by Rebecca York
Someone behind him opened the door and looked out, probably to make sure he wasn’t going to hang around and try to jump Landon later.
Mack walked across the street to his SUV, climbed in and drove away, thinking that he’d made a mess of that encounter. So much for his professional detective skills.
It was because of his own frustration, he thought. Frustration with himself, with Jamie, with the situation. He wanted to have a normal conversation with her, but she didn’t want to talk to him. So he’d gone after Landon instead. What had he thought? That the guy was going to confess to trying to run her down? And when that hadn’t worked, he’d returned and tried to shove her into his car? Then Mack would come back to Jamie with the news of the confession, and she’d leap into his arms in gratitude.
He snorted. If that had been the scenario, it hadn’t panned out. Using the technique he’d employed with Jamie, he thought about the encounter. Landon’s eyes were brown. But his nose wasn’t anything remarkable.
Mack pulled into a gas station, bought a soft drink from the machine and held the icy can against his temple as he drove back to the hotel. With any luck, Jamie would be sleeping, and he wouldn’t have to see her until the morning.
But when he tried to open the door, the interior latch stopped him, and he had to knock.
Through the crack in the door, he saw Jamie looking out, a wary expression on her face. When she saw it was him, she opened the door fully, and he stepped quickly inside, his head turned slightly away.
But she spotted the red mark on his forehead where Landon had hit him.
“What happened to you?”
“I walked into a door.”
“I don’t think so.”
He sighed. “I tried to ask your mom’s boyfriend some questions, and he didn’t take kindly to my interfering with his evening.”
“At Louie’s Bar?”
“Yeah.”
Her face had taken on a look that made his heart beat a little faster. “Worried about me?” he asked.
She took a moment before answering, “Yes.”
He wasn’t prepared for the catch in her voice. Instead of commenting on her reaction, he said, “I gave as good as I got.”
She came back at him with a sharp retort. “That’s just great. He’s dangerous. And despite what we think of him, he’s got friends in town. You should have stayed away from him.”
Mack wasn’t going to admit he’d done anything wrong. “I want to know if he’s the guy who went after you.”
“You said it was the killer.”
“I said it could be the killer or Landon. There’s still no way to be sure.”
She made a small sound of distress. “I wish…”
“What?”
“I’d like to know if they were both the same guy.” She straightened and gave him a closer inspection. “You need to put some ice on your forehead.”
“Yeah.” He walked toward the small refrigerator, bent and pulled out the ice tray, thinking the evening wasn’t going the way he’d planned. Not at all. But had they made some sort of breakthrough in their personal communications? At least they were talking again. He should ask for clarification, except that he didn’t know how to do it without maybe setting her off again. Damn, he hated feeling like he was trying to walk through a bed of hot coals without burning his toes.
After wrapping some cubes of ice in a dish towel, he turned back toward Jamie.
“Putting on the safety lock was a good idea,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“I decided to make some calls to people I know in town.”
“And?”
“Some of them know Aubrey Rollins. I didn’t get any bad reports on him. He’s an aggressive real estate agent, but he hasn’t made anyone mad. Actually, he’s considered a good catch by the women my age.”
“Okay.”
She cleared her throat. “It felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere with questions about him. Then I started thinking about something else.” She paused a moment, then started again. “You remember we drove around looking for the funhouse, and I couldn’t find it? Maybe there’s another way.”
“Like what?”
“Suppose I try to go there in my mind. The way I did in the dreams.”
“You can do that?”
She hesitated. “I never tried it before.”
“But you think you can do it now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been there a couple of times already. I never did that in a dream before. I think it means I’ve got a connection to the place.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“Because going there scares you. With good reason. It’s not a nice place. I hate to have you do it deliberately.”
“But I want to try.” She cleared her throat. “And I waited until you came home. That was sensible, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
He studied her anxious expression. At first he’d thought that she couldn’t possibly be getting any information about a murder with some kind of psychic mumbo jumbo. Then he’d come around to the point of view that there was no other way she could have known about it. Now the idea of her deliberately going to the site of two murders made his skin crawl, but if she’d done it once, maybe she could do it again. And so far they didn’t have any other leads.
“You’re sure you want to try it?”
She nodded.
“How do you want to do it?”
Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. “I guess the first thing I should do is get comfortable.”
She sat down on the couch, leaned her head back against the cushion, and closed her eyes.
After watching her for a few moments, he asked, “Where should I be?”
Her eyes snapped open again, and he wondered if he’d broken her concentration.
“In one of the chairs,” she answered in a barely audible voice.
He took the easy chair facing the sofa where he could easily monitor her.
JAMIE CLOSED HER eyes again and folded her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath and let it out. Then another. She could feel Mack across the room, watching her, and she wanted to ask him to go in the bedroom.
