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The transition happened like it always did—Jenna’s consciousness slipping sideways into that peculiar state where dream and awareness merged. Her breathing slowed, her body went still, but her mind sharpened to a crystalline clarity that only came in these lucid moments.

Jenna recognized the sensation immediately. She was dreaming, yet fully aware—the state in which the dead sometimes found her.

The bedroom faded away, replaced by something strange and vast that stretched before her: a jungle of audio equipment extending as far as her eyes could see, devices from every era arranged in towering columns and precarious stacks that defied the laws of physics.

Moving ahead, she came across a colossal reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Its metallic spools shimmered in the spectral radiance that seemed to come from nowhere, yet bathed everything in a subtle glow tinged with blue.

Then she became aware of other objects around her, a collection that reminded her of Howard Mitchell’s estate.

Radios from the 1920s leaned against modern amplifiers.

Ancient phonographs with enormous horns stood beside sleek digital mixing boards.

Vacuum tubes glowed with amber light next to LED displays blinking patterns of red and green.

Cables snaked along the ground like dormant serpents, connecting impossibly matched technologies across decades of innovation.

“Marcus?” Jenna called softly, her voice absorbed by the walls of equipment.

She had hoped to encounter him here—the murder victim who had been too frantic and paranoid to talk to her when she’d met him in that earlier dream. Perhaps in this electronic wilderness, a reflection of his passion, he might finally be willing to offer clues about his killer.

But no response came. Just the faint electrical hum of dormant equipment.

Then, cutting through the silence, a voice began to sing. A woman’s voice, clear and melodious, without accompaniment:

“In the quiet of the night, we find our way,

Through the shadows, love lights up our day.

With every tear and smile, we gather strength,

Our hearts beating as one, across any length.”

Jenna froze, the lyrics washing over her like a physical wave. A visceral recognition jolted through her body, followed by a surge of emotion so strong it nearly knocked her backward.

“Whispers of Forever.”

She whispered the title aloud, her throat tightening. Piper’s favorite song. Her sister had played it endlessly, singing along in their shared bedroom, insisting that someday she would perform it at her wedding.

For one dizzying, hope-filled moment, Jenna thought the voice might be Piper’s.

But as quickly as the thought formed, it dissolved. No, she knew this voice. The timbre, the control, the subtle vibrato. This was Sandra Reeves, the once-famous singer who had recorded the original.

Complex feelings flooded through Jenna—disappointment that it wasn’t her sister, curiosity about Sandra’s presence in her dream space, and an underlying current of dread. If Sandra was here, in this place where Jenna communed with the dead...

She pushed the thought away, focusing instead on following the music.

Jenna began to navigate through the maze of equipment, drawn toward the voice like a sailor to a siren’s call. She squeezed between towering speakers taller than houses. She stepped over tangled cables thick as her wrist. She ducked beneath suspended microphones that hung like strange metal fruit.

The journey felt both physical and impossible at the same time. Her feet moved, one in front of the other, yet distances stretched and compressed in the way that only happened in dreams. A step might carry her inches or yards, with no logic to the difference.

As she moved, the voice grew stronger. The melody seemed to guide her, pulling her forward through the electronic wilderness. The voice swelled, drawing Jenna around a corner formed by a wall of vintage amplifiers stacked higher than seemed safe.

And there she was.

Sandra Reeves sat before an antique Edison cylinder phonograph, its large brass horn gleaming in the dream-light.

Her eyes were closed in concentration as she leaned toward the horn, singing directly into it as if recording.

The wooden case of the machine had the deep, rich patina that came only from decades of careful handling, and the cylinder inside whirred steadily, capturing her voice just as it would have done in 1900.

Jenna paused, not wanting to interrupt. Sandra’s profile was lit from some unseen source, highlighting the elegant curve of her neck as she sang. Though older than in her publicity photos, she retained the presence of a performer, her posture perfect even in this intimate, solitary moment.

Sandra continued, unaware of her audience.

“And we’ll rise, with the whispers of forever,

Through the storms, we’ll stand together.

In the echoes of our dreams, we’ll carry on,

Side by side, our love will be strong.”

The final notes lingered in the air, almost visible in the strange light of the dream. Sandra reached forward and switched off the machine with a decisive click. The abrupt silence felt almost physical.

“That was beautiful,” Jenna said quietly.

Sandra turned, showing no surprise at Jenna’s sudden appearance—the dream logic making such things unremarkable.

“Thank you,” she replied, her smile tinged with melancholy. “It’s not what it once was, of course. That’s why I retired. The voice is the first thing to go, you know.”

“I remember your songs,” Jenna said, stepping closer. “I used to hear them all the time when I was younger. My sister especially loved ‘Whispers of Forever.’“

“Did she?” Sandra’s smile warmed. “That’s lovely to hear. Would you like to see something magical?”

Without waiting for an answer, she reset the phonograph, cranking the handle to wind its spring mechanism. Then she positioned the needle and started it again.

The scratchy, ethereal sound of Sandra’s own voice—the recording she had just made—emerged from the horn. The quality was primitive compared to modern recordings, yet it possessed a haunting authenticity that digital perfection often lacked.

“Isn’t that marvelous?” Sandra’s face lit with wonder and joy. “Just think—in 1899, this would have seemed like sorcery. A human voice, captured like a bird in a cage, ready to sing again and again long after the moment has passed.”

Her eyes gleamed with an almost childlike delight.

