Chapter 1

Jon was a dreamer. In his dreams he found himself in another time or place. Once he experienced a vivid dream as a member of the French army fighting for Napoleon Bonaparte. In another dream he found himself in a kilt trudging across the barren plains of Scotland to fight for Bonny Prince Charlie. He dreamed he was in the trenches of Normandy fighting the Turks in World War I. When he woke up one day in a strange weird place his immediate reaction was, 'was he dreaming?'

Where was he? The bed he was on felt like stone. The covering over him was an animal skin and the smell that greeted his nostrils would rival any chicken coop. "Yuk!" he said, swiveling his head and eyes around and not daring to move his body.

The room around him was small, built mainly from stone. Small holes in the walls served as windows and a hanging animal skin served as the door. Amazed, he lifted his head slightly and gazed further around, seeing smoke lazily rising from the roughly hewn fireplace. The room was dim. The furniture was large, ugly and made of rough planks of wood. On the table plank were fish, bread, cups and plates.
Peering through the gloom Jon saw a person huddled in the corner beside the fire. The noise from the sleeping person was a loud snoring. The snores added to the confusion of sounds coming from outside. He heard a wind howling and the pounding of the sea. Crashes of noise came at intervals and echoed in his ears. 'The noise has to be waves bashing against rocks,' he thought. Glancing around, his eyes swiveling around in confusion, his mind screaming that he hated this dream.

It was more likened to a nightmare. He closed his eyes tight, hoping the whole scene would go away.

His eyes closed, holding his breath and counting to ten, he sensed a movement in the corner of the room. He heard a shuffling noise coming toward him. He lay tense and silent until curiosity got the better of him and his eyes fluttered open.
His eyes wide open, he expected to see his mother standing over him in his own room with his own things around him. Instead he stared into the eyes of a strange woman peering down on him. She smiled and Jon saw her teeth were brown and her two front teeth were missing, which coupled with her smile, gave her the gruesome awesome look of a witch. He stared in dismay, tears prickling his eyes and pangs of panic racing through his body.

"Ruhtra… Ruhtra. My boy," the strange person whispered down at Jon in an unfamiliar rasping voice. "You've come back to us. You've come back to us," she repeated dolefully. "We thought that you had gone forever."

The woman bent down over Jon and to his utter dismay she lifted up the top half of his body and crushed it tightly to her bosom. A feeling of nausea crept over him at the smell of this strange woman. It was not the nice perfumed smell of his mother but a smell that lingers in a fish and chip restaurant. Wrenching away from the woman's firm grip he fell back onto the bed.

'Perhaps,' his thoughts spiraling around, 'perhaps if he pretended to pass out he would have time to gather his wits.' He closed his eyes, willing his body to go limp.

'How long could he keep still without twitching?'

"Ruhtra, Ruhtra, come back, come back," the women wailed.

Jon felt the shudder of revulsion reach every nerve in his body. He must be dreaming. He had to be dreaming. 'How could he have gone to sleep in his own comfortable bed in his own room, in his own house with his television blaring, and then wake up to all this? No, no, this is not a dream, he thought fervently. It is a nightmare!'
He remained silent trying to sort out his emotions. If he remembered 'who' he really was, then perhaps if he thought hard enough he could remember how he managed to be in this weird place.

'Bike.... Bang... Crash!' were the noises going through his head as he lay straining his mind. 'Hang on! Hang on!' Visions scampered through his confused brain. In these visions he saw himself riding his bicycle, pedaling along a long street with many trees and houses. 'Wait, wait'…he paused, as memories flooded back to him.

Taking a deeper breath, his thoughts screeching at him loudly, he started to piece together more of the mystery that had been eluding him. "My name is Jon Hooper. My name is Jon Hooper!" he repeated softly. "I was spending the afternoon with my best friend Troy. We were playing war games and I had to leave because it was getting late and my Mom would start to worry. I was on my bike...and something happened...something hit me and I hurtled through the air...and then nothing." There was nothing left to remember.

After a minute of trying hard to add more, Jon could not. His mind went blank.