4
A street sweeper sounded in the distance when Emily caught her hand half way to her phone to order a ShamWow, or five. It was definitely time to at least try to get some sleep. It was either that or call Jason the ‘discreet escort’ to come and keep her company.
She grabbed the blanket she was currently snuggled into, switched off the TV, and made her way to bed. After nearly an hour of staring at the ceiling, she was ready to admit defeat. The sun would be up soon and she had yet to close her eyes. She saw her attacker lurking in every shadow of the room with her eyes wide open, and Emily didn’t even want to think about what she’d see in her dreams. Sighing and punching her pillow, she sat up and switched on her bedside lamp, catching sight of the book resting on the table. She could try that. Reading was the one thing that had always soothed her, as well as helped distract her when she’d had enough of dealing with her mother for one day.
She’d been meaning to delve into Hannah’s book ever since her friend had sent her a signed copy. Emily had gotten to know Hannah through the bakery where Hannah worked. She’d often stop in for a coffee, along with whatever delicious treat Hannah’s boss Lorenzo had baked that morning. Then one day Emily stopped by and the cafe was closed. The owner of a nearby store told Emily the dreadful news—Lorenzo had been killed in his own store, and now Hannah had disappeared. It wasn’t until months later that Emily found out Hannah had witnessed her boss’s murder and had been placed in witness protection. Hannah had nearly lost her own life in the aftermath of Lorenzo’s death, but to Emily’s great relief she was now safe and had found love with the man who rescued her, U.S. Marshal Luke Blake. She didn’t see her friend in person much anymore as Hannah had moved away, and now Emily was states away too, but she thought of Hannah often. In fact, it was finding out Hannah had had the courage to go out there and pursue her dream of becoming a writer that had given Emily the push to try chasing her dreams herself. Sure, she was dirt broke and right now, lonely, but she was free.
Emily grabbed the book and flipped it open, but only managed to get five pages in before the nightmare from the previous night invaded her thoughts once again. She huffed out a breath. So over this. For a moment, she seriously considered calling one of the late-night psychics she’d seen on the TV. Her grandmother had believed in them, after all. Hell, maybe she should find a new job and become one. The ad she’d seen was billing $20 a minute. Geez. She forced herself to concentrate on her book again when she noticed the address of Hannah’s website on the front page. Just about everything you could ever want to know, and a lot you didn’t, was online these days. Maybe she could find some information about interpreting dreams?
Giving up on sleep again, Emily climbed out of bed. Shrugging on a robe, she made her way over to her ancient computer, making herself a cup of coffee while she waited for the dinosaur to boot up. If she wasn’t going to sleep, maybe the caffeine would stop her feeling so damn tired all the time. The computer ready, her fingers skimmed across the keys—at least she was a decent typist. It came in handy in her line of work. Words such as premonitions, visions and schizophrenia flew out of her fingers and into the search engine. That last one seemed way more possible than all the wacky crap she was finding, each search returning more and more crazy results. Hey, there was actually a quiz titled ‘Am I Psychic Or Just Crazy’. Emily rolled her eyes and then stood up from her chair in frustration, pacing across the room.
“There is just no damn way I'm psychic!” she shouted to her walls, which stared back at her in beige, blank silence. That only served to drive her even crazier.
I give up, time to sleep before I lose my mind.
Walking back to her bedroom, Emily climbed into bed and pulled out the blister pack of Gravol tablets. Months ago when she’d been ill, she’d found out that the over the counter nausea medication also knocked her out like a light. Lately, she’d been trying to avoid taking one, relying on them a little too much. But, despite a looming addiction, they were necessary tonight.
One sheep, two sheepies, three, four, five sheep. She counted and tried to imagine the sheep in a peaceful green meadow until the narcotics finally shut her brain down and she welcomed the darkness of oblivion.
It seemed like only seconds had passed before her peaceful meadow and fluffy sheep evaporated. When the pictures came, they blew in with a sickening sense of déjà vu.
