“Yes, I know.”

“Yeah, well you wouldn’t happen to have a dead-to-living dictionary laying around would you?”

“No, but given your wealth of experience in that realm, perhaps you should consider writing one.”

“I doubt if it would sell.”

“You might be surprised.”

“Yeah, maybe. So, let me ask you something. Why didn’t you just tell me I was being paranoid like I asked you to do in the beginning?”

“Because, Rowan, you would not have believed me if I had. You did, however, need someone to listen so that you could figure out for yourself that which you knew all along.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right,” I said. “Even so, I still have this nightmare to contend with.”

“Yes, but now you can meet it on your own terms.”

The relief began to fade as I felt murky shadows folding around me once again. That seemed to be the way of my life most of the time, gloomy and overcast with occasional brief periods of warmth and light. I just wished those periods of brightness would last a little longer.

“You know, Helen,” I said as the weight of the ethereal darkness pressed in on me. “I have a terrible feeling that things are going to get a lot worse before they even think about getting better.”

“Is that a feeling, or an intuition, Rowan?”

“A lot of both.”

“I hate to say this, but I fear you are correct.”

“That’s not exactly comforting, Helen.”

“It was not meant to be.”

Friday, November 18 1:27 P.M

. Saint Louis, Missouri

CHAPTER 3:

I suppose having only three repetitions of the horrifying night terror was better than the quintuplet I had experienced the night before I visited with Helen. I’ll admit I would have preferred none at all, but I wasn’t going to complain. I’d take what I could get, and a reduction in frequency was as good a place as any to start.