Dead Spots

by Rhiannon Frater

  The door creaked open and Grant peered in around the edge of it. “Are you sure you’re okay? It’s a very active night.” He’d found an enormous pair of men’s pajamas and a robe to wear. He was virtually drowning in it. Loretta’s husband had evidently been a big guy.

  An earsplitting shriek made Mackenzie wince. “Any idea why it’s this bad? It wasn’t this way last night.”

  “It’s nighttime in the real world. People are having nightmares. There’s a large town nearby. This could be overflow from there. Or there could be people near us that are manifesting the creatures.” Grant slipped over to the window. He, too, peered out. “The barn is outside this dead spot, in case you were wondering.”

  “That’s a comfort,” Mackenzie lied. “So the people who might be near us would be like us, right?”

  Grant inclined his head, dropping the edge of the curtain.

  “It can’t be Tildy,” she said, her sorrow feeding the dark wave.

  “No, it can’t be. Though she could be out there.” Grant leaned against the dresser, his arms crossed.

  The creaking and cracking of trees being torn asunder before tumbling to the ground startled both of them. The cries and growls of nightmare creatures filled Mackenzie with dread. She yanked the covers up to her chin and listened to the battle. Grant, too, was silent, his expression pensive.

  “They’re outside the dead spot,” Grant said after a half minute of scrutinizing the noises of the fighting beasts.

  For a little while that night, Mackenzie had enjoyed the serenity of the farmhouse and had toyed with the idea of staying another day. Now she couldn’t wait to be away from this area and its dreadful inhabitants.

  “It sounds like some kid has a bad dinosaur obsession,” she observed.

  “Or dragons. I’ve seen plenty of those.”

  “Not helping.”

  A thunderous roar sent the window vibrating and the walls shaking.

  Mackenzie gave out a startled yelp.

  “Mackenzie, don’t give in to your fear. It’s outside the dead spot. You created a safe haven here. We’re safe. Believe me.”

  “Grant, telling someone not to give in to their fear is like throwing gasoline on a fire. I’m already scared shitless and when you say that I only get more freaked out!”

  “Well, you shouldn’t!”

  “But I do because it’s pretty damn clear that it’s my responsibility to keep those things out of this so-called safe haven!” Her stomach was roiling and she felt nauseous.

  “Listen.”

  “What?”

  “It’s quiet now.” Grant smiled with satisfaction. “See?”

  “See what? That one big dinosaur or dragon killed the other one?” Mackenzie’s head was throbbing and she wished she could fall asleep. Maybe then she wouldn’t be tortured by the raucous noise outside and not be tormented with images of what could be causing it.

  His expression softening, Grant approached the bed and stretched out a hand to touch her forehead gently. “I think you’re a little feverish.”

  Tucking a stack of pillows under her, Mackenzie sighed. “It was a rough day. Everything hurts. My feet, my back, my legs. My neck is killing me.”

  With a very light touch, Grant rested his hand on her shoulder. “You’re very tense.”

  “Do you blame me?”

  His hand was very warm against her skin in a soothing way. “Let me give you a neck rub, Mackenzie. You’re too knotted up to sleep comfortably and you need your rest.” His voice was neutral.

  Looking over her shoulder at him, she saw concern filling his features. If he was coming on to her, it was so low key it was impossible to detect. Her mother’s voice in her head screamed that he was trying to have sex with her, but Mackenzie ignored it. Finally she said, “That would be nice.”

  Sliding onto the bed next to her, Grant rubbed her sore shoulders and neck. It felt wonderful and her eyes closed contentedly. During her pregnancy Tanner had often given her neck rubs to release the tension that always built there. The thought of her ex-husband made her body ache. She missed him with all her heart. Not the cold, closed-off person he had been at the end, but the warm, sweet man she had married.

  An explosion of growls and howls filled the night. Mackenzie jerked upright, her heart thundering in her chest. Forcing herself to take deep breaths, she clutched a pillow tightly while Grant rubbed her back to comfort her.