She was back at the edge of the alleyway, the mist again curling around her feet. She tried to move, but her feet felt like lead. She was stuck on the spot, her thin nightgown doing nothing to protect her against the icy winds that blew around her. This time, terror was not the first thing she felt. What came first was a sickening sense of expectancy and dread. In the silence of the dead of night, she heard a cry.
Emily jolted, but no, it wasn’t a man calling out. This time. A stray cat dumpster diving for its night-time feed scattered by her feet. Even it wasn’t stupid enough to stick around.
Why couldn’t she move?!
Someone else entered the alley behind her. She squinted through the darkness. Holy shit! That wasn’t someone else, that was her!
Before her, the scenes of her dream from the night before played out all over again. She saw herself walking down the alley oblivious to the world. Then came the cry for help, and she just had to play concerned citizen. Her phone illuminated a shadow in the distance ahead of her, and for a moment, she could see herself consider running away. Emily knew what was coming, but still she stood rooted to the spot, unable to move or tell her dream-self to run away.
She tried to see further into the darkness, but could see nothing beyond watching herself walk straight into danger. She screamed at her dream doppelganger to turn, to run away, but no sound left her mouth. She stood and watched the man she’d tried to help throw her to the ground holding her down when she fought back, before finally drawing the blade across her throat. The attack was over in seconds and felt like a lifetime all at once. A hot burn began in her throat and flowed down her chest as hot wetness slid over her. Tears tracked down her cheeks and she watched herself die, lying on the fetid alley ground.
The man stood and loomed over her, smiling as her other self, choked on the blood now flowing from her wounds. As she drew a last shuddering breath, he knelt down before her again and, using the knife, cut a lock from her hair. He then stood and left the scene, rushing past her as if she was as ethereal as the cold wind still blowing through her.
Another shudder went through the body lying on the ground before she finally lay still. Too still.
Surely now she was dead she could finally escape this nightmare? Instead, Emily felt herself being tugged backward, and the picture before her shimmered and changed.
She was back at the mouth of the alley. Again she heard a cry, but higher this time, not the anguished groan that had drawn her there.
“Help!” she heard her own cry as she watched herself, alive, launch herself out of the alley and run across the road, crashing into the passing car all over again.
Everything swirled past her again. Emily was now convinced. She was definitely off her rocker. She was given no time to mourn any loss of her sanity however because a new image now played out before her. This time, though it wasn’t her own self she saw approaching the dark shape lying on the ground. This time, the woman who stood at the mouth of the alley, stopped by the feeble cry for help, had bronze skin with long flowing dark hair.
“Stop!” she tried to cry out. “Don’t go in there!” Though she could now hear her own voice, the other woman seemed oblivious to even her presence. The wind still blew around her, and now Emily felt the fear sink back into her bones.
“Help me please,” the feeble call came again, and Emily could do nothing but watch the other woman step hesitantly into the alleyway. She tried to follow, looking around for help, but the street behind her was empty and hazy, swirling behind her. Some part of her knew that this was just a dream, but shit, every slash of the knife had felt so damn real.
“Hello?” the woman in front of her called out. No answer came back. Emily reached out to her in an attempt to hold the other woman back, but her hand passed right through her shoulder. Her heart sped up, almost beating through her chest. Was that what was going on, was she a ghost? Had she died in the attack after all and was now stuck in some kind of twisted limbo?
She watched as the figure on the ground moaned again, the woman rushing forward and doing the one thing Emily was silently begging her not to do—she bent over and touched the man’s shoulder. In the next beat of Emily’s heart, the man leaped from the ground just as he had during her attack. In one swift motion, the woman was on the ground, the man straddling her hips. The woman screamed, but no one answered. She fought back, but she wasn’t strong enough, her hands scratching at think air. Finding she could finally move, Emily tried to shove at the man, but her hands passed through the space unaffected.
