it’s stuck tight. We’re gonna need the Jaws of Life, sure enough. Don’t worry, though—the rescue squad and paramedics are on their way.”

Distant sirens were getting louder, but even so she felt a chill of worry. “I had a full tank of gas. You don’t think—”

“I don’t smell anything,” he reassured her. “And I’ve worked in garages most of my life. Don’t worry. By the way, my name is Jim. Jim Smith, believe it or not.”

“It’s a day to believe anything. I’m Joanna. Nice to meet you, Jim.”

He nodded. “Same here, Joanna. You’re sure you’re okay? No pain anywhere?”

“Not even a twinge.” She looked past his shoulder to watch other motorists slipping and sliding down the bank toward her, and swallowed hard when she saw just how
far her car had rolled. “My God. I should be dead, shouldn’t I?”

Jim looked back and briefly studied the wide path of flattened brush and churned-up earth, then returned his gaze to her and smiled. “Like I said, this seems to be your lucky day.”

Joanna looked once more at the car crumpled so snugly around her, and shivered. As close as she ever wanted to come…

Within five minutes, the rescue squad and paramedics arrived, all of them astonished but pleased to find her unhurt. Jim backed away to allow the rescue people room to work, joining the throng of onlookers scattered down the bank, and Joanna realized only then that she was the center of quite a bit of attention.

“I always wanted to be a star,” she murmured.

The nearest paramedic, a brisk woman of about Joanna’s age wearing a name badge that said E. Mallory, chuckled in response. “Word’s gotten around that you haven’t a scratch. Don’t be surprised if the fourth estate shows up any minute.”

Joanna was about to reply to that with another light comment, but before she could open her mouth, the calm of the moment was suddenly, terribly, shattered. There was a sound like a gunshot, a dozen voices screamed,
“Get back!”
and Joanna turned her gaze toward the windshield to see what looked like a thick black snake with a fiery head falling toward her out of the sky.

Then something slammed into her with the unbelievable force of a runaway train, and everything went black.

There was no sense of time passing, and Joanna didn’t feel she had gone somewhere else. She felt … suspended, in a kind of limbo. Weightless, content, she drifted in a peaceful silence. She was waiting for something, she knew that. Waiting to find out something. The silence was absolute, but gradually the darkness began to abate, and she felt a gentle tug. She turned, or thought she did, and moved in the direction of the soft pull.

But almost immediately, she was released, drifting once more as the darkness deepened again. And she had a sudden sense that she was not alone, that someone shared the darkness with her. She felt a featherlight touch, so fleeting she wasn’t at all sure of it, as though someone or something had brushed past her.

Don’t let her be alone
.

Joanna heard nothing, yet the plea was distinct in her mind, and the emotions behind it were nearly overwhelming. She tried to reach out toward that other, suffering presence, but before she could, something yanked at her sharply.

“
Joanna? Joanna! Come on, Joanna, open your eyes!”

That summons was an audible one, growing louder as she felt herself pulled downward. She resisted for an instant, reluctant, but then fell in a rush until she felt the heaviness of her own body once more.

Instantly, every nerve and muscle she possessed seemed on fire with pain, and she groaned as she forced open her eyes.

A clear plastic cup over her face, and beyond it a circle of unfamiliar faces breaking into grins. And beyond
them
a clear blue summer sky decorated with fleecy white clouds. She was on the ground. What was she doing on the ground?

“She’s back with us,” one of the faces said back over his shoulder to someone else. “Let’s get her on the stretcher.” Then, to her, “You’re going to be all right, Joanna. You’re going to be just fine.”

Joanna felt her aching body lifted. She watched dreamily as she floated past more faces. Then a vaguely familiar one appeared, and she saw it say something to her, something that sunk in only some time later as she rode in a wailing ambulance.

Definitely your lucky day. You almost died twice
.

Her mind clearing by that time, Joanna could only agree with Jim’s observation. How many people, after all, go through one near-death experience? Not many. Yet here
she was, whole and virtually unharmed—if you discounted the fact that the only part of her body that didn’t ache was the tip of her nose.

Still, she was very much alive, and incredibly grateful.

At the hospital, she was examined, soothed, and medicated. She would emerge from the day’s incredible experiences virtually unscathed, the doctors told her. She had one burn mark on her right ankle where the electricity from the power line had arced between exposed metal and her flesh, and she’d be sore for a while both from the shock that had stopped her heart and from the later efforts to start it again.

She was a very lucky young lady and should suffer no lasting effects from what had happened to her; that was what they said.

But they were wrong. Because that was the night the dreams began.