CHAPTER 1
I tore wildly through the woods. My eyes stung from the sweat dripping off my forehead and my pounding heart threatened to explode in my chest. The tall pine trees loomed like giants above me, and the shadows they cast danced like spirits on the thick trunks and ground below me. A low swirling fog made it nearly impossible to see anything beyond a few feet. The sound of crunching leaves and snapping branches behind me was getting closer. Much too close! Whatever was following me was closing in fast. My foot hit something hard, and I fell to the ground with a thud. My capture for the moment, a gnarled tree root, closed the narrow gap between me and my pursuer even further. Without a second to waste, I crawled and clawed at the pine needle covered ground, and struggled to get back on my feet. The slick surface slowed my efforts.
Thump!
I couldn’t move. Something or someone pushed me down again, and continued to press hard on my back. I gasped and tried to catch my breath. My chest tightened and heaved from my breath and the pressure. It was going to burst like a balloon too full of air. This is it, I thought. I haven’t even got my drivers license and I’m going to die. I could barely move because of the force holding me down, but I managed to turn my head slightly to the right. Everything was blurry, but I thought I saw someone, and in the distance, I heard a woman’s gut wrenching scream, “Help me!”
Crack!
The thunder jolted me awake and I sat straight up in my bed. My heart was still racing and sweat covered my face. My legs felt weak and shaky, as if I had just run a race. A bolt of lightning flashed and my room and the yard outside lit up like Christmas. My window was open, and the curtains flapped furiously in the wind. I jumped up to shut it and I swear I saw someone was standing in my yard. Without the lightning, it was pitch black, and I couldn’t see a thing. Seconds later, another flash lit up the yard, but no one was there.
Must have been a bush, I thought.
The wind howled, causing the trees to sway and creak. This moaning, and a faint scent of pine sap lingering in my nose, took me back to my nightmare. I remembered the whispers I had heard in the wind. It was a woman’s voice. She needed help. Yes, I had definitely heard her scream, “Help me!”
What a terrifying dream! What an ominous place, giant pine trees, darkness, spooky shadows, and something chasing me. Who had been chasing me? Where had I been? It seemed so familiar to me. I lay in my bed, listening to the thunderstorm, and tried to recall every detail. It felt different from other dreams, so vivid—so real, like I had really been there. My knees and wrist hurt—sore from my imaginary fall—and my back ached as if I really had been stepped on. Impossible! It was only a dream.
I tossed and turned as the dream played over and over in my mind. My imagination was in over-drive. Maybe there was someone in my yard, the same person from my dream. I was too scared to look. I tossed and turned, but eventually I must have fallen back into a dreamless sleep, because the next thing I remembered was my mom yelling, “Taylor! Taylor! Wake up!” My alarm blared in the background. “This has been going off for ten minutes,” she said, hitting the snooze button. “You have to get up now or you’ll be late for school.”
I groaned and said, “Okay, I’m up.” I rolled onto my side, and winched in pain. I really was sore. I must have overdone it at practice without realizing it. I sat on the edge of the bed, and seriously debated crawling back under the warm covers.
Mom poked her head back through the doorway, “Come on Taylor, let’s get moving.” She’d keep doing this until I was up, so I gave in and dragged my aching body out of bed.
How am I going to make it through school? I thought as I dressed. I was exhausted, and all I could think about was my dream.
***
I met my three best friends, Kaycee, Elle (short for Gabrielle), and Amy, when I got to school, and I told them about the dream. They listened for a little bit, seemed mildly interested at first, but quickly brushed me off. My dream was not on their top ten list of important things to talk about. I wanted to tell them how different it was, how real it was, but they wanted to talk about something else—anything else.
“Taylor, don’t let it get to you. It was just a bad dream,” Elle said as she handed me some makeup. “Here, you need this under your eyes. Geez, you look tired.”
She was right. I gasped when I saw our reflections in Elle’s locker mirror. I looked awful while she looked perfect. Her long, blonde hair was straight and flawless, and my unkempt ponytail—a mess of frizzy, dark blonde curls—looked ridiculous. I had just thrown it up and walked out the door. I hadn’t even tried to straighten it today. What was I thinking? To make matters worse, the dark circles under my eyes made me look like a raccoon!
Kaycee, Elle’s identical twin, looked equally perfect. She rolled her eyes, and said, “Oh, Taylor, it just seemed more real because of the thunderstorm. We all know how much thunderstorms scare you.” She laughed and playfully punched my arm. “Remember that time we all slept over Amy’s and there was a storm? You were so scared you pulled the blankets over your head and wouldn’t come out until it was over.”
The three of them burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself; I laughed, too. They were right. I’m a chicken sometimes, and I was making too much out of this. It was only a dream, so I brushed it off.
***
After school I had soccer practice and a ton of homework. When I was finally able to crawl into bed, the dream popped into my head for a second, but I quickly dismissed it. I was too tired to think of anything but sleep.
It was only a dream. I thought as I drifted off. Boy was I wrong!
I found myself back in the same forest, under the same tall tress, feeling the same terror from the night before. I was running through the towering pine trees again, and I was lost and scared. I stopped running and tried to calm my racing heart.
It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream. I repeated in my head. I listened to the wind. Nothing—no voices, only the wind rustling the trees.
It’s only a dream.
Suddenly the wind blew harder and I heard something else. It was the woman’s voice. “Help me!” It trembled with fear, but it was also soft and sweet—childlike—almost as if she was singing.
