Only the Good Die Young

by Chris Marie Green

What was the connection here? I didn’t get it. I didn’t have the brainpower right now. . . .

  It took me a few moments to realize that I wasn’t alone, either. Someone . . . something . . . was behind me.

  Fake Dean?

  As in a dream, it felt like forever and a day had passed by as I turned around to see who it was.

  When I spied Gavin Edgett, with his startling blue eyes, short brown hair, and accusing expression, I wasn’t sure if he was better or worse than fake Dean.

  “What are you doing in here?” Dream Gavin asked, his words stretched, echoing like a god’s.

  It was like he couldn’t give a crap about the chaos going on around him. I was the big problem.

  I searched for an answer, but came up empty.

  In dream time, his hand reached out, then rested on my shoulder. A flood of sparks burned me, and I bit down on any response I might’ve had.

  “You’re . . . real,” he said.

  Above us, in the flaming sky, the air machine sputtered. When I pulled my gaze up to it, the little girl pilot was peering down at us, her long, dark hair trailing out from under her leather helmet, a worshipful expression on her goggle-hidden face as she lavished a look on Gavin.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked, my words dragging together as I finally backed away from his hand. I didn’t want him touching me.

  He ignored the dragon as it resurfaced again behind him, then dove underwater.

  “It’s a game.” He kept watching me, his gaze so intense that I thought he could see everything about me.

  Something in my chest clenched.

  “A game,” I repeated. Then I understood. “Your game?”

  Was this the project he’d been working on when he was falling asleep? Flying machines . . . big ugly birds . . . dragons with human faces?

  Where were the blood and blades from his other games?

  Just as the question faded in my mind, the dragon thrust itself out of the water wall again, but it was going for the sky this time.

  Its neck was so endlessly long that the monster’s teeth would be able to crunch down on the air machine that the little girl was flying.

  Just as I started to slow-scream for her to watch out, I felt Gavin covering my eyes with his rough-skinned hand, like he didn’t want me to see.

  I heard the sound of steel being unsheathed.

  Then, in a flash of black, we were someplace else.

  A room stacked with books on heaven-high shelves, but one wall was missing, and it opened to the lagoon-shaped pool just outside the Edgetts’ mansion.

  Gavin was sitting across from me in the same chair he’d been seated in last night, both feet planted on the carpet as his hands clutched the armrests. Blood from his fingers trailed down the creamy leather, and he had a pearl-handled gun on his lap.

  Now he talked in normal time, his voice deep and a little raspy as he checked me out.

  “You’re so familiar,” he whispered. “Have I seen you before?”

  Along with his speech, my thoughts were up to speed, too. So was my heartbeat.

  Was he talking about last night, when I might’ve accidentally appeared to him during the haunting? Had he seen me then?

  But this was a dream, and nothing made sense. Why should he?

  “You just saw me in that other room,” I said. “Remember?”

  The way he was staring me down made me shift, and I realized that I was perched on the edge of a desk in the study that I’d visited during a tour of the mansion. One of my legs was crossed over the other, and I had my hands braced on the edges.

  He slowly leaned forward, too, and I felt locked in his sights.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  Outside, the pool water splashed, like someone was swimming. From the open wall, I could see gentle waves lapping out of the pool and against the concrete.

  “I’m just a figment of your imagination,” I said.

  Then I had an idea.

  Could I make even better use of my time in his dreamland? Could I actually plant a seed in his subconscious—if that’s where we were—for all the odd things he would be experiencing about Elizabeth while I drove him to a confession?

  Hell, I’d just seen Inception on HBO about a week ago. It’d sure worked there.

  He rested his forearms on his thighs and stared me down with those pale blue eyes. They were such a deep, dream-enhanced extra-blue that I had to tell myself not to fall in.

  Then he stood, coming toward me with a deliberation that made my stomach flip. The gun had disappeared from his lap.

  “I know you,” he said.

  Outside, it sounded like someone was getting out of the pool, water smacking concrete.

  Gavin got close enough to me so I could hear him breathing, even in a dreamland. And every breath made my dream heart beat louder.

  Danger, I thought. But that didn’t make me back away from him.

  Just as he was opening his mouth to say something else, someone entered through the empty wall.

  “Gavin?”

  A light, bright voice. A woman.

  And as he turned around, I saw that Elizabeth Dalton was standing there in a one-piece white bathing suit that would’ve been right at home in the ’fifties, when movie stars still shone with glamour and mystery.

  Her short, wet blond hair was slicked back, her mouth lipstick red as she held a towel in one hand.

  As Gavin began walking toward her, he fisted his hands at his sides, his body stiff.

  Then Elizabeth disappeared into thin air, her towel dropping to the carpet.

  But instead of a towel, it was a fashionable white scarf, lying prone on the floor like a corpse. And now . . .

  Now there was blood all over it.

  In slow motion—yeah, it was back, slower and more terrible than ever—Gavin turned to me.

  He was wearing a mask.

  Just like my killer had, but this one was different.

  Before the details settled into my brain, horror screamed through me, and I shut my eyes.

  Out. Out now!

