Amazing Grace how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now I'm found

was blind but now I see.

Floyd Wilks found his surroundings to be too surreal, too absurd to be anything but a dream. Surely he was lying in his bed at home, and that this whole thing was all brought on by stress. He had to watch out for THE STRESS his doctor had told him, he wasn't any spring chicken anymore and the last thing he wanted to do was to give himself a heart attack. He would feel the crushing pain in his chest or maybe his shoulder and before he knew it he would be kicking the bucket, buying the farm, pushing up daisies. THE STRESS would do that to him, he had to make sure he kept that blood pressure down.

He wasn't a hypochondriac to be sure. However, Floyd had made the near instantaneous decision that something was fundamentally wrong with him when he went to sleep in his bed and found himself awakened in a cornfield. Not that he felt like anything was wrong; quite the contrary, aside from standing in the middle of someone's farm wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, he felt better than he had in twenty years.

He could hear the music, a droning but pleasant voice off to his left accompanied by the strum of a guitar. He cautiously started walking in that direction, almost positive that he had finally snapped, that he was going mad.

Is this how it happens? He wondered. Is this the kind of world people with the Alzheimer's live in? To them they are in this nice happy place, but to everyone on the outside they have just gone totally batshit insane?

If this was a dream, it was the most real dream he had ever experienced in his life. And that wasn't saying all that much, Floyd very rarely remembered his dreams, not since he was a very small boy. He dimly recalled that he was prone to nightmares. That he would have to run to his parents' room once or twice a week and climb under their covers. Floyd had another scary dream his mom would say and they would all go back to sleep.

This didn't feel like any scary dream though. In fact, nothing about it felt particularly unpleasant in the slightest. To his mind, this entire place was one of the most idyllic settings he could imagine, it made him almost have pangs of regret of what could have been, the places he could have retired rather than live out his remaining years in cold-assed northern Ohio.

A warm evening breeze blew through the cornfield. Floyd could see the stalks, heavy with corn, rippling and bowing in the gentle wind. He walked toward the music; his hands stretched forward probing like a blind man parted from his cane, clearing a swath of cornstalks out of his way as he trudged on ahead. Still the singing continued on, growing louder with each step.

When we've been there ten-thousand years

Bright shining as the sun

We've no less days to sing God's praise

Than when we first begun

Finally and without warning, the cornfield in front of him seems to just disappear. He walked through what appeared almost like a solid wall of corn and then out into about twenty feet of (he thought) poorly maintained grass that ended with the front porch of an old single-story farmhouse.

An old black woman, wizened with a faint fluff of white hair on the top of her head stopped singing and set aside her guitar when she saw him approaching. A bright and inviting smile spread out across the canvas of her bespectacled face as he approached in an almost dreamlike daze.

"Hello Floyd" she said. "What kept you?"

Uncertain how to respond, or even what to respond he pointed back behind him gape-mouthed for a moment.

"The corn" he said. "I lost my way in the corn…how do you know my name?"

And then a more important thought came to him before she could reply. "Am I dead?"

"You aren't dead, Floyd. Praise God!" she replied.

"If I'm not dead, where am I. Is this a dream?" Floyd asked, a little confused.

"Mayhap it is, and mayhap it ain't." The old woman said, grinning impishly. "This is Hemingford Home, Nebraska and folks around these parts call me Mother Abigail. You are going to need to come and see me soon, Floyd, you and all your friends."

"I don't understand…" Floyd started but Mother Abigail interrupted him. And it seemed to him at once that the sky was growing dark above him at an alarmingly fast pace.

"Nightfall is coming soon! You best get here before night falls for good!" She said and then pointed behind him at the corn.

Floyd turned around and noticed with alarm that large black storm clouds were directly over him, bright flashes of lightning arcing back and forth between the thunderheads. The wind was now blowing through the corn with gale intensity. Shaken, he turned back to the old woman to ask her what was going on but behind him there was nothing but corn. He turned again in a circle, panic welling up within him, but he found himself completely surrounded by corn on all sides.