“Hello! Hello! Please help me! Help me! Help me!”
I ran through the trees in a panic, searching for the woman. I was off the trail, lost and running in circles. Thick underbrush tore at legs. Tears, from pain and frustration, streamed down my checks, and I could taste the salt from my sweat in my mouth. Finally, in pure desperation, I stopped and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Where are you? I can’t find you!”
“Right here,” she said. The voice came from behind me, inches behind me. An icy breath floated over my neck and shoulder, sending shivers down my spine. The hair on my neck stood on end, and goose bumps covered my body. An electrifying tingle, a sensation like I’ve never experienced before, raced through my body. I spun around to face the voice.
Suddenly I was awake.
“No!” I shouted and pounded my fist on my mattress. I wanted to find her, and she had been right there. Why did I have to wake up just when I was finally going to see her?
My feet ached, my shins stung, and my sheets were damp with sweat. I flung them off to look at my legs, expecting to find scratches all over them. The breeze from the sheet sent a whiff of pine into the air. My legs were fine, but I wasn’t. My body shook with cold and fear. This time I was convinced that the dream was real. Something was so different about it, and I couldn’t dismiss it. It was not my imagination, not just an ordinary dream or nightmare—it was real. I was experiencing it…somehow living it. I smelled the pine. I heard the voice. I knew there was a real woman in that forest, and she needed my help. I desperately wanted to fall back to sleep and dream again. I had to see her, to help her, and the only way to do this was to dream. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t fall asleep, and without sleep, I couldn’t return to my dream.
***
School was a blur the next day. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the dream. I looked awful, and everyone kept asking me if I was sick. I have no idea how I made it through the day. Soccer practice was even worse.
All I cared about was getting home and getting to sleep; my mind was on the dream, not the scrimmage we were playing. Kaycee passed me the ball and I dribbled down the field and put it in the goal, but then everyone started laughing at me. Kaycee ran up, patted my back, and said, “Way to go, Taylor.” She rolled her eyes and smirked. “You scored for the other team!”
I buried my face in my hands and wished I could disappear. I was mortified!
“O’Neill!” Coach screamed from the sidelines, throwing his hat on the ground. “Get your head in the game or get off of the field!”
Elle ran over to us as the rest of the team continued to point and laugh. “Taylor, are you all right?” she asked. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about the dream.”
“What?” Kaycee asked. She looked utterly confused.
“The dream I told you about the other day. Being chased in the woods, remember?”
“Oh, that again,” Kaycee said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Seriously, you have to let that go. This is real, that isn’t. We have a big game coming up, and we need you here, not in dreamland.”
“Yeah, Taylor. That’s only a dream,” Elle said. “This is the real world. If we lose, we might not be district champs again. Stop letting it get to you, okay?”
“Are you three going to chitchat or play soccer?” Coach yelled again, and we all ran back to our positions. I muddled through the rest of practice and was so relieved when Coach blew the final whistle.
***
When I finally got home, I was exhausted. I didn’t have an appetite, so I skipped dinner. Miraculously I didn’t have any homework and was able to crash early. When I fell into bed, sleep and the dream came quick.
It started out the same as it had two nights before, with me lost and searching in the forest, for a woman who needed my help. I had to find her—she sounded so desperate, and I was afraid something bad would happen to her if I didn’t. As expected, when the wind began to blow, I heard the same familiar, frantic voice.
Her cries for help whipped through the forest and echoed off of the trees. “Help me, please! Help me! Help me!”
“I’m trying to help you!” I yelled back. “I can’t find you. Tell me where you are! Tell me who you are!”
This time she answered me. “I’m here in the woods! My name is Sarah! Please help me—I’m so frightened! Oh, please help me! He’s going to kill me!”
I felt my chest tighten, and I looked around to see if anyone was there. “Who is going to kill you? Is he here now?” No one answered. Sarah was gone. I ran again, looking for her, calling out her name.
“Sarah! Sarah! Please come back! Where are you?” I thought I saw the shadowy figure of a woman behind every tree, but nothing was ever there. Sarah started yelling again, and I followed the sound of her haunting voice, but we couldn’t find each other. It was as if we were in the same place, but time or space separated us, as if we existed in parallel universes. I had read about kind of experience once in a book, but I hadn’t really believed or understood it. Now I was living it. We were both desperately searching for each other, but it seemed like it would be a hopeless, endless search in a unsolvable maze of pine trees.
I suddenly woke up. The same sweat, the same smell of pine, the same aches and pains from running were there, and I could still hear the voice echoing in my ears. Tonight though, I had a name, Sarah.
The sound of Sarah screaming, “Help me! Help me! Help me!” in my head was so loud it was deafening. I covered my ears with the pillow and willed it to go away. I sat up, threw the pillow, and screamed in frustration. I flung myself out of bed and paced around my bedroom. I was so aggravated I wanted to punch something. I clenched and unclenched my fist until they were sore.
When I could finally stand still, I stared out the window, searching for what I couldn’t find in my dream. My blank stare was interrupted by a flickering light, and then suddenly a woman dressed all in white and glowing like a dimly lit firefly was standing in the center of my yard. I blinked my eyes in disbelief and shook my head. When I looked again, the vision had vanished. There was no storm tonight, so there was no lightning. No shrubs or trees were planted in that spot. It had been a woman! Maybe it was Sarah from my dream, I hoped. I blinked a few more times, hoping she would reappear, but like my sleep for the night, she was gone.
