I.

For seven nights in early December, before her alarm sounded at 5:30,   Dara dreamed the same dream: she sat in a blue canoe,  floating atop dirty water,  singing gospel hymns in a sweet angelic voice. Paddling, peering through murky water,  she saw the lettering of submerged street signs; the lettering  seemed to be in an occult alphabet.  In the dream, she sought her own street corner,  called out to her father, in whose presence she’d be  safe. At the dream’s end, Dara found herself staring into the ghastly wide-open eyes of a dead woman, her bluish gray corpse two feet under.  As Dara slowly awoke, she felt smothered in mud and fought to free herself from sticky sludge.
     On the seventh morning, a Monday, she sat buttering  sourdough toast  at the kitchen table and drinking  black bitter coffee;  utterly exhausted, she  thought of the dream, the dead woman’s image hanging in her  memory.    With the grandfather clock ticking loudly from another room,  she looked out the window at the shriveled plum tree that had died in her back yard last winter.   She noticed the rising sun  on the horizon,  its light pushing away  darkness.
    Tall, slender, and beautiful at twenty-five,  Dara  had long dark brown hair cascading down her back.  Her perfect face was childlike, and her brown eyes generally danced with a joy  that the dreams had stolen.   Raised Pentecostal in Wyoming,  Dara and her mother had fled her father’s Biblical wrath  three years ago and moved to Las Vegas,  where Dara now  worked as a waitress at Denny’s and attended  community college in North Las Vegas.   While she  missed him, Dara was glad that her father,  the assistant preacher at Streams of Living Water Church back home,  no longer looked over her shoulder,  breathing fires of judgment down her neck  when she acted contrary to the will of God.
     Slowly, wiping butter from her mouth, she arose from the table.   Coffee cup in hand, she walked into the small living room  to pick up her books piled on the TV.  It was finals week, and  indifferently she realized she would miss her Philosophy final if she didn’t hurry.
After taking one last sip,  she set her cup on top of the television, and attempting to shake images of the dream from her mind, walked out the front door and headed across the dead-grass front yard  to her primer-gray Chevrolet  parked along the street.

II.     It was 9:45. She knew had  failed her open-book Philosophy exam and now  stood outside 2408 waiting for Ron, who was  taking his final in International Business Relations.  A darkly  entrepreneurial sort who dabbled in the stock market and dealt in drugs and pornography,  Ron had been Dara’s boyfriend for  two years.  He had promised her that, once he got "free and clear," he would marry her in one of the quaint chapels on the Strip and then whisk her away to New Zealand, where they would live out their lives together.
      Standing in the hallway,  Dara watched the dream play in her mind,  felt herself sitting in the canoe and moving over  dark, murky waters.   Obsessed with these images, she had not studied the night before,  hadn’t had sex in a week,  and had forgotten her friends.
Struggling, she thought: Jesus God Almighty,   what am I going to do about these dreams? To whom can I turn?
     Almost magically, she saw in her mind’s eye the one person who would likely have an answer. Instantly, she recognized him:  Preacher Ray, the aging and blind black pastor of the  Church of Living Waters on Bruce Street.  Two months after moving to Vegas, Dara had complained of  severe stomach pains,  which the doctor attributed to stress over leaving her father.  Reluctantly, her mother had gone with her to a full-gospel church where Dara had met  Preacher Ray, and  as he had greeted her and her mother after service and placed  his big, callused hand on her shoulder,  Dara felt for the first time as if she had been touched by God.   Dara fondly remembered meeting  in the tiny church: the congregation consisted of people of all colors and classes,  singing hearts out, hands raised in worship.  Christmas service had been wonderful and brought to mind a painting she had once done of a choir of angels.
      Dreaming of Christmas service, she heard a still small voice telling her to see Pastor Ray.
