I don't understand why she led me, skipping and holding my hand, into a room of monsters…

The little girl was a ghost in my dream. Laughing on the lawn beneath a lazy sun, she swung her long gold hair and said, come with me.

Inside a rundown house she brought me to a wall where pictures hung and dust covered pretty faces. She was somewhere caught in those frames, alive, smiling, and younger. I looked down at her and she was angry. I looked at the photos again, afraid.

A smiling dusty mouth yawned wide and teeth shot from the picture. I did not have a chance to force myself to look at the little girl again before I woke.

Are dreams just half-formed thoughts adrift in our heads?

The little girl was with me in the woods today when I decided -- half way past the sweating stones beneath hemlocks -- that the mood was off. I imagined shadows filled with watchers waiting to reach out from the dust. Looking at Hershey sniff around for a ball was no help, so I relied on something a trainer had said about Lily: if you're in the woods with her and her hair stands up and she barks at something, get out of there. If you can't keep this dog, we would have no trouble at all placing her in a home. These are good, protective dogs.

I looked down at Lily for reassurance and continued up the hill, across a fallen tree trunk, and through low-growing wild blueberry bushes budding with fruit.