It had been a long time since he’d had a dream like the one he’d just experienced. In high school, he dreamed about Marsha Schubert losing her cherry to Josh Stevens long before Josh’s bragging let the cat out of the bag. He dreamed about Matt Garret and Bubba Saunders’ wreck the very night Bubba’s truck tried to straighten a curve on Highway 87, killing both boys. In another dream, he’d seen old Charles Wellman, the town’s retired night watchman, come home and kill his wife, then kill himself — the same night the old drunk did just that. The last dream of this nature was about a year and a half ago, when he had dreamed that Michael Salter and Ruby Keinzel were having an affair — months before the gossip started floating around the small town of Newton, Texas. There was no doubt that tonight’s dream was the type of dream Angie referred to as his visions. These strange dreams were all seen through the eyes of someone else, and they had a certain reality to them, a certain unmistakable feeling not in sync with the surrealism of normal dreams.
But this vision had been different from any he’d had before. For one thing, most of these dreams were brief, some very brief. His dream of Doris Crawford dropping her baby out of its highchair had lasted only around five seconds. The night Charles Wellman was driving home drunk and tried to outrun Jack Cooper’s patrol car gave him the longest vision James could recall, and it lasted only around three minutes. But tonight’s vision lasted over thirty minutes, possibly closer to an hour.
That wasn’t what bothered James, however. What bothered him was the fact that this dream hadn’t been seen through the eyes of a human.
CHAPTER 1
The One Who Sees
It was only after much tossing and turning that James was able to get back to sleep. When the alarm went off the next morning, he felt as if he hadn’t slept a wink. He rolled out of bed and ambled zombie-like to the bathroom where he brushed his teeth and combed his hair. James put on a pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt, then made his way toward the kitchen. In the hall, a sandy-haired little boy wearing a backpack zipped by, the backpack bouncing and rattling as the boy ran.
“Hi, Daddy,” the energetic child said without turning.
“Hey, Squirt.”
Jimmy Taylor had just started first grade. Jimmy was blessed with his mother’s good looks and social abilities, and — if his straight A report cards were any indication — his father’s intelligence.
Stopping only long enough to give his mother a quick peck on the cheek and grab a Pop-Tart, Jimmy scampered outside to wait for the school bus.
When James entered the kitchen, Angie was watching Jimmy from the kitchen window. She was holding a cup of coffee in her hand and was dressed in her version of a housecoat — a huge white tee-shirt that came down past her knees, and on the front it said in bold black letters BACK OFF! The shirt, a gag gift from a birthday two years ago, couldn’t have been more incorrect about Angie’s early morning disposition. Her shoulder length blond hair was in a ponytail. Angie wore a minimum of makeup, but even this bit of lipstick and powder was absent in the Taylor family early morning ritual. It didn’t matter. Her complexion was flawless. James noticed how the sun coming in the window made her seem to glow. She’s even beautiful in the morning, he thought.
“Morning, Honey,” James said, plopping into a chair at the kitchen table in front of a plate of eggs and toast.
Keeping her blue-green eyes glued on Jimmy in the front yard, Angie smiled sweetly and replied, “Morning.”
James and Angie had been married for seven years now. Not coincidentally, only about a half a year longer than Jimmy had been alive. Their marriage had been a shock to the small town of Newton. At the time she was a senior in high school, Homecoming Queen, and one of the most popular girls at Newton High School. Her parents owned Lambert’s Furniture in Jasper, and her father was on then Newton City Council. Angie Lambert was real Newton County nobility.
James Taylor, on the other hand, was anything but. He had lived in Longview until his parents died in a car accident when he was twelve. James was taken in by his grandmother, who lived in Newton. The move didn’t agree with James in the least. He was a smart kid, but he wasn’t outgoing and had a difficult time making new friends. Halfway through his senior year, James’ grandmother died. Only a few weeks later, James dropped out of school and went to work as a carpenter’s assistant.
Two years later, Angie and James met when the Lamberts decided to build an addition onto their house. They struck an instant friendship and soon they were dating. At first Angie wasn’t serious about James, but she soon found she was becoming more and more attached to him. What really clinched their relationship, however, was Angie’s father, George Lambert. He strictly forbade Angie to have anything to do with this “no-good dropout.” So like any other rebellious teenager, Angie promptly fell in love.
There were hard times at first, but a few months later, soon after Jimmy was born, Matt Garret’s untimely death opened up a job at Baldwin’s Garage, and, although James had no prior experience as a mechanic, he managed to get the job. James learned his job quickly and soon realized he had a bit of a knack as a mechanic. In no time he had developed a reputation as the best mechanic in the county. Two years after James first started to work for the garage, Ike Baldwin — one of the two brothers who owned Baldwin’s Garage — was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Ike sold his half of the garage to James at an unbelievably charitable price. Soon James had paid off the note and was even able to buy the small two-bedroom house just outside of Newton where they were currently living.
James ate his eggs and toast while Angie continued watching Jimmy from the kitchen window. It was not until James heard the sound of the bus’ air brakes, followed by the squall of its unoiled side door, that Angie turned her eyes away from the window.
“You didn’t sleep very well last night,” she said. “You tossed and turned all night.”
James was a little shocked by the statement. Angie was normally such a heavy sleeper that she wouldn’t know if a train wrecked in the front yard. “No, I didn’t,” he answered briefly.
“Did you have a nightmare?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorta,” James answered, washing down a bite of toast with a swig of milk.
Angie gazed at him for a moment then, hesitantly, she asked. “Was it one of those dreams?”
“Sorta.” James mumbled through a mouthful of eggs.
Those dreams were a touchy subject for James. Although most of those dreams, or visions as Angie sometimes called them, were simple, unimportant things that he saw through the eyes of other people while he was asleep, he all too often saw something that he would rather have not seen. In fact, the dreams, or visions, were never of a positive nature.
After James finished swallowing his mouthful of eggs he changed the subject. “How do you feel today? Any morning sickness yet?”
Angie let the other subject drop.
Smiling, she patted her still flat tummy (only two months’ pregnant, she hadn’t started to show) and said, “No, not yet.”
James washed down his last bite of eggs and got up from the table. He gave Angie a kiss before leaving for work.
Angie watched him from the kitchen window much as she had Jimmy. James was not attractive by any stretch of the imagination; neither was he unattractive. In fact, he was somewhat nondescript. He was slightly short — about five-foot seven inches tall — and fairly thin. He had brownish-green eyes and brown hair that always seemed to be hidden by an old baseball cap. Angie smiled as she watched him stop to toss a stick for their black lab, Lady. It wasn’t James’ looks that had caused Angie to fall in love with him.