The sight made her tremble, hanging in the air like a dove on a string. What was this? The beginning of a nightmare after all? But even her nightmares had never played this vividly.

Then a sign of life twitched at the corner of her vision and she turned toward the shed topped by the rooster Shannon had shot. The weather vane still graced the metal building, pierced head and all. But it wasn’t the rooster that had moved; it was the door that now swung open, pushed by a young man who stepped out into the sun.

Sherry spun to him and immediately drew back, stunned. It was Shannon! An adolescent with long blond hair, a reincarnation of the boy she’d lost in the jungle eight years earlier. Her heart hammered in her chest and she drew shallow breaths, afraid to disturb the scene below. Afraid he might see her and turn those green eyes skyward. She didn’t know if she could manage that without breaking down.

And then suddenly Shannon did turn those green eyes skyward. He smiled at her!

Her heart stopped; her breathing ceased. Whatever body she possessed quaked in the sky. A thousand voices collided in her mind. The nerve endings in her fingers and toes rattled madly.

Then the forest rolled up beneath her, like a canvas prepared for the tube.

Sherry bolted up in the armchair, her eyes wide open, her breath now coming in quick short gasps. She jerked her head about the room.

Her mind began to connect scattered dots into an image. She was in her apartment again; drool edged down her cheek; Marisa stood over the sink in the kitchen; daylight streamed through the windows; the clock on the wall now read seven o’clock. Those were the dots, and together they said she’d just slept through the night!

And she’d had another vision. Like the one that she’d had in the box eight years ago.

Sherry stood to her feet, still trembling. The blue blanket fell to the floor. What could be the meaning of such a vision, anyway?

“Marisa?”

“Good morning,” her roommate called politely from the kitchen.

Sherry staggered over to the kitchen, running her hand over her head as if that might clear her thoughts.

Marisa turned and studied her with a raised brow. “You okay?”

Sherry ran her eyes about the room, still collecting herself. “I slept through the night,” she said as much to herself as to her roommate. “Without a nightmare.”

Her roommate stilled her hands in the sink.

Sherry continued, as though still in her dream. “And I had a vision, I think.”

Now Marisa turned to face her, quickly drying her hands on a towel. “A vision? You mean you dreamt something.”

“Maybe, but it was different from the ones on the beach. It was like the dream I had in the box when my parents were killed. I was floating above all this stuff and seeing things that were real, in real time. Like the clock, it read eleven, and I was sleeping on the chair. Did you cover me with a blanket?”