She picked up her beer mug and drank deeply from it again. She looked at the television mounted on the wall behind the bar. The Simpsons was on, and she pretended to pay attention to Homer’s shenanigans.
Alicia scooted closer and slapped a cold, clammy hand down on Dream’s upper left thigh. Dream sucked in a deep breath. The hand on her leg felt rough and leathery. She glanced down, noted the contrast between Alicia’s rot-brown hand and her own pale, unblemished flesh, and began to feel light-headed.
Alicia leaned closer still and Dream felt the dead woman’s bony knee press against her. “There, girl. Do I feel like a motherfucking hallucination?”
Dream trembled. She gripped the handle of her beer mug tighter. Her eyes flicked toward the bar’s front door. She could go. Just slide off the stool and hit the ground running. Bang through the door and leg it across the street to the lot where her old Honda Accord was parked. Then drive. Get the hell out of this stink ing, gray, miserable New England town, find some other place to prowl for a while.
Alicia’s dead hand gave her thigh a squeeze. “Don’t matter where you go, baby. I’ll be there. It’s like I said, I’m not exactly a ghost.”
Dream looked at the bar and kept her voice as low as possible. “Then what are you?”
“I’m something you created.”
Dream frowned. “Bullshit.”
“Oh, it’s true, all right.” Alicia laughed again, and Dream saw a single maggot strike the mahogany bartop and begin to squiggle across the polished wood. “You and I both know you left that fucking house of horrors a changed woman. And I don’t mean just changed in the head. You got yourself some of the same supernatural mojo that Master asshole had. You always had it in you, but he woke it up. You can do things normal people can’t. You’re stronger. Smarter. And you can change the shape and substance of the world around you, just by thinking hard enough about it.”
Dream shook her head. “No.”
“Yes.” Alicia’s fingers began to stroke Dream’s inner thigh. “You know it’s true. And it scares the shit out of you. So you’ve done everything you can to hold that power back, to suppress it. But the pressure’s building up inside you. Some of that psychic energy is spilling out. And me…well, I’m one of the consequences of that. Some of that energy mingled with the bit of my essence you’ve carried with you all these years. And that got all mixed in with your guilt. It was inevitable I would manifest.” Another soft, dry laugh. “And that I would look this fucking awful, I guess. Seriously, I ought to bitchslap you for this Night of the Living Dead Black Bitch look you’ve stuck me with.”
Dream was still shaking her head, but it was just automatic, desperate denial. Another part of her—a part the booze was meant to numb—acknowledged the truth of Alicia’s words. But truth changed nothing. She would work harder to suppress it. Drink more. Drug more. Whatever it took. “I have to get out of here.”
The barmaid looked up from the glass she’d been polishing. “Whatever. Go talk to yourself somewhere else. But you owe me three bucks for that beer.”
Dream fumbled with her purse, digging for bills. “Okay. Sorry.”
Alicia continued to stroke her thigh. “I’ll tell you a secret, Dream, something I never seriously considered telling you when I was alive. I always wanted to get it on with you. You were the only chick I ever felt that way about. I was always too scared to tell you, of course. Didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship.”
Dream’s hands were shaking as she at last managed to extract her wallet from the purse and undo its snap. She withdrew three dollar bills, considered withdrawing a fourth for a tip, but decided against it when she got a look at the barmaid’s face, which was a mask of pity and disdain.
“Remember what I said. You made me. I’m not a ghost.” Alicia’s fingers ceased their stroking motion and squeezed. Hard. “I’m also not exactly the woman you remember. But I’m close, Dream, I’m real fucking close. And I am always with you.” She squeezed even harder, really bearing down. “And I was with you in the bathroom when you put the hurt on that geek. That was some fucked-up shit, baby. Nothing like the sweetheart I remember. Shit, you should change your name to Nightmare, would suit you better these days.” She ran the coarse end of her gray tongue over her bloated lips. “Personally, I think it’s an improvement. You don’t get anywhere in this world without kicking some ass.”
Dream threw the three single bills on the bar and slid off the stool. Some instinct caused her gaze to flick toward the young dart players, and she felt something stab her heart as she saw the way they were looking at her. Frat Boy’s finger made a circle in the air around his ear, the international loony symbol.
She hurried out of the bar and stood outside on the sidewalk, watching the traffic on the two-lane street whiz by. She heard music wafting from another bar on the same side of the street, “People Are Strange,” that old Doors chestnut. Hearing it now, in these circumstances, raised gooseflesh on her arms and the back of her neck. A creeping sense of paranoia threatened to overcome her. She sensed that something important—something on the order of a seismic shift in her life—was on the cusp of occurring. The feeling scared the shit out of her.
She glanced to her right and saw Alicia standing there. The dead woman’s eyes were stained a milky white, but they remained oddly expressive, conveying a hint of amusement.
“Look, Dream, here comes a bus. I think if I were you, I’d consider stepping in front of it.”
Dream looked to her left, where a block away a traffic light was turning yellow. In another few moments, the traffic would slow to a halt and she would be able to cross to the parking lot on the opposite side. She knew she should just focus on getting out of here and ignore Alicia.
But curiosity forced her to ask the question:“Why?”
Alicia smiled. She wiped another trickle of maggots from her lips and flicked them away. “Nasty things. There’s trouble coming, baby. You’re strong. Powerful, even. But this may more trouble than you can handle.”
Dream squeezed her eyes shut. Enough. This was clearly just some especially malevolent corner of her shattered psyche fucking with her. Alicia was a hallucination, and the things she was saying were issuing from somewhere inside her, not from the mouth of some maggot-spewing ghoul. She hoped the realization would make the dead woman’s voice halt in mid-sentence…
…but Alicia kept talking. “You thought it was all over when you left that evil place up in the mountains. But it ain’t, girl, not by a long fucking shot. The evil is still out there. It’s been dormant for a while, but it’s just been restoring itself, getting strong again. That woman, the one who killed me, she’s gonna come looking for you soon.”
Those last words sent a deep, resonant chill through Dream. “No…”
Alicia didn’t respond this time. Dream opened her eyes and looked to her right. The apparition was gone. She breathed a sigh of relief, but the chill invoked by the dead woman’s words remained.
She shivered and began to thread her way through the stalled traffic. She unslung her purse and looked for her keys as she enter ed the parking lot. She cursed, not finding them at first, but then her forefinger snagged the key ring. Before she could get the keys out, though, she heard a vaguely familiar voice say, “That’s her.”
Dream tensed. She’d reached the far end of the lot. It was darker here, removed as it was from the main thoroughfare and the lights of the bars. She heard movement to her right and her head snapped in that direction. She gasped. The girl from the bathroom was standing there, an ugly smirk on her face. Two boys were with her. Dream’s heart pounded. They stood between her and the Accord. Which meant she only had one option available—to turn and make a desperate dash back toward the street. But just as she started to turn, she sensed more movement behind her.