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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Mystery
- Subject: Ghost Stories / Paranormal
- Published: 07/15/2018
Caught Between Two Worlds
Born 1947, M, from Oceanside, United StatesCaught Between Two Worlds
The knock on my driver’s side window startles me out of a dreamless sleep. For the first second or two before opening my eyes, I think it’s probably a lifeguard telling me it’s time to move my car. I had parked on the beach the night before along with numerous other cars, trucks and vans, so at the time, I was pretty sure it was okay to do so. But now, when I open my eyes and turn my head, it isn’t a lifeguard whose face I’m looking into—it’s the face of a young female cop. My stomach plunges like a kite that’s run out of wind. Was it not okay for me to sleep on the beach after all?
I start to roll down my window when I notice the name of the town on her badge: Westport Police Department. But that’s impossible! It should say Corpus Cristi Police Department. Is this some kind of dream?
I turn my head to look around and that’s when a tsunami of fear and confusion rolls through my stomach. Yes, this is Westport Connecticut’s Compo Beach all right. My mouth drops open and my eyes pop like in a cartoon.
How in the hell did I get here!?
When I turn back to look at the female cop, she says, “I don’t see a sticker on your car. What are you doing on the beach, and how did you get past the gate?” After ten p.m. until six in the morning, the security guards usually lock up the entrance to the beach for the night. As for the sticker? She’s referring to the beach stickers many Connecticut towns make their citizenry purchase in order to use their town-owned beaches during the summer. Within a month after Labor Day, they close down everything: the snack bar, the bathrooms, even the lifeguard station, so you don’t need a sticker any more, or have to worry about guards. The entrance is left open all day and most of the night.
I don’t know what to say to the cop, so I just stare at her until she requests the familiar, “License and registration, please.”
Timidly I ask, “Is it all right if I get out of the car first? My pants are so tight I won’t be able to pull out my wallet unless I stand up.
She nods then steps back several paces as I slowly open my car door and begin to get out. After wriggling my wallet out of my back pocket, I hand her my license and registration. The registration should have been in my glove compartment, I know, but yesterday when I left Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, for some reason I folded it and put it in my wallet. Just one of those dumb things you do and don’t know why.
My stomach is quivering with waves of nervousness and fear, as I stand there watching her scan both items. I can’t help but wonder: is she’s going to give me a ticket, or worse, is she going to make me follow her back to the police station? God, I hope not! After all, I didn’t do anything wrong. I just parked on the beach—well, not here, of course, but . . .
“This car is registered in Texas,” she says, looking up, her hazel eyes boring into mine. “But your license says you live here in Westport.”
“That’s because I just got out of the Air Force,” I tell her.
“When was that?”
I swallow hard. “Two days ago.”
Her brown eyebrows shoot skyward. “You drove all the way from Texas to Connecticut in two days! What were you doing—a hundred miles an hour all the way!?”
I shake my head. Should I tell her? She’s never going to believe me, but as strange as it seems, something is compelling me to tell her anyway, so I explain, “No, actually, it was late yesterday morning when I left my base in Texas, and then last evening is when I parked on the beach in Corpus Cristi, but this morning, when you woke me up, I found myself here.”
She stares at me for a long time. I know for sure she’s going to say I’m lying, but instead she surprises me when she says in a very calm voice, “You’re going to have to get back, you know.”
I look at her confused. “Get back to where?”
“Corpus Cristi.”
I stare at her bug-eyed. “How in the hell am I supposed to do that? I don’t even know how I got here!”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. If you don’t get back, you might find yourself caught between two worlds.”
My stomach plunges. “What do you mean caught? You mean like stuck?”
She nods and says, “The same thing almost happened to me once.”
Again, I stare at her. “What do you mean the same thing almost happened to you?”
“I was born and raised in southern Massachusetts,” she says, “but went to college in Florida. On the day I was supposed to graduate, I was sitting in my car, smoking a joint (strange to hear a cop say that), when I nodded off. The next thing I know, I’m waking up back in my home town in Massachusetts.”
I stare at her confused. “How in the hell did you get there?”
“That was the kicker,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “I had no idea.”
“So what did you do then?”
“I drove back to Florida.”
“What!” I almost shout. “Are you telling me that you got so freaked out by what had happened, you drove all the way from Massachusetts to Florida?”
“And without stopping except for gas.”
“But didn’t you try to go home first?”
“I did, but when I got there, I found strangers living in my house.”
“What do you mean strangers? Were they squatters?”
She shakes her head. “No, but instead of my mother and father, I found a black family living in the house I grew up in. They claimed they’d been living there for the last twenty years!”
Again, I stare at her both shocked and confused. “But what happened to your parents?”