She stood watching, helpless as the man raised the strange blade over his head. She watched the blade flash in the moonlight before the man drew the knife sharply across the woman’s throat. Emily fell to her knees, begging for it all to stop. Her eyes couldn’t move from the scene before her as the blade slid across the woman’s skin and lines of red bloomed. The woman’s screams quieted into a terrifying gurgling, choking sound. As she lost consciousness, the man paused and looked up at the sky. He cut a lock of hair from the woman’s head, and then turned and slipped away into the night, a glimpse of a tattoo visible on one arm.
Moving forward, Emily watched as the woman in front of her opened her eyes. Deep gray eyes stared back at her as the woman’s hand rolled from her chest to the ground. She turned from the bloody scene as she heard voices passing at the entrance to the alley, the happy chattering of a group of friends. People who had no idea what had just occurred just yards from where they walked.
The mist that swirled beyond the alleyway began to move until it swept up under Emily’s feet. She felt herself lifted and swirled away.
The tears that wet her face as Emily woke up were definitely real. She wiped at them with a trembling hand, unable to stop the flow of others intent on coursing down her cheeks.
What the hell was happening?!
The clock beside her bed read just minutes before five a.m., and she was sure that despite the drugs, sleep wasn’t coming back anytime soon. Flopping her head back onto her pillow, Emily took a couple of deep breaths, trying to relax her breathing and stop the tears. It had worked for her in the past, but today the clouds of the overcast early morning were far too much like the swirling mists of the alley in her dreams. The other woman’s face was burned into her mind, whether or not she closed her eyes. Had it, any of it, been real? Perhaps her brain had finally overloaded and had replaced her own death with that of someone else in her dream. Emily was comforted by the thought for a moment until she realized that the first dream of the alleyway had come before anything had happened. But then, she hadn’t died then either. She’d been able to save herself. Perhaps she could save this woman too, if any of this was even freaking real!
Her thoughts ricocheting madly around her head, Emily startled when the ringing of her cell phone broke the silence in the room. Emily looked at the caller ID, and then at her alarm clock. It was too early for her mother’s high-pitched voice bleating into her ear, all about Emily’s apparently ill-timed conception and how much her mother had sacrificed for her, despite how ungrateful Emily was.
“No need, Mom,” she spoke to her walls again, “I’m driving myself mental just fine without you right now.”
Emily rolled over in bed and pulled the blankets up over her head, but her near panic attack had washed away the last effects of the sedatives and now anxiety had replaced any lingering sleepiness. Her eyes felt like they were full of grit, and she rubbed them furiously, squinting them tightly closed. The dream woman’s face flashed in front of her again. The darkness of the alley, the slash of the blade, the killer taking a lock of hair, and then the dead gray eyes staring unseeingly back at her. Those images were now permanently etched into her mind.
Her phone rang again and this time, she answered. “Yes, mother?”
“Hi honey!” came the peppy reply. “I'm just checking in.”
“Mom, it’s five a.m. here,” she shot back instantly annoyed. “The sun isn’t even up yet.”
“What? Because you moved out, I can’t call you?” Emily could sense her mother’s annoyance rising and she slapped a hand over her forehead intensifying the headache that started simmering. “With an attitude like that, you better be damn sure you don’t ever need to move back in here!”
“Mom, I'm going to hang up now.” Emily sighed and felt new tears of frustration slip down her cheek. “If no one is sick or dying please limit your calls to daylight hours.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting to find you asleep,” came the reply, “I was just checking in. See how you’re coping without your family. I’m fine you know, here all on my own now.” The satisfaction she heard in her mother’s voice that came along with the apology was just too much of an insult. Heaven forbid she was still in bed even at the six a.m. it was in New York.
“Goodbye Mom, have a good day."
Emily hung up her cell and then fell back against the pillow. Had she really done something so terrible just being born? If she knew, her mother might call her current situation divine retribution, but for Emily, it was just fate being a fickle bitch. Again.
