by Bryan Smith
She curled her body around him. “We’re going to kill him, Eddie.”
Eddie felt a tingle of the old fear, but it was an echo, a remembrance of something that no longer existed. He would do Giselle’s bidding. That had been clear all along, but now he was truly at peace with it. “I know,” he rasped.
She kissed his neck. “It’s why you’re here, Eddie.”
He breathed heavily. “I know,” he repeated.
“Remember, Eddie,” she said, and briefly took the lobe of an ear between her teeth. “Symbol. Ritual. I can’t tell you everything now.” Her tongue traced the edge of his jaw, dipped briefly into his mouth, and retreated. “But know this, Eddie, it will all become clear to you soon. When the moment comes, it will all be perfect, and you will see. You will understand.”
I hope so, he thought.
“You will,” she said.
Eddie looked at her and shivered.
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It was a reminder, he realized.
She owned him, mind, body, and soul, and she could see his thoughts as clearly as if they were printed on his forehead.
She smiled.
“Relax, Eddie, let it all go for a while.”
Eddie stared at her beautiful face and tried to do what she said.
Her smile turned salacious. “Would you like me to tie you to the bed again, Eddie?”
Eddie gulped.
Shivered.
And said, “Yes.”
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Karen turned out the lamp on the nightstand next to the bed, snuggled up under the plush comforter, and tried not to think about Shane. It was impossible. There in the darkness, with the shadowy outlines of unfamiliar furniture lurking like dream phantoms, she found herself unable to think of anything else. The darkness was suffocating, a dark cloak drawn taut over her head. Helpless to stop it, her mind went back several hours, brought back the claustrophobic feeling of stumbling blindly through invisible trees. Dark and forbidding, these woods were full of hidden rocks and branches that snapped at your face an instant before you saw them. She staggered and fell, got up, and kept going, moving with relentless, heedless drive in the general direction of the scream they’d heard from the road. The terror, the most undiluted, all-encompassing burst of emotion she’d ever experienced, was more than
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she should have been able to bear. But she was undaunted, motivated by guilt, by the need to rescue the lover she’d betrayed.
The echo of Chad’s voice taunted her: “I fucked your girlfriend, Shane.”
Asshole.
What a rotten son of a bitch.
Chad’s revelation, so cruelly delivered, was an unforgivable offense. Boorish in the extreme. But he’d only been the messenger. She had only herself to blame for her transgressions. The worst of it was that the regular trysts with Chad hadn’t constituted an isolated phenomenon. There had been many other lovers. It shamed her. She wanted to know the serene joy of pure love, an ideal relationship, the one so fulfilling in every way it would erase at last her inability to be monogamous. She’d had such hopes for Shane, had even fleetingly believed he was The One. The one who would match her carnal intensity, finally freeing her to mature into a responsible, faithful lover.
But now she would never know.
Her eyes filled with fresh tears. Guilt welled within her like a balloon ready to pop, and her heart ached with loss. She thought of Dream, then, and remembered that awful night Alicia’s shaky voice on the phone had summoned her to the emergency room. The sight of her friend’s wan, drugged countenance in that ER room haunted her for months. Life was so fucking unfair. Dream was a sweet, funny, beautiful girl, and the depression that crippled her was so cruel. A lot of people cared about Dream, even loved her, but she didn’t give much of a damn about herself.
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It had mystified Karen.
Even angered and scared her.
Now, however, she thought she knew what it was like to be Dream, to dwell in a place where fear and unmitigated anguish held sway. A dark, echoing, empty chamber of the heart, a lonely place where no one else could ever venture. Her friend inhabited this lonely realm full time. It felt at once alien and welcoming.
She couldn’t sleep. Not at first. She tossed in the bed, curling into a ball first on her left side, then her right side. She turned onto her stomach, clutching the pillows like a lover. That was no good. Too many heartrending connotations. So she turned onto her back again and stared at the velvet expanse of the four-poster bed’s canopy. She thought her mind would never rest enough to grant her the temporary peace of unconsciousness. But sleep came the way it always did, stealing in slowly, stealthily, displacing consciousness before she knew it was gone.
And then the dreams came.
Shane was alive in the dreams. And then he wasn’t. He was an ambulatory corpse, a wounded, shambling thing, a movie zombie. His mouth hung open and a steady, raspy hiss emanated from his throat. His flaccid cock dangled from the open fly of his jeans, and one of his dead hands stroked it to no effect. He came after her with it, and she ran. She ran and ran, tripping and stumbling her way through a phantasmagoric wilderness filled with screaming vampire bats and wolves with luminescent yellow eyes.
Then the scene shifted.
She was in a bed. The bed was her own, but in the
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dream it was in Shane’s apartment. His bedroom. She was naked. A faceless man loomed over, fucking her, grunting and cursing her. And she loved it. It was so great. She clawed the phantom lover’s back and cried out. Shane was in the room, too, standing clothed next to the bed, watching the primal rut with an empty expression.
