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Alicia looked at him. “I’d like to know the answer to that myself.”

  Chad smirked. “Lots of people would like to know what makes me tick. I’m just a fascinating guy. But I have a few questions of my own I’d like answered, starting with where the hell are we and why are we here?”

  Dream said, “Somewhere a little east of Chattanooga. And we’re here because a few of my friends stopped acting like civilized human beings.”

  “And once again the unassailable Dream Weaver, she of the single stupidest name in recorded history, laughably

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  attempts to place herself on the moral high road.” The mocking tone, a stable of Chad’s verbal arsenal, had long ago lost its ability to sting. What was shocking to Dream was the unadulterated anger in his voice. This was something new, these outward displays of hatefulness. “Allow me to remind you of a few key things, your highness. One, tricky maneuvers involving automobiles and hairpin curves are best left to professional racers. They certainly should not be performed by unmedicated manic-depressives, especially not by PMS-ing manic-depressives. Two, and I think I should emphasize this as dramatically as possible…” Here his voice rose drastically in pitch. “YOU ALMOST GOT US FUCKING KILLED, YOU STUPID FUCKING BLOND BIMBO BITCH!”

  Karen Hidecki said, “Whoa … oh, wow …”

  “Chad,” Alicia said, calmer than Dream would ever have imagined her friend being under circumstances such as these, “I know you don’t give a damn about anybody’s feelings but your own, but I’m telling you to keep a lid on your bullshit. Otherwise I’ll have to hurt you. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.”

  Karen turned her sullen face away from the line of trees. “You’ll have help, too.”

  Then her gaze went back to the impenetrable darkness of the forest. Heartache was evident in every nuance of her posture and facial features. She exuded regret in a way that was almost a physical presence. It was painful to observe.

  Dream slid off the Accord’s hood and approached Chad, who instinctively backpedaled a step. She took a grim satisfaction in the look of utter surprise on his face. Well, he would be surprised, of course-a genuine act of

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  confrontation would be the last thing Chad would expect from her.

  She stepped right up to him. “What did I ever do to you, Chad?” She strove to make her voice as calm as Alicia’s, hoped to fill it with even a fraction of that same withering quality. “I really would like to know, because I’ve never been anything but a friend to you. I’ve supported you through every crisis in your life. I’ve been your shoulder to cry on when girlfriends left you. I’ve thought about it, really dredged my fucking memory, and I can’t think of a single thing I’ve done to warrant this viciousness. But obviously there’s something I’m missing. Please do me the favor of telling me what it is. You owe me that much.”

  Chad glared at her for another long moment, then the hardness went out of his face, like air escaping from a balloon. His shoulders sagged and he suddenly seemed very tired. Like the rest of them. “Okay” he said, sighing. “There is something.”

  Alicia grunted. “This should be rich.”

  Chad opened his mouth to say something, then appeared to hesitate. Finally, he said, “I don’t know if I should tell you.” Another hesitation. “You might want to kill me.”

  Dream felt a nameless terror rising in the back of her mind. She was right on the cusp of knowing what he was talking about. “No…”

  Chad nodded. “Yeah.” A sheepish expression distorted his features. “I’ve known about your little secret all along, Dream.”

  Dream shot a horrified glare at Alicia. “You didn’t?”

  The exasperated look on Alicia’s face was enough to dispel

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  her suspicion, though. “I never said a goddamn word, Dream. I keep my word, girl.”

  They heard Karen sigh. “I told him.” She kept her back turned to them. “I guess I’m just full of character defects. No honor.” Her voice grew quiet. “Not worthy of trust.”

  Chad rolled his eyes. “Break out the violins and strike up the self-pity orchestra. Jesus Christ.” His gaze fixed on Dream. “Let’s stop fucking around and get this all out in the open. I’ve known all along about your so-called suicide attempt. What’s funny is how you went to great lengths to cover up such a stupid plea for attention. You had to know it would get back to me somehow. And why is it I can’t stop thinking that was what you wanted all along-to make me feel guilty for failing to fall at your feet and pledge my undying devotion? You need help, Dream. Serious help. And you need to stop laying your troubles at my feet. It’s not fair.”

  Dream’s eyes brimmed with tears again.

  She wrenched her gaze away from him. “You asshole. …”

  Chad grunted. Dream didn’t need to see the smirk on his face to know it was there. “Yeah, I’m an asshole. And you’re the most selfish-“

  Dream didn’t know what she was doing until she had done it. Her clenched fist struck Chad’s midsection with a force that surprised both of them. It was the first time in her life she’d hit anyone in anger. Chad clutched his stomach, bent over, and gasped for air. His glasses slid from his face and tumbled to the asphalt, where they landed with a crack.

  There was a long period of relative silence during which

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  the only sound was that of Chad’s attempts to regain his breath. Dream knew right away her friends were shaken by the sight of her assaulting another human being. Sure, Chad probably deserved some form of punishment, maybe even a good thrashing, but no one would have expected Dream to administer it. Dream was kindhearted. Dream was a hippy-dippy pacifist who listened to Phish and fawned over every puppy she met. Dream wore tie-dyed T-shirts and always had a flower in her hair in the springtime. She was a kind of benevolent earth goddess. She was, well, a flake.

