—José Bergamín Welcome home, son. The scream raced free of Lance’s throat and rebounded off the walls of his bedroom. His stomach muscles cramped from the effort of bringing himself upright off the bed and his chest heaved with the exertion. Lance brought one shaking hand from the mattress and rubbed the back of his sweat-slicked neck. The skin was smooth, unblemished, and uncut. His eyes searched the dark room as he regained the sense of being in the waking world, and his mind began to brush away the clinging miasma of the dream. Something different had happened this time. He pushed at the boundaries of the memory that inched its doors closed to his prodding thoughts. He had seen something just before he woke. The light had come on fully this time, but the figure before him hadn’t had a face. Instead, it was nothing but shadow. Lance swung his bare feet out and put them on the coolness of the floor. The sensation brought him fully awake, and he rubbed his eyes to clear them.
