“Time . . . loop . . .”
With a jerking shock, I remembered what the dark spirit had done to Cassie yesterday, taking a handful of her and shoving it into itself, weakening her just like this and bringing her too damned close to the limbo I’d once been in.
Had the spirit done the same to Randy after they’d emerged from Tim? Everything had happened so fast that I hadn’t seen it.
I forgot I couldn’t drag him to an outlet, and when I reached for him, my hand passed right through his bzzting essence with a snapping whimper.
“Shit!” He was already flickering. “I don’t know if Amanda Lee can pull you out of a time loop like she did for me!”
As he slid a hand toward the wall, stretching out, mere feet away from the outlet, I wished I knew that prayer Wendy had used on the blob to chase it off . . .
A loud sparking sound made me turn around to see that Louis and the dark spirit had been going at it, hammering at each other with hardened essences. As I cemented my fists, too, I saw Tim out of the corner of my gaze, his arms over his face to protect himself from the mayhem as cold air whooshed around the room.
When the dark spirit yanked itself from Louis, it fell back toward Tim, circling around his head, then paused midair to split into two blobs, just at it’d separated its essence at Wendy’s.
As its first half charged at a taken-aback Louis, its other part summoned the electricity in the room, materializing fully in front of Tim so he could see it.
But it didn’t appear in its dark shape. It looked more like . . .
Cassie?
I couldn’t move as I watched. It was just like she’d come back to us, her ponytail waving in the air like wheat in the wind.
“Tim,” she said. “You’re under attack by a haunting, and I need your help so I can help you. On the shelf, those little cast-iron statues. Go!”
Oh, crap. Iron. Poison.
Thank God Tim just stood there like the asshole he was.
“Go!” the creature roared with a reedy, electric voice, filling the house with new malevolence.
Tim sprinted for the shelves above the dining table where the fairy-tale souvenirs waited. Snow White and her dwarves, all suddenly weapons against us.
I almost went after him, but seeing “Cassie” had stymied me. It isn’t her, I kept telling myself. It was the dark spirit using the essence that it’d stolen from Cassie yesterday.
Once I got that in my head, I revved up, putting Tim in my sights. Then I rushed toward him, screaming through the air as I aimed to the side of the dark spirit to get to the shelves before Tim did.
Cassie . . . the thing . . . grew bigger as I flew toward it, its eyes widening into a glare so intensely evil that fear ripped through me. Its Cassie smile was just as hellish.
Not her. Not my dead-and-gone friend at all.
The dark spirit hardened its arms into what looked like spikes under those paisley blouse’s sleeves, and it aimed one at me as I kept coming.
Was it hoping for an impalement?
I angled toward the ceiling just in time, bringing around my hammer arm, arcing it down—
“Swing at the air!” Dark Cassie yelled to someone who wasn’t me.
My instinct forced me to change course, jetting away from Dark Cassie again, back toward the ceiling. When I saw Tim below, blindly swinging around a cast-iron dwarf, I wanted to laugh.
Dark Cassie materialized again so Tim could see her. “Keep on going!”
Then the entity popped back to spirit form, but in the few seconds it took for it to dematerialize, everything happened in a blink: Louis and his own dark spirit fighting, inching dangerously close to Tim. The dark spirit using its hammer fist to bat Louis away, making him spin into the path of Tim’s swinging statuette.
Iron.
Poison.
Tim bashed the dwarf through Louis, making him freeze and go pale in the air, part of him dissipating.
Like a rock, he dropped to just above the floor, hovering, unmoving.
Oh, God.
As Dark Cassie loomed in front of me again, I glanced at the equally wounded Randy oozing toward the outlet, and I started losing hope.
But hope grew eternal again when I saw that, in all the excitement, Tim had dropped his phone close by Randy, only an inch away, and Randy had seen it.
While Louis lay still, ashy and bewildered, Randy reached the phone, resting a pale hand on it.
Then he began . . .
Talking to it? Was there a Ghost 9-1-1 he was calling or something?
