Chapter 1

I found myself floating above the road leading to the cemetery. A dark cloud spun in the air before me, a nauseating mix of ghosts and all sorts of flying dead things. Flies, which I absolutely hate, both dead and alive as well as dead birds and other insects. It swirled and spun around my body standing down there by the wrought-iron gates. Mrs. Kane controlled my body, but not my abilities. Logan had to have woken these dead things. On the ground the cemetery residents shuffled, risen as zombies in all of their funereal finery.

“Come forth!” she cried.

The bitch and her son were setting me up to the Inquisition. Every witness could say honestly that it was Ravyn Washington, that odd high school girl, that had woken every dead thing around. Just like her grandmother Helen Richardson. And then the Inquisition would take me away to burn out the section of my brain responsible. If I was fortunate I'd recover enough to lead a fairly normal life, with only the scorn and hatred of others to endure.

Except I'm not in high school anymore, and this had already happened.

I was dreaming. It had worked! I was lucid in a dream! I had an experiment to complete but the scene below drew my attention.

I watched the zombies crowding around my body and I felt the connection, the energy that bound me to my body. When I was sixteen I had followed that energy back to my body and I had driven Logan's mother from my body.

I flew closer, following the connection down into that dark cloud of dead things. Ghosts and flies flew through me, ignored me just as they had four years ago. I saw flies, all gross and hairy, ghosts with vaguely human shapes and dark holes for eyes, screaming in soundless rage. A crow flapped past, missing half of its feathers and raining maggots down on the zombies below. I smelled the sharp, stomach turning smell of rot and decay. It clung to the back of my throat and my stomach tightened. Pressure built in my throat and I felt sure I was about to puke.

It didn't make sense. I was dreaming of being out of my body. I could sense everything around me, sights and sounds, but I couldn't touch or smell in an astral state.

But my gorge rose anyway and the stench was almost overpowering. I felt flies crawling on my skin and I spun out of control, spinning toward the ground below as I swatted at the horrid things. I hit the ground and it gave beneath me like a mattress. Looking up I saw my own face looking back down at me. My face, but I don't think I ever looked so nasty, leering with bright red lipstick that totally wasn't my color, and black eye shadow that turned my eyes into dark pits against my pale skin. My black hair floated around my head in a living halo. Other faces crowded in, zombies reaching for me with fingernails encrusted in dirt and gore.

I screamed but no sound came out. I didn't have a body. My body stood in front of me baring bloody-looking lipstick-stained teeth as she laughed. I felt her draining my life away through the connection between us.

That hadn't happened before. I fought for control. Last time I followed the connection back into my body and threw Mrs. Kane out. Then I cut off her connection to Logan and the other side, and she had dissolved in front of me. I rose up, trying to follow the connection back into my body but she screamed and I was thrown back like a wind-blown leaf.

Decaying zombie hands grabbed at me, and insubstantial as I seemed, each grasp tugged at me the way a hand might fan a column of smoke, distorting its shape as the smoke continues to rise. Even worse the dead leaned close and sucked with gaping rotten mouths, moaning all the while, as they threatened to consume me!

I tried to escape, to fly, to get away even though I still knew it was nothing but a dream. I didn't care. All thoughts of the experiment I'd meant to conduct were gone. I either wanted to get away or even better, wake up.

I couldn't. The grasping and sucking of the zombies weighed me down and the energy of my connection to my body felt like an anchor dragging me down. I acted on instinct. I reached out with my gift and closed my focus on that connection. I squeezed and squeezed it as I tried shaking off the zombies until finally the unthinkable happened.

The connection snapped.

My body shrieked to the heavens, her face exultant —

I woke.

I woke and still the stink of the dead clung in my mouth and I felt flies crawling on my skin. A weight pressed me down into the thin mattress. Nearby I heard the scratch of thin pins on the paper of the old EEG machine. The weight was a person, lying atop me, clutching my arms and pressing me into the mattress. I couldn't move. My eyes refused to open. The flies crawled across my eyelids.

I screamed, or meant to scream, but no sound came out of my throat. A feeling of coldness, of such loathsome evil filled me, and I knew without any question that the person pinning me to the mattress was evil. I struggled to move but my body refused. Not a single finger so much as twitched.

I breathed and otherwise lay motionless beneath my attacker, although I struggled with every fiber to get free.

Bright white light flashed in my eyes and I lunged up off the mattress, suddenly free to move. My scream burst out of my throat, tearing its way free. I swung out blindly and hit nothing. I couldn't see for all the light but I scrambled away from the mattress for the corner of the room.

Leads popped free from my head and face with sharp tugs. The EEG machine started beeping.

I hit the corner and turned, pressing my back against the cold concrete. Through watery eyes I saw the vague outline of a person in front of me.

“Ravyn!”

