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She had been terrified

But that night she had felt silence descend on her battered mind For the first time in weeks

The creepy, lurid, crazy-quilt visions of people and places she didn’t knoere gone In its place…not peace, exactly But quiet Her ain

Despite her fear, Orsay slept Reality had becohtmare

On the second day, Orsay had hiked until she’d encountered the barrier And then she knew that whatever was happening to her, it was real

The barrier was impassable It hurt to touch it

There was no going north The only way open was to the south, toward the distant town of Perdido Beach, almost twenty miles away

Orsay had resisted She was desperately lonely, but then she had been for a long tiain was alh to make up for the utter isolation

She found enough food in the storehouse and, when that was used up, in the carounds

For a while she thought she ht be the only person left alive But then she had chanced upon a group of kids hiking through the forest There were five of thee, except for one younger boy, maybe four or five years old

She followed theh to hear from a distance They lacked Orsay’s well-developed woodsman’s skills

That night, as they began to sleep, Orsay crept closer, wondering, hoping…

/>And then it started

The first dream was from a boy nae boat that flew through the air and crashed down on his head; a hotel atop a cliff; a race around a marina

Crowding behind Edilio’s dream came visions frolooive them life