by John Dixon
“Please stop!” Brad cried.
“If you’re expecting mercy from me, you’re even stupider than I thought. You’re going to pay for what you did every night for the rest of your life.”
Heavy footsteps approached from the shadows behind him. Boom…dust popped from the rattling floorboards…boom…
Brad shut his eyes, muttering prayers.
Boom…
Behind Brad, the monster stepped into view. She was proud of her creation. She had based him on the neighbor’s giant bull, which had terrified Brad as a young boy. This version of the bull, however, walked upright on its muscular hind legs, had hands instead of front hooves, and had a humanoid face, the features of which she had borrowed from Dale Groover, the hulking and sadistic dimwit who had terrorized Brad in his freshman year. Groover used to wait outside the showers for Brad, then snap his wet, naked body with a towel twisted up into a whip. The towel would crack; Brad would shriek, hating the sound of his own voice; and long welts would raise along his back and butt and belly.
“Look, Brad,” she said.
He shook his head, whimpering.
“Look!”
Brad turned and saw. She made his screams high and girlish and filled him with the old locker room self-loathing and all the fear of the bull and the bully and drowned out his cries with the laughter of his friends and father.
Brad’s clothes disappeared. He yelped and did his best to cover himself. She added beads of highly chlorinated water to his body and the soft sound of showers running not far away. He whimpered.
The bull-thing snorted, advancing slowly.
Brad’s screams knifed the steamy air, but his legs wouldn’t move. He was locked in place.
“You never should have messed with me, Brad,” she said.
Brad tried to apologize again, but his weakness disgusted her so much that she rushed the narrative, and a gruesome towel, twisted and knotted and clotted with blood, manifested in the knobby hand of the bull-thing. The towel slashed the air, cracked like a bullwhip, and sliced Brad’s hip to the bone. The bull-thing drew back its muscular arm for another swing. Brad blubbered, begging for mercy. When the whip cracked again, splitting his butt cheek and painting his naked leg in blood, Brad screamed in terror and pain and desperation, but the sound was lost beneath the crazed laughter of his buddies and the father whose love he’d always chased and never earned.
Much later, when it was all over and the boy who had wronged her was reduced to a quivering mess of meat and fat hanging ragged on bloody bones, Dalia whisked Brad away from the pain and terror and deposited him, as she did every night after his punishment, in a comfortable chair in the bright kitchen of his grandmother. From watching his dreams and dredging his subconscious, she knew how much he missed his grandmother and the meals she had made him, the sprawling Sunday dinners and her cookies—sugar and molasses, freshly baked and waiting for him in the green glass cookie jar on the counter whenever he visited, which was frequently, especially when things were hard at home, when his dad was drinking and running around on his mom and Brad couldn’t concentrate on his schoolwork or focus at football practice. Whatever was wrong, Grandma was always there for him, always with a warm hug, the woman as soft and comforting as a pillow. Dalia was always careful to replicate the smell of the old woman’s cheap perfume, a scent as sweetly cloying as her grandmotherly voice, telling him to sit down and have a cookie…freshly baked sugar today and here, Bradley, have a cold glass of milk.
Food is comfort, Dalia whispered in his grandmother’s voice each night as Brad fluttered down, shredded, from the heights of terror. With every bite that Brad took, Dalia reduced his pain and horror. Food will make you feel better, she cooed in the old woman’s voice. I love you, I love you, I love you…
“YOU REALLY DODGED A BULLET, Han Bro-lo,” Lucy said when Scarlett explained Rhoads’s ruling. “Stay out of trouble for a while, okay? No more midnight walks. You so much as sneeze in class, they’ll crucify you.”
Scarlett nodded. All things considered, she felt pretty lucky.
Not that she would enjoy missing lunch or spending two hours of marching back and forth in the gym, but she’d expected far worse punishment. Rereading the discipline code, she was surprised that they hadn’t charged her with a major offense—or even two major offenses, splitting the assault and interference charges—and sent her to the Chamber.
