Sarah slept fitfully. Tossing and writhing about in sheets of cotton so damp that they squeaked with her erratic movement.

Her auburn hair caught in clumps of matted knots, twisted in the torment of her lucid dreams.

How could she be so real, so lifelike? Sarah could touch her, hear her, smell her.

Her mother, Maria.

It had been so long since her mother's name was mentioned by her father. Her memory had almost faded away. Now, however, the name had conjured up images held far in the recesses of Sarah's mind. They jostled for priority within her dream.

It was autumn, her father lit the fire in the living room. Little Sarah solemnly passed him sticks of kindling. A gentle hand brushed the top of her head. A wave of lavender draped over her as her mother came in the room.

Sweeping past Sarah in a long, flowered dress made of thick cotton, with warm dark green tights, Maria flopped down onto the sofa.

Her mother hugged her knees to herself, stretching the dress's material to form a tent with only her stockinged toes peeking out. Her hair in its custom plait lay along her crossed arms. She smiled and her eyes twinkled while she observed her small family on the hazy, chilly afternoon.

Sarah felt herself changing. Now, she was no longer the little girl of the memory but the adult version of herself - taking her own place.

Her father asked her to lean into the fireplace and blow air onto the kindling.

"It's the only way to get the fire going sweetheart."

He grinned back at his wife.

Had she been an adult, Sarah would have guessed the hidden meaning of the words between her parents, yet trapped in her waking dream of innocent childhood memories, it was lost on her. She bent closer to the sparks and breathed heavily.

The blaze escaped the confines of the fireplace and softly spread like a red winged angel around Sarah and her father, reaching out to encompass the whole scene, her mother included. Wrapped in this surreal coating of flame, with no heat and no sensation of danger, Maria began to sing.

"O filli et filiae
Rex caelastis, Rex gloriae
Morte surrexit hodie...."

The gentle rise and fall of the tune left Sarah calm and serene, swaying along with the musical lilt of her mother's voice. When she reached the chorus, it seemed as if other female singers were accompanying Maria, one almost soprano, one lower. They were harmonising.

"... Hallelujah, hallelujah..."

The beautiful serenade continued while Sarah remained caught in this tableaux, her father beside her. As the voices completed the chant in a crescendo, she was aware of Neil's change of emotions.

Looking up in slow motion at his face, she could see bubbles of tears collecting in the rims of his eyes, reflecting the brazen glow of the surrounding fire. His countenance transformed beneath her gaze; from a happy, rosy cheeked grin, to a much graver expression. The corner of his lips inched their way downwards as his cheek and jaw muscles clenched tighter into a set form. Lines furrowed his brow, creating a fierce frown of anger, turning all too quickly into a face possessed with rage.

She watched spellbound as he turned to face Maria, his arms stretching out towards her in a lazy freeze frame action.

The moment his fingers were inches away from his wife's face, the voices ceased as did Maria, the silence snapping the scene back into lifelike time.

The encircling flame backdrop roared into existence, the suffocating heat and searing power clawing around the family of three. Maria screamed. Neil fought desperately to put out the fire which had taken hold of her hair. He was yelling and choking at the same time.

"No! No, no. You can't have her. Take me. You said you'd take me."

Sarah's dreaming consciousness left her body, releasing her from any sensation of burning or physical pain. However, she stayed there within the dream, witnessing the final moments of her mother's life.

The fire drew in concentration into one area, building a shroud of fire to engulf Maria, sending Neil reeling backwards in an unconscious reaction for survival. He could do nothing while her body became a cocoon of ravaging flame standing alone in the centre of the room.

Sarah could hear her father's sobbing and pleading. Her mother's horrendous screeches of torture. The ferocity of the fire.

In what had only been a passing of a few seconds, the flames disappeared and Maria's blackened corpse fell to its knees. Yet somehow Maria's voice spoke again.

"You have to save her." The voice was dry, husky and much lower than Maria's had been in life. "Sarah is next."

