The Hunter; The Chase; The Kill

by L. J. Smith

  “You live to kibitz,” said Audrey.

  “We’ve all got to stay calm,” Jenny said. “We’ve got to think. How can we get rid of these things? We can’t pull them out. So what else can we do?”

  “Weed-killer,” Dee muttered. There was some exotic red-and-green-leafed plant growing on her, almost harmonizing with her dark skin.

  “We don’t have anything here to work with,” Audrey said. “Never mind anything deadly to plants.”

  Michael spoke up in a whisper—but a whisper with a new note in it.

  “We’ve got fire.”

  Jenny looked up at the candle in its brass holder.

  “You can let go of me, now,” Michael told Dee. “I won’t go anywhere. I want to see if that candle will come out.”

  Dee released him. He tried to take a step, then stopped. He squatted down to stare, his head almost at floor level. Jenny bent, too.

  His bare foot was rooted to the floor by a mat of white tendrils.

  They were growing out of his sole and into the black carpet. He could barely raise his foot an inch, and only by turning it sideways could he see the roots.

  As Jenny slowly looked up, she expected him to go frantic again. But Audrey reached out and firmly took his hand, her fingers crushing the leaves on the back.

  Michael was shaking, but he stayed rational.

  “Get the candle,” he said thickly.

  Dee lifted it out easily. “I’m going to try it on myself first,” she said.

  “No. Me.”

  Dee slanted a sloe-eyed look at him, then nodded. She tilted the candle to apply the flame to a leaf on his arm.

  The leaf seemed to melt slightly in a crescent where the flame touched it. There was a bad smell as the edge blackened. Nothing else happened.

  “Try the roots.”

  Dee tried lower, very close to Michael’s skin. Michael flinched away from the heat, but Audrey held him steady.

  The plant started to shrivel.

  “That’s it!”

  “Can you stand it?” Dee asked.

  “I can stand anything to get these off. With the right kind of incentive, of course.” He looked hopefully at Audrey, who was still holding him and murmuring encouragement.

  Jenny smiled to herself. To be inane and lecherous when you’re scared to death required a special kind of bravery.

  Dee burned more roots. The plants began to drop off more and more quickly, shriveling at the first touch of the flame.

  Michael was almost sobbing in relief. His arms and torso were clear.

  “Anything—ah, lower?” Dee gestured with the candle at Michael’s sweatpants.

  “No! And watch where you’re waving that thing. I plan to be a family man.”

  “Look,” Jenny said softly.

  The patch of moss on her skin was getting smaller and smaller. In a moment it had faded altogether. The same was happening to Dee and Audrey. Michael’s feet came free of the floor.

  And then they were all laughing, admiring their clear, perfect skin, touching it, holding it up to the others. Just exactly like the scene at the end of Ben Hur, Jenny thought, where the two women are miraculously cured of leprosy. Michael put his sweatshirt back on and kissed Audrey once more.

  “You had some mold on your lips before,” he said. “I didn’t like to mention it.”

  “No, you didn’t, Aud,” Dee muttered in Audrey’s ear. Audrey looked helplessly at Mike, but with some indulgence.

  “So this was your nightmare, and we got through it,” Jenny said. “This hallway is your nightmare room. Which means that if we go back through that door . . .”

  The door opened under Dee’s hand. They walked through into the hallway, apparently the same hallway they had just left. But with two differences, Jenny noticed. In this hallway there was no candle missing from the bracket. And there was a scrap of white paper on the floor.

  A picture of a huge green plant, something on the order of a rubber plant, with arms and legs sticking out. No head.

  “Ugh,” Jenny said.

  “My nightmare,” Michael said, still looking embarrassed. “Turning into a plant. It’s so stupid—I think it came from this book I read when I was in third grade. It had a story about a kid who was so dirty that things started to grow on her—little radishes and veggies. And it just freaked me out. I mean, it was this harmless story, but for some reason I just flipped. I kept thinking about that kid, all crusted with dirt, with green stuff sprouting from her—it made me sick.”

  “You’re making me sick,” Audrey said.

  “And then the parents pulled them—the veggies—they pulled them off her—”

  “Stop it,” Dee commanded.

