Of course. The library is every bit as horrible as I remember it being. I sat, sulking and leaning against the back of a creaky old chair. I felt suffocated; everything looked like it was covered in years of dust, and in my mind, I was breathing all of that in. It was dead silent except for the sound of Sarah clickety-clacking away on the keyboard in front of her.

She had felt that the best place to start looking was a simple google search. Since this was a public library, the computer policy stated that each person only had an hour at a time one of the 10 terminals, and Sarah wanted to get as much out of this time as she could. This meant that I sat waiting, eager for the time to be up and we could get out of this dry, brittle building.

I begged Sarah to at least go back to one of our houses and use a personal computer, but she refused. Because the library was closer. Ugh. I was still drained from my lack of sleep, and I wanted nothing more than to take a nap.

Finally, after what seemed like an excruciatingly long hour, Sarah hopped our of her chair, and walked off without a word. I followed her to the printers, where she grabbed a huge stack of papers, half of them almost tumbling out of her hands as the technician glared at her.

“You aren’t supposed to print this much, ya know.” He rolled his eyes when she didn’t respond, and I gave him a sympathetic look. Again, he rolled his eyes and turned away from me.

We scurried out of the library, stack of papers stuffed haphazardly in Sarah’s oversized purse, and rushed back to my apartment. We knew that we would have ample privacy there, and Sarah seemed like she had something exciting to tell me.

No sooner had I unlocked my door did Sarah begin talking animatedly.

“Oh my god, Bri, I found so much stuff online! There are entire forums dedicated to people who say they are reincarnations of one person or another. Like, some of them are obviously fake: people who happen to know a lot about the person they are supposed reincarnations of or whatever, but BRI! I found so many stories about young children who knew way too much about people they had never met. JUST LOOK!”

She shoved a handful of her papers towards me, and I picked them up tiredly. Sure enough, there were countless stories that she had printed off. One boy who kept telling his parents that he wanted to go to his old home, a young girl who somehow knew everything about her mom’s parents’ farm that had long since been sold outside of the family.

Each situation and story was more wild and unbelievable than before.

“Okay, Sarah, but how do we even know that this is what’s going on? What if it was just some weird, super hyper-realistic nightmare?” I didn’t want to say it aloud, but I truly felt that Sarah was jumping to some pretty absurd conclusions.

“If that’s the case, then you shouldn’t have any problems with what I am about to suggest.” She smiled widely at me.

“Ummm… dude what?”

“It’s nothing crazy, I promise. But in these forums, there were a bunch of people commenting book recommendations and stuff encouraging people to embrace their past lives.” She quickly continued when she saw me grimace, “look I know how it sounds! But if it really is nothing, then nothing should happen, but I read that if you immerse yourself in the experiences, you can actually dig deeper into your past lives.”

“What do you mean, Sarah?” I had had enough of her antics and was about to tell her that I was going to sleep.

“Look, I already know you’re about to take a nap. So if you start to dream about the girl again, try and soak up every detail that you can. But you need to be thinking about her when you sleep. Basically, you have to want to uncover these memories.”

“Fine, fine, but if you want me to sleep you have to be quiet. But you’re welcome to stay here and make yourself comfortable.” With that I took my tired butt back to my bed. It had only been about 5 hours since I left my house, but already I felt like I had just lived through the longest, busiest day of my life. I sunk into my unmade bed and, of course, found myself thinking about the wild dream I had had.

As I drifted off to sleep, I remember thinking yeah, I definitely want to know if you are one of my past lives. If you are, I want to find out more about you.

Almost immediately, I was thrown back into that shed. While last time it had felt as if I was just seeing the interior of a shed, kind of like watching a movie, this time I was standing in the shed. I tried to look down and see my body, but I just saw shadow. Instead of wondering about this, I started looking around the shed, soaking up details that I might have missed the first time.

This time, the walls were bare, save for a single picture of a different girl. This girl was a little bit younger than the last one. She seemed to be around middle-school age, with dirty blonde hair and brown eyes. This single picture was of the girl and a few of her friends having a picnic in the park. Odd, I thought, not many kids her age still have picnics.

A few moments later I noticed a box sitting on the counter; this box hadn’t been there the first time. I walked towards it and reached out a shadowy hand. It was odd; I could feel the box under my hand. It was so surreal. Why couldn’t I see my hand touching the box? What was going on?

Inside the box were the  pictures from the last dream. I shuffled through all contents of the box, and found various other pictures of countless young girls. I felt a strange sensation in my stomach as I looked at these pictures, which I assumed was caused by my utter disgust at the whole situation.

At the very bottom of this box was a small, worn Crown Royal bag. Against my better judgement, I slowly opened the almost empty bag and poured the contents into my hand. A few small, white stones fell onto the shapeless appendage. I looked at them closely, again feeling that same fluttering sensation. Then, in horror I dropped the stones.

They scattered all over the shed floor as I retched, turning my face away from them. Those were not stones. They were teeth! All of them were pearly white and all different sizes. Whoever this sicko was kept teeth as a trophy from his victims.

I was shaking violently trying not to think about what I was seeing. I did everything I could to wake up. I shook my head, slapped myself, pinched my shadowed arm. At one point I even bashed my head against a wall. After my effort, I got extremely dizzy and felt myself stumble and fall to the ground.

***

Again I woke up in my own room, drenched in sweat. The nausea I had had in the dream was all too real, and I immediately ran to my bathroom and puked. Sarah came in from my living room, concern and curiosity both glittering in her eyes. I just looked at her with determination. Whatever had happened to those girls was sick and twisted, and now I was even more convinced that I needed to know what happened.