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    The Dreamers
    The Dreamers
    The Dreamers
    Ebook52 pages39 minutes

    The Dreamers

    By Jack Bray

    ()

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    About this ebook

    “THE DREAMERS”
    It has happened to all of us. We see someone who looks familiar and it drives us crazy trying to remember where we had met them or who they were. Often they resemble celebrities or someone we knew well. What if these ‘look-alikes’ were actually the person we thought they were, but we were certain had died? What if everything around us, the world we live in, were all in our mind and we were experiencing it after we had died and everyone who looks familiar to us is also dead and we are in their minds?

    And we didn’t know it.

    In a little town in north Alabama, in a house built in the 1600s, a belief that we do indeed come back from the dead and experience another “life” remains as strong as it was when the German founders brought it to America. A small group of people who shared the burden of dreaming of their deaths gather to discuss their experiences. Calling themselves “ Dreamers” because they all have dreamed they already died, they are suddenly visited by someone who not only validates their feelings but startles them with even further news.

    “Dreamers” is the sequel to “Grove House” where it all began. It will leave the reader wondering whether everything described in these few pages is possible.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJack Bray
    Release dateFeb 14, 2015
    ISBN9781310759352
    The Dreamers
    Author

    Jack Bray

    After college, Jack had a successful thirty year career in broadcast television sales in New York City where he was born and raised, retiring as President of Blairsat, a satellite company he founded. His retirement years were spent as stock broker, teacher, publisher, lay minister and for the last 20 years, freelance writer.While living in Florida, feeling the need to respond to criticism of Catholicism, he began writing letters to the editor that led to column writing and web postings. After moving to Cullman, Alabama, his current home, he published his first book, a collection of those writings, "When My Catholic Buttons Were Pushed". That was followed by his debut novel, "The Good Sheep", a story of temptation suffered by a young man seeking the priesthood. The sequel, "Immortal Enemy", is a tale of the devil following that young man in his first year as a priest.His first novel of commercial fiction, "Grove House", is the story of a man who experiences the onset of dementia complicating his dealing with multiple suicides while living in a retirement home. His estranged daughter reunites and uncovers the mystery behind the suicides.He has just published “The Dreamers”, a short story sequel to “Grove House”.

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      Book preview

      The Dreamers - Jack Bray

      THE DREAMERS

      The Sequel to Grove House

      Jack Bray

      Copyright 2015 Jack Bray

      Published on Smashwords

      Formatted by eBooksMade4You

      * * *

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

      * * *

      dedicated to my children

      John-Richard and Norah

      * * *

      CONTENTS

      Prologue

      EMILIE

      Alyssa and Betty

      Manny and Tony

      Gabriella

      * * *

      "To sleep,

      perchance to dream,

      ay, there’s the rub"

      Hamlet (Act III, Scene 1)

      * * *

      Prologue

      The Grove House had quite a history.

      In 1643, on the 6th day of February.a date chiseled on a metal tablet in the main square,a tired band of travelers from a small village in Germany arrived in a beautiful clearing surrounded by three lakes among the mountains of northwestern Alabama. They looked at one another and said, Das ist sie--This is it. They named the spot after the oldest member of their group, and Denham was born. One of the first structures they built was Grove House, so called because it stood in a grove amid weeping willow trees.

      Over the years, as the town grew, a second floor was added, and it became a boarding house. That’s when the stories began. At first, they were merely rumors, but later became reported as actual events. Although it was a house for transients, it seemed no one ever left even when they died. No one ever saw funeral hearses. Or so the locals said. All the deaths were unusual. There were drownings in bathtubs, as well as in the pond, hangings in closets or from chandeliers.

      Two hundred years later, in the mid-nineteenth century, Grove House was bought by the local college and turned into a dormitory for women students. The sudden deaths seemed to end, but stories of ghosts began. It wasn’t long--five years, actually--before the college sold it to a local religious congregation who were dedicated to the care of elderly and who turned it into a retirement community. And for some unknown reason, the strangeness of the original Grove House returned.

      It seemed a woman appeared one day to see her father whom she had not seen in twenty years. When he moved into this retirement home, he began to experience the onset of Alzheimer’s. It got so bad he didn’t know what was real and what he was imagining. When she appeared, he was thrilled

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