Page 27 of In Her Wake
“Try to get some sleep,” Jake advised before they ended the call.
Jenna continued toward Trentville, her thoughts drifting between the mannequin in the Powells’ kitchen, the mannequins in Liza’s studio, and Marjory’s unexplained absence.There were too many strange connections, too many coincidences for her to make sense of yet.
As she drove through the darkness, she wondered if tonight’s sleep might bring dreams with some clue about what had happened to Marjory Powell.
***
Jenna found herself standing in a vast emptiness, a gloomy expanse.No walls, no ceiling, no discernible floor beneath her feet—just endless gray space stretching in all directions.The familiar disorientation washed over her, and she knew immediately: she was dreaming.Not just dreaming, but lucid, aware of her consciousness even as it floated through this constructed reality.These were the dreams where the dead came to her.
She turned slowly, surveying the void around her.Sometimes these dreams had settings—crime scenes, homes, woodlands.This stark emptiness was unusual, unsettling in its simplicity.
“Hello?”she called, her voice neither echoing nor seeming to travel at all.It simply existed, then vanished.
As if responding to her voice, something materialized in the distance—a shape, low to the ground.Jenna moved toward it, the formless gray giving way as she approached.The shape resolved into a human figure lying prone, covered entirely with a white sheet.The stark white fabric stood out against the muted backdrop like a beacon, impossibly bright.
Jenna’s pulse quickened.In twenty years of these visitations, she’d learned that the dead rarely presented themselves peacefully.They came with urgency, with unfinished business, with wounds still raw.
She knelt beside the sheet-covered figure, hesitating only a moment before grasping the edge of the fabric.With a steady hand born of years of crime scene experience, she pulled it back.
Marjory Powell’s face was revealed, eyes closed as if in sleep.An oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth, the clear plastic fogging slightly with each shallow breath.Her skin had an unnatural pallor, her auburn hair arranged too perfectly around her face.
“Marjory,” Jenna whispered.
Marjory’s chest rose and fell once more, the mask clouding with condensation, then clearing.Then—nothing.The movement stopped.The mask remained clear.Jenna reached forward, about to check for a pulse, when a voice spoke from behind her.
“I’m not there.I’m over here.”
Jenna spun around, rising to her feet in a fluid motion.Standing just a few yards away was another figure—a mannequin like those in Liza’s studio, its fiberglass joints and limbs clearly visible, unclothed and artificial.But where the head should have been blank and featureless, Marjory Powell’s face stared back at her, eyes open and alive, expression mobile and distressed.
This confirmed Jenna’s worst fear.If Marjory was appearing to her in a lucid dream, it could only mean one thing—Marjory was dead.
“You’re...gone?”Jenna asked, though she already knew the answer.
The Marjory-headed mannequin looked down at its own artificial limbs, lifting jointed hands in a gesture of confusion.“This isn’t right,” she said, her voice strangely distant yet clear.“This isn’t my body.I need to get back.”
“Back to where, Marjory?What happened to you?”Jenna took a step closer, careful to keep her voice gentle.The newly dead were often confused, disoriented.She’d learned to guide them slowly toward awareness.
“My body,” Marjory repeated, gesturing toward the figure on the ground.“That’s where I belong.Not in this...thing.”She looked down at her mannequin form again, horror crossing her features.“He put me in the wrong place.”
“Who did?”Jenna pressed.“Who did this to you?”
Marjory’s eyes focused suddenly, recognition dawning.“Sheriff Graves?What are you doing here?”Her gaze darted around the empty dreamscape.“What is this place?Where are we?”
“I’m trying to help you,” Jenna said.“Do you remember what happened?Who hurt you?”
“He didn’t mean me any harm,” Marjory said, her voice taking on a strangely defensive tone.“He told me so.He just didn’t understand—I still have so much to live for.”She reached toward the sheet-covered body on the ground, but her mannequin arms couldn’t quite extend far enough.“I told him about Harry, about Kayla at college.I thought he understood.”
Jenna stepped closer, fighting back the frustration that often came with these fragmented conversations.The dead rarely gave straight answers, their memories clouded by trauma and the transition between states of being.
“Who is ‘he,’ Marjory?Can you tell me his name?”
The mannequin with Marjory’s face looked up, eyes suddenly clear and direct.“I wasn’t the first,” she said with startling clarity.“And I won’t be the last.”
“There were others before you?”
But Marjory’s attention had drifted again, her gaze fixed on her sheet-covered body.“I need to go back,” she whispered.“I don’t belong in this shell.I’m not a doll.I’m not a thing.I’m—”
Jenna jerked awake.
