Page 1 of Chasing Dreams
Prologue
Raindrops collected like silvery dots of light on the window. A lonely man stood watching the rain. His pain was so intense, she was sure that if she touched him, it would become hers. Something drew her toward him anyway, drew her to touch him, feel his pain, taste it. She had the ability to take his anguish inside herself and ease his burden. There was a way to transform his suffering to a bearable level, but the means escaped her. She searched within herself for the answer.
The sound of the rain faded away. The lightning disappeared, and enveloping clouds obliterated the moon.
Only the sound of ragged breathing remained
Hers.
A clap of thunder jolted Shaine Richards upright in her bed. Through the sheer curtains, the streetlight cast a lacy shadow on her bedroom ceiling. The luminous red digits on her clock radio told her it had been less than an hour since her last dream.
Reaching for her phone on the nightstand, she scrolled to her recent calls, paused over a number and then returned the phone. Slipping out from under the covers, she padded into her living room, the only room of her basement apartment below the inn that had a full-length window, and gazed out at the rain.
Instead of her own likeness reflected in the panes of glass, she again saw the man in her dream. An occasional flicker of lightning had illuminated one side of his granite-hewn face, mirroring his lonely image. He had a hard, square jaw that hinted eloquently at a sober, spiritual respect for life and all its frailties. Eyes, dark and agonized, knew things the man behind them wished he didn’t know.
A leaf blew against the window, clung stubbornly for seconds, then was caught up in another gale.
Without a sound, without the least warning, the man in her dream had known he was being observed, and in the slender threads of moonlight, he turned his head and unerringly found her. A shiver worked its way up her spine.
Minutes passed in which the only sound was the patter of rain against the glass, and the mournful howl of the wind beneath the eaves. Lightning had momentarily sucked away the blackness in a rapid succession of flashes, as quick as a camera strobe, the light again revealing only one side of his face.
Shaine closed her eyes, the line between dream and reality dangerously blurred. Another face superimposed itself over the man’s: Jack’s.
She hadn’t recognized him when she’d first started having the dreams. Her nephew had only been a little over eighteen months old when Shaine’s sister’s car had gone off a bridge into the Missouri River with both Maggie and Jack in it.
In her dreams Jack was a year older, as he would be now.
“They’re both so lonely,” she whispered.
She should call Tom Stempson, the researcher at the institute in North Carolina who’d worked with her for the past six months. But it was late, and she knew he’d just tell her to record the dreams.
Back in her room, Shaine lay down, turned on the lamp and flipped through the pages of her journal. Each entry was marked with an ‘R’ for regular dreams, or a ‘K’ for knowing dreams, the way she had learned to identify them.
Dreams of Maggie were regular dreams, like the dreams of them doing things they had as kids. The dream of the man at the window and those of Jack were ‘knowing’ dreams. She scanned the knowing dream entries. A woman with a white apron... a document on a wall...an Irish setter bounding through the woods...the man at the window... What did he have to do with Jack? Somehow, she knew instinctively that there was a correlation between the two dreams...and the others tied into the equation somewhere.
The therapists at University Hospital had told Shaine her mind couldn’t cope with the possibilities concerning Jack’s death. Maggie’s body had been recovered from the river, but Jack’s had never been found. The police said because he was so small, he could have become snagged below or washed up anywhere. The doctors advised that Shaine needed to let go.
She’d wanted to let go.
She’d tried to let go.
But the dreams wouldn’t let her.
She rolled over and curled into a tiny ball, wadding her knuckled fists against her eyes. She’d done her best to refuse the frightening uncertainties, but ignoring them had done no good. The dreams brought all the exhaustive questions to life. Shaine had to sleep, but when she did, the dreams took her captive.
Finally, one of the university doctors had taken her aside and given her the name of a Ph.D. at the Psychic Research Center.
Tom had taught her not to fight the dreams.
Tom had taught her how to keep them from taking over her existence. If only Tom could help her understand and do something with them. But she’d come to depend too much on his long-distance voice, and he’d done all he could for her. She needed to get a handle on this thing herself.
She wasn’t like the others he worked with. And they both knew it.
Shaine took her hands away from her eyes and breathed evenly, relaxing her body.
And then she dreamed a new dream.
Chapter 1
