Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series) (2 page)

I darted up the stairs, and through another door. Clint particularly loved the old, out of the way staircases closed in by doors on the top and the bottom. I didn’t let myself think about the things he did to his victims in them.

The attic was poorly lit by tiny windows on either side of the long, low peaked room. Dust motes made the air hazy and I swiped my hands over old tables and furniture as I ran past, kicking up as much dust as I could for my hillbilly attacker to run through. At the end of the narrow room was the second set of stairs leading back down to the main floor. My forced shortcut had put me much closer to my classroom. I only had to outpace him down the stairs, through a forgotten storage room, out into the hall and to my classroom door.

With a foolish grin I jumped down the stairs and fought through the old furniture cluttering the musty room that was only two away from my class. I reached for the tarnished door handle and was jerked off my feet by fleshy hooks fisted into my short hair.

The full length of my body slammed to the floor and the slivery wooden planks bit into my bare elbows. That was the least, but sharpest, of my pain. A cloud of grimy dust rose up around me and Clint stood in it, an evil grin distorting his face. Pain crackled along my spine as I scrambled back towards the stairs and with exaggerated ease he shoved over a stack of chairs. They cascaded across the front of the doorway in a shriek of metal on metal and crunching plastic that no one but us would hear. Fear set in as I realized trying to climb over them only caused more to fall in my way.

Wheezy, snide laughter filled the room as I desperately searched for a way out.

“You ain’t getting away this time, bitch,” Clint said gleefully. More determined than afraid, I launched up and ran straight past him, ducking as his fist came up to my face. But once again he clawed into my short hair and threw me back to the floor. My attempt to tuck and roll ended with a blinding crunch of pain in my right shoulder. Through a cloud of agony and despair I realized Clint’s large, doughy body and hillbilly intellect made excellent covers for his predatory agility. “How long did you think it would take me to figure out you always run through up there?” he asked, wiping an already dirty finger over a dusty desk top.

“About four weeks.” I grabbed the edge of a massive desk to pull myself up and nearly toppled over. My head was seesawing and I clung to the antique roll top, fighting to stay upright. His shameless glee twitched into embarrassed anger. With a dark, determined grin he shoved a set of metal shelves overflowing with outdated textbooks in front of the door to the hall. He never took his eyes from mine, just pushed with one arm what I couldn’t move with two of me.

I couldn’t keep the fear from my face and he seemed genuinely pleased by it. “How you gonna get out now?”

In panic mode, I lurched away from the desk just as he swung his fist into my face and my control over my body fell away as pain exploded in. Falling, I felt the back of my head smash into the corner of the desk that had held me up just a second ago. Clint laughed and kicked a booted foot into my ribs, making them pop and crunch.

I gasped noisily through my mouth then coughed on the blood I had drawn in. Somehow I forced my body to roll over so I didn’t choke but it made my head spin and everything in the room spun with it.

My vision rushed out from me and Clint and the dusty storeroom seemed to fly away. Things grew grey and then dark. With fuzzy bewilderment I realized I could hear wind rushing past and feel my short hair slapping against my face and ears. It was as if I were being dragged backwards by some speedy giant.

Things turned back from dark to grey and my vision slowly filtered in. Tall outlines appeared at the edges and soon showed themselves to be trees. They ran in a foggy haze from the edge of my vision to the center and faded out again. Then old buildings began rushing past and just as my vision finally cleared I saw from the corner of my eye a house—my house. My Nightmare Town house. It was gone almost as soon as I saw it and I nearly missed passing by the general store. I kicked my legs out, tried to grab hold of anything with my arms to slow my bizarre, backward flight. Nightmare Town was exactly where I wanted to be but my body kept rushing away from the town, from my home, from where almost all my hopes and dreams were. Interspersed between all the trees and buildings were the astonished faces of the few townies that were out.

“Bixby?” I heard Abe call as I flew past him but then I was back into the woods and the dark. A dull light came up again and I was slammed still.

My whole body ached and I could barely open my eyes. I could tell I wasn’t moving anymore and feared to find out if I was back in the musty store room with Clint.

