"I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on a man's shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure."

— Dr. Henry Jekyll in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886

The only sound was his own ragged breathing and the crackling pop of the fire before him. He sat very still, legs crossed, unblinking, eyes burning. The flames danced before him, yellow, orange, red, curling around glowing logs, now higher and dimmer, then lower and brighter. The fire was all he could see.

A man's voice, deep and authoritative but distant, barely audible. "Good. Focus on the flame."

Then, suddenly, his hand was pulled toward the fire, and he felt pain lance through his arm. He didn't fight, but his eyes moved to his hand. The man gripped it, pressing a knife against his forearm. Blood, his blood, flowed down the knife and dripped into the flames, sizzling away into acrid smoke.

This is worse than he said. This isn't right. So much blood, he thought, but even his own thoughts were fuzzy, distant.

"The flame! Look into the flame!" came the voice again.

He looked. And was swept away.

He came to, found himself lying on his back in the dirt. There was pain in his arm, but it was nothing compared to the agony in his head. He opened this eyes to see his companion standing over him. "Good, you're awake. Tell me what you saw, William."

"Saw?" he croaked. He struggled to recall the madness which had overwhelmed him. Had he seen anything at all in that maelstrom? He held is hand in front of his face. His arm was freshly bandaged. "Saw." he repeated, stalling.

"Yes. I imagine you saw quite a bit. Tell me."

"I didn't really think this would work. I was confused."

"It doesn't matter. Tell me what you saw!"

"Hmm… there was a bull elk in the clearing. It looked right at me. It seemed angry, somehow."

"Good. You'll be seeing him again. What else?"

"Arcadia Bay… people and places here. Some I know, some I don't. Some things were different."

"Different how?"

"I'm not sure. The town is… changing."

"Yes. Much is changing. What else?"

"That's... all I've got."

"A good start. I told you I would open your eyes, do you believe me now?"

"I'm starting to."

"Good. I think it's time to leave." Sean Prescott held out his hand, helped William to his feet. "We'll talk later. Drive slow on the way home, you're a little short of blood." With that, he turned and strode off down the path, away from the smoldering embers in the center of the clearing.

William put a hand to his throbbing head. A cold wind had come up from sea, powerful gusts blowing through the treetops above him, swirling leaves around his feet. He could barely make out the little path by the moonlight, but eventually he found his way through the forest, back to his car. This was a bad idea, he thought. It had started, like so many bad ideas, in a bar. Sean had been slumming it, taking a drink with the working stiffs down at the local watering hole. Or so it had seemed; at this point William suspected the man had been on a more specific errand. His curiosity had gotten the better of him, and now here he was, a 23-year-old nobody sacrificing his own blood in the woods with the creepy scion of Arcadia Bay's resident plutocrats.

He ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair. He didn't even believe in spirits. But still, he was intrigued. He didn't think he'd been drugged. Why had he seen what he did? What did it all mean? Only Sean Prescott could help him find out.

The second time, Sean offered some measure of explanation. "I've come to see it as another world, which is closed to us. We don't see it, we can't touch it. But here, in this place, the door is just slightly ajar. With the right talent, and the right skill, we can peer through the cracks. And the spirits there know things, about the past, the present, and the future. The future, William. They can show us. We will make them show us." He looked into William's eyes, long and hard, then added some advice. "Try to focus on where you are. Keep your feet on the ground and your eyes open and you won't move around so much."

"OK, I'll try. Is this… always going to involve cutting me up?"

"My grandfather found the way, and my father spent his entire life trying to make it more… palatable. He never succeeded. Fortunately, we have the help of modern medicine." He gestured at the first aid kit next to him. Surgical-grade hemostatic foam was expensive stuff, but Sean was rich. As callous as the man seemed to be, he had dressed the previous wound meticulously, and William had healed quickly.

They proceeded as before. Lit the fire, added various plants, at least one of which was extremely poisonous, drew obscure shapes in the dirt. William concentrated. Sean cut him, again, blood spilling in the fire, again. He lost himself, again.

Fire, and chaos, for a time. The elk appeared, snorted at him, tossed its head. Then he was at the post office, mailing Christmas cards. One was to his brother. In Portland. Portland? he wondered. When did he move?

He watched a man and a woman walking down the street, eating ice cream, laughing.

He was in the diner eating breakfast. Joyce refilled his coffee. She was wearing a wedding ring. He looked down at his left hand… so was he. He smiled.

He watched a construction crew pour concrete into a new foundation. A big one. Next to… Blackwell Academy? A painted sign next to the site read "Coming soon: Prescott Dormitory".

He watched a fishermen hoist a cage onto the deck of his boat. The man started pulling out crabs, measuring the smaller ones and tossing some of them back. The rest went into the hold.

He was in the library with a girl. She looked a lot like Joyce, as a child. Joyce's daughter. His own daughter! He watched her pull books from the shelf, flip through them, put them back. "Max would like this," she said, keeping one. Who's Max? he wondered.

He stood below the Eiffel Tower with Joyce, taking a photo. She munched on a croissant. Their daughter, a teenager now, ran ahead. The sun shone in her blonde hair.

More scenes followed, then dimmed, and he saw fire, and chaos, again.

And then he woke in the clearing. Sean was still finishing the bandage on this forearm.

"Well?" came Sean's voice.

"Clearer this time. A lot of stuff. A daughter. Sean, I'm going to have a daughter! She's so beautiful!"

"So, now you believe."

"It just seemed so real. I guess I don't know. Are you planning to make a donation to Blackwell?"

"Eventually. They need a new dormitory and I want to make sure my own children are well-treated there."

"Whoah… I think I saw it, being built."

"Good! You see? You've had a real vision, tonight."

"A daughter. I need to propose to Joyce!"

"Be careful, William. Don't be too hasty to act on what you see, it's not set in stone."

"I'm pretty sure about this. I've waited too long already."

Sean closed the first aid kit, produced a notebook. "What else did you see?"

The next day, he called his boss, pretended to be sick. He drove an hour to the nearest jewelry store, selected a ring in some haste, drove an hour back. He couldn't afford much, but it'd do. Walked into the Two Whales a little before the lunch rush, sat down at the counter. He thought he should be nervous, but he wasn't. He just watched Joyce behind the counter, smiling. She was 22, tall, blonde, beautiful. She'd moved here from Atlanta just three years ago but somehow already seemed like she owned the place.

She took an order from a trucker at the other end, stuck the tag up in the passthrough, then sauntered over to William, leaned down with her elbows on the counter across from him. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, Mr. Price?"

"It's a free country," he teased. "Can't a man walk into a diner without facing an interrogation?"

"Not this man. I know when you're up to something, and you have a glint in your eye today as surely as the sun rises in the east."

He feigned distress. "Once again you've seen past my subterfuge. Woe!" He leaned back, put his right hand to his forehead in mock anguish. While Joyce's eyes followed the motion, with his left hand he set the ring box on the counter, popped it open. Then he looked down at it. "What do we have here? It appears I've come here to ask you to marry me."

Joyce followed his gaze, saw the ring for the first time. Her eyes widened. "William… I… of course… of course I'll marry you! If you really think you'll be happy with a small-town waitress for a wife!"

"Of this, I am absolutely certain."

She leaned across the counter and kissed him, long and hard. The trucker looked up from his coffee and stared. After a moment, Joyce broke off and looked at him. "You need a refill on that, sugar, or are you just rubberneckin'?"

"Sorry ma'am," the man said, gruffly, returning his attention to his coffee.

She pulled the ring out of the box, slipped it on, admired it. Then she looked at William, who sat beaming across the counter. "I never thought you would. You are full of surprises, mister."