  “Like I said, it was stupid, a kid’s thing.”

  “I don’t think it was stupid, I think it was horrible. And I think you were smart and brave, the way you dealt with it,” Jenny said. Michael’s soulful eyes widened at the unprecedented compliments, and he gave her a rumpled grin.

  The unseen clock struck one. There was something eerie about the way it echoed. Morning is coming, Jenny thought.

  “We’d better get moving,” Dee said, just as Michael made a stifled sound.

  “What’s wrong—” Audrey began, but then she saw it, too, in the darkness of the hall where nothing had been before.

  A staircase.

  CHAPTER 10

  Excitement bubbled up in Jenny. “Finally we can go somewhere.”

  “And get out of this freaking hallway,” Dee said.

  Michael was looking awed. “It’s just like going up to the next level of a video game.”

  But Audrey pursed her lips. When Jenny asked why, Audrey gave her a sideways glance under spiky dark lashes.

  “One thing about video games—the farther you go, the harder they get,” she said. “N’est-ce pas?”

  The stairs had rubber padding with the ridges worn almost to nothing. Jenny couldn’t see the top from where she stood—the roof of the Haunted Mansion hall was in the way.

  “What are we waiting for?” Dee said and vaulted onto the steps. Then she grabbed for the railing—as soon as her foot touched a step, the whole staircase had started moving with a jerk. It was a wheezing, groaning, shivering escalator.

  “Oh, geez,” Michael said. “I hate to tell you this, but when I was a kid I was scared of escalators. I was afraid they might catch the end of my muffler or something—”

  “You don’t wear mufflers,” Audrey said and shoved him on.

  “Mike, if you’re scared of escalators, then this one is probably your fault,” Jenny said, stepping on behind him. “Remember, he gets it all from us.”

  As they neared the top, Jenny found they were riding directly toward a mirror. In fact, she discovered when she looked down the hall—after helping Mike jump off the escalator at the strategic moment—there were mirrors everywhere.

  The hallway downstairs had been dark—this one was exactly the opposite. Light bounced and rainbowed off the mirrors lining the zigzagging walls until Jenny saw colored streaks even with her eyes closed. In fact, the mirrored walls zigged and zagged so sharply that it was impossible to get a clear view for more than a few feet. You had to veer alternately right and left to follow the hallway’s path, and anything in the bend before you or behind you was invisible.

  “All right, who put these here?” Dee demanded.

  “Are my legs really that short? Or are these trick mirrors?” Audrey asked, pivoting.

  Michael made one effort to straighten his wrinkled gray sweats and then gave up.

  Jenny’s own reflection made her uncomfortable. She seemed to hear Julian’s voice in her mind: “Eyes as green as cypress and hair like liquid amber. . . .”

  That wasn’t what she saw. Just now Jenny saw a girl with flushed cheeks, whose hair was clinging to her forehead in little damp curls, whose tissue-linen blouse was beginning to go limp, and whose flowing cotton skirt was dusty and grass-stained.

  “Right or left—take y
our pick,” she said, glancing up and down the hallway.

  “Left,” Dee said firmly, and they went that way, zigging and zagging with the acute turns.

  The mirrors were disconcerting. Everywhere Jenny looked her image was thrown back at her, and thrown from mirror to mirror so that she saw herself coming and going, reflected to infinity on all sides. Stay in this place long enough and you might forget which one is really you, she thought.

  As in the other hallway, there were no deviations from the pattern, nothing to distinguish any part of it from any other. It was especially nerve-racking not being able to see more than one turn behind you, and not knowing what might be waiting around the next turn ahead. Images of the Creeper and the Lurker went through Jenny’s mind.

  “Dee, slow down,” Jenny said as Dee’s long, light step took her out of sight for the third time. Dee was navigating the corridor like a skier on a slalom, plunging in and out of the sharp turns, while the rest of them walked with hands outstretched to help them tell reflection from reality.

  “No, you guys hurry up—” Dee’s voice was responding from the next bend, and then there was a flash.