  This wasn’t that Dream, the one they all knew and loved.

  This was a tigress.

  “Damn you for making me do that, Chad.” She sniffled again. “Damn you.”

  Alicia touched her elbow. “Easy, Dream.”

  Dream flinched from the touch. She wasn’t ready to be consoled. She wasn’t done addressing Chad, either. “It breaks my heart to say this, but you better know I mean it.

  I don’t ever want to see you again after this. You can officially absolve yourself of any guilt, real or imagined, I may have caused you.”

  Chad held his stomach a moment longer. He examined his broken glasses and cast them aside. He wore them for nearsightedness, but he could see okay without them. He got shakily to his feet. “Okay.” There was a note of sad resignation in his voice. “I guess that’s the way it has to be.”

  “Thank God,” Alicia said. “This is eons overdue, if you ask me.”

  “Amen “Karen said.

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  Chad sneered. “Hypocrite.”

  Alicia shot a warning glance at Chad, then addressed Dream. “Sweetie, do you have an Atlas in your car? A Mobil guide?”

  Chad shook his head. “What do you want, a four-star hotel? Let’s just find the nearest Rathole Inn and call it a night.”

  Alicia smirked. “Appropriate, since you are a rat.”

  Dream looked at Alicia. “I don’t have an Atlas or anything like that. There was one in Dan’s car, but… well…” She turned her hands up helplessly. “But I saw one of those road signs with symbols on it before I pulled off the interstate. I’m pretty sure there was one of those lodging icons on it.”

  Alicia nodded. “Okay, so if we drive a little bit down this road, we ought to come to one of those clusters of motels and convenience stores soon enough.”

  Dream said, “I think so.”

  The discussion about what to do next continued as Karen Hidecki drifted away from them. She reached the guardrail and stood there as she studied the stand of trees. Shane was out there somewhere. She strained to detect any evidence of his presence, but there was nothing-just darkness and the occasional
flicker of shadow as the breeze stirred tree limbs. Something about the inscrutable blackness disturbed her, made her hug herself even though the night was warm. It occurred to her that Shane had been out there a long time.

  Almost as if on cue, a scream emanated from somewhere in the woods.

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  A scream of pain, judging from the shrillness of the cry.

  Karen’s heart lurched.

  Shane!

  She vaulted the guardrail, scrambled up the slight rise, and plunged into the woods. She didn’t realize what an impediment her alcohol-slowed reflexes would be until she ran into a low-hanging tree limb a second after seeing it. The limb smacked her forehead and sent her tumbling to the forest floor, where the back of her head struck something hard and unyielding. She never lost consciousness, but everything went gray for a moment, and she only caught a fuzzy glimpse of the creature that emerged from the shadows to stand over her. She sensed only that it was something very large and entirely outside her experience. It seemed to contemplate her for a moment, the way a patron of a restaurant would study a slab of meat prior to impaling it with knife and fork, then its head jerked up at the sound of her approaching friends.

  They were calling her name, getting closer by the moment.

  Then it was gone.

  Karen blinked her eyes in surprise. There hadn’t even been enough time to be properly scared, but now a tsunami-sized wave of terror was sweeping in, oh, yes.

  “What the fuck was that?” she panted.

  She heard a crackling of branches somewhere in front of her, then a brutal burst of knowledge arrived in her head fully formed.

  Shane had already encountered that… thing.

  Which meant…

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  “SHANE!”

  She started to get up, but then a hand fell on her shoulder and held her down. She screamed.

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  Eddie proceeded the only way imaginable under the circumstances-with the most extreme degree of caution he could muster. He was in the kitchen of The Master’s home. It looked much the same as he remembered from his prior experience. Here was the same large, wellstocked pantry. In the middle of the room was a large island with cupboards and a sink. Beyond it was a table, the same one at which he’d partaken of his last normal meal prior to his imprisonment Below.

  He’d arrived here some six months earlier, a lost and weary traveler in search of a telephone. He had been returning from a business trip to North Carolina, where he’d assisted in setting up a new distribution center for the company that employed him, when his car-a year-old Lexus-began to sputter and cough. He’d pulled off the highway in desperation, figuring he would call Triple A

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  from his cell phone. Only his cell phone, a brand-new, company-provided Motorola, had also decided to stop working.

  Eddie was a low-key guy, laid-back and not given to fits of temper; he chalked up the mechanical failures to a quirk of fate, the kind of thing he could turn into a funny story at the next corporate meeting. So he got out of his car and started walking, certain he would soon reach a place to crash for the night. In the morning he would call Triple A from a phone provided by the hotel. They would tow his car and soon he would be on his way in a Hertz rental.

  Things didn’t work out quite that way.

  He walked and walked for what seemed like forever. He was good at judging distance by foot from his days on the high school track team. A mile went by. Two. Three. He began to tire. Huffing and puffing, he stopped to try his cell phone one more time. Nothing. So he trudged on. Five miles and no sign of civilization. Okay, there was a winding asphalt road, bordered on each side by guardrails. Clearly man-made stuff. But he hadn’t encountered even one road sign, not one billboard, nothing at all to indicate he was in a populated area. Which was just absurd. He knew where he was. He’d passed through Knoxville not long before the Lexus started misbehaving. So there should be something. Some tiny telltale indication of a human presence.

