Mesa, AZ – May 2007

J
ennifer Roberts was fighting insomnia. She had been since February, with the onset of her first prophetic dream. In that terrible nightmare, an Amtrac train had crashed into another train outside the small farming town of Bourbonnais, Illinois. Close to two hundred people had been killed and many more maimed. She’d tasted the smoke as it seared into her lungs, heard people screaming. The seats had been tossed through the air like debris in a tornado.

On awaking the next morning, she thought back over the dream. Every detail was crystal clear: the twisted cars that had been scattered like dominoes across the tracks and hilly grass areas, the survivors that had stumbled out of the wreckage. Flicking the remote in her bedroom to cable news, she’d gasped in horror. An Amtrac train had indeed collided with another one in Bourbonnais. The whole thing had happened exactly as it had in her dream – right down to the body count.

Just a fluke, she told herself. Coincidence. She kept her dream to herself, not even telling her girlfriends. And life went on.

Then, like a bad omen, a month later she had another horrific nightmare. A charter airplane had lost control and nose-dived into the Everglades, leaving only steam and smoke to settle over the reedy, murky area. A voice had called out: there are no survivors. Sleep had evaded her for the rest of the night. The next morning while watching the news, the telecast was interrupted with breaking news. An airplane had crashed. She held her breath, bearing for the worst. Just like in her dream, a charter aircraft had crashed into the Everglades, killing all twenty-seven passengers on board.

At this point, she knew her fortuitous dreams could not be coincidence. But where could she go to for answers? The thought of seeking professional help disappeared as quickly as the plane had in her dream.

And…two more months passed as quietly as a soft breeze after a storm.

Then last night, it happened again. In her dream, she saw a woman for a fleeting moment and then heard her cries for help. Jenn awoke, but then fell back to sleep and picked up on the same dream. A petite brunette with long hair was being strangled to death with a piece of thin rope. The woman’s desperate last breaths had been agonizing. Then silence. Horrorstruck, Jenn had watched the lifeless body as it was dragged and left face-down in a pond near palm trees.

She woke the next morning, her body damp with sweat. Running her small hands over her baby doll PJ’s, she tried to get a grip. Had this dream, like the others, already played out? Was there a woman out there – somewhere, who had just been murdered? Was this the beginning of her own personal hell, one where she would be leery of falling asleep, lest she might read the future in her dreams?

Suddenly her eyes shot open with a reality check. She was petite with long brunette hair. She could easily be the victim. Her body stiffened and chills ran down her spine. “My God! Someone is going to kill me!” She turned on her lamp on the nightstand. Her eyes flashed around the room. Jumping from the bed, she checked beneath it. Nothing but empty space. The closet doors were then flung open. No one was there.

Back in bed she tried to block out the world, to focus on happier times before her mom and dad had died. But only memories of that horrible day surfaced. She’d been at work, when the phone on her desk had rung. An officer from the Mesa PD had relayed the devastating news: her parents’ car had been found at the bottom of a mountain on the Hekowai reservation – the results of a hit and run. The most precious people in her life had been killed. Their untimely deaths still plagued her. It had been brutal, unfair - final. Not a day had gone by that she didn’t think of them. She closed her eyes; their faces appeared - the warm smiles, their arms opened for hugs, the love they had exuded. They would know what to do, have all kinds of good advice. “Mom…Dad,” she called out feebly. “I need you so.”

Their images faded into obscurity like light clouds being chased by the wind. Pulling the sheets up to her neck, she choked back soft cries....