Though Mary drifted to sleep that night content within Tim's 
arms, her dreams were a disturbing journey into lands Mary could 
scarely have imagined were contained within her mind. She hovered 
above rocky plateaus which towered out of an endless abyss, lit in 
flickering auburn as though from a vast fire far below. Shapes 
moved among the towers, flying without wings. She could see them, 
and yet she could not, as though she saw them not as much with her 
eyes, but with her mind. It was hard to define a shape; the 
creatures somehow did not seem confined by physical bodies, as 
though they wisped out in all directions in ethereal tendils 
invisible to the eye. What she did see was bloated and 
asymmetrical, thin tentacles flailing blindly.
     She sensed that one had detected her--again, not with eyes, 
for the creatures had none, but as if it had scented her very 
mind. It swooped up, homing in, and Mary screamed and closed her 
eyes as it closed in--
     --and a peaceful calm fell over her. She no longer sensed the 
beast within her brain. Mary opened her eyes and now she stood in 
a green meadow. Prairie grass swept to the horizon unbroken by 
roads or telephone poles or any touch of modern man. Save for atop 
a low hill where a huddle of hooded and cloaked people stood 
silhouetted by the rising moon. Faintly, Mary heard them chant in 
an unfamiliar tongue. Then in single file they descended the slope 
and disappeared behind the opposite side, leaving several small 
fires burning at the summit.
     Mary began to feel a chill as the sun gave way to the moon 
and the cold prairie night settled in. The fires, she thought, 
looked very warm and attractive. She would just sneak up there and 
hope that the Druid-like people had gone for the night. Hugging 
herself, she crossed the meadow and climbed the hill. Once there, 
she saw that the fires were lit at the endpoints of a strange 
symbol scratched into the earth. It was like a star that had been 
left in the sun and melted and warped into something altogether 
new. Just then a sound--behind her? no, beneath--and she turned, 
kicking one of the small fires and spilling the burning wood 
across the bare soil. Immediately, a fissure split the ground 
through the center of the symbol; an auburn light familiar to Mary 
shone upward, striking a serpentine otherworldly beam across the 
darkening prairie, and the screams came again--
     --and she realized that she was awake, in her own bed, Tim's 
arm still curled around her side and midriff. Gladly, she did not 
seem to have wakened him. Mary slipped out from under his arm and 
she sheets and made her way through the dark downstairs and to the 
kitchen. She poured a glass of milk and tried to put the dreams 
out of her head. She forced pleasant thoughts to the forefront: 
the flowers she had planted on the west side of the house; her cat 
snuggled asleep on her lap; ...Tim's face as he had made love to 
her. That last one presented itself uninvited, but was perhaps the 
most welcome of all.
     At peace again, Mary finished the milk and started upstairs 
once more, humming a tune under her breath. She was halfway down 
the upstairs hallway before she realized that the tune was the 
chant of the hooded people.