Leap - Chapter Three

                                          3

          She is walking in a strange, barren place, the terrain is rocky and parched.  Beside her is a man that she has never seen before.  Despite the fact that he is a stranger to her, she is comfortable with him, relaxed in his presence.  She is certain she does not recognize him but it feels like she should for he is familiar in someway.
          They walk in silence, making their way up a small hill, sand pushing up around her sneakers as she digs into the loose soil for traction.  When they reach the crest of the hill, an expansive vista opens before them.  Several low hills rise up in procession, clusters of trees scattered here and there, leading to a high wall that surrounds a dozen or more buildings, rising in a broken line above the horizon.  “What is this place?” she asks breaking the silence.
          “This was my home for a time,” he answers.  The sound of his voice is gentle and caring, and she is overcome by a desire to fall in his arms and pour all of her pain on him, to give him all her sorrow and regret.  Somehow, she feels he would welcome it.
          “Do I know you?” she asks.
          “No Grace, but I know you.  I’ve known you all of your life.”  She instinctively believes him.  Intuition tells her that he will never lie to her.
          They continue to close the distance between them and the buildings ahead.  As they draw near she can see that it is a large community of sun-bleached brick with a ten-foot wall around its perimeter.  Inside the wall, still some way off, the top of a large, brick structure rises high over the other, smaller dwellings.  It all appears ancient and she wonders where she is.  Just outside the wall, directly ahead of her, a small crowd of people mills about on a low hillside.  Three wooden crosses stand at the top of the hill and at the sight of them her heart quickens.  Step by step, the closer they come to the crowd and to those crosses, the more agitated she becomes.  She does not want to go there, she does not want to see what those people are doing, and yet she keeps moving closer. 
          When they are within 100 yards of the hill, she sees that there are people up there, hanging from those crosses, blood dripping from their hands and feet.  What is this, she wonders, why is it familiar?  She is close to panic now and she tries to turn away but the man beside her gently takes her arm and leads her closer.  She does not want to see, she does not want to know, but she has no will to resist him as he brings her to the base of the hill.
          Her eyes, inexplicably, drift toward the horror she so desperately does not want to know.  Her gaze slowly rises and meets the gaze of each of the suffering; her mother, her father, her little sister - crucified.  Her shocked gaze moves from one beloved face to the next.  She watches a stream of blood flow down her father’s arm, drip from his elbow and pool on the hard ground.  Pain contorts her mother’s features until she is barely recognizable, her breathing ragged and hoarse.  Anna is clearly terrified, her face tear-streaked, her lip quivering, her breath is labored making her body rise and fall painfully as she fights for each breath.  Grace falls to her knees, her breath trapped in her lungs.  The man beside her leans close and whispers in her ear, “They died for you Grace.”
          “No,” she whispers.  “NO NO NO.”  It builds to an agonized scream.



          She bolted up on the bed, the sound of her own screams echoing in her ears, sweat making her clothes and her hair cling sickly to her body, the shock of the dream still choking the air from her throat.

    “They died for you Grace.”