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eBook Category: Romance/Suspense/Thriller
eBook Description: A freelance writer is awakened by a bad dream, and then the dream becomes reality. At the age of thirty, Dannah Wingate discovers she has become psychic. Pursuit of her family history and how she acquired this unnerving ability leads her to a small college town in Mississippi, and a handsome stranger who is wrongly accused of murder. Dannah knows the truth, but proving it becomes her challenge.

eBook Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc, Published: 2006, 2006
Fictionwise Release Date: October 2006

8 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.1 MB], eReader (PDB) [245 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [238 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [209 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [202 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [259 KB], hiebook (KML) [513 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [269 KB], iSilo (PDB) [195 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [245 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [276 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [304 KB]
Words: 68953
Reading time: 197-275 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 1-59088-551-1

"You're the next in line" were among the last words Danna Wingate heard her father say. Sharleen Johnson weaves a tale of romance, suspense and the supernatural. A well written page turner that I could not put down.

After the death of her father, Dana returns to Oxford, Mississippi the family home of the Winthrops. She not only discovers that her aunt has left her the family home and a substantial inheritance, but ghosts and a fifty year old crime to solve. She meets Jason Dunhill and together they are caught up in the middle of murder and mayhem. -Frances Boyle, Fictionwise Recommender

The black cast iron skillet slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor, spilling the yellow crumbles of scrambled eggs across the red brick-patterned linoleum floor. The blinding pain in her chest was overwhelming, sucking the breath from her lungs as the burning sensations spiked down her left arm. Bathed in suffocating terror, she folded to the floor, hit her knees, then pitched forward onto her face. She was afraid of dying, and yet somehow managed to yank on the phone cord and drag the instrument within reach. Nine-one-one. The frightening wait for help. Lights, voices, oxygen, needles. The rocky ride in the ambulance. Sirens. White-coated people rushed around, barking harsh commands, asking stupid questions, but they couldn't halt the excruciating pain, or stop her from dying, from slipping away from this world into another without the solace of a comforting hand. Her whispered call for help emerged as a piercing scream--

--a noise so chilling it tore Dannah Wingate from sleep. Gasping for air, she bolted upright and tried to moderate the chaotic thumping of her heart by breathing deeply, slowly. In. Out. Soggy curls clung to her forehead and neck as she tried to shake the nightmarish dream from her sleep-shrouded mind. Convulsive tremors wrenched her slender frame as she crawled from the tangled bed covers and sat on the edge of her bed. The small electric clock glowed a green 11:45 pm. It seemed she had fought the dream throughout the entire night, when in truth, she had only been in bed for thirty minutes.

In spite of the air conditioning, her thin cotton nightgown was plastered damply to her body, portraying a voluptuous image in the remote glow of the August moon spilling through the bedroom window, but there was no one to enjoy the view. Dannah lived alone.

For the past few weeks she had been plagued by unpredictable dreams and random thoughts of death and occasionally violence and the ordeal was both frightening and exhausting. The recurring images sometimes came as night dreams--like tonight--while others came spontaneously, materializing without provocation; but they were so striking, with realism so detailed, they made her feel as though the terrifying events were happening to her. Tonight's dream was more genuine and more detailed and explicit than any previously experienced. The heat from the stove was still vivid in her mind, the weight of the skillet in her hand, the piercing agony in her chest as well as the sharp pain in her joints when she fell to the floor.

Dannah shuddered as her imagination sent an unpleasant tingle grinding down her spine. She massaged the phantom pain in her knees. Even when she was awake, her thoughts were being monopolized by a strangely persistent pull to do something, to go somewhere, but she didn't know what or where.

After shuffling barefoot down the carpeted stairs to the fridge and pouring a glass of milk, she sat down at her kitchen table piled high with computer printouts; photocopies of old court documents and penciled sketches of family trees. Tracing her ancestry had been her hobby for many years. In fact, she was often accused of exhibiting obsessive-compulsive behavior on the subject. She had successfully traced her maternal line. Unfortunately, her mother, Della Taylor, had been an only child begotten of an only child, which meant that Dannah had no aunts, uncles or cousins. Other than one paternal aunt she'd never met, Dannah had been unable to locate a single living relative on either side of her genealogical tree, creating an abysmal sense of isolation.

The young woman took another swallow of the cold milk then glanced at the huge twelve month appointment calendar affixed to the fridge door with magnets. She had marked a big red "X" on July tenth. That was the date she had her first dream. It was nearly as frightening as the one which had awakened her tonight. That one also involved her own death, but in a far different scenario. In the July dream, she was lying in bed--her surroundings comfortable and familiar--and died more peacefully and without pain or fear. In fact, she distinctly remembered a woman's hand reaching out to her from a bright white, but opaque mist. Faces were maddeningly out of sight.

