Synopsis

Mikala Daly has visions.

Years before she was born, her father, detective Jack Daly, married into a family rumored to have a powerful sixth sense. Jack didn’t believe in their abilities until that gift—curse—befell his daughter.

Now their normal, mundane lives spiral into mayhem as Mikala relays her dreams to him about three missing boys. Before Mikala, before Jack was a detective, Mikala’s aunt Rachel partook in a government program for children who had a sixth sense. Now, years later, the participants of that program seem to have a connection to the missing boys. Who’s taken them and—

Why?

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Excerpt

Chapter 1 Jack

He felt her eyes on him before she spoke.

“Daddy?”

Her breath warmed his cheek. She stood so close remnants of last night’s snack—her mom’s favorite, watermelon gumdrops—mingled with mint toothpaste and reminded him she was a little Lisa, only fearless.

He lie still. Held the sweet smell for a moment and waited for the familiar poke. The prod came. One miniature finger pecking three times, knocking at his shoulder.

“Daddy? Are you in there?”

He loved that she pictured him inside his own head. Yet, he hated it, too.

“Yes, Mikala.” He stretched his legs, careful not to wake Lisa. “I’m in here.”

“Marky is close now.”

His eyes snapped open.

“How close, sweet pea?”

“In my room.”

Jack Daly sat up and swung his legs over the bed, feeling for his shorts on the floor with his toes. He placed his feet in the leg holes, stood, and pulled them over his boxers.

“I can see the movie better,” she said lowly, shuffling her pink, puppy slippers backward to give him room.

“Quiet, darling, let’s not wake Mommy,” he whispered, but the request was in vain. The covers rustled as Lisa rolled over. She tugged a pillow over her head to muffle their words. She didn’t approve of their morning chats.

“Okay,” Mikala whispered softly from the doorway. A ray of moonlight cheated its way through the corner of a window blind and fell faintly on her eager form.

She stood hands raised, fingers wiggling.

He whisked her up in his arms, her one-size-too-big flannelled pajamas bunching over wiry arms and legs, and her long blond locks cascading over tiny shoulders. He turned and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. When he released his hand, the doorknob clunked to the floor, and the door drifted ajar.

“Damn it,” he whispered, tucking Mikala close as he leant to look for the handle. “Oops, sorry, sweetie.”

“It’s okay, Daddy.”

Normally, he refrained from swearing around the kids, but his procrastination had thrust him into a parental slip of the tongue. Shirking home-upkeep chores naturally accompanied tough work cases. Plus he hated odd jobs. Twirling a screwdriver and dipping a paint brush had never been his forte. He hoped the knob-less door didn’t remind Lisa he hadn’t patched the wall in the boy’s bedroom or touched up the kitchen backsplash. Their homey little tri-level needed a makeover.

For lack of vision, he swirled one foot over the hall carpeting until he felt the knob against his foot, and then he kicked the nuisance to the side and glanced down the hall toward the fluorescent yellow lights of the cartoon clock in Mikala’s bedroom. 4:44. The time was always about the same when the dreams called her from the night. His fingers found the hall light switch, and their world lit up.

“Let’s go downstairs, so we don’t wake your brothers.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“We don’t have time for coffee.”

He smiled. She knew the routine. Milk and coffee in their favorite mugs at the kitchen counter. He shouldn’t be amused. He knew what was coming, but despite all, her youthful wisdom still grabbed him.

“Okay, sweetie.” He sat down at the top of the staircase, and her little frame collapsed into his lap. One of her arms landed squarely around his shoulder. “You said Marky is in your room?”

“Yes, he played the movie, bigger.”

Her voice tickled his eardrums. He loved its young, high-pitched tone that hadn’t kept time with her six years. He savored the youthful shrill, knowing when she grew older, like Lisa, the years would age her sweet voice, and life would cloud her innocent interpretation of the dreams.

He yawned and thread the thick, caramel-colored hair garnishing his forehead with his fingers, smoothing an annoying clump to the side. The tuft bounced back defiantly. He frowned. “Can you see the other little boy, yet?”

“Yes, but I didn’t look at his face. I wanted to wait. So I am safe with you.”

“You’re safe, sweet pea.”

“I’m scared.” Her fingernails pressed into the skin on his shoulder.

“Scared?”

Her dreams seldom frightened her. He could lead her away from the bad parts, talk her around the murder, so she didn’t experience the horror. He wasn’t completely sure about all this. Her psychologist said she didn’t seem damaged in the least from her nightmares, but then they hadn’t been completely truthful about everything. These weren’t really nightmares. “Why? You aren’t normally afraid.”

“Because I recognize the room in the movie.”

He turned to face her. “It’s familiar?” He scratched an itch at the back of his neck with his free hand.

She nodded.

“What do you recognize about it?”

“It’s Danny’s room.”

He stopped breathing.

Doubting his daughter’s words had long escaped him. Since she first explained about the movies—dreaming wide awake, she called the phenomena—their accuracy had dissolved any disbelief. But this couldn’t be. She must be wrong this time. Marky, the boy in her dreams, relayed movies of strangers. Visions that remarkably resembled abductions in their hometown.

Years before, he merely suspected she inherited her mother’s gift. Now, he knew. She was Lisa’s replica. The one difference? Mikala was strong willed like her aunt Rachel, grounded at age six. Lisa couldn’t handle the dreams. Mikala could more than handle them. Like a miniature newscaster, she announced each scene to him until she came too close to the scary parts, and he nudged her by them.

An investigator promoted from the police force three years ago, the fact his own daughter had a sixth sense was anything but coincidental. After all, his occupation and this curse of a trait so alive in his in-law’s family is what had led him to Lisa.

