CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The dream came like a tide, washing over Jenna's awareness.
She felt the familiar shift, the subtle tilt of reality as her mind crossed the threshold between ordinary dreams and those that were so different—sharper, clearer, with edges that cut through the fog of slumber.
Lucidity bloomed as the darkness around her took on weight and texture. She knew what would follow.
Someone was coming.
A figure materialized, his edges blurring and reforming as if he wasn’t quite able to maintain a solid presence.
“Dad?” Jenna whispered.
Greg Graves stood before her, looking as he had in last night’s dream—strong, steady, with that reassuring smile that had always made her feel safe. The dream-space around them settled into a formless void, neither her bedroom nor any recognizable place.
“I know I’m dreaming,” she said.
Her father’s expression was more animated than she’d seen in last night’s visit. His eyes were bright with urgency, his movements quick and restless. Something was different this time. He seemed charged with energy, almost vibrating with it.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Jenna Marie.” Her name on his lips sounded strained, as if pushed through a barrier. “I found her. I found Piper.”
The words hit her like an electric shock. Jenna stepped forward, the dream-space shifting around her. “You found Piper? Where? Is she alive? Dad, where is she?”
Dad’s face contorted with frustration. His mouth worked as if he were speaking, but the words came out garbled, fragments of sound without meaning. Jenna recognized the pattern—the dead who visited her dreams often struggled to communicate clearly, especially about complex emotional matters.
“Try again,” she urged, reaching for him. “Please, Dad. Where is Piper?”
Her father’s form wavered, his outline becoming less distinct. He looked down at his own hands, which were beginning to lose substance. Panic flashed across his features.
“She’s—” he started, but his voice cut out like a failing radio signal. “She’s … she’s …” His words dissolved into meaningless sounds.
“Dad, stay with me!” Jenna pleaded. “I don’t understand. Where is she?”
Dad’s expression was pained now. He reached toward her, his hand already transparent. “Love you,” he managed clearly.
His form dissolved completely, scattering like mist, and Jenna found herself alone in the darkness.
“Dad!” she called. Only silence answered. But she was still in the dream.
Now the void around Jenna deepened. She felt suspended in absolute blackness, a sensation of falling without movement.
Gradually, a pale glow began to form in front of her, sharpening into a rectangular shape that resembled a screen or a window.
The two-dimensional surface flickered, and an image appeared—but strangely inverted.
Jenna squinted, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
The image was of a room, Victorian in its furnishings, with heavy curtains and ornate wallpaper.
A couple moved through the space, but upside down from her perspective.
The woman was unpinning her hair while the man removed his coat and waistcoat.
The scene had the grainy, slightly jittery quality of silent film footage, though no captions appeared.
The lighting was dim, casting long shadows across the inverted floor that was actually the ceiling.
“You’ll get used to seeing things that way,” a male voice said from somewhere behind her. “I rather like the view.”
Jenna turned, startled. A man stood with his hands in his pockets, his posture relaxed but commanding.
Recognition was jarring. It was the man from the portrait at Calloway House—Pete Shannon.
The dark hair parted in the middle, the thick mustache, and most distinctively, those eyes that seemed to calculate even as they observed.
The portrait had also caught the sense of his ruthless intelligence perfectly.
“Mr. Shannon,” she said.
“Sheriff Graves. I’m flattered you recognize me.”
“I saw your portrait yesterday.”
“Ah, yes. Boyd Calloway’s little restoration project.” Shannon’s lip curled slightly. “Turning my home into apartments required hiding my image. Progress, they call it.”
Jenna glanced back at the screen. The Victorian couple continued their bedtime routine, unaware of being watched. The woman was now in her undergarments, her husband helping her with the laces of her corset.
Shannon chuckled, following her gaze. “They have no idea we’re watching. Most people don’t.” He gestured casually toward the screen. “We see so much that others miss, don’t we, Sheriff?”
