CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ilsa Chertoff's arthritis protested the early-morning chill, but after forty years as a court stenographer, discomfort was something she had learned to push aside in favor of routine. "Easy, Bozo," she murmured as her black Labrador tugged impatiently on his leash.
She checked her watch. Six-thirty, precisely—the same time she had begun her walks for the past twelve years, ever since she had retired from the courthouse. The familiar weight of her binoculars hung from her neck, ready for any early risers of the avian variety that might cross their path.
Heritage Park stretched before her, its winding paths bordered by maples beginning their autumn transformation.
Dew clung to the grass, sparkling in the slanted morning light.
She knew every bench, every turn of the trail, could recite the Latin names of most of the trees and flowering plants they passed.
After decades of recording every word spoken in courtrooms, Ilsa’s memory stored details others overlooked.
“We'll take the eastern path today,” she told Bozo, who had stopped to investigate something near a cluster of ferns. “The nuthatches were active there yesterday.”
Bozo's ears suddenly perked up. He raised his head, nose twitching rapidly as he sampled the air. Ilsa recognized the change in his posture—something had caught his attention.
“What is it, boy?” she asked, scanning the surrounding trees for movement. Perhaps a deer or raccoon had left a fresh scent.
Bozo whined, a high-pitched sound that seemed out of place in the tranquil morning. He pulled at the leash with unexpected force, nearly yanking it from her grasp.
“Bozo! Heel!” Her command went unheeded as the dog strained forward.
Instead of continuing on their usual route, Bozo dragged her toward a narrow side path she rarely took, one that led deeper into the wooded area of the park.
The dog’s nails scratched against the dirt as he pulled, his whining growing more insistent.
“This isn't our way,” Ilsa protested, but curiosity overcame her annoyance. In seven years together, she had never seen her dog behave this way.
The side path curved through a denser section of trees before opening onto a small clearing where the park management had installed a picnic area last spring.
The wooden structure stood alone in the clearing, its roof shingled in cedar that still retained its honey color, not yet weathered to gray.
Four large picnic tables with attached benches were there beneath the shelter.
Bozo's pulling became frantic now. The leash bit into Ilsa's palm, and she winced as her arthritis flared in protest.
“What on earth has gotten into you?” she muttered.
That's when she saw it—something white draped across the surface of the farthest picnic table. A sheet, perhaps, covering what appeared to be a rounded object. In the growing light, it stood out starkly against the dark wood of the table.
“Someone's forgotten their picnic supplies,” she said aloud, not believing her own words even as they left her mouth. Although people occasionally left trash in the park, this looked intentional, arranged rather than discarded.
Bozo growled, a sound she rarely heard from him. The hair along his spine stood erect as he strained toward the covered object.
“Stay,” she commanded, her voice sharper than intended.
To her surprise, Bozo halted a few feet from the table, though his body remained taut, as if ready to lunge forward.
Ilsa approached the picnic table cautiously.
The white fabric—a sheet, as she had guessed—covered something rounded, like a small dome.
With her free hand, Ilsa grasped a corner of the sheet. She hesitated, suddenly afraid of what she might find. In her years as a court stenographer, she had heard descriptions of crime scenes that still haunted her dreams, details meticulously recorded while her mind recoiled.
“Don't be ridiculous,” she whispered to herself. “It's probably just someone's forgotten picnic.”
She pulled back the sheet in one swift motion.
The scream caught in her throat, emerging as a strangled gasp. Beneath a glass display dome lay fleshy organs of some kind—their surfaces glistening wetly in the morning light. She recognized the distinctive shape of lungs and what appeared to be a liver.
Ilsa staggered backward, her free hand flying to her mouth. Her mind, trained to catalog details even in shock, noted the clean cuts, the absence of blood on the glass, the careful arrangement. Not a random act of cruelty, but something deliberate. Something planned.
"Oh God," she whispered. "Oh, God."
With shaking hands, Ilsa reached for the cell phone in her jacket pocket. She struggled to maintain her grip on Bozo’s leash while dialing 911, her finger slipping on the screen twice before successfully making the connection.
“911, what's your emergency?” The dispatcher's voice sounded impossibly calm.
“Heritage Park,” Ilsa managed, her voice unsteady. “The picnic shelter on the east side. I've found—” She swallowed hard. “I've found what might be human organs under a cake dome. On a picnic table.”
“Ma'am, did you say human organs?” The dispatcher's professional tone couldn't entirely mask her shock.
“At least, they might be human. They could be animal, I suppose, but—”
“Stay where you are, ma'am. Don't touch anything further. Officers will be dispatched immediately. Can I have your name?”
“Ilsa Chertoff,” she replied, backing away from the table, dragging Bozo with her.
“If you can move to a safe distance while remaining in sight of the scene, please do so. Officers should arrive within minutes.”
Ilsa nodded, then remembered the dispatcher couldn't see her. “Yes, I will. Please hurry.”
As she disconnected the call, the full impact of what she had discovered washed over her.
In all her years recording testimonies about the darkest acts humans could inflict on one another, she had never witnessed the aftermath of violence firsthand.
Now, in the quiet dawn of a day that had begun so normally, she had stumbled upon something that defied comprehension.
*
Jenna's boots crunched through snow that shouldn't exist. The forest clearing where Claudia Kingsley's body had been discovered yesterday now lay transformed under a blanket of pristine white, unmarred by footprints other than her own.
A chill wind stirred the pines, sending crystalline powder swirling into the air.
The incongruity registered immediately—it was early October, too early for snow in Missouri, and the temperature yesterday had been mild.
Then a familiar realization settled over her: she was dreaming. Lucid, but not in complete control. Jenna was never in control of who came to visit.
“Cold,” she whispered, her breath forming clouds that dissipated into the frigid air.
