Page 2 of In Her Memory

The guest bedroom door stood ajar to her right, the room beyond it dark and still. She’d decorated it in shades of blue and cream, hoping that Katie and her fiancé might visit someday. So far, the only occupant had been her sister Ellen, who’d stayed for two awkward days before declaring that she “couldn’t sleep with all the strange noises.”

Donna had dismissed Ellen’s complaints as the usual dramatics, but now, standing alone in the quiet hallway, she wondered.

There was something about the nighttime stillness of Calloway House that made even the most rational thoughts twist into concerns.

Her mind drifted to tomorrow’s plans—the HOA coffee hour she’d been avoiding, the invitation from the woman in unit seven to join her garden club. Maybe it was time to stop hiding behind her grief. Maybe what this place needed, what she needed, was to open up a little. Let some light in. Let some people in.

“I’ll go,” she decided aloud, the words hanging in the empty air. “I’ll say yes.”

It felt like a promise, not just to herself but to Richard. He’d always been the social one, drawing people in with his warmth and humor. He wouldn’t want her retreating from life like this.

The laundry room door was closed, though Donna was certain she’d left it open after retrieving some clean towels her housekeeper had folded and left there. Biscuit whined, his nails scratching at the wood.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she sighed, her earlier unease giving way to irritation. She reached for the knob, cool brass against her palm, and pushed the door open.

The small room was dark except for the green glow of the digital clock on the dryer. The air felt different here—cooler, charged somehow, like the atmosphere before a storm. Biscuit stood in the center of the tile floor, his small body rigid, growling at something Donna couldn’t see.

She fumbled for the light switch, her fingers trailing along the wall. The prickle at the back of her neck returned, stronger now, a warning she couldn’t quite interpret. The house seemed to inhale around her, the walls contracting slightly.

“Biscuit, come here,” she commanded, her voice sharper than intended.

The light switch eluded her, and for a moment, panic flared in her chest. She had been in this room a dozen times today—why couldn’t she find the switch? The darkness pressed closer, and Biscuit’s growl deepened.

There was a soft sound behind her—sounding like a brush of fabric against wood, the gentle exhalation of breath. Donna’s nerves were taut now, stretching to their breaking point.

“Who’s there?” she called, hating the tremor in her voice.

She finally found that light switch, but before she could flip it, she sensed rather than saw movement there in the shadows. A swift displacement of air, the subtle shift of weight on the old floorboards. Then came the sudden, crushing blow to the back of her head.

The pain was shocking in its intensity, a white-hot burst that stole her breath. Donna’s knees buckled, and she felt herself falling, her body twisting as she tried instinctively to catch herself. The cold tile rose to meet her, unforgiving as concrete.

As she lay on the floor, her vision narrowing to a pinpoint, fractured thoughts tumbled through her mind. The maintenance request she’d filed yesterday about the strange scratching in the walls. The email she’d been drafting to Katie, full of forced cheerfulness and carefully edited loneliness. The invitation to the garden club, now an opportunity that would never be taken.

Biscuit was barking frantically now, the sound distant and muffled as if coming from underwater. Donna tried to move her hand toward him, to offer one final comfort, but her body refused to respond.

In her last, fading moments of consciousness, regret washed over her—for the chances not taken, the connections not made, the life cut short just as she was finding the courage to begin again. And beneath the regret, a final, terrible question: Would anyone notice she was gone? Would anyone in Calloway House hear her dog’s desperate cries, or would they simply close their doors tighter, turning away from the sounds of distress as they had from her attempts at friendship?

The room grew darker, colder. Donna’s awareness contracted to a single point of light, then winked out entirely, leaving only the echo of Biscuit’s whimpering in the silent condo.

CHAPTER ONE

Darkness enveloped Jenna, not the ordinary darkness of closed eyes, but a profound absence of light that seemed to have substance. She knew this feeling well—the strange weightlessness, the heightened awareness that signaled she was no longer in the realm of ordinary dreams. Lucidity crystallized in her mind; she was conscious within the dream, able to observe and interact with whatever her psychic gift had summoned her to witness.

Then, a pinprick of light appeared in the distance, growing steadily brighter as it approached. The flame of a single candle pushed back the darkness, illuminating slender fingers that cupped protectively around the wavering light. The hand belonged to a woman, her face still obscured in shadows beyond the candle’s glow. Something in the way she moved—cautious, searching—suggested both fear and determination.

“Hello?” Jenna called out, her voice sounding oddly muffled in the dreamscape. “Who are you?”

The woman startled, nearly extinguishing the candle. She steadied the flame, then lifted it higher, casting light on her face without fully revealing it. Middle-aged, Jenna guessed, with worry lines around eyes that darted nervously from side to side.

“Can you see me?” the woman asked, her voice tinged with disbelief.

Jenna took a careful step forward. Experience had taught her that these lucid dream encounters were fragile; push too hard and the connection might break. “I can see you,” she confirmed. “I’m Jenna Graves. Why have you come to me?”

“I need help.” Her gaze flickered past Jenna, scanning the darkness. “I need to find out who did this to me.”

“Did what?” Jenna asked, taking another step closer. “What happened to you?”

But the woman’s attention had shifted. Her head tilted, listening to something Jenna couldn’t hear. Then from somewhere in the darkness came the high-pitched yapping of a small dog.