I didn’t have time to wonder what was going on with him because the dark blob had come over to join fake Cassie, and they weren’t attacking me. They were just facing me, giving me awful, baneful leers.
Why weren’t they coming at me? Why just sit there staring like they were enjoying the clear terror on my face?
Because they’re feeding off it, I thought. It’s making them stronger.
Now that the air was still, Tim tossed the dwarf statuette to the ground and sprinted to the front door, leaving it open as he burst outside. I almost went after him again, but Dark Cassie moved to block me.
“Let him go,” the creature said, but instead of using a demented version of Cassie’s voice, it sounded more like a corrupted man—a tone that reminded me of steel nails running over asphalt.
Was that supposed to scare me? Well, it pretty much did, but I wasn’t about to show it. I cut my fear off from them.
Thwarted, Dark Cassie rejoined with the black blob, becoming one entity again, stronger, darker. Now the single being hunkered over me, pointing a knifed fist at my throat.
“It looks like you’re intent on going back to a residual haunting phase in that forest,” it said in its ice-inducing voice. “That’s what’s going to happen if you insist on running off from me.”
But if I stayed, Tim would escape. Then again, if I ran, I would leave my friends in danger, just as Louis was sliding toward the nearest power outlet and Randy was drawing power from touching that phone. He’d finished talking to it and thuds of color blipped through him every so often. Yet it wasn’t happening fast enough.
“Why’re you helping Tim?” I asked the dark spirit, buying time. Maybe soon, Randy would be powered up enough to join me. But what if the dark spirit had taken a handful of Randy earlier? Was that why he was so slow to recover?
Had it done the same to Louis when I wasn’t paying attention?
Then another thought—when the dark spirit had stabbed me at the séance over a month ago, had it taken a piece of me? I didn’t think so. How had I somehow escaped that?
The only thing I was sure about was that stealing part of a ghost’s essence allowed the spirit to impersonate different personalities, like Cassie’s.
The creature kept staring at me, moving up and down as it hovered, but I still didn’t give it my fear.
Finally, it answered my question. “Why wouldn’t I help Tim when he’s just like me?” Now I could see swirls in its dark essence, like it was rearranging itself.
Malignant electricity was slicing over me in this thing’s quiet presence, and I thought part of it had to do with the way it was keeping me on a string, making me anticipate the moment it would finally attack.
Sadist, I thought. How appropriate for the monster that’d been Wendy’s dad in life.
Through the open front door, the unstable roar of a motorcycle trying to start growled through the air, then sputtered to death. I glanced over at Randy, who smiled faintly at Louis as his buddy struggled toward the outlet.
They’d obviously disabled Tim’s bike earlier. Score: Tim 1, Randy 1. Tie freaking game.
When I heard a female voice from outside call Tim’s name, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. But the dark blob . . . I swore I saw it smile in its blackness.
“When I was inside of Tim,” it said in its screeching, low tone, “I couldn’t resist quietly meddling. I suggested a diversion that might keep him away from Nichelle for a time, so you can
thank me later for that. But I told him something rather helpful, too.”
What was it talking about? Whatever it was, I didn’t like the sound of it. “How did you know where we were—” I started to ask.
“Can’t you feel me outside open windows, Jensen Murphy? I love to watch and listen to you. I’ve been doing it for a while, biding my time. Didn’t you feel me?”
An army of shivers needled me as an opening appeared in the dark spirit’s face. A bigger smile, crooked and foreboding.
From the depths of my memories, I heard a cackle.
“Stop! Please! Why’re you doing this?”
The mask, the ax . . .
I jerked with such force that I sank toward the carpet, shivering, my arm injury beating feverishly as I looked into the anonymous form of my killer.
“Are you hurt, little girl?” it said, looking down on me as I stayed low to the ground.
Can’t be happening, I kept repeating, avoiding the truth as my arm pounded ten times worse. Can’t be happening. . . .
