She’d had the dream again. It always reared its head when she became stressed or anxious. Her pillow was wet, and she knew she’d been crying in her sleep. Anna waited until the nightmare and the unsettled feeling it always left behind dissipated. The last time she’d been plagued by the dream was about a year ago, and she felt sure her visit to the cemetery earlier that day had triggered it. The dream was always the same. In it, she stood alone in a forest late at night. In the sky above her, a pale full moon shone blue-white light. The sound of a crying infant reached her and she turned to see a wooden cradle sitting on the forest floor, inside it a wailing baby. She moved toward the infant to comfort it, but her movements were sluggish, like walking under water. Before she reached it, something winged and sinister swooped down from out of the darkness, snatching the crying infant from its cradle and carrying it away into the black night. In her apartment high atop the glass tower she called home, Anna turned and gazed out the wall of windows at the glowing orb of a moon in the velvety sky, unformed worry nagging at her.
