Page 7 of In Her Dreams (Jenna Graves #7)

The colors of midnight and blood and bone twisted into impossible patterns around Jenna, while feathers—some delicate as whispers, others sharp as harsh accusations—floated on currents of air she couldn’t feel.

She pushed forward, her dream body moving with that familiar underwater-like slowness, while her instincts screamed that something was terribly wrong in this place where the laws of reality bent like the willow branches woven through the canopy above her head.

Jenna recognized the lucid dream state immediately. After twenty years of these visitations, the heightened awareness was unmistakable—the colors so vibrant, sensations so precise, the world so responsive to her thoughts. She was both a participant and observer in this strange terrain.

“Hello?” she called, her voice swallowed by the dense thicket of vines and feathered fronds. “Is anyone here?”

The landscape shifted in response, threads unraveling and reweaving themselves into new configurations.

But then the colors faded until she was surrounded by dull browns.

What had been a narrow path moments before became a barrier of knotted strings, forcing her to change direction.

The scene was familiar somehow, reminding her of something …

The dreamcatcher. Richard Winters’ bedroom. The ugly web with its chaotic design and dull feathers.

A woman’s cry cut through her realization, distant but desperate. The sound twisted through the jungle of threads, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.

“Help me! Please, someone, help!”

The voice was accompanied by a flutter of wings—first just a few, then dozens, then hundreds. The sound built from gentle rustling to deafening chaos, a storm of feathers and fear.

Jenna pushed harder against the barrier of threads, which parted reluctantly, making a small opening she could just step through before snapping back behind her like a closing jaw.

“Where are you?” Jenna shouted, fighting against the thickening tangle. Threads wrapped around her wrists and ankles, slowing her progress. “Keep calling! I’ll find you!”

The woman’s voice was closer now, edged with panic. “Oh God, they’re coming back!”

The flapping grew louder. Shadows darted between the fabric trees—wings and beaks and talons in flashes of movement too quick to track properly. Jenna tore through a curtain of black feathers, their edges unnaturally sharp against her skin.

Then she stumbled into a clearing and saw her.

A woman stood in the center. She was in her twenties, with shoulder-length brown hair, and her face was a mask of terror.

“Please,” the woman gasped, seeing Jenna. “Help me. They attacked before …”

The birds descended without warning.

They poured from the fabric sky like a living waterfall—ravens, crows, hawks, birds of prey that Jenna couldn’t name, their feathers an impossible blend of natural and unnatural colors.

The woman screamed as they enveloped her, a sound that pierced Jenna’s core.

The birds’ wings beat frantically, creating a whirlwind of feathers that obscured the woman from view.

Jenna lunged forward, hands outstretched. “Hold on!”

For an instant, the woman’s face appeared in a gap in the feathered tornado—mouth open in a scream that could no longer be heard over the thunderous beating of hundreds of wings.

Suddenly, the birds dispersed with a sound like a thunderclap, scattering in all directions. The force of their departure knocked Jenna backward.

Where the woman had stood, there was nothing.

Jenna jolted upright in bed, her heart hammering against her ribs as though it was trying to escape. Sweat cooled on her skin as reality reasserted itself—her bedroom, her sheets tangled around her legs, the first pale light of dawn seeping around the edges of her curtains.

But the feeling remained. The awful certainty.

Someone was dead. That woman had been attacked by something and had died violently even before Jenna had heard her call for help—because only the dead could reach her in a lucid dream.

She hadn’t witnessed the woman’s death. She’d witnessed its reenactment—the woman’s fear reverberating into her own consciousness.

She reached for her phone, checking the time: 5:47 AM. Early, but not too early to call the station. She dialed, waiting through three rings before a familiar voice answered.

“Genesius County Sheriff’s Office, Officer Mendez speaking.”

“Mendez, it’s Sheriff Graves,” Jenna said, trying to sound more alert than she felt. “Has anything come in overnight? Any calls about... someone found dead?”

A pause on the line. “No, ma’am. It’s been quiet. We had a minor fender bender on Main around midnight, and Mrs. Whitaker complained about teenagers again but nothing else. Everything okay?”

“Just checking,” Jenna said, forcing lightness into her tone. “Had a feeling.”

“You and those feelings,” Mendez said, and Jenna could hear the smile in his voice. Her deputies had learned to respect her hunches, even if they didn’t understand them. Mostly, they avoided asking about them. “Want me to call if anything comes in?”

“Please. I’ll be in the office after my run.”

Jenna hung up and sat on the edge of her bed, the dream images still vivid behind her eyes. The woman. The birds. The overwhelming sense of terror and helplessness.

She pushed herself to her feet. Standing still wouldn’t change anything. Better to move, to run, to clear her head. There had been no time for a morning run yesterday, and she felt the need to get back to a healthier routine.

Jenna dressed quickly in running leggings and a lightweight shirt. She grabbed a granola bar from the kitchen. The actions were already comforting in their familiarity, an anchor in the unsettling waters of her morning.

Outside, the air held the cool bite of early morning. Grantville was still mostly asleep, though lights were coming on in a few houses as early risers began their days.

Jenna stretched briefly on her porch before setting off at an easy pace, her feet finding the familiar path. The steady rhythm of her footfalls on the pavement provided a counterpoint to her racing thoughts.

The dream clung to her, refusing to fade like ordinary dreams did.

