Dreams for the Dead (3 page)

Dawn reached for her coffee and realized she’d forgotten it at the garage. “God damn it!” she yelled, smacking the steering wheel.

After picking up the negatives, she sped the couple blocks to Leila’s art school. She didn’t know her way around very well. She wandered aimlessly around the tree-shaded grounds, looking for someone she recognized, any of Leila’s friends whose names she couldn’t even remember. Anyone who might know Jared. Even Jared himself. But none of the faces were familiar, and she didn’t feel entirely comfortable accosting strangers with questions.

She found a coffee stand and bought another coffee. The sun beat down on her shoulders as she sipped it at the edge of the path, staring discreetly at every student who passed.

Nothing.

She had to get to work anyway, and the sensation of being watched from behind the trees was too disconcerting. T
he unsettling feeling of an unseen stranger's eyes lingered on her back for hours.

T
wo

E
ndpapers
was a store easily overlooked in one of the city’s numerous strip malls. The window was painted with red letters faded from the relentless sun, and Roy was always trying to get Dawn to ask Leila to repaint them. Inside, the brimming shelves stretched nearly to the ceiling. It was Dawn’s job to catalog, alphabetize, shelve, sell, package, and ship the books. Roy owned the store, but he didn’t like to work in it. He sat in his office in the back with the financial papers and watched movies on his laptop.

Alone on a footstool in a dusty corner of the store, Dawn leaned her forearms on the nearest shelf and rested her forehead between them. The curls of her hair created a barrier between her and the rest of the world.

Most of the time her shifts at work seemed to last forever. Beyond the dark window, the night was suspended in the surreal amber haze of streetlights that put her on the edge of time. When she looked at the glass, all she could see was a dim reflection of the store. And herself, but she usually avoided her own eyes. She never noticed anything weird in her own bathroom mirror, but in the store, where the light was different, the window showed her eyes as hollow shadows. Their dismal reflection made her feel like the living dead. If she stared closely into her pupils, she could discover the most frightening version of herself.

Her job was mostly dull, but the dullness suited her. The dullness
was
her. She worked among stiff pages beneath the hum of the air conditioning. Her feet creaked the floor beneath the thin carpet. Day after day of fuzzy sunlight slanting across her knuckles. Night after long September night, each one cooler than the last.

Sometimes the wind outside was fierce, buffeting the window and jangling the bell above the door. Those windy nights she felt jumpy and savagely wistful, and she waited and wished for som
ething to happen that never, ever did.

Until now.

Dawn got up from the footstool and went to sit behind the register instead. With a sigh, she poked her sunburned shoulders. The tip of her nose had reddened too.

Uncoiling the strips of neg
atives from the film canister, she held them up to the light. Leila probably would have yelled at her for getting fingerprints on them.

The negatives showed nothing important. They were just tiny shots of Leila’s carefully co
mposed, half-blurred vision. There were a few of Dawn. She wondered how Leila chose which ones to develop. Most of them were too abstracted to make sense to her.

She rolled them back into the canister and glanced at the clock. Almost ten. Time to start coun
ting the drawer.

It was a quick task, and she walked the drawer back to Roy with three minutes to spare before closing. “I’m going home,” she said.

He opened the safe and stuck the drawer inside. “Thanks.” Then he pretended he’d been going over the store’s accounts all along, instead of watching
The Crow
, which was paused on his laptop.

“See you tomorrow.”

Though the bookstore was close enough to the apartment for Dawn to walk to and from work, which she had often done when the weather was nice, she hadn’t felt safe doing it tonight. She drove home, still wondering why she didn’t just call the police. It had been twenty-four hours now, or close to it. And Leila wasn’t home. The apartment was dark.

“All right,” she grumbled as she parked her car and got out. “I’m doing it.” She dialed 911 while walking to the door and was about to hit send.

Someone stepped in front of her and she looked up, expecting a neighbor. But she’d never seen the man before. It could have been a neighbor, since she didn’t know them that well, and people were always moving in and out. He was tall, with shoulder-length black hair and swarthy features. He was kind of handsome, but she didn’t really have time to think about that. He wore a plain white shirt and holey jeans.

