“For real, you guys,” I said. “Focus.”
“Take a chill pill, we were just looking up faucet,” Twyla said. “And, lookee here—it symbolizes, like, emotions. And a dripping faucet is . . . Oooo, check it out—sexual problems!”
“Sounds ’bout right to me,” Randy said. “Didn’t ya say Tim’s—”
“Faucet was dripping?” Twyla finished.
“Yeah, I did,” I said as they went back to giggling over things like feces.
Louis steered us right again. “How about that white room Tim was in?”
“It symbolizes isolation?” Amanda Lee said. “And the blood on the walls . . . I think that’s just a pretty clear warning in general.”
“Or,” Louis said, “again it could be something very literal with Tim. There will be bloodshed.”
“Shit,” I said. Where were the unicorns and puppy dogs I’d wanted? “And we haven’t even gotten to the middle part of the dream. One of the worst things was when he was watching his neighbor through the window. I remember he ate breath mints, just like he did yesterday in the backyard. Actually, there were a lot of callbacks to what happened yesterday as I watched him, like when Nichelle saw him looking through the fence and said, ‘What’re you doing back there?’”
“What bothers me, too,” Amanda Lee said, “was that Dream Neighbor turned into Heidi.”
I hesitated, not wanting to say it. But I did.
“This was almost like a fantasy mixed with a dream, you know?”
“His desires could very well be on display for us,” Amanda Lee said. “But do you think he’s truly attracted to Heidi? Or is she a symbol, as well?”
Louis stuffed his hands into his pockets again. “Either way, it seems to me that he has a real yen for brunettes. Mis— Jensen, you said that, during your empathy reading, his thoughts showed you that he was watching a neighbor down the street, too.”
“Another brunette,” I said. “And what was interesting was that, when this Dream Heidi was inviting him to come to her during the, uh . . .”
“The part of the dream in which the neighbor was masturbating,” Amanda Lee said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah.” Wasn’t she just a regular Dr. Ruth with the sex talk? “During that portion, Tim started growing taller.”
Twyla laughed over at the computer. “You know what that reminds me of?”
“Don’t even say boner,” I told her.
“Naw!” She glanced at me like I was a freak. “I’m talking about Alice in Wonderland.”
I believe she shocked us all by being more than relevant twice in one day.
Louis was nerding out more than usual now, his words fast and passionate. “Twyla’s right. The breath mint’s like one of those pills Alice took to grow taller or shorter.”
Amanda Lee had understood the Wonderland subtext even without Louis’ help. “The imagery’s interesting, but I think this has more to do with Tim perhaps having some issues with being a small man. He wishes he were bigger. He might even have an easier time impressing the ladies if he were.”
“Here’s another angle,” I said. “What if he’s a real Disney fan and the imagery is coming from that? Remember the collection in their family room—the chopsticks and figurines and all that? I know this sounds weird, but what if they’re not just Nichelle’s, or even hers at all? What if Tim’s got fairy tales on the brain?”
Amanda Lee said, “Even if he’s merely aware of the collection, the images could have made their way into his head.”
Twyla performed a very unsubtle fake yawn. But she still looked proud that she’d contributed beyond the fart trivia.
Louis was running on all cylinders. “How about the part in the woods?”
Amanda Lee gave me a glance, like she was checking up on my state of being. Forests were such a touchy subject around me.
“Again,” she said carefully, “the woods could represent Tim’s subconscious.” She turned to me. “Did you get the feeling he was lost there?”
“Not really. He was chasing that scream. And the woman sounded like she was in pain. And she was begging.”
“Because if he were lost, that might indicate he’s trying to find a new direction in his life. Also, it’s interesting that he was watching all this on a television, distant from the action.”
I said, “He likes to watch, doesn’t he?”
“If you ask me,” Louis said, “we’re certainly seeing some fantasies here, just like you all said. Before falling asleep, he’d been watching TV with all that . . .” He searched for a word.