“What is this?” Jenna asked, gesturing to the inverted scene.
“Just a glimpse behind the curtain,” Shannon said. “And a word of advice from someone who knows: don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Isn’t that what you are?” Jenna countered. “A ghost?”
Shannon’s expression hardened momentarily, then relaxed into a grin.
“Not talking about me,” he said. “I’m the real thing.
” He paused, studying her. “But some things that might look like spirits are something else entirely.” He lowered his voice and whispered, “I’ll give you an important clue, Lady Sheriff.
If they’re solid enough to touch, then you’ll know they’re still living.
” He chuckled and added, “Though by then it might be too late.”
The inverted scene on the screen flickered, and the couple was now sitting on the edge of their bed. Their movements had become jerky, unnatural.
“What are you trying to tell me?” Jenna asked.
"That's not everything as it appears." Seemingly out of nowhere, Shannon produced a small silver tray that held a bunch of grapes. "Would you care for one?"
Jenna noticed immediately one grape standing out among the pale fruit—conspicuously black and shining, almost pulsing with an inner light. It didn’t look like a grape at all, but a perfect sphere of darkness.
“That one,” Shannon said, following her gaze to the black grape. “Try it. You’ll like it.”
Something in his tone made Jenna hesitate, but curiosity pushed her forward. She reached for the strange grape, her fingers closing the distance.
As her hand approached, the black grape seemed to expand, growing larger in her vision until it dominated everything she could see.
She was no longer reaching for it—she was falling toward it, tumbling into its expanding darkness.
The black surface enveloped her, becoming a tunnel that stretched endlessly before her.
She felt herself hurtling through it, weightless and without control.
“Some doors,” Shannon’s voice echoed around her, “once opened, can never be closed again.”
Jenna gasped, her body jerking as if she’d been falling in reality. Her eyes snapped open to the familiar ceiling of her bedroom. Sweat dampened her hairline and the back of her neck. The disorientation of waking from such a vivid dream left her momentarily confused.
She turned her head toward the digital clock on her nightstand. The red numbers glowed: 4:16 a.m.
Jenna sat up, switching on the bedside lamp.
The sudden light made her eyes ache, but she needed the reassurance of real surroundings.
She reached for the notepad and pen she kept beside her bed for precisely these moments, when the dead visited her dreams with messages she couldn’t afford to forget.
Her hand trembled slightly as she wrote:
Dad says he found Piper. Couldn’t tell me where.
Pete Shannon appeared—warned not to believe in ghosts. “Some things that look like spirits are something else entirely.”
Upside-down projection of a Victorian couple, unaware they were being watched.
The black grape became a tunnel.
“Some doors once opened can never be closed again.”
She stared at the words she’d written, trying to make sense of them. Had her father truly found her sister? Was she still among the living, or was she in whatever plane of existence he now inhabited?
But surely, Jenna thought, if Piper was dead, she would have appeared to me herself.
And Pete Shannon—what was he trying to tell her? He said he was a real ghost, but other ghosts weren’t real. The distinction had seemed important.
Jenna set the notepad aside and lay back against her pillows, her mind too active for sleep. She stared at the ceiling, replaying the dream. The inverted room. The couple unknowingly observed. The black grape and the tunnel. All of it felt significant, loaded with meaning just beyond her grasp.
Her father’s words echoed in her mind: I found her. I found Piper.
Could it really be that simple? That her father, from beyond the grave, had succeeded where she had failed?
Jenna glanced at the clock again: 4:23 a.m. She had hours before she needed to get back to work, but sleep seemed impossible. Still, she knew she should try. The morning would bring its own challenges, and she would have to be sharp.
She reached over and switched off the lamp, plunging the room back into darkness. But as she closed her eyes, she couldn’t stop seeing the image of that single black grape, perfect and gleaming. She couldn’t shake off Pete Shannon’s warning about doors that couldn’t be closed again.