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  What Dean said was, “Please don’t do it. I’ll do anything. I swear.”

  A brief pause.

  “Thank you, Dean.”

  She snapped his thumb.

  Dean’s next scream mingled with the laughter of Ms.

  Wickman’s apprentices. Some of the laughter died off as their Mistress gathered his broken fingers in her hand and…squeezed.

  Then squeezed harder. And harder still.

  Tidal waves of pain slammed through Dean. His body bucked. The long, continuous scream that ripped out of him felt as though it might tear his body apart. Dean blacked out for a moment, only to be reawakened almost instantly by the agony blazing in every nerve ending in his body. At some point, Ms. Wickman relinquished her grip on his broken fingers, stood up, and moved away from him.

  He heard her talking to her followers. There were four of them, ranging in age from mid-teens to early twenties. The oldest, a thin but tall boy of about twenty or twenty-one, hauled Dean off the floor and deposited him on the old sofa. The sofa reeked of mildew and rot, and it creaked beneath his weight.

  Then Ms. Wickman loomed over him again. A long, thin cigarette was pinched between two fingers of her right hand. She took a draw on the cigarette, then blew a thin stream of smoke at the sagging ceiling.

  She met Dean’s gaze and smiled. “Do you smoke, Dean?”

  Dean coughed. “No.”

  That strange, wicked smile again. Insinuating. Malicious to the core. “Well, you’re about to start.”

  Dean felt terror again, sure, but now another feeling rose to the surface, a weariness he felt from the depths of his soul. “I don’t care anymore. Please kill me now. Get it over with.”

  The woman’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Oh, Dean, honey, I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding between you and me.”

  Dean drew in another sharp breath as she sat next to him on the sofa and draped an arm around his shoulders. He trembled beneath her touch, tried to cringe away from her, but of course was unable to move.

  She leaned into him, her breath hot on his ear as she spoke. “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here, Dean. You see, we’re not going to kill you.”

  Dean’s gaze swept over the mad woman’s followers, cataloguing a variety of minor injuries and mutilations. A missing finger here, a livid scar there…and the tall, thin boy was missing an ear.

  Dean shook his head as more tears filled his eyes. “No. No, no, no. You can’t make me. I won’t…won’t be like… them.”

  A dark-haired girl in a raggedy black dress and black Doc Martens laughed. “Where have I heard that before?”

  More deranged laughter.

  Ms. Wickman leaned closer still, her lips moving softly against his ear as she said, “You’ll be whatever I want you to be. You belong to me now.”

  Then she put out her cigarette on the back of his mangled hand.

  Dean screamed yet again.

  And watched aghast as smoke rose from the seared pucker of flesh.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two years later

  Dream Weaver was a drink or two shy of being truly drunk. She had every intention of addressing that deficiency within the next few minutes. But first things first. She needed to get her game face on before wading back into the action. So she extracted a tube of lipstick from her Prada knockoff purse, uncapped it, and leaned over the sink as she applied a fresh coat to her full lips. She capped the tube and dropped it in her purse, dabbed away the excess with a square of toilet paper, then teased out her hair a bit with her fingers.

  The image looking back at her from the bar bathroom’s tiny, cracked mirror looked less and less like a stranger with each passing day. This was a good thing. She wanted to obliterate every trace of the woman she’d been. Erase her. Replace her with something completely different. Whether or not that “something different” was something others would consider admirable was of no consequence.

  Her flowing blonde tresses were gone, replaced by a choppy, dyed-black cut that made her look like a punk Bettie Page. Her formerly perpetual tan was also a thing of the past. The extremely tight and skimpy black top she wore accentuated her womanly assets and displayed a lot of very pale flesh. It looked as though the sun’s rays hadn’t touched her in years, which wasn’t too far from the truth. Ultrashort denim cutoffs hugged her still shapely ass. She turned to admire herself from a side angle, peering over her shoulder to get a glimpse of the new black rose tattoo on her lower back.