     "So what do I do about Ron?" she  asked aloud, as if carrying on an animated dialogue with someone present.  Suddenly she realized that other students were walking down the hall,  several looking at her as if she was crazy. She recognized one heavy-set woman from anthropology class, whose final was scheduled for tomorrow, and Dara shrugged, laughed, and said to her, "Hearing voices again."
     As the large woman nervously smiled and continued walking,  Dara decided  it was time to find Pastor Ray.  For an instant, she thought of  going  into the classroom and telling Ron  that she had to leave, but the urgent call prompted her to leave the building and head for her car.

III.
Fifteen minutes later, she pulled into the church’s empty parking lot. She noticed  the church’s front door was open and saw the manger scene in the front yard, reminding her of the Christmases that she had spent in Wyoming when she was a little girl and of her father, a stern man who did not tolerate her mother’s drinking.
    Desperate for wisdom, Dara stumbled out of her car and slammed the door,  walked to the church entrance, hesitated, thought of turning around, getting back into her car, and driving away when she felt her heart insisting that she stay.
     Standing  in the church doorway,  looking down the hall, she saw an office to her right.  The office door was open, papers rustling inside.
Her heart in her mouth, she called, "Pastor Ray? You in there? Pastor?"
    She waited, and the rustling stopped. Then a deep voice spoke: "Come in, sister.  Been a while since I saw you and your mother." She was stunned that anyone in this city, let alone a preacher, would remember her at all. Over the years, particularly since moving to Vegas, she had come to regard herself as not particularly significant.
     Dara moved down the hall, stopping  outside the office.  Seated behind a dark oaken desk, window shades pulled but the corner lamp on, was Pastor Ray, a tall  thin man with thick graying hair.  Though his eyes were closed, she  sensed that he was examining her soul.
     "You remember me?" she asked.  "It’s been awhile.  Must be an awful small congregation."
     "Not small," said the  preacher, "just intimate. Intimate.   The Lord binds all his children to Him, and if I can help it I try to remember everyone He sends."  He cleared his throat and smiled.
"’Though I do admit it’s getting tougher with the years as I  get older."
     Touched by the soft voice and  warm smile,  Dara  relaxed, walked into the office, and sat in the high-backed wooden chair facing the preacher.
     "Dara, isn’t it?" he asked.
     "Yes, that’s it," she softly spoke.
     "Something is upsetting you," he said.
     "Yes," she replied.  "Yeah, it’s some dreams. I’ve been having them for a week."
     The Preacher nodded in silent encouragement.
     Dara continued.  "Funny thing. I was standing in hall at the college a little while ago, asking myself what to do about these dreams. It was like a light came on, and I saw your face. So here I am."
     After Dara described the dream,  the preacher  leaned back in his wooden chair and looked up at a point in the ceiling.   She wondered if he were praying, concluded he could be doing nothing else,  and  asked, "So, what does the dream mean?"
     "Maybe nothing," Preacher Ray ventured. The lamp in the corner cast a glow around the preacher.
     "Maybe not," said Dara.  "Only in the Bible, aren’t dreams one way God speaks to people?"
     Pastor Ray nodded his head. Then he began.  "Dara, I think the waters represent a period of tribulation.  You know, being tested. Seems to be a time of testing for you.  You’re floating, and everything seems underwater. You can’t clearly read the signs. You’re seeking direction." The preacher paused, and Dara could feel him directing his thoughts to her.
    So far,  the preacher made sense. Dara studied the old man, bathed in the glow of the lamp, and when he still said nothing, Dara spoke: "And what about the body at the end of the dream?"
The preacher breathed deeply,  and  Dara got the sense of the earth suddenly stopping on its axis.
     "Ah, yes," he said, gripping the sides of his chair, "the body in the water—well, that has to be you, doesn’t it?"
    Dara froze as if she had just read an announcement of her own death.
