She freezes mere paces outside her door.

There are no roads to tread, for this tiny cottage, she discovers, stands upon a tiny island. The mainland is clearly visible, its dunes baptized in a strange kind of manufactured light, but a raging channel stretches between it and the woman. She studies the choppy surface with its whitish peaks. It is like a horde of ghosts floating past her, endlessly.

Out here the bleating sound is that much louder, that much closer. Peering out across the roiling divide, she pinpoints the source of the noise. Standing on the far shore, planted in the sand like an incongruous tree, is a payphone. Fixed to a stout wooden pillar, the phone is of a style the woman has not seen in years. The metallic clang of its bell is painful, panicked, like the mechanized scream of a maimed creature…

*

Joyce Felton lifted her eyelids slowly, then immediately closed them again. Though the dream had dissolved, its significance lingered, spiting the daylight that had only just begun to brighten the blinds. Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. Breathing had become a chore. Joyce knew she had to muster sufficient courage in order to face whatever changes might have been wrought during her sleep. She also knew that there were questions, difficult and delicate questions that needed to be asked.

She sat up quickly and forced herself to see.

The bedroom was as she had left it, complete with the half-drained water glass and an overfilled ashtray on the nightstand. Though these sights might have on any other morning reassured her, Joyce could not ignore the fact that she had endured a disturbing dream, a nightmare where every detail seemed to sweat menace, to shine with fell purpose.

She rose and began to walk, to scrutinize, to hunt for signs of transition.

In the hallway, pale carpet met smartly with moulding.

Walls ran upright. All the light fixtures were functioning.

The number of steps on the main stairway had neither swelled nor diminished. The mums in the vase on the foyer stand had not withered.

A cursory check of the kitchen proved that the milk remained white in its container and that the water still drained clockwise in the sink.

Joyce had almost managed to convince herself that her lot in life had survived this most recent experience in the nightmare-realm, but her confidence crumbled when she chanced a glimpse through the laundry-room window that looked out into the back yard.

The lawn was strewn with the bodies of birds—crows, thrushes, sparrows.

At first Joyce was struck by the awful scenario of the creatures having suffered some epidemic that had stolen their lives. But this theory was usurped by the worse reality once Joyce noticed that many of the birds were still stirring and twitching. Their feathers were fluffed, bills were tucked under wings, tiny eyes were closed.