Sherry bolted upright in bed, still screaming. The room echoed with her hoarse voice and she clamped a hand over her mouth. She breathed heavily through her nostrils, eyes peeled at the soaked bed.

She wasn’t dead.

The vision had come back. Stronger this time. Much stronger.

“Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Oh, God, this is worse than the box . . . Please . . .”

Helen!

Sherry didn’t bother brushing her teeth or dressing. She threw her bathrobe on and ran for the car.

Helen answered on the second knock, as if she’d been waiting.

“Hello, Tanya.”

Sherry walked in, still trembling.

“You look a bit ragged, my dear.” Helen looked her over and then walked for the living room. “Come on, then. Tell me again.”

She walked in and sat.

“You did not like the bile, I take it,” Helen said.

The bile?

Helen must have seen her expression. “The stomach of the whale. Jonah. The acid.”

“The bile,” Sherry said. She dropped her head and began to cry.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” Helen said gently. “Really, I am. It must be painful. But I can assure you that it won’t end. Not until you go.”

“I don’t want this!” Sherry cried.

“No. But you’re not sweating blood yet, so I suppose you’re all right.”

Sherry stared at her through blurred vision, at a loss for what she could possibly mean. “I can’t go through another night like that, Grandmother. I mean . . . I really don’t think I can. Physically.”

“Exactly.”

“This is mad! ”

“Yes.”

Sherry lowered her head and shook it. Helen began to hum an old hymn and after a while it had a settling effect on Sherry.

Wiping her eyes, she lifted her head and studied the older woman.

“Okay. So what you’re saying is that God has chosen me for some . . . some purpose. I have to go back to the jungle. And if I don’t he’ll torment me with these . . . these . . .”

“Pretty much, yes. I doubt he’s the one doing the tormenting, but he isn’t getting in the way. It seems that you’re needed.”

“Do you have any idea how absolutely stupid this all sounds?”

Helen looked at her for a few seconds. “Not really, no. But I’ve been through a bit.”

“Yeah.” Sherry’s mind swam at the thought of returning to her past.

“I don’t see how that would be possible,” Sherry said.

“Why not?”

“For one thing, the place was overrun by soldiers! Who knows what’s there now.”

Helen nodded. “Father Petrus Teuwen is there. Petrus. Not where your parents were, but in Venezuela, on a mission station farther south, I believe. My husband knew him well when he was a boy. I talked with Petrus yesterday. He’s an exceptional man, Tanya. And he would welcome you.”

A small buzz erupted between her ears. “You talked to him? He knows about this?”