Cautiously I forced one eye open and saw a dark fireplace with a rocker next to it. Carefully turning my head I saw a familiar wardrobe and the posters of the bed I was in. Tears poured over onto my cheeks.

I was back.

Chapter Two

P
ain, or possibly a head
injury, had seriously dulled my mind but I knew where I was—in Jordan’s world. That name brought a special pain of its own but I couldn’t quite place it. Carefully I pulled myself upright and off the bed. I had tried so hard to get back to this place and suddenly I couldn’t remember why I wanted to be there.

Catching my breath was impossible, even with my left arm wrapped around my chest to hold all the pain in. Curiously, my right arm didn’t seem to work at all.

Clint.

Panic seized me as I staggered out of the room. Even if I was in Jordan’s world my body was still in Clint’s. Pain shot through my head with every step but fear was stronger and it ruthlessly pushed me on.

I flew down the hallway, trying to think of where I would be the most likely to find someone, anyone. In my pain and panic fueled haze, I passed the grand main stairway and had to double back. It was set in short, elaborate staircases end capped by wide landings with huge windows and sills deep enough to sit in to admire the view. I stumbled down, unable to hold the banister on the right with my limp arm and unable to hold the banister on my left for fear that if I let go of my rib cage all my pain would shoot out of it like a shotgun blast.

Finally, at the third landing, I came upon a woman walking up with an armful of cut flowers. There was no slowing my panicked descent and I slammed into her, almost knocking her into a stone window sill. My body wouldn’t hold itself up and I heard her smothered shriek.

“Please help me,” I gasped, scrambling onto my one hand and both knees, ignoring the searing pain in my ribs.

The woman gaped at me, her face pale, all the flowers tossed down the stairs. “Bixby?” she whispered. “Bixby, what are you doing here?”

I tried to focus on her face but my vision blurred and faded. I couldn’t place her. “Please help me!” I gasped again, tasting blood. “You have to tell him—”

“Oh my, oh … what happened to your face?” She was shrinking back from me, and I grabbed her skirts. She pulled away and my hands left garish maroon streaks on the pale green cloth. It had been a pretty dress.

The woman’s name popped into my head along with a few fuzzy memories of horrifyingly feminine dresses. “Ash! Please, Ash, tell him I was here, I need him, I need help, please!” I grabbed more frantically at her skirts as they escaped my grasp and I suddenly realized she wasn’t pulling away—I was fading. I shouted one last time, “Ash, find him and tell him!”

This time it was plain blackness that took me over, and I welcomed it, hoping it would stay. But eventually it faded to dull light then ugly muted colors. To my despair, Clint was still standing over me with his evil grin.

My thoughts twirled around in my head and I could barely grasp them.

So my body really didn’t disappear when I went to Jordan’s world, I mused dully. I had been pretty sure about that but had always wondered. Clint obviously hadn’t noticed anything different, but maybe that was because he was distracted by unbuttoning his shirt. My half-eaten breakfast rioted in my stomach and I swallowed hard. I had a feeling vomiting would hurt.

He mistook my revolt for something else. “Like what you see, cupcake?” he sneered. I really did have a witty comeback, but my jaw seemed numb, and somehow unhinged.

I crawled back as well as I could with only one working arm and prayed for a really fantastic weapon to find its way into my hand. But all I managed to do was bump my head again—hard. A fresh stream of blood flowed into my eyes and while I tried to wipe it away, Clint pounced and landed. He ground his way into a sitting position and I knew the breath-stealing shards of pain could only mean broken ribs. My tears and gasps of fiery pain and anger did nothing to deter him. Instead, it almost seemed to excite him. Maybe puking on him would cool his perverse appetite, but then again, maybe not.

“Honestly,” he spat in my face, “it doesn’t usually take girls like you this long to learn. I
always
get what I want. You must be extra stupid.”

