Page 1 of Light of Day
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The strange littlegirl tugged at Heather’s hand. She was saying something urgent and fearful, but her words couldn’t pass through the fog between them. In the dream, somehow Heather knew that, although she didn’t know much else. Like…why were people shouting outside the little house they were in? And why…why was the housemoving? It jerked forward—the entire house—and she staggered, but the little girl just held her hand tighter.
She didn’t want to go outside. A howling wind was battering the walls and making the windowpanes shudder. It was dark out there, too, the intense dark of a stormy, new-moon night. Through the window, she saw the light of a hurricane lantern swinging in someone’s hand. The sight struck fear in her heart. Whoever was coming, it didn’t mean anything good.
The girl yanked at her hand again. Heather focused on her, trying to make sense of what she was wearing. Her long-sleeved blue cotton dress closed tightly at the neck and fell past her knees. Over it she wore a pinafore, which had been mended in several places with tidy patches. She was barefoot, but she held a pair of worn leather, lace-up boots in her other hand, as if she was delaying putting them on as long as possible.
The strange girl said something else, but still her words couldn’t penetrate the swirling fog between them.
“Who are you?” Heather called out. “What’s your name?”
But the girl turned her back to Heather and ran for the door, which tilted wildly to one side as the house jerked again. What was happening to this house?
“Telephone,” someone yelled from outside.
Telephone? What did that mean?
Heather glanced around the small house, which was furnished with simple wooden furniture, so rough it looked homemade. There was no telephone, no cell phone, no electric appliances of any kind, not even a refrigerator. The house itself was sturdy enough, even though its boards creaked as it moved forward. It looked lived-in and loved, with pretty trim around the front door, which was now being pushed open by the girl.
She jumped into someone’s arms, a man wearing a conductor’s cap and suspenders. The two of them disappeared into the stormy darkness.
“Where are you going?” Heather yelled after them. “What’s happening?”
She ran to the door, which was about to swing shut. Pushing it open, she peered outside into the chaotic darkness. Was that…a beach? It was so hard to see in this darkness, but now more people with hurricane lanterns were appearing. One of them dashed past her and in the brief illumination she saw a beach made of piles and piles of tiny shells.
She knew that beach. She recognized it. But she didn’t have time to think more about it because this house was heading right across the beach toward the ocean lapping at the sandy edge.
“Stop!” she yelled as she clutched at the doorjamb. “Make it stop!”
“Telephone!” someone yelled again.
Why was that the only word she could understand? “I don’t know what you mean!” She yelled back. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?”
No answer came as the house reached the ocean and a wave of icy water splashed across the threshold and onto her feet.
Heather McPhee wokeup in a cold sweat, shudders traveling through her entire body. That same freaking dream. Whenever she was stressed out, that dream came back, and whenever it did, it could take her hours to shake it off.
She’d even spoken to a therapist about it.
“It’s so vivid it feels like a horror movie, but I don’t even watch those movies. I googled it and didn’t find anything with houses walking into the ocean. And I have no idea who that little girl is. I don’t recognize her.”
Her therapist had suggested the little girl was her, and the ocean was emotion, and maybe she was afraid for her childhood self being drowned in emotion, and that all made a certain amount of sense—except that Heather didn’t believe the girl was her. She didn’t look anything like her, for one thing. The little girl in the dream had olive skin and curly hair bound into two braids. Heather had been a freckle-faced tomboy with a gap between her teeth.
“Do you think the dream is connected to your fear of swimming?”
“Maybe. I always wake up as soon as the water touches my feet. But what about the telephone? That’s always the only word I can understand in the dream.”
“Well, let’s talk about it,” her very patient therapist had said. “What do telephones represent to you?”
“I don’t know. Communication? Maybe stress?”
“Okay. That’s progress. What sort of stress are you experiencing at the moment?”
Heather couldn’t stop laughing at that question, and they’d had to end the session only partway through her lengthy list of things causing her stress.
Speaking of stress—and telephones—Heather reached for the cellphone charging on her nightstand. It was always the first thing she did the instant she woke up, and yes, she realized that was stressful in and of itself. But she didn’t have a choice. As a coordinating producer of the cable news showBoiling Point, she was the first point of contact for any kind of crisis.
She already had over twenty texts to scroll through, even though it was barely six in the morning. A guest for today’s segment on immigration had canceled. Heather was prepared for that—she located her file of backup guests and texted it to the booker.