  She looked good. Hot. She was a beautiful woman. None of the potential cosmetic changes available to her—short of a splash of boiling acid to the face—could change that essential aspect of her existence. But she was cool with that. It was the one thing about herself she had no desire to change. She was a much shallower human being these days, a thing she had no problem admitting to herself. Gone was the ditzy girl who fretted so about the feelings of others and worked to avoid using her looks to unfair advantage. In her place was a cool, cold-hearted bitch who knew damn well she was prettier than just about everyone else—and didn’t hesitate to make full use of the fact.

  Someone pounded on the bathroom door, rattling the cheap hook-and-eye lock. “You about done in there? Other people have to piss too, you know.”

  “Wait your fucking turn, cunt!” Dream snarled, her face twisting in a sneer.

  Dream slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder and stared at her reflection some more. The only flaw in the otherwise perfect reflected visage was the tell-tale hint of red in her eyes. She dug a Visine bottle out of her purse, squeezed a few drops into each eye, and blinked away excess moisture until she could see clearly again.

  The bathroom door rattled in its frame again.

  Dream smiled. And waited. The redness was already fading from her eyes.

  She waited another beat longer, until the door rattled yet again. Then she went to the door, popped the lock out of the hook, and opened the door. The girl waiting to use the bathroom was a scrawny thing, almost waifish. Flat-chested and curveless. She wore thick glasses and her short hair was dark with streaks of blonde.

  Dream smirked. “There she is…Miss America.”

  The girl rolled her eyes and tried to push past her into the bathroom. Dream stepped aside, allowing her entry. Then she shut the door and locked it again.

  The girl’s face twisted in a scowl. “What are you doing? Are you a dyke or something? I don’t swing that way.”

  Dream adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder and stepped forward. “I don’t care.”

  She slammed the girl against the wall and punched her hard in the stomach. The girl’s eyes went wide with shock and pain. Her legs gave out, but Dream held her up and punched her again. Then one more time.

  She stepped away and the girl dropped to her knees. A sheen of sweat broke out over her face and she lunged toward the toilet, flipping the lid open an instant before her stomach voided its contents. When she was done heaving, she looked at Dream, her lower lip trembling as she said, “Why…why…”

  She lifted her glasses and swiped at a sudden flood of tears, unable to comprehend the outburst of violence.

  “Because I’m a bad person.” Dream knelt next to the trembling girl, lifted her chin with a finger. “And you don’t fuck with bad people.”

  The girl twisted away from Dream and cried some more.

  Dream stood up. “Get yourself together. When you’re done here, pay your bill and leave. Don’t say a word about this to anyone, ever.”

  Dream watched her a moment longer, then turned and left the bathroom.

  The Villager Pub was a tiny place, with a short bar just inside the front entrance. There were two tables opposite the bar, a jukebox (silent now), and an old Galaga tabletop video game. Between the bar and the bathrooms was an open area for dart players. Dream waited for a pause in the in-progress dart games, smiled her thanks to the waiting players, and made her way to the bar. She felt the gazes of the male dart players on her
every step of the way. The lust they felt as they drank in her long, long legs and abundant curves was a palpable thing. It made her feel good.

  And powerful.

  She took a seat at the end of the bar, a good place for watching the dart games. The players were all college-age boys. A look through their wallets would reveal more than one fake ID. Maybe tonight the mark would be one of them. These young guys, bursting with hormones and fueled by too many beers, would be easy. She would lure one of them to a motel room. Dope his drink. Maybe even fuck him before he lost consciousness. Then rob him blind and light out of town before sunrise. It was the way she lived now. Town to town. Mark after mark. Sometimes, when she’d dosed them just right, they were delirious enough to share credit card PIN numbers. There was an art to timing everything just right. She was getting better at it all the time.

  One of the players elbowed his buddy—a square-jawed, bushy-haired frat type—and nodded in her direction. Frat Boy saw her looking at him and grinned.

  Dream smiled and lit a cigarette.

  The barmaid—a thin woman of about forty with long, dishwater hair—approached her and said, “What’ll you have?”

  “Shiner Bock.”

