Ghost Town (36 page)

Like the children, the mayor had become her costume. She was still twelve feet tall, but now her body was in proportion to her height, and her dark blue gown was shredded, revealing that her torso blended with the roof shingles. She no longer was simply standing on the house. She had become one with it. Her arms and neck were now long and thin, almost sinuous like serpents. Her flesh was still blue, reminding Drew of some images he had seen of the Hindu death goddess Kali. Her mouth was filled with sharp silvery teeth resembling knife blades, and her solid-black eyes gleamed like polished obsidian. In her clawed hands, she held her staff, only now it was a gnarled hunk of wood formed from braided tree limbs, and the end of it burned bright with fire. The Witch Queen let out a hate-filled hiss and stabbed her staff toward them, releasing a blast of flame.

Drew yelled, “Run!” but he needn't have bothered. With skeletons advancing on one side and deadly fire shooting toward them on the other, no one needed encouragement to get the hell out of there as fast as possible. Drew glanced back over his shoulder and saw the flames engulf the skeletons and the bone horse, along with the crooked man who still hadn't recovered from Greg's attack. Fire wreathed their bodies, and they flailed about, shrieking and stumbling, before collapsing to the ground and lying still as they burned. Amber had said that these transformations were real, at least on some level, and he feared for the people who had been changed by the Dark Lady's power. Would the damage done to them in their new forms remain when they returned to normal?

The Witch Queen shrieked in frustration at missing her intended targets, and she unleashed a new blast of fire at them. This one missed, too, but it came close enough that Drew felt heat sear the back of his neck, leaving him with what felt like an instant sunburn there.

They were running toward the other side of the street in a blind panic, but when Drew saw what waited for them there, he shouted for the others to stop. The Dark Lady had done more than transform those participating in the parade. She had also changed the onlookers. A monstrous mob stood on the sidewalk, hundreds of creatures of every shape and size, all of them nightmarish versions of whatever costumes they had been wearing before their metamorphoses. One person's head had been replaced by a giant pus-weeping eyeball, while another looked as if he or she—it was impossible to tell—had been turned inside out, glistening organs revealed to the world. A rotted pumpkin-headed thing stood next to a clown with a long coiled spring of a neck, like a jack-in-the-box come to life. A boar-headed butcher complete with bloodstained apron and dripping red cleaver stood beside a couple who had been dressed in that perennial Halloween cliché, the tandem horse. They had become a hideous equine-human conglomeration, a two-headed thing with a jumble of human and animal parts. Even costumes that should have been benign—football players, cowboys, French maids, superheroes, fairy princesses, and the like—had become grotesque distortions of mottled flesh, fanged teeth, and clawed hands.

“She can't have this kind of power!” Trevor said. “It's not possible!”

“It's a trick,” Greg said. “At least partly. The monstrous appearance of the people is an illusion created by the Dark Lady, but their aggression is quite real. If they manage to get hold of us, they'll tear us apart.”

“You should all leave me,” Erin said. “When they're busy with me, you can try to get to the bookstore.”

“This is no time for suicide by possessed mob,” Greg said, “no matter how guilt-ridden you feel. The best way to fight illusion is with illusion.”

Drew thought of the burn on the back of his neck. If the Witch Queen's fire was an illusion, then he wasn't actually hurt. But he still felt as if he'd been burned. “If the possessed believe they're injured, they'll react as if they are. But any wounds they suffer will be merely psychosomatic.”

While they talked, the creatures on the sidewalk stepped into the street and started toward them. They moved slowly at first, as if they were in a daze. Drew glanced backward and saw that the Witch Queen was looking around, seemingly confused. The skeletons—upright again and moving, although their clothes were aflame and their bones blackened—milled about uncertainly.

The Dark Lady is having trouble controlling them all,
Drew thought.
She's spreading her power too thin. Good.
That gave them a chance to figure out a way to deal with the mess.

Trevor turned to Greg. “Illusion is your area of expertise. Can you do anything to help us?”

