Page 4 of Beyond Dreams

And she was obviously beyond exhausted, or shewasseriously going nuts. Arnold, with his thin and slicked back white hair and his paunch and soft hands was speaking in the same voice Holly had given to the man of her dreams. Puzzled and more than a little alarmed she turned and wondered if anyone else heard this, the change in his voice. They did not. While she was surrounded by fifteen other people in the tour group inside the ruins of this old broch, no one was paying any attention to Arnold.

“You will stay here when we go,” he said next.

“No,” she said automatically, frowning now. “No. We’re going out to Skye. Why would I—”

“You must,” he said, still usinghisdeep voice, not Arnold’s.

“I don’t understand,” she said and gave a nervous laugh, looking around at her tourmates once more. No one looked confused. “Is this a joke?”

“Sit just here, in the very center of the ruin,” he said, “and wait for them to come for you.”

“Wait? For who?” A frisson of greater alarm hammered in her heart. And it only multiplied tenfold when a couple of newlyweds from the group approached Arnold and asked him something and he answered them—she heard Arnold’s true voice then—but he did this while staring directly at her, holding her freaked-out gaze, his lips unmoving. Her own lip began to tremble. She turned to the young couple. “What did he say to you?” She asked, her tone becoming frantic. “Do you have to stay here, too?”

Though they passed within three feet of Holly, returning to their examination of the ruins, they did not in any way acknowledge that she’d spoken to them. It was as if they could not see or hear her. Holly reached for the young woman’s arm. “Wait!” She cried out when her hand passed through the flesh of the woman, as if one of them were not human. It looked like a bad CGI effect, the way she could see her hand swipe through the woman’s arm without actually touching anything.

She gasped again and stared at her hand, which looked as it always did, solid and real. She swiveled back to Arnold, her shock flourishing yet more, since there stood the man of her dreams and not Arnold at all. In the flesh, in his peasant clothing, and piercing her with a caustic glare.

He was different from her dreams though, was clear and...and here. This was no dream, she sensed that instinctively and resolutely. He was as distinct and as vibrant to her as any of her tourmates. He was...he was magnificent, with a ruggedly handsome face bronzed by wind and sun and covered in days of stubble and green eyes that were so...real. So vivid and lifelike, his fury more alive than ever. His cheeks were sharply drawn, his chin square and taut. He was huge, at least six-two or six-three, with massive shoulders and bare, well-defined arms. His raw beauty was almost unearthly, almost frightening for its severity.

“Come on then, lass,” he said stiffly, flicking his hand with some impatience at her. “Ye have nae choice.”

“No,” she whimpered, shaking her head. “This is not happening. I...I am just overtired. I need to—”

“I need you, lass,” he growled at her.

“But you’re...you’re not real,” she argued, the only thing that made sense to her even as it confused her more. “You can’t be.”

“Flesh and blood, lass,” he countered, “same as you.” He beckoned her again with his hand. “Come home with me.”

“Oh, my God,” was breathed as a horrified moan from her. Spinning around, she found that she was alone. No one, not one of the tourists from the group stood within the circle of the broch with her. She ran out of the ruins, away from the specter of her dream man, and ran all the way around the circular broch, finding herself alone. When she had run around the entire exterior, she could no longer find the place where the wall was missing—the ancient, ruined broch was now almost completely intact. She spun again, looking back toward the road. The small bus was gone. The narrow paved road was gone; there was only a trail of rutted earth to say that any road had ever been there. She went in search of the man and now had lost him. Unless he was running ahead of her, always just beyond her view around the broch, or if he were now inside the mostly-intact broch, he was nowhere to be found.

Shaking with fear and confusion, she stopped moving and closed her eyes.

I am dreaming. That is all.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a tiny old woman walking toward her from around the hollow-walled roundhouse. Relief did not come for this, since the woman was dressed as the man had been, in plain clothes from some ancient time. Long, stringy hair of gray floated around her shoulders, and she carried a walking stick, the end of it cradled by her gnarled fingers.

“What the hell is happening?” Holly cried as the woman smiled at her.

“It is time to go,” said the strange woman.

“Go? Go where?”

“Beyond your dreams,” came the answer, once more in the green-eyed man’s voice.

Her stomach clenched tight for her fright as she fought valiantly to keep control of...anything. And then an icy fear gripped her heart when a white light flashed before her eyes.

The woman stretched out her hand to Holly. “Come,” she urged.

A stunning blackness followed that white light. The last thing she would remember was the feeling of frothiness, as if her body had no substance, as she fell to the ground.

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