    The preacher continued,  urgent: "Child, please, please,  stay away from the trouble.   Don’t you go near it. This very night, the night your soul may be tested, do not go near it. "
    Somehow, she thought, this preacher has hit the target.  The preacher stopped.   Heart pounding wildly, Dara knew that her life  depended upon doing what the preacher said—and she knew that her heart would struggle against the man’s words.
    Preacher Ray continued:   "You need to break away from whoever leads you  wrong. This very night."
     These words, thought Dara, are what my father would proclaim: repent and please God. Growing up, she’d heard the message a hundred times and, as a teenager, had gotten tired of it.   She thought about her past four months with Ron: the parties, the drugs, the night clubs, the prostitution and pornography.  And she knew she had no intention of turning away from these things. These things, she assured herself, are temporary.
    As she eyed the preacher, she recalled  a particularly dark incident.  Several weeks before, she had been with Ron in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Las Vegas when a group of  men had strode into the dining room and  dragged Ron  into the back  parking lot. She had followed, screaming for them to leave her boyfriend alone.  She had watched as,  in a reign of fists, they had bloodied Ron, forced him to the pavement where they had kicked him in the head, back, and stomach.
They may  have beaten him to death if three patrol cars had not arrived.  She learned later that  the  men had been after Ron for a long time and considered him untrustworthy in his dealings, and she wondered now if, in visiting the preacher, she was betraying her boyfriend.
     Dara  stood.  "You may be right, Pastor," she said.  Yes, she had wanted the dream explained; but Ray had told her more than she wanted to hear and she now wanted to put as much space between her and the blind man as possible.
    Dara’s mind was made up.  Slowly backing out the door and away from the preacher,  Dara  said,   "Thank you, Pastor."
     "Dara," Ray said, slowly rising from his chair to a height well over six feet, "you need to stay.  We should pray. You must not do this thing."
      But Dara was gone, running across the grass and past the manger scene with Mary and Joseph leaning over the baby Jesus.    After she sped out of the parking lot, she pushed the car up to seventy and turned on her favorite rock station full blast.

IV.
 That evening, after she had told Ron about her meeting with the preacher and after he had ridiculed her for listening to a blind man, the worm turned.    Dressed for an evening of fun, Dara and Ron were to meet some of Ron’s "associates"  at a  Mexican  restaurant in the industrial part of town. It was the coldest night of the year, and Dara shivered as she stepped out of the car and headed to the restaurant’s entrance, hand-in-hand with Ron.
     "This is Saul’s place," Ron said, referring not to the owner of the restaurant but to the leader of the group, "and Saul is the man now."
     "Who’s Saul?" she asked.
     "You’ll see," Ron dryly responded, opening the door to the restaurant and allowing Dara to precede him.
    As she and Ron  headed for a table in the back, Ron assured her that the people she would meet were now friends; yet when she saw them huddled at a table far in the back,  wrapped in cigarette smoke,   Dara remembered that  two of them, both husky men with long  red hair and beards to match, had been among those who had beaten Ron.  Too, though she had never met him,  she  recognized Saul, a small, bespectacled man with thinning slicked-back black hair, thin sideburns and mustache, and a blazing red sports jacket.  Her blood turned to ice as Saul looked up at her and, through  swirling smoke, greeted her with, "How are you, sweet  plum?"
    Chilled, Dara answered, "Fine."
     She thought of her meeting with Preacher Ray and then forced her thoughts onto  Ron.   Dara  remained silent during the meal, having learned  that it was better not to interrupt Ron when he was talking business.
     Outside the restaurant, after dinner,   Ron said that they needed to drive to  Lake Mead.  "Gotta meet  the friends at Lake Mead and do a little business," he said, once they were in the car.
     "These guys?" she asked, referring to the group they had just eaten with.
     "Some.  Plus others," Ron said, backing his car out of a parking spot.
     "Babe, these aren’t your friends," Dara replied.  "A couple of those guys nearly killed you when we went to that restaurant a few weeks back."