It continued. “I guarantee you’re not as hurt now as you were that night. And, damn, but you’re a far better fighter than you were then, too. I caught you so easily in those woods, but then again, I got better and better at catching all my girls. Practice makes perfect. But I’ll give you this—you escaped what they ended up getting from me.”
I could barely speak. When Randy groaned from across the room, he expressed my terror more than I could.
Flicking a gaze to my friends, I saw that Randy was still gradually adding color from the phone’s charge, slowly, so slowly. Louis’ own essence was shaking as he reached for the outlet . . .
The dark spirit clucked his tongue. “Poor baby. Are you embarrassed for your friends to hear how you died? You certainly don’t like to hear about it yourself, do you? I like to hear it, though. Haunting you with the details was all I thought about in that place they kept me in for what felt like an eternity.”
Weaker, weaker by the second. My arm was sapping me. So was my newly awakened horror.
Now that I was at the moment of truth, I didn’t want to hear everything about how I’d died. But I couldn’t get away from it, either, pinned by my concern for my friends . . . and, whether I admitted it or not, a compulsion to know all, no matter what my common sense was telling me.
“I don’t know where I was sent after I died,” the dark spirit said in that scratch-steel voice. “Maybe hell? A holding cell? A dark tube that allowed me and millions of cursed others to skim the perimeter of life so we could watch and yearn and hope for a way in?” He laughed. “Looks like I found one, thanks to Amanda Lee Minter. She all but invited me back here, never knowing that I was watching you. Waiting to see you again.”
I was gathering my quaking energy, my will. Finally, I said, “I didn’t put you in that place.”
“No, someone else did. Does that make you feel better, to know I stopped killing girls after I was killed?” It laughed like rusted nails being twisted around a tight hole. “But I’m baa-ack. Someday I’ll express my appreciation to your psychic friend. I like that woman. I worship her in all her righteous ineptitude. How wrong were the two of you to think I was after Wendy Edgett, of all people? Yes, she’s wonderful, fresh, young meat, but I like the blondes so much more.” My killer leaned down close enough to me that I smelled old blood. “I like you.”
Its words flipped a switch in me, making me think . . .
No, it couldn’t be.
“Is that you, Dean?” I asked, meaning fake Dean, fear edging the question.
The thing hesitated, and I almost barfed ghost-style. It couldn’t be him. . . .
But then it laughed in its serrated way until the water in the fish tank rippled.
What a stupid thing to have said. No, this couldn’t be Dean. I was still in ghost form and didn’t have that pseudo-body that I had whenever fake Dean was with me. But this creature had sounded as arrogant as Dean was, and it’d assumed another form, too, just as fake Dean liked to do.
This wasn’t the devious spirit I’d come to kind of like.
As the creature kept laughing, I saw that Louis had recovered way faster than Randy, who was only barely past pale. Even though Louis wasn’t as gray as he should be yet, he’d already pulled out of his power source, creeping toward the front door that Tim had left open.
He was going to see about Tim. . . .
Randy gave me a nod, like he was telling me to keep the dark spirit talking.
I went on. “How many girls did you kill?”
The thing smiled widely again, opening up its essence. “Fifteen, if we’re talking about pure kills.”
Fifteen, just like me. “What do you mean, pure kills?”
For the first time, I saw the semblance of a face in the darkness, but I closed my eyes because I could only recognize the mask—the hag’s mouth, wrinkled skin, piercing blue eyes. The face that had killed me.
My energy drained out of me a little more, like the spirit was devouring my fear from only feet away. My arm thudded even harder, each tremoring beat a fast pulse of electricity out of my essence.
“What I mean,” it said, “is that I only count the bloody kills. Those were the times when my ax blade would actually hit one of my little darlings in the head and I’d see a brief, lovely look of surprise on her.” The spirit held up a handlike appendage to its temple. “‘Gee, am I really dead?’ That’s what she’d be thinking as she realized she’d just been snuffed. But you?” Even this thing’s chuff sounded twisted. “You were only my fourth kill, and I was still in that first stage of excitement. You flinched, moved out of the way, and I missed your sweet spot on the way down. The blunt side of the blade got your head in a place that did you in, anyway, but you died without that beautiful spray of blood that I love to see and feel.”