“Excuse me,” she said, and started to move around him.

“You’re going to make trouble for us, aren’t you?”

She stopped again. “What?”

“I can’t let you make that call.”

His hand flashed out and he snatched the phone from her. Dawn gaped in astonishment as he crushed it in his fist. Who even did that? For a second she forgot to be afraid, because she was so a
ngry she’d lost two phones in twenty-four hours. No, not lost. Some random assholes had
destroyed
them.

And suddenly the fear returned. This wasn’t some weird joke or a coincidence. Something
bad
had happened to Leila, and now the bad guys had come for her to tie up loose ends. The man’s bottomless dark eyes settled on her as he dropped the mangled phone pieces to the ground.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered.

Dawn had never fainted in her life, but she thought she was about to as he stalked toward her with dubious intent. She was breathing so quickly her vision grayed. Her brain was sending signals of danger but the rest of her wasn’t cooperating. Her legs weakened and her sight went fully black. She never even felt herself hit the ground.

~

It was still dark when she opened her eyes. She didn’t think she’d been out for long. She was riding in the front seat of a car and the black-haired guy was driving. They were still in the city, not far from the apartment, but she couldn’t figure out what direction they were heading.

“Where are you taking me?” Dawn asked.
Her voice was slightly hoarse.

“My father’s house,” the man said brightly.

Dawn frowned and looked ahead. She wouldn’t make trouble. She wouldn’t give them a reason to want to hurt her before she figured out what they’d done with Leila.

The house was hidden in an old neighborhood of custom homes built in the sixties or seventies Dawn had never even seen b
efore. The man pulled into a driveway and stopped before an iron gate set into a white stucco wall that probably surrounded the whole property. He rolled down the window to punch in a code that sent the gate rolling open, and they continued up the long, curving drive.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the property was lush and green, scores of trees and rosebushes sca
ttered across the perfectly manicured lawn. Someone didn’t care about water conservation. A jungle of palms, oleander, red birds of paradise, and fragrant honeysuckle surrounded the house, shielding it from view until the car was right in front of it. It was smooth and white and geometric, low and sprawled. The windows had black shutters. Malachite-green tiles covered the sloping roof. The double front doors were black, gleaming as if wet. Despite its outdated architecture, the house seemed to have aged well.

“Get out,” the man said.

Dawn remained in her seat as he got out and walked around to her door. He flung it open, causing her to flinch, and grabbed hold of her arm. He wasn’t gentle as he jerked her up, but he said nothing as he steered her toward the house.

Why didn’t I run? Why didn’t I just
try
?

Because she knew it would have been useless.

They entered into a quiet, blue-tiled foyer so empty there was a faint echo. The ceiling was low. Expensively framed but bland landscape paintings adorned the plain white walls. Rounded doorways led off to other rooms. To the right, long purple curtains marked the entrance to what looked like a darkened family room.

“Branek. You’re home.”

She didn’t hear the sound of footsteps on the tiled floor, but suddenly a man was standing in front of them. A cold man, Dawn thought. It was as appropriate a description for him as any. He was tall and narrow, with ice-hued hair and slitted eyes the color of molten lead. He was still as fallen snow.

“I’ve brought something,” her kidnapper—Branek—said.

“A new toy?”

“She’s a friend of Jared’s new one. She was going to call the police.”

The cold man’s eyes froze her in place. “Foolish. Why did you bring her here? Why did you not just kill her?”

“Would you prefer her dead?”

“No.”

The third, passionless voice rang out through the room. Dawn glanced around until she saw a lean, familiar form lounging in one of the doorways. It was Tristan. He looked even paler than he had last night at the bar, his deep brown hair stark against his skin. Dark blue half circles underscored his eyes, sugges
ting a lack of sleep. Or drugs.

“I want to play with her,” he said.

A chill shivered through Dawn. This would not end well for her.