The next day, Dalia gave her a knowing smile. “I told you not to worry. Didn’t I say I’d take care of you?”
Scarlett thanked her. Had Dalia really gone to Rhoads on her behalf? She didn’t know and wasn’t about to ask. After skipping lunch and spending two long and incredibly boring hours marching back and forth, Scarlett wasn’t in the mood for games. Nor was she in the mood for the lecture that Dalia and Dunne gave her about Seamus.
“Keep your distance,” Dalia said. “Bad things happen to people who hang around Seamus.”
A grin spread across Dunne’s broad face. “I reckon Scarlett probably might’ve figured that out.”
Well, Scarlett thought, it’ll be easy enough to avoid Seamus. He probably hated her now.
* * *
—
NO, SCARLETT THOUGHT. No, no, no…
She was dreaming again, but it was all so real, so accurate, like traveling back in time.
She didn’t want to be here, just as she hadn’t wanted to be here last May, with Dan swaggering toward her, red-faced.
No. Not this again.
Though she understood that she was dreaming, she remained powerless, doomed to relive the past. It was like being a passenger in a car accident, hearing the squeal of tires, seeing the onrushing truck, everything slowing as impact approached…yet having no chance to do anything to change the outcome.
Dan jabbed a finger into her shoulder.
It’s a dream, she told herself, but this detached narration did little to quell the burgeoning terror within her because she could feel the pressure building all over again, just as it had built that horrible day in the backyard.
Her own mouth spoke without her consent, saying, “Stop. Pushing. Dan.”
But he kept pushing, and the dream dragged her back through that horrible afternoon, everything escalating until the force inside her exploded, and she pushed back, and Dan flew through the air and crashed into the ground, and the window rattled up behind them—Scarlett’s brain screaming, No-no-no-no!—and Mom cried, “Are you trying to kill me?”
She sprinted away, pounded through the side gate, hopped onto the Yamaha, and sped into the street, where a horn blared, and she narrowly dodged an onrushing car and wound through a pine-dark bend in the dirt road, Sav’s arms tight around her. Scarlett’s terror ramped up as she downshifted the motorcycle and the forest whipped away behind them, and the world was suddenly noonday bright. She lifted an arm to shield her eyes and pulled into the field where the car burned and dead men with sparkling hair lay near an overturned pickup with the horn jammed, blaring…yet she could still hear the woman’s voice crying out, “Save my baby!”
Again and again, all the way through the flames and the woman’s hideous smile as she burned alive, smiling to see her child pulled to safety, Scarlett having somehow managed to wrench the door from the smashed car, to pull the metal free, snapping its hinges, and toss it like an empty cardboard box across the field and into the darkness.
She carried the child away from the flames and out the guest house door, where its cries became insistent commands—“On the ground!” and she tried to tell them to back away, and the explosion was in her, swelling again, and she knew it was a dream, yet there was nothing she could do about it, and for the fiftieth or hundredth or thousandth time—it was impossible to say, her nights being so fraught with these repetitive nightmares—the explosion boomed out of her…
And then, suddenly, it was over, and she felt good
—scratch that, great—the sun warm on her bare skin as she moved against Nick, who was naked and delicious beneath her. His big hands encircled her waist as she rode him, the two of them moving in perfect harmony, not too fast, not too slow, not too hard, not too soft, a rhythmic pleasure machine made of flesh, both of them a little high and incredibly happy, and in another flash of detached semilucidity she realized that this was it, the apex of life, the definition of true happiness, both of them digging it, digging each other, and she was free, free, free—
A gasp behind her ruined everything. She covered herself and turned. “Dalia?”
Dalia stood there, staring not at Scarlett or Nick but off in the other direction, toward the tree line.
And then Scarlett’s consciousness whipped away.
She woke to darkness, in her room at The Point, fighting for breath, heat throbbing in her.