  “How can we be safe?” Mackenzie whispered. “When there are things out there?”

  “We are,” Grant promised her. “We’re in your safe haven.” He gently swept her hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear.

  The act was too intimate. It made Mackenzie suddenly all too aware of the warmth of Grant’s body and the strength of his elegant hands against her skin while he massaged the bunched muscles in her shoulders. Holding her pillows tightly, she lay on her side facing away from him.

  “Do you want me to stop?” His hands lifted, leaving her skin tingling.

  Shaking her head, she said, “No. It’s helping.”

  It wasn’t Grant’s fault that it had been months since she had last felt a man’s hands on her body. She hadn’t felt the desire to find someone new after Tanner left. Not until this moment did she realize how starved she’d become for physical touch. Her nipples were tightened into almost painful nubs and her sex was throbbing. Grant was a very handsome man in a Golden Age of Hollywood sort of way, but she hadn’t been attracted to him until this moment. Even if her body was responding in a sexual way to his shoulder and neck massage, Mackenzie wasn’t about to act on it. She barely knew Grant and she had never been one for one-night stands.

  The howls and cries of the nightmare creatures continued to make her start, but Grant’s gentle ministrations gradually calmed her. The painful knots in her shoulders and neck finally unlocked. She felt drugged with the endorphins swirling through her system and she pressed her thighs together to fight the sudden urge to invite Grant into her bed.

  Grant’s hands relaxed on her shoulders, then slid away. He remained next to her, not moving, her back pressed against his thigh.

  “I could sleep in here if it makes you more comfortable,” he said, his voice nonchalant.

  Opening her eyes, she stared at her hand resting on the pillow. It was devoid of her wedding band and engagement ring. She had taken them off to shower, but hadn’t returned them to her finger. Instead, she had placed them in her purse. Maybe Grant had taken it as a sign. After several long moments of panicked indecision, Mackenzie shook her head. “I’ll be okay.”

  “All right,” Grant answered.

  The bedsprings squeaked when he slid off the bed and Mackenzie closed her eyes, fighting the urge to ask him to stay.

  “I’ll see you in the morning. If you need anything, just call out,” Grant said, his footsteps soft against the old worn carpet on the floor. “I’m right outside the door.”

  “Okay.” Mackenzie kept her back facing him and closed her eyes, feigning drowsiness.

  It wasn’t until the door clicked shut that she sighed and covered her face with her hands. After everything that she had been going through, she didn’t need to complicate her life further. Her emotions were in turmoil as it was. How her mind was not fractured to pieces after the last few months was astounding, but after the last twenty-four hours she was surprised she was even coherent. Maybe her grief counselor was right. The human mind was far more resilient than people realized.

  The whole day felt like a terrible nightmare, unreal in every way. Yet, her body bore the wounds of the struggle against the balloons and their long trek during the day. Fine little scratches covered her face, neck, and hands while her wrist still smarted from the deeper cut inflicted by the ribbon that had snagged her. The world of nightmares and dreams, as Grant called it, was terrifying.

  Banishing thoughts of Joshua, Tanner, Estelle, and Tildy from her mind, she concentrated on counting backward from one hundred. The world beyond the house was quieter.
Only the rush of the wind and the melodic creak of the tree branches swaying in the front yard reached her ears. As she neared the fifties in her countdown, her eyes began to droop, her body sinking deeper into the mattress. She had just muttered the first number in the forties when sleep caught her.

  She stirred again when she felt the bed tip downward on one side. Opening her eyes, she saw that the lamp was off and that the room was shrouded in darkness. Muddled by sleep, she wondered why her nightlight wasn’t illuminating her bedroom. She hated waking in the dark. A warm, strong hand slid seductively over her neck to cradle her face and a gentle kiss was pressed to her shoulder.

  “You look so pretty when you sleep,” Tanner whispered.

  “Am I sleeping?”

  “Yeah, you are, baby.” His Louisiana accent purred against her skin as he kissed her neck. “You smell so good.”