“Porn,” Amanda Lee provided.
“Thank you. Yes.” Louis nodded. “With the pornography on it. So that made its way into his dream, too.”
I said, “So chasing the scream through the woods? Is that a form of porn?” Hell, I’d seen some of the gnarly scary movies they put out these days. Total horror porn.
Amanda Lee rested a hand near her throat. “That’s rather dark, Jensen.”
“But a possibility? He’s watching very bad things, and he feels guilty about it. That’s why his mother’s voice was scolding him. Could it be that he doesn’t want to displease her with these fantasies?”
“And, at the same time, displease Nichelle?” Amanda Lee asked. “There’s the approval we were talking about. He needs those dominant women in his life to give their blessing, but he knows he won’t get it, and it’s making him very angry at them.”
A thought blasted me. “Whoa.”
Everyone waited.
“Amanda Lee, did you see on the computer if his mom’s still alive?”
“There are a few pictures on Facebook and he mentions her in the present tense a few times. Why?”
“I wondered if he’d . . . you know. Killed her.”
While everyone stared, Twyla snorted. “How Norman Bates.”
Okay, so it’d been far-fetched. “I wish we could just get him to go to a good shrink.”
But I didn’t think that was our answer. I didn’t know when Tim had started up with these fantasy dreams, but I had the feeling it was back when he was a boy playing with toys. That’s a long time for someone to be thinking in these terms, and I’m sure the imagery and anger had been building and building year after year.
So when was the right time for us to slay monsters like the one I’d seen in him tonight, even if he was only a monster down deep?
Louis started flowing to the computer to see what Randy and Twyla were chuckling about now, but as soon as he got near, Twyla started bitching at him because the screen was extra fuzzy with all the ghosts around.
“Guys,” I said. “How about giving the computer up to Louis for a while so he can go further with his theories?”
But Amanda Lee came to the rescue. She stood and went to some bookshelves, pulling down a tome and setting it on a table. “Louis, I brought my dream interpretation book over here, since this is where we’re doing most of our work, anyway. I can turn the pages as you like.”
“Thank you, Mi— Amanda Lee.”
“You’re very welcome.”
They sat down to work, and it was pretty odd to be in between the kook squad on my right, with their appreciation of the symbolic uses of burp, and Team Serious on my left, who was diligently studying in silence.
I moved away from my battery, suddenly feeling useless. I’d been going since yesterday morning, and it’d probably be a good idea to just float now, taking everything in, letting all this information gel.
But the stimulation only made me realize that sitting around really sucked. I wished ghosts could shut down and go to sleep so that awful boredom would never creep in.
Maybe I shouldn’t have put my desires out into the world like that, because it was as if the world certainly heard it by sending a sharp rap on the door.
“Gawd!” Twyla said. “If those are lookiloo ghosts, I’m gonna, like, throttle them.”
For once, I’d take Twyla up on that.
I flew to the door. “Who is it?”<
br />
“Cassie!”
Twyla’s good ghost friend. She knew she could slip under the door to enter, but all my Boo World buds respected Amanda Lee, and I guessed me, too much to just zip through a crack between the door and floor. Even Cassie, who hadn’t been around all that much.
Once identified, though, she came whizzing through, gathering into full form on our side, light ponytail, seventies paisley-patterned blouse and flare-bottom polyester pants, pale-tinted lipstick and all.
“Jen, you need to come. I tried to yell for you, but you weren’t close enough to hear.”
Yeah, ghosts could yell for help, too. “What’s wrong?”
Already my essence was going, “Humanah, humanah.”
“It’s your friend Wendy,” Cassie said, looking around me to the other ghosts, her mascara-framed eyes wide. “Scott’s there right now, fending off that dark spirit you’ve been watching for. Let’s go.”
After Amanda Lee ran over to open the door, we were off like a hail of invisible shots.
