His name is Christopher Henry Brentwood, but everyone calls him Chris. Everyone, that is, except his Grandma Waters, but that's okay because she's family and when she says his full name, Christopher Henry, it's never in anger or warning but in complete and total love. He is her only grandson in a sea of a dozen granddaughters and he knows he is special.
About to graduate from high school, top ten percent of his class and one of the graduation speakers, he has been accepted at half a dozen colleges including Dartmouth, Notre Dame and Stanford. His mom wants him to go to Dartmouth, but he knows Stanford is his choice, and only a two hour drive from his family.
He doesn't ever want to be much farther than that from home.
Yet, when he lies in bed at night, excited about the future, embraced by the love of his parents and sisters, daydreaming about the courses he'll take and the people he'll meet, sometimes he gets flashes of vibrant green and old stone.
After the third straight night of seeing these images just as he was about to drift to sleep he asked his mother if there was any Irish blood in the family.
For, though he's never told anyone this, he doesn't know why he applied to an Irish Catholic university. All his other choices were secular, and the Brentwoods are staunch but pretty much lapsed Presbyterians.
His mom, an archival historian by trade, told him that there were no Irish ancestors on either side.
That doesn't seem right.
Those odd flashes and bits and pieces of images have bothered him as long as he can remember.
Are they fantasies? Bits of previous lives? Racial memories? Though he doesn't believe in either of the last two.
At least not when fully awake.
Most of the time the images are sterile, and he's long since learned to accept those and shunt them aside.
But there are a few that linger. Those have emotions attached, tickling his memory, refusing to leave him alone. Those are the ones of the slender, blonde woman, icily beautiful, and the big, dark, faceless man. He doesn't know them, but he knows they love him.
The worst though is the other woman, the brunette with the flirty smile.
The one he sees himself writhing with beneath blue sheets.
And he knows he loves her.
In the light of day he is upset and confused and angered by the dreams of her. The images tell him she's his first and only, this woman loved on a mattress on the floor. But his mind knows better.
He's slept with his three last girlfriends, including the current one, Jessica, and his first time was in a sleeping bag under the stars in the backyard while his parents slept unknowingly inside the house.
She was a blonde.
He's never even dated a brunette.
And then there are the images of the weapons. He's always had a fascination for swords and other bladed weapons. Is this why?
But, unlike those he's seen in museums and books, these are never static. He sees them moving, cutting...
Killing...
The weapons are bloody.
And the blood isn't always red.
When he gets those visions, he knows he's the one wielding those blades. And that frightens him.
He couldn't even dissect a worm in biology class. Why does he have visions of killing?
After the celebratory dinner with his family over a scholarship offer, with graduation only a few days away, he turns off the light and lays back on his bed, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. The moon is full and the stars bright.
He's always loved living in the country, surrounded by trees, the sounds of insects soothing him. The bullfrog in the pond behind the house sounds, and he smiles slightly, wondering, as always, why anyone would live in a city, or even the town where he goes to school and most of his friends live.
Eyes drifting shut, he lets the cool air from the open window wash over him, and smiles at the hint of rain. His mom's flowers will bloom soon if it rains.
His mother died in the rain.
Heart pounding in sudden fear, he bolts upright in bed, gasping, the suddenly thick air stifling him.
The image is hazy, but he can still see it. A man, a woman, a baby's cry. Pounding rain.
He was there, but he wasn't. It's as if someone told him this.
Sighing in relief, he lays back down. Just a story someone told him, or a movie he saw.
His mother is alive and well and sleeping down the hallway.
Again closing his eyes, he forces himself to find sleep.
When he awakens he's forgotten all about the scene that flashed into his head the night before. He's learned to make himself forget. He knows that if he keeps mentioning these things he sees...and feels...the worry will only grow on his parents' faces.
And he really doesn't want to go to therapy. That's a mid-life crisis kind of thing and he's only eighteen.
Stepping outside to head to his car and school, he notices that it did rain. The outdoor, wood-burning barbeque smells of wet ash.
He stops, swallows convulsively, and hears the wind whisper in a knife sharp feminine voice.
A shudder goes through him, and he angrily shakes it off.
This is his life. Those images, those thoughts, those emotions are not real, not him.
He is Christopher Henry Brentwood.
The name Connor means nothing to him.
End