Dream Maker
Autor:in
Charlotte Douglas
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15
Prologue
Jared Slater bolted upright in the darkness with a scream on his lips and blood thundering in his ears. Another dream. Cold mountain air struck the perspiration bathing his bare chest, while his senses reeled from the horror his mind had painted.
He fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp, but its soft glow brought no comfort. Blackness hovered in his memory, and although the red digits of his radio winked two a.m., he knew sleep would elude him for the rest of the night.
After pulling on sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and thick crew socks, he sprinted down the narrow flight of stairs and flipped on the lights in the great room, the scene of his nightmare. The tranquil setting, with its deep leather chairs, massive fireplace rimmed with mountain stone, and timbered cathedral ceiling, contradicted his dream. Every piece of furniture stood in its place, the door remained securely locked, the ceiling-high windows that overlooked the valley glistened whole, unbroken. And the braided rug in front of the hearth—
He shook his head in an attempt to clear the image of a young woman sprawled there, a bloody gash marring the smooth perfection of her high forehead, and her eyes, the color of mountain mist, staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
Forcing himself across the braided rug where her body had lain in his dream, he removed a pad and pencil from his desk and carried them into the kitchen, where he turned on the coffeemaker before trying to capture the details of the horror that had awakened him. The insidious nightmare coiled like a python in his brain, strangling all thoughts except the visions from his dream.
The woman had seemed familiar—he had experienced an overwhelming affection for her—but awake, he had no idea who she was or why she had been there. A shudder racked his body. Even with the central furnace pumping warm air into the room, he couldn’t shake the chill. He poured steaming coffee into an earthenware mug, carried it to his chair in front of the fireplace, and then touched a match to logs and kindling. In a few minutes, a cheerful blaze crackled and hissed in the stillness.
Pictures hovered in his head of the woman who had died—a small-framed woman in her twenties, with long black hair, gray eyes, a heart-shaped face and a clear complexion. She’d been determined, independent, good-natured, and incredibly beautiful.
“I loved her.”
His words echoed back from the high ceiling, and the grief that had seized him in the dream refused to release him. Anguish skewered his heart with a numbing, intimate despair. The woman in the dream hadn’t been a stranger he’d never known, would never know; he had loved her.
Images from his nightmare replayed in his mind: the beam of sunlight that had turned her hair to glistening jet as she entered the room through the front door, calling him by name; the glimpse of rhododendron blooming on the mountainside; the stack of mail she had sorted before extracting a priority envelope with a look of pleased anticipation; the force and direction of the explosion as it had knocked her off her feet.
Exhausted from reliving the woman’s death again and again, Jared drained his cup, padded into the kitchen for a refill, and tossed another log onto the fire. Then he settled into the leather depths of his chair again.
The dreams had begun two years ago. He’d considered the first one merely a creation of his sleeping brain until he read in the newspaper that the woman he’d dreamed about had died. When the second horrible vision visited him in his sleep, he’d worked frantically to identify the woman in order to save her. He had discovered her identity too late. Now, already faced with the death of a third victim, the doom of a fourth woman had been thrust into his consciousness.
Was fate playing some horrible practical joke, showing him the future while denying him the ability to change it?
Or was this latest dream a sign that he could finally make a difference? The woman had been in his house, his living room. To keep her safe, all he had to do was deny her entry. If he couldn’t save the others, at least he could save her.
For the first time since awakening from the grisly vision of the woman’s death, the tension eased from his muscles. Jared laid his head back against the soft cushion and stared at the flickering flames.
The fire burned low, and bleak predawn light tumbled through the high windows before he finally drifted back to sleep.