But this was different. Now the gift—curse—befell his daughter.

“Danny? As in your cousin Danny?”

“Yes. Can I close my eyes now?” She poked her chin out and shut her eyes before he responded.

“Sure, sweetie, but I think you’re confused.”

“No, I’m not confused.” She scrunched her lids tighter. “I can see Danny’s Superman bed.”

“There are lots of Superman beds.” He kept his arms around her still while she concentrated. As if absence of movement could clarify her vision, erase his nephew from her mind’s view.

“No, it’s Danny’s. I can see the three Batman stickers. The ones Aunt Janice yelled at him for putting on his bed.”

This wasn’t normal. Typically, she described streets, houses, faces of strangers, never people or places she knew. Two months ago, after Marky Blakley turned up missing, she’d described the boy’s lisp to perfection. Said he came to her. Showed her the scar on his finger where the spokes of a neighbor boy’s tricycle had cut a piece off—a bit of information never released by the department. Then Marky began showing her movies of other little boys. In her head. Scenes of an abductor targeting children of single mothers flooded her mind.

But this couldn’t be. This was Danny, his sister’s son.

“The bad man broke the glass of Danny’s window and then held up the white washcloth—the sleepy cloth.”

Chloroform.

“Mikala, look at the boy in the bed, his face. You’re confused.”

She was quiet, still, her expression soft. Lip relaxed against lip. Then her eyes opened.

“He can see me.”

At first, because of her casualness, he thought he’d surely heard her wrong.

“Who can see you?”

“The bad man.”

His calmness faded to confusion. He tightened his eyebrows. Premonitions, they called these episodes. His wife experienced them, now his daughter. But they were never interactive.

“What do you mean he can see you?”

“He said my name. He has a guide.”

“A guide?”

“You know, Daddy, someone who shows him movies. He knows who I am.”

“No, Mikala, the bad man does not know who you are.”

“Yes, he does, Daddy.” For the first time, he heard panic in her voice. “That’s the reason he is at Danny’s house.”

A creak in the floor behind him grabbed his attention, and he turned his head. Lisa darted from the bedroom, ripped Mikala from his arms, and handed him something in her place.

“I told you not to allow this. I said you were playing with fire.”

“Lisa, she’s wrong. He can’t see her.”

“Yes, he can, Daddy.”

“No, he can’t, Mikala.” He lowered his voice to sound stern.

“Yes—yes he can. He’s with Danny right now. Run Daddy. Get Danny!”

“Go.” Lisa screamed so loud one of the boys in the next room woke crying.

Jack looked down at his lap—at the ratty sneakers Lisa had placed there. For the moment it took him to put them on, he wondered if he should run or drive the block and a half to his sister’s house. He decided, descended the stairs, and bounded out the front door bare-chested, leaving Lisa behind switching on lights and talking into the scanner. She would call for a cruiser to go to Janice’s house, to her own house. But Mikala was wrong about Danny. She had to be. He was going to be in a heap of trouble with the chief later.

He ran down the driveway and disappeared into the black night within seconds. His legs turned over like an Olympic sprinter’s, his breath labored, and sweat beaded on his upper lip. He rounded Third Street and nearly slipped in the wet grass on Nevada Drive but caught himself. He saw her house in the distance. Janice, four months separated from her husband, was alone there with her son. Alone like the others. Three single mothers of three abducted little boys.

His mind raced. The police would be at his house in two minutes. At Janice’s in three. They protected each other’s families.

When he was four houses away, he began screaming his sister’s name. Trying to scare anyone off. Make the bad man drop the child? Leave without the child? He didn’t know why he screamed. By the time his feet hit her driveway her light had turned on. The front bedroom window opened.

“Jack?” Janice’s voice slithered through the screen.

He passed her window and ran toward the back of the house, toward Danny’s room. He could see broken glass on the ground shimmering with the reflection of a street light.

Dear God, no, he thought. It couldn’t be. These abductions could not have hit his family.

“Danny,” he yelled.

When he reached his nephew’s window, the whites of Danny’s two little eyes glowed in the dark room. He was there. Standing. Looking out the bare, open window back at him. Waiting.

“Hi, Uncle Jack,” Danny said, his little face peeking over the window ledge, his stuffed bear, Tony, nudged under his chin.

Jack leaned hands on house and huffed, trying to catch his breath. Trying to decipher Danny was okay. Alive. Mikala was wrong.

“Thank God, thank God,” he uttered out loud. When he caught his breath, he gazed up at his nephew.

That’s when horror seized him. Above Danny’s little face, secured on the broken glass, a scribbling on Christian stationary paralyzed him. It was the abductor’s fourth message, but the first to make Jack’s blood circulate like an electrical current. The words he read flowed over his lips in a whisper, expelled with terrifying breath.

“One mulligan for Mikala.”

Interview with CJ Zahner

About the Author

CJ Zahner is a digital-book hoarder, lover of can’t-put-down books, and the author of The Suicide Gene (Wild Rose Press) and Dream Wide Awake (Kindle Direct). She has two more novels, Within the Setting Sun and The Dream Snatchers, to be released in 2019.  In 2015 after her only sibling was diagnosed with early-onset dementia, Zahner walked away from a full-time grant writing and part-time freelance writing job to become a novelist. She hopes to read, write novels, and run happily ever after…

CJ Zahner is a digital-book hoarder, lover of can’t-put-down books, and the author of Dream Wide Awake and The Suicide Gene. She has three more novels pending, Project Dream, Within the Setting Sun, and The Dream Snatchers.  Writing novels since 2015, that year her only sibling was diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and Zahner walked away from her full-time grant writing and part-time freelance writing job to follow her dream of becoming a novelist. She hopes to read, write, and run happily ever after…

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