Re-occurring dreams of a house Hope Graham lived in as a child taunts her nights. Nightmares of a woman in a bloody nightgown fortell of sins of the past and forewarn of danger in the present. Determined to conquer her fears, Hope travels to Sheboygan to investigate the house and discovers the truth can be more frightening than nightmares.
A murder mystery wrapped in a paranormal ghost story. Apparitions and vivid dreams reveal clues of mystery, murder, and revenge.
Excerpt
The young redheaded boy crouched on the rotting, dilapidated porch of my childhood home. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. His mop of hair whipped in the gale force wind surrounding us. He had a white-knuckled clutch on the shell of the bay window.
Fearing for his safety, I screamed, “Hey, over here!”
The wind pricked at my face. My white nightgown billowed out behind me. I called again over the blustery wind. “Hey you!”
Turning toward my voice he removed his hand from the window and pressed his index finger to his lips to silence me. Then he beckoned to me with a gesture of his hand. Struggling against the wind like a drunk attempting to walk a straight line, I finally reached him. He slipped his small hand into mine and led me out of the windstorm and into the abandoned house.
Once inside the house transformed before my eyes into the home I’d once known. There were panes of glass inside the windows. Mustard colored carpet covered the floor. The only light in the room was the flickering glow of the television set, its light falling on a snoring man on the couch. The stench of whiskey and cigarettes hung in the air like fog rolling off the San Francisco Bay.
The man and the children appeared blurry as if I was watching them on a station with bad reception. In a tight-knit group, several children sat within inches of the television set, but instead of watching the program, they used the light to see primitive motions they were gesturing toward one another. Although the children had not
noticed us, the young boy and I stood motionless, watching their signals of communication. They seemed to be conversing with one another in their own sign language, I assumed, in an effort to avoid disturbing the passed out man.
I turned toward my companion in an eerie slow motion. He watched the children and imitated their gestures. He tapped my arm and repeated a hand sign over and over.
Attempting to recall the sign language class I took in college, I searched my memory.
Think, think.
Yes! Help. That’s the sign for help.
The boy walked backwards toward the downstairs bedroom, beckoning me to follow him. The bedroom was furnished with an unmade queen size bed, a shabby pressed board dresser with a cracked mirror, and a bassinette that someone had taken the time to weave blue ribbons through. A familiar, barely audible, tuned played as a mobile of butterflies turned above the bassinette.
I turned to look for the boy, but he was no longer there. A glimpse of the bed drew my attention. It was now covered in cobwebs, and an undisturbed layer of dust had materialize on the bureau. I focused on an invisible finger etching words in the dust. The words left behind read: HELP THE BABY.
I scanned the room once again, searching for the boy. Though I could not see him, I was certain it was he who had written in the dust. The beautiful bassinet enticed me─almost as if beckoning me toward it─but I planted my bare feet on the arctic-cold floor. My gut instinct seemed to warn me against approaching the bassinette. Somewhere outside of myself I felt a presence encourage me. Go over there…over to the bassinet.
A wall of water ascended behind me, and with enormous pressure, forced me toward the bassinet. I could hear an infant crying. The icy cold water splashed against my back as I peered into the ribbon wrapped bed. As a mother, the site made my heart flutter. A blue and white crochet blanket embroidered with tiny flowers and edged with sheetr lace loving swaddled a child. My hand─as if of its own accord─moved toward the infant. No mother can resist the urge to hold a baby.
With gentle care, I picked up the bundle, and marveled how light the babe felt. Removing a corner of the blanket from the child’s face I inhaled in shock.
Suddenly, the boy stood before me signing in jerky panicked motions, “Help, help, help.”
