Never Tell Your Dream

NEVER TELL YOUR DREAM

A Horror Novel by Award-Winning Author Jerrimiah Stonecastle

Biloxi, Mississippi. 1957.

Eleven-year-old Joshua Brown wakes to the smell of bacon, eggs, and grits-and a dream he cannot wait to tell.

At the breakfast table, with his sisters Latoya and Shanice and his thirteen-year-old brother Malcom already eating, Joshua blurts out that he dreamed his father met a rich man who gave him a great deal of money.

Reverend Xavier Brown nearly comes out of his chair.

"Never tell your dream before you eat!"

Joshua has never heard the warning before. His mother, Louise, dismisses it for what she believes it is-an old superstition.

"Christians don't believe in superstitions. We believe in God."

Xavier disagrees.

Some superstitions, he tells her, are based in fact.

"So are curses," Louise answers. "And those are in the Bible."

By the following day, Louise Brown will begin questioning everything she believes.

Xavier owns a struggling automobile repair shop on the Black side of Biloxi, where keeping the doors open has become almost as difficult as surviving the racism surrounding them. Then wealthy white businessman Warren Wilson's Bentley breaks down, and Xavier tows it to his shop.

He repairs the automobile quickly.

He charges a fair price.

And Warren Wilson is impressed.

Tired of white mechanics keeping his vehicles for weeks and charging outrageous prices, Wilson promises to send his friends to Xavier instead. He understands what crossing the racial line could mean in Mississippi, so the wealthy customers quietly send their Black drivers.

Soon Xavier's failing shop is failing no more.

Money comes in.

Customers line up.

The Brown family begins prospering.

And somewhere else in Biloxi, another repair shop begins dying.

Its owners know exactly whom they blame.

They decide the competition must be eliminated.

But Joshua Brown is dreaming again.

Only now his dreams are no longer simply predicting what will happen.

They are warning him.

Protecting him.

Showing him things no eleven-year-old boy should ever see.

And somewhere between sleep and waking, something has begun answering back.

Because Joshua's dreams may not be coming from Heaven.

And when the people hunting his family finally make their move, they will discover that the Brown family is no longer the most dangerous thing standing in their way.

Some dreams predict the future.

Some dreams protect you from it.

And some dreams should never be spoken before breakfast.

Never Tell Your Dream.

Because once Hell hears you-

it may answer.