But she didn’t do it, because she didn’t want to be alone. But being alone, she reminded herself, was the only way she could do this. If she could do it at all.
She wasn’t even sure what she was doing. Trying to sleep? Well, not a normal sleep. A sleep that would take her away from her body to another place.
As she sat on the sofa, she called up a picture of a hallway in the funhouse, trying to recapture the feeling she got when she was in one of the nightmares. Maybe that was too threatening, because nothing happened.
Switching tactics, she let her mind drift.
For a long time, she knew she was sitting on the couch, trying to do something that she didn’t really understand.
Then she felt a change. It was like her mind was drifting away from her body.
A jolt of fear pulled her back, and she made a low sound.
“Jamie?”
That was Mack, calling to her. But his voice was far away, and she knew that only part of her was still in the hotel room.
She felt her lips form words. “I’m okay,” she whispered, wondering if she’d spoken aloud so that he could hear her.
ALARM ZINGED THROUGH Mack as he watched Jamie. Her eyes were closed, but her face looked strange. Flat and smooth. Like she’d left her body sitting on the couch and gone somewhere else.
Well, wasn’t that what she was trying to do?
She’d said she was all right.
Should he believe it?
The seconds ticked by, and nothing much seemed to change. Then she jerked a little and slumped to the side.
He started to jump up, then stopped himself. If she was really going to the funhouse, he’d pull her out of it.
>
He forced himself to stay where he was, watching her. Her body jerked again and slumped over more. He knew she was going to wake up with a kink in her neck if she stayed that way.
Quietly he stood and crossed to her.
“I’m going to pick you up,” he murmured as he bent to slip one arm under her legs and the other in back of her shoulders.
Gathering her in his arms, he straightened and held her against his chest. She felt limp.
After making sure she was secure in his arms, he carried her to the bedroom.
The covers were already thrown back, and he laid her on the bottom sheet.
But he wasn’t going to leave her there alone, because every other time she’d been to the place, she’d awakened in a panic. Quietly, he eased onto the bed beside her, then rolled onto his side so that he could watch her face.
She looked calm, until an expression of alarm crossed her features.
“What is it?” he whispered.
She opened her eyes and stared at him, although he wasn’t sure she was really seeing him.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“You’re with me. With Mack.”
“No.”
“Then where are you?”
“The funhouse. I think.”
It was a strange conversation. Was she there or not?
Alarm sizzled through him. Could he wake her if he needed to? Maybe he should do it now.
He reached out a hand and pulled it back. If he woke her, he might be the cause of the experiment going wrong.
“Jamie,” he whispered again.
Again she looked at him. Then her body began to shake.
“What’s happening?”
“I’m cold.”
“Wake up.”
“No,” she protested again. Then she was silent.
“Jamie. I don’t like this. Jamie.”
“IT’S ALL RIGHT,” Jamie managed to say.
Was she talking to Mack? She was vaguely aware of him, of the hotel suite. She could feel the pillow and the sheet below her. She remembered that she’d been lying down and hadn’t remade the bed. Then the room where her body was lying became less important as the funhouse became more real.
She shivered. It was cold in here. Nobody had turned on the heat.
She’d hoped to arrive outside so she could have some idea of where the house was. But she had come directly inside, into a wide front hall.
Whirling, she turned to look out the windows and found they were covered with opaque panels. When she clawed at them, they stayed in place.
Giving up the attempt to see outside, she walked farther into the house and found there were no open areas. As soon as she stepped out of the front hall, she was in a long corridor. Like the ones she remembered from the dreams.
She ran her hand along one wall, then the other. The left side was smooth plaster. The right was plywood.
Apparently he’d changed the structure of the house to create the environment he wanted, but not permanently.
She glanced back over her shoulder. She could walk down the hallway…but what if she got trapped? What if he came up behind her?
Could he catch her here the way he had caught his other victims? But she wasn’t really here, was she? Surely she’d be able to leave the same way she’d come.
She wished she had a flashlight. To her amazement, her fist closed around something cold and cylindrical.
The object she’d wished for.
That emboldened her. This wasn’t reality, nor was it exactly one of her dreams. There must be different rules because she’d brought herself here. She had control of the situation. Or at least that was the best explanation she could come up with.
She clicked on the light and shined it on the walls, examining them more closely. She could see the nails in the plywood. And on the plaster side, she could see a high, old-fashioned baseboard.
She kept walking, shining the light ahead of her. There were little doors in the walls, like doors to cabinets, and when she opened one, a monster with green skin, red glowing eyes and black horns sprang out at her.
With a muffled cry, she jumped back. Even as she did, she knew the monster wasn’t real. But she was too on edge for that to matter.
When she reached for it, the texture was sticky, like a nest of spiderwebs, and she dropped the thing with a grimace, watching the head bounce back and forth. She should put it back before the guy who owned this place noticed.