In mortified horror, I tossed the crocheted blanket. Remains─human remains−tumbled out of the blanket onto the floor in front of my bare feet. The beautiful crocheted blanket had tenderly covered nothing but decaying bones. Everything in the bedroom vanished except the spinning musical mobile. Now the barely audible music became deafening. Over and over the mobile played the tune, Hush Little Baby…
As the whirlwind from outside shattered the windows, spraying glass pierced my face and chest. The wind whipped around in the hazy bedroom and the mobile began to spin violently. It crashed to the floor, landing on top of the bones. Even oveer the howl of the wind I could hear the music. At unbearable decibels, Hush Little Baby, resounded from the wreckage.
The wall of water that had forced me to the bassinet now gushed down on top of me, tossing my body like a buoy. I smashed up against the bedroom wall. The water stung my throat, my nose, my lungs, the entire bedroom flooded.
Drowning, I’m drowning.
Professional Reviews
Cover Corner
{August 10, 2009} Cover Corner: Victoria Roder
I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming new author, Victoria Roder to The Write Time & Place. Asylett Press released Victoria’s first book, The Dream House~Visions and Nightmares earlier this month. I expect this book to draw in readers from many genres as it crosses over several–paranormal, thriller, romance, and suspense. Have a seat, kick back, and read all about this new author! Leave her a comment below, and show your support for Victoria! Thanks so much…Valerie
Recurring dreams of a house Hope Graham’s family rented when she was a child taunt her nights with nightmares of a woman in a bloody nightgown pleading for help. Dream sequences of children metamorphosing in rats, blood spewing out of windows, and walking across decaying bones all foretell of sins of the past, and forewarn of danger in the present. In an attempt to end the agony of her sleep-depriving dreams, Hope travels to her hometown…only to discover that the truth can be more frightening than a nightmare.
Review:
When I sat down to read Dream House—Visions and Nightmares, the debut novel by Victoria Roder, I expected a book full of ghosts and attempts at spine-tingling scenes. What Roder actually delivers is a taut story with an ending only the most attentive of readers will figure out prior to reading the final chapters.
Roder strategically introduces characters, allowing the reader to gradually learn their significance. This prevents information overload, but also affords Roder the opportunity to develop multifaceted characters the reader comes to either care about or despise. Every good book has a villain, but Roder offers up more than one—and they all have their place artfully etched out in the plot.
The book opens with Hope Graham fighting off sleep and losing the battle. Nightmares plague her. Horrible, unsettling nightmares. The lack of sleep and plentiful nightmares begin to intrude on Hope’s waking hours, causing her boss at the resource center where she works to issue the ultimatum: Get it together or get out. After one nightmare too many, Hope calls her sister, Samantha and, at 3 in the morning, decides she’s going back home to Sheboygan where her sister still lives and where the house of her dreams can be found.
Hope begins to unravel the purpose of the haunting nightmares by investigating the house those nightmares center around. With a little bit of help from her sister and a lot of help from the locals, Hope not only uncovers history about the house, but she unearths secrets that force her to dig deep into her own past and confront the very real nightmare she lived through as a child.
The sunshine in the darkness of the plot comes in the form of very sexy bakery owner, Brock Cooper. Brock offers Hope all the things her ex-husband couldn’t: romance, friendship, support, encouragement, tenderness, understanding, and love. He’s her sounding board, her confidant, and her romance when she needs a break from the intense mystery surrounding her dream house. Roder holds back and successfully allows the romance to slowly blossom between these two, which is refreshing given the fact this is not a romance, but rather a paranormal thriller that serves up a happily ever after in spite of the odds against it happening.
Hope also finds an ally in the elderly busybody living across the road from the dream house. Ida is full of knowledge, but is not as forthcoming as Hope—or this reader—wants her to be. Instead, Ida has a foresight most people wished they had, and there’s a purpose for disclosing information slowly. Hope’s on a voyage of self-discovery and too much information too soon not only makes for a short book, but would defeat what Roder obviously worked so hard to combine into one exciting, unpredictable plot.
You won’t want to miss this debut novel by Victoria Roder.
Book three in series. Excitement and tension begin on the first day of filming a Restoration drama on location at the historic Jacobean mansion, Ham House in Surrey.
