Another scream, closer than the first and a whole lot louder. It sounded like the same voice. Whoever it was, she had to be right up ahead. I could hear the sound of footsteps coming toward me, the hard slap of boots on the wooden boards of the maze floor.
Then I saw her.
Becky.
She came barreling around the corner, running away from something that I couldn’t yet see. Her chest heaved as she gasped for air. I had seen Becky frightened before, back at Long Brook, but she hadn’t been screaming then; she had seemed doggedly determined to see it through, despite the paranormal dangers and the very real possibility of suffocating or burning to death that night.
Becky was a fighter, not a screamer…so what had terrified her to the point of screaming now?
There was only one answer: the dark and predatory presence that I could sense, still lurking out there somewhere in the blackness of the maze, and obviously getting off on her state of fear. I could feel an overwhelming sense of glee emanating from it, and knew that it was getting closer to Becky, drawn to that same sense of fear like a moth to a flame. It was much nearer to us both now, and I was becoming convinced that it was getting stronger and more powerful by the minute.
“Becky!”
She was totally oblivious to my presence. I flinched as she came straight at me, her eyes wide with panic, but instead of barreling into me and knocking me to the ground, she passed right through my body. It was the weirdest feeling…I turned stone-cold, shivering as our bodies shared the same space for a split-second. Then she was out the other side, and tearing down the corridor; Becky was so frantic to escape that she wasn’t paying any attention to what was right in front of her. I winced as her head slammed into one of the mirrors with a thud that took the wind out of her sails, forcing her to sink to her knees.
Gathering up every ounce of mental strength that I could find, I willed myself to move forward, and this time, amazingly, my dream-body obeyed me, allowing me to follow in her panicked footsteps. It only took a few seconds for me to catch up with her. After the bump on her head, Becky must have gotten confused, because she had managed to take a wrong turn in the maze and had run into a dead end. She was slapping her palms against the mirrors on either side of her as she attempted to grope her way out of the trap that she now found herself caught up in.
Behind me, I could sense that the dark presence was still closing in, like a shark homing in on blood in the water.
The first thing to emerge was a hand. Six feet in front of Becky, a set of smoky black fingers began slowly pushing their way out into the corridor from inside one of the mirrors. The hand flexed its fingers into the shape of a claw, and was followed by a rake-thin arm and then the shoulder that it was attached to. Next was a head, which seemed to struggle to push its way out from behind the glass and into the ‘real’ world — if that’s where we were. The head slowly turned toward Becky, who was now trying to pull herself back onto her feet using a pair of mirrors for leverage, and I swear — I swear — I saw it grin when it caught sight of her.
After the figure had managed to free itself completely, standing in front of Becky and towering over her as she kept struggling to find her feet, still more shadow people began to emerge from the mirrors all along the hallway. At least two of them were child-sized, no bigger than a six or seven year-old at most, and the pair ran excitedly around the feet of the taller figures as though they were playing some kind of game.
“Becky, run!” I yelled, but she didn’t react to me at all; in fact, she hadn’t even looked at me since she had first rounded that corner. I didn’t think that she could see me, and I also didn’t think that she could see the shadow people either, based on the way she was acting. Becky was back on her feet at last, and although she seemed a little on the groggy side, she looked determined to get out of here. Her face was more fight than fright now, much more like the old Becky that I knew and crushed on in a major way. Her hands were balled into fists, and her mouth was set in a determined line. It was as though she knew that the shadow people were out there, but not exactly where. Her head was on a swivel, but her eyes never seemed to fix upon any one of them.
One of the children suddenly darted forward, coming around the leg of the biggest adult and swiping at Becky’s face with its hand. The shadow child jumped backward just as Becky brought a hand up to protect her face, which had an expression somewhere between amazed and fearful now. She had obviously felt the touch of the spirit on her skin.
Even in the super-dim light, I could see that although Becky’s body was reflected in all of the mirrors, the shadow people not only cast no shadows themselves, but they also weren’t showing up in any of the mirrors at all — except for when they first pulled themselves out of the glass and emerged to stand alongside one another inside the maze.
Becky reached out with both hands, and her questing fingers passed straight through the large shadow man that had been the first one to try and back her into the corner. Moving with incredible speed, the big figure decided to return the favor, lashing out with both arms and slamming an incredulous Becky backward into one of the mirrors so hard that the glass cracked and spider-webbed on impact.
You have to give her credit. Almost anybody else in her position — me included, probably — would be hollering the place down by now, but it looked to me as though Becky’s screaming days were over. Taking three uncertain steps forward, she punched out at what must have seemed like empty air in front of her. For the second time, her fist passed straight through a shadow figure, which was the same man (I was guessing from his build) that had just pushed her backwards.
How can you fight something you can’t hit?
All the hackles suddenly went up on the back of my neck. I spun about, glad that this dream-body was now somehow obeying my mental commands, and then —
Oh, crap.
At the far end of the maze corridor, the same one that Becky had just practically flown down, I could finally see what she had been running from…and I really didn’t like it, not one little bit.
