Stories – Eric Graham

The Dreamwalker of Pheasant Walk

In a quiet corner of South Florida where the streets still carry the names of birds, Jahkeem Seymour came into the world with a scream so powerful it rattled picture frames. His mother, Lauren Seymour, loved him fiercely but quickly learned the world would hear him too — every hour, every day. A temporary wall, packed with insulation, was built to soften the sound in the common rooms. It didn’t work. His voice cut through drywall and patience alike, announcing that a force of nature had arrived.

Lauren bore it all with the kind of strength reserved for single mothers who build worlds from exhaustion. She worked long hours, always doing everything she could to make life fit together — if not by her own hands, then by arranging help from others who could. Every decision was made with care, from the food on his plate to the air he breathed. She even staggered his childhood vaccines, slow and deliberate, letting his small body grow into its own defenses. Love, in her hands, was scientific and sacrificial.

The house in Pheasant Walk became a small universe of family and friction. Multiple adults shared the roof — laughter, tension, and too many opinions echoing through thin walls. Somehow, through the noise, the family made things work. Jahkeem, as he grew, filled the house with his own kind of noise: jokes, sass, laughter that bounced from tile to tile. In Eric’s words, “the jokester of the group, making any situation fun.”

But beneath that humor ran something deeper — a restlessness, a curiosity that seemed to hum in the air around him. When storms rolled through, Jahkeem would stand barefoot in the yard, staring at the puddles until the reflections changed. Sometimes they shimmered into candlelit rooms where men in lace collars wrote by quill, where crests and seals marked the corners of parchment. One night, he saw his own face there — older, dressed in another century.

His cat was the first to notice. Its tail twitched when the world bent. Soon the dreams followed — walking through rain into Haarlem, where a boy named Herman Antonie van Valkenburg sketched ships by candlelight. Through these mirrors, Jahkeem learned to travel between then and now, guided by instinct, humor, and a strange sense of belonging.

Every morning, his mother’s voice would pull him back to the present: “Breakfast, dreamwalker. You’re needed here too.” She never knew that her name echoed through his dreams — whispered by women in the old world, protectors across time.

To this day, when the rain hits hard and reflections ripple across the driveway, Jahkeem still pauses to look. The puddles seem to wink back — carrying both history and mischief — like the boy himself, a spark of laughter born from lineage and stormlight.

Record Type: Family Fiction — Mythic Realism Series (“The Dreamwalker Cycle”)

Prepared by Eric Graham — Appendix G Series, 2025

Part of the Graham Family Biography Project — Fictional Works Inspired by Ancestry

The Rain Key

It began on a Saturday, heavy with the smell of ozone and wet earth. Thunder rolled through Pheasant Walk like an echo from another age. Jahkeem sat by the sliding-glass door, his cat coiled beside him, watching the rain turn the patio into a mosaic of silver circles. When his hand pressed to the glass, a faint shimmer pulsed beneath his fingertips—warm, electric, alive.

The reflection in the puddle shifted, and for the first time it moved because he willed it. A candle flared in the mirrored world, its flame bending toward him as though caught in the same breath. Beyond the flame stood the boy from his dreams—Herman Antonie van Valkenburg—holding a small brass key.

“De sleutel van regen,” the boy whispered—the rain key. When Jahkeem blinked, the words appeared across the glass in beads of condensation, curling like handwriting.

The cat yowled and leapt back as the door fogged over. For a moment, the storm outside and the storm inside were indistinguishable. The brass key in Herman’s hand began to dissolve into light, the same light that now glowed in Jahkeem’s palm. He didn’t know how he had taken it—only that it belonged to both of them.

Over the next days, Jahkeem tested the key’s will. A drop of anger could darken the water’s surface; a laugh could brighten it to silver. When he was calm, the reflections showed Haarlem’s streets; when restless, they scattered into clouds. The dream-world was reading him, learning his pulse.

His mother noticed the change—the quiet intensity, the way he stared too long at puddles. “You’re thinking again,” Lauren said, brushing rain from his shoulders. “Just don’t think yourself away.” He smiled, but the key’s glow pulsed faintly in his fist.

One evening, the rain came harder than ever before. The cat crouched low, fur rising. Jahkeem stepped outside, barefoot, key in hand. The puddles didn’t mirror him anymore; they formed doorways. As lightning cracked, he whispered the Dutch word he barely understood, and the world folded in two.

