Frederick's Hollow

CHAPTER ONE

In my dream, I'm standing at the town border on the only road leading out of Frederick's Hollow. It's a place I'm very familiar with as Jordan and I often drive out there in his old pickup truck and talk for hours about our plans for after high school.

The sign that says "Welcome to Frederick's Hollow" on one side, and"Thanks For Visiting Us!" on the opposite side, looks exactly as it does in real life, right down to the recently repainted white background and bright blue Edwardian script, and the little yellow daisy someone stenciled above the letter 'i' in "Frederick's" two weeks ago.

Most of my dreams tend to occur in black and white and random bursts of color, and in this one, the sign is the only thing in color. Well,that, and the pulsating thing I'm standing in front of. It appears to be a transparent wall of some sort, but it shimmers in some spots with quick pulses of color. The pulses give it the appearance of something living, and dangerous. It stretches out to the left and right as far as I can see, but the bottom of it sits directly on the town's border.

"You have to try, Riley," Jordan's familiar voice says from behind me,sounding almost pleading.

I turn around and see him standing in the usual spot just off the road by the tree line, where we always park the truck.

"I can't," I respond. "I'm scared."

Jordan is the only person I would ever admit such a thing to, in dreams or in real life. "I am too," he says, walking toward me. "We all are. But you're the only one who can do this. You're our only hope."

Even though I have no idea what he's taking about, my dream self acknowledges this as truth. And somehow, I also instinctively know that there is a very high chance I could die. Darkness starts to creep in on us from the edges of the trees as the dream morphs into a nightmare.

I become aware of my heart racing frantically, each beat like a drum thrumming in my chest. My body is shaking slightly, and my cheeks burn. My hands shake the most, and Jordan, ever the intuitive best friend, takes both of them in his own, folding all four of our hands into one warm, comforting ball.

"You can do this," he assures me. The conviction is clear in his voice and in his eyes, and I believe him.

I nod, and slip my hands hesitantly from his as I turn back to face the pulsing wall. I stretch my hand out to it before I can hesitate further. Being this close, I can feel energy radiating from it like waves of electricity. It keeps my hand suspended there. I couldn't turn back now even if I wanted to.

I take a deep breath and thrust my hand forward, connecting with the wall. A surge of electricity rushes into me, jolting me awake.

It is almost noon already, far later than I would normally sleep in on a Saturday. It takes a few minutes for my heart to resume its normal pace, and I take a few long pulls of water from the glass on my nightstand to quench my parched mouth.

Already the feelings of anxiousness and fear from the dream are starting to fade from my mind, but the details remain vibrant. I grab my dream journal from the nightstand and quickly write everything down so I can look at it later if I want to. I started dream journaling when I was younger, as a way of coping with the frequent nightmares I used to have. And even though the nightmares are now infrequent, I've still kept up the habit of writing down whatever I can remember. Sometimes I even read them aloud to Jordan and we have a good laugh trying to decipher their meanings.

As I hurriedly jot everything down, I'm hit with a sense of deja vu, as if I've dreamed this exact dream before. But if I have, I can't remember when.