Chapter 17 17

At this moment, this Jesse, who was not ten years old but thirty-nine years old and had been a widow for almost twelve hours, shackled to the bed in the summer house on the north bank of Daxko Lake, suddenly realized that two First thing: she fell asleep.Rather than dreaming about the day of the eclipse, she was reliving it.She thought about it again and decided it was indeed a dream, just a dream.Like her dream about Will's birthday party.Most of the party guests were either dead or hadn't actually been seen for years.This new inside-the-head movie has the surreal yet sensible quality of the previous one.But that's not a size to trust, because the whole day is surreal and dreamlike.First the eclipse, then her dad—

no more.Jesse decided.No more.I want to get out of here. She was making a frantic effort to get out of this dream, this memory, or whatever it was.Her mental effort turned into a writhing of her whole body.She twisted her body violently from side to side, the chains of the handcuffs clanking softly. She's almost there.For a moment, she almost broke free.She could have succeeded, would have succeeded, had she not changed her mind at the last moment.What stopped her was an indescribably terrifying human form—something waiting, and what had happened on the platform that day was nothing compared to it...that is, if she had to face it.

But maybe I don't have to face it.Not yet. Perhaps the desire to slip into sleep wasn't everything—it might be something else.Some part of her was intent on bringing this out once and for all, no matter what the cost. She sank into the pillow, her eyes closed, her arms stretched upwards sacrificially.Her face was pale and tense. "Especially you girls," she whispered into the darkness. "Especially all of you girls." She sank into the pillow, and the eclipse recalled her again.