I blinked and rubbed my eyes with one hand, the other still out warding off my attacker. My vision cleared, showing me the small ten by fifteen concrete room, the mattress on the floor with the plain blue hospital sheets and worn comforter, the tall boxy shape of the EEG machine and the dented institutional desk in the corner. The thin lead wires dangled from the machine and out one side a stack of traction paper spooled into the hanging wire bin.

And I recognized Pam standing in the doorway, her brow wrinkled and her hands out to me. “Ravyn, please. It's Pam.”

I cleared my throat. It felt raw and sore. “Pam, sorry.” I managed weak chuckle, suddenly aware of how this all had to look, but the memory of the dream clung behind my eyelids.

Pam walked around the mattress to the EEG machine and shut it down, stopping it from wasting more ink and paper. As I watched her doing that I noticed that the stink of rot was gone, but I could smell my own sweat. My scalp and my eyelids itched but when I rubbed at the spot I found the remnants of the EEG paste clinging to my skin. I wanted a scalding hot shower. I wanted to feel the water pounding into my skin while I scrubbed everywhere.

I rubbed at my arm and pain flared on my tricep. I twisted my arm to look but I couldn't see anything. Pam edged around the machine and stopped. She pressed her hands together.

“Are you okay, Ravyn? Nightmare?”

Of course it was. I shook my head and rubbed tears from my eyes. “Yeah, a nightmare.” That's my life, a nightmare that I can't share with anyone. No one can know about what happened.

Pam crouched and picked up my moleskin dream diary and pen from beside the mattress. She held them out to me. “Do you want to write it down? Before you forget everything?”

I took the notebook and pen but I didn't make any attempt to open it and write down the dream. I could still see every detail of the dream. I remembered it all. I looked at Pam. She was really beautiful, like model-gorgeous with short reddish hair, a fantastic figure and deep green eyes, but she never seemed vain or stuck on herself. Usually she had one or more guys following her around. Two of them, Justin and Daryl, had joined the my group so that they'd have more excuses to hang around her. Plus I think they thought anything to do with dreams might increase their chance of sleeping with her. And not in a dream experiment sort of way.

“Ravyn?”

I blinked, looked at the diary and back at her. I couldn't tell her everything but she didn't need to know it all. “Yeah, just thinking about it. I don't think I could forget it and right now I wouldn't mind. There were all of these dead things, zombies but also flies and dead birds flying around.”

“Like in one of the Roland films?”

“Yeah, something like that. I was flying when it started and I realized that it was a dream. I was lucid and aware of it being a dream.”

“That's great! Did you get a chance to try the experiment?”

I shook my head. “No, I ended up down in among the zombies and I could smell the rot and everything. It made me sick and they were trying to devour me.”

“Couldn't you fly away? Or make them disappear? Or start doing the Thriller or something?”

I laughed and felt much better. Of course, it was all a dream. If I hadn't freaked out I should have been able to do any of those things. “I panicked. It was all so real it freaked me out. And I could feel the flies crawling on me, and I hate flies. It's like a phobia with me. They're just so gross.”

Pam nodded. “I'm the same way about moths.”

“Moths?”

“What can I say? They freak me out.”

“Okay, moth-girl. Anyway, I freaked and didn't get anywhere near doing the experiment.”

“That's too bad. It would have been awesome if you had used a zombie for it.”

“Right. Too bad.” I remembered what happened later. I could see and hear my body laughing and then the presence pinning me down to the mattress, the smell and taste of dead flesh in my mouth, and the flies crawling on my skin. “Anyway, then it was like I woke up but I couldn't move. It felt like someone was pinning me down and I could still smell the zombies and everything. The flies were still crawling on my skin. Then you flipped on the light and woke me up.”

“Sorry,” Pam said.

“Don't be. It was really scary.”

“But isn't that just sleep paralysis?”

I don't know why I hadn't thought about it until she said it, but then I felt so stupid. I must have been staring at her in surprise because she laughed and shrugged.

“Hey, I've been paying attention. I know that sometimes you can wake up and still be under the effect of sleep paralysis. It's supposed to be terrifying. People used to think it was all demons come to take your soul or whatever. After a nightmare like that I can see how terrifying it would have been.”

“But what about the flies crawling on me? I could feel them on my face.”

“It could have been anything, including a false awakening, right?” Pam picked up the trailing leads of the EEG machine. “Or it could have been these stuck to your face?”

I put my head down on my knees and groaned. When I looked up I smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Pam. I guess I was really freaked out by the nightmare.”

“No problem. Heck, I still haven't gotten out of my dorm room in my dreams. You at least got to fly. You've got to work on your landings, though.”

“What?”

Pam pointed at my arm. “You must have banged your arm when you threw yourself off the mattress. It looks like you're bruising.”

I touched the sore spot on my tricep. I didn't remember hitting my arm when I woke up. But I did remember being pinned to the mattress.