  The barmaid removed a frosty pint glass from a cooler behind the bar and began to fill it from the tap. Dream licked her lips as she watched the amber liquid fill the frost-rimmed glass. She loved the taste of the stuff, but more than that she craved the fuzziness of mind it would bring, that added buffer between her present life and the painful memories of her past. The barmaid placed a napkin in front of Dream and set the nearly overflowing mug on it. Dream waited for the head to settle before taking a first sip of the deliciously cold, cold brew.

  The skinny girl emerged from the bathroom and wobbled through the game area, oblivious to the men with their darts. She bumped into one, eliciting a startled yelp.

  Frat Boy sneered. “Watch where you’re going, bitch.”

  One of his friends snickered and said, “Yeah, skank.”

  The girl didn’t say anything. Dream watched her from the corner of her eye as she continued toward the bar. She experienced a flash of sense-memory, a vivid moment in which she again felt the girl’s soft flesh yield beneath her hard fist.

  The girl gave her a wide berth, continuing down to the far end of the bar, where she paused long enough to dig into her purse and extract several rumpled bills. She tossed these on the bar and left in a hurry, the bell over the door jangling behind her. An untouched pint of Bud Light gleamed in the light of the neon Miller sign mounted behind the bar.

  The barmaid frowned. “Well, shit, girl didn’t even drink her beer.”

  A middle-aged man in a cowboy hat rose from his seat at one of the tables. “Hell, I’ll drink that, darlin’.”

  The barmaid shrugged. “What the hell, it’s paid for. Today’s your lucky day.”

  Cowboy Hat gripped the mug’s handle with a beefy hand and winked at Dream. Dream kept her expression blank and returned her attention to the young boys playing darts. Frat Boy caught her eye again and grinned. Dream flashed another smile, hoping to encourage the kid to make a move. He’d better get the hint soon, because she had a feeling Cowboy Hat would lumber over any moment and hit on her. But Frat Boy’s attention was again on the dartboard. He was squinting, a dart pinched between thumb and forefinger held at about shoulder level.

  It was then she heard the slightly labored breath behind her and knew the time had come to shoot down another dirty old man. The bar stool to her left creaked as a weight settled onto it. Dream set her mug down with a sigh. She looked longingly at Frat Boy a moment longer, but he was still too focused on his damnable game. Vowing to make him pay for that later, she swiveled around on her stool to tell Cowboy Hat off…

  But the smackdown went undelivered, the words dying on the tip of her tongue as a paralyzing numbness swept rapidly through her body.

  There was someone on the bar stool next to her, but it wasn’t Cowboy Hat.

  The apparition smiled hideously through rotting lips. “Hello, Dream.”

  A ghost. A fucking ghost. Or a hallucination. That was more likely, she supposed, but how could anyone tell the difference?

  It was Alicia Jackson, her one-time best friend in the world. Alicia had been dead for more than three and a half years. She didn’t look like an old-time movie ghost, though. She wasn’t flickering or floating in mid-air. She looked as solid and three-dimensional as the bar stool under Dream’s ass. She was a walking corpse, her flesh bloated and rotting. The back of her head was a pulped, sticky mess—the exit wound from the self-inflicted gunshot wound that had ended her life. She wore a slinky little black dress, which meant a lot of visible putrescent flesh. The tortures she’d endured prior to her suicide were much in evidence, including the uncountable razor-blade cuts the demonic Ms. Wickman had inflicted on her. Each wound weeped blood.

  Alicia’s gruesome smile widened, exposing rows of teeth that protruded alarmingly from her blackened, shrunken gums. Maggots trickled from one corner of her mouth. “It’s been a while, girl.” She laughed and more maggots tumbled from her mouth. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking—I’m not real. But you’re wrong. I’m not a ghost. Not exactly. And I’m sure as shit no hallucination.”

  Dream opened her mouth to say something, managed a single, incoherent syllable before falling silent again. Her mouth hung open in astonishment. She simply couldn’t speak. What could she say to this…thing? The idea of holding a conversation with it was absurd.

  Alicia chuckled. “You’re still not believing it.”

  Dream nodded, a very slight downward tilt of her head. She didn’t want anyone in the bar to see her interacting with this thing that looked like her old friend. She knew they’d only see a thirtysomething chick in slut gear conversing with an empty bar stool. An aging barfly with severe mental problems would be the likely perception.