  It was difficult to focus and her eyelids kept fluttering closed. Sleep kept pulling at her mind, drawing her into the darkness. It slowly registered that she wasn’t back in her bedroom in Shreveport, but in the farmhouse in the dead spot. It was difficult to hold focus when Tanner was nuzzling her ear and running his hand slowly up her belly to caress her breasts.

  “I’m dreaming,” she sighed.

  “Is it a good dream?” Tanner playfully bit her ear.

  “Oh, yes.” Her heart yearned for Tanner and her body craved him. Every fiber of her being sang for him. How had everything gone so wrong when they had been so right?

  Somewhere in the murk her mother’s voice was screaming at her to wake up, but it was so deliciously nice to feel Tanner’s hands skimming over her body and his fuzzy cheek scratching against her jaw as he kissed her neck. She didn’t want to lose this dream and fall into another one. She moved her head so her lips met his, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw.

  “Miss me, baby?” Tanner licked her lips seductively.

  “So much,” she answered. The familiar hardness of his body, honed by hours of hard labor, pressed against hers, making her burn for him. A piece of her felt guilt for indulging in her sexual desire for her ex, but it was just a dream. There couldn’t be any harm in it. Her newly awakened body craved to be touched again, and Tanner had always made her feel so deliciously alive.

  Clinging to Tanner and the dream, Mackenzie’s fingers traced along the side of his body. Deeper layers of sleep kept drowning her for a moment in blackness, before she fought her way back to Tanner’s passionate lovemaking. She struggled to retain the dream, fighting against her sleeping mind’s inclination to drift.

  Sometimes the dream felt vividly real, the warmth of Tanner’s hands scorching hot against her flesh when he undressed her. Other times, it was as if she were grasping at a ghost, clutching at empty air. Yet throughout it all, her body cried for release.

  Twining her legs around Tanner’s, her fingers buried in his hair, and her lips devouring his, she clung to him as her mind again began to wander, ready to leave this dream for another.

  “Don’t leave me,” she whimpered. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t,” Grant’s voice whispered.

  “What?” Mackenzie shoved upward, pushing away the man who had been so ardently kissing her.

  “Babe? What’s wrong?” Tanner asked.

  The dream suddenly felt quite vivid. Mackenzie felt the heaviness of Tanner’s erection against her thigh and the roughness of his fingers when he touched her cheek.

  “Tanner?”

  Grinning, he kissed her. “Of course. Who else would it be? I’m the guy that always makes you scream.” He playfully bit her neck.

  Relief mingling with desire, Mackenzie surrendered to the fantasy fully, relishing the deliciousness of her imaginary lover.

  While he was brushing his rough fingertips against her cheek, Tanner’s voice was sexy and low as he said, “I know you’ve been so lonely. So afraid. I’m so sorry, baby.”

  Those were the words she longed to hear, and even though she knew she was sleeping, they alleviated the empty ache inside of her. Tanner shifted, his leg nudging hers open wider so the tip of his cock lightly pushed at her.

  “Let me in, baby,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers. “Let me in.”

  The dream began to collapse around her, growing hazy and without mass. All she felt was his hands on her face, his forehead pressed against hers, and him lightly pressing at the folds of her vagina. Black veils of slumber wrapped around her, drawing her away from Tanner.

  “Mackenzie, let me in,” Tanner whispered urgently. “Before it’s too late. Let me in.”

  In the cavern of her fears, her mother’s voice was screaming at her to wake up. Her mother had always hated Tanner. Always hated Mackenzie’s happiness.

  Tanner’s body was beginning to dissolve like vapor.

  “No, no, please. Be with me!” she cried out.

  The fervent kiss matched the urgency of him entering her. Wrapped in darkness and mist, Mackenzie clutched Tanner to her as he thrust desperately into her. The kiss grew hungrier, full of need. His teeth dragged at her tongue and lips, and his hands gripped her shoulders painfully. It suddenly felt all wrong. The rhythm was all wrong, the fullness she felt too wide, too deep. His shoulders were too broad, his chest too hairy. The hair clutched in her fingers was too curly and thick.