  It seemed to reflect from everywhere at once, but Jenny thought it came from ahead. She and Audrey and Michael stood frozen for a moment, then hurried forward.

  Dee was standing, hands on her hips, in front of a door. It was mirrored like the walls, but Jenny figured it had to be a door because there was a red button like an elevator button beside it. When she looked hard she could distinguish the door’s outline from the mirror around it.

  Above the red button was a blue lightbulb, round as a clown’s nose.

  “It just appeared,” Dee said and snapped her fingers. “Like that. In that flash.”

  From the turn ahead they heard whimpering.

  “Summer!” Jenny, Dee, and Audrey exclaimed simultaneously.

  It was Summer, huddled in the next bend, her spun-sugar curls resting on her folded arms, her legs drawn beneath her china blue shirtdress. She looked up with a little hysterical cry at their approach.

  “Is it really you?”

  “Yes,” Jenny said, kneeling. She was a little frightened by the expression in Summer’s eyes.

  “Really, really you?”

  “Yes. Oh, Summer.” Worriedly, Jenny put her arms around the smaller girl and felt her trembling.

  “I’ve been alone here so long, and I kept seeing myself, and then sometimes I thought I saw other people, but when I ran toward them they weren’t there. . . .”

  “Who have you seen?” Jenny asked.

  “Sometimes Zachary—and sometimes him. He scares me, Jenny.” Summer buried her small face in Jenny’s vest.

  He scares me, too, Jenny thought. She said, “There’s nothing to be frightened of now. We’re really here. See?”

  Summer managed a watery smile.

  “Poor sun bunny,” Michael said. “I guess it must be your nightmare next.”

  “Good job, Mr. Tactful,” Dee said under her breath.

  They explained about the nightmares to Summer. She wasn’t as disturbed as Jenny thought she might be.

  “Anything to get out of here,” she said.

  “I know. I’ve only been here twenty minutes, and I hate the place already,” Dee said. “Anybody for claustrophobia?”

  In front of the door Jenny hesitated with her finger on the button. “I don’t suppose you want to tell us what you drew for your nightmare,” she said. She didn’t have much hope; none of the others had told.

  “Okay,” Summer said readily. “It was a messy room.”

  “A messy room ?” Michael said. “Oh, horror.”

  “No, really, Summer,” Audrey said with a briskly adult air. “It’ll help if you tell us.”

  Dee flashed an amused ebony glance at her.

  “I did tell you. It’s a messy room.”

  “It’s all right, Summer,” Jenny said gently. “We’ll deal with it when we get there.” She pushed the red button. The blue light went on. The door slid open.

  It was a messy room.

  “You see,” Summer said.

  It was Summer’s bedroom, only more so. Ever since Jenny had known Summer, her room had been messy. Summer’s parents were refugees from the sixties, and everything in their house was slightly frayed or weathered, but as Michael said, Summer herself had clutter down to a fine art. When you visited her you usually couldn’t see the handmade tie-dyed curtains at the window or the bright patchwork quilt on the bed, because of the things hanging from them or piled up in front of them or scattered on top of them.

  In the room behind the mirrored door, Jenny couldn’t even see the bed. There was a small clear space in front of the closet—everything else was obscured by piles of junk.

  Dee and Michael were giggling. “Trust you, Sunshine, to have a nightmare like this,” Dee said.

  Jenny sighed, not nearly as amused. “All right, everybody, let’s go in. I suppose we have to clean it up—there must be a door somewhere along one of the far walls.”

  “Hey, wait. I don’t do the C-word,” Michael protested, alarmed. “Besides, dust is bad for my allergies.”

  “In,” said Audrey, taking him by the ear.

  They all squeezed in between the closet and the piles. The door slid noiselessly shut behind them—and disappeared.

  “Talk about claustrophobia,” Michael gasped.

  “Cette chambre est une vrai pagaille,” Audrey said under her breath.

  “What?” Jenny asked.

  “I said this is one messy room. Summer, how can you stand it?”

  Summer’s delft-blue eyes filled with tears. “My real room isn’t as bad as this. This is my nightmare, dummy!”

  “Well, why this kind of nightmare?” Audrey said, not softening.

