by Bryan Smith
If only I’d gotten it right that time, came the inevitable conclusion.
The thought made the scarred area around her left wrist tingle. She experienced again the sense-memory of the blade penetrating her flesh. There had been pain, yes, intense pain, but there had also been relief. Tremendous relief. There’d been a sense of falling, of plummeting from a great height, and then the sweet release of unconsciousness.
If only …
Dream’s tears flowed unimpeded now.
She made a shushing noise, slipped an arm around Karen’s neck, and again eased her into a sitting position. She cupped a hand under Karen’s chin, held her head steady, and said, “Honey, I’m gonna need you to get up now, okay?”
Karen’s shoulders sagged. “Shane …”
“I know, sweetie, I know…” She glanced at the man’s ravaged body, winced at the tickle of nausea at the back of her throat, and brought her gaze back to Karen. “He’s just resting.”
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“That’s right,” Alicia said, taking the verbal baton from Dream. “He’s resting. We’ll get him some help real soon, but first we have to get you out of here.” A forced smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “Okay, sweetie?”
Karen swallowed a lump in her throat, sighed, and looked at each of them in turn. Dream and Alicia each felt a flash of shame at the look of desperate pleading in her eyes. “Don’t coddle me.” She sniffled. “I know he’s dead.”
She tried to get to her feet. “Whoa …”
Dream and Alicia caught her as she wobbled, held her until she was steady, and began to walk her back to the car. As they stepped through the line of trees, Dream heard something behind her. Something stealthy. She risked a backward glance, saw a flicker of shadow at the periphery of her vision, gasped, and stumbled over a rock. The other women gave out a shout as she pitched forward and tumbled down the incline.
Her uncontrolled descent came to a painful and abrupt stop in the ditch. Her body was gouged and scratched, and she ached all over. She tried to move, but a line of pain arced through her like a jolt of lightning. She cried out again and looked up to see a panicked Alicia kneeling over her.
“Goddamn, Dream, try to give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
Dream winced as she turned her head toward the dark line of trees. “I saw something back there, Alicia. I looked back and … saw something.”
She shuddered at the memory.
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Alicia frowned. “What?” She glanced in the direction of the woods, then looked again at Dream. “What did you see?”
“She saw what I saw.”
They both looked at Karen, who was sitting up on the guardrail now, staring at the line of trees, that green wall that now seemed like the demarcation between the sane, natural world and a land of nightmares.
Her voice had a faraway, dreamily detached quality to it. “The thing that got Shane. A real, honest-to-gosh monster.”
Alicia sighed. “Jesus…”
Dream seized Alicia’s wrist. “She might be right.” The other woman’s skepticism was immediate and obvious, but Dream plunged on. “Or maybe not. But there’s something out there. Something that didn’t leave when it was done with Shane.”
Alicia’s gaze again went to the line of trees. “Fuck me.” She swallowed a lump in her throat and fixed Dream with a serious expression. “I don’t believe in monsters, girls, but I do believe in mad dog killers. So maybe some Hannibal the Cannibal wannabe is out there. And I don’t know about either of you, but I don’t aim to be another notch on his knife handle.”
Dream recognized the logic in Alicia’s words. Her theory made so much more sense than the idea of some supernatural abomination, but there was something about her memory of the barely perceived thing at the edge of her vision that snickered at concepts like logic and reason. Something in that flicker of shadow that made the idea of monsters resonate in her heart with cold certainty.
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She held tight to Alicia’s wrist and began to haul herself up. Bits of dirt and bramble tumbled off her, and various parts of her body complained. Alicia cried out, surprised by the abrupt movement, but Dream managed to get to her feet. She tightened her grip on Alicia’s wrist and began to move toward the guardrail. Alicia stumbled along with her, protesting every step of the way.
“Hey! Shit… hold up. …” She stumbled again, but Dream’s arm went rigid and held her upright. “Jesus … what’s gotten into you?”
A moment later they were at the guardrail, flanking Karen, who regarded them with the kind of distant expression a combat veteran would have recognized, the hollow gaze of a person who has walked straight through hell’s front entrance, fought with demons, and somehow emerged physically intact. The same couldn’t be said of her mental health, however, which was in obvious tatters.
Her eyes didn’t reflect the smile she showed them. “Monsters,” she breathed. She hugged herself and shuddered. “I can feel them watching. Can’t you?”
Dream looked at Alicia. “I don’t care which of you is right. All I know is our odds of getting out of here alive are dropping by the second. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge, girls.”
Alicia grunted. “You see me arguing? Let’s go.”
They climbed over the guardrail and began to walk toward the empty car. The Accord’s trunk was standing open, Dream’s keys dangling from the lock. Dream slid a sidelong glance in Alicia’s direction, noted that her friend seemed a bit distracted, and said, “Alicia.”
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Alicia blinked and looked at her. “Yeah?”
Dream strove to keep her voice nonchalant as she said, “Get Karen in the car. I need to get something out of the trunk.”
Alicia shrugged. “Sure.”