Record Type: Family Fiction — Mythic Realism Series (“The Dreamwalker Cycle”)

Prepared by Eric Graham — Appendix G Series, 2025

Part of the Graham Family Biography Project — Fictional Works Inspired by Ancestry

The Reflection in Haarlem

The flash split the sky and, for a heartbeat, everything turned white. When color returned, Jahkeem Seymour was no longer standing on the patio in Pheasant Walk. The air smelled of ink and coal smoke, and rain fell against cobblestone streets instead of concrete. Bells tolled somewhere far off, slow and heavy, each one shaking the puddles at his feet into ripples of gold.

Haarlem stretched before him, dream-sharp and perfect. Tall, narrow houses leaned together like conspirators whispering across centuries. Windows glowed with candlelight. Every pane seemed to hum with energy—reflections upon reflections—like mirrors waiting for their turn to speak.

His cat was there too, impossibly dry, weaving between his legs as if it had made this journey many times. “You again,” Jahkeem whispered, his breath fogging in the cold air. The cat’s eyes caught the light like twin green lanterns, and it trotted down a narrow lane that smelled faintly of salt and varnish. Jahkeem followed.

The boy from the dreams, Herman Antonie van Valkenburg, appeared at the end of the street. He was sketching beneath a street lamp that hadn’t yet been invented in his own century. His quill scratched lines across a sheet of parchment: ships, canals, sigils. When he looked up, his eyes were the same dark hazel as Jahkeem’s.

“You found it,” Herman said, nodding toward the brass key in Jahkeem’s hand. “But you don’t yet know what it opens.”

They walked together through narrow alleys slick with rain, passing doorways marked by old coats of arms. Herman spoke of a mirror hidden in the archives of the city hall—one that didn’t show faces but futures, reflecting what a family might become. “The mirror must stay clean,” he said. “If the line forgets itself, the glass goes dark.”

As they neared the waterway, Jahkeem caught his own reflection in the canal. But it wasn’t him—it was his mother, Lauren, standing at the sliding-glass door back home, looking out into the storm. She was calling his name, her voice faint but clear across the centuries. The ripples blurred, and the brass key in his hand began to hum.

“She’s your anchor,” Herman said quietly. “Don’t lose the sound of her voice. The rain remembers those who listen.”

Jahkeem turned toward the canal one last time. The cat’s tail brushed his ankle, and the air shimmered. He stepped forward into the reflection, the key glowing like a heartbeat in his palm. The world folded again—light, water, and sound rushing inward—and he was gone.

Record Type: Family Fiction — Mythic Realism Series (“The Dreamwalker Cycle”)

Prepared by Eric Graham — Appendix G Series, 2025

Part of the Graham Family Biography Project — Fictional Works Inspired by Ancestry

Lauren’s Lantern

The storm hit hard that night, sweeping through Pheasant Walk with the fury of a tide come home. The lights blinked twice and went out, leaving Lauren Seymour standing in the soft blue glow of her phone. Wind rattled the windows like impatient hands. For a long moment she simply listened—rain, thunder, silence—and realized that Jahkeem wasn’t in the room.

She called his name once, then twice, her voice barely carrying above the weather. Somewhere near the sliding glass door, the cat meowed. The sound was strange—distant, like it came from inside a tunnel. Lauren’s heart stuttered. She grabbed the small camping lantern from the shelf, flicked it on, and the beam carved a path through the dark.

The light fell on the glass. Beyond it, the backyard shimmered under the downpour. Puddles reflected the storm clouds, but there—just for an instant—Lauren thought she saw something else: narrow streets, a canal, a boy with her son’s eyes standing in the rain beside an old bridge. The vision flickered as lightning split the sky.

“Jahkeem!” she shouted, but the thunder swallowed his name. The lantern’s flame wavered in her grip, throwing long gold shadows up the walls. Behind her, the photographs in their frames seemed to tilt, as if trying to see too.

She pressed her palm against the glass where the reflection had been. The cold bit through her skin, and for a second she felt warmth push back—like someone touching from the other side. It was gone as fast as it came.

When the power returned hours later, Lauren found Jahkeem asleep on the floor, the cat curled against his arm, both dry despite the open door. The brass key lay in his hand, dull now, but faintly warm. She brushed hair from his forehead and whispered, “Whatever world you wander, come home to me.”

Outside, the rain slowed to a hush. The puddles in the yard were still, each one holding a pale reflection of the lantern’s glow. If anyone had looked closely, they might have seen her face mirrored twice: once in the glass, and once in water that no longer belonged to this century.

