Chapter One
Dreams
December 17, 2021
Bangor, Maine
It was a typical teenage girl’s bedroom, if neater than most. Strips of LED lights, switched off for the evening, ran along the edges of the ceiling. The window in the eastern wall had a broad sill, upon which rested several well-tended potted plants, carefully arranged to soak up the morning sun. The posters of actors and bands were perfectly vertical and precisely aligned next to one another.
Similarly, the books and papers on the desk were stacked neatly and arranged at ninety-degree angles. The white carpet was free of clothes and freshly vacuumed. The walls were a soft pink—a color the paint store called Rose Dust.
In one corner, a pair of tangled headphones lay on top of a hastily discarded backpack, the only sign of mild untidiness. On the wall above the backpack, three shelves displayed various awards for academic achievement and community service. The trophies were meticulously polished, the wooden plaques free of dust.
The alarm clock on the nightstand read 10:00 p.m. The girl asleep in the bed looked like the proper owner of the bedroom. Like the room, she was all right angles, one knee drawn up, the other leg straight, one arm down at her side, the other tucked under the pillow. Her pajama top was white, the bottoms light pink, matching the walls and carpet. Her breathing was slow, even, and perfectly consistent. Like the backpack tossed in the corner, her red hair splayed wildly over the pillow was the only thing that suggested disorder.
An hour passed. She remained motionless, perfectly at peace.
Down the hall, her father slept less peacefully. His room was more sparsely decorated but equally tidy. A few framed vinyl records adorned one wall; an autographed bass guitar hung on another.
The bed was big enough for two, but he slept alone. A single framed photo on the nightstand showed a smiling couple on a beach—him and a woman who hadn’t slept in his bed for twelve years.
A beautifully hand-painted urn on a high shelf held her ashes.
The man often had vivid dreams. Some nights, he dreamed of his wife, waking with moisture in his eyes and a smile on his face. Other nights, his dreams were plagued by dark forms and whispered promises of perdition.
Tonight, he had no dreams. Even so, he slept fitfully. He always did.
Another hour passed.
His eyes flew open at the sound of an ear-splitting scream from down the hallway. “Sara!” he shouted, as if by reflex, before he’d even come fully awake. His feet hit the floor as he yanked open the nightstand drawer and closed his fingers around the loaded pistol. He was at his bedroom door in a flash. It opened outward, and even though it was unlocked, he shouldered it open forcefully, causing the knob on the opposite side to punch a large hole in the drywall.
His daughter needed him.
At a running pace, her bedroom door was only six steps away. Many thoughts raced through his mind in that brief distance.
At first, he wondered if she had merely had a bad dream, the same sort of bad dream that every teenager has once in a while. He dismissed that notion immediately. Her scream carried discordant notes of heart-wrenching terror far beyond anything that a normal nightmare caused.
Then he thought—hoped—that she’d screamed because someone had broken into the house. That seemed a horrible thing for a father to hope for, that an intruder was in his daughter’s bedroom. But he was armed, he was reasonably strong, and he’d been taking Krav Maga classes twice a week for years; so had Sara. They could defend themselves against an intruder.
Deep in his heart, he knew there was no intruder. The gun in his hand would be useless against this threat. In seventeen years, he’d never heard Sara scream that way before.
Only one thing could make her scream like that.
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