"Mother Abigail?" he asked tentatively, but the only reply was a loud peal of thunder directly above him.

Trying to keep calm he started walking back in the opposite direction from which the storm had come in, the rational parts of his mind telling him that the farmhouse must be there in the corn somewhere and all he needed to do was to find it. In forced calmness, he walked quickly; he didn't want to run, knowing that the moment he started to run the panic was going to take control.

He kept circling around to look behind him. No matter what direction his back was facing he was almost positive that there was someone directly behind him. It felt like a queer and uneasy pressure that was right on the back of his shoulders; it felt like someone was watching him, it felt like someone was standing right behind him and grinning at him.

He could feel the anxiety building, he could feel THE STRESS building and finally it became too much for him. Floyd turned around and yelled, "Who's there?" into the howling wind that was beating down on the cornfield.

He got no reply and was just about to chide himself for being so irrational when two hands slammed down hard on his shoulders, bringing him down to his knees. Wide eyed he looked over and saw one of the two hands resting just to the side of his neck. They were horribly disfigured claws with long dirty nails. He tried desperately to scramble away, but those terrible hands were holding him in a death-like grip.

II

Floyd was on the ground, clawing at the wood beneath his hands and feet. He could hear a noise, not quite a scream but more like a high-pitched moaning. It took him a moment to realize that the sound was emanating from deep within his own throat. It took him a few seconds longer to realize that he was lying on the floor of his bedroom, soaked in sweat with the morning sunlight poring in through the bedroom window.

He suddenly stopped thrashing about, feeling more than a little bit absurd about his current situation. He was relieved that there was nobody in the room to poke fun at his childish reaction to what was nothing more than a little bad dream, a dream no doubt caused by THE STRESS of dealing with his son being sick right before a big air show.

He gradually got to his feet, every single joint in his body creaking with the exertion. He could smell breakfast being cooked in the kitchen downstairs, bacon and potatoes were the aromas he could identify readily; Amanda was an amazing girl. While Derek had grown steadily worse throughout the evening, Amanda jumped into action doing every single function that was needed to care for her fiancée and compensate for his illness.

Sure enough, as he got dressed and walked down the stairs he found her busily cooking eggs, bacon and hash browns in the kitchen. But even more shocking was that Derek was up and around, sitting at the table and drinking a glass of orange juice. He looked drained and pale, with bright circles of color high on his cheeks; but otherwise he looked like he might be getting over this bug he'd caught.

"Hi dad" Derek said, his voice was toneless and tired.

"I didn't expect to see you up today, not with how you were doing last night." Floyd said. This was a bit of an understatement seeing that only eight or so hours earlier, Floyd was ready to take Derek to the emergency room after his fever peaked at 103.8 degrees and was not showing any signs of letting up. But much to his relief, the fever broke right around midnight and they both were able to sleep peacefully through the night.

"I still feel pretty bad, but I think I might be out of the woods, Amanda's chicken noodle soups seems to have this thing on the run." Derek said, sharing a private smile with his girlfriend.

Amanda smiled back and continued cooking, stopping for a moment to grab a tissue out of the Kleenex box on the counter and sneeze into it a couple times. She caught Floyd looking at her worriedly and shrugged, smiling.

"It's okay Floyd, I'm not coming down with it." She said. "It's just my allergies."

Floyd wasn't so sure, she was getting a flushed look about her that he was finding alarming. She was a little bit worried herself, her parents were stranded on their vacation with air travel to and from the islands of Hawaii being suspended because of the flu epidemic, they were unsure exactly when they would be able to come home. Amanda's mother had talked to him the day before, she herself had sounded like she was developing a bad case of the flu, and told him that she was very sorry about all of this and that they would be home as soon as they possibly could.

Predictably, Floyd told them that it was okay and not to hurry on his account.

