Chapter 1: Introduction

Looking back I guess I've always been a sleepwalker, but I wasn't quite like the ones you hear about. I mean you hear the stories of kids getting up in the middle of the night and wondering around the house, parents waking up to find their kids sitting in the middle of the living room "watching" television. Even though the television is off and the kid doesn't even seem to notice that there is no picture or that the parents are even there. I did all that stuff. I wasn't like the really scary ones you hear about, kids actually walking out of the house in the middle of the night, roaming the neighborhood, walking down the middle of the street in the middle of the night. You know the really scary stuff; especially in today's world. My case is a little different. Okay, it's a lot different.

I was seven when I first noticed that something strange seemed to be happening. It all seemed pretty normal around the house; no one noticed anything out of the ordinary. I was just your average little boy in your average home. Maybe not 'normal' by today's standards, I mean my parents were actually married and living under the same roof. Oh, sorry, my name is James; James Edward Matthews, to be exact. I was named for my grandfathers on either side of the family. The family joke is that I'm Mom's little J.E.M. Here's a hint. Don't EVER call me that. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom. But Jem is a one of those cute nicknames that will get your son beaten up on a regular basis starting about two days after any kid in school learns of it. Something my mom found out the second day of Kindergarten when she got the call from the principal of our elementary school. It wasn't even my fault. It's not like I brought it up. The teacher noticed it and thought it was cute. Apparently so did Mark, and Ted, and Bobby. I was used to 'Jem' I'd been tolerating it for years; but I drew the line at being called "little Jemmy." Unfortunately I drew the line in Bobby's right shin and just under Mark's left eye. Ted was Bobby's twin brother so naturally it immediately became a matter of family honor and as they say, "It was ON!"

Once the SWAT team had secured the area and the smoke started to clear things looked like they were going to be okay. Right up to the point that we had to tell Mr. Iverson what happened. He made the mistake of sniggering at the nickname and I made the mistake of using one of those words my dad wasn't supposed to say around me. That actually got me off the hook with Mom though. It was kind of funny watching Dad try to melt into one of Mr. Iverson's office chairs when he told Mom what I'd called him. Her head just did one of those cartoon spins toward Dad and he just looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, Alaska, the Middle East, a black hole, anywhere! The nicknamed dropped off the public radar for a while after that. Mark's parents brought him over the house and made him apologize, my parents invited them for dinner and we were soon best friends.

Anyway, I was seven when things started happening. My sister, Allison, is two years younger than me and I just love her to death. Some nights I would get up in the middle of the night and just watch her sleep. I didn't realize it at the time, but those were the nights she was restless and having trouble sleeping. I would just crawl out of bed and go sit by her and she would settle down. It became pretty routine for my mom to find me sacked out in her floor the next morning. Other nights I would just dream about her. It seemed like she was always in my dreams. We played, we explored, fought daring duels with pirates, wrestled and played with tigers and lions in the deepest wilds of the African Jungle. If I was Tarzan, she was Jane. One night I suddenly found myself on a horse in full armor galloping towards a castle to slay a dragon and rescue the maiden in the tower. That one didn't turn out quite the way you would expect. I didn't end up slaying the dragon. It turned out she, yeah, that was odd too, whoever heard of a female dragon? Anyway, she turned out to be pretty cool after all and we all had tea and then we promised to come back and play again some other time. It took me while to figure out what really happened that night but I'll get to that later.

I was at Mark's house "camping" in his garage one weekend and Allison had a bad nightmare. She woke Mom and Dad up with one of those blood-curdling screams of hers, but by the time they got there she was laying quietly. When Mom asked her what happened she said that she was scared but that Jimmy woke her up and told her it was okay. The folks just passed it off as one of those "kid" things. The weird part was that I'd had a dream at Mark's that night. In my dream Allison was having a bad dream and I had gotten up and touched her awake and hugged her and told her it was just a dream and everything was okay.