Her eyes struggled to adjust, and she could make out an expanse of scrubby brushwood, its raggedy tops shuddering in a chill wind. The darkness was impenetrable, with no demarcation between land and sky.
Julia found herself moving toward the left, oddly, without understanding where she was going. She came to a stop and looked up, and just then she heard a woman screaming for her life, a primal shriek for survival.
The horrific sound blasted Julia’s ears, then she heard herself screaming, too.
Abruptly the screaming stopped, and everything went black.
7
Jules!” Courtney hovered above her, her frightened expression illuminated by a phone flashlight. “Holy shit, are you okay?”
Julia came to her senses, astonished to be lying on her back. The ground was hard, the tall grass scratchy on her neck. Bugs flew in and out of the light from Courtney’s phone. She didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t understand. She must have fainted. She didn’t know why.
“Come on, get up! Here we go!” Courtney hoisted her to her feet, but Julia felt wobbly. They walked to the house, where Courtney got her into the kitchen and Julia flopped into a chair. Courtney pulled out the other chair and sat opposite her. “Jules, what happened? You screamed at the top of your lungs! It was freaky!”
A freak.Julia swallowed hard. Her throat hurt.
Courtney’s eyes widened. “You were reaching for the moon like a lunatic!”
A lunatic.Julia tried to think, to understand what had happened.
“You were acting crazy!”
Crazy.Julia felt that way.
“I called you but you ignored me, like you didn’t even know I was there. I tried to get you back in the house, but you pulled away. Then all of a sudden you, like,dropped.”
Julia hadn’t felt any of that. She looked down at her clothes, which were disheveled. She didn’t even know where her own body had been.
“Did you see fire again? Was that it?”
“No.” Julia answered hoarsely, her voice strained. She knew she’d heard a scream, but it didn’t make sense. It hadn’t come from anywhere. It could have been an auditory hallucination. Maybe she was just tired. Really, really tired.
“Why did you scream? What scared you?”
Julia didn’t know if she should tell Courtney. She didn’t want to upset her further.
“Julia, talk to me. What happened?”
“I’m not sure. I could have just imagined it. I’m so tired—”
“Nobody’sthattired. Please, tell me, I want to know.”
Julia hesitated. “I don’t know if you need to know.”
Courtney recoiled, frowning. “What? We tell each other everything.”
“Listen, you’re going through it, with your grandmother’s murder, the cops, the bloodstain—”
“I can handle it. I need you to tell me.” Courtney placed a hand on Julia’s shoulder. “If you tell me, we can figure it out together, and we need to. Whatever’s going on, I want to help you with it.”
Touched, Julia realized that Courtney was worried abouther. “I don’t need help.”
“Yes, you do, girl. You were screaming like somebody was trying to kill you.”
Oh no.“Okay,” Julia agreed, reluctantly. “I heard a scream.”
Courtney’s eyes flared. “Who was it? Who was screaming?”