25 Years Earlier

It came to Zandra the night after the national media picked up on David's story. Her restless eyes watched as the anchors on TV relayed the bizarre events. Nothing beats a sensational disappearance.

Zandra flipped the TV off and attempted again to sleep, just as she'd tried for hours before. She kept drifting in and out, like an infant slipping off a nipple, her mind never quite latching on to sleep. Stuck in that buffer between being awake and asleep.

The more time passed, the more vivid the images in her head became. They started as a flicker, like the opening reels of an old movie. It felt like half of a dream. She could move in it. Control it. Command it.

Free to float wherever she pleased, she brought herself into David's last moments. Followed him in her mind's eye down the street to the drug store. She stood with him over his shoulder, perusing the aisles for sun tan lotion. Close enough to feel his breath when he hollered a greeting to someone familiar across the parking lot.

Gene Carey. Asking David for a ride. It'll only take a moment, Gene said.

Something prevented Zandra from getting into the car with David. She knew what would happen next. So she stayed in the parking lot, overwhelmed by sadness at the inevitability.

The agony jolted Zandra back into reality, to the present. She felt herself sobbing into the pillow, almost as if she'd stepped back into someone else's heaving body. For reasons that would haunt her for years to come, two words worked themselves out of her lips. Most nights, it would be David's name. But tonight they formed, "Soma Falls." The waterfall marked the spot where they shared their first kiss.

The more she repeated them, the better she felt. Over and over, Zandra said the words, until she stopped crying. They offered a strange comfort to her. A sense of peace. Of closure.

"Soma Falls."

A breath.

"Soma Falls."

A deep breath. Shoulders relaxed. She sat straight up.

"Soma Falls."

Zandra gnawed on the words as if they could slip away at any moment.

The police didn't check Soma Falls out yet, right? Right. She stumbled to the telephone. Dialed the number for her 24-hour contact.

"Soma Falls," Zandra said into the phone. "Soma Falls."

"What? Oh, you mean the waterfall at the park in town. What about it?" the voice on the other end said.

"He's there. David's there. Please. Look. Hurry," she said.

The voice paused in thought. Zandra heard papers shuffling.

"OK, we'll send someone over to check it out," the voice said. Another pause. "Something happen for you to bring this up?"

"A dream, I guess," Zandra said.

The voice clears its throat. "Ma'am, I understand this is a stressful time for you, but we can't go chasing leads from dreams."

Zandra's eyes soaked the receiver in a fresh mask of tears. She tried to form words, but they came out as sobs.

"OK, OK, settle down. Look, I'll send a patrol over there real quick. I can't promise more than that," the voice said.

"Thank you," Zandra managed to get out before sliding down the wall into the fetal position.

As newspapers across the country would soon relay, that lone patrol car at Soma Falls Park soon turned into two. And another and another. Stevens Point's famous waterfall lost its innocence that night. No longer would young couples sneak off for a good luck kiss in its mist.

Investigators pulled David's remains from the shallow shores of the pool beneath the falls. It looked as if he'd been discarded upstream in a deeper section, then floated down to Soma Falls, spilling over the side. What's more, it appeared the body washed up right around the time of Zandra's dream.

Zandra's life ended on those same shores. The headlines shifted from describing her as a "grieving wife" to a "psychic phenomenon."

Zandra couldn't even escape the label at David's funeral. Her mother, feeling exceptionally cold that day, greeted her with the first of what would become a regular accusation.

"A dream? Really?" Zandra's mother said. "You make yourself out to be some sort of psychic as cover. Confess to the police and end this nonsense. You killed him, didn't you?"

Her father also offered little support. Long since divorced, the alcoholic had burned off the sympathetic part of his brain. What lucidity remained went toward trying to make up for his absence in inappropriate ways and getting confused at Zandra's reactions.

"You'll get to belong with a better man for you soon that will marry you. I don't see how this can be so bad if it works out better than it was before with you," her father said in his usual clunky phrasing. Zandra left the funeral after that.

Awake at night, Zandra wondered if her mother's accusation held any water. Had she killed David? The odds of a dream that pointed exactly to David's remains went beyond astronomical. More like diabolical.

No.

Zandra knew she played no part in David's demise. Gene Carey, on the other hand, seemed more likely. Dream or no dream, the motive and means rested in his hands. And, as it turned out, the messaging. Once the national press corps garrisoned Stevens Point, Gene made himself more than available, ready to construct the narrative.