He shook his head. “Not as long as I'm in this body. Amber will have to do it.”

“Me?” she said. “What can I do?”

“You're already shielding us from the Dark Lady's power, preventing us from being possessed,” Greg said. “You're doing it instinctively. It helps that four of us have had experience resisting psychic assaults, but we couldn't do it without you.”

“Tell me what to do,” she said.

“There's a great deal of psychokinetic energy in the atmosphere right now,” Greg said. “You need to tap into it and use it.”

“But use it
how
?”

He shrugged. “It's up to you. You have to use your imagination.”

She turned to Drew. “Help me.”

He understood what she was asking. It was common for therapists
to use guided visualization with their clients, although doing so would have been easier in the quiet confines of an office, as opposed to the middle of a street with a horde of possessed parade goers slowly advancing on them.

Drew took hold of Amber's hands and squeezed gently. “OK, close your eyes and concentrate on the sound of my voice. Take in a deep breath, hold it for a moment, then let it out slowly. Think of your mind as a pool of clear water, the surface still and calm. Take another breath, let it out. Now, picture the six of us. You, me, Trevor, Greg, Erin, and Arthur. We're in danger, but that's all right. We're protected from the Dark Lady's influence, and we have the ability to defend ourselves.”

Amber did as he said, and her breathing became more relaxed as he spoke. At first, nothing happened, and Drew feared that she wouldn't be able to summon the concentration necessary for the task, but then Trevor said, “Whoa!” Drew turned to his friend and saw that he now held a sword, as did Greg, Carrington, and Erin. He let go of Amber's hands, and the moment he did so, a sword appeared in each of their hands as well.

“You couldn't have conjured up a few automatic weapons?” Greg said, giving his sword a few experimental swishes through the air.

“Stop complaining,” Amber said, “and start moving.”

“Sound advice,” Carrington said. He raised his sword to his face in a salute. “‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends.'”

And with that, the six of them began running down the street in the direction of Forgotten Lore. They stuck to the strip of street between the crowd on the sidewalk and the parade participants, hoping to avoid both.

As they ran, Drew looked at Amber. “Swords?”

She grinned. “When you said Arthur's name, it made me think of King Arthur. I guess my subconscious decided to whip up a bunch of Excaliburs for us.”

As they passed the haunted house, child-size ghosts and witches
came streaking through the air toward them. Drew knew they weren't really flying, that it was all part of the Dark Lady's illusion, just as he knew that hitting them with Amber's equally illusory swords wouldn't really hurt them. Still, he hesitated to swing his weapon at a witch who came flying toward him, cackling with mad glee. In reality, she was only a little girl, running toward him instead of flying, driven to attack by the mind-twisting power of the Dark Lady. She was as much a victim of the baleful spirit as the men and women she had killed, and he didn't want to hurt her. But when she was within range, he lashed out with his blade and struck her a solid blow to the side of her neck.

The witch screeched in pain, black blood spurted from the wound, and her spinal-column broom veered off to the left. She dipped toward the ground, smashed into the asphalt, bounced, rolled, and came to a stop, leaving a smear of black gore behind her. She lay still in a widening pool of blood.

He stood there shaking, ribs throbbing.
She's not dead,
he told himself.
She only thinks she is.
Once the Dark Lady released her grip on the girl's mind, she would return to normal and be restored to full health. He hoped. He had no more time for doubts then, for a ghost came at him, moaning like a midnight winter wind.

They hacked and slashed their way through the ghosts and witches, Drew doing his best not to think of them as boys and girls, and they were almost past the haunted house when the Witch Queen turned in their direction, let out a shriek of rage, aimed her staff, and released a blistering gout of flame.

Amber was right in the path of the fire blast, and although Drew took a panicked step forward, he knew he couldn't save her. As they had run and fought, space had opened up between them, and there was no way he could reach her before the flames. There wasn't even enough time to shout and warn her.

