Todd woke up sweating, his heart beating a mile a minute. It was just a nightmare, he thought with relief. But it had been so real.
He had been in the dark, huddled in a tiny space with his knees up to his chin and his hands tightly tied behind his back. The knots hurt his wrists and his feet hurt with pins and needles where they had fallen asleep, as his mother called it. A thick piece of tape held his mouth closed and it was hard to breathe through his nose. Something had hit him in the nose, he realized, and in the eye, which was swollen almost shut. He also hurt in his private places, but he couldn’t even think about that because what had happened was just too scary and too disgusting.
He could sense the presence of the man who had done this to him-he was very close but he couldn’t see him in the dark. He knew this man would kill him. It was only a matter of time. He sensed it and he knew it.
Then he had woke up and realized it was just a dream, a horrible, frighteningly real dream that still echoed throughout his entire being. Yet he also knew that it was not a dream. At some level, it was real and either was happening or would happen in the near future.
Then, with sudden shock, he realized that he was dreaming about Melissa, the missing girl, and that for her, it was not a dream at all, but a terrible, terrible reality.
Todd wanted to tell someone about his dream and tell them the girl was in trouble. But he knew they wouldn’t listen. The sheriff had laughed at him when he’d mentioned the rock, and even Mom and Dad thought he was imagining things.
He rolled over and wished that Faith were here with him to curl up in his arms. He didn’t expect to get much more sleep that night.