  But there was nothing.

  He was beginning to despair when his eyes detected the faint pinpoint of a distant car’s headlights winding along a curve in the road. He listened to it draw nearer, suddenly

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  all too aware of how rarely he himself stopped for hitchhikers, which was approximately never. As the car entered a straightaway that led to where Eddie was standing, he stepped into the center of the road and began waving his arms up and down.

  He remembered thinking, I look like a crazy man.

  The car, a sleek black Bentley slowed down as it approached him, but instead of going around him it drew to a stop beside him and the driver’s-side window whirred down. He walked over and peered down into the face of a stern-faced woman, whose hair was pulled back into a tight black bun. Her face was implacable and ghost-pale as she listened to his tale of woe.

  After babbling for what seemed like a day or so, Eddie concluded with, “So, if you could get me to the nearest hotel, I would be forever in your debt.” He fumbled for his wallet. “I could pay you a generous-“

  The woman’s expression didn’t change as she said, “Get in.”

  Eddie thought there was something strange about her, but he’d been in no position to hesitate or question why she was so willing to pick up a total stranger. She told him only that she would take him to her employer’s house, where he could use a phone.

  “A hotel would be better,” he’d said.

  To which she hadn’t replied.

  He was happy to no longer be stranded, so he didn’t press the matter.

  And so it was that he’d arrived at the house he was once again in. An unassuming two-story abode that sat hunched against an East Tennessee mountain. He was too tired to

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  be disturbed by its utter isolation. He wouldn’t know it for a few more hours yet, but his life as a free man had come to an end the moment the front door swung shut. There had been times since when he’d thought this season in hell would never end, but maybe there was hope after all.

  So get moving, he thought.

  He padded slowly through the kitchen on his bare feet. He stopped at the island to extract a long carving knife from a wooden block. The knife would provide precious little defense against The Master himself, but just being armed at all made him feel a little better.

  A few more quiet, shuffling steps and he was out of the kitchen. He peered around a corner into a hallway. To his left, at the far end of the hallway, was the closed front door of the house. He willed himself to resist the impulse to immediately dash in that direction. He had to be patient, had to make sure no one was watching. To his immediate right was a staircase that led to a series of bedrooms and The Master’s chambers.

  The devil’s playground.

  The memory of his one night ensconced in one of the second-floor rooms made him shiver-a return trip to that place would be nearly as bad as a return Below.

  He shuffled past the staircase and peered around another corner. He saw a plushly decorated living room with opposing sofas, a coffee table, bookshelves, and a bar. Eddie remembered this room, too-it was where The Master entertained “guests.” He heard a low murmur of voices issuing from the far end of the room.

  Two male voices.

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  Eddie sucked in a breath.

  One of them—

  The Master.

  The timbre of that hated voice was unmistakable.

  Eddie edged away from the corner and stood staring at the closed front door, wondering if he should make a run for it now or spend more precious time looking for an alternate way out. He was smart enough to know the latter choice was the only sensible one, but something primal in him rebelled against the notion of spending even one extra moment in this house of horrors.

  Gotta get out, he thought.

  Eddie trembled and took a shaky step toward the door. His heart racing, he took another step. And another. He kept expecting The Master to suddenly appear before him, all imposing
six-feet-plus of him, leering at Eddie like a raincoat-wearing pervert as he closed in for a quick kill. Or perhaps he would toy with Eddie the way a cat does with a trapped mouse. The latter seemed far more likely.

  He took another careful step.

  Then froze.

  Shit!

  He heard a muffled jangle of keys from the other side of the door. His breath caught in his throat as he watched the knob begin to turn. It was the bitch, returning with yet another new fly caught in The Master’s web. The sadistic “housekeeper.” Ms. Wickman, she was called, but Eddie had come to think of her as “lisa of the Manor.” She wasn’t quite as voluptuous and strangely alluring as Dyanne Thome, that cinematic icon of bondage and discipline, but this woman was the real thing, the personal overseer

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  of the methodical torture administered to The Master’s newly arrived guests.

  There wasn’t anyone he feared as much as The Master.

  But one person came close.

  lisa of the motherfucking Manor.

  Without thinking about what he was doing-there wasn’t time for thought-Eddie turned and raced up the stairs. When he remembered where he was going and the horrors that awaited him, he had to suppress a scream. An impulse to turn around and go back flashed through him, but he dismissed it as the closed option it had obviously become. He reached the second-floor landing, looked down the long, empty hallway he’d entered, and trembled. There were rooms here that resembled normal bedrooms, but they were all equipped with cleverly concealed implements of the sort favored by sophisticated sadists everywhere. Other rooms, usually locked to prevent premature entrance by new arrivals, were full-scale torture chambers.

  Eddie performed a speedy analysis of his current situation and decided death at his own hands might be the best option all around. He looked at the carving knife and tried to imagine piercing his own flesh with it. But not his wrists, of course. Too slow a way to get the job done. He’d have to slash his own throat.