Further down the flanks of the volcano, two bright blades of light knifed through the darkness as a single car negotiated a lonely twisting stretch of mountain highway. Like a wounded animal, the car staggered and swerved erratically from one side of the road to the other. The driver shook his head and rolled down the window, trying to revive himself in the cool flood of air that washed over him.

On one of his many swerves into the opposite lane, the man flinched suddenly, certain he saw something in the headlights a few hundred yards ahead. Staring through the gloom, he saw an old lady stumbling along the side of the road. As he passed, the man's eyes were drawn to the woman's snow-colored tresses, which contrasted strangely with the leathery tones of her dark face--a face so deeply carved with wrinkles of age that it looked like antiquity itself. From severely recessed sockets within her skull, two small, close-set, intense eyes stared at the man as he went by.

He couldn't have merely imagined those piercing brown eyes--the way they burned into his consciousness as no dream ever could.