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Life was good. She had been married for four years to a man the newspaper had recently called the 'wonder boy' of commercial real estate in the city. There were rounds of dinner parties, eating in the cities' best restaurants, shopping for designer clothes and shoes and numerous accessories, working out in the most exclusive gym with other top executives' wives, massages, manicures, pedicures, two hundred dollar haircuts, and of course, sojourns with her husband to the best travel destinations his money could buy.

And then It started. The dreams. Hundreds of tornadoes, whirling and churning, all headed for her. These dreams lasted about three months, and they occurred once a week. Each dream would wake her, and she would shiver, scared and sitting up, next to her peacefully sleeping husband. The dreams left, and she was relieved. Then one day she and her husband paid a Sunday luncheon visit to his parents, who lived in a beautiful and spacious high-rise apartment, several stories up. The day was gorgeous, one of those autumn days when the air itself sparkles in sunshine, and the breeze gives a premonition of the North wind, yet still warms the skin. One minute she was fine, as they sat in the living room, chatting with her in-laws, who she actually liked, and then suddenly it gripped her. The anxiety. A feeling of leaving her body and not wanting to, and being terrified that the others would see it. She felt like she was going crazy. "This is just an anxiety attack, she told herself, as she struggled to act as normally as possible. She did a good job, because no one noticed or saw any sign of her extreme discomfort. At one point she thought she would scream out, so she rose, walked to the window, and looked down. Twenty-four stories below, cars moved along the Drive, but the lake was the main view, and whitecaps moved rhythmically on top of the water, which was a deep purple in the afternoon sunlight. She kept her back to them all and continued looking out at the lake, and soon she calmed. She turned, and her husband gave her the "look, which meant he'd had enough of his parents. Saying good-bye, they left, retrieved the car parked in the building's garage, and drove the short distance back to their own spacious, high-storied high rise apartment.

As soon as they pulled into their own garage, the attendant stopped them and said, "Hello Sir and Missus. You'll be wanting to take the back elevator. We had a jumper today. They're taking her body away right now, out in front. She was startled before the horror of what the man had said sunk in. They did go up the back elevator, and by the time they'd walked down the hall and reached the apartment, her husband was already talking about his big deal that he would be closing the next day. His voice soothed her, and the sense of normalcy had returned by the time they went inside. Later that evening her husband went for his usual run, leaving her alone. Their apartment had a balcony, and she loved to walk out on it when he went for his runs, and she would watch him, far below. He had just left, and she sat on the sofa that faced the balcony. She started to stand, and that's when the world shifted. She immediately sat down. She knew with certainty that if she went out on the balcony she would jump off.

She never told anyone about this strange compulsion to want to walk out, climb up on the railing, and jump off. If anything, it made her feel that there was some kind of a weakness in her mind, and after all, she came from a family that valued happiness above all else. So time went on, and she kept the secret to herself.

The dinner parties, beauty treatments, super chic workouts and travels continued, until one day she found that she was pregnant. This made her very happy, as it did her husband, and the pregnancy was very easy and joyful, and she completely forgot about her secret. She was told by her elders as well as her husband that she had everything anyone could possibly want in life, and she wholeheartedly believed them. She didn't seem to notice that her friends were no longer around.

Their son was born one week early with a full head of black hair. When the delivery room nurse put him on her chest she felt the warmth and movement of his tiny body, and she was filled with the most intense love, and she wept with pure joy. She was able to forget that her husband had waited outside during the birth. She was able to forget that her mother, who had come to the hospital with the rest of the grandparents, had said she looked like a "washerwoman with that cap on as she was being wheeled on a gurney toward the delivery room.

The baby was exquisite, and she became immersed in her motherhood. She carried the baby with her almost everywhere. When he cried, it was like a knife slicing the backs of her legs, and when he made a sound in the next room, she would run and see if he was all right. Her husband told her that he was jealous of their son, and she just laughed, but never before had she experienced love like this.

