CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jenna’s boots crunched softly on the bed of fallen leaves, her breath visible in the chilled air as tendrils of fog curled around her. The moon hung low and pale, casting an unearthly glow upon the familiar yet foreboding landscape. There, under the massive, gnarled branches of an ancient oak tree, she saw a young woman whose presence felt oddly predestined.

The woman stood motionless, her silhouette framed by silvered light. Then, right in front of her, a doorframe made of roughly-hewn wood stood, standing upright with nothing around it except air.

The woman knocked on the door and spoke through it in a pleading voice.

“You’ve made a mistake. She’s not the one you want. Don’t hurt her. I’m here. Maybe I can help you. Just open the door. Maybe I can be who you want me to be. I’m ready. Please let me in. You’re right about everything.”

Then, as if she had achieved her purpose, she turned away from the door toward Jenna.

Jenna approached slowly, the sense of purpose that had propelled her into this shadowy world tempered by caution. Even as she drew closer, the details of the figure before her refused to come into focus. The woman’s hair cascaded in loose waves, dark as the surrounding night, but her face remained stubbornly indistinct, as if she were not quite of this realm.

“Who are you?” Jenna asked, keeping her voice steady despite the unease she felt. Was this just a persistent figment of her own restless subconscious, or was this someone among the dead reaching out with an important message?

“I came to meet him,” the woman replied, her tone infused with mystery and an undercurrent of longing. “I was supposed to meet him here.”

“Meet who?” Jenna pressed gently, her mind grappling with the peculiar sense of repetition. She was awake within the familiar dream now, lucid and aware, and she wanted to be careful not to alter its course.

She was aware that this moment was a mirror of her dream from the previous night. She felt like she knew the script of this story by heart, yet she was certain there was more to learn. If she kept the dream going, maybe this time she’d be able to get answers.

“Under this tree,” the woman continued, ignoring Jenna’s question as if it were unheard or irrelevant.

Jenna frowned. Her instincts screamed that this encounter was pivotal—a nexus point in the web of mystery that had ensnared her since Amber Stevens vanished. There was something important to be discovered here if she could find the right questions to ask.

“Tell me his name,” Jenna insisted, taking a careful step forward. “Who did you come here to meet?”

The woman’s mouth opened wide, as if to shape an answer. But no sound came through her lips. The woman offered no answer, standing as silent and enigmatic as the oak itself.

“Are you trying to tell me something about Amber Stevens?” Jenna ventured, her voice slicing through the mist. The woman’s silence enveloped them both in a suspense that was all too real, even here in the land of dreams.

“Who are you?” Jenna repeated. But there would be no revelation, no clarity given.

“Look at this,” the woman murmured, her voice a mere whisper. Jenna’s gaze followed the direction of the outstretched arm to the large round scar on the oak tree that she’d seen the night before, the void left by an amputated limb. The fog seemed to curl around the edges of the bare wood, as if reluctant to touch it.

Jenna watched, transfixed, as the invisible hand began its work, just as it had last night. Letters were cut into the tree’s flesh—one after another—with precision and care. “EG + AP” materialized there, carved with an artisan’s skill yet by no visible craftsman. But before she could delve deeper, those letters were violently crossed out, replaced by a new set: “RD + PM.”

The sequence played out like a macabre ritual, each set of initials appearing only to be dismissed by an unseen judge. Jenna tried to connect these initials to her earlier dream, but she knew they were not the same. How many times had someone’s hopes been carved here?

This was more than a dream; it was a message—a code that needed deciphering. Something critical lay within these spectral carvings. Each crossed-out pair of initials might well be a testament to a something erased, a story untold. Was it a list of victims, a trail of broken hearts, or something she had yet to identify?

As the next pair of initials took shape before her eyes, Jenna kept pondering over how that this ghostly tableau might hold the key to the enigma of Amber Stevens. Why else would she be seeing it? But the initials “AS” seemed never to appear. She fought the urge to reach out and touch the scar, half-expecting her fingers to pass through the apparition of freshly carved letters.

Staring at the marks, Jenna could almost hear the rasp of the sharp blade against the bark, a reminder that very real danger could be lurking just beyond her perception. She shuddered, feeling the chill of the fog seep into her bones. This was not just a cryptic game played by her imagination; it was a personal challenge, a gauntlet thrown down by whatever forces governed this gap between waking and slumber.

“Tell me,” she pleaded to her ghostly companion. “What do you want me to see?”

But the woman remained silent, her expression unreadable, a perfect mirror to the enigmatic scene. Jenna’s mind raced, drawing connections, weaving theories, all the while knowing that the true answer lay just beyond her reach.

The tree’s scarred skin transformed once more, the bladeless carver working its phantom craft. “JT + KL” materialized only to be violently struck through. Jenna watched, her breath misting in the cold air, as “LN + WS” took its place. The cycle continued, an endless haunting waltz of letters and obliteration—but never the initials “AS.”

“Are you Amber Stevens?” Jenna asked the enigmatic figure beside her. The urgency of her voice cut through the silence like the unseen knife that marred the oak.

The young woman before her held Jenna’s gaze, her midnight hair a stark curtain against the pallid fog. Something flickered behind her eyes, a desire to speak, to divulge secrets Jenna was desperate to uncover. Yet her lips remained still.

Before Jenna could press further, another voice, clear and disconcertingly familiar, reached her ears from behind. “Do I look like Amber Stevens?”

