She shielded her face, then looked down toward the ground, head aching and eyes watering fiercely. As she blinked away the tears, Jessica saw that the normal color of the grass had returned. For a few seconds the lawn looked green and alive, but then the cold blue rushed back into it, like a drop of dark ink spreading through a glass of water.

Her head still pounded, and Jessica thought of eclipses, in which the sun was darkened but still powerful, blinding people who unknowingly stared at it. An afterimage of the huge moon still burned in her eyes, changing the hues of the whole street. Glimpses of normal colors—greens, yellows, red—flickered in the corners of her vision. Then slowly her headache subsided, and calm blue tones settled over the street again.

Jessica glanced up at the moon again and with a flash of realization saw its true color: a bright darkness, a hungry blankness, a sucking up of light. The blue light in this dream didn’t come from objects themselves, as she’d thought at first. And it didn’t come directly from the giant moon above. Rather, the cold, lifeless blue was a leftover, the last remnant of light that remained after the dark moon had leached all the other colors from the spectrum.

She wondered if the moon—or dark sun, or star, or whatever it was—had been in the sky in her last dream, hidden behind the clouds. And what did it mean? So far, Jessica had thought these dreams were adding up to something. But this was just bizarre.

A howl came from down the street.

Jessica whirled toward the sound. It was the cat again, this time screeching the high-pitched call of a monkey. It stood at the end of the street, glaring back at her.

“You again?” she said, shivering at the sound. “You’re pretty loud for such a little kitty.”

The cat yowled once more, almost sounding like a cat now. An unhappy one. Outside in the moonlight its eyes flashed indigo and its fur was even blacker, as rich and dark as an empty night sky.

It yowled again.

“All right, I’m coming,” Jessica muttered. “Don’t get all psychosomatic on me.”

She walked after the creature. It waited until it was sure she was following, then padded away. As they walked, it kept looking over its shoulder at her, making shrieking or barking or growling noises in turn. It stayed well ahead, too scared of Jessica to let her get close but taking care not to lose sight of her.

The cat led her through an otherwise empty world. There were no clouds in the sky, no cars or people, just the vast moon slowly rising. The streetlights were dark, except for the uniform blue glow that came from everything. The houses looked abandoned and still, dead silence hovering over them, pierced only by the weird menagerie of noises from the anxious cat.