“I found out later they were living in a parallel dimension to the one I was in.”
“A parallel dimension?! What the hell are you talking about?”
“The way it was explained to me,” she says, “there are numerous dimensions—the one we live in and several other invisible ones, which co-exist parallel to our own.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of that theory.”
“Somehow, I had slipped into one of the others, probably because I was wishing so hard to be home instead of at school.”
I think about this a moment. “So, is this the same thing that happened to me?” I ask her. I’d been thinking a lot about Compo Beach when I parked on the sand in Corpus Cristi. She nods.
Once again my anxiety level spirals up a bit. “So how do I get back to my own dimension?” I ask her.
“Like I said, you have to get back to Corpus Cristi first.”
“Are you telling me I have to drive all the way back to Corpus Cristi, Texas, for this to be okay?”
She shakes her head. “Not really.” I breathe a huge sigh of relief. “I found out later from a psychic, that all I had needed to do at the time was go to a place where I felt the most comfortable and think about where I wanted to return to, and if I wished hard enough and long enough, I would end up there.”
“There being your college in Florida?”
She nods. I’m thinking about this when something else occurs to me. “But wait a minute,” I say. “If you drove back to Florida, wouldn’t you have found yourself still in the same reality as the one you woke up in?”
“You would think so,” she replies, “but somewhere along the way, I slipped out of that dimension and back into my own.”
“How did you do that?”
She shrugs. “At the time, I had no idea. I didn’t even know that it had happened until I got back to my dorm.”
I’m thinking how bizarre this whole thing is and yet . . . “So why doesn’t this happen to everyone?” I ask her.
“The way the psychic explained it to me,” she says, “it has something to do with our connection to the universe—something about our frequencies or vibrations, and the way they line up. Only a few rare people like you and I have this ability.”
I’m not sure I would call it an ability, I think, but after looking around Compo Beach one more time, I have to admit, it is definitely for real, so I say to her, “So what you’re telling me is, if I stay here, and if I wish hard enough, there’s a good chance I could end up back in Corpus Cristi?”
She shakes her head. “Not here.”
I frown. “Why not?”
“If you stay here, even if I don’t give you a ticket, one of the other patrols probably will. They might even arrest you.” That was true. “And then you’d have one heck of a time trying to convince them you weren’t nuts.” Again, I had to agree with her.
“So where else should I go then?”
“Where else besides Compo Beach have you always felt the most comfortable?” I have to smile; there’s only one place—Big Top! It’s a hamburger joint I’ve been going to since I was a kid. Its hamburger patties are never frozen and always flame broiled, and its fried apple pie treats, along with a cup of coffee, are like being in heaven.
When I say Big Top to her, she also smiles. “Since I’ve been here in Westport,” she says, “I’ve come to really love their barbecued ribs.” We stare at each other, smiling like two conspirators. Then she cautions me, “Remember, when you get to Big Top, try to relax and think hard about where you want to go back to in Texas and maybe you’ll get there.”
It makes my whole body and mind hiccup to think there is no guarantee, but after she gives me back my license and registration, I thank her, take note of her nametag, and then start driving slowly toward the beach’s entrance, which is now open.
It doesn’t take me long to get to Big Top—less than fifteen minutes. I can see it as I approach the main road that slices through the center of town. It’s sitting on the other side of the intersection like some long-time friend waiting to greet me.
God! I wish I was in there right now having one of their hamburgers and apple pies; but even if I wasn’t stuck in a parallel universe, it’s only 7 a.m. The place won’t be open for at least another three hours.
Crossing over the main road, I turn left into Big Top’s lot, park my car facing the building, shut off my engine and try to relax. Then just before closing my eyes all the way, I pray to whoever might be upstairs listening: please get me back to my own dimension, p-l-e-a-s-e! Meanwhile, I try to picture the beach in Corpus Cristi where I had parked the night before.
Corpus Cristi I repeat silently to myself. Corpus Cristi . . . C-o-r-p-u-s . . . C-r-i-s-t-i-i-i . . .
“It’s about time you got home,” my mother says to me after I walk in the front door of our house. “Where have you been for the last two weeks?”
“Checking out a few beach towns along the way,” I tell her. “No beaches anywhere near Abilene.” She nods with understanding.
“So after you unpack,” she says to me, “you gonna call Sam?” (Sam was one of my oldest and dearest friends) “He’s been phoning here almost every day, wondering where the heck you’ve been?”
“I will, but first, I think I have a lunch date.”
She looks at me surprised. “Already, you just got here! When did you have time to make a date?”
I look at my mom, knowing I can’t tell her the whole truth, so I tell her a smaller truth instead. “Let’s just say, we both love Big Top.”