“We take it for granted now, don’t we? The preservation of sound. But imagine hearing your own voice played back to you for the very first time in human history. The miracle of it.”

Jenna nodded, caught up in Sandra’s enthusiasm despite the strange circumstances.

Sandra reached beneath the table and produced a wooden box containing dozens of wax cylinders, each in its own small container.

“This one is from 1904,” she said, selecting a cylinder and carefully placing it on the machine. “Listen.”

She cranked the handle once more and set the needle. A tinny, distant-sounding orchestral introduction crackled to life, followed by a male tenor singing “In the Good Old Summer Time.” The voice emerged from a century past, preserved in wax and now released into Jenna’s dream.

As the old recording played, Sandra began to sing along, her voice harmonizing with the long-dead tenor. The juxtaposition created an eerie duet across time—one voice present and vibrant in the dream world, one a ghostly echo from the more distant past.

“In the good old summer time,

In the good old summer time,

Strolling thro’ the shady lanes

With your baby mine …”

The hairs on Jenna’s arms rose as she watched. The dreamlike quality of their interaction, Sandra’s presence in this strange environment, the focus on preserved voices from the past—it all suddenly clicked into a disturbing conclusion.

If Sandra Reeves was here, in this dream space where Jenna had previously encountered the spirits of the deceased, it could only mean one thing.

Sandra must be dead.

The realization settled over Jenna like a cold shroud. She looked at the singer with new eyes, noting now the strange quality of light that seemed to emanate from within her rather than fall upon her from outside.

“Sandra,” Jenna said gently, interrupting the singing. “What happened to you?”

The singer stopped, looking puzzled by the question. Her brow furrowed slightly.

“What do you mean?”

“How did you get here?” Jenna pressed, her voice soft but insistent.

Sandra looked around at the endless jungle of audio equipment, seeming to truly notice it for the first time.

“I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “I woke up from a nightmare a little while ago—an awful nightmare.” Her voice grew distant, her eyes unrousing. “I remember only impressions now.”

“Tell me about the nightmare,” Jenna urged, her sheriff’s instincts fully engaged despite the surreal setting.

Sandra wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly looking smaller, vulnerable.

“I was being pursued through the street at night,” she said, her voice dropping to just above a whisper. “I ran through a narrow passage between two buildings. I remember trying to hide in a warehouse.”

Jenna’s heart began to beat faster. “What else do you remember?”

Sandra seemed to consider the question for a moment. “I tried to call for help.”

“You screamed?” Jenna asked.

“No. On my phone. But it didn’t work … I think it was because of the warehouse walls.”

Sandra paused for a moment, as if struggling to remember.

“I took off my shoes,” Sandra continued, looking down at her bare feet as if noticing them for the first time. “I thought I could move more quietly that way. But he found me anyway.”

“He?” Jenna asked.

Sandra’s hand went unconsciously to her throat. “He seized me from behind. I felt something around my neck—a cord of some kind. I couldn’t breathe.”

Jenna fought to keep her expression neutral, to not show the horror rising within her as Sandra described what was clearly not a nightmare but her actual murder.

“I remember going limp,” Sandra continued, her voice becoming mechanical, as if reading from a script.

“While he bound my hands and feet to something hard and metallic. I couldn’t move.

And while he tied me up, he kept babbling, saying crazy things.

Something about astral voices. And a midnight voice.

Also something maybe having to lure the midnight voice ‘to where it all started,’ the place where she ‘spoke to the world.’ None of it made sense to me. ”

“Did you see his face?” Jenna asked, the question urgent now. “Sandra, did you see who attacked you?”

Sandra looked at Jenna with confusion, as if the question made no sense.

“What does it matter?” she asked. “It was just a dream.”

“It matters,” Jenna insisted, stepping closer. “It matters very much. Please try to remember.”

Sandra’s gaze drifted past Jenna to some point in the distance.

“I only glimpsed his face,” she said absently. “It seemed familiar somehow, but I couldn’t remember from where or when.” She shook her head. “It’s slipping away from me now, like dreams do.”

“Think harder,” Jenna urged. “Was there anything distinctive about him? His voice, his clothes, anything at all?”

But Sandra didn’t seem to hear the questions anymore. Her attention had returned to the phonograph, which continued to play the century-old recording. She began to sing along once more, her voice blending with the ghostly tenor as if Jenna had ceased to exist.

“In the good old summer time, in the good old summer time...”

The edges of the scene began to blur. The towering stacks of equipment seemed to lose their solidity, becoming transparent, then fading altogether. Sandra’s voice grew fainter, though her lips continued to move in song.

“Sandra!” Jenna called, reaching out, but her hand passed through the singer’s shoulder like smoke. “Sandra, where are you? How can I find you?”

But the dream was collapsing now, the entire setting constructed of the dead woman’s memory dissolving into darkness. Sandra’s form became indistinct, then vanished entirely, her voice the last thing to fade away.

Jenna’s eyes snapped open. She lay in her bed, early morning light pouring through the window. Her heart hammered in her chest, and a thin film of sweat covered her skin. She sat up abruptly, pushing her short chestnut hair away from her face, struggling to clear her mind.

She had received a visitation.

Sandra Reeves was dead, murdered in the same manner as Marcus Derrick.

Although Jenna now had a name for the killer’s latest victim, she knew almost nothing else. No location, no time frame, not even a clear description of the killer—just the certainty that a serial killer was at work and would not stop with the two she had seen in the dreamworld.