“Shut up!” Dream vainly tugged at her bindings again. “And get off me, you fucking disgusting…thing.”
“I will not.” She cupped Dream’s breasts in her swollen hands and tweaked the nipples with her thumbs. Her nails were abnormally long and yellowed; seeing them graze her flesh made Dream’s stomach twist. “You’re in no position to demand anything. And let me be clear about this one more time. I am Alicia Katherine Jackson. And though you didn’t mean to, you brought me back, restored me to this undead state of existence. And let me tell you, I’m not feeling all that charitable toward my old best gal pal these days. It’s not a lot of fun being a half-decayed walking corpse.”
Dream still couldn’t accept it. Buying into what the grotesque apparition was trying to sell her would mean she was some kind of monster. “No. You’re not her. You’re lying. You’re some thing masquerading as her to cause me misery.”
“Nonsense. You think I’m some random ghoul playing head games with you? What kind of sense does that make? No, I’m what I say I am and you’re just going to have to deal with that.” Alicia picked at a weeping razor wound with a yellowed nail. “These hurt, by the way. Thanks so much for making me corporeal, Dream. Thanks for making me feel things. Everything hurts, Dream. Everything feels like it wants to come apart, but the magic you filled me up with won’t let that happen. So, from the bottom of my dead-but-beating heart, thank you so very fucking much. Cunt.”
Dream’s vision blurred. She sniffled and b linked back the tears. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was small, soft, the sound of a beaten, broken thing. “I never meant to hur t you.”
Alicia’s smile faded. “I wonder how many times you’ve said that in your life. You know, I never thought I’d say it, but I’m beginning to think Chad-boy was right about you all those years ago. You love drama. You wallow in self-pity. And at the end of the day, all you’ve ever really done is hurt people.”
“Stop it.” Dream’s eyes misted over again. “Please…”
There was a sudden sound of voices from the other side of the closed door. Alicia sighed and climbed off the bed, moving to a spot near the bookcase. “The fuckers who nabbed you earlier are back. Guess I’ll just sit back and watch the show. Hopefully they’ll at least leave me some sloppy seconds.”
The door flew open and several young people swarmed into the room. Dream counted seven altogether, including the girl she’d assaulted in the bathroom of the Villager Pub. There were two other girls and four boys. They all appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties. One boy was carrying a huge Igloo cooler. He flipped the top open and pulled out a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. A few of the others grabbed beers, too. A girl wearing a black gypsy dress had hair bleached a platinum shade of blonde with inch-long black roots. Black fishnets with several rips exposing pale flesh encased her slender legs. She fired up a clove cigarette and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Hello, sleeping beauty.”
Dream didn’t say anything. Though the girl was smiling, the expression didn’t reach her eyes, which were hard and flat. A barely contained rage pulsed just beneath that smiling surface. Dream’s eyes again filled with tears. She would probably die in this room. And despite the hell her life had become, she didn’t want that to happen.
The girl blew rancid clove smoke in Dream’s face. “I hear you beat up my sister tonight.” She indicated the girl Dream remembered from the Villager Pub with a nod. “She says you beat the living shit out of her for no good reason at all. Now, you’re not getting out of here no matter what. I guess you know that, so you might as well be straight with me. Is my sister telling the truth?”
Dream met the girl’s merciless gaze and swallowed hard. Though she was still terrified of what was about to happen, a part of her was already resigned to it. So the girl was right, there was no point in telling anything but the truth.
“Yeah. I did it.”
The girl nodded. “Good.” She blew more foul smoke at Dream’s face. “It’s good that you admitted it, I mean. It’ll make this easier for both of us. We’ll know what we’re doing is justified. And you’ll know you’re getting what you deserve.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to kill you.”
The bluntness of the statement elicited a helpless, sudden sob from Dream. For a long moment the only sound in the room was her rising anguish. Then the girl put her cigarette out on Dream’s thigh, making her scream and jerk away from the source of the pain.
The girl waited until Dream’s screams died away to a low, blubbering moan. “We’re going to kill you,” she said again, “and we’re going to take our time doing it. You may wonder why we didn’t gag you. We’re kind of out in the country here, which means you can scream your fucking lungs out and no one will ever hear you.”
One of the boys, a lanky, long-haired kid with acne, had been slouching in a corner, his arms wrapped over his knees, a can of Pabst dangling from one hand. He abruptly came out of the crouch and moved into the center of the room, beer sloshing out of the beer can. “Am I the only one who thinks this is kind of fucked?” There was agitation in his voice, real anger and incredulity, but the words were slightly slurred. A little much liquid courage, Dream figured.
He turned in a slow circle, eyeing each of his friends in turn.“Come on, you assholes. You know this is wrong. You can’t kill a person over something like this.”
No one said anything for a while. Several of the kids shifted uneasily. They studied the floor or briefly glanced at each other before turning their gazes to the ceiling or an inexplicably interesting patch of blank wall.
Then the girl sitting next to Dream said, “Am I going to have to worry about you, Michael?”
Michael was staring at another boy in the room, one to whom he bore a strong resemblance. They were siblings or very close cousins. Michael’s brother or cousin stared hard at the floor. His hands were shaking. Dream did a quick scan of the faces arrayed around her and saw evidence of fear in all of them, including the girl she’d so stupidly vented some of her free-floating rage on in the pub bathroom. The one exception was that girl’s sister, who was eerily calm.
The girl rose from the bed and approached Michael. “I asked you a question. I’d like an answer. Now. Am I going to have to worry about you?”
Michael gave up trying to engage his relative’s attention and faced the girl. “Or what, Marcy?”There was real venom in his voice now, a harshness only slightly blunted by the boozy slur of his words. “Are you afraid I’ll turn narc?” He gulped Pabst. “And what if I do, huh? What then? Are you going to kill me, too?”
Marcy said nothing at first. She pried the Pabst can from Michael’s shaking hand. She drank what was left and tossed the empty can into the open cooler. Then she put a hand on Michael’s shoulder and said, “No more beer for you tonight. It’s making you crazy and you need to calm down.”
The kid was trembling all over. Something about Marcy being so close terrified him. He wanted to flinch away from her touch but didn’t quite dare. And he did seem perceptibly less bold without a beer in his hand.
His voice was very soft as he said, “We can’t do this. It’s wrong.”
Marcy slapped him, the sound shockingly loud in the otherwise silent room.
Alicia barked laughter and said, “Damn.”
No one reacted. The kids couldn’t see or hear the dead woman. Dream glanced at her. Alicia winked and blew a kiss. Dream forced herself not to react and made a mental note not to respond to anything else Alicia might say. She sensed a delicate balance in the room, her fate perhaps hinging on whether this kid had the fortitude to continue making his stand. Her case wouldn’t be helped any should she start talking to invisible people.