  She picked up her beer mug and drank deeply from it again. She looked at the television mounted on the wall behind the bar. The Simpsons was on, and she pretended to pay attention to Homer’s shenanigans.

  Alicia scooted closer and slapped a cold, clammy hand down on Dream’s upper left thigh. Dream sucked in a deep breath. The hand on her leg felt rough and leathery. She glanced down, noted the contrast between Alicia’s rot-brown hand and her own pale, unblemished flesh, and began to feel light-headed.

  Alicia leaned closer still and Dream felt the dead woman’s bony knee press against her. “There, girl. Do I feel like a motherfucking hallucination?”

  Dream trembled. She gripped the handle of her beer mug tighter. Her eyes flicked toward the bar’s front door. She could go. Just slide off the stool and hit the ground running. Bang through the door and leg it across the street to the lot where her old Honda Accord was parked. Then drive. Get the hell out of this stink ing, gray, miserable New England town, find some other place to prowl for a while.

  Alicia’s dead hand gave her thigh a squeeze. “Don’t matter where you go, baby. I’ll be there. It’s like I said, I’m not exactly a ghost.”

  Dream looked at the bar and kept her voice as low as possible. “Then what are you?”

  “I’m something you created.”

  Dream frowned. “Bullshit.”

  “Oh, it’s true, all right.” Alicia laughed again, and Dream saw a single maggot strike the mahogany bartop and begin to squiggle across the polished wood. “You and I both know you left that fucking house of horrors a changed woman. And I don’t mean just changed in the head. You got yourself some of the same supernatural mojo that Master asshole had. You always had it in you, but he woke it up. You can do things normal people can’t. You’re stronger. Smarter. And you can change the shape and substance of the world around you, just by thinking hard enough about it.”

  Dream shook her head. “No.”

  “Yes.” Alicia’s fingers began to stroke Dream’s inner thigh. “You know it’s true. And it scares the shit out of you. So you’ve done everything
you can to hold that power back, to suppress it. But the pressure’s building up inside you. Some of that psychic energy is spilling out. And me…well, I’m one of the consequences of that. Some of that energy mingled with the bit of my essence you’ve carried with you all these years. And that got all mixed in with your guilt. It was inevitable I would manifest.” Another soft, dry laugh. “And that I would look this fucking awful, I guess. Seriously, I ought to bitchslap you for this Night of the Living Dead Black Bitch look you’ve stuck me with.”

  Dream was still shaking her head, but it was just automatic, desperate denial. Another part of her—a part the booze was meant to numb—acknowledged the truth of Alicia’s words. But truth changed nothing. She would work harder to suppress it. Drink more. Drug more. Whatever it took. “I have to get out of here.”

  The barmaid looked up from the glass she’d been polishing. “Whatever. Go talk to yourself somewhere else. But you owe me three bucks for that beer.”

  Dream fumbled with her purse, digging for bills. “Okay. Sorry.”

  Alicia continued to stroke her thigh. “I’ll tell you a secret, Dream, something I never seriously considered telling you when I was alive. I always wanted to get it on with you. You were the only chick I ever felt that way about. I was always too scared to tell you, of course. Didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship.”

  Dream’s hands were shaking as she at last managed to extract her wallet from the purse and undo its snap. She withdrew three dollar bills, considered withdrawing a fourth for a tip, but decided against it when she got a look at the barmaid’s face, which was a mask of pity and disdain.

  “Remember what I said. You made me. I’m not a ghost.” Alicia’s fingers ceased their stroking motion and squeezed. Hard. “I’m also not exactly the woman you remember. But I’m close, Dream, I’m real fucking close. And I am always with you.” She squeezed even harder, really bearing down. “And I was with you in the bathroom when you put the hurt on that geek. That was some fucked-up shit, baby. Nothing like the sweetheart I remember. Shit, you should change your name to Nightmare, would suit you better these days.” She ran the coarse end of her gray tongue over her bloated lips. “Personally, I think it’s an improvement. You don’t get anywhere in this world without kicking some ass.”