"Foolishness. This is all pure foolishness," she argued with herself.

She needed to cleanse her mind of these disturbing images so she could concentrate on her writing. In the past, she was doggedly persistent chasing after the truth and exposing local corruption with her own unique brand of "go-get-'em" journalism, but lately, because of too little sleep, she was more consumed by lethargy than dedication. Truthfully, her exhaustion extended bone deep.

The inauspicious creditor-wolf would be banging down the door if her inspirations and creativity dried up. Trying to make a living at freelance writing wasn't easy. If all else failed, she could always go back to her old job at the newspaper, but punching a time clock would be a last resort. Although she enjoyed the freedom of being self-employed, she honestly missed the camaraderie of her co-workers.

Dannah finished the milk and as she turned off the kitchen light to return to bed, the shrill ring of the phone exploded into the midnight silence. As she placed the receiver to her ear, her hand trembled slightly with the worry over who would call at such a late hour. "Hello?"

"This is St. Francis Hospital. Are you Dannah Wingate?"

"Yes, I am." Her heart beat stuttered, then escalated.

"Your father, Coleman Wingate, has just been admitted to the Cardiac ICU through the ER. He's had a heart attack."

"Oh my God. Is he okay? Is he alive?"

"Yes, he's in critical, but stable condition. He's asking for you and we think you should come as soon as possible."

"I'm on my way."

The streets of Memphis, Tennessee, were always busy. The hustle and bustle of her citizens never ceased, even in the dead of night, and especially on Poplar Avenue, just east of the interchange with I-240.

She was ushered into the hushed atmosphere of the cardiac intensive-care unit. Tiny, glass-faced rooms were arranged in a semi-circle around the hub of the nurses' station with banks of black-screen monitors alive with dancing icons, jagged lines and ever-changing numbers.

"Wingate is in room four. Right now, he's stable and breathing on his own."

"Daddy?" she whispered softly as she approached his bed.

When Coleman Wingate opened his dark brown eyes, the beeps on his heart monitor quickened. "That my girl?"

"Yes, it's me, Daddy. You okay?"

"Don't reckon I am."

"What happened?" she asked and gently combed her fingers through his thick salt-and-pepper hair.

"I was fixin' me a late night snack--scrambled eggs an' toast--then the pain hit an' I fell. But I managed to call 911. By then, I didn't have the strength to call you."

"Oh, Daddy, you're going to have to listen to me. You can't continue living alone. What would have happened if you couldn't get to the phone?"

He grasped her wrist with surprising strength and pulled her close. The tendons in his neck tightened as his head came away from the pillow. "Listen hard, girl. You need to go see your aunt Gova Wingate down in Oxford, Miss'ippi." He paused to suck in a labored breath of air. "She's at 703 Azalea Lane. Phone: 555-1234. She knows, she'll tell you all about it."

"All about what?"

"You know. Them dreams you told me about. An' them other things that's been happenin' to you. I hope it ain't a'ready too late. I was hopin' you wouldn't get burdened with 'em, but, but, you're next in line." Tears began to spill from his eyes. "Gova knows." He sank back onto the bed, as if the effort to speak had left him totally exhausted.

"Hush, Daddy, hush. Save your strength. We can talk about this when you're feeling better."

"No, no. Time's runnin' out fer me."

When the beeps began to race in erratic fashion, one of the nurses swept in. "You're upsetting your father, my dear. You have to leave."

"But-but, he was upsetting himself," Dannah protested. "I can calm him down, then I'll just sit in the corner and be quiet. He'll be more comfortable with me here."

"No, I'm sorry, but rules are rules. Visiting hours are posted on the door. You can come back at eight tomorrow morning."

Dannah squeezed her father's hand and kissed his pale, cold cheek. "The nurses say I have to leave and let you rest. I love you, Daddy. Concentrate on getting well. Get a good night's sleep and I'll see you first thing in the morning. We'll talk more about Aunt Gova then." He reached for her hand again, as though reluctant to let her go. When she whispered "I love you," a second time, he managed to respond with a weak, half-smile.

The trip back to her apartment was less hurried as she tried to plan for her father's rehabilitation. He would have to sell his little house in the eastern suburbs and move into an assisted-care facility. There was a nice place just two blocks from where she lived in the midtown Garden District. It would make it easy for her to visit him on a daily basis. Riding her bicycle that distance would give her some much-needed fresh air and exercise. Together, she and her father would turn this bad situation into something good.

Dannah was barely in the door of her apartment when the second devastating phone call came.