Page 2 of In Her Mind

Leaves crunched under Amber’s faltering steps, the whisper of her movement a desperate plea through the dense undergrowth. She could feel the pulse of her heart in her injured ankle, each thud resonating with the knowledge that time was running out. The cold fingers of fear gripped her spine as she realized that once she was caught in the flashlight’s beam, it would be over.

The fog clung to her skin, and her breaths came out in ragged gasps. Amber wished for the impossible—to dissolve into the mist, become part of the night’s fabric, unseen and untouched. But wishes were frivolous things when faced with a very real hunter. Her mind raced, frantically calculating odds and avenues of escape, but her options were narrowing with each limping step.

She tried to focus on the crunch of her own footsteps, to not think about who else might hear them. A bitter laugh bubbled up from her throat, edged with hysteria. That road had always been her secret shortcut, her private detour. She’d never imagined it would lead to this harrowing chase.

Amber pressed on, driven by the raw instinct to survive. The woods around her seemed to close in, branches reaching towardher, as if to betray her location. The possibility of what lay ahead if she stopped was unthinkable. She could not afford the luxury of surrender. Not now. Not ever.

Behind her, the light continued its relentless sweep, a beacon of doom that promised nothing but peril. Amber knew her attacker was close, too close. The air felt charged, the silence between the rustling leaves filled with the weight of imminent discovery. Her thoughts scrambled for a plan, any plan, to evade the inevitable. But the forest offered no answers, only the echo of her own labored breathing.

CHAPTER ONE

Jenna Graves stood in the living room of her childhood home, a place once brimming with laughter and whispers, now disturbingly quiet. She couldn’t remember why she had come here after so many months of absence.

And why did everything around her keep changing?

The wallpaper, which had always been peeling at the corners, shifted patterns—floral print to paisley, then stripes. She blinked, seeking logic in the disorienting metamorphosis. The couch, an heirloom passed down through generations, was reupholstering itself over and over, cycling through fabrics—velvet, corduroy, leather—in rapid succession.

As she looked around, she saw that family photos on the mantelpiece were altering too; images blurred and refocused, showing faces she didn’t recognize, then familiar ones, eternally smiling.

When Jenna heard footsteps out on the porch, the sound was both foreign and familiar, and with it came a bit of recollection.She was here to see her mother, Margaret Graves, whom time and silence had distanced from her. The lump of dread lodged in Jenna’s throat felt real enough to choke her. Conversations long overdue seemed to drift through the air like specters. But as the front door swung open, the figure that materialized was not Mom.

Jenna’s father stood before her, preserved in the prime of his life, back when Jenna had been a teenager, unmarred by illness or age. Heart leaping, Jenna opened her mouth to voice the impossibility, the denial that he could not be standing there—that he had died five years ago. But the words dissolved on her tongue, replaced by the realization that this was a dream—one of the lucid kind, when she became aware that she was dreaming.

Her father’s features were marked with a concern that seemed out of place on this younger face she remembered. His green eyes, mirrors of her own, held an urgency that belied the calm of their familiar surroundings.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” Jenna asked, aware of the dream’s capricious nature, but needing to anchor herself in the normalcy of dialogue.

“Jenna,” he said sternly, “you’ve got to get tough. No more pussyfooting around. You understand?”

She frowned, a flicker of frustration crossing her mind. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Before he could explain, a train horn cut through the fabric of the dream. It was a blare that didn’t belong, distant but intrusive. Her father glanced toward the unseen source of the sound, his expression tightening.

“Can’t talk now, Jenna,” he said, a note of finality in his voice. “Somebody else needs you.”

The horn blew again, louder, as if echoing across a vast chasm. Suddenly, the interior of Jenna’s childhood home dissolved, giving way to a fog-drenched night. Moonlightstruggled against the mist, casting silvery tendrils that reached down to where she now stood under a large oak tree. Its branches stretched towards the sky, skeletal and bare despite the actual season.

Next to the tree, a young woman waited. Her age was indeterminable; she could be a teenager or slightly older, her features frustratingly vague, shifting as though viewed through water. The woman’s expression was solemn, her stance conveying a silent plea.

“I need your help,” she said to Jenna, her voice clear in spite of the murkiness that surrounded them.

Jenna tried to discern any familiar trace within the blurred lines of the woman’s face, but she was only able to make out a few details. The woman’s hair cascaded in loose waves, a deep shade of midnight that absorbed the moonlight rather than reflecting it. Her face, though blurry, seemed delicate and angular. Standing at a moderate height, she possessed a slender build that seemed to blend seamlessly with the shadows around her.

But recognition eluded Jenna, just another layer of the dream’s bewildering message. The feeling that this encounter was pivotal pressed upon Jenna, a certainty that transcended the uncertain world of this dream.

“Help with what?” Jenna spoke into the night, her words almost lost in the dense fog that swirled around them.

The young woman seemed to wrestle with elusive words, her lips parting in frustration. “I don’t know how to say it,” she murmured, her voice drifting through the fog that enveloped them both. Jenna held her breath, waiting for clarity that never came. She knew the rules of these encounters; the dead were enigmatic messengers, their meanings cloaked in obscurity.

“Is there a message you’re trying to give me?” Jenna probed gently, her tone even, betraying none of the urgency that she wasfeeling. The woman’s eyes, though indistinct, appeared clouded with an emotion that hinted at desperation.

“You must solve the puzzle yourself,” she said, as if reciting an oft-repeated statement.

Jenna nodded, accepting the familiar challenge. It wasn’t the first time she’d stood as an intermediary between the living and the spectral voices of the deceased. Each dream was a riddle, urging Jenna to assemble the disjointed spectral communications into a story she could understand and act on when she was awake.

The conversation paused as the woman’s attention shifted to the gnarled oak tree. “I was supposed to meet him here,” she whispered, sorrow crossing the blurred visage. Her hand extended towards the tree, pointing to a discolored circle on its trunk where a robust limb had been cut off. Jenna stepped closer, her eyes tracing the rough edges of the scar. It spoke of past violence, a severance from life as it should have been.

“Who is ‘him’?” Jenna pressed, her curiosity sharpening. But no name came from the woman’s strained silence. Instead, she only gestured again to the wound on the tree.

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