Then I knew. I
understood. Fragments of those sad, confusing days bobbed up to the surface of
my memories.
"There was that
weird storm. Mrs. Miller... She didn't die of a heart attack, did she?" I
whispered.
Angela gripped my
hand tighter and shook her head.
Six years ago, there
were strange buzzing sensations in the ground for a day or two. Other people
didn't seem to notice the electrical tingles in the soil, but Granddad let me
curl up on the couch with him, where we both kept our feet off the ground. That
day, Bethany and I were at soccer practice with Miss Lanie. Mrs. Miller had
left the diner on an errand before lunch and didn't come back. A freak storm
had struck, sending people diving for cover, driving rain horizontally. When it
cleared up, she was found collapsed in an alley between two stores on the Mall,
drenched, cold and dead.
Part of me wanted to
yank my hand free of Angela's and run away. If I tried, she probably wouldn't
hold onto me, keep me there. Not with her hand, anyway.
"Where are the
dreams coming from? There's someone--no, something trying to come up, come out,
break through a wall." I shook my head and pressed my free hand against my
forehead. "I remember hearing things. You and Miss Lanie and Granddad
talking. Mrs. Miller stopped something." For a second, it was like I
couldn’t catch my breath. “Something that tried to happen before.”
"Yes, our enemy
tries periodically to shatter the barriers we hold up to protect the world.
Stephanie was part of that defense. Neighborlee has many guardians, each of us
picking up clues, warning signs, in different ways.”
"So my dreams really
do mean something?"
"How I wish they didn’t. But be encouraged. Every time the enemy tries to break through, we grow stronger and we learn better how to fight it. Someday, we will defeat it once and for all."
No comments:
Post a Comment