A successful artist who paints the recurring nightmares of a scarred childhood not only learns that her visions are being intensified by a malignant tumor in her brain, but also that they contain details involving the investigation of a missing child. Her decision to forgo the surgery that could save her life in order to help save that of the missing girl places everyone involved on a collision course with the past that has haunted her.

SYNOPSIS:

Zoe Sullivan is a successful artist who uses the nightmares of an abused childhood as the inspiration for her paintings. Within these dreams has always been the red-headed child of her memories. And they have always been dreams. That is until they start to become conscious visions while she is awake, including images she doesn’t remember, and children who don’t feel like herself, though they are all red-haired girls. Unbeknown to Zoe, detective Sal Dooley and his partner Crespin Romero are on the case of a missing child, abducted at a zoo, as seen through the opening scene of Zoe’s nightmare. Unfortunately, Sal and Romero are unable save the missing girl in time and her body is discovered in a pond. Zoe sees the news report and connects the details to those she has seen in her visions and depicted in her paintings. She goes to the police, but is quickly dismissed. Thinking she is crazy being beside the point, Sal ignores her logically on the grounds of not having any novel information.

On the way home from the precinct, Zoe has a particularly strong vision and accompanying seizure, which lands her in the hospital. Here she learns that her visions are being intensified by a malignant tumor in her brain, one which needs to be removed as soon as possible. Zoe’s partner, Alison, of course wants her to have the surgery, but Zoe fears losing her artistic inspiration. During an MRI, Zoe has a startling vision of another little red-haired girl. She returns to the precinct to warn the detective of another missing girl, but again she is ignored, this time being shown the extensive police record for Alison. But when another girl does go missing, according to the details Zoe provided, Sal arrests Zoe, moments before her surgery, as the prime suspect. Through her questioning and subsequent visions, a web of connections is formed between Zoe, the missing girls, and another suspect recently released from custody. Zoe is released as well but refuses to have the surgery feeling that her visions are the best chance of finding the girl. What Zoe doesn’t know is that she will be found first, by a strange figure that has been watching her all along, Francis Lafferty, a man Sal and Romero are led to by working the case, not knowing that Zoe is being held in his basement, along with the other missing girl. During their visit, Sal secretly snaps a photo of Francis in a large antique chair, one described earlier by Zoe. He takes the photo to Zoe’s apartment and shows it to Alison. She doesn’t recognize the chair, but she does recognize Francis… Zoe’s twin brother who sexually abused her as a child.

The trio return to Francis’s house, where Sal finds the missing girl, alive but barely. Francis and Zoe are gone, but Alison knows where to. Zoe has nearly succumbed to the tumor, incapacitated and dying, awakening in the Supernal Emptiness, a world between this one and the next. Francis is shot while trying to escape, which sends him to the Supernal Emptiness as well. Here, Zoe fights a fantastic battle of the mind and will with Francis. She eventually destroys him and wakes in bed next to Alison. Surrounding her apartment are paintings of a new style, softer and brighter, but still beautiful and amazing.