Caught Between Two Worlds(Tom Di Roma)
Caught Between Two Worlds
The knock on my driver’s side window startles me out of a dreamless sleep. For the first second or two before opening my eyes, I think it’s probably a lifeguard telling me it’s time to move my car. I had parked on the beach the night before along with numerous other cars, trucks and vans, so at the time, I was pretty sure it was okay to do so. But now, when I open my eyes and turn my head, it isn’t a lifeguard whose face I’m looking into—it’s the face of a young female cop. My stomach plunges like a kite that’s run out of wind. Was it not okay for me to sleep on the beach after all?
I start to roll down my window when I notice the name of the town on her badge: Westport Police Department. But that’s impossible! It should say Corpus Cristi Police Department. Is this some kind of dream?
I turn my head to look around and that’s when a tsunami of fear and confusion rolls through my stomach. Yes, this is Westport Connecticut’s Compo Beach all right. My mouth drops open and my eyes pop like in a cartoon.
How in the hell did I get here!?
When I turn back to look at the female cop, she says, “I don’t see a sticker on your car. What are you doing on the beach, and how did you get past the gate?” After ten p.m. until six in the morning, the security guards usually lock up the entrance to the beach for the night. As for the sticker? She’s referring to the beach stickers many Connecticut towns make their citizenry purchase in order to use their town-owned beaches during the summer. Within a month after Labor Day, they close down everything: the snack bar, the bathrooms, even the lifeguard station, so you don’t need a sticker any more, or have to worry about guards. The entrance is left open all day and most of the night.
I don’t know what to say to the cop, so I just stare at her until she requests the familiar, “License and registration, please.”
Timidly I ask, “Is it all right if I get out of the car first? My pants are so tight I won’t be able to pull out my wallet unless I stand up.
She nods then steps back several paces as I slowly open my car door and begin to get out. After wriggling my wallet out of my back pocket, I hand her my license and registration. The registration should have been in my glove compartment, I know, but yesterday when I left Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, for some reason I folded it and put it in my wallet. Just one of those dumb things you do and don’t know why.
My stomach is quivering with waves of nervousness and fear, as I stand there watching her scan both items. I can’t help but wonder: is she’s going to give me a ticket, or worse, is she going to make me follow her back to the police station? God, I hope not! After all, I didn’t do anything wrong. I just parked on the beach—well, not here, of course, but . . .
“This car is registered in Texas,” she says, looking up, her hazel eyes boring into mine. “But your license says you live here in Westport.”
“That’s because I just got out of the Air Force,” I tell her.
“When was that?”
I swallow hard. “Two days ago.”
Her brown eyebrows shoot skyward. “You drove all the way from Texas to Connecticut in two days! What were you doing—a hundred miles an hour all the way!?”
I shake my head. Should I tell her? She’s never going to believe me, but as strange as it seems, something is compelling me to tell her anyway, so I explain, “No, actually, it was late yesterday morning when I left my base in Texas, and then last evening is when I parked on the beach in Corpus Cristi, but this morning, when you woke me up, I found myself here.”
She stares at me for a long time. I know for sure she’s going to say I’m lying, but instead she surprises me when she says in a very calm voice, “You’re going to have to get back, you know.”
I look at her confused. “Get back to where?”
“Corpus Cristi.”
I stare at her bug-eyed. “How in the hell am I supposed to do that? I don’t even know how I got here!”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. If you don’t get back, you might find yourself caught between two worlds.”
My stomach plunges. “What do you mean caught? You mean like stuck?”
She nods and says, “The same thing almost happened to me once.”
Again, I stare at her. “What do you mean the same thing almost happened to you?”
“I was born and raised in southern Massachusetts,” she says, “but went to college in Florida. On the day I was supposed to graduate, I was sitting in my car, smoking a joint (strange to hear a cop say that), when I nodded off. The next thing I know, I’m waking up back in my home town in Massachusetts.”
I stare at her confused. “How in the hell did you get there?”
“That was the kicker,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “I had no idea.”
“So what did you do then?”
“I drove back to Florida.”
“What!” I almost shout. “Are you telling me that you got so freaked out by what had happened, you drove all the way from Massachusetts to Florida?”
“And without stopping except for gas.”
“But didn’t you try to go home first?”
“I did, but when I got there, I found strangers living in my house.”
“What do you mean strangers? Were they squatters?”
She shakes her head. “No, but instead of my mother and father, I found a black family living in the house I grew up in. They claimed they’d been living there for the last twenty years!”
Again, I stare at her both shocked and confused. “But what happened to your parents?”