Record Type: Family Fiction — Mythic Realism Series (“The Dreamwalker Cycle”)

Prepared by Eric Graham — Appendix G Series, 2025

Part of the Graham Family Biography Project — Fictional Works Inspired by Ancestry

Ancestral Interlude — The Keeper of Rain

Haarlem, the winter of 1765. The canals were frozen, the wind carrying the salt of the North Sea across the roofs. In a narrow study above the printers’ guild, Herman Antonie van Valkenburg wrote by candlelight, his ink stiff with cold. The entry in his ledger was not meant for the archives but for the bloodline.

To those who come after me, he began, the mirror must never be left unguarded. When the line forgets its sound, the rain forgets its face.

Legend said the mirror had been forged from river glass during the siege, when the city’s reflection was all that kept its courage. Its surface showed not what was present, but what might yet be reclaimed. Herman had seen it once — a sheet of silver water held within an oak frame, humming faintly as though remembering storms not yet born.

Each generation, a single child of the line was chosen as its keeper. Herman had been nine when the mirror called to him: his hand leaving a print of light upon the glass, the same mark that would later appear on his descendants. Since then, he’d learned the family’s quiet rule: the rain listens to the living, but it obeys only those who dream.

He dipped his quill once more, sealing the parchment with a wax crest — the familiar VAN VALKENBURG emblem, flanked by wings and waves. When the storms return, and the mirror flickers in foreign light, find the child who laughs through thunder. The key will know his hand.

Herman blew out the candle. Outside, snow had begun to fall — but in the dim windowpane, water still rippled where no rain had touched.

Record Type: Family Fiction — Mythic Realism Series (“The Dreamwalker Cycle”)

Prepared by Eric Graham — Appendix G Series, 2025

Part of the Graham Family Biography Project — Fictional Works Inspired by Ancestry

The Mirror Keeper

Morning came washed clean. In the kitchen light, Lauren Seymour poured coffee and watched Jahkeem trace the outline of a brass key on the table with one finger, as if confirming it had been real. The cat leapt to the chair beside him, eyes bright, tail curled like a question mark.

“Last night was different,” Lauren said. Not an accusation—an observation sharpened by years of listening between storms. She set a small lantern on the table—habit now—and its warm circle of light wrapped around them.

On the sliding-glass door, faint condensation gathered where the morning air met the house’s cool breath. Letters formed slowly in the fog, curling into a hand older than theirs: De spiegel moet bewaakt blijven. The mirror must be kept.

Jahkeem stood and, without touching the glass, breathed a steady stream across the pane. More words surfaced—broken, then clearer—as if the house itself were remembering: Wanneer de lijn zichzelf vergeet, wordt het glas donker. When the line forgets itself, the glass goes dark.

He told her everything—the puddles, the boy named Herman Antonie van Valkenburg, the streets of Haarlem, the key that hummed like a heartbeat. Lauren listened, not with disbelief, but with the same practical courage that had carried them through long nights and thin months. “Then we keep it,” she said simply. “We keep the mirror.”

From a drawer she pulled a thin folder—family notes, clipped articles, a print of an old crest. Wings and waves flanked the name VAN VALKENBURG. In the lantern glow the ink seemed to ripple. The cat watched, unblinking, as if taking attendance across centuries.

“Herman left a message,” Jahkeem said. He pressed the key against the folder’s plastic sleeve. The room cooled, the glass clouded, and a final line surfaced on the door as though written from the far end of rain: Zoek het kind dat door donder lacht. De sleutel kent zijn hand. Find the child who laughs through thunder. The key knows his hand.

Lauren smiled then—tired, fierce, certain. “That’s you,” she said. “But it’s not just yours to carry.” She lifted the lantern and set it beside the key. “Light and lock. We keep them together.”

They worked the rest of the morning like archivists of weather: labeling the folder, tucking the key into a small cloth pouch, noting dates and the shape of the storm. When they finished, the house felt different—aligned, as if some hinge had found its seat.

Outside, a thin sun opened the puddles into mirrors. In one, for a breath, a canal winked back; in another, a study lit by candle. The images faded, but not the sense of appointment. Keeper and key, lantern and line—mother and son—had stepped into their role.

That night, before the windows went dark, Lauren hung the lantern by the door. “In case the rain remembers,” she said. The cat flicked its tail. The key warmed faintly in its pouch. Somewhere far off, bells measured the hour in a city that did not know their names—and yet did.

Record Type: Family Fiction — Mythic Realism Series (“The Dreamwalker Cycle”)

Prepared by Eric Graham — Appendix G Series, 2025

Part of the Graham Family Biography Project — Fictional Works Inspired by Ancestry