I could tell from the cold blue glow which outlined its lanky frame that it was a spirit, not a living human being. From the set of its shoulders and the way that it moved, I also felt pretty sure that the tall dark figure was a male rather than a female. There was something…I don’t know, something familiar about him, the way the man looked and carried himself: it reminded me of the Slenderman that was cropping up all over the Internet right now. It took me just a few short seconds to realize exactly what that was.
I had seen it before, from my seat on the bus window earlier tonight.
It was the spirit that had draped its arm around Becky.
Just like it had before, it looked me in the eye and smiled at me, its mouth a gaping black chasm set in a dark face with no other features. It was as if a deeper black hole had somehow opened itself up out of the blackness, and wanted to swallow us both whole.
“Why, hello Danny!” The voice was soft, cultured, and…holy crap, British? Like one of the dudes from Downton Abbey, that PBS show which Mom was practically addicted to. It actually sounded friendly and welcoming, a pretense that the spirit was talking to an old friend that it hadn’t seen in a long time. Somehow, that managed to make it sound even more sinister.
The thing kept gliding toward me on long black legs that didn’t move a fraction, floating two or three inches above the ground.
“Isn’t she just magnificent?” the entity went on, sweeping out a hand toward the place behind me where I assumed that Becky was facing off against the clustering shadow figures. I risked an uber-quick look and saw that I was right. Surrounded on three sides by mirrors, she was lashing out at the dark spirits that penned her in on the fourth. When my head snapped back to face him again, I flinched; the Dark Man (as I was starting to think of him) was only a few feet away from me now, floating forward slowly in a manner that suggested he had all the time in the world.
I tried to back away, but my legs were suddenl
y refusing to move again, rooting me to the spot. All I could see was that cadaverous black grin looming at me out of the shadows. Then we were nose to nose — though this thing didn’t even have a nose — and I smelled something…weird, like the musty odor of a second-hand bookstore, all old, stale paper, wrapped up in the musk and history of hundreds of years and thousands of lives.
“I really do think that I’m going to have to keep her for myself,” the Dark Man continued, his voice taking on a confidential air. “All for my very own. Yes, I do believe that I shall.”
The featureless black face regarded me impassively. I thought that I saw the smile widen just a hair, but it could easily have been my dream-eyes playing tricks. Unless I was mistaken, he also seemed to be speaking slightly out of synch — it reminded me of a foreign movie that had been badly dubbed.
“Becky might have something to say about that, and I sure as hell will.”
“She’s certainly wasted on you, young man,” the Dark Man sneered, and there it was again, that weird time lag between the thing’s mouth moving and the words coming out.
“Kiss my butt,” was the best retort I could manage. Hey, cut me a little slack…how much wit would you be capable of drumming up if you had a malevolent spirit entity jamming its faceless face right up against your nose? I think kiss my butt was actually pretty damn good, all things considered.
The thing laughed, and suddenly the friendly tone was dropped, shown for the fake that it really was. No human throat could ever have uttered a laugh like that. Just the sound of it made me want to puke.
“If you don’t mind, I shall decline your most generous offer.”
What is it about the English that they can be so freaking polite and so freaking rude at exactly the same time? They must learn it in school or something.
“That’s too bad,” I grunted, trying desperately to get my legs to move; they had quit obeying my commands, no matter how much I strained and willed them too. This on-again/off-again control of my dream body BS was getting old. Perhaps it was because this was only a nightmare, and I was traveling as a passenger in my own dream-body, instead of being in the driver’s seat. That was the only thing that reassured me a little. It didn’t take a genius to work it out. I was terrified of losing Becky. Suddenly I’m dreaming about shadowy figures coming out of mirrors and chasing her through a maze. A shrink would have a field day dissecting this one, wouldn’t they? Fear of loss; fear of rejection; fear of Becky running away from me and never coming back.
It all made perfect sense.
Except…
Dreams and nightmares don’t appear on Boulder sidewalks and put an arm around the girl who just stormed away from you, did they?
Realization hit home with the sickening force of a hammer to the guts.
I had been fooled into thinking that, just because I was unable to make my body do the things I wanted it to do, I must be dealing with something kicked up by my over-active subconscious, rather than interacting with genuine spirits.
This wasn’t a regular nightmare at all.
This was one hundred percent real.
“She’s not going to run away from you.” The Dark Man broke my train of thought with a voice that had gone back to pouring honey into my ear again. “No, no, no. Nothing so simple as that. You see, I’m going to take her away from you. Because I want her. For my very own. Forever. Unless, that is, you are man enough to put up something resembling a fight.”
With that, the thing slid forward once more, moving into and then through my body. I went cold for a second time, but this was a different kind of cold from the one that Becky had caused when she went straight through me. I could feel the panic rising within me now, and struggled with every fiber in my body to turn it around, to make it face the Dark Man and his entourage of mirror-spirits through sheer force of will...but I couldn’t move, not so much as a dream-muscle. I couldn’t even twitch now. For lack of a better expression, I was being totally controlled, though I had no idea by who or by what.
From somewhere behind me, Becky screamed again.
I could only imagine what the shadow people were doing to her back there.
CHAPTER SIX
I woke up with a start, my bed linens drenched with sweat and clinging to my lower body. All the classic signs of a brain-bender of a nightmare.