He was holding a gun.
His Glock.
The gun hung limp in his hand, aimed at the floor. But now his arm moved, raising the gun, pressing the muzzle against his temple.
She laughed at him. “Do it. I’ll come so hard if you do it, Shane.”
Shane’s empty expression never changed. His finger squeezed the trigger, there was a momentous explosion, and her boyfriend’s brains splashed the window blinds behind him. Karen awoke with a gasp, her eyes blinking against the wall of darkness, the final grisly image from the dream imprinted indelibly on her brainpan.
She felt sick, disgusted at the imagery conjured by her traitorous mind. The dream’s meaning couldn’t have been more clear. She’d killed Shane with her betrayal. But it was just a dream, random brain blips, the unconscious mind’s bent way of processing the shame filling her conscience. The crude mental shorthand couldn’t be taken seriously.
She knew that.
So why was she suddenly crying again?
Because it was all too much. The grief washed over her again, drowning her in sorrow. She was so preoccupied with her guilt, she didn’t initially realize something was very wrong. Then she felt it.
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The restraint.
Something cold and metallic encircled her wrists.
Handcuffs?
And all at once there were no more feelings of guilt, no more bottomless depths of grief to plumb. Panic, hot and galvanizing, spread through her like a wildfire. Her hands yanked against the restraint, and she heard a faint metallic clank.
Shit!
Her hands were cuffed to the headboard rails. Before she could scream, she heard a faint creak-then she saw a sliver of yellow light. The bedroom door slowly opened, and a lithe figure stood framed in the light from the hallway.
The figure chuckled.
Fear seized her heart like a cold hand.
The figure closed the door. There was a click, the sound of the door being locked. Then she heard heels clicking on the hardwood floor. The figures face wasn’t clear yet, but a sudden certainty gripped her-she knew who it was.
The figure clicked on the lamp next to the bed.
And Karen trembled.
Her suspicion was validated.
Ms. Wickman smiled at the cuffed girl, licked her thin lips, and said, “What a n
aughty little bitch you are. Killing your boyfriend that way.”
She made a tsk-tsk sound and shook her head.
Karen whimpered. “Don’t hurt me … please.”
Ms. Wickman threw her head back and laughed heartily. She looked again at Karen and said, “Oh my, I haven’t laughed that hard in …” She pursed her lips, cocked an
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eyebrow, and appeared to think it over.”… oh, since the last time I punished a lying little whore like you.”
She pulled the comforter down, cast an appraising glance at Karen’s exposed body-nude except for white cotton panties-and opened the nightstand’s drawer, from which she extracted a cat-o’-nine-tails. It was black with a braided handle, nine knotted cords with metal tips, and a wrist loop for better handling. Karen shuddered. She’d played with such things before-in controlled situations with partners she trusted.
Ms. Wickman’s demeanor was not that of one who wanted to play.
And there was the matter of the woman’s devastating accusation…
… killing your boyfriend that way…
Could she see into her mind?
It wasn’t possible.
Was it?
Ms. Wickman smiled and flicked the whip at her.
Another room, dark and quiet.
The figure on the bed sleeps fitfully. Tortured dreams abound in this place tonight. They always do. The house is a vast repository for nightmares. The very air is heavy with the trace remains of agonies past. …
Alicia’s eyes snapped open in the darkness. She sensed something in the room with her, an unnatural presence leering at her, and the perception caused her heart to do a pretty good imitation of a jackhammer. She sat up in bed, gasped, and cast her gaze quickly about the dark room.
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The terrain of the room was alien, disconcerting, its dark corners impenetrable in the gloom. A ripple of fear made her teeth chatter. She flipped the covers off her body, snapped on the bedside lamp, and saw …
Nothing.
She was alone in the room.
She put a hand to her breast, breathed deeply, and tried to relax. The perception of a menacing presence faded. More deep breaths. She worked at regulating the out-of-control rhythm of her heart. Her nerves were on edge, a condition she attributed to the creepy surroundings.
Goddamn you, Dream, she thought.
But Alicia was angrier at herself. She should never have acquiesced to Dream’s strange desires to stay in this place. Her friends were distraught. Their judgment wasn’t to be trusted. That being the case, she should have been firmer in her resolve.
Alicia breathed a sigh of frustration.
The truth was, there was little she could have done. The Accord was so low on gas it might not have gotten them back to the paved road, much less all the way back to the interstate. And the prospect of sleeping in the Accord after all those cramped hours on the road was only marginally more enticing than an invitation to sleep on a bed of nails. Therefore, they were at King’s mercy.
Alicia didn’t like that.
Not at all.
This house was a few very small steps removed from being a prison. She was here against her will, and she couldn’t leave. The stark reality of it shook her. She wished she’d probed King for personal information when she’d
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had the chance. They’d all been too wrapped up in their own problems to give him much thought, but it suddenly seemed very important to know who he was and what he did. Why, for instance, did he live in such isolation? He was a man of obvious wealth, given the size of his home and the fine furnishings in evidence throughout its interior, but how did he generate the money?