  “Because my mom never yells about my room, but once my nana came to visit, and she almost passed out. I still dream about what she said.”

  “Don’t make her feel bad,” Jenny whispered to Audrey. “Try to clear a path around the edges,” she said aloud, “and check every wall for the door.”

  The piles of junk were amazingly varied. There were heaps of rumpled clothes, year-old magazines, disjointed Ray-Bans, spindled cassette tapes, unstrung string bikinis, crushed frozen yogurt cups, bent photographs, mismatched sandals, dry felt-tip pens, chewed pencils, twisted headphones, musty towels, endless mounds of underwear, and a zoo of bedraggled stuffed animals. Also a dog-chewed Frisbee, a mashed Twister mat, and a futon that smelled like somebody’s bottom.

  “It’s spider city here,” Dee said, gathering up one of the heaps. “Haven’t you ever heard of Raid?”

  “I believe in live and let live,” Summer said vaguely.

  It really was a nightmare of sorts, Jenny thought—a nightmare of tedium. But Dee worked with tireless energy and Audrey with fastidious precision, and slowly they forged a path through the debris. Michael was no good at all—he stopped to leaf through every magazine he picked up.

  They were getting to a different type of garbage—a type that made Audrey wrinkle up her nose. Blackened avocado husks, mildewed newspapers, and plastic glasses with the dregs of unidentifiable liquids in them.

  Then Jenny lifted a box of odds and ends and saw something like a pressed flower on the hardwood floor underneath. But it wasn’t a flower, it was the wrong shape. At first she didn’t recognize it, then she saw the little muzzle and the tiny curled-up feet. It was a flat and desiccated mouse.

  She couldn’t help gasping.

  I can’t touch that, I can’t, I can’t.

  Dee scraped it up with a 1991 calendar and threw it in the closet. Jenny felt a whisper of terror inside her, unease that went beyond disgust at the mouse.

  The garbage got worse and worse—like what you’d find at a dump, nothing that would be in anybody’s bedroom. Food in all stages of decomposition. Every kind of refuse, trash, and litter.

  No one was smiling anymore.

  Dee picked up a tattered Eas
ter basket, paused. An awful smell wafted from it. She stirred the cellophane grass with one long finger, and then her face convulsed. In the basket was a solid mass of white, writhing maggots.

  “God!” In one fluid motion Dee threw the basket at the closet, where it hit the door and scattered a shower of white. Michael bolted up from his magazine with a yell. Audrey and Summer were shrieking.

  Jenny felt the quick, cold touch of real fear.

  “Summer—just what did your grandmother say about your room?” she said.

  “Oh—she said things were growing in it,” Summer reported, her eyes large and worried. “She said it would attract bugs. She said it looked like an earthquake hit it. She said someday I would get lost in it and never come out.”

  Dee, who had been staring at Summer, now cut a glance of startled revelation at Jenny. “Uh-huh,” she said.

  The tension in the room was palpable.

  “And just what kind of nightmares do you have about it?” Jenny asked, trying to discipline her voice.

  “Oh.” Summer shivered. “Well—it’s like I hear a scratchy noise, and then I look and it’s these cockroaches—but they’re big, big as . . . as sneakers. And then I see this thing on the floor. It’s like fungus, sort of a column of fungus, but it’s got a kind of mouth on the top and it’s howling. It’s howling fungus.”

  Summer’s lips were trembling by now.

  “It may not sound scary, but it was. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  A primitive warning was going off in Jenny’s brain. She, Audrey, Dee, and Michael all looked at one another. “It sounds plenty scary to me,” she said. “I think maybe we’d better get moving.”

  Michael’s lips were puckered in a soundless whistle. “I think maybe you’re right,” he muttered. He bent to work without another word of complaint.

  The closet was full by now, and they were just transferring things from before them to behind them, like digging a tunnel. The garbage kept getting grosser and grosser and scarier and scarier. Things Jenny didn’t want to touch with her hands. She wore crumpled T-shirts like oven mitts to move them.

  Then the bugs came.

  It started with a rustle, a pleasant sound like a taffeta prom dress. Jenny stiffened, then turned slowly to look.