stom- ach again. Isabel didn't fight it. Instead, she concentrated harder on the picture, the smile.
Jessica.
Then Isabel began to feel the girl.
There was no better word to explain what dreamwalk- ing was like. She simply concentrated until she was able to feel people. The closest analogy she could make was the feeling she had about people that lingered after she had dreamed about them when she slept herself. Dreamwalk- ing was like that feeling, but instead of dissipating as she woke up, it grew stronger and stronger until she was with them in their dream.
With certain people, the feeling lingered long after the dreamwalk. She still had flashes of Max from the time that she had dreamwalked him while he was in the Special Unit's White Room. He had been so scared and vulnerable. She had felt it all; she had also felt him more clearly than she ever had before while they were growing up.
Then there was Alex. Isabel had dreamwalked him a number of times. At first it was just to find out if he was a threat to their secret, but even then the dreamwalks had left her feeling closer to him, connected to him in a way that she had had no words for at the time.
Eventually she was able to give that closeness a name. For a very short time around the night of the dance when she and Alex had held each other and she had called the closeness by its proper name… in her head if not to him.
Then Alex was dead.
Oddly enough, thinking of Alex did not distract Isabel. It focused her concentration and her energy. It had hap- pened before, and she liked to think that he was somehow helping her. Isabel began to feel Jessica more keenly, though the girl remained just out of sight, as if she was dancing on the edge of Isabel's peripheral vision. There was a cloud between them. Isabel had no trouble giving that cloud a name. It was fear. Wherever she was, Jessica was very afraid, even while she was sleeping.
Isabel concentrated again and suddenly found herself in a bedroom. Looking at the decorations on the wall, she realized it was a little girl's bedroom. On the bed she saw a dark-haired girl of perhaps nine or ten sleeping fitfully.
It was Jessica, Isabel realized. And she was dreaming about her herself as a little girl, sleeping in her room. The room felt very familiar to Isabel, but she knew that was only because it was familiar to Jessica. There was some- thing else, too, a sense of deja vu, as if Jessica had not only been here before, but had had this dream before.
Suddenly, Isabel was sure that Jessica was in the middle of a dream she had had since she was a little girl. That made the dream less helpful for Isabel. A recurring child- hood dream wouldn't have the kind of detail that Isabel and the others would need to find Jessica in the real world. There was a noise from inside the closet on the other side of the room, and the girl on the bed opened her eyes. Isabel could see fear in young Jessica's eyes.
Jessica glanced with recognition as if remembering this dream. Whatever was in that closet scared her badly. Isabel considered interfering, but decided to let the dream run its course. Perhaps it would show her something helpful.
Jessica got out of bed and walked toward the closet. She did so almost unwillingly, as if she knew what was inside and was being forced by some twisted dream logic to seek it out.
Isabel felt a swell of sympathy for the scared little girl in front of her in a long white nightgown and the scared young woman out there somewhere. She wanted to stop the girl from opening the closet door, but Isabel forced herself to keep out of it. Jessicas life would likely depend on what Isabel could learn here.
The girl padded across her room and reluctantly put her hand on the closets doorknob. Slowly she turned it and started to pull at the door.
An instant later, the door practically exploded open, throwing the girl backward and onto the floor in front of her bed.
What happened next, happened quickly. The first thing that Isabel noticed was the noise: A loud roar sounded from the closet.
It wasn't an animal sound that Isabel had ever heard, nor did she recognize it as anything from any movie or tel- evision show she had ever seen. It was a high-pitched and piercing series of clicks and tones that Isabel could feel in her chest.
Isabel was sure of one thing, though: It was terrifying Jessica. Feeling her panic rise, Isabel realized that there was something unnatural in that sound. Reflexively, Isabel found herself raising up her hand to defend herself as Jessica backed away from the closet as she sat on the ground. Then the creature that made the sound took a step from the darkness of the closet into the light of the room.
It was hideous. Isabel couldn't believe that it had come from a child's imagination. The creature had roughly the shape of a person, but that was where the resemblance ended.
Covered in a scaly brownish-yellow skin, it had a large head that came to a point in the back of its skull. Its eyes were a bright yellow, and it had a wide mouth that jutted out from its face and was full of long teeth.
It was a monster, and Isabel felt her blood run cold just looking at it.
A scream sounded from behind her, and Isabel turned to see Jessica cowering against her bed. The creature looked down at Jessica, and then it seemed to notice Isabel.
The monster began to make its sound, which was even louder now that it was free of the closet. When it lurched forward, Isabel instinctively raised her hand and sum- moned her energy. Before the monster could take a step, Isabel released her power and hit it full force in the chest.
The creature betrayed a moment of surprise as it sailed backward into the darkness of the closet. As Isabel caught her breath, she sensed motion next to her. Then she turned to watch Jessica getting up and heading for the closet.
'Wait,' Isabel said.
But before Isabel could act, the girl grabbed the closet door and slammed it shut.
Then Jessica looked up at her and said, 'We should go.”
Isabel nodded and said, 'All right.”
She took Jessica's hand, and they started walking for the bedroom door. They had only taken a few steps when Isabel felt the little girl jerk in her hand.
Looking down, Isabel saw that something was pulling Jes- sica toward the bed. A claw with three fingers had snaked from underneath the bed and had grabbed Jessicas ankle. She recognized it as belonging to the creature from the closet.
Jessica screamed, blind terror in her voice. 'Help me, don't let him take me!”
Isabel pulled on Jessica's hand, trying to tear her away from the bed. But the creature was very strong, and Jessica started to slip down to the floor.
'Nooooo!' Isabel heard herself scream.
Then the world flashed around her, and Isabel found herself in a large room.
She looked around frantically and saw that the creature was gone. She was relieved, but still felt the tension and adrenaline of the encounter in Jessica's bedroom. As she started to relax, she took note of her surroundings. She was in a… place that she had never seen before.
It wasn't a room.
It had a floor that was made of some sort of metal and a ceiling maybe ten feet above. But it did not have walls. The floor and ceiling seemed to go on forever on all sides until they just disappeared into the distance.
There were no lights that she could see, but there was light all around her.
Looking down, Isabel saw that Jessica was with her, lying on a low table. The girl had her eyes closed, but Isabel could tell that she wasn't sleeping.
The little girl's eyes were shut, but they were being squeezed shut tightly. Jessica was afraid, Isabel saw. She was as afraid here as she had been in her bedroom. Isabel decided that she couldn't let this continue. She would have to try to contact Jessica directly. It risked waking her up and expelling Isabel from the dream, but she had no choice. She wasn't going to learn anything in this place.
And the girl was terrified.
Leaning down, she took Jessica's hand and whispered, 'It's all right. I'm here to help you.”