But Erin was standing right next to Amber, and she saw the flame blast coming. She slammed her shoulder into Amber and
knocked her aside, just as the fire hit. Flames engulfed Erin, and she screamed in agony as her flesh blackened and sizzled. She dropped her sword and staggered around, still screaming, until Greg stepped forward and calmly rammed his swordpoint into her chest. She stiffened, her screaming stopped, and then she slipped off of Greg's blade and collapsed to the ground.

Trevor stepped toward Greg, sword raised. “You sonofabitch!” He swung, but Greg parried the blow easily.

“Relax. She's not dead. But she believed she was on fire, so the pain she felt was real. All I did by seeming to kill her was render her unconscious. It was a mercy.” He glanced down at her still-burning form. “Believe me, I know.”

Greg still wore Connie's face, but for an instant, Drew saw his actual visage, bald and burn-scarred, superimposed upon it. But the image faded, leaving him looking only like Connie again.

“Let's go before that bitch witch roasts the rest of us,” Greg said. Without another word, he resumed running, and the others followed.

“Is Greg right?” Amber said to Drew as they ran. “Is Erin OK?”

He resisted glancing back over his shoulder at Erin's blackened, smoldering corpse. He wanted to reassure Amber, but he couldn't find the words, so they just kept running.

Amber's right arm
felt as heavy as lead, but it wasn't as heavy as her heart. She understood that they weren't really hurting anyone with their swords, that this was all an elaborate game of pretend, a psychological battle rather than a physical one. But it
felt
real. Every time her blade cut into an opponent's flesh, she felt the jolt run up her arm, saw blood spurt from the wound, heard the cries of pain. Real or not, she knew she would have nightmares about this for years to come.

The six of them—make that five—had reached Forgotten Lore. Everyone looked as exhausted as she felt: clothes splattered with blood, faces slick with sweat, lungs heaving, sword arms hanging limply at their sides. But the fight wasn't over yet. The high-school band was coming toward them, moving with halting, staggering steps. The kids had become emaciated, gray-fleshed corpses, with dark pools of shadow where their eyes had been. Their instruments had been transformed, too, becoming weapons—knives, axes, and hand scythes—fashioned from whatever material their instruments had been made from. Keys, valves, slides, and mouthpieces remained, indicating the weapons' musical origin, but rather than making the objects look ridiculous, their altered appearance rendered them sinister in the extreme.

Amber wondered how the band members would wield their strange weapons. They weren't really blades, after all; they only appeared that way. She assumed that the kids would use their instruments like clubs, beating their victims repeatedly until they
died. It sounded like a very long and painful way to die, and she would prefer to avoid it if she could. They had their swords and could fight back, but there were too many kids, and they were too tired. Besides, their swords were illusory, but those instruments, despite their current appearance, were not. It would only be a matter of moments until they were overrun, and when they died, they would do so for real.

The five of them stood with their backs to the storefront so they could face the oncoming corpses. Amber looked over her shoulder and peered through the display window. If the Dark Lady was inside Forgotten Lore, she couldn't tell. The store was filled with an impenetrable darkness, the kind Amber imagined could only be found in the deepest ocean depths where no ray of light had ever touched.

Maybe we'd be safer staying out here,
she thought.

Yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the door, and Amber wasn't surprised when Drew tried to open it and found it locked. He stepped back and tried kicking it open, but the door was made of thick, solid wood and refused to budge.

“I've got an idea,” Trevor said. He walked up to the window, told everyone to stand back, and swung his sword at the glass. Amber knew what was going to happen, but she still gritted her teeth in anticipation of hearing the sound of glass shattering. But Trevor's blade passed through the glass without so much as leaving a scratch.

“What part of
illusion
don't you get, genius?” Greg said.

Then, as if Greg had said that the emperor had no clothes, all of their swords dissipated like mist.

“I'm sorry!” Amber said. “I must've lost my concentration.”

Drew shook his head. “Seeing concrete evidence that the swords were illusory caused your subconscious mind to no longer believe in them. When that happened—”