Solid as Steele (10 page)

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 her.

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.

 

M
ACK'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.

When she screamed, he came back to the bed and tried to gather her close, but she kept screaming, kept trying to jerk herself out of his arms, her back arching in her struggle to get away.

Terrified, he tried to get through to her.

“Jamie. Sweetheart. Come back to me.”

She didn't seem to hear. Didn't seem to know he was even there.

“Jamie!”

She kept struggling, and when he pressed his hand to her chest, he could feel her heart beating wildly.

What should he do?

 

S
CREAMING, SHE TRIED TO
pull away, but the living wall held her in its grip.

She shouldn't be here. Coming to this place had been a terrible mistake. If she could have clawed her way out, she would have fled the dream. But it continued to hold her fast.

And then something worse happened. To her right, she heard a noise. Jerking away from the wall, she turned to face the door. Not the one where she'd entered. Another door.

It opened to reveal the figure of a man.

She had seen him before. At least twice.

He was dressed all in black, with a cape flowing out behind him as though a strong breeze were blowing it. In place of a face, he had a death mask.

“You,” he whispered. “How did you get here?”

Her only answer was a scream.

She would have run, but her feet were rooted to the floor.

The figure came toward her. Far away, she heard someone calling her name. It was Mack.

“Jamie. Wake up, Jamie.”

“I can't,” she whispered.

Mack spoke again, his voice urgent. “Yes, you can. Jamie, come back to me.”

She wanted to. She wanted to get out of this awful place. She wanted to come back to him.

“Keep talking to me,” she whispered because she knew that he was her link to sanity, and only he could drag her back to the real world.

“Jamie. Sweetheart. Please, Jamie.”

She felt Mack's hand clamp around hers. Sensed his desperation.

Somehow she managed to turn her hand, knitting her fingers with his, clinging to his solid flesh and bone. He was real. The only thing that was real. The rest of it was only a nightmare.

“Yes! Wake up.”

She could hear him. Touch him. But she couldn't see him. All she could see was the man in black with the death mask coming around the table, advancing on her step by step like the murderer in a horror movie. He was going to swoop down on her, and that would be the end.

She felt herself lifted, and she knew deep in her mind that it wasn't the monster who had her. It was Mack. He was carrying her somewhere.

He shifted her weight, seemed to lower her, triggering a roaring noise in her ears. A confusion of impressions assaulted her. But one thing she knew above all others, the bad man was still in back of her. Coming. He was going to grab her the way he had grabbed the other women. And there was no escape. He would kill her, just the way he'd killed the rest of his victims.

The monster was almost there, reaching out his hands toward her. He was going to seize her.

Then something wet came pouring down on her, soaking her to the skin.

She started coughing, and sputtering. When she opened her eyes, she blinked in confusion. She was in the shower. With her clothes on. Mack was holding her in his arms. He was in the shower, too, standing there fully dressed with water pouring down on them.

“Thank God,” he muttered.

“What…what happened?” she choked out.

“You were screaming. I think he was coming at you, but you couldn't wake up. I tried to make you hear me, but I couldn't do it.”

“I did hear you. I knew you were there,” she whispered. “I could feel your hands on me, but I couldn't get to you.”

“I thought if I got you wet, that would be enough of a shock to make you come back to the world.”

Water was still pouring out of the showerhead onto them.

She laughed. “I guess it worked.”

“Yeah.” He set her on her feet, made sure she was steady, then reached to turn off the water. “Sorry.”

“About what?”

“Dousing you.”

“It was the right thing to do.”

He pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her, swaying with her in the tub, saying her name over and over.

She heard him swallow. “I was scared. Scared you were stuck there.”

“I think I might have been, if you hadn't pulled me out.”

He nodded against the top of her head.

“What happened, exactly?”

“I went to the funhouse. Like in my dreams. Only it was different.”

“Did you find out where the place was?”

“No. I was inside the whole time.” She gulped. “I was like the women he'd brought there. Only I had…abilities they didn't.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wished I had a flashlight, and then I was holding one. The way it can happen in a dream.” He nodded.

“First I was inside the main entrance to the house.” She thought for a moment. “I think he'd left it the way he found it, but he'd made a longer hallway beyond that. I went down it. There was a trapdoor in the floor. But I found it and kept going. Then I stepped into a…dining room.”

“Like a regular dining room?”

She shook her head. “There was a table and chairs, but it was set up like a spook show, and the door locked behind me. When it wouldn't open again, I walked around the table.” She gulped. “Then all of the sudden he was there—coming through another doorway. He was coming toward me. You got me out of there just in time.”