The details remained sharp—the woman’s face, the birds, the odd environment.

Twenty years of these visitations had taught Jenna to parse their meanings, to work on separating symbolic elements from literal ones.

Just one thing was consistent: those dreams always featured people who were dead, coming to her with messages or warnings.

The woman in her dream had been taken, at least in her own mind, probably just as Jenna had seen. As sometimes happened, at first she hadn’t even realized that she was already dead. The dream she sent to Jenna was a cry for help that was already too late.

But who was she? There was something vaguely familiar about her face, like someone Jenna might have passed on the street or seen at a community event.

Her phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. Jenna slowed to a walk as she pulled it out, checking the caller ID: Melissa Stark.

“Morning, Melissa,” she answered, trying to sound normal despite her racing thoughts.

“Good morning, Sheriff.” Melissa’s voice was crisp and professional as always. “I apologize for calling so early, but I thought you’d want these results as soon as possible.”

Jenna’s pace slowed further. “Richard Winters?”

“Yes. I finished the autopsy and preliminary toxicology last night. Worked late to expedite things, given the... unusual nature of the case.”

“I appreciate that. What did you find?”

“Cause of death was indeed cardiac arrest, as we suspected. Mr. Winters did have an existing heart condition—just a mild arrhythmia, nothing that should have been immediately life-threatening. But what’s interesting is the biochemical picture.”

Jenna stopped walking entirely, focusing on Melissa’s words. “Go on.”

“His system showed extremely elevated levels of adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress hormones at time of death. These levels are consistent with someone experiencing acute terror or extreme shock. I’m talking off-the-charts fight-or-flight response.”

Jenna thought of Richard’s face, frozen in an expression of horror. “So you’re saying that he was literally scared to death.”

“In layman’s terms, yes. His heart couldn’t handle the surge. It’s like his body thought he was being chased by a bear.”

“But there was nothing in the room to indicate that anybody or anything else had been there. Nothing that could explain that level of fear.”

“Nothing physical, no,” Melissa agreed. “And no toxins, no hallucinogens, nothing in his system that would artificially induce such a state. Whatever scared Richard Winters was either something he thought he perceived or something that was removed from the scene before we got there.”

Or something that seemed unimportant, Jenna thought but didn’t say. Melissa had said yesterday that the dreamcatcher hadn’t made an impression on her. And why should it?

“I appreciate you rushing this, Melissa.”

“Of course. I’ll have the full report on your desk this afternoon, but I wanted you to have the headline findings now.”

After thanking Melissa and ending the call, Jenna resumed running, her mind churning with this new information.

The pieces were starting to align in a pattern she didn’t like.

Richard Winters had died of terror, with no apparent cause.

Now Jenna had dreamed of a woman being consumed by a frightening swarm of birds. She had looked terrified too.

And there was something else that tied them together … dull brown colors… the barrier of knotted strings. Her dream had echoed that dreamcatcher in Richard Winters’ bedroom. Was her own mind just getting confused? Conflating two separate incidents?

She turned onto another neighborhood street, passing houses that were beginning to stir with morning activity.

A newspaper carrier on a bicycle tossed the morning edition onto front porches.

A man in a bathrobe collected his mail. Normal life continuing, oblivious to the darkness Jenna sensed gathering.

The cry came so unexpectedly that Jenna nearly stumbled.

“Help! Oh God, please, somebody help!”

For a heart-stopping moment, Jenna thought she was back in the dream. The voice carried the same desperate edge, but this was real—the sound coming from somewhere just ahead.

A woman burst from the porch of a small blue cottage. She wore pajama pants and a hastily-thrown-on coat, her hair a frantic tangle around her pale face. She spotted Jenna immediately and ran toward her, bare feet slapping against the cold sidewalk.

“Please!” the woman cried, grabbing Jenna’s arm with surprising strength. “You have to help! I think she’s dead—oh God, I think she’s dead!”

Jenna gripped the woman’s shoulders, steadying her. “Slow down. Who’s dead? What happened?”

“Anita—” The woman’s breath came in gasping sobs. “My roommate. You have to come. Please.”

“I’m Sheriff Graves,” Jenna said, already letting the woman pull her toward the house. “Show me.”

The blue cottage was neat and well-kept, with flower boxes beneath the windows and a small garden gnome standing by the front steps. The door hung open, revealing a glimpse of a tidy living room beyond.

“This way,” the woman said, leading Jenna inside. “In her bedroom.”

The interior of the house was just as orderly as the exterior—books neatly shelved, their spines all aligned. The furniture was carefully positioned, and not a speck of dust dared to linger on any surface.

“I didn’t move anything,” the woman said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper as they approached a door at the end of the hallway. “I saw her and touched her but there was no … I panicked … ran out to get help.”

The bedroom door was partially open. Jenna pushed it wider, her police instincts taking over as she scanned the room for threats before focusing on the figure on the floor.

A woman lay sprawled beside the bed, one arm outstretched as if reaching for something. Her face was frozen in an expression Jenna recognized all too well—the same wide-eyed terror she’d seen on Richard Winters. And on the dream-woman’s face as the birds descended.

It was her. The woman from Jenna’s dream, her eyes wide open, her features contorted in a final moment of absolute horror.

Jenna’s gaze traveled slowly upward to the wall above the bed. Her breath caught in her throat at what she saw there.