The Dreamstalker by Barbara Steiner Page A

Alysia’s bed, she tugged on thick socks, then padded from the room without looking back. The house was quiet, too quiet.
    She sank into a chair in front of the cold fire. This was not real. She was still dreaming. Alysia was not dead. She couldn’t handle Alysia’s being dead. So she wasn’t. She’d come in here in a minute and say it was a joke. But Alysia had never been a practical joker. She was serious most of the time, sometimes too serious. Karen would work to make her laugh.
    It was cold in the living room. There were huge picture windows looking out at a mountain meadow. Karen couldn’t see it in the dark, but she could imagine it. She and Alysia used to play there. They’d run and chase each other. They’d look for the first wild flowers of spring. They’d sit very still and watch deer nipping off new shoots of grass.
    The police arrived, along with an ambulance. Karen could see the light swirling when the front door opened. All those men wearing boots and parkas trooped into Alysia’s bedroom. They were going to wake her up. They’d come out and say, “She was just asleep. I don’t know why you thought she was dead. I don’t know why you bothered us in the middle of a stormy night.”
    They stayed in there a long time. Karen was cold, so cold. She got up and pulled an afghan from the couch. It was brown and green and tomato red. Karen remembered when Mrs. Holland was knitting it. Alysia could knit. She liked to knit socks. She had knitted Karen’s skating socks for her last Christmas.
    She curled back into the chair, shaking out one foot that had gone to sleep, then wrapped the woolly blanket around her and waited again. She was not sleepy. She might never want to go to sleep again.
    â€œKaren.” Mr. Holland looked old. She had never noticed that he had so much gray hair. “Captain Martin wants to talk to you.”
    â€œYou were asleep in the same room as Alysia?” Martin was young and really handsome. His voice was soft, soothing. He pulled up a straight-backed chair and looked at her sympathetically. But there was something else on his face. Curiosity? Disbelief?
    Karen nodded, not trusting her voice.
    â€œYou didn’t hear anything?”
    They couldn’t believe this had happened and she had slept through it. Neither could she. “No. I had a bad dream. It woke me up. The dream was about Alysia.”
    â€œAnother of your dreams, Karen? This is a bit unbelievable.” The look of sympathy disappeared. “Can you relate the dream to me?” He took out a notebook.
    Slowly, Karen recalled the dream in detail. It was so real, so vivid, and she remembered everything. “In the dream, Alysia was wearing that cloak.”
    â€œHad you ever seen the cloak before?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt didn’t belong to Alysia? Or Mrs. Holland?” Captain Martin studied his notebook page. “Had you and Alysia ever played dress-up in the coat?”
    Dress-up? “We’re not children, Captain. I said I’ve never seen it before.”
    â€œI know you aren’t children, Karen. I mean, years ago. I understand you’ve been friends for a long time. Maybe when you were a child you saw this cloak. It was in a trunk here someplace.”
    You’re leading the witness . She had seen that on TV once. A lawyer said it. It didn’t matter. “No.”
    She and Alysia had never played dress-up. She didn’t know why. They just never had. They played outside most of the time, except in the winter when they played games—Monopoly and Risk and—and—They played cowboys and Indians some, hiding in the big rocks on the edge of the meadow, riding imaginary horses through the meadow. Kerr played with them. He always liked being the Indian, so she and Alysia would be cowboys. Kerr liked painting his face and—
    â€œThe red—the red—Was that really paint?”
    â€œYes. I