     Ron hit the brakes hard and came to a sudden stop just before the street.  He turned to  Dara. "Yeah," he snapped, setting his jaw and peering through the dirty windshield.  "But things change when you’re doing business. Business is  business."
     Ron gunned the car and shot out into traffic, barely missing a station wagon full of children.
     "Jesus," she said, "let it go. I say we don’t go to the lake."
She  looked out her passenger window at the bright lights of the Strip. She consoled herself with the thought that New Year’s on the Strip was going to be a blast this year.
     "And I say it’s none of your fucking business what I do," Ron said.   "That was then, babe. Weeks ago. It’s over."   Dara decided to drop the issue. Going along for the ride was always easier.
    Two hours later,  Ron and Dara reached the rendezvous, a beach on the north side of Lake Mead.  As Ron’s car pulled off the two lane road and next to a white van in the small parking lot, Dara’s heart nearly jumped out of her body.  The van, a battered  GMC, had a blue canoe painted on its side panel.  In the picture, seated in the canoe was a young woman who reminded Dara of herself.
    When Dara and Ron climbed out of the car and into the cold, the doors to the van opened, and eight people piled out, Saul among them. She noticed that Saul moved close to the ground, slightly hunched, his face darting left and right. He reminded her of a lizard.
    She  turned and observed, to her right,  Ron  facing eight men carrying crowbars, baseball bat, and rope.  The men silently glared at him. No words were exchanged.
    Her mouth and jaw were too numb for her to speak, and she watched in silent terror as three of the men stepped forward and seized Ron, bearing him to the ground in a flurry of fists and feet, using the big rope to ties his hands and legs.  Frozen, she could only observe as Ron’s bound body wriggled on the ground, as Ron wept, bled,  and pleaded for mercy.  She  watched as first one, then another of the men approached Ron, striking his head and body again and again in dull whacking thuds. Wondering if she were dreaming, she saw Ron’s skull cave in and  asked herself how the face grafted to the skull could belong to the man she had slept with, the man she had waited for this morning, the man who had promised to marry her.   Finally, the  beating stopped, Ron’s body a bent and twisted mass of broken and dislocated bones.
Please, dear God, Dara thought to herself as the men silently gathered around the body.
    Then Saul turned to her and said, "Good evening, delicious plum."    Buffeted suddenly by a powerful lake wind, Dara turned and sprinted down the beach. Moving on instinct, Dara ran like the wind and was certain she had left the men behind when she heard the steady and pounding advance of footsteps behind her.
    Before she could fully turn to defend herself, she felt her arms seized by large hands. "Got a Christmas present for you," the voice said, guttural.  Pain coursed through her as she felt herself dragged into the  December waters    Trying to find  strength to fight her captor, she forced a scream, heard only a weak shrieking, wondered why she could not yell as she felt herself being forced face-up under water, fighting for one final breath.  She could see through a watery film  the face of the tall bearded man with short-cropped hair and a red sweater.
Frantically, she struggled to emerge, finally losing strength as her killer mouthed the words "Merry Christmas" and then  relinquishing life as the chilling  water poured through her nose and  her mouth, filling her lungs and her stomach.  She  sensed black death descending gently upon her like a warm cloak.
    Jesus, help me,  she pleaded in her mind as, in a flickering, she felt herself simultaneously pushed into muddy sludge and raised out of her body, realized that she hung suspended over the tall man who was holding her body under the water.  At that instant, slowly ascending, she could see Preacher Ray kneeling before the cross in the front of the church, praying for her, and felt herself lifted up as if  by gentle wings.
    Rising, floating, the darkness of the night slowly giving way to a light that seemed to have no source, she saw the other men gathered on the shore, saying something occult-sounding to the one who had held her under water.   Saul stood in the middle of the group,  pointing and yelling instructions at her killer, and saw in the distance, next to the van with the painting of the blue canoe, the twisted body of the man who had promised, once he got free and clear, to marry her and take her away to a place where no one could ever harm them.