Page 29 of In Her Mind

“I came to meet him,” the woman replied, her tone infused with mystery and an undercurrent of longing. “I was supposed to meet him here.”

“Meet who?” Jenna pressed gently, her mind grappling with the peculiar sense of repetition. She was awake within the familiar dream now, lucid and aware, and she wanted to be careful not to alter its course.

She was aware that this moment was a mirror of her dream from the previous night. She felt like she knew the script of this story by heart, yet she was certain there was more to learn. If she kept the dream going, maybe this time she’d be able to get answers.

“Under this tree,” the woman continued, ignoring Jenna’s question as if it were unheard or irrelevant.

Jenna frowned. Her instincts screamed that this encounter was pivotal—a nexus point in the web of mystery that had ensnared her since Amber Stevens vanished. There was something important to be discovered here if she could find the right questions to ask.

“Tell me his name,” Jenna insisted, taking a careful step forward. “Who did you come here to meet?”

The woman’s mouth opened wide, as if to shape an answer. But no sound came through her lips. The woman offered no answer, standing as silent and enigmatic as the oak itself.

“Are you trying to tell me something about Amber Stevens?” Jenna ventured, her voice slicing through the mist. The woman’s silence enveloped them both in a suspense that was all too real, even here in the land of dreams.

“Who are you?” Jenna repeated. But there would be no revelation, no clarity given.

“Look at this,” the woman murmured, her voice a mere whisper. Jenna’s gaze followed the direction of the outstretched arm to the large round scar on the oak tree that she’d seen the night before, the void left by an amputated limb. The fog seemed to curl around the edges of the bare wood, as if reluctant to touch it.

Jenna watched, transfixed, as the invisible hand began its work, just as it had last night. Letters were cut into the tree’s flesh—one after another—with precision and care. “EG + AP” materialized there, carved with an artisan’s skill yet by no visible craftsman. But before she could delve deeper, those letters were violently crossed out, replaced by a new set: “RD + PM.”

The sequence played out like a macabre ritual, each set of initials appearing only to be dismissed by an unseen judge. Jenna tried to connect these initials to her earlier dream, but she knew they were not the same. How many times had someone’s hopes been carved here?

This was more than a dream; it was a message—a code that needed deciphering. Something critical lay within these spectral carvings. Each crossed-out pair of initials might well be a testament to a something erased, a story untold. Was it a list of victims, a trail of broken hearts, or something she had yet to identify?

As the next pair of initials took shape before her eyes, Jenna kept pondering over how that this ghostly tableau might hold the key to the enigma of Amber Stevens. Why else would she be seeing it? But the initials “AS” seemed never to appear. She fought the urge to reach out and touch the scar, half-expecting her fingers to pass through the apparition of freshly carved letters.

Staring at the marks, Jenna could almost hear the rasp of the sharp blade against the bark, a reminder that very real danger could be lurking just beyond her perception. She shuddered, feeling the chill of the fog seep into her bones. This was not just a cryptic game played by her imagination; it was a personal challenge, a gauntlet thrown down by whatever forces governed this gap between waking and slumber.

“Tell me,” she pleaded to her ghostly companion. “What do you want me to see?”

But the woman remained silent, her expression unreadable, a perfect mirror to the enigmatic scene. Jenna’s mind raced, drawing connections, weaving theories, all the while knowing that the true answer lay just beyond her reach.

The tree’s scarred skin transformed once more, the bladeless carver working its phantom craft. “JT + KL” materialized only to be violently struck through. Jenna watched, her breath misting in the cold air, as “LN + WS” took its place. The cycle continued, an endless haunting waltz of letters and obliteration—but never the initials “AS.”

“Are you Amber Stevens?” Jenna asked the enigmatic figure beside her. The urgency of her voice cut through the silence like the unseen knife that marred the oak.

The young woman before her held Jenna’s gaze, her midnight hair a stark curtain against the pallid fog. Something flickered behind her eyes, a desire to speak, to divulge secrets Jenna was desperate to uncover. Yet her lips remained still.

Before Jenna could press further, another voice, clear and disconcertingly familiar, reached her ears from behind. “Do I look like Amber Stevens?”

Jenna spun, the abrupt motion stirring the fog into ghostly eddies. Another young woman approached, emerging from the obscurity of an adjoining wooded area—almost a doppelganger of the first. For a heart-stopping instant, Jenna believed it wassome trick of the dream, the same woman shifting places with a magician’s flair. But reality—or the dream’s semblance of it—held firm; both women stood separate, their similarities a riddle wrapped in shadows.

“Can we both be Amber Stevens?” they intoned together, their voices eerily synchronized, as if woven from the same thread of haunting melody.

Jenna scrutinized them closely. The first woman’s hair cascaded in loose waves, absorbing the moon’s glow like the velvet of midnight skies. Her angular features gave her a delicate yet otherworldly beauty, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin that hinted at resilience rather than fragility. The second woman mirrored her in many ways, but subtle differences marked her—a slightly fuller lip, a gentler slope to her nose, nuances that distinguished them even in this dim light.

The fog began to lift, and Jenna’s eyes pierced through the lingering haze. The women’s similarities to the photograph of Amber Stevens—the one Jenna had committed to memory—were undeniable, yet something crucial was amiss. It was as though the essence that animated Amber’s smile, the spark of life unique to her, was absent in these spectral figures.

“You’re not Amber,” Jenna stated firmly, addressing the first apparition. She then turned to the second, “You’re not Amber either.”

The women did not seem taken aback by Jenna’s assertion. Instead, they regarded her with an air of quiet understanding, their expressions unreadable. They exchanged a glance, their midnight waves of hair shimmering faintly in the moonlight, but they still gave no explanation.

“Can you at least tell me anything about Amber? Is she alive, dead, or in danger?” Jenna pressed on, even though she knew well the futility of extracting clarity from such phantoms. Shestudied their faces for any sign of recognition, any flicker of knowledge. But the silent pair remained inscrutable.

The first woman’s lips parted again as if to speak, but no sound emerged. Instead, it was the second woman who motioned with a slender hand, beckoning Jenna and her companion into the woods from which she seemed to have emerged. The commanding gesture left Jenna with no choice but to follow.

They moved in silence, not even a whisper of leaves underfoot to confirm their passage. The ground sloped gently downward, leading them into a small clearing where the earth bore two ominous indentations. Grave-shaped hollows lay side-by-side, the mounds of displaced soil standing as mute testimony to the act of their creation by human hands, looking ready to receive dead bodies.

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