What the hell?
DALIA WAS HAVING THE SAME thought.
Still in the dream, she shielded her eyes to better see the Watcher at the edge of the forest. It was a young woman with long hair as dark and shining as obsidian. From that distance, Dalia couldn’t make out the features on the woman’s pale, heart-shaped face, but the sense of beauty sighed over her like a warm breeze.
The woman raised a hand, beckoning, and began to fade back into the trees.
Dalia stood, took one step in that direction, and froze, the intuitive wind shifting, chilling her with a concern as faceless as the distant woman, who looked now like a fading ghost as her pale skin receded into the forest.
What’s going on here?
Scarlett hadn’t dreamed this—and I’m certainly not dreaming.
Scarlett was gone, yet Dalia lingered here, as if touring an archived dream…only this place, these events, they were still active. She remained in control of her own actions, but this other woman, the Watcher, was still here, too, even if she’d vanished into the trees.
What to do?
Common sense told her to fly back to The Point. This was strange, perhaps dangerous—so get out—yet she hesitated, because this was by far the most interesting thing that had happened to her since she’d learned to dream walk. Who was this woman? What did she want? How had she found Dalia? And where were they now, if not in Scarlett’s dream?
Too many questions.
Yet she wanted to know. Needed to know.
Of course, she would never admit this to Rhoads, but she got lonely at times. Very lonely. And it hit her there in that strange dream space that she had always been lonely. Back in Wyalusing, she’d skulked at the edges of society like a scapegoat wolf. At The Point, she was the alpha female, but even if she now ate first, at the head of the pack, she still ate alone.
Could this woman be another dream walker, a kindred spirit…a friend?
Realizing she’d been walking toward the tree line, she stopped.
A friend? she thought, disgusted by her own neediness. You’re still pining for friends?
No. She rejected this weakness wholesale. It was the same attitude that had led her to such intense misery back in her hometown.
She was powerful now. She wouldn’t whimper for friends like some abandoned puppy.
Besides, none of this made sense. The woman, the continuation of the dream, the steps she’d taken without quite knowing it.
Another cold breeze passed over her.
Was she in danger? Was Scarlett in danger? Had Dalia somehow opened a gate onto Scarlett’s dream space and allowed someone else to enter? By staying here, was she further endangering Scarlett?
With that thought, she pulled back. The sunny summer scene whipped away, and she returned to the shadowy confines of her dimly lit room.
So strange. So very strange.
She sat up, remembering the woman. Here, in the world of flesh and bone, Dalia felt more alert and more aware. Something tickled up her spine like a spider, making her shudder.
Fear. That was what had whispered up her back, a thing she’d thought she’d done away with…fear.
She shook her head.
Nothing to fear, she told herself. You’re in control. Only you.
With that thought, she glanced to her nightstand and the item she’d printed from The Daily Review before going to sleep. The service would be Saturday morning at the Bolan Funeral Home in Towanda, followed by a noontime internment at Oak Hill Cemetery.
The funeral notice didn’t say if the Turpin family would have an open casket for Brad. She supposed it depended on how he’d done it.
But of course, a newspaper wouldn’t spell out suicide, let alone the method.
She’d gone off to play with Brad this evening and had come up empty, not even tapping into the static subconscious of a wakeful mind. There was nothing. After pulling back, she’d hopped online. Something was wrong…
What a shame. She’d expected to punish him for years, and she’d been really interested to see if she could make Brad eat himself to death. He’d cheated her of that pleasure.
A part of her wanted to go back in now to range the dream lands, looking for the Watcher, but she decided against it. It was time for sleep now. Real sleep, deep and dreamless.
She fed the funeral notice slowly into the paper shredder and stretched out on her thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets.
Even the Queen Bitch needed her beauty rest.
“WE’RE SO PROUD OF YOU, sweetie,” Scarlett’s mother said, her eyes shining like the Christmas lights adorning this wing of the West Point dining hall. “Aren’t we, Charles?”