In the summer when the baby was twenty months old, they went on a trip to the dunes on the other side of the lake. The first night in their rented cottage, she was awakened by a thunderstorm. Storms always rolled over the lake with a great power, and she was accustomed to this, but this night the wind and the rush of rain brought with it lightening so close that it was deafening. The father and the little son somehow slept through the crashing and booming, but she lay awake, electrified with wonder, and a voice inside her said, "The child coming will have the power of this storm. She marveled at the certainty of the voice, and she knew she was pregnant.

He was now even more successful than he had been a few years earlier, and he told her that he wanted them to buy a home in the choicest suburb of the city. The house she found was a six bedroom Colonial on a tree lined street with other houses filled with young, successful families. The older boy's little brother was born by Caesarean Section, and three weeks later, with a new nanny in tow, the family of four moved into the new house.

They were sitting in the new family room, along with both of their mothers, when the nanny came in with the baby, handed him to his paternal grandmother, and said she was quitting. In disbelief they asked her why, but she wouldn't give any explanation. This nanny was in a rush to get out of the house. The mothers clucked and bustled and made light of it, and were very cheerful. She sat in a large, new leather recliner and tried to settle into it, so that she could hold the new baby, but she felt a tendril of fear snaking around her ribs, tightening her chest, and her solar plexus began to ache. And then It happened again.

She felt like she was leaving her body, only this time it was more intense than it had ever been. She looked up at the ceiling and it was rising, and she looked at the walls and they were rising also, and then she saw that the room was getting narrower and narrower and taller and taller.

(NOTE: The following happens much later; don't know yet what happens in between.)

The crows started to come in the early fall. Crows were common in that part of the world, so not much thought was given to it, at first. She would back out of the garage in her car to go to the gym for her morning workout, and as she turned to move forward, she would see them perched on the roof, just above the ceiling of the master bedroom. Just above where she slept. As that particular fall progressed, she became very tired, so tired that she no longer got up with her husband in the early morning. She no longer got up with her boys to get them ready for school. The oldest was in first grade, and the youngest was in kindergarten. She started giving the housekeeper more and more responsibilities with the boys.

Then one morning the phone roused her from a heavy sleep. She answered, and her husband's voice said from his car phone, "They're all over the roof. Hundreds of them. You've got to get up and take a look." She got up reluctantly, threw on a jogging suit, and went outside. He was right, there were hundreds of birds cawing and flapping and pecking up on the roof, but this time they covered the entire house. Her next door neighbor came outside and called across the dense bushes that separated the houses, "Hi there! Well this is unusual. Must be something's up with the weather. He spoke loudly, to compete with the din of the crows. The neighbor stood there, looking over the bushes at her. "Yes, was all she could muster. It was getting harder and harder these days to have long conversations with anyone other than her husband. The man smiled politely, and went around the back of his house, disappearing through a gate that led to a yard.

She turned back to look up at her roof, but something caught her eye. It was the large boulder-sized piece of pink quartz that the previous neighbors had left in the front yard, near the side door garage. She had never given it much thought, but now it appeared to shimmer and vibrate in the morning sun. She looked up at the leaves of the oak tree that grew tall and solid in the middle of the front yard. She thought, "Why aren't there any birds in the tree? Looking back at the house, she noticed that the slatted boards it was constructed of which were normally light gray, had now taken on the rose cast of the quartz. She looked over at the large crystal and there was a single, large crow sitting perfectly still on top of it, with it's head cocked to one side. It was calmly looking directly into her eyes. She drew a sharp intake of breath, but otherwise didn't move. She realized with a pang that the hordes of crows on the roof had quieted down, and an electrical sensation moved outward from her stomach to her skin. She started to shiver and simultaneously felt like she was in a furnace.

Suddenly, the crow on the quartz began to caw and flap its wings. Still looking into her eyes, it raised up and slowly soared higher and higher, cawing all the while. In unison, the rest of the birds left the rooftop, and the sound was deafening as they followed their brother, disappearing finally over the roofs of other houses.

(To be continued)