They arrived at the Accord. All four doors stood open, and its dome light was on. The empty car looked like an abandoned spaceship in the dim moonlight. Alicia busied herself with Karen, who was mumbling something else about monsters, and Dream went to the open trunk, where she began a quick inspection of its contents. Shane’s Eddie Bauer bag was tucked in a corner behind Alicia’s scuffed green suitcase.
Dream’s heart accelerated as she reached for the bag, grasped it, and pulled it closer. She peered around the open hood, saw that Alicia was in the backseat next to Karen, who apparently was again in need of comfort. Dream relaxed a little, tugged the zipper open, and began to sort through Shane’s things.
There was an array of typical vacation wear, ranging from Hawaiian shirts and sandals to ugly, floral-print boxers and droopy cargo pants. Wedged into a side panel was a porn magazine devoted exclusively to depictions of girls getting it on with other girls. Poor Karen. The deceased sleazebag didn’t merit her grief. She experienced a dark awareness-that she was bothered more by the manner of Shane’s death than the actual fact of his death.
She waited for a flicker of guilt.
She sighed.
It wasn’t forthcoming.
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Forget about shadowy creatures lurking in the woods, she thought, the real monster is right under your noses, girls.
The gun was tucked into the same side panel. Dream carefully extracted it, set it down in the trunk well, and zipped up Shane’s bag. She put the Eddie Bauer bag back in the trunk, opened her own bag, and slipped the Glock beneath a pile of flimsy tops and panties. She zipped the bag shut, closed the trunk, took the keys from the lock, and got into the car.
Alicia said, “Find what you were looking for?”
Dream thought she detected an accusatory note in her friend’s voice. Alicia wasn’t dumb. She knew Dream was vulnerable, and she no doubt remembered Karen’s remark about the gun. It was a simple equation-suicidal friend plus availability of deadly weapon equals a ton of trouble.
“No.” Dream put a key in the ignition and started the Accord. “I was looking for Shane’s gun.” She amazed herself by keeping her voice steady as she slightly embellished the part of her statement that was a lie. “I thought we m
ight need it, but I didn’t see it right away, so I gave up.”
She put the car in gear and pulled away from the shoulder of the road.
Alicia grunted. “Yeah, okay”
Dream was able to read Alicia pretty well after all these years. She didn’t entirely buy Dream’s story, but she wasn’t too concerned by it either. Or maybe she was just too tired to voice open skepticism. Whatever the case, she obviously wasn’t about to give Dream a lot of grief over it.
Dream relaxed a little.
Things were falling into place.
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Soon they would reach a place where Shane’s death could be reported, and a little while after that they would retreat to hotel rooms. There, alone at last, she would open her bag and meet her fate.
She drove deeper into the night.
And tried to imagine how it would feel to finally be free.
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The shapeshifter stepped through a line of trees and surveyed the access road that lead to Below’s primary tunnel entrance. There was no indication of shapeshifter activity in the vicinity, so it stepped onto the road, slung its unconscious human cargo over its shoulder, and began to run.
The creature experienced an echo of emotion from another lifetime. From the time before the change-before he’d come to this land of strange creatures and dark forces, a land where he lived a very different existence from the one he’d known before. Here he roamed the haunted woods, hunting and eating in the old ways, feasting on the flesh of unfortunate wanderers who’d found themselves lost in this place. It was a primal, sensual existence, exhilarating in ways savage and oddly wonderful. He loved the taste of raw flesh, of blood spurting fresh from severed arteries into his mouth.
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Yes!
The glorious exultation of bloodlust indulged was a delight without equal. Something like sadness filled him now as he began to realize he had tasted human flesh for the last time. He regretted that his time in this nocturnal wonderland was nearing an end, but this angst was tempered by the promise of an even better place. An exalted place beyond this physical realm. A paradise. The word emerged from long-dormant memory banks, those reservoirs of human knowledge he’d rarely tapped since The Change.
Paradise.
That place promised him by The Other.
She’d come to him in the forest one night, naked and beautiful, long raven-black hair spilling over milk-white breasts. Walking into the clearing where he sat finishing his latest meal, the forearm of a man whose guts lay steaming on the forest floor. He didn’t experience the expected fresh flare of hunger, and he soon realized why-the woman, The Other, wasn’t human.
Not anymore.
The Master had changed her.
Her dark eyes instilled fear in him. He wanted to drop the food and run, to plunge deep into the forest and erase from his memory the image of the woman’s compelling countenance. He was guided by pure instinct most of the time now, ancient and primal urges, but the woman exuded a power that overwhelmed instinct-that overwhelmed, obliterated, any ability or desire to rebel or resist her will.
She was almost as powerful as The Master.
And he belonged to her the moment she projected that
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power Into his mind, telling him with images the things she wanted him to do. Tempting him with images of a reward so sweet his fear of The Master’s wrath was all but extinguished.
She had taken him on the forest floor.
Plying him with sex magic.
Inducing a temporary reversion to his human form.
Still, he’d howled at the moment of release, bucking into her like the wild beast he would again be when she left him, and the feeling was better than the taste of warm blood in his mouth. Better than anything.
And it was only the beginning.
She showed him this, too.
It was a promise of things to come.
A glimpse of paradise.