"I remember David as one of my best employees at my insurance company. Sharp as a knife. A benefit to everyone fortunate enough to work with him," Gene said at a self-hosted press conference. "What I want is justice, just like anyone else. And I don't want it wrapped up in superstition and hokum. If I were you, I wouldn't concern myself with psychic mumbo-jumbo. Anyone pushing that is trying to distract you from the truth."

That "anyone," as far as the public eye could see, was Zandra. And just like that, Zandra went from "psychic phenomenon" to "attention-seeking bitch" overnight. Gene popped up anywhere and everywhere to gently ruin Zandra, even as her grief drowned her to the point where putting on shoes took all day. Zandra couldn't compete.

Months passed, and the investigation ruled David's death accidental. Officially, he'd slipped on a wet rock and hit his head. His unconscious body fell into the water upstream of Soma Falls. Case closed. What possessed David to go to Soma Falls Park in the first place was never determined.

The conclusion provided no comfort for Zandra, now a visibly pregnant shut-in. That's when she went from "attention-seeking bitch" to "cheating whore." Whispers in Stevens Point told the story of a supposed affair around the time of her wedding. Zandra knocked off David to be with her lover and father of her illegitimate child, they alleged.

Gene took one last jab at Zandra before letting the entire thing go. This time it proved fatal.

"In another time, they'd call someone like her a witch, a real Old Testament wench. But not me. If she winds up aborting this baby from that affair everyone's been talking about, that's her decision and hers alone," Gene said in an interview with the Milwaukee newspaper. "I ask everyone to pray for her and her family during this difficult time. I personally set up an account to assist her with financials. David, being the kind of hard worker I knew him to be, was the sole breadwinner in that household. God bless Zandra and the prayer warriors I'm sure will come to the aid of her and her unborn child."

The religious zealots moved in with a fury since unseen. They came from across the country to protest on the sidewalk outside Zandra's house. The police said they couldn't prevent them from gathering there. The sidewalk was public property.

The taunting drove Zandra mad. She screamed at them from inside the house. It only served their narrative all the more, with Zandra apparently angry with God, not the protesters. They only needed to press harder. Their perception equaled reality. Years later, she'd apply the same principles to fleece Stevens Point one psychic reading at a time.

Barricaded in her home and in her grief, unable to care for herself, Zandra added another layer to her trauma with a miscarriage, cued by the stillness in her womb. Whatever light remained in her life left that day.

Zandra limped down the sidewalk to the doctor's office, where an OB recommended the fetus be removed. The protesters hounded her to the procedure, hurling insults and never letting her forget the word "abortion." Zandra tripped and torqued her ankle inside a pothole trying to get away from them. She ignored the pain and went through with the procedure anyway. That day never left her mind. Neither did the stabbing pain in her ankle.

News of the procedure didn't need to hit the press to spread. Everyone in town knew about it. The looks on their faces told her so. No longer a "cheating whore," now her reputation started and ended with "that woman who killed her baby."

The fund for financial assistance Gene mentioned never materialized. Zandra went broke and sold the house, later moving into her current apartment. In a way, it was for the better. The protestors left after Zandra's neighbors complained. Supernatural thrill seekers and New Age pilgrims soon replaced them. They descended on Soma Falls, hoping to tap into the "spirit" and "energy" of the "psychic fountain" at the waterfall.

This gave business owners some ideas, and Stevens Point's cottage industry of paranormal bullshit was born. The city erected a sign to let everyone know it was, "STEVENS POINT: HOME OF ZANDRA THE PSYCHIC." Tours, lectures, shops and festivals followed suit, soaking up as much money and attention as they could before drying up. Meanwhile, Zandra ate canned potatoes and peanut butter for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The wounds in Zandra's heart never healed. With time, the depression and grief turned to hatred. Watching the businesses make money in her name, knowing Gene Carey slept well at night, grilled the feeling into every inch of her body.

She had nothing left in life but her reputation. And they said she was a psychic, a whore, a witch, an abortion fiend, then fuck it. She'd wrap herself in those things like a winter jacket. She'd be this town's undoing as much as it'd been to her.

Zandra spent her last dollar to purchase a storefront in downtown Stevens Point. A few shoplifted items from the thrift store later, she declared herself a psychic. Fueled by nothing other than hate for the clients walking through the door, she legally picked the pockets of Stevens Point's most willing dipshits.

Her vengeance gave her a heightened sense of awareness, the kind she could hone and exploit with her "readings." It only became sharper as the years rolled by.

And all the while, she collected information on her clients. On the people of Stevens Point. Personal details. Affairs. Money problems. Perversions. Things that would wipe the church-going smirk off their faces. She knew one day she'd take the knife out of her back and drag it up and down the city streets. She would be their reckoning.

And she'd start with Gene Carey.