Kicking the sheets off, I swung my legs out of bed and groped for the Nalgene water bottle that I always kept on the bedside table. It was still half full. Unscrewing the lid, I took a long, welcome swallow of tepid water that had been flavored with caffeinated cherry sweetener.
My heart was pounding away like a jackhammer inside my chest, and I was breathing so hard it practically ached. Spirit-Moggie was nowhere to be seen, so I could only assume that my nocturnal thrashing session had made him say adios and probably go off to sleep with Mom. She couldn’t see him, of course, but knowing that he was most likely in there keeping her company made me feel just a little better. That cat had raised his game of comforting his adoptive humans to the level of an Olympic sport, even when one of us wasn’t aware of his presence. In fact, Mom swore that he gave off sleep pheromones every time he plopped his hairy black butt down on the comforter next to her.
I picked up my phone (no returned calls or texts, dammit) and swiped to find the time. Six thirty-seven on a Sunday morning.
Becky.
That one thought suddenly leaped out in front of all the others, grabbed me by the shoulders and yelled for me to pay attention. Was it too early to call her? I wavered for a minute. Not only was it early, but for a Sunday morning it was zero-stupid-early.
But she was in danger… after the dream, journey to the spirit world, whatever the hell it had actually been, I felt that now with total certainty.
The Dark Man was real, and he wanted her. I had believed him when he said it to me there in the mirror maze, and I believed it now, sitting her on the edge of my bed.
Screw it.
Punching in the four-digit security code, I brought up Becky’s contact number and pawed it.
Amazingly, she picked up on the fourth ring.
“M’hello?” Becky must have answered by reflex, because judging from the sound of her voice she was still pretty much asleep.
“Uh, hey Becky. It’s me. Danny.” Crap. I hadn’t thought this far ahead. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t expected her to pick up at all.
“Danny…” She seemed to struggle with the concept for a few seconds, then asked me what time it was.
“Nearly seven,” I hedged, thinking that nearly seven sounded marginally less insane an hour to call at than six thirty-eight.
“What do you want, Danny?”
I tried to read her voice. Was she still angry with me after last night? At least she was safe, which was the main thing. Upset, I could handle. Under threat, I really couldn’t.
“I, uh…” Before I said it, I knew how lame it was going to sound. Even forming the words in my brain was making me wince. But what else was I supposed to do…lie to her? “You’re in danger,” I began awkwardly.
“Danger,” she repeated, still a little groggy but coming out of it pretty fast. A word like that would have that effect pretty fast.
“Yeah. Look, about last night…”
“Yeah, about last night,” she cut me off. “You acted like a real jerk, Danny. You do know that, right?”
I paused and didn’t say anything, trying desperately to figure out the right thing to say. Which was, apparently, the wrong thing to say.
“Because I’m still processing what happened to us up there at Long Brook. That’s why I keep wanting to go back”
“I—” was all I could get out before she cut me off again.
“It’s OK for you, Danny. You can see the dead. You can talk to them and visit them in your sleep whenever you feel like it. Getting answers is a whole lot easier for you. Some of us have to work through this all on our own…”
“Becky, you’re not alone—”
> “Yes I am, Danny. Yes. I. Am. Because you’re forever acting like you can’t be bothered to spend any time with me up there.”
Now I was starting to get resentful, maybe even a little angry myself. I kept the volume down so that I wouldn’t wake up Mom, but I could hear the heat starting to boil up in my voice. “What answers do you expect to find up there anyway? It’s just a ruin now. The spirits are long gone. The only things that haunt Long Brook Sanatorium now are rabbits and coyotes. But that’s not why I called…”
“You’re so freaking sure of yourself Danny!” She was getting angry too. Fighting fire with fire. There was no way this was going to end well.
Instead of de-escalating, I was stupid enough to try and play the trump card. “Well, why shouldn’t I be? Like you just pointed out, I’m the Seer. Not you.”
“Oh, and I’m just the tag-along little sidekick, is that it?”
I didn’t answer. Turns out that silence was still the wrong thing to say.
“That is it, isn’t it, Danny? That’s how you see me…”
“Hey, that’s not fair—”
“It’s totally fair!” Becky’s voice was raised now. I’d seen the size of her house though. It was a McMansion, as Mom called anything that cost more than three hundred grand and had more than two floors, and Becky could probably holler her lungs out from her bedroom and not wake her parents up. The place was huge. You could have built your own Death Star in its triple-berth garage. “Just because not everybody has your special gift, it doesn’t mean that you can look down on them Danny.”
Look down on them? What was she talking about? Part of me, the calm, rational side that was keeping an eye on the conversation from the perspective of a detached observer, could see how badly things were going off the rails. It started to warn me — just gentle nudges at the back of my mind, trying to get my attention — that we both needed to calm things down and really talk about this, instead of just yelling at one another. That rational part of my brain kindly pointed out that close to seven o’clock in the morning was probably not the best time to expect good communication skills from either of us, but I just told it to shut the hell up. I was angry, and do you know what? I was pretty much sure at that moment that Becky was the cause of it all.
Last Halloween (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 2) Page 4
