Page 41 of In Her Memory

“I saw your portrait yesterday.”

“Ah, yes. Boyd Calloway’s little restoration project.” Shannon’s lip curled slightly. “Turning my home into apartments required hiding my image. Progress, they call it.”

Jenna glanced back at the screen. The Victorian couple continued their bedtime routine, unaware of being watched. The woman was now in her undergarments, her husband helping her with the laces of her corset.

Shannon chuckled, following her gaze. “They have no idea we’re watching. Most people don’t.” He gestured casually toward the screen. “We see so much that others miss, don’t we, Sheriff?”

“What is this?” Jenna asked, gesturing to the inverted scene.

“Just a glimpse behind the curtain,” Shannon said. “And a word of advice from someone who knows: don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Isn’t that what you are?” Jenna countered. “A ghost?”

Shannon’s expression hardened momentarily, then relaxed into a grin. “Not talking about me,” he said. “I’m the real thing.” He paused, studying her. “But some things that might look like spirits are something else entirely.” He lowered his voice and whispered, “I’ll give you an important clue, Lady Sheriff. If they’re solid enough to touch, then you’ll know they’re still living.” He chuckled and added, “Though by then it might be too late.”

The inverted scene on the screen flickered, and the couple was now sitting on the edge of their bed. Their movements had become jerky, unnatural.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Jenna asked.

"That's not everything as it appears." Seemingly out of nowhere, Shannon produced a small silver tray that held a bunch of grapes. "Would you care for one?"

Jenna noticed immediately one grape standing out among the pale fruit—conspicuously black and shining, almost pulsing with an inner light. It didn’t look like a grape at all, but a perfect sphere of darkness.

“That one,” Shannon said, following her gaze to the black grape. “Try it. You’ll like it.”

Something in his tone made Jenna hesitate, but curiosity pushed her forward. She reached for the strange grape, her fingers closing the distance.

As her hand approached, the black grape seemed to expand, growing larger in her vision until it dominated everything she could see. She was no longer reaching for it—she was falling toward it, tumbling into its expanding darkness. The black surface enveloped her, becoming a tunnel that stretched endlessly before her. She felt herself hurtling through it, weightless and without control.

“Some doors,” Shannon’s voice echoed around her, “once opened, can never be closed again.”

Jenna gasped, her body jerking as if she’d been falling in reality. Her eyes snapped open to the familiar ceiling of her bedroom. Sweat dampened her hairline and the back of her neck. The disorientation of waking from such a vivid dream left her momentarily confused.

She turned her head toward the digital clock on her nightstand. The red numbers glowed: 4:16 a.m.

Jenna sat up, switching on the bedside lamp. The sudden light made her eyes ache, but she needed the reassurance of real surroundings. She reached for the notepad and pen she kept beside her bed for precisely these moments, when the dead visited her dreams with messages she couldn’t afford to forget.

Her hand trembled slightly as she wrote:

Dad says he found Piper. Couldn’t tell me where.

Pete Shannon appeared—warned not to believe in ghosts. “Some things that look like spirits are something else entirely.”

Upside-down projection of a Victorian couple, unaware they were being watched.

The black grape became a tunnel.

“Some doors once opened can never be closed again.”

She stared at the words she’d written, trying to make sense of them. Had her father truly found her sister? Was she still among the living, or was she in whatever plane of existence he now inhabited?

But surely, Jenna thought, if Piper was dead, she would have appeared to me herself.

And Pete Shannon—what was he trying to tell her? He said he was a real ghost, but other ghosts weren’t real. The distinction had seemed important.

Jenna set the notepad aside and lay back against her pillows, her mind too active for sleep. She stared at the ceiling, replaying the dream. The inverted room. The couple unknowingly observed. The black grape and the tunnel. All of it felt significant, loaded with meaning just beyond her grasp.

Her father’s words echoed in her mind: I found her. I found Piper.