Scarlett’s father grunted, chewing, and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “This food isn’t half bad for mess hall grub,” he said. “Lot better than the slop they fed us in basic.” He turned and shared the same opinion with Perich’s father, who sat at the other end of the table. “White Christmas” crooned from the mess hall speakers.
It had been a surprise when the Operation Signal Boost parents arrived at the big holiday dinner laughing and hugging like old friends, which in many cases appeared to be the case. Every cadet in Operation Signal Boost had a parent who’d served alongside Scarlett’s father in Operation Desert Storm. An excruciatingly awkward moment ensued when her father had recognized his “old buddy” and dragged her over, both sets of parents rejoicing and grilling their kids with questions. Did they know each other? Why—wink, wink, nudge, nudge—were they blushing? The two of them weren’t…dating…were they?
“No,” the cadets had answered in unison.
Awkward, indeed, but she had to give it to Hopkins. The way he acted, no one would guess how much he hated her or that she’d wiped the Chamber floor with him and his buddies. Since returning from the infirmary, Hopkins had ridden her twice as hard at mealtimes and with every stupid regulation in the book, but he hadn’t laid a finger—made of either flesh or telekinetic force—on her since she’d fought back.
Luckily, the Hopkins family had been on the other side of the cafeteria when Colonel Rhoads had invited everyone to sit down.
The rest of the campus was empty, the cadets on exodus for Christmas and the holidays. Today, the grand dining hall belonged solely to The Point.
Scarlett’s mother reached across the table and squeezed her forearm. “Cadets need quality nutrition.”
Scarlett put her hand on top of her mother’s. She missed her.
Her father seemed smaller somehow. Diminished. Maybe he’d lost weight. Or maybe it was context, the man not looming quite so large in this vast dining hall.
Or maybe this is his real size and you couldn’t see that until you’d escaped from his house.
Whatever the case, she was glad to see them. Mom looked happy and well rested. She’d earned a promotion at the university, and she’d been taking yoga classes three nights a week.
She considered telling her that she’d been taking yoga, too, but dec
ided against it, wanting to avoid questions. My instructor? Oh, she’s great. Unless you make her angry. Then she’ll wrap you in a living blanket of spiders.
Scarlett couldn’t see Dalia from where she sat, but she could certainly hear her. Dalia was talking loudly to her parents—an older, timid-looking couple—and shouting laughter that had everyone in the hall casting glances. Rhoads, who’d been going from table to table and glad-handing like a politician, smiled uncomfortably after one particularly loud squawk.
Dalia had been acting really weird lately, sometimes showing up for yoga, sometimes not. She looked uncharacteristically disheveled and had dark circles under her eyes. She’d shifted into a kind of manic state, talking even more than usual and so erratically that she was often hard to follow. Of course, Scarlett’s boredom and distraction probably hadn’t helped. It was hard to sit through the same half dozen story types again and again: how Dalia had shocked Rhoads that day, how she’d humiliated some guard, how so-and-so was expecting her to do one thing but—here she’d pause and give Scarlett the sideways grin—he or she was in for a “little surprise.”
Dalia been moody, too, and anything less than total attention annoyed her. Scarlett didn’t mean to piss her off, but honestly, it was getting harder to care. She was stressed out, battered by life, and worn out by sleep deprivation and her crazy dreams, which amounted to so many nightmare recollections, dragging her through the worst of her memories. She was a captive participant. She went through the motions, saying and doing and experiencing things as if her body had been enslaved while her semilucid thoughts remained, taking it all in and trying to analyze things with absolutely no power to change what was happening. If she couldn’t escape the crazy dreams, she wished she could at least be dreaming about Seamus.
She could see him over her father’s shoulder, toward the back of the room. Seamus ate alone, no friends, no family. As she watched, he leaned back from his food, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and stared up at the gigantic mural that covered the back wall.