She read letters from parents who had experienced an overwhelming sensation or a vividly detailed dream of danger to their children, who had kept them from school, off flights, from getting into cars—and averted certain death by random accident.
She read story after story of ordinary people who had dreamed, or actually seen, a loved one appear to them—only to learn later that that relative or friend had died at the exact moment the apparition came to them.
She read accounts, backed up by testimony from witnesses, from family members who had experienced phantom pain in a limb at the exact moment a relative had been injured.
And as she read, she felt a rightness about it—there was an unmistakable ring of sincerity and truth to the accounts. She believed them.
At the end of the day, Laurel returned the boxes to the front desk of the basement archives and used the call button to page Ward, then stood in a daze beside the desk, every muscle in her body and her mind sore.
The dour librarian appeared in less than a minute, as if she’d been poised and waiting for the call. She looked over Laurel and the boxes without a trace of expression.
Despite herself, Laurel blurted out, “So there’s no order to any of this?”
“Not that anyone’s seen so far,” Ward said dryly. “Had enough?” Somewhere deep inside Laurel, something flared. “I’ll be back tomorrow at nine,” she said defiantly.
“Huh,” Ward said, and began stacking the boxes.
As Laurel drove home through the dark maze of trees, her mind kept straying to her own dream. Finally, she pulled the car over to the side of the road, stopped the engine, and sat back against the seat, letting herself experience the memory …
Step by step down the long, dark hall, bare feet on the cool hardwood floor … the sick-sweet scent of jasmine and the sound of moans …
And the shattering …
Laurel gasped and pulled herself out of the memory. She was breathing hard … and she could feel the beginning of welts rising on her chest.
She clenched her hands around the steering wheel, and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself.
As much as she had tried to dissect the dream in logical terms: she was subconsciously aware of Matt’s infidelity; she’d gotten real life hints that Tracey was his lover, there had been clues, there had been signs all along …
None of those hints and clues explained the time on the clock, the siren and the dog, and the smell of jasmine—all details she dreamed, exactly as they happened, before they happened.
And the mirror … the mirror …
Without realizing it, she spoke aloud into the dark. “It wasn’t broken before. It shattered … while I was standing there.”
For the first time she allowed herself to consider the possibility that there may have been more to the dream.
Much, much more.
CHAPTER SEVEN
If indeed we have this ability, then why are we not devoting every waking hour to the exploration of that possibility?
—Dr. Alaistair Leish
In the early morning before class, Laurel sat in the darkness of a basement library carrel, the light from a black-and-white sixteen-millimeter film flickering on her face. The film was of an interview: On the small screen in front of her a man was speaking from a leather armchair in front of a wall lined with books, in what looked like a private study or library. The man was tall, lean, blond, and gorgeous, dressed in an elegantly tailored suit with a narrow tie. His voice was as rich and refined as the voices of the best actors and news broadcasters of the time.
He leaned forward in this chair with an intensity that sent chills through Laurel’s entire body; he seemed to be speaking directly to her, in that velvety British accent.
“Perhaps that which we call ‘reality’ is no more than an agreement, a social contract that the less imaginative among us have decided upon, for the sake of convenience. But what if life is—in reality—more like the dreaming state? If time is a spiral, then is it possible to remember the future as well as the past? Might that begin to explain ESP?”
The black-and-white film had the grainy quality of a newsreel and seemed like a jolt from history. The only marking on the film can was ALAISTAIR LEISH, 1965. Laurel had found the can of film in one of the file boxes and was now watching it on one of the library’s machines, completely riveted to the screen.