He picked up the travel bag, slung it over his shoulder again, and resumed walking. But his legs didn’t feel lighter than air anymore. A heavy conscience weighed him down, a burden that imbued every step with lethargy. He was only a few more yards down the road by the time he finally perceived the approach of heavy footsteps somewhere behind him.
The sound of bare feet thumping on the asphalt.
He sensed speed and feral intent.
Chad gripped the shoulder strap of the travel bag tighter, readying to sling it in the face of anything that came near him. The bag left lots to be desired as a weapon, packed as it was with clothes and a few chintzy souvenirs. A pillow might pack a little less wallop. But only a little.
Running didn’t seem like a viable option, either.
His heart pounded as whatever it was pulled up short behind him. He heard moist, smacking sounds, and felt hot breath at the back of his neck. He flashed on Karen’s vague description of a monster, and he muttered a silent apology to her.
Because he really didn’t need to see the thing behind him to know he’d been wrong.
Her monster was real.
And it had found him.
He turned slowly around, a thick lump of fear lodged like a sardine in his throat, and the paper-thin wall separating his conscious mind and an incapacitating wave of terror gave way.
A snippet from an old Monty Python movie floated into his head as he stood there paralyzed by this up-close encounter with the outright surreaclass="underline" Run awaaay!
Yes, a dash into the woods might be the best idea all around.
Too bad he felt nailed to the asphalt.
The creature commanded his attention, obliterated rational thought. It was big-really big. A huge, misshapen head with a long, leathery snout sat atop a massive body covered with fur and corded with impossibly huge muscles. It leered at him, hissing through a lot of sharp, glittering teeth.
Saliva dripped from its mouth, splashing the pavement.
Chad’s head hurt.
He felt dizzy.
Why was it just staring at him like that?
Was it toying with him?
Maybe.
The fucker.
But then it was reaching for him, extending one of the unnaturally long, distended arms. …
Chad slumped to the pavement unconscious.
And the creature scooped him up in its arms.
Eddie dreamed of white-water rapids, the heat of the summer sun, and a spray of water against his face as his raft slapped the roiling river. He was with friends he hadn’t seen in what seemed like a span of lifetimes. He dreamed of rum and sweet, slow sex with an island girl on a beach in the Caribbean. He experienced the reassuring solidity of rock beneath his hands as he scaled a mountain in some other exotic place. And now he was with another woman, a stunning blonde like something ripped from the pages of a fashion magazine. She was wearing a flimsy blue shift; it billowed around her and her long hair swirled gently about her head as a breeze redolent with the scent of the sea brushed over him. She stepped into his embrace, held him close, and he shuddered as her soft lips met his own. The wet tip of her tongue probed his mouth, sending another shudder through him, then she slipped free of his embrace and stepped away from him.
God, how beautiful she was!
He swallowed hard. “I need you, Dream.”
So the dream girl was named Dream. This was amusing to him even behind the wall of sleep. Her smile became a seductive pout as she began to disrobe. “Worship me, Eddie.” She turned her head to the sky as the wind stiffened, buffeting her hair like a boat’s sail on the open sea. She raised her hands above her head as the shift fell away. “Worship me.”
No problem there.
Eddie fell to his knees in front of her. “Oh, Dream-“
But something was wrong.
The blue of her eyes was displaced by a yellow gleam, and there was something about the tone of her bare flesh that suggested elasticity. He shuddered with fear as she began to morph into one of those awful things. Her face elongated and there were several audible pops as new bone matter and cords of muscle formed in her body. Her formerly lovely head swelled to the size of a Halloween pumpkin, and thousands of strands of fur sprouted from her flesh like a fast-spreading fungus.
The transition from human to beast was complete.
Droplets of saliva spilled from the corners of her mouth, which had become, let’s face it, a snout. She was drooling, watching him the way a fat man at a burger joint watches the arrival of his burger and fries.
Eddie thought now would be an excellent time to wake up.
Because this didn’t seem at all like a dream. He was not only awake, he was face-to-face with, well, a werewolf, and it was going to scarf him down like a Happy Meal. The beast loomed over him, opened its enormous mouth wide to display rows of killing teeth, growled at him, then swooped in for the kill.
Eddie woke up with a gasp.
And then he was screaming, because the monster had somehow slipped through a dream matrix. It was here with him-in the closet-teeth clamped to his throat, poised to rip his life out. He clutched at his throat, seized the presence there, and realized he’d been frightened nearly to death by a ball of fur no bigger than one of his hands.
He ceased screaming immediately.
Still, why had the creature attached itself to his throat that way? He looked now into its strange yellow eyes and was struck by how strongly they resembled the eyes of the she-wolf thing in his dream, which were so like those of the shapeshifters that prowled the tunnels Below. The usual subliminal dream alchemy.
Yeah.
But—
He held it well away from his body, waiting for it to change into something else. A werecat, maybe. The kitten felt too substantial in his grip, stronger than something its size should be. His hands tightened instinctively around it, and he had a nearly overpowering urge to snap its little neck.
The animal seemed to sense his intent.
It hissed and thrashed in his grip.
There was an instant when it almost slipped free, but he caught it about the neck and began to choke it. The hell with it. He had to kill the goddamn thing.
Then, just as he began to feel cartilage give way beneath his strong hands, the closet was flooded with light. Eddie blinked. He sensed a physical presence rushing into the room. Panic gripped him, instilled a renewed urge to flee, but there was nowhere to go this time. The row of dresses he was hiding behind was swept back. The beautiful mute girl glared down at him, her eyes gleaming with a fury that made Eddie gulp, and she ripped the cat free of his grip.
There goes my insurance policy, Eddie thought.
The girl glared at him another time, then shifted her attention to the kitten, whose demeanor had undergone a radical change. A loud purring emanated from its throat. The girl held it close and made strange cooing noises at it.
A dark thought occurred to Eddie-he might have to kill the girl. He tried to picture himself doing it. Perhaps with some blunt instrument in the room. The idea repulsed him. Maybe he would do it-if given no other choice-but a very large part of him doubted his ability to kill her. Bashing in a woman’s skull, especially that of a very young woman, would put him in league with the sleazy likes of Ted Bundy.
And Eddie had already lost quite enough of his humanity and self-respect, thank you.
He realized the girl was staring at him, an expression of cold calculation evident in the set of her features. Then she wheeled about on her heels, the train of the long dress swishing about as she moved, and was gone from the closet. The part of his mind that valued survival above all else went into a state of high alert. He should get to his feet, charge after the little bitch, and take her down.