Normally I would have risen to the occasion and tried to find a way to anger or distract him so I could escape but something red, other than the blood flowing into my eyes, had my attention. A tiny, crimson tear in the middle of the room appeared over his left shoulder. At first I thought it was a spider, suspended from its invisible thread. The tiny not-spider spun silently and its nearly paper thin side grew into an ugly red void. My mind still wanted to think it was a spider until a small, white crescent emerged from the imperfection in the air and drew down, revealing bright sunlight in a line as it moved.

Oh my God, I thought. I have a serious head injury.

Two hands emerged from the perfect nothing floating in the air and slowly spread, ripping everything wide open. Through the jagged hole of my reality I could see a lovely stone fireplace before a horrible, angry face moved into the crescent of the tear and one flaming eye peered out.

Terrified, I bucked my hips and managed to dislodge Clint long enough to roll over but he grabbed my hair again to keep me from crawling away. For a second I almost wished Eva had shaved my head.

“Oh, so you do know about me,” Clint cooed. “You must like it that way too.” He grabbed my hips for emphasis, but I wriggled out of his grip, not from fear of him, but fear of that face.

It resembled Jordan but couldn’t be him. I had seen only one eye, a sharp cheekbone and the wicked curve of a mouth but it was enough to know he really wasn’t human. Deep down I had known that from almost the beginning and loved him anyway, but his inhuman fury was beyond terrifying. I kept trying to crawl away, unmindful of Clint’s fingers painfully digging into my upper thighs.

“Bitch, please,” Clint growled and slammed my hips to the floor again, pinning them with his body. Searing pain ricocheted between the bones and pushed out all the air from my chest in one howling scream.

The answering shriek unraveled the rest of my nerves. I couldn’t move and could barely feel. Even the pain that had me screaming just a second ago was now a bothersome, dull ache. Tears pooled in my eyes and I was powerless to even blink them away.

My face remained ground into the floor and I was helpless to pick it up. There was no rush of blood behind my eardrums, just a horrible, congested, high-pitched breathing that drowned out everything else. Was that me?

I barely registered the weight of Clint disappearing off my back and then my whole world was just that rushing, painful wheeze in my chest as I waited for something, anything to happen. My mind slipped and everything mixed together in a jarring way. I tried to remember why I was laying on a rough floor breathing in dust but it all skipped away from me in a whirl of confusion. I clung on desperately and my mind snagged a word out of that vortex. Shock.

Was I going into shock? I tried to funnel my thoughts through that word. But the only thing I knew about shock had something to do when farm animals had a traumatic birth and no human to attend it.

My eyes opened and focused on their own and informed me I was lying in a pool of slightly widening blood. Yep, must be shock. And it all must be my blood, too.

Hot—too hot—hands cut through my dismal confusion and grabbed my right arm, jerking me over. Every dull ache came to life with vengeance and my panic urged it on. I screamed hoarse, panicked, throat-shredding screams. I couldn’t calm myself; I couldn’t close my throat or stop my mind from imagining the worse.

Everything began to cut out but didn’t fade. Pain and terror pulsed through my brain until there were no more colors, or pain or sound, just my mind screaming for a very long time.

A soft, shaky voice called my name. “Bixby?”

My mind didn’t want to react but my body did, and I felt my left arm jerk defensively over my chest.

This time the hands were only pleasantly warm as they pressed against the sides of my neck.

“Bixby, you have to wake up.” The voice was still shaky but insistent.

I groaned and rolled—the wrong way. As soon as my right shoulder pressed into the soft bed, I was sitting straight up, gasping with pain.

“No, no,” a man next to me breathed, his hands expertly tucking me back down into the bed. “You need to stay still, please just lie down.”

I couldn’t lie down, but was gently pushed into the soft bed just the same. I couldn’t breathe through my nose or feel the lower half of my face but somehow I felt better.

Slowly, I convinced my eyes to open. And I really was back. Not in my bed, not in my room, but the colors and walls and decor convinced me just the same. I was back in Jordan’s world. Even he is here, I mused, taking in his blurry form at the side of the bed. My mind kept sliding around.

“Really,” he was whispering, “you’re not fine yet, but you will be. Where do you hurt?”

I wanted to tell him my whole body hurt, everything that wasn’t numb at least, but I couldn’t make my jaw work.