Twenty-six
Rick lunged into Becky to throw her out of the
trajectory of the onrushing hammer. The wooden shaft and heavy metal head
passed close enough to his head to stir his hair with its passing breeze.
Becky fled screaming. Rick went after her with
Marla's insane laughter echoing from behind. Marla watched the two duck
into room ninety-four. An instant later, from further down the corridor, she
saw movement. She heard nothing, but from Mort's mysterious hole in the
wall, blood sprayed across the floor and the far wall. Mort's inert body
followed, thrown bodily into view. He struck the floor like a rag doll,
slid to a stop, and lay twitching in a widening pool of his own bodily
fluids.
In the complete silence, every little sound carried.
Rick and Becky emerged from hiding to investigate the sound of the body
impacting with wall and the floor. They looked at Mort and then glanced
back at Marla with accusation in their eyes.
"I didn't do it! He came out of the hole!"
Marla rushed to join the two kneeling at Mort's side,
understanding nothing of the conversation that ensued between the two.
"He's dying," Rick said.
"He's been shot in the back."
Becky shot to her feet. "No. Rick, he's not
dying!"
Rick looked up at the girl with a puzzled and angry
expression.
"Think!" she cried. She pulled a flower from her
hair and threw it down at him. "I told you this would happen!"
"But he's dying!"
"No, he's not! Everything that happens to us is
happening on the inside of our minds! We know it's not real! I proved it
to you!
Rick looked down at Mort to confirm what was obvious
to their eyes.
"Don't look at him!" Becky cried. "Don't reinforce
whatever he thinks happened to him! Do you understand what I'm trying to
tell you?"
Strangely, Rick sighed and gave a nod of agreement.
Marla understood nothing of what Becky Marple was babbling about. She
turned way, sickened to her stomach and assuming the two were cracking
under the pressure.
Marla hurried down the hall without a destination in
mind. She stopped in front of the main offices wondering why they kept
drawing her back like a magnet. Maybe because the school was ruled from
this place during the day. Only the authorities in the world could hope
to make this madness right again.
Or could anything hope to accomplish that? Mort was
dead. How could they hope to explain it? The hole in the wall led
nowhere, no more real than the crystal that kept trying to grow on her
skin and clothing, or the blue flowers gushing after Becky Marple.
They were hallucinating. They had been drugged.
Maybe something had been put into the air. Sooner or later, daylight
would come. The doors would unlock, and the administrators would walk up
the hallway.
She withdrew the switchblade from the pocket in her
slacks. She'd have to put it back before it all ended. It was imperative
the authorities have no reason to suspect her of any crime. Mort had been
far too unimportant to allow his death to interfere with her life. She'd
be on hand to get in the first word when the school opened and come off
smelling like a rose and a proper young lady. Then her parents would file
suit against the administrators themselves for letting this happen to her.
She sat at a desk in a cubicle and absently picked at
a piece of crystal growing on her slacks. She had only one concession to
make. If the crystal was coming between her and anything of any real
value in her life, it was Rick Kaiser. She would give up life itself to
be able to reach out to him, if only she knew how. Everyone else seemed
to know how. Even the crazy Asian girl had that down pat. Rick's little
China doll. Rick's new girlfriend.
Rick had given up on her. It wasn't the first time
in her life she had been abandoned. She swore to herself it would never
happen again.
Footsteps crunched on broken glass. She whirled
about to see who had entered the offices, flicking open the blade with
almost as much expertise as Mort himself. It took a moment for his face
to register.
"What's up?" Mort Braggs said.
Marla dropped the knife. She fell as gracefully as
possible against a desk when her knees threatened to give out. She
groaned in panic when an explanation refused to come to mind.
"My old man shot me in the back," Mort said. "Can
you beat that? So how's come I'm still alive, do you suppose?"
Marla's sense of reality came apart at the seams.
Mort gave her a crooked smile. "I got shot, didn't
I? You were there. What did you see? Rick and Becky are trying to tell
me that nothing happened, like it was all in my imagination, or
something."
She had seen blood splattered on the floor and the
wall and Mort writhing in a growing pool of his own blood. She looked him
up and down from head to foot and saw no blood stains at all.
Mort's smile looked suddenly pale and stressed. He
reached down, scooped the switchblade from the floor and pointed it at
her. "I asked you a question, Ice Queen. What did you see?"
Marla backed away, supporting herself along the row
of desks as she went.
"My old man was right about guns," he said. "Point
one and you might as well shoot it. Kill someone and you might as well
put it to your own head."
"Stay away from me!"
"I always knew that gun would get me in the end.
It's like it was at the center of everything that went wrong, and the
miserable thing is, it wasn't my fault my parents wanted to be cops, and
it's not my fault that I was born. So why did they do that to me? Why am
I being punished?"
Shaking her head in complete disorientation, Marla
encountered a wall and could retreat no further from the ghost of the dead
and his gleaming knife.
"Do you want to know what it feels like to get shot?"
Mort said quietly. "It doesn't feel like much of anything at all." He
twisted the blade of the knife. "But I bet you'd feel this. So tell me
what happened."
Marla talked soft and fast to keep it from
happening. "You fell out of the hole in the wall, like somebody threw you
out. You had blood all over you, and all over the wall and the floor."
"Was I dead?"
"Yes! You were dead!"
Mort gave her claim a moment's thought. "Why didn't
I stay that way?"
"Becky said..."
She wet her lips nervously, trying to make sense of
what Becky had said to Rick standing over his body.
Mort frowned, looking more scared now than angry.
"The Marple girl had something to do with this?"
Marla started shaking, remembering the madness of the
flowers growing out of the floor as if in pursuit of her. "You were
dead," Marla said. "Becky brought you back to life. She says she knows
what's happening. She can do things."