She laughed, the sound echoing through the hallway. How could he notice? This was her dream. She wasn’t really here. Or was she?
She couldn’t be sure of that or sure of anything—except that this place gave her the creeps, and she wanted to get away.
But she’d discovered a way of coming here, and it would be stupid to leave without finding out anything useful. Maybe if she got to the back of the house, she’d find some windows. Or maybe the upstairs hadn’t been turned into a funhouse. Maybe it was normal and she could see outside from there.
She looked back toward the entry hall where she’d seen a staircase. Should she go up?
The idea sent a shiver over her skin. Maybe he was up there. Maybe that’s where he went when no one else was here. He wouldn’t need a mask. She’d be able to see his face. But the idea of confronting him made her heart pound.
Instead, she kept walking down the corridor.
When she came to a place where the hallway hit a wall and a perpendicular passage, she stopped, remembering one of her previous dreams. The other women who had been here had faced a choice like that—left or right—and it hadn’t worked out so well for them.
Stopping, Jamie shone the beam down the hallway to the left, seeing it stretch away before her. It looked like the corridor went on for at least twenty feet before it made a turn. Next she lowered the beam and made a small sound when the light picked up a thin line on the floor on the right-hand side. Getting down on her hands and knees, she reached out and pressed against the floor. It wasn’t solid. At her touch, it pushed downward, allowing a musty smell to drift upward toward her. Shining the light into the hole, she saw a yawning black cavern below her. But the choking dampness made her cough, and she quickly eased the trapdoor back into place.
It made a sucking noise, and she went still, hoping he hadn’t heard it. Only, how could he? This was simply her dream of the funhouse, although that didn’t make the place less dangerous. If she’d been walking down the corridor without being on her guard, she would have fallen through to the floor below. Would she have gotten hurt? She couldn’t answer that question.
Fighting the feeling of being trapped, she slid down the wall and landed in a little heap on the floor where she pulled up her knees and rested her chin on them.
This excursion had been her idea, and now she desperately wanted to escape from this place. Too bad she didn’t know how to get back to the real world.
She sat there for long moments, struggling to wake herself up. But apparently it wasn’t going to work.
What if she called out to Mack? Would he hear her?
She tried it, but she didn’t seem to get any response. She must be too far into the dream to reach him.
Finally, with a sigh, she climbed to her feet again, then turned and retraced her steps, looking for the way out just as the other women had searched for an exit. Only they hadn’t found it.
When she came to a door, she opened it. Shining the light beyond, she saw a large room. In the center was an ornately carved wooden table perhaps four feet wide and eight feet long. Around it were chairs in some kind of antique style that she couldn’t name.
Was this the old dining room to the house? A place that had nothing to do with frightening people.
Cautiously, she stepped through the opening. The door slammed closed behind her, and suddenly the chamber was full of flashing lights and blaring sound. Black light shone on the table and chairs, turning them an eerie green. And music that sounded like the soundtrack of a horror movie blasted out at h
er.
From above her, a giant spider descended, its eyes glowing red. When it reached the table, it started bouncing around.
She gagged and jumped back, then turned to press on the door. This time it wouldn’t open.
What had made her think she could come here with no consequences? She was trapped. Just like the other women had been trapped.
No, she told herself. All she had to do was wake up. But that was beyond her power.
Desperately, she looked around the room and spotted another doorway at the far side. She was making her way around the table, when one of the chairs pulled out by itself, as though a ghost had gotten up from the table. Unprepared for the movement, she bashed into the chair, whacking her shin.
But she wasn’t going to let it stop her from escaping. She couldn’t give up, because that would be death.
She wanted to cover her ears and close her eyes, to blot out the flashing lights and the terrible music. Only that would leave her blind and deaf.
Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the back of another chair. Maybe if she sat down, she’d feel better. But when she pulled it away from the table, she gasped. The seat was covered with knife blades, sticking upward. If she’d sat down, they would have cut her terribly. She jumped back, hitting the wall, and it seemed to come alive with ghostly hands pulling at her arms and shoulders.
MACK’S FEAR ROSE AS he watched Jamie writhe on the bed, her arms flailing.
He rolled toward her, holding her arms at her sides so she wouldn’t bash him in the face. “Sweetheart, wake up.”
In response, her panic seemed to surge, along with his own. She had wanted to do this. Now he was afraid that it could kill her.
Fear made his stomach knot.
A dream could kill her? He wouldn’t have thought it possible. Until now.
“Let me go,” she moaned, and he was sure she didn’t know he was holding her.
What should he do? He rolled away from her and eased off the bed, where she wasn’t going to hit him. Her head rolled from side to side, and he wondered if she knew where she was.
He didn’t know if she was here with him or trapped in a dream world. He’d never experienced anything like this, and he simply didn’t know what to do.