But the isolation bothered her more than the mystery of his wealth.
A person with certain inclinations, a fondness for the taboo things civilized society shunned, would find it easy to indulge those appetites here, far from the prying eyes of law enforcement and media.
A disturbing thought sent a chill through Alicia. He could kill people and get away with it. Take the case of Alicia and her friends, for instance. Days had passed since they’d communicated with anyone back home. Nobody knew where they were, a situation exacerbated by the unplanned detour from the interstate and the subsequent bewildering path they’d taken through the winding back roads. If anything happened to them, how would anyone ever find them?
The answer was obvious.
No one ever would find them.
Fear galvanized Alicia. She got out of bed, pulled on a white robe, and went to the window that overlooked the front yard. Ground lights faintly illumined the driveway and front porch. The burgundy Accord was a rich red in the semidarkness. A black Bentley was parked behind it. The elegant luxury car hadn’t been there before, and the sight of it made Alicia frown.
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The frown deepened when she realized the night sky was clear and the ground below was drier than Death Valley.
What the hell happened to the inclement weather? she wondered.
She was contemplating this when she heard the sound.
Shrill but abrupt, it might have been a scream. A woman’s scream. Alicia spun away from the window and went to the bedroom door. She placed an ear to the door, held her breath, and waited to hear the sound again, but the only thing she heard was her heart kicking into overdrive.
Warring factions of her mind debated.
That was a scream.
No, you’re imagining things.
She hoped she’d imagined it.
Then the sound was repeated.
Alicia was propelled by instinct, with no regard for her own safety. She cinched the robe shut around her with the sash, pulled the bedroom door open, and stepped into the dimly lit hallway.
Which way?
The next scream, longer in duration and more anguished, provided the answer. She went left, her bare feet scampering across the cold floor. The sound grew louder and was punctuated with sobs. Though there were no words, something in the tonal quality was recognizable. One of her friends was making that sound. She came to a stop outside a room several doors down from her own, grasped the doorknob, started to turn it-
-and hesitated.
Karen was on the other side of this door. Something horrendous was happening to her. Alicia wanted to come
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to her friend’s rescue, but the mystery of the situation gave her a moment’s pause.
She was weaponless.
Karen wailed again.
Fuck it.
Her bare hands would have to suffice.
She turned the knob and stepped into the room. She was several feet inside before her mind registered the reality of the insane thing she was seeing.
A previously ordinary wall composed of drywall and paint had been flipped around to reveal manacles set in stone. Karen was suspended above the ground in these, her legs and arms spread apart in a Christ-like pose. A neck bracket kept her head flat against the wall. She saw Alicia and sobbed.
Ms. Wickman’s whip hand paused in mid-lash, and she turned around to greet Alicia with a wide-eyed grin of pleasure. “Why, it’s your little Negro friend. Come on in, dear. We don’t discriminate here.”
Alicia wanted desperately to take the old bat’s whip and insert it firmly up her tight fucking ass. She would have done it, too, if not for the specter of the thing crouched at the end of the bed.
Dark, matted fur covered its foul-smelling flesh. The thing looked at her, and the enormous nostrils at the end of its long snout flared. A rumbling snort emanated from somewhere deep within it. Its mouth opened, leathery lips peeling away from gleaming rows of razor-sharp fangs.
It growled at her.
And loped off the bed.
Alicia wilted, the sense of righteous fury spiraling out of
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her like dirty water down a storm drain. She backed away, but her shaking legs betrayed her, and she tumbled numbly to the floor. The thing loomed over her, dripping saliva on her
face.
Too late, she believed.
Monsters exist, she thought.
They really do.
And I’m just another goddamn dead pragmatist.
A spine-scraping sound sputtered out of its hideous mouth.
Lupine laughter.
Alicia fainted.
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Dream had somehow known there would be no drawn out process of seduction. The chemistry between them was so powerful, their desire so obvious, that an unspoken conclusion was reached-they would dispense with the niceties, forgoing even the merest pretense of accelerated courtship, and get right to the fun part, the enthusiastic exploration of each other’s body.
Even so, she was shocked by just how swiftly this developed. There were a handful of one-night stands in her past, though not nearly as many as other people believed, but she hadn’t fallen into bed with any of them quite as hastily.
She supposed she should feel bad about it.
Perhaps feel cheapened, an easy lay.
But she didn’t care.
Not now.
And maybe never.
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Dream screamed into the mattress.
She moaned. “Oh … God …”
Her face was pressed sideways against the tangled bedsheets. A sheen of sweat covered her sun-brown body. She panted. Strands of blond hair fell into her open mouth, and she spit them out automatically, not thinking about it. Her fists knotted handfuls of bedsheet. She cried out again as another precise thrust pushed her forward. She turned her mouth into the mattress and loosed another muffled scream. Her knees wobbled on the edge of the bed, but King’s hands were firm at her waist, holding her in place.