The word echoed in her memory, connecting with something Piper had said when they'd brought her to this spot.
Her sister had shivered, complained about the cold, despite the autumn warmth.
Now Jenna understood—Piper had sensed this very dreamscape, this winter forest from some other reality.
The transition from normal dream to lucid awareness sharpened Jenna’s perceptions.
Every detail crystallized—the weight of snow on pine boughs, the particular quality of winter silence, the bite of cold against her cheeks.
She flexed her fingers inside gloves she hadn't been wearing moments before, testing the boundaries of this constructed reality.
She lifted her gaze to the oak tree that had been used as a macabre display post. Where Claudia Kingsley's body had hung yesterday inside a burlap wolf, a wolf mask now dangled alone.
Its snout was elongated, eyes hollow and dark, teeth bared in a permanent snarl.
It spun slowly, as if surveying the clearing for prey.
“It's not very realistic, is it?”
Jenna turned sharply toward the voice. A woman stood at the edge of the clearing, dressed in a red hooded cloak that blazed like blood against the snow.
Beneath it, she wore a white dress that reached her ankles, its fabric simple and old-fashioned.
Her blonde hair spilled from the hood, framing a face Jenna recognized immediately.
“Claudia,” Jenna said, her voice steady despite the strangeness of addressing a woman whose corpse she had examined yesterday.
Claudia Kingsley tilted her head, studying the wolf mask with detached curiosity. “That's not what wolves look like. The snout is too long. And the teeth—” She made a dismissive gesture. “Pure fantasy.”
Jenna took a careful step toward her. This was always the delicate part—the dead rarely understood their situation. Some seemed to know they had died, others existed in a state of confusion, and a few denied their fate entirely.
“Claudia, do you know why you're here?” Jenna asked.
The woman in red held up a wicker basket that Jenna hadn't noticed before. “I'm supposed to deliver these to my grandmother. But I think I've taken a wrong turn. The forest looks different in winter.”
“Do you remember what happened to you?” Jenna pressed gently.
Claudia's brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Yesterday. Do you remember anything about yesterday?”
A shadow passed across Claudia's face, distress quickly replaced by the same placid expression. “I was rehearsing. We're doing fairy tales this season.” She gestured at her costume. “Type-casting, I suppose. I've always been better at playing the innocent.”
Jenna knew this was pure imagination on Claudia’s part.
She felt the familiar frustration of these encounters—the circling conversations, the inability of some who met her here to directly confront their own deaths.
Sometimes they provided clues, fragments of memory that helped solve their murders.
Other times, they seemed locked in loops of their own making, unable to offer anything useful.
“Who hurt you, Claudia?” Jenna asked directly, hoping to break through.
Claudia looked toward the hanging wolf mask, her expression unreadable.
“The wolf, of course. That's how the story goes.” She turned back to Jenna.
“But in some versions, the huntsman saves her.
Did you know that? Cuts open the wolf's belly and pulls her out, still alive.” She smiled sadly. “I always preferred those versions.”
Before Jenna could respond, a different voice cut through the stillness of the clearing behind her—a woman's voice, tight with distress.
“It's so cold in here. Please, can't someone help me?”
Jenna turned toward the sound. At the opposite edge of the clearing, partially obscured by snow-laden pine branches, stood what looked like a display case—no, a coffin. A glass coffin, its transparent sides frosted at the edges, its gold-trimmed frame gleaming dully in the winter light.
Inside lay a woman Jenna didn't recognize.
Unlike Claudia's storybook appearance, this woman wore ordinary clothes—jeans and a cream-colored sweater.
Her dark hair fanned out beneath her head on a cushion of white silk.
Her eyes were open, alert and frightened, and her breath fogged the inside of the glass lid as she called out again.
“Please! I can't get out!” Her palms pressed against the underside of the glass.
Jenna approached the coffin, the snow crunching beneath her boots.
She remembered that friendly dwarfs had put Snow White in a glass coffin when she seemed to be dead.
This was another fairy tale made manifest in the dream realm.
But unlike the peaceful, death-like sleep of the storybook princess, this woman was fully conscious and panicking.
“I'm here,” Jenna said, reaching the coffin's side. “I'll try to help you.”
The woman's eyes locked onto Jenna's, filled with desperate hope. “Thank God. I've been trapped for so long. It's freezing in here.”
Jenna examined the coffin, looking for latches or hinges, any mechanism that might open it. The gold frame was seamless, offering no obvious way to release the lid. She pressed her hands against the glass, feeling its cold resistance.
“What's your name?” Jenna asked, still searching for a way to open the coffin.
“Rebecca. Rebecca Hartley.” The woman's voice was muffled by the glass. “Please hurry.”
Jenna's hands stilled on the glass as she remembered—the very fact that this woman appeared in this liminal space meant her fate was already sealed. Rebecca Hartley—she couldn’t remember hearing the name before. But if Rebecca was here, in Jenna's dream, then Rebecca was dead.
“I'm trying,” Jenna said, even though she knew that there would be no saving Rebecca Hartley.
Rebecca pounded on the glass, her movements growing more frantic. “You have to get me out!”
Before Jenna could act further, a buzzing sound cut through the dreamscape, incongruous and insistent. The forest began to dissolve around her, the snow melting into nothingness, the glass coffin fading entirely. Rebecca's face, twisted in terror, was the last thing to disappear.
The buzzing dragged Jenna back to consciousness. She opened her eyes to the darkness of her bedroom, the red digits of her alarm clock reading 7:00 AM. Her phone vibrated on the nightstand.
Colonel Spelling.
Jenna reached for her phone. Calls at this hour never brought good news, and this time she knew that Spelling’s call had something to do with what she had dreamed just now.