9
We simultaneously busted out of our travel tunnels at Wendy’s courtyard.
Me, Randy, Cassie, and . . . Twyla.
When I saw that last one, I didn’t have time to ream her out. She was supposed to be with Amanda Lee, and it looked like Louis had stayed instead. But who had time to fuss about that when Scott was tangling with something that looked like a dark stain against the morning-bright sky?
Scott was a whirring tumble of fading flannel and denim as he fended off the spirit, rolling around the air with it, crashing into the condo and not even leaving a mark as they spun away.
I was the first one to zoom toward the dark thing, but instead of cutting through it like it’d done to me when it’d attacked at the séance, something else happened.
It broke into two blobs of anonymous blackness, floating above me and Scott, then spreading its essences out, almost like both creatures had ragged, terrifying wings.
When Twyla, Cassie, and Randy blasted by me, rushing the two shapes, another insane thing happened: The two split up and gushed into three more blobs.
Five against five now.
Twyla and company skidded to a stop, and all of us ghosts just hovered next to one another. Shit. None of us had ever met anything like this before. How many times would this spirit multiply?
Cassie whispered, “It’s legion.”
“No, it’s not,” Twyla said. “It’s just trying to scare us.”
“We can’t do things like that.”
“That’s because we weren’t, like, pulled from a portal.”
Quickly, I scanned Scott, whose form was slowly going paler, bled of energy from the fight.
“You could use more energy,” I said out of the corner of my essence as we continued staring down the five. “You need to charge, you know?”
He got a cocky teenage grin on his mouth. “Good idea.”
And charge he did, straight at one of the blobs.
It was ready for him, its form fanning out like it was welcoming the assault with open arms . . . or wings . . . or—
It didn’t matter what they were, because when tentaclelike arms shot out of it, I yelled, “Scott!”
He veered to the side just in time to avoid the blob’s tentacle sharpening like a sword.
From above the thing, Scott zapped out both of his arms, making them into sword shapes, too.
Seriously? I guessed if we could form fists to rap against walls, we could do this?
Next to me, the other ghosts did the same, and I followed, just like it was the most natural act.
Zing!
We dived toward the other four shapes, sharpened arms extended. They met us, and I could only focus on my blob, slashing down at it over and over while it avoided every move. Damn, it was good.
But something became obvious: When this thing had attacked me at Amanda Lee’s fake séance, it’d stabbed me. It’d been strong. It wasn’t so much now, though, after separating into pieces. . . .
As I struck at it again, the blob parried, sparks spitting through the air as I brought up my other arm to slice through it and fend it off. It blocked that attack, too, and the force of this knock sent me spinning away.
But not for long. I flipped around, extending two more sharpened limbs, swirling as I went in again. I was hurricaning out of pure panic.
Yet my hyperactivity was working, because the thing wasn’t ready for me, and it weaved out of my reach, twisting upward, trying to get away. As it put some distance between us, I realized that it was trying to lure us away from Wendy’s window.
I didn’t move from my position, and I could only watch the other ghosts engaged with their own blobs: Twyla was a screaming bunch of sparks as she drove back her guy. Scott was flying through the trees outside of the courtyard wall, giving chase. Randy was tumbling here and there, sloppily but effectively giving his blob fits.
But then there was Cassie, who was down near the fountain, repelling her attacker. When my blob saw an opportunity and bombed downward, exploding into and merging with its other part, its newer, bigger form darkened, growing like a splatter of waving ink.
God, it was stronger now, enough to press its advantage on Cassie, driving her against the marble, spreading her out until she was thinned like a pancake.
The blob perched over her, a tentacle in the air, poised to strike.
Instinct pushed at me to leave Wendy’s window, but I’d be playing into this thing’s hands. I was her last guard, so all I could do was yell at Cassie to fight harder as the blob speared her with its limb.