How much more could I hear? Whatever my limits, I wasn’t going to let this thing win.
“But you inspired me, Jensen Murphy. You saved me a lot of cleanup that night and in the future. You were a learning experience, because I ended up dragging you to my van and cutting you the fuck up there. I already had the plastic lining in place for your remains, so I started on you right away, while I was still in heat.”
This isn’t me he’s talking about, I kept thinking, trying hard not to picture what he was describing. Not me.
“I was so high off your blood,” he said, “that afterward I took those bracelets of yours, wiped them off nicely, then removed my costume and pretended like I was just an average Joe in the forest at night. The car you drove was unlocked, so I left a calling card, just to see if anyone noticed I’d been there.” He laughed. “’Fraid not.”
I didn’t tell him that, in the time he’d been gone, CSI had taken over the world. He couldn’t have been careful enough, and we were going to finger him.
“I got even better after that night, cleaner,” he said. “I nearly perfected my art until . . .”
The spirit halted, smiling widely again, lifting its blobby hand and shaking what looked like a finger at me.
“You thought I was going to tell you how I died.”
“I don’t care.”
“I think you do. And I’m going to let you wonder. I’m also going to let you imagine all those other girls whose chopped limbs got consumed by a lye solution, just like yours. Burning the bones was always fun, too. You’re not the only one who likes to give out nightmares, you know.”
My temper took me over. “I do that for damned good reason. Don’t you dare compare yourself to me.”
Don’t you dare make it seem like I haven’t made any difference.
“Now there’s the feistiness I was hoping for. You know what I’m going to do with you, Jensen Murphy?”
“Kill me again?” Fucker.
“Yes, in a way.” The spirit grew larger, trying to intimidate me. “I’m going to chase you again and again, because that’s what floats my boat. I’m going to haunt the shit out of you. I’m going to make you wonder
where I am, when I could appear, and I’m going to eat your fear like it’s a feast until I get tired of it. And when I do get tired, I’m going to move on to the other girls I killed, because there’re still a few in this dimension. None of them have taken up with a vengeful psychic like you did, though, so congratulations—you won the grand prize of being my main love interest!” It sighed. “This is kind of like first love, isn’t it? And I did love you when I was watching you in the woods, at that party, Jensen Murphy. I loved every part of you after I cut you up.”
I’d been saving all the energy I could, just for a moment like this. And when I focused electricity on that cast-iron figurine Tim had dropped, making it fly through the air and right through the center of the spirit, the creature flinched back from me with a cry.
“Bitch!”
As it darted its blobby hand out, I knew it wanted to grab a piece of me like I’d seen it do to Cassie.
But I was prepared.
I jetted out of the way, and Randy must’ve seen what my plan was, because he’d gotten strong enough to crawl to an outlet, and he was pointing at the iron dwarf, too, helping me to move it.
The figurine felt so much lighter with Randy’s aid as we manipulated the iron through the dark spirit’s essence, making the creature scream in pain as, little by little, its insides began to dissipate.
But after it dissipated, where would it go? I didn’t know, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be here.
When it started laughing, weakly this time, I braced myself for one last attack. But it just kept fading away, dust to dust.
“Remember,” it said in its last moments. “I’ll be watching you!”
A cold wind screamed around the room as the thing disappeared.
Me and Randy dropped the figurine to the floor, and I flew over to him.
“Are you all right?”
“A lil’ worse for the wear, but still dead ’nuf.” He closed his eyes and rested his head near the wall. “I called Amanda Lee to git over here, but you need to go to Louis. See what’s keepin’ ’im . . .”
Shit, Louis had been gone for a while. I didn’t know how long I’d been held up from chasing Tim, but I didn’t want to let the asshole out of my sight for any more time.
Another One Bites the Dust Page 26