“I found out later they were living in a parallel dimension to the one I was in.”
“A parallel dimension?! What the hell are you talking about?”
“The way it was explained to me,” she says, “there are numerous dimensions—the one we live in and several other invisible ones, which co-exist parallel to our own.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of that theory.”
“Somehow, I had slipped into one of the others, probably because I was wishing so hard to be home instead of at school.”
I think about this a moment. “So, is this the same thing that happened to me?” I ask her. I’d been thinking a lot about Compo Beach when I parked on the sand in Corpus Cristi. She nods.
Once again my anxiety level spirals up a bit. “So how do I get back to my own dimension?” I ask her.
“Like I said, you have to get back to Corpus Cristi first.”
“Are you telling me I have to drive all the way back to Corpus Cristi, Texas, for this to be okay?”
She shakes her head. “Not really.” I breathe a huge sigh of relief. “I found out later from a psychic, that all I had needed to do at the time was go to a place where I felt the most comfortable and think about where I wanted to return to, and if I wished hard enough and long enough, I would end up there.”
“There being your college in Florida?”
She nods. I’m thinking about this when something else occurs to me. “But wait a minute,” I say. “If you drove back to Florida, wouldn’t you have found yourself still in the same reality as the one you woke up in?”
“You would think so,” she replies, “but somewhere along the way, I slipped out of that dimension and back into my own.”
“How did you do that?”
She shrugs. “At the time, I had no idea. I didn’t even know that it had happened until I got back to my dorm.”
I’m thinking how bizarre this whole thing is and yet . . . “So why doesn’t this happen to everyone?” I ask her.
“The way the psychic explained it to me,” she says, “it has something to do with our connection to the universe—something about our frequencies or vibrations, and the way they line up. Only a few rare people like you and I have this ability.”
I’m not sure I would call it an ability, I think, but after looking around Compo Beach one more time, I have to admit, it is definitely for real, so I say to her, “So what you’re telling me is, if I stay here, and if I wish hard enough, there’s a good chance I could end up back in Corpus Cristi?”
She shakes her head. “Not here.”
I frown. “Why not?”
“If you stay here, even if I don’t give you a ticket, one of the other patrols probably will. They might even arrest you.” That was true. “And then you’d have one heck of a time trying to convince them you weren’t nuts.” Again, I had to agree with her.
“So where else should I go then?”
“Where else besides Compo Beach have you always felt the most comfortable?” I have to smile; there’s only one place—Big Top! It’s a hamburger joint I’ve been going to since I was a kid. Its hamburger patties are never frozen and always flame broiled, and its fried apple pie treats, along with a cup of coffee, are like being in heaven.
When I say Big Top to her, she also smiles. “Since I’ve been here in Westport,” she says, “I’ve come to really love their barbecued ribs.” We stare at each other, smiling like two conspirators. Then she cautions me, “Remember, when you get to Big Top, try to relax and think hard about where you want to go back to in Texas and maybe you’ll get there.”
It makes my whole body and mind hiccup to think there is no guarantee, but after she gives me back my license and registration, I thank her, take note of her nametag, and then start driving slowly toward the beach’s entrance, which is now open.
It doesn’t take me long to get to Big Top—less than fifteen minutes. I can see it as I approach the main road that slices through the center of town. It’s sitting on the other side of the intersection like some long-time friend waiting to greet me.
God! I wish I was in there right now having one of their hamburgers and apple pies; but even if I wasn’t stuck in a parallel universe, it’s only 7 a.m. The place won’t be open for at least another three hours.
Crossing over the main road, I turn left into Big Top’s lot, park my car facing the building, shut off my engine and try to relax. Then just before closing my eyes all the way, I pray to whoever might be upstairs listening: please get me back to my own dimension, p-l-e-a-s-e! Meanwhile, I try to picture the beach in Corpus Cristi where I had parked the night before.
Corpus Cristi I repeat silently to myself. Corpus Cristi . . . C-o-r-p-u-s . . . C-r-i-s-t-i-i-i . . .
“It’s about time you got home,” my mother says to me after I walk in the front door of our house. “Where have you been for the last two weeks?”
“Checking out a few beach towns along the way,” I tell her. “No beaches anywhere near Abilene.” She nods with understanding.
“So after you unpack,” she says to me, “you gonna call Sam?” (Sam was one of my oldest and dearest friends) “He’s been phoning here almost every day, wondering where the heck you’ve been?”
“I will, but first, I think I have a lunch date.”
She looks at me surprised. “Already, you just got here! When did you have time to make a date?”
I look at my mom, knowing I can’t tell her the whole truth, so I tell her a smaller truth instead. “Let’s just say, we both love Big Top.”
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