5
Emily lay in bed after her mom’s call, her mind cycling over the dream as she tried desperately at the same time to forget it. Even when her alarm went off a short time later, hauling herself out of bed proved to be an almost impossible task. Still, there was no way she was taking a sick day. Work was mostly boring, but it gave her something to focus on, and Emily needed the distraction. Her head pounded with a vengeance—for what she wasn’t quite sure. All the motrin in the world wasn’t going to get rid of this one. Her head throbbed in rhythm with every step as she dragged herself to the train station. Walking was not happening today.
The stack of new work greeting her when she reached her desk depressed her further, the joy she’d felt yesterday from finishing the pile felt like forever ago. It almost made her pack up and head back out the door. A vision of her standing in a subway, strumming a guitar, eking out a living as a tortured artist entered her mind. Ugh, no subways. They’re far too similar to an alleyway. She couldn’t quit, it had taken her long enough to find this job. If she left it, the only options left might as well be either returning to New York or selling herself. Yeah, cause you’d be hot property. Ugh.
Ignoring the creaking pile in her inbox, for now, she sat and switched her computer on, swiveling the screen to avoid casual glances from her co-workers. She hadn’t made much progress with her research last night, but her computer took an eon to load a single web page. She had to look further into what the hell was going on with her dreams if she was ever going to get them out of her head.
Maybe I’m seeing something that’s already happened? Perhaps a news report playing in the background somewhere had wormed its way into her brain unnoticed, and her subconscious was using it to release the pressure from the stress from the recent U-turn her life had taken. Yep that actually sounded plausible, and better yet, meant she wasn’t losing her mind.
“Ms. West?” Emily looked up to see a man standing in front of her desk. He looked familiar, but her sleep-deprived mind couldn’t place him. His hand shot out in front of him, making her jump a little in her seat. Emily held her breath, that is until she noticed what was in his hand. Breathe Emily, before you really die of a heart attack. She grabbed the proffered bunch of envelopes, bundled together with rubber bands, as well as two of the beige envelopes used for inter-office paperwork transfers. Just what she needed, more work. She glanced up at his name tag.
“Thanks, Juan.”
Taking the envelopes from his hand, she opened the first of the internal transfer
envelopes as the mailman moved on to the next cubicle. It contained paperwork from HR, asking her to sign where noted and then return the forms in person so they could organize her insurance paperwork. Seemed like all she’d done the past couple of months was juggle paperwork. The second envelope contained a letter welcoming her officially to the company—four months later. Emily shrugged. Well, better late than never. She had just slid her finger under the flap of the external mail when excited footsteps paired with chirpy good morning greetings echoed toward her. Both just intensified her headache.
“Emily, right?” the chirpy voice sent a shot of pain through her head. Emily pressed her fingers to her temple, applying pressure to try to keep her brain from exploding.
“Depends on why you’re asking,” she muttered as she turned to face her visitor. The woman was happiness personified, and her presence instantly annoyed Emily.
The woman winced at her sympathetically. “Wow, rough night last night hey? Too much wine?”
Lady, you have no idea.
Her visitor waved a hand through the air. “Anyway, I won’t keep you. I'm Lily. I noticed you were new here and thought I’d come introduce myself.”
Emily knew who she was. During a late-night conversation, her equally pathetic late-night colleague Wanda had broken down the social hierarchy in the office for Emily. The pretty little blond standing before her was the office social integrator, or interrogator, depending on how you looked at it. She was the most extroverted person Emily had ever met and a definite social butterfly. Hell, with the way she heard Lily partied she could be a social pterodactyl, with an equally imposing charisma that was hard to ignore. The only way to stop yourself being dragged into her next event was to tell her to leave you the hell alone. Problem was that Lily was just too damned nice, despite her epic perkiness, and Emily felt bad just thinking about ignoring her, even with her headache.
Emily (Dreamcatchers Romantic Suspense Series Book 1) Page 3
