Page 20 of In Her Shadow

Frank nodded with understanding, then posed a question that halted her departure.

“Do you think you’ll have a lucid dream tonight?Something related to the case?”

Jenna lingered in the doorway, her hand resting lightly on the frame.She knew the dreams would come sooner or later, unbidden yet necessary, making connections between the living and the lost.Their unpredictability was a constant in her life, every bit as much as her search for Piper.She realized the feeling was there, that subtle vibration in her bones, signaling an imminent visitation from the ethereal realm that lurked just beyond the veil of sleep.

“Maybe,” she replied.“They don’t exactly run on a schedule, but...yeah, I’ve got a feeling one is coming.Probably tonight.”

“Take care of yourself, Jenna,” Frank’s voice held a touch of concern, but his eyes showed his belief in her strength.

A silent understanding passed between them, acknowledging the unique tool at her disposal and the heavy price it demanded.With a final glance at Frank, Jenna stepped out into the night, the air cool against her cheeks as she made her way to her car.

The drive home was a familiar one, yet tonight it felt alien, as if each turn of the wheel carried her further into uncharted territory.Her headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the winding road of Trentville that led towards home, revealing the world piece by fleeting piece—but nothing disclosed what the coming days would hold, or what spirit of the dead might haunt her this very night.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Moonlight painted the world in shades of silver and shadow as Jenna stood, her feet rooted to the grassy earth, before the solitary gravestone of Marie Bates.A chill brushed her skin, yet she felt an odd comfort in the familiarity of the scene at the Bates family property: the iron fence guarding the plot, the way the night seemed to hold its breath around her.She blinked, attempting to piece together how she had come to stand here at this gravesite.

“I’m sorry, Marie,” Jenna murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.“I should’ve brought flowers.”It seemed the right thing to do, to offer respect to the dead.

As the apology left her lips, a cry shattered the stillness—a raw, ragged sound that shook the tranquil scene.Jenna’s head snapped up, instinctively reaching for the gun that wasn’t there at her hip.The cry echoed again, a desperate plea that pulled at her very soul.

She turned and saw Roger Bates, a rancher she’d known since her childhood.His familiar weathered face bore the harsh lines of a lifetime on the ranch, now twisted into a mask of raw terror.Jenna suddenly became lucid; she knew she was dreaming.And if Roger Bates was here in her dream, it could only mean one thing—that he was dead.And it was up to her to decode whatever riddling message he was trying to give her.

“Roger, tell me what happened,” she demanded.But as Roger opened his mouth to respond, his words were swallowed by a voice so deep and resonant that it seemed to rise from the earth itself, vibrating through the air with the force of ancient authority.

“The land remembers,” the voice boomed, turning Jenna’s blood to ice.The words were cold and menacing, like a sudden winter chill.

She blinked, trying to rationalize the auditory hallucination.Dreams were her domain, yet this felt alien, a message meant for more than just her subconscious to decipher.

Before she could question him further, Roger rushed past her, propelled by a terror Jenna had seen only in the eyes of those who’d stared death in the face.He sprinted towards the solitary headstone of his late wife, Marie, and clung to it as though it were a lifeline cast across the chasm between life and death.

“Roger!”Jenna called again, moving closer, the investigator within her desperate for answers.“What does it mean?Why is this happening?”

But Roger seemed beyond reach, his gaze fixated on the marble marker, hands digging into the earth as if trying to anchor himself against a tide that sought to sweep him away.

Jenna’s breath caught in her throat as the voice thundered once more.

“You are too small for the land.You are too small for the sky.The sky is too big for you.”

Lifting her eyes, Jenna felt her consciousness dwarfed by the immensity of the cosmos.The stars above Trentville were usually bright here outside of town, but here in this dream-scape, they blazed with a ferocity that was both beautiful and terrifying.Each one throbbed with a pulsating light, like the heartbeat of the universe itself.

The vastness overwhelmed her, taunting her with its indifference to human struggles.She realized the insignificance of her own existence against such infinity; she was but a speck on the canvas of time, grappling with earthly sorrows while the skies stretched boundlessly, untouched by mortal pain.

As if responding to her introspection, the boundary between earth and sky began to dissolve.A hiss, like the release of pent-up steam from the bowels of the earth, filled the air.Then a brand ignited with a flame so intense it seemed not of this world.The tree-shaped symbol, horrifically familiar, emblazoned the night with its fiery presence, filling up the cavernous sky.It matched the mark found seared into Clyde Simmons’s flesh.

“The land remembers,” the voice boomed again.

Then Jenna was ripped from the dream, or rather nightmare, with such suddenness that the room seemed to sway before her eyes.An abrupt ringing shattered the stillness of her bedroom.Disoriented, she reached out with a trembling hand and snatched her phone from the nightstand, the glow of the screen stark against the scant light filtering through her bedroom curtains.The caller ID read “Colonel Spelling” in unapologetic boldness, an omen that set her nerves on edge.Jenna sat up, pressing the phone hard against her ear as if to squeeze reality back into her senses.

“Graves,” she answered, her voice croaking with sleep and residual terror.There was a pause on the line, the kind that stretched for just a moment too long, filled with the crackle of static and the weight of impending revelation.

“Sheriff Graves,” came Spelling’s voice.“We’ve got another one.”

Jenna’s thoughts spun, colliding with the images from her dream so vividly that for a moment she couldn’t distinguish between the two realities.Fragments of her dream—the brand in the sky, the ominous voice—clashed with the urgency of the call.Roger Bates’s name hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she bit the words back.

“Who is it?”she asked, her voice steadier now.

Jenna’s fingertips went numb as Colonel Spelling confirmed the victim’s identity.“Roger Bates,” he confirmed, his voice a low rumble.“His body was found at his ranch.It’s the same MO, all right.The same killer.”

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