Рик Янси (Rik Yansi)Rick Yancey
THE 5TH WAVE
For Sandy,
whose dreams inspire
and whose love endures
IF ALIENS EVER VISIT US, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.
—Stephen Hawking
THERE WILL BE NO AWAKENING.
The sleeping woman will feel nothing the next morning, only a vague sense of unease and the unshakable feeling that someone is watching her. Her anxiety will fade in less than a day and will soon be forgotten.
The memory of the dream will linger a little longer.
In her dream, a large owl perches outside the window, staring at her through the glass with huge, white-rimmed eyes.
She will not awaken. Neither will her husband beside her. The shadow falling over them will not disturb their sleep. And what the shadow has come for—the baby within the sleeping woman—will feel nothing. The intrusion breaks no skin, violates not a single cell of her or the baby’s body.
It is over in less than a minute. The shadow withdraws.
Now it is only the man, the woman, the baby inside her, and the intruder inside the baby, sleeping.
The woman and man will awaken in the morning, the baby a few months later when he is born.
The intruder inside him will sleep on and not wake for several years, when the unease of the child’s mother and the memory of that dream have long since faded.
Five years later, at a visit to the zoo with her child, the woman will see an owl identical to the one in the dream. Seeing the owl is unsettling for reasons she cannot understand.
She is not the first to dream of owls in the dark.
She will not be the last.