"Don't flake out on me," Mort said.
"She's a witch," Marla said. "She's got us all
hypnotized."
Mort looked unsure of himself. "You think so?"
"Becky is the outsider," Marla said. "We don't know
anything about her. But she's got Rick on her side now."
Mort gave her a crooked grin. "Yeah? Sort of left
out in the cold, are you?"
"I'm going to kill her," Marla said, hoping she
sounded reasonable. It was the only way of stopping more madness from
happening, the only way to survive until morning.
Mort stared at the blade in his hand. He flipped it
end for end and held it out to her. "If you think it'll do any good to
try, go for it."
Marla shied from the offering.
"I'm not doing you any favor. Learn the hard way, if
that's what it takes."
Marla reached out and took the knife. "Will you help
me get her away from Rick?"
Mort held up a finger. "One more time. Then we do
it my way."
Marla shook her head in confusion. "I don't
understand."
Mort drew closer, looking dangerously close to
madness. "We got a way out now. We go back through the hole and over my
old man's dead body and whatever else it takes to quite this place."
"Becky won't let us."
"She's a girl. And just a kid. If you think she's
at the bottom of this, you deal with her your way."
Marla didn't want to deal with anything. She wanted
Mort to do it for her. For now, she would have to take the lead.
"Just as long as you're not going to use me to try to
get Kaiser back," Mort added as an afterthought.
Marla had no choice but to lie. "I don't need Rick
anymore."
Mort grinned. The thought of Mort pawing at her and
sucking on her neck like a lamprey eel turned her stomach. At the same
time, she remembered ordering her pewter-faced knights to imprison Mort in
the forest. She remembered her excitement at the prospect of exploring
the dark side of her soul. "It's just you and me from now on," she said
softly thinking that maybe that's the way it would have to be.
Mort stepped aside for her. Marla strolled out into
the corridor feeling some of her old self-confidence returning. She would
have to test Mort's resolve and see how far he would go to please her.
Maybe she could encourage Mort to play his nasty games with Becky Marple.
In the end, Rick would appreciate the sacrifices she made. He would know
that she loved him in her own special way.
Someone blocked her way in the hall. First Mort back
from the dead. Now this. Marla stopped and tried to make sense of the
girl and the dog blocking her way. The girl was Becky Marple. A large
white dog sat quietly at her side, panting.
"We need to talk," Becky said. "There are no
constraints in a dream, nothing but foolish wish-fulfillment and
self-imposed nightmares."
Marla's knees buckled. Mort grabbed her arm and kept
her from falling.
Becky stared at her without expression. Marla had
always been frightened of Becky's eyes. She did not know the manner of
foreign creature that dwelled behind them.
Rick came up behind Becky and stood at her side like
a body guard.
Briefly, she smiled. "Good. We're all together."
Mort gathered the courage to speak first, his eyes
riveted on the dog. "You found a way out," he said.
It was what Marla thought as well. Becky had let a
dog into the building. She had found a way to open a door, or maybe a
window.
"There is no way out," Becky said. "There's nothing
outside at all. None of this is real. Not any of it."
"The dog," Mort said, understanding nothing. "Where
did you get it?"
"The dog is proof that we are still in a virtual
reality environment," Becky said. "The dog is here because I imagine him
to be here, just as you are imagining the things that are happening to
you."
Mort shook his head. "No way. I'm not buying any of
that."
Becky smiled.
Mort's lower jaw dropped open.
Marla frantically scanned the empty spot at Becky's
side, trying to see what had been there an instant before.
The dog had vanished.
Becky reached up and picked a tiny blue orchid from
her hair. She nodded at a small crystal plate growing on Marla's blouse.
Marla quickly brushed it aside.
"Virtual reality and memory webs," Becky said.
"Dreams and memories that don't belong to us."
"They can do that?" Mort said.
"Don't believe her," Marla said, numb with
resignation. "She's a witch."
"There's no such thing as witches," Mort muttered in
derision.
"How come she can do these things and we can't?"
"You are doing them," Becky said. "You're doing them
to yourself."
"The only thing I want to do is the front
door!" Marla cried.
"And go where?" Becky glanced at a nearby skylight.
"It's still dark out."
"I like the dark!"
"You may not like what you've got hidden in the
dark."
"No? You've hidden things in the dark maybe.
Everything I've got to be afraid of is in the light of day. I don't start
getting scared until my parent's show up again."
Becky sighed. "Even so, if we keep getting caught up
in our personal nightmares, they'll get worse and worse."
"You're doing that," Marla spat at her.
"We can't blame each other. It won't help."
"Nobody's blaming anybody but you," Marla said in a
voice shrill with hysteria. "Me and Rick and Mort have been friends
forever. You're the outsider. You're the crazy one."
"There's more to it than that," Rick said.
Marla laughed sarcastically. "What a big help you've
been. You and what other cloud of little gnats?"
She held the knife up to his face. "You had your
chance and you blew it." Her expression turned to stone. "You betrayed
me, Rick Kaiser."
Rick stepped forward. "Marla, please..."
Marla shook the knife at him. "Get within reach of
this and see what you get. Mort, make him stop."
Mort blocked Rick's way. "Sorry, old buddy. I don't
have anything else to loose."
"You can't help her," Rick said. "She doesn't have
anything you want."
"She doesn't know it yet, but we're a perfect match.
She'll figure it out sooner or later."
Marla turned to Becky Marple. "You've got Rick
fooled. Mort's afraid of you. I'm not." A step at a time, she advanced
on the Becky with the gleaming blade swinging from side to side.
With a shriek of primal rage, she lunged.
