“You mean, you think I was getting messages from other victims but didn’t realize it?”

He nodded. “You could have. You were young, maybe you thought they were just bad dreams.” “Dreams!” Rose exclaimed. “Jerram, do you still have our notebook?”

He looked puzzled, then his face cleared. “We wrote them down, didn’t we?”

They hadn’t thought of the notebook in years, since he’d hidden it in their old toy chest.

It was funny to see the childish handwriting. Every dream was neatly recorded, with their parts carefully labeled and dated. Jerram had been a literal child and every word had been put down.

Rose, September 21

There is a fairy godmother who knows everything. She says, “Sit down and tell me all about it” Rose won’t tell. She gets scared.

The fairy godmother shakes her big wand in Rose’s face.

Jerram, September 21 continued

1 told the fairy godmother that I don’t believe in them and she said if I don’t believe in them how come 1 am talking to one? I took out my own wand and shook it at her and she got scared and melted into a puddle of water.

“That one’s obvious,” Jerram said. “A nice rendition of our trips to that psychologist, the one I hated, with a little Wizard of Oz thrown in.” “We’d seen it on television, remember? It popped up in our dreams for months.”

They read through the year to the next fall.

Rose, December 20

A shadow comes to the window at night. It taps and asks to come in. Rose thinks: Is this a vampire ? She takes a pencil out of her ear and writes a note to remind herself to buy garlic. The shadow says never mind, it will call back in an hour.

Jerram, December 20, continued

Rose is in her bedroom, pointing at the window. The whole place stinks like Lucky’s Italian restaurant. She asks me how I like the new decorations. Garlic cloves all over. I tell her she doesn’t have to worry, I’ll take care of it. I grow fifty feet tall and look out the window but I don’t see anything or anybody.

“This is great stuff for a baby horror comic,” Jerram said, “but it doesn’t tell us much.”

“I disagree,” said Rose. “I had repetitive dreams about things at the window. Look what this one says: ‘A creature took me in the air and over the bridge. We looked down and saw a doll lying in the water.’ Couldn’t that be a childish idea of seeing a dead body, thinking it was a doll? I was flying in that dream, just like I did with Nancy.” “Looks like only you had these visions of things appearing at the window. All I did was try to protect you from them.”

Rose felt chastised. “You did, Jerram. You were a good brother.”