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J ulia saw a face begin to emerge from the pitch black around her.

She didn’t know when the room got so dark, but now it was, bottomless as space.

Materializing out of its depth was a small head and she realized it was the baby in the photo, and in the next moment, the baby’s face began to shift and morph and change, the cheeks pulled like taffy and the chin yanked in the opposite direction, the visage being tugged and wrenched out of shape by unseen forces, and in the next moment the baby was crying, its blue eyes losing shape and definition, constantly changing and shifting shapes.

Julia tried to wake up, but she couldn’t, and she felt herself shaking in bed, turning her head right and left, trembling all over, not wanting to see what would happen next because she knew that it was going to frighten her, terrify her, scare her out of her wits.

Suddenly the face turned into the stern visage of Caterina Sforza wearing a pearl necklace that she took off and handed to Julia, then Caterina’s face changed, contorting out of shape, pulled and yanked in all directions, Caterina’s electric-blue eyes blazing and suddenly askew, her lips being wrenched back into a hideous grimace, Caterina’s teeth white turning into fangs, and then Caterina tightening the necklace on Julia’s throat, making it tighter and tighter, throttling her.

Julia gasped for breath, torquing this way and that, her hands clawing her neck, scratching her own skin, trying to get off the pearl necklace, a noose strangling her, cutting off oxygen to her brain, to her body, a ligature embedding itself so deeply into her flesh that it was decapitating her, severing her neck in two, separating her head from her shoulders with lethal force.

Her body writhed and bucked off the bed, trying to free itself, no longer human anymore, an organism trying to survive, out of oxygen, suffocating to death in agony, everywhere was blackness, and in the next moment, Julia saw herself running out of bed and down the hall, her fingers and nails clawing at the garotte, her head wobbling as she ran, she tried to hold it on, running even though she had no oxygen left anymore, surely she was dead.

She flew out the back door and down to the vineyard and vines curled and coiled and zoomed from the ground to meet her, fastening themselves around her wrists and ankles like ropes, wrenching her back down into the earth, and she fought back, turning this way and that, fighting to stay above the ground, she would be dead if they pulled her down, it was her own grave, and she could smell the earth and the rot and the decay, and she was dead now, even as more and more vines coiled to her, whipping toward her, wrapping themselves around her neck, her upper arms, her knees, tethering every single part of her body to the earth, dragging her down, trying to bury her alive.

Julia saw herself from above, watching herself being strangled, her eyes protruding grotesquely, her mouth gaping open, her face turning electric blue, her hair writhing wild as snakes, as the vines dragged her down, down, down into the earth, yanking her through the surface and all the way down to the clammy, cold, stinking decay at the black rotting center of the world.

“Signora, Signora!” Anna Mattia shook her, holding her by her arms.

“No, no, no!” Julia screamed, clawing at herself, trying to get the vines off, and in the next moment, she swallowed huge gulps of air, hiccuping oxygen, her heart thundering and her chest heaving so hard that she bucked and bucked, but she wasn’t buried anymore, she was above ground, and when she opened her eyes and looked up, all she saw was a full moon like a gargantuan pearl.

“Signora, is okay, is okay!” Anna Mattia squeezed her arms. “Is okay!”

Julia didn’t know what was happening. She wasn’t in bed anymore. Anna Mattia was there, and Piero stood behind her. Bianco barked in agitation, a white blur.

Julia couldn’t tell if she was awake or asleep. She was lying on something rough and cold and hard. It was pitch dark everywhere except for two flashlights, their round beams like more and more pearls running over her body, plaguing her, taunting her.

She realized she was outside in the vineyard. Maybe.

She didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.

She didn’t know if she’d had a nightmare at all.