She turned away from Ellen’s door and continued down to her own bedroom. The door was standing open, as she’d left it. The black-haired woman was still asleep. Marcy drew in a steadying breath and entered the room. She was going to get this over with now. Put the gun to the cunt’s head and pull the trigger. But as she strode into the room she was immediately aware of something not right. The door swung shut behind her and Marcy spun about, raising the gun and applying pressure to the trigger. But her finger froze before squeezing off a shot.
Her mind reeled at the sight of the intruder, a shapely black woman in a slinky black dress. The woman was alive and smiling, but she looked like a walking corpse. Maggots wriggled from the corners of that hideous smile, falling onto the black dress and the bare tops of her bloated breasts.
Marcy took a step backward. “Holyjumpingjesusfuckingshit!”
The black woman laughed and more maggots tumbled out. “Yeah. About sums it up, I guess.”
Marcy’s hands were shaking. “Stay away from me!”
The black woman chuckled and took a step toward her. “I’m not afraid of you, Marcy.”
Marcy squeezed the Glock’s trigger. The gun boomed and the bullet punched a hole in the door behind the woman. The black woman didn’t flinch. She never stopped smiling. “I’m not afraid of you, Marcy,” she repeated. “And the reason for that, in case you haven’t already figured it out, is that I’m already dead.”
Marcy was shaking her head and moving backward again. The backs of her legs met the foot of the bed and she stopped. “No. That’s not possible.”
“Oh, it’s possible, all right, thanks to that bitch tied to your bed.”
Marcy frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
The black woman pried the gun from Marcy’s suddenly numb hands and tossed it on the bed. “I was her best friend back when I was alive. But then I died. Which should’ve been the end for me, but she conjured me back to…undeath, I guess you’d call it.”
Marcy was shaking. She turned her head away from the dead woman’s rancid breath. “This is insane. It can’t be happening.”
The black woman slapped her. “But it is. It’s real as a motherfuck. Hell, I’m getting more real by the goddamn minute. You didn’t see me last night, but I was here all the time.”
Marcy couldn’t deal with this. It felt like the very fabric of the world was unraveling. Soon she would go spiraling away into some unfathomable void. Which would kind of be okay at this point.
The black woman grinned again. “And speaking of insane, that was some wild display of batshit crazy you just put on, girl.”
Marcy felt bile rise in her throat. “I shouldn’t have done it. Any of it. Something’s really wrong with me.”
“Don’t you second-guess yourself, baby.” The black woman wrapped her arms around Marcy and pushed her rotting flesh against her. “You did what you had to do, and you know it. Hell, it’s the main reason I’ve decided not to kill you.”
Marcy shivered in the dead woman’s sickeningly intimate embrace. “What do you mean?”
The black woman laughed softly. “We’re all going on a very long trip together. Just us girls on the road. Won’t that be fun?”
“Where are we going?”
“To a bad place, Marcy. A very bad place.” She smiled in a way that might have been intended to reassure, but the effect was offset by the sight of more wriggling maggots. “But along the way we’re going to have big fun and see many wondrous things. You have my word on that.”
Marcy frowned. So much for an escape to a tropical paradise. She felt a vague instinct to fight against this, but she recognized the idea as futile and it quickly withered. And anyway, maybe this was the true unescapable destiny she’d sensed was waiting for her beyond this place. “So when are we leaving?”
The black woman’s smile widened. “Oh, soon. Now give me a kiss.”
Marcy sucked in a breath. Then the dead woman was kissing her.
Maggots fell into her mouth and slid down her throat.
Marcy closed her eyes and prayed for an end to the nightmare.
CHAPTER NINE
The old Ford pickup slowed as it passed a green highway sign announcing the last rest station for fifty miles. When its turn signal began blinking, Chad flicked on the Lexus’s blinker and glanced at Allyson. She looked disheveled and tired. They’d talked very little during their three hours on the road, with Allyson sitting very still the entire time and staring straight ahead at the unfurling highway.
He supposed he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk. She was a young woman from the suburbs used to a life of relative peace and quiet. Chad, however, had some experience with sudden, shocking violence, mostly from his time in the place called Below, the cavernous underground prison beneath the House of Blood. Even now, three years later, nightmares of that time still occasionally jolted him out of sleep.
And now Allyson, who had swept into his life like some divine angel of mercy, had likely been condemned to years—and perhaps a lifetime—of similar nightly tortures. The thought of it made him grip the steering wheel harder as his anger began to build again.
He hadn’t known the dead men in his kitchen; Jim seemed sure they were emissaries of the long-missing Ms. Wickman. And Chad had believed him. Which was why they were on the road now, bound for some vague destination Jim had assured them would be a safe haven. Citing “security concerns,” he refused to specify the precise location of the place, asking that they instead follow him to wherever it was they were going. It wasn’t that Jim didn’t trust Chad and Allyson with the information. Rather, he refused to allow even the remote possibility of the location being extracted from them via torture should more of Ms. Wickman’s agents intercept them en route to the place. Which was paranoid as hell, but Chad didn’t blame the man.
The old Ford slowed some more and eased off the highway onto the curved white lane that led to the rest station. The parking lot was about half full. People were milling about around the vending machines and talking to each other on the long sidewalk. Other people were having lunches at the nearby picnic tables. A dog ran across the sloping lawn to the left of the rest station, chasing a yellow Frisbee that arced across the sky. Chad felt the knot of tension in his gut ease a bit. After the long, silent hours on the road, it felt good to be among people again. Normal people doing normal things.
He followed Jim’s brown-and-tan truck to the end of the lot. Then he shut off the Lexus and twisted in his seat to look at Allyson. She still had that stunned animal look, her eyes dull and staring at nothing at all.
He put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Honey? Let’s get out and stretch for a bit, okay?”
Her head swiveled toward the sound of his voice. The corners of her mouth dimpled, a smile so soft and weary that it made Chad’s heart ache for her. “Sure.”
She unbuckled her seat belt and reached for the door handle, stepping out of the car before Chad could reply. She threw the door shut and moved rapidly to the sidewalk, where she paused to stretch her arms and neck. Chad remained behind the wheel a moment longer and watched her, enjoying the simple, supple grace of her lithe body. She caught him looking at her and smiled. Chad smiled back as she reached into her handbag, retrieved a pair of black sunglasses, and slid them on. She waved at Chad and headed for the rest station’s main building.