CHAPTER ONE

Jenna Graves stood in the living room of her childhood home, a place once brimming with laughter and whispers, now disturbingly quiet. She couldn’t remember why she had come here after so many months of absence.

And why did everything around her keep changing?

The wallpaper, which had always been peeling at the corners, shifted patterns—floral print to paisley, then stripes. She blinked, seeking logic in the disorienting metamorphosis. The couch, an heirloom passed down through generations, was reupholstering itself over and over, cycling through fabrics—velvet, corduroy, leather—in rapid succession.

As she looked around, she saw that family photos on the mantelpiece were altering too; images blurred and refocused, showing faces she didn’t recognize, then familiar ones, eternally smiling.

When Jenna heard footsteps out on the porch, the sound was both foreign and familiar, and with it came a bit of recollection. She was here to see her mother, Margaret Graves, whom time and silence had distanced from her. The lump of dread lodged in Jenna’s throat felt real enough to choke her. Conversations long overdue seemed to drift through the air like specters. But as the front door swung open, the figure that materialized was not Mom.

Jenna’s father stood before her, preserved in the prime of his life, back when Jenna had been a teenager, unmarred by illness or age. Heart leaping, Jenna opened her mouth to voice the impossibility, the denial that he could not be standing there—that he had died five years ago. But the words dissolved on her tongue, replaced by the realization that this was a dream—one of the lucid kind, when she became aware that she was dreaming.

Her father’s features were marked with a concern that seemed out of place on this younger face she remembered. His green eyes, mirrors of her own, held an urgency that belied the calm of their familiar surroundings.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” Jenna asked, aware of the dream’s capricious nature, but needing to anchor herself in the normalcy of dialogue.

“Jenna,” he said sternly, “you’ve got to get tough. No more pussyfooting around. You understand?”

She frowned, a flicker of frustration crossing her mind. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Before he could explain, a train horn cut through the fabric of the dream. It was a blare that didn’t belong, distant but intrusive. Her father glanced toward the unseen source of the sound, his expression tightening.

“Can’t talk now, Jenna,” he said, a note of finality in his voice. “Somebody else needs you.”

The horn blew again, louder, as if echoing across a vast chasm. Suddenly, the interior of Jenna’s childhood home dissolved, giving way to a fog-drenched night. Moonlight struggled against the mist, casting silvery tendrils that reached down to where she now stood under a large oak tree. Its branches stretched towards the sky, skeletal and bare despite the actual season.

Next to the tree, a young woman waited. Her age was indeterminable; she could be a teenager or slightly older, her features frustratingly vague, shifting as though viewed through water. The woman’s expression was solemn, her stance conveying a silent plea.

“I need your help,” she said to Jenna, her voice clear in spite of the murkiness that surrounded them.

Jenna tried to discern any familiar trace within the blurred lines of the woman’s face, but she was only able to make out a few details. The woman’s hair cascaded in loose waves, a deep shade of midnight that absorbed the moonlight rather than reflecting it. Her face, though blurry, seemed delicate and angular. Standing at a moderate height, she possessed a slender build that seemed to blend seamlessly with the shadows around her.

But recognition eluded Jenna, just another layer of the dream’s bewildering message. The feeling that this encounter was pivotal pressed upon Jenna, a certainty that transcended the uncertain world of this dream.

“Help with what?” Jenna spoke into the night, her words almost lost in the dense fog that swirled around them.

The young woman seemed to wrestle with elusive words, her lips parting in frustration. “I don’t know how to say it,” she murmured, her voice drifting through the fog that enveloped them both. Jenna held her breath, waiting for clarity that never came. She knew the rules of these encounters; the dead were enigmatic messengers, their meanings cloaked in obscurity.

“Is there a message you’re trying to give me?” Jenna probed gently, her tone even, betraying none of the urgency that she was feeling. The woman’s eyes, though indistinct, appeared clouded with an emotion that hinted at desperation.

“You must solve the puzzle yourself,” she said, as if reciting an oft-repeated statement.

Jenna nodded, accepting the familiar challenge. It wasn’t the first time she’d stood as an intermediary between the living and the spectral voices of the deceased. Each dream was a riddle, urging Jenna to assemble the disjointed spectral communications into a story she could understand and act on when she was awake.

The conversation paused as the woman’s attention shifted to the gnarled oak tree. “I was supposed to meet him here,” she whispered, sorrow crossing the blurred visage. Her hand extended towards the tree, pointing to a discolored circle on its trunk where a robust limb had been cut off. Jenna stepped closer, her eyes tracing the rough edges of the scar. It spoke of past violence, a severance from life as it should have been.

“Who is ‘him’?” Jenna pressed, her curiosity sharpening. But no name came from the woman’s strained silence. Instead, she only gestured again to the wound on the tree.

Jenna’s breath caught as she watched the air itself carve into that wound, invisible fingers etching initials into the scarred wood with methodical precision. “MT + GN” appeared first, characters deeply grooved into the scar of the ancient oak.