A glimpse that allowed him to put aside the dimmer sense of loss and plunge through the tunnel mouth without hesitation. Long legs took him through the winding tunnel at a rate even the fastest human couldn’t hope to match, taking him deep beneath the surface of the earth. He knew the terrain of the tunnel as well as he knew his hunting ground Above, and he moved nimbly through the darkness, never once stumbling.
Down he went.
His passenger light as a feather over his shoulder.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Until he came around a bend and saw light. The light illuminated a building surrounded by a chain-link fence. A human stood at an open gate. The shapeshifter’s nostrils
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twitched and his mouth filled with drool, but he understood he was not to eat this human. The Other compelled this denial of his nature. The human, a man attired in the militaristic uniform of Below’s police force, waved a flashlight at him.
The man’s expression was grim. “You’re late.”
He turned away from the shapeshifter.
“This way.”
The shapeshifter followed the guard through the gate and then through a propped-open door into the building. The man led him through a long corridor, then a shorter one, at the end of which was a small holding cell. The guard took a ring of keys from his belt, selected one, and slid it into the cell door lock. He gripped the door and pulled it open, then beckoned to the shapeshifter.
There was another human inside the cell. A woman. Strong and healthy. She sat on a cot with her legs crossed, not looking at them, her face a study in apparent disinterest. Hot saliva dripped from the shapeshifter’s mouth, and he looked at the tasty morsel longer than appropriate.
The guard prodded him with the flashlight. “Over there.”
The shapeshifter set the unconscious man down on an empty cot, glanced once more at the woman, who still hadn’t acknowledged the presence of her new cellmate, then he followed the guard out of the cell. The guard threw the cell door shut, relocked it, and led the creature back out of the building.
The shapeshifter was happy.
It had done The Other’s bidding.
Paradise was assured.
He was thinking of that place, of his sweet reward, when
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a bullet from the guard’s side arm tore out a big chunk of his head. The guard sighed and holstered his piece. “Sorry, big guy
He regretted having to kill the poor deluded thing, but he consoled himself with the knowledge it had given its life to a higher cause.
He sighed one more time.
Then got to work hauling the carcass out of sight.
Chad came to slowly, his aching head full of nightmare images of things that couldn’t be real. He saw a creature that shouldn’t exist, a hideous, snarling thing that looked like a werewolf.
Which wasn’t possible, since werewolves didn’t exist.
Except that, well, they did. Apparently.
His last conscious memory was of the beast opening its elongated snout to bare a distressing number of very sharp teeth. Everything thereafter was cloaked in darkness. The empty, eternal darkness one knows at the moment of one’s death.
But he wasn’t dead.
Which was nothing short of fucking miraculous.
He felt something solid beneath him, a padded, uncomfortable thing that made him think of dorm rooms and camping excursions. Tangible, physical evidence that he was back in the land of the living. His eyes fluttered open, and he saw that he was sprawled across a cot in a dimly lit holding cell. He glimpsed a graffito on the wall, a simple two-word legend: LAZARUS SAVES. There was another cot above him, and there was another pair of stacked cots
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against the opposite wall. Bunks. He hadn’t slept in a bunk bed since a miserable two weeks at summer camp when he was in junior high. There was an overhead light in the form of a dangling bulb that crackled and popped, making the room’s shadows caper like epileptic phantoms.
He had company.
A slim woman clad only in a leather loincloth and a matching top paced restlessly about the room. She had straggly brown hair and wore thin-soled sandals that slapped against the cement floor. There was a tattoo of some sort on her neck, something that vaguely resembled chain links. An unpleasant odor emanated from her vicinity. It wasn’t overpowering, but it was strong, almost a physical presence in the cell. She smelled like a person who’d been homeless and living on the streets for a while. On the other hand, her long legs were shapely and toned with muscle. Her belly was flat and her bosom ample. And that getup made her look like a refugee from a sci-fi movie, a warrior babe from a post-apocalyptic world.
When she noticed he was awake, she ceased pacing and focused in on him. She had vivid green eyes that added to her exotic appeal. “I’m not gonna beat around the bush here, new guy-if you’ve got anything of value left on your person, hand it over.”
Chad swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the cot. He felt weak, exhausted, the way he would after a long day of physical labor.
He said, “Hold on, give me a second here. Did you say-“
Then she had two handfuls of his shirt and was lifting him off the cot with little obvious effort. “Shut up!’ She
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shook him so hard, Chad thought his head might snap free of its moorings. Moisture sprayed his cheeks. “Don’t trifle with me, idiot. I want everything you’ve got. Now.”
Chad gulped, struggled for a moment to find his voice, then said, “Okay! Okay! Just please let me down. I’ll do whatever you want.”
She released him immediately, and he swayed back on his feet. He required a moment to regain his footing, then, with a last, sweat-inducing glance at the woman’s flashing eyes, he began turning out his pockets. There wasn’t much. A handful of change, which he relinquished to her as soon as it was in his hands. But she cast the coins aside with a swat of his hand, sent them spinning across the floor. He patted the rear pocket his wallet usually occupied and realized with a start it was gone.