Mack ran his fingers up and down her arm reassuringly. “It wasn't real.”

“You can say that.” She shuddered. “I don't know if it's true. I mean, the rules aren't like the real world—or like regular dreams.”

“Did you see his face?”

“He had on a mask.”

“The ski mask? Like when he pushed you into the car?”

“No. The death mask like when he went after the other women.” She made a strangled sound. “He looked like he did when he was with the women, telling them they could get away. Only we both know they couldn't escape.”

“He wasn't really there. How could he be, in your dream?”

She sucked in a breath. “He recognized me.”

His hands clenched on her shoulders. “How do you know?”

“He said…‘you'.”

“But not your name?”

“No.”

“Then he could have meant someone else.”

She knew there was no point in arguing with Mack about what was real and what was not. He hadn't been there. He didn't understand that what had happened to her in the funhouse had taken on a life of its own.

“I was so scared,” she murmured.

“So was I.”

She nodded. She's known it even when she was dreaming. She knew it now.

Mack's voice turned gentle. “We'd better get dry,” he said, leaning her shoulders against the tile wall and taking a step back. He was fumbling with the buttons on the front of her shirt, when his hands went still.

“Maybe I shouldn't be undressing you,” he said in a thick voice.

When he met her gaze, she didn't look away. “Maybe you should,” she said, her own voice equally thick.

“Why?”

“You saved me.”

His voice turned rough. “You don't have to pay me back.”

“That's not what I meant.” She swallowed hard. “I mean you were my lifeline—the reason I wanted to come back. You were the thing in this world I could cling to. Even when I was in that place, in some ways I knew I was here with you. I don't know what would have happened if I'd tried to do it before you came back. I guess I realized it was too dangerous without you.”

She reached for him, the wet fabric of their clothing slapping together. After a long moment, she eased away and began working at her shirt buttons.

When she raised her head, the look in his eyes made her chest go tight with need.

“After what happened, you need to rest.”

She knew that he was saying it because he thought it was the right thing to do.

“I think I know what I need,” she answered. “You.”

She cupped her hand around the back of his head and brought his mouth down to hers, and when their lips touched, she knew that was the right move.

Her wet clothing had turned cold, chilling her to the bone. But when he moved his lips against hers, heat sizzled through her body.

She opened her mouth to give him better access, silently saying that she needed him.

“I was so scared when I couldn't wake you,” he whispered against her mouth.

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“I had to do something. And the only thing I thought of was to carry you to the shower.”

“That was smart.”

“And now I'm taking advantage of you.”

“No.”

“You're sure?”

“Very.”

In answer his hand slid down to her hips, pressing her against the hard shaft of his erection.

“We've got to get out of these wet clothes,” he muttered.

Because she'd been in bed, she was wearing sweatpants. All he had to do was slip his hands inside the elastic and pull them down, along with her panties.

When they pooled around her feet, she stepped out of them, and he ran his hands over the curve of her bottom, then lower, to find her sex. She was already aroused, and he made a low sound in his throat as he stroked her there.

“I don't think I can stand up much longer,” she whispered.

“I know the feeling. Give me a second.”

He pulled his dripping shirt over his head while she got rid of her bra, then reached for the snap at the top of his jeans.

When she had trouble lowering the zipper, he helped her, his erection bouncing out as he freed it.

Naked, they clung together, swaying in the tub.

“Bedroom,” she whispered.

They left a sodden mass of clothing in the tub as they staggered back to the bedroom, where they fell onto the bed together. He gathered her close, stroking his fingers over her back, down her flanks, pulling her against his
body, making her feel like every tender part of her was going to ignite.

Easing away, he took her breasts in his hands, his thumbs stroking over the hardened tips, bringing a whimper to her lips.

He sucked one taut nipple into his mouth, while he slid his hand down her body into the folds of her sex, his fingers knowing and skillful. His hands and mouth sent pleasure roaring through her body.

“Now,” she whispered, closing her fist around him, making it impossible to deny what they both wanted.

When she rolled to her back, he followed, letting her guide him inside her.

They both exclaimed at the joining. Then he began to move, making her cry out again as she came undone for him.

He followed her over the edge, and she clasped her arms around his shoulders, hugging him to her. She had reached for him, and he had taken her in his arms and given her what she needed. She wanted him to know that it had been the right thing to do.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” he answered, and she heard the emotion in his voice. It made her chest tighten. This meant a lot to him. More than she ever would have believed.