"After breakfast" Floyd started right before Amanda plopped a plate down right in front of him which him that he immediately started to douse with Tabasco sauce. "After breakfast I'm going to head on over to the market and pick up some stuff. Is there anything that I can get you?"

Derek nodded, his voice still sounding weak and congested. "Get some Nyquil or something, anything that will help me sleep better tonight. Last night sucked."

Yes, Floyd agreed, yes it did.

III

The drug store was a complete nightmare, Floyd watched with horror at the chaos that was taking place in front of him. Everyone in the store except him seemed to be exhibiting some stage of flu-like symptoms. The stores patrons all were acting universally disagreeable and irritated, not that he blamed them, that's pretty much how he felt when he was sick.

The store itself looked like it had been picked over and cleaned out pretty well. Either that or they hadn't gotten a delivery of new merchandise in a few days. Maybe it was both. The pharmaceutical section was the area that looked like it had been hardest hit; everything that was even remotely useful in treating colds or the flu had long since been picked up off of the shelves. Even the homeopathic remedies which were only slightly more useful than taking nothing at all were long gone.

Floyd gave a cursory expression at the shelves, looking around for anything at all that might be useful for easing his son's (and maybe his daughter-in-law's) symptoms. Just when he thought that the ransacked shelves had nothing to offer him he spied a box of Tylenol PM pushed back to the end of a shelf and completely overlooked. He grabbed the box and walked for the front of the store, keeping the small box of medicine concealed – he watched two people get into a shoving match over something as innocuous as a bottle of ginger ale.

Even more surreal, he stood at the check stand for almost ten minutes waiting for the cashier to come up and check him out, but nobody ever showed up. During this time he watched a coughing man walk out the door with a shopping cart full of groceries. Floyd had opened his mouth to ask the man if he had intended to pay for those, but then closed it. Things were seriously not right in the world.

Frustrated, he reached into his wallet and pulled out six dollars. He set the money on the counter and walked out with the medicine in hand. He was sure that someone would steal the money, most likely before he had even gotten out of the parking lot, but at least his conscience would be clear in the fact that he was not a thief.

His walk back to the car was interrupted when he noticed that a man was sitting in an idling car parked next to his. He knew this man too; he was the guy that manned the flight shop counter at the Kent airport. He didn't know him very well, but they had a few decent conversations over the years. And now he was slumped over the steering wheel in the car with the windows down and Tom Petty blaring out of the car stereo.

Floyd cautiously walked up. The man made no movement but the sound of his raspy, labored breathing was audible even over the music.

"Mark?" Floyd asked, he scanned his recollection for the airport clerk's last name and came up empty.

"Mark?" he said a little bit louder, reaching in and pushing the power button on the car stereo. The irritatingly loud music cut off leaving the more disturbing sound of a man's dying breaths.

Floyd held his hand out, at first he had intended to tap the man on the shoulder, to try to get his attention and possibly see if he needed someone to call him an ambulance. But instead he slowly withdrew his hand from the car. Yet just as he started to do so, the man sprung to life and grasped Floyd's wrist in his hand.

The grip was damp and sweaty, yet strong enough the Floyd couldn't pull his hand free. In terror he looked to Mark, who was now grinning up at his with a delirious fire in his eyes.

"He's coming for you Floyd, the darkman, the hardcase…" Mark said, his mouth stretching into a lunatic grin.

Floyd lunged back and broke free of the sweaty and diseased hand that was grabbing onto him. He turned and started running only turning around when he heard the screeching of tires behind him.

He turned around wide eyed and saw Mark's Chevy fly backwards and slam into the parked car on the other side of the aisle. Floyd took a few steps backward, certain that Mark was going to now throw the car into gear and drive after him, to run him down. But mark just lay there slumped over the steering wheel, the horn blaring. His left hand hung out of the window sliding back and forth across the door like a pendulum.

Floyd turned and ran. Screw the car, he thought, it's only a ten minute walk to get home.