Her father's face was now gripped with grief and anguish beyond belief. Sarah made a monumental effort to make sense of the fact that Maria was still able to speak. To understand the incredible event that had brought them to this moment. To perceive that some things in this world were without understanding, over and above the reach of reality.

Neil sank to his knees in front of his wife. Tears streaming down his heat-seared face.

Sarah's empathy for her father grew as she realised how the salt must sting his wounded flesh.

"Maria...?" His voice was hardly a whisper.

From within the burnt, flaky remains of her face, Maria's eye sockets steamed emptily as she addressed her husband.

"Sarah is next."

"No. I'll... I'll never let that happen. I swear Maria! Please just come back to me."

"Sarah is in danger. You must protect her. If they have her, they will never stop."

"I... I promise... Maria... Maria..."

His final pleading cries died out as the carcass crumbled to ash on the floor.

Stretching himself prone across the floorboards, Sarah's father struggled to delicately push together the sooty remains of bone and sinew, palming collections of crumbling heaps, sobbing to himself in despair.

Sarah was lost. She no longer felt attached to this dream. No longer wished to be a part of it.

She woke and sat up in her bed. She pulled her knees up and hugged them, feeling her hot tears burst and storm free down her cheeks. Her beautiful mother. Her lovely, wonderful, beautiful mother. What a horrible way to die. Such agony. Had it really happened this way? And her poor father so devastated. How could anyone survive that event?

Echos of half-overheard conversations and mumblings between her Grandfather and father, led her to believe that the dream she'd witnessed could well be the truth. Even through all her heart wrenching thoughts, one niggling idea from the memory of the dream just wouldn't let go.

Three voices. Why three voices?

And that song, she knew it instinctively. Knew the words. But now that she was awake they eluded her again.

Swiping the back of her hand across her face, she obliterated her tears and sighed heavily before getting out of bed.

She went to the bathroom on a call of nature and hoped that the change of scene and lightening of her bladder could help her to settle back to a much more pleasant dream of rest.

It's what Grandfather had always suggested when she'd arrived, crying and scared at the foot of his bed after her numerous childhood nightmares. Firstly he'd groaned at being disturbed, then rubbed his eyes, taken his glasses from the bedside table, put them on and peered at her sternly.

"Get up, go to the loo and have a glass of water. Then everything will have moved on in the world of dreams and you won't have to go through it again. Simple as that. Now clear off."

Sarah smirked to herself at the memory while she washed and dried her hands. Taking up the glass on the side of the sink, which she kept handy for just such an occasion, she let the cold water tap run for a while to clear any residue limescale.

Sipping from the glass, the cool liquid helped to clear the remaining feeling of heat from the fire still clinging to her. As she set down the glass the little round mirror squeaked on its hinges and gyrated its way downwards to face her. Sarah flicked her gaze to its reflection and caught the sight of her puffy, red eyes and worn-out expression. She yawned widely and pushed the mirror back upwards again.

With the mirror out of the way, the bathroom light reflected in the window. Sarah could see her reflection there too. But it wasn't quite right. She leaned closer, stretching her neck to see. Her hair was black. Her eyes were black. Her lips were black. It wasn't her! It was her mother.

Behind and to either side of her mother's face there were two other faces, blackened and indistinguishable. Their mouths were open. Large ovals of deep, red. Structured in a kind of clay like material, as if they had been formed from mud.

Sarah's breath quickened. The vein in her left temple throbbed with the onslaught of rushing blood. What had Grandfather always said? What was it? She couldn't bring it back quickly enough while her frazzled brain was trying to piece together the picture in the window. Come on, Loopy Laker. Get a damn grip, girl. What was it? Yes! That's it, you've got it."

Sarah quickly shut her eyes and covered her ears, then summoning up all her aggression she spat out the words at the image in the window.
"Sod off back to hell where you belong and don't come back!"

She kept her eyes screwed shut for another couple of minutes, then tentatively opened one to see if it had worked. Job done. The window only shone back the bathroom light and her own pale reflection.

Her legs felt weak and the past few days caught up with her in a sudden rush. She was exhausted. By the time her head hit the pillow Sarah was fast asleep. This time with no dream to disturb her rest.