  With a rushed yank backward, I flew out of him, violently popping into the world again, back to where I was before.

  In his office.

  But this time I was on what I had for an ass, spread over the floor in front of his couch.

  My essence quaked. I wasn’t a body anymore. Everything was back to ghost-normal, and he was still sleeping, although now he’d changed position, clearly restless, riddled with what had to be a nightmare.

  I took a moment, just in case his subconscious was playing a trick on me and I was actually still in his dream. Horror movies always finished that way, with a shock ending that you don’t expect, just like Halloween, where Michael Meyers isn’t really dead.

  When nothing happened, I relaxed. What the hell had everything meant in that dream, anyway?

  Dragons. Air machines. A video game in action.

  Elizabeth.

  But what haunted me the most was Gavin’s face as he was turning around during those last moments.

  Now that I was safe, my brain let me see what I’d blocked out as I’d exited the dream, allowing me to realize that his mask had been made of clear plastic, eerily dulling his features.

  And emphasizing the trails of bloody tears running down his cheeks.

  10

  By the time I flew back to home base, night had fallen, and before I could stab another window in Amanda Lee’s house with shears again, I found her in the backyard, in the hot tub near her own modest pool.

  She was neck deep in bubbling water, her red-and-gray-streaked hair pinned up. Actually, she looked like a bobbing head, just like that fortune-teller in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.

  “What a night,” I said.

  “Why, hello to you, too, Jensen,” she said as I settled over a wicker chair that faced the tub. She sounded real vegged out.

  Until I told her about the dreamland in Gavin’s head.

  She was giving
off some nervous energy during my story—I could feel waves of it from her—but when I was done, a satisfied smile ended up taking over her mouth, like his dream was nearly as good as a confession.

  “We’re so close to making everything right,” she said. “Do you know that? Just a few more pushes toward the truth . . .”

  Pushes. From me. This haunting had really started.

  “I figure that having Gavin asleep made our interaction a little different today,” I said. “Being in his head was like conducting an interview in Hades, but I think I learned a thing or two about him.”

  “I think so, too. And, for future reference, we know a little bit more about how you work. When humans are awake, you enter a hallucinatory plane with them. When they’re asleep, you’re in what you call a dreamland.”

  “Yeah, definitely good to know. But you know what was extra-strange about today?”

  “There seem to be many levels of strange going on.”

  No kidding. “Well, on this particular level, the dreamland had similarities to that star place. You know, with fake Dean?”

  “Right. What sort of similarities?”

  “I had a solid form in this dreamland, just like I did in the star place. What’s that about?”

  A frown from Amanda Lee. Uh-oh.

  “That is strange,” she said. “I wonder . . .”

  Of course there was a huge BUT.

  She shook her head, laughed a bit. “It’s a ridiculous idea. Never mind.”

  “We went beyond ridiculous a while ago,” I said, gesturing to myself, because . . . seriously?

  She inclined her head toward me. “All right. You were in a solid body during this dream today. And you were solid in the star place. Is there a possibility that this fake Dean character had the power to put you into a sort of sleeping state and then he entered your dream? Or maybe it’s even the other way around. You were in his mind?”

  “I’m not sure if a creature like him has a regular mind.” I had no clue what that jerk was capable of. I mean, if he wasn’t an angel of death, then what the hell was he? In this Boo World, anything was possible.

  “So you’re saying that the star place might not even be a place,” I said. “It’s more a state of mind.”

  “It’s only a theory.”

  The murmur of the spa’s water continued, and Amanda Lee straightened up, exposing the red halter straps of her suit as she cupped water in her hands and splashed it over her face.

  “Long day, huh?” I said.

  “Just an interesting one. It’s too bad you can’t come in here, too, for some unwinding.”

  I laughed, and Amanda Lee closed her eyes and leaned back again.

  “You feeling better about what happened in the forest?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I still didn’t want to talk about the spooky psychic vision she’d shared with me today. “Way better.”

  “Good. I knew you’d bounce back.”

  “Luckily, it didn’t take me long to juice up again.” My death spot had given me enough natural energy to last for a while, I supposed. “After I entered Gavin’s dream, I even had enough rah-rah to comb through his office for information before he started to wake up. I didn’t find much, though.”

  “No evidence about Elizabeth?”

  “None. Not out in the open, at least.” I still couldn’t figure out how to open drawers and closets—and squirming into them through the cracks only left me in closed and dark places—so who knew what was hidden away from me?

  She let her arms float on the top of the churning water, as weightless as I was. Maybe she needed a lot of weight taken off her today and this was just another way a psychic and medium could do it.

  “I want you to tell me every detail about his dream,” she said. “Nothing is too minor for you not to mention. We’re going to see what we can get out of it, and what it tells us about his state of mind.”

  I did what she asked, and when I was done, her eyes were wide.

  “I could interpret that dream for hours,” she said. “Wasn’t it terrifying to be in there?”

  “Nah.”

  Seriously, it was, but I wasn’t about to shout it out.

  “When I have visions,” she said, “they aren’t even that intense. I’ve had a few that have come close, but . . .” She looked up at the sky, like it held every answer she needed. “Where do I even start with this one?”