And what about her, she thought. Tomorrow would she regret what they had done?

 

F
RED
H
YDE STOOD IN
the dining room of his magnificent creation. He'd been sleeping upstairs when something had wakened him. It wasn't his alarm going off. It was something else, something he couldn't explain beyond a sudden sense of dread.

He'd jumped out of bed and inspected the system. It was functioning properly and showed no intrusions.

No one had gotten into the house. He was sure of that. Yet he was still feeling nervous, as though a presence that didn't belong was here. After dressing quickly, he went down to walk around the first floor. Everything seemed to be in order, yet when he entered the dining room, a shivery feeling rippled over his skin. It was like that feeling they call “someone walking over your grave.” Ridiculous.

He had the house rigged so that you couldn't turn on the lights in the normal way at the switches. You had to use his remote control, which he did before making sure nothing was out of place.

When he got to the dining room table, he stopped and stared. There was a mechanism in the floor that triggered a latch in the ceiling. When you stepped in the right place, a spider came down a thread of web and landed in the middle of the table where it jumped around like it was going to spring off the table and take a chomp out of your arm. Only it never left the horizontal surface.

There was no reason it should have fallen to the table now. Only here it was. And he'd have to put it back. Or get out one of the birds with the steel claws and knife-blade beaks.

There was something else that stopped him in his tracks. One of the chairs was standing away from the table. And he was sure he had pushed them all in.

What the hell was going on?

He stood very still, thinking. Trying to pick up vibrations, if one could do something like that. He didn't believe in paranormal stuff, even though he'd made the funhouse into a place where otherworldly phenomena seemed to be part of the landscape. But it was all fake. All from his
own imagination or stuff he'd seen in movies or read in books.

Once again he assured himself that nobody could have been here, yet it felt like someone had been in the house. Here in this room, messing with his creation.

Closing his eyes, he tried to conjure up an image of who it might have been…and lit on Jamie Shepherd.

Impossible. She didn't even know where this place was. Still, another shiver went up his spine. He'd have to capture her before she wrecked all his plans.

Could she?

What if she and that detective started sharing information with the cops?

But what did they know, really? What could they know?

 

M
ACK WOKE AND CAUTIOUSLY
turned his head. Jamie was lying next to him, staring at the ceiling.

“You okay?” he asked, hearing the catch in his voice.

“I'm not going to jump out of bed and run away from you,” she said.

“That's something,” he managed to answer as he allowed himself to relax a little.

Under the covers, she found his hand and knit his fingers with hers. “But I do want you to understand something.”

He was immediately on edge again.

“About what happened to me last night. When I went to the funhouse.”

“Okay.”

“It was real, in a way that I can't explain to you.”

“Okay,” he said again, wondering why she was insisting. Then it hit him. This could be a test. Maybe not a conscious one on her part, but a test nonetheless. They'd made love, and it had been wonderful, but there had to
be more to their relationship than great sex. There had to be trust. He'd been a little in love with her since Craig first brought her back to Baltimore from Gaptown. Back then he'd seen her as a charming, desirable, funny, smart woman. He hadn't known there was another dimension to her. Something that she'd kept hidden because she realized that it was hard for people to accept.

He knew she must have told Craig about her strange ability. Before or after he'd brought her to Baltimore, he wondered. At any rate, he was sure Craig had accepted it.

And he would have to do the same, if he wanted his relationship with Jamie to go anywhere.

“What are you thinking?”

He swallowed. “That I'd like to understand what the dream meant to you.”

Her face was so serious that he felt his stomach clench. “It was weird.”

“I'll bet.” He tightened his hold on her hand. “Tell me what you can about it.”

“Before, when I dreamed about something bad happening to another person, I was always that person, experiencing it through their senses. This time, it was just me, alone in the dream, and that somehow made it worse.” She tensed. “Well, I was alone until he came in at the end.”

She was silent for a moment, and he didn't press her, just let her tell it the way she wanted to.

“The worst part was that I had the absolute feeling that I was really there. I mean, if I go to the house, it will be exactly like the dream. Unless he changes something around in the meantime.”

She sank back against the pillows, took a deep breath and let it out. “I said the worst part was feeling like it was so real, but maybe that's not true. Maybe the worst part is
that I put myself through hell, and I don't have any better idea where to find the house than when I started.”

“It's okay.”

“It's not. I failed.”

“No. You thought it would work. It was a reasonable thing to try.”

“I thought maybe I'd get there and be outside. But I was in the entrance hall.”