  As he came hard inside of her, filling her, she whispered in despair, “Grant.”

  Then the fantasy vanished as her mind was finally swallowed into the cold darkness of a dreamless slumber.

  CHAPTER 17

  It was screams that awakened Mackenzie.

  At first she thought another nightmare beast was howling outside, but then words unfurled out of the hysterical screams and shouts. Groggy, she was uncertain if she had been asleep for hours or mere minutes. The thick blackness filling the room indicated it was still night. As she flipped on the lamp, the light shoved back the dark.

  Fumbling her way out of the bed, she was startled at the soreness between her legs. Shoving back the bedclothes, she saw her nightgown bunched around her waist leaving her crotch area bare. She had washed her own clothes downstairs and hadn’t been able to bring herself to wear the underwear she had found in the dresser so had opted to go without. She remembered distinctly falling asleep alone and that she had not invited Grant into bed with her, but the tenderness of her sex frightened her. As she stared in confusion at her exposed flesh, the memory of the dream flashed to life in her mind. Dread mingled with her bewilderment. Why had Grant taken Tanner’s place? Though his massage had aroused her, she didn’t actually want to have sex with him. So why had she dreamed about it?

  Feeling oddly violated, she pulled the nightgown over her legs.

  “It didn’t really happen,” she muttered in an attempt to reassure herself. Maybe in her sleep she had touched herself when she had been dreaming.

  The shouts and cries from outside grew louder, pulling her attention from her disturbing thoughts. “Grant!” she called out, feeling awkward saying his name. “Do you hear that?”

  The bedroom door banged open. Grant stood in the hallway clutching the rifle. His hair was mussed and his eyes still looked hooded from sleep. She couldn’t help but stare at him and wonder if his body would feel like it had at the end of her bizarre dream. “Mackenzie, are you okay?”

  “Yes, I hear voices outside though.”

  “There are people outside,” he briskly answered. “But are you okay? You look upset.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “Are you sure they’re real?”

  “I saw them coming up the road when I looked out the window,” Grant answered.

  Shaking her head in an effort to fully wake up, Mackenzie said, “How do you know they’re real?”

  “One of them still burns bright like you do. I’m heading downstairs.” Grant vanished out of sight, his bathrobe swirling behind him.

  On throbbing, painful feet, Mackenzie grabbed the big butcher knife off the bed stand and followed. The unease she felt fro
m her dream clung to her. Nothing in Grant’s manner indicated that what she had experienced was anything other than her sleeping mind spinning a peculiar fantasy. In fact, Grant’s demeanor was all business while he hurried down the last steps to the front door and set about dismantling the barricade they had created out of chairs and a table.

  It was difficult not to think of the dream when she looked at him. She could still feel his curls clenched between her fingers and his heavy body riding hers. It may have just been her imagination, but she could not discount the reality that she was in a dead spot and that something odd could have happened.

  The shouts and screams grew louder and another sound, deep and growling, was added to the cacophony. It sent Mackenzie’s heart racing again. Gingerly, she padded down the stairs to help Grant.

  “Grant, are you sure we should let them in?”

  “They’re like us and need our help or else they’ll end up dead.” His handsome face was solemn and worried. There was no indication of him even being interested in her other than having her help him move the furniture.

  “Like Tildy.” The agony of Tildy’s death tinted her tone.

  Grant hesitated. “Tildy was almost gone when she found us. She was dangerous to us. These people won’t be.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m sure. Trust me. Like I said, one of them burns brighter.”

  “You can see that? Really?”

  Tossing her a frustrated look, Grant finished scooting the table aside and started unlocking the many bolts on the door. This time he didn’t answer, but concentrated on his task. Mackenzie bit her lip and took a few steps to one side so that he could open the door. She remembered her promise to let him lead because he understood this world better than she did. It wasn’t easy though. It upset her that she felt ill at ease with him, yet craved his approval. She found herself yearning for the slightest indication that he wasn’t upset with her.