Jenna spun, the abrupt motion stirring the fog into ghostly eddies. Another young woman approached, emerging from the obscurity of an adjoining wooded area—almost a doppelganger of the first. For a heart-stopping instant, Jenna believed it was some trick of the dream, the same woman shifting places with a magician’s flair. But reality—or the dream’s semblance of it—held firm; both women stood separate, their similarities a riddle wrapped in shadows.

“Can we both be Amber Stevens?” they intoned together, their voices eerily synchronized, as if woven from the same thread of haunting melody.

Jenna scrutinized them closely. The first woman’s hair cascaded in loose waves, absorbing the moon’s glow like the velvet of midnight skies. Her angular features gave her a delicate yet otherworldly beauty, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin that hinted at resilience rather than fragility. The second woman mirrored her in many ways, but subtle differences marked her—a slightly fuller lip, a gentler slope to her nose, nuances that distinguished them even in this dim light.

The fog began to lift, and Jenna’s eyes pierced through the lingering haze. The women’s similarities to the photograph of Amber Stevens—the one Jenna had committed to memory—were undeniable, yet something crucial was amiss. It was as though the essence that animated Amber’s smile, the spark of life unique to her, was absent in these spectral figures.

“You’re not Amber,” Jenna stated firmly, addressing the first apparition. She then turned to the second, “You’re not Amber either.”

The women did not seem taken aback by Jenna’s assertion. Instead, they regarded her with an air of quiet understanding, their expressions unreadable. They exchanged a glance, their midnight waves of hair shimmering faintly in the moonlight, but they still gave no explanation.

“Can you at least tell me anything about Amber? Is she alive, dead, or in danger?” Jenna pressed on, even though she knew well the futility of extracting clarity from such phantoms. She studied their faces for any sign of recognition, any flicker of knowledge. But the silent pair remained inscrutable.

The first woman’s lips parted again as if to speak, but no sound emerged. Instead, it was the second woman who motioned with a slender hand, beckoning Jenna and her companion into the woods from which she seemed to have emerged. The commanding gesture left Jenna with no choice but to follow.

They moved in silence, not even a whisper of leaves underfoot to confirm their passage. The ground sloped gently downward, leading them into a small clearing where the earth bore two ominous indentations. Grave-shaped hollows lay side-by-side, the mounds of displaced soil standing as mute testimony to the act of their creation by human hands, looking ready to receive dead bodies.

“Is this where you’re buried?” Jenna asked, her voice cutting sharper now, edged with urgency. The spectral figures seemed poised to answer, their mouths opening in unison—yet instead of words, the mournful cry of a distant train horn pierced the night. It was the same haunting sound that she had heard in a previous dream.

Jenna’s body tensed, her gaze snapping toward the source of the sound. Yet there were no tracks in sight, only the thickening woods and the endless night. Her chest tightened with the realization that this dream, like so many before it, held a message—a puzzle piece in a larger, darker picture that she was compelled to solve.

She pivoted towards the plaintive wail of the train horn, its mournful sound slicing through the foggy silence of the night. Her feet carried her away from the spectral clearing, the grave-shaped hollows fading into a distant memory as she stepped back toward the oak tree. The dream’s persistent logic drew her eyes to an anomaly in the landscape—a set of railroad tracks now lay beside the oak tree, materializing as if conjured by her own subconscious.

The train headlight pierced the darkness, casting a focused beam that illuminated the oak’s trunk. Upon the pruning scar, letters glowed with an eerie permanence: SV + NS. Jenna’s heart raced; the initials seemed to burn themselves into her retinas, a fixed message in this ever-shifting dreamscape. She stepped closer, drawn by a force beyond reason, her mind working furiously to decode the significance of those carvings.

As the locomotive’s light swelled closer, Jenna’s gaze was torn from the tree to a familiar sight down the tracks. A railroad crossing gate was closing, its red lights flashing rhythmically, warning of the train’s imminent passage. A sign accompanied the flashing gate, and with a sharp intake of breath, Jenna recognized the location—it was real, tangible, a place she had passed countless times in the waking world.

“I know that place!” she gasped aloud, her voice echoing strangely in the thick air.

Without warning, the scene evaporated, dissolving like mist under the relentless sun. Jenna’s eyes snapped open, the morning light flooding her bedroom with soft hues of dawn. She lay still for a moment, chest heaving, as the remnants of the dream clung to her like cobwebs. It was as vivid and intense as reality itself, writing every detail into her mind with indelible ink.

She rose from her bed, a sense of purpose propelling her forward. That crossing, those initials—they were clues, breadcrumbs leading her towards an answer that had eluded her thus far. Jenna knew, with an unshakeable certainty borne of years seeking answers in the shadows of the unexplained, what her next move must be.

Jenna’s hand shook slightly as she reached for the cellphone resting on her nightstand. The digits of the clock glowed 5:17 AM, casting a faint light in the dimness of early dawn. With deliberate motions, she swiped the screen to life and navigated to her recent calls, tapping on Deputy Jake Hawkins’ contact.

“Jake, you up?” Her voice was steady despite the racing thoughts fueled by the vivid dream.

A rustle of sheets crackled over the line before his response came, tinged with the grogginess of interrupted sleep. “Yeah, I’m up now. What’s going on?”

“Good,” Jenna replied with an urgency that mirrored the pounding of her heart. “Get ready. I’ll be there in twenty to pick you up.”

She could almost picture Jake sitting up in bed.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, though her mind still echoed with the phantom sounds of the train horn from her dream. “We’ve got someplace to go.”