Before Jenna could consider the meaning behind those initials, a harsh line scored through them, obliterating the union with a swift slash. Then fresh letters began to form: “JD + SP.” They were meticulous, every stroke deliberate, cut with fury by an unseen weapon guided by an unseen hand.

“Who are they?” Jenna asked the young woman, but she received no answer. Instead, another pair of initials was carved, and then another, each set eradicated as quickly as they had appeared. The randomness of the act confounded Jenna’s analytical mind, the logic that served her so well in waking life now scattered in this realm of dreams.

“He’s very angry. I didn’t know how angry,” the young woman murmured, her voice trembling.

The initials continued to change, a relentless dance of letters that twisted and turned, a macabre waltz of identities lost and discarded. Jenna felt a cold realization that somewhere beyond this dream lay a mystery she needed to solve. She knew this was a message, a puzzle meant for her and her alone, born from her psychic ties to the dead.

“Angry about what? Who is he?” Jenna pressed, though she expected no clear response. The young woman’s form flickered like a flame starved of oxygen, her features still frustratingly indistinct.

Jenna’s pulse quickened at the distant horn, a sound that seemed to echo from both the dream and some far-off memory. “We need to leave,” the woman said with urgency, pulling Jenna’s attention back to the present danger. Without questioning why, Jenna followed the spectral figure deeper into the forest, gripping a flashlight she hadn’t realized she was holding.

The fog hung heavy around them, swallowing the weak beam of light as they navigated through dense underbrush. The trees loomed large in the dimness, their shapes merging with the mist to create an otherworldly tableau. Emerging onto a gravel road, Jenna noticed how it stretched indefinitely in both directions, barren and forlorn. “This must be where it started,” the woman murmured, gazing down the path with an expression that Jenna could only interpret as one of regret or loss.

“Started? What are you talking about?” Jenna pressed, though she anticipated no straightforward answer. The woman glanced at her, eyes filled with an unfathomable depth of sorrow and confusion before the train’s whistle cut through the silence once more.

In an instant, the peaceful stillness shattered. A locomotive’s light pierced the fog, barreling towards them with alarming speed. Jenna’s instincts screamed at her to dive out of the way, to haul the woman to safety, but a paralyzing terror rooted her to the spot. Her emerald eyes, usually bright with determination, now reflected the stark white beam of the oncoming engine.

“Move!” Jenna’s mind willed her body to respond, but it was as if the dream had its own grip on her, dictating the rules of reality within its confines. She looked over at the woman, expecting panic, yet found only a detached curiosity there, as if she were merely an observer rather than a participant in the impending catastrophe.

“Come on!” Jenna managed to croak, reaching out to pull the woman with her. But her hand passed through the apparition’s arm, grasping nothing but the damp night air. The ground beneath her feet trembled with the approaching roar, a vibration that resonated with a deep-seated fear Jenna couldn’t quite place.

Was this the end? Would the train barrel through them, bringing an abrupt close to the dream? Or was something else at play, a deeper meaning to this relentless pursuit? Jenna’s analytical mind raced, dissecting the situation even as the headlights bore down on them.

Jenna stood frozen, waiting for the inevitable collision, or perhaps, the revelation that would come with it.

As the spectral locomotive’s light cut through the fog, an eerie tranquility settled over the woman beside Jenna. “Strange, nobody ever comes this way anymore,” she remarked, her voice steady in the noise of the oncoming train.

“Listen to me,” Jenna insisted, her sheriff’s instincts surging despite the dream’s surreal nature. “We need to move now!”

The woman turned to her with a serene smile, her form wavering like a candle flame in a gentle breeze. “Oh, no. This is not how I die. And it’s not how you die, either. It’s time for you to wake up.”

Before Jenna could respond, the woman’s presence waned, her image flickering like a candle threatened by a growing breeze. Jenna reached out instinctively to grasp what remained of the encounter, but her fingers closed around nothing but the damp, cool air of the dreamworld that abruptly dissolved into nothingness.

Jenna’s eyes snapped open to a familiar ceiling. Her breathing was heavy, her chest tight as she sat up in bed, trying to shake off the remnants of the dream. She glanced at the simple digital clock on her nightstand—it read 6:00 AM, its numbers glowing softly in the dimness of dawn.

The chill from the dream still clung to her, seeping into the silence of her bungalow. Jenna swung her legs over the side of the bed, her feet meeting the cold hardwood floor. As the fog of sleep cleared from her mind, sharp fragments of the dream lingered—cryptic messages, the carve marks on the tree, and the woman’s calm demeanor in the face of impending doom.

There was something unsettlingly familiar about the rhythm of that dream, a pattern that mirrored the cadence of her life since her sister Piper’s disappearance. Each dream, each encounter with the departed, had led Jenna to true stories, their meanings often obscured until the light of day cast clarity upon them.

She stood, moving mechanically to prepare for the day ahead, her movements betraying none of the turmoil within. But as she dressed, the conviction that had been forming in the back of her mind crystallized. The dream wasn’t just a random assembly of subconscious fears; it was a harbinger, a prelude to the troubles that lay ahead—perhaps even a premonition.