“It’s been a long time since you took an interest in having a toy,” the cold man said.

Tristan’s eyes flicked over her with disinterest. “Has it?”

“I brought her especially for you,” Branek said. “You did let her get away.”

“I wanted to chase her. But thank you anyway for bringing her.”

Tristan moved out of the doorway and slunk toward her. Branek stepped away, ceding his prey. The cold man just watched without a word. Tristan’s eyes bore into her without a flicker, and she shuddered to think of the horrible things he’d do to her.

Dawn was beginning to feel the most desolate, hopeless kind of fear. Her instinct was to scream and bolt for the front door, but she knew she wouldn’t make it. It wouldn’t help her. Acting out would only get her hurt. She struggled to remain outwardly quiet and passive, and lowered her eyes so they wouldn’t know the depths of the fear and rage burning in them.

Kill you now
. That was what Tristan had said. And that she wouldn’t like if he took her with him.

When he reached her, Tristan took her hand in his, large and cold, and suddenly she wished she
had
tried to run. He pulled her to the doorway where he’d been lounging. She tugged her hand back just enough to show resistance, but her legs moved automatically to follow him. She looked over her shoulder. Branek and the cold man had disappeared.

“I don’t want to go with you,” she said softly, her voice trembling. “I want to go home.”

He didn’t even glance back at her. “You’re not going anywhere.”

The doorway led to two other doors, presumably bedrooms. Tristan went into the one on the left, a room with startlingly bright, acid-green walls. He stopped just inside and let Dawn walk in front of him. Then he closed the door, locking it with a key.

Trying to prepare herself for something terrible, Dawn folded her arms over her chest and backed against the wall. Tristan didn’t even look at her. He crossed the room with long strides and crouched in front of a low, wide bookshelf. One shelf was lined entirely with records. He flipped through them, selected one, and put it in a player sitting on the next shelf up. Then he sat down in a retro teal armchair, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

Music Dawn had never heard before filled the room. It was obviously old, maybe some kind of early punk, wild and rough. Even if she’d cared, she couldn’t concentrate enough to really listen. She was confused.
What do you want? What are you going to do to me?
These were questions she wanted to ask, but didn’t. They would only draw attention to her, and she didn’t really want to know the answers.

Keeping a wary eye on Tristan, she inched toward the door and stretched out a hand toward the knob. It was locked. She’d known it was, of course. She’d seen him do it. The key was in the pocket of his black jeans.

She moved back to her spot by the wall. When she glanced up, she saw Tristan’s eyes were open and he was looking at her. She stiffened. Now he was going to hurt her, just like his friend Jared hurt Leila. It was crazy to think a bunch of sick fucks shared this house together, doing weird things in the various rooms … That was what Dawn pictured, anyway, without allowing her thoughts to become too specific. In actuality, she had no idea what was happening.

He stood up and walked in her direction. She skittered to the side, afraid to look, afraid to see what was coming. But then she heard the door unlocking, opening, closing. It locked again from the outside. She tried the knob anyway and wasn’t surprised when it didn’t turn.

Alone in the room, where the music still played, Dawn felt free to freak the hell out. She grabbed handfuls of her hair, sank into a crouch, and allowed herself to cry into her knees for a few minutes, confident the music would hide the sound of her sobs. Then she took a few deep breaths to compose herself.

She’d been too busy watching Tristan to take much notice of the room before. It had two wi
ndows, but they were both sealed shut with viscous black paint. She rose to her feet, wiping the back of one hand across her nose. There was a long, low bed right beside her, taking up most of the room. On her side of it was a black nightstand with a simple metal lamp that lit the room with a soft golden glow. The drawers were empty.

Glancing toward the door, she moved to the other side of the bed. She stopped in front of the bookshelf. Besides the records in their tattered sleeves and the record player, the shelves held a fat red candle, never burned, and a tattered teddy bear, which was weird. There was only one book, an encyclopedia of music history. She flipped through the records but didn’t reco
gnize any of the bands.