I felt what she must’ve felt, because I’d gone through it before—a stabbing sensation, a bleeding and tearing feeling. But now, when the blob pulled out its limb, I saw a speck of fading essence in its grip.
Part of Cassie?
As the thing plunged her essence into itself, she misted toward the ground, leaching to a dull pale.
Awfully close to a time loop.
Numb, I could only stare at her lying prone, so helpless. Get to the fuse box, I thought, like she could hear me or something. But she was just a mass of ghost, and she wouldn’t have the strength to harden her form so she could project a limb the ten feet it would take for her to reach the box.
Above her, the blob rotated, fixing its attention on me again, twice as strong as before. There were facial features somewhere in there, but I couldn’t make them out.
Almost like the darkest mask imaginable.
I stood my ground, ready, wanting it to come here because it’d gotten to one of my friends. Because it was one of the bad guys, and I was getting sick of them.
Just as it was flexing, preparing to take off toward me, I heard the window behind me crash open, then a familiar voice.
“Stop!”
Wendy?
I whipped around, ready to tell the kid with the pink stripe in her hair to get her ass back inside because she was exposed out here. But then I realized she was holding one of those computer pads in her hands.
Her voice wavered as she read from it.
“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host—by the Divine Power of God—cast into hell, Satan and all the evil spirits, who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls!”
Whoa.
All of the fighting stopped as the four remaining blobs froze, zeroing in on Wendy.
“Get back inside!” I said, hardening my hand into a fist. I wasn’t going to punch her away from the window, but I’d do whatever I could to put a barrier between her and the blobs.
She ignored me, repeating the prayer.
And . . . whoa again. The blobs began to violently shake, almost as if their sort-of heads were about to fall off.
“Amen!” ended Wendy.
All four blobs let out a howl so high-pitched that I vibrated, too.
Twyla, Randy, and
Scott began to shrivel into themselves, and I could also feel an inner pull, like the sounds those things were making could shatter glass. Shatter us.
But Wendy had started the prayer yet again, louder and more commandingly, and just as a porch light sprayed into pieces down in the courtyard, the dark howls turned to whimpers.
As if compelled, the blobs magnetized toward one another, tendrils of their blackness seeming to claw the air as they were pulled back home.
Wendy’s voice grew in volume, and the creatures let out one last howl, then smashed together, becoming a single, darker thing again. Right away, it darted in a trail of pitch tendrils off into the morning, leaving the rustle of tree leaves, singeing the closest ones.
Me and Randy hustled over to them, blowing, putting out any little flames. Meanwhile, Twyla and Scott dashed to Cassie at the fountain.
Wendy leaned out the window and saw our pale friend’s sad state as she fizzled on the ground, unable to function, her ponytail curled limply above the ground, her lips even whiter than the lipstick normally made them. She stared at the sky, getting worse every minute.
“I’ve got this!” Wendy shouted, then pulled shut the window. I saw her running out of her room and, within a minute, she was in the courtyard with her computer pad, setting it in the middle of Cassie’s form.
The battery. It would charge her up.
“We need more,” I said, floating by a kneeling Wendy, fluttering her dark hair where it slid over her shoulder. “That battery’s a good start, but it won’t be enough. I should know. I’ve almost regressed back to a time loop myself before.”
As Randy hovered above us, watching for the return of the dark spirit, Wendy ran back into the condo and came out with more battery-operated devices: one of those iPods, two flashlights, and a laptop computer.
“Will this give Cassie enough juice to get to the fuse box and get a real charge?” I asked.
None of us could drag her over there since our “hands” would slide right through her. She was all ghost jelly.
Scott said, “She’ll be stronger in a sec.” He didn’t seem too worried while he gave Wendy the appreciative eye.
I held up my finger to him, telling him to take a red. He shrugged. Clearly, Scott had been feeling his oats during the fight. Even if he didn’t have testosterone anymore, he sure acted like it, slicking a hand back over his hair.
Another One Bites the Dust Page 11