  “The dragon?” I asked.

  “It’s as fine a place as any, but I have to tell you that the problem with interpreting dreams is that it’s more effective when you have feedback from the dreamer. That’s how it is when I read the tarot, too.”

  So she was an experienced dream interpreter. Surprise, surprise.

  “What do dragons even mean?” I asked.

  “In this dream, it could be a symbol of a fiery, passionate nature. But those two traits can lead to trouble in a person. It could also mean the killer knows he needs some self-control.” She looked straight ahead. “Yet isn’t that something every murderer needs?”

  I wished all killers had it, believe me. “What about the huge black bird in the fire sky?”

  “Usually a bird signifies hopes and goals, but this creature sounds like a protector since it was flying over the girl in her air machine, like a wingman. Still, it was a black bird. A crow?”

  “I think so.”

  “Death,” she said. “Misfortune, disharmony. Or even a new phase in life on a metaphorical level. Death seems the most appropriate reading.”

  Or was that the reading she wanted?

  I still wasn’t sure. “And that weird air machine with the girl in it?”

  “It could mean our subject is trying to rise to a new level, above the crime he committed. An escape from it. The girl, though . . . I wonder if she’s the feminine side of him, the feeling side, and it’s flying free even while shadowed by Elizabeth’s death, and that’s producing the disharmony.”

  She sounded so positive of Gavin’s guilt that I felt naive for still wanting more definite proof. True, the bloody towel/scarf Elizabeth had dropped had looked pretty bad, but it still wasn’t enough for me.

  She went on. “As far as the fire sky goes, it could mean destruction or desire or purification . . . or anger. That would apply most of all to him. And the walls with the water rising upward could mean that he’s overcome by his emotions. Since the water is moving toward that fire, it’s as if it’s trying to put out that anger in him because it’s burning him up.”

  A thought intruded into my head. Anger that still remained after Elizabeth’s death, right? I wasn’t sure about that, either.

  “At the end of that portion of the dream,” she said, “he shielded your eyes as you heard the sound of a sword, which put an end to those insane images and started a batch of new ones.”

  “In the room with the books.” I added my two cents. “Books mean knowledge.”

  “Yes, and also calmness.”

  “He sure was calm in that chair.” With the blood running down from his fingers and the gun in his lap.

  “It’s interesting to note that he wasn’t afraid of you, only curious. And since that part of his dream played out in real time, I think his brain was clearer than it was before in the fire and water room. I believe the things you saw in the book room are far more straightforward.”

  “So the blood on Elizabeth’s scarf is his guilt coming out.” I think I’d read about a scarf the investigators had found in a pond near her body. The blood hadn’t come all the way out of it, and it was believed that the killer had used it to choke her.

  I wanted to counter Amanda Lee’s interpretation with another dream image—the tears of blood on his masked face. It just didn’t sit right with me for some reason, and I didn’t know if it was because the red streaks made him look like a suffering martyr or an even bigger monster than I’d thought.

  “At any rate,” she said, “the closed books mean he’s mysterious, which we already knew.”

  �
��Could they also mean that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover?”

  If she could stare a hole through me, she would’ve.

  “Just asking,” I said.

  She sighed. “You’re right. That actually could be an interpretation. But do you really think it is, based on what you experienced? Remember how he was sitting in that chair, with blood coming down it, as if he was the commander of death. And when Elizabeth came out of his pool . . . that was something he could’ve seen in real life many times, but here it’s a moment that plays over and over again in his subconscious. She’s dressed in white, innocent, and she’s there to remind him that he’s guilty while those symbols of blood and death surround him.”

  And here I’d thought his dream might’ve only been elements of his video game being recycled in his mind, sprinkled with a cryptic Elizabeth cameo. I think I still had a case for that.

  “Amanda Lee,” I said, “when I cruised around the office before his staff left, I found some employees working on designs that resembled those air machines and that dragon.”

  “Don’t underestimate the meaning of what went through his mind when you visited, Jensen. There are clues all over the place in there. We just need to figure them out. And to use them.”

  “In hallucinations?” The things that were supposed to needle his guilty conscience and bring him to a confession?

  “Exactly.”

  Inspiration struck. “If I’m capable of getting into his head and collecting clues and planting ideas in dreamland, why do I need to pretend there’s a poltergeist going on? Isn’t getting into his head enough?”

  Then we could leave Wendy out of this altogether.

  “A poltergeist is still only an option, if we find that we need a cover story.”

  Amanda Lee began to rise from the water. “You have so many gifts that I don’t have, and we shouldn’t dismiss anything that your abilities let us accomplish.”

  Water dripped from her skin as she stepped out of the hot tub, reaching for a towel hanging from a nearby chair. I wasn’t into girls or anything, but Amanda Lee’s bikini showed off a hard body for an older woman.

  Then again, I was kind of an old woman, too, wasn’t I? Except I’d never be old.

  As she wrapped the towel around her, I couldn’t help comparing Amanda Lee, with her wet, slicked-back hair, to the dream image I’d seen of Elizabeth, just out of the pool.