Page 1 of In Her Dreams
PROLOGUE
Richard Winters jolted awake with his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped animal.Sweat plastered his thinning hair to his scalp as he gasped for air, each breath shallow and insufficient.The familiar walls of his bedroom, barely visible in the predawn darkness, seemed to pulse with each frantic beat of his heart.The red numbers on his digital clock glowed accusingly: 3:17 AM.The sight sent an inexplicable shiver down his spine.
“Just another nightmare,” he whispered.But the lingering images refused to fade—narrow spaces closing in, air thinning to nothing, and beneath it all, that faint voice whispering words he couldn’t quite make out.
Richard pressed his palm against his chest, feeling the irregular flutter beneath his pajama top.The old familiar arrhythmia, the one his doctor had been monitoring for years.Not dangerous, she’d told him, just something to keep an eye on.He wasn’t so sure she’d say the same now, with his pulse skittering like this.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, letting his bare feet rest on the cool hardwood floor.The physical sensation helped anchor him to reality.
“Get it together, Rich,” he muttered, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness of the night.
None of this made sense.The claustrophobia that had plagued him for years—and that had gotten so much worse two years ago after his wife Betty died—should be gone now.Hadn’t the Chantico Rite taken care of that?Two months ago, he’d finally found the courage to try it, desperate for relief from the panic attacks that had even begun to interfere with his work at Riverbend Trust.
The details of the ritual swam hazily in his memory—a darkened room, the scent of herbs and smoke, a chanting voice guiding him through confrontations with his deepest fears.He remembered little of the specifics, but he recalled with crystal clarity the sensation afterward: lightness, freedom, the crushing weight of his phobia lifted from his shoulders.
For eight blissful weeks, he’d moved through the world unencumbered.No more taking the stairs instead of the elevator at the bank.No more hyperventilating in the bathroom stall when the walls seemed too close.He’d even taken a long, relaxing, recreational drive in his car last weekend—something that would have been impossible before when he was afraid to be inside a vehicle.Why, then, was he back in the grip of terror tonight?
Richard pushed himself to stand, needing water and movement.The floorboards creaked beneath his weight as he took a tentative step forward.But something felt wrong with the space in his bedroom.The big dresser against the far wall, the one that had belonged to Betty’s grandmother, seemed closer than it should be.At least six feet from the bed, it had always been.Now, it seemed larger and barely three feet away.
He blinked hard, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.When he looked again, the dresser appeared even closer.
“It’s just the darkness playing tricks,” he told himself, but his voice sounded thin and unconvincing.
Another step, but then he froze in place again.The room was contracting around him like a closing fist.The distance between the bed and the door, normally an easy ten paces, now appeared impossibly short.The ceiling—had it always been so low?Richard felt pressure building in his chest, the familiar precursor to a panic attack.
“This isn’t real,” he gasped, but his body disagreed.His lungs seized, refusing to expand fully.His vision tunneled, the edges darkening.The walls of the bedroom, papered in Betty’s favorite pale blue pattern, seemed to ripple and advance.
Richard pressed his back against the nightstand, seeking an anchor point in the shifting geography of his bedroom.The lamp toppled over, its base hitting the floor with a dull thud that seemed to echo far longer than it should have.
“You beat this,” he reminded himself.“You’re cured.The Chantico Rite worked.”
The memory of the ritual drew his gaze automatically to the object on the opposite wall: the dreamcatcher that had been given to him afterward.In the faint light filtering in through the window, it looked like a large spider hanging against the wallpaper, its web of threads just visible, it's dangling feathers and beads taking on an odd formation he hadn’t noticed before, its small teeth-shaped stones seeming to gnash together.
Richard had never been one for mystical trinkets.Banking was his life—numbers, facts, the reassuring solidity of the financial world.But after the ritual, he’d felt oddly compelled to hang the dreamcatcher directly across from his bed.Betty would have teased him for it.Practical, no-nonsense Richard Winters, banking on superstition to keep bad dreams at bay.
But it had worked, hadn’t it?He’d been cured, at least for a while.
As he stared at the dreamcatcher now, something definitely changed in its appearance.The feathers—were they moving?No breeze stirred in the closed room, yet those shapes trembled against the wall as if caught in a gust of wind.The beads seemed to catch light that wasn’t there, gleaming with an inner luminescence.
An electric tingle raced up Richard’s spine, every instinct screaming danger.Yet simultaneously, an irresistible urge to touch the dreamcatcher seized him.He took a halting step toward it, then another.
Each movement was a struggle as if the air had thickened to molasses.The walls pressed in further.The ceiling descended inch by incremental inch.Sweat ran freely down Richard’s back now, soaking through his pajamas.His breath came in short, staccato gasps, insufficient to fill his constricting lungs.
“Heart attack,” he thought wildly.“I’m having a heart attack.”But the pressure in his chest felt different from the cardiac episodes he’d experienced before—not a physical pain but a crushing weight of dread.
Five steps from the bed to the dreamcatcher.It should have been an easy distance to cross.Now, it felt like miles, each inch gained through sheer force of will.Four steps.Three.The room continued to shrink around him, the very air solidifying, resistant to his passage.
Two steps away, Richard could see the dreamcatcher in unsettling detail.The pattern wasn’t the simple concentric design he remembered.It formed complex, asymmetrical spirals that seemed to move and rearrange themselves as he watched.The beads weren’t the plain wooden ones he recalled but gleamed like tiny eyes, pupil-less and aware.
One step.He raised a trembling hand; fingers outstretched toward the alien thing that had replaced his benign souvenir.The walls of the bedroom were now so close that he could touch them on either side without fully extending his arms.The ceiling brushed the top of his head.Still, the compulsion to touch the dreamcatcher overwhelmed his mounting terror.
Just as his fingertips were about to make contact with the web, a voice stopped him cold.
“Richard, don’t!”
The sound cut through the oppressive silence like a blade, startling a gasp from his constricted throat.He knew that voice.Had heard it daily for thirty-five years.
“Betty?”he whispered, voice cracking.
