Dream shivered as the swirling wind abruptly redirected and gusted across her wet face. She tucked her hands under her arms and wished for better protection against the elements than the light jacket she was wearing. She leaned further over the railing and looked at the rushing stream of water directly beneath the Rainbow Bridge. An image leapt unbidden to her mind then, one that stirred horror within her, but was not without a certain morbid appeal. She imagined herself climbing over the slick railing and leaping spread-eagled into the drink, her arms outstretched as she soared for one glorious moment before plunging into the cold, cold water and the darkness beyond.
“It’s tempting, isn’t it?”
Dream flinched at the sound of Marcy’s voice. The fragile-but achingly vivid-illusion of perfect aloneness was wrecked again. On the other hand, there was a measure of comfort to be derived from the proximity of an undeniably flesh-and-blood human being. Dream considered asking Marcy whether she could see the girl in the yellow rain slicker, but decided against it when she realized she wasn’t certain which would unsettle her more, a yes or no answer.
Marcy took up a position a few feet to her left and leaned over the railing. The wind blew her bottle-blonde hair wildly about her face, but she seemed oblivious to the conditions. She glanced down before looking at Dream again. “I kind of wish I had the guts to do it. Just climb over and…jump.” Her tone turned wistful as her gaze was drawn back to the water. “It would solve a lot of problems.”
Dream sighed and finally acknowledged her presence. “So do it. I won’t stop you, I promise.”
Marcy grunted. “If you hate me so much, why don’t you just kill me? Make my brain explode like you did to my friend. Or have your freaky zombie friend rip my head off or something.”
Anger stirred within Dream as she listened to Marcy rant. The girl had been nearly as silent as her meek little sister during their first days on the road, but in the last week she’d grown increasingly bold with her verbal jabs. Dream knew she was testing her, probing to see just how far she could push. She was treading a very thin line. The pressure building within Dream was immense. It wouldn’t take much to trigger an explosion. And she had a feeling her next explosion might wipe out anyone within range.
Dream shivered again and looked at Marcy. “That thing isn’t my friend. Not really.”
Marcy smirked. “That’s not what she says. She says-”
“I know what she says.” Dream turned away from the railing and leaned close to Marcy. She caught a glimpse of Alicia over Marcy’s shoulder. The black woman was standing at a spot some twenty yards to the left, her gaze trained on the waterfall. “And maybe she even believes it. But she’s not Alicia. She’s not even Alicia’s ghost. There may be some little strand of Alicia’s essence inside her, something some part of my subconscious always carries with me. If anything, she’s some kind of fucked-up clone or copy. There’s a lot of what I remember about Alicia in that…thing, but it’s all distorted.” She frowned. “I don’t know how to put it exactly.”
Marcy’s brow furrowed. “Like a garbled data transmission, then? Static or interference causing some information to be left out and other bits of it scrambled all to hell.”
Dream shrugged. “Something like that, I guess.”
Marcy nodded. “Yeah. The supernatural gumbo inside you created a shell based on your last memories of Alicia, then downloaded a faulty blueprint of her psyche to her regenerated brain.” She laughed and shook her head. “It’s all very late night Z-movie. Not sure I believe it, but I guess it makes at least as much sense as the idea of a genuine walking corpse.”
Dream didn’t respond to that. She looked over Marcy’s shoulder again at Alicia. The slinky cocktail dress had been traded in for jeans, a long-sleeved thermal shirt, and a light jacket similar to the one worn by Dream. She looked almost normal now. And it wasn’t just because of the clothes. The wounds and corpse bloat were still there, if you looked close enough, but these things were fading, the open, weeping razor incisions closing and becoming scars. Every day she looked a little better, and Dream suspected she would soon be fully restored. Her improvement was disconcerting, although it wasn’t as unsettling as the realization that other people could see the dead woman now. It reduced the likelihood that she was hallucinating or losing her mind, a scenario that bothered her far less than the idea of having actually conjured Alicia into being through some unconscious use of raw magic. A vision of the girl in the yellow rain slicker formed in her mind then, and Dream was again made to consider the possibility that if she could perform the feat of creation once, then she could surely do it again.
She thought about that. She assumed the dead woman was feeding off the power lurking within Dream, drawing some of that energy out to make herself more real. That they were tethered together in some way was clear, but Dream had no way of knowing the depth of that connection. But she wondered just how much Alicia still needed her now that she had form and substance in the physical world. She had a feeling the creature would’ve ceased to exist had those idiot kids killed her outright that night instead of abducting her, either blinking out immediately or continuing in a fuzzy state of semi-existence for a brief time before fading away.
But now…
Now she was here to stay. Dream could take a swan dive off the Rainbow Bridge and Alicia would remain up here behind the railing. She would watch the water take Dream and sweep her away. Then she would leave this place, taking Marcy and Ellen with her as she resumed her meandering search for Ms. Wickman.
Which, of course, was crazy. The thing that resembled her dead friend might not actually be Alicia Jackson, but she certainly bore her grudges as tenaciously as the real thing. She meant to see Ms. Wickman dead, preferably at the business end of a straight razor. Dream was not bothered by the idea of being made to participate in the murder of that woman. She deserved death and worse. What did bother her was the obvious impossiblity of making this happen. There was a whole wide world into which Ms. Wickman could have disappeared. They could never hope to find her.
Except that…
Well.
Except that Alicia believed Ms. Wickman had already established a new kingdom similar to the one formerly ruled over by the Master. She also believed Ms. Wickman had scores of operatives scouring the country for Dream even now. She wouldn’t say why she believed this, but the strength of her conviction was clear. Alicia hoped to somehow draw the attention of these agents, induce them to capture them and transport them back to this supposed new kingdom. Which would eliminate the necessity for all this endless, aimless hunting. Dream figured it was the only remotely plausible way Alicia might get what she wanted. And even the remote possibility of again gazing into the awful Ms. Wickman’s cold, dead eyes chilled her to the bone.
Marcy noted Dream’s continued scrutiny of Alicia and smiled. “Hey, at least the maggots are gone.”
Dream laughed. “Yeah. There’s that.”
“So it’s not all bad.”
“Right. Now it’s only 99.98 percent bad.”
Dream watched the dark form of a bird swoop through her field of vision before disappearing into the gathering darkness on the horizon. The rain grew harder, falling in silver-white sheets across the sky. The temperature seemed to have fallen another five degrees in just the last twenty minutes. Though it had been her idea to come to this place, she was beginning to regret it. It was one of a number of places she’d always wanted to visit, and when she’d realized they were wandering close to this area, she’d insisted on a slight course change to bring them here. Niagara Falls was as beautiful as she’d always imagined, and the sight of all that rushing water inspired the expected sense of awe. And that overwhelming beauty was enhanced now with the advent of twilight. The spotlights behind the falls had been switched on, adding a lovely soft green tint to the pouring water. The problem was that it was too beautiful a thing to share with her current company. She should be seeing this in the company of a lover, here or on one of the closer observation platforms, holding hands and leaning against each other, enjoying a classic romantic moment.