Laura Crum - Going, Gone: A Gail McCarthy Mystery (Gail McCarthy Mysteries)

The auctioneers rhythm rattled in my brain. Repetitive, almost mechanistic, rapid-fire. Give me twenty, twenty, twenty, whos got twenty, twenty, twenty, do I have twenty, now twenty-five...

I sat in the bleachers, high in the shadowy barn above the brightly lit ring where a group of cattle milled. I could see the auctioneer; a slim, dark man in front of a microphone, his mouth constantly moving. The ring men watched the crowd, marking the bids.

What was I doing here?

No answer but the rattle of dirt clods on boards as the ring men moved cattle out the gate to the auctioneers Going, gone, sold at twenty cents.

I knew enough to know that the cattle had sold for twenty cents a pound. I still didnt know what I was doing here.

Sudden shrilling noise blasted through my mind; in another minute I was aware of sheets and blankets, my head on a pillow. A dream, just a dream, I told myself groggily. But what could it possibly mean? Why would I dream about a saleyard? Especially an unfamiliar auction. The place in my dream was no place Id ever been.... I was sure of it.

I closed my eyes as the alarm clock went into its snooze mode, and slowly managed to drift back to sleep. Only to wake moments later, or so it seemed, with my heart pounding.

Its a dream, I told myself, another dream. But somehow I couldnt shake the feeling of dread; it clung to me, as persistent as a toothache. Something was wrong. I could feel it.

The dream didnt seem so terrible when I reviewed it. Just a dark horse, running across a field, under a stormy sky. Not even a horse I recognized. A dark-colored horse, unknown to me. I had the sense that something, either me or the horse, was lost and terrified, and also the feeling of some sort of impending doom. I could not remember what led up to this. If the dream sequence had revealed more than this one scene, it was lost to me now.

Rolling over onto my side, I glanced at the sleeping forms of my husband and son, hearing their gentle, murmured breathing. Nothing wrong there. But something was wrong, somewhere. In this moment, I was sure of it.

I cast about in my mind for the meaning of the fleeing horse, for a clue as to the identity of that horse, an idea about what it might symbolize. Nothing arose. Just the feeling of dread, washing over me in waves, not diminishing.

Was it our trip? We were leaving today on vacation; was this some sort of premonition of disaster? A dark horse as a sign of warning?

Stop it, Gail, I urged myself. Forget it. It was just a dream. But even as I rolled over and tried to grab a few more minutes of sleep, I felt an uncomfortable certainty that the dream had meant something. What, I wasnt sure.