An hour later, the book slips from my slack grip. My eyes blur, transfixed. I’m neither asleep nor awake, but somewhere between my reality and someone else’s. A lucid dream with sound, smell, and touch—a frightening duality with ominous thunder presaging her nearness. A hazy image emerges in my periphery, pulsing around Stacy’s sleeping body, brushing a vague hand across her face. My heart races. It drifts past Jude, standing before my chair—a distorted, faceless, feminine silhouette.
The heady aroma I detected at the brownstone suffuses my nostrils again. Paralysis deadens my muscles. My mouth glues, but I’m screaming in my head. I try to close my eyes, but my vision fixes on the diaphanous-indigo-dress-clad specter, fluctuating closer, her face undefined. Bloodless gray veins snake from
