Ghost Dance Read online

  "Hello, Morgan," it hissed.

  He stumbled away from Jimmy's corpse and the thing that had gestated inside it.

  The demon raised its neck. Threads of Jimmy's skin grew taught and then snapped as it shook first one clawed hand and then the other free.

  There was a hard pressure against Morgan's bicep and for a moment of irrational panic he thought it was the demon's doing and jerked away.

  "Morgan," Alex said. "Snap out of it!"

  He stopped struggling and turned to look at her. "You've got to help them. This is your place. Do something!"

  Her expression was wild. "For god's sake, it's too late for them. Look at them! We have to get away from here."

  Morgan looked at the carnage; a few of the corpses still twitching, others barely recognisable as human. And he looked at Jimmy's crumpled form, kneeling in the dirt. The demon tattoo had freed itself almost entirely from his back. Only its feet still remained as two-dimensional imprints on the skin, and as Morgan watched, they began to bulge free, nails like rhino horn ripping out congealed lumps of flesh and blood as they freed themselves.

  The demon laughed, a ringing, almost childlike sound. "I'm come-ing," it said.

  Morgan tucked the shofar through his belt, grasped Alex's hand and ran.

  Coby was flying. The desert whisked by beneath him and there was nothing he could do to stop himself. In this place, Alex had a strength he could only dream about. He thought for a moment that he'd returned to the real world and that he'd die when he hit the ground. But he just kept on flying and as the landscape changed beneath him he knew he was still in the spirit world with its impossible, twisted physics.

  One moment he was flying over bare sand and rocks, the next there was thorny vegetation beneath him. He noticed no moment of transition and failed to notice it again when the scrubland became meadow. The grass waved in a wind he couldn't feel and he realised that it was no longer Alex's will which was moving him. Some other, even stronger force drew him on. He felt it tug at his chest and the heart beneath it and he understood that wherever he was going, it must have some powerful hold over him. He knew that was how this realm worked, the psychic significance of places more important than their temporal or physical location.

  The grass, silver and delicate, became the robust golden stalks of wheat undulating over rolling hills. The sky grew more blue, high clouds scudding across it too fast, and he knew that he wasn't just travelling through space. Time was passing too - or retreating. With every inch and second that went by the shofar grew more distant and with it his hopes of immortality. There was nothing he could do. The spirit world wanted him to go wherever it was sending him and even Alex wouldn't have the strength to fight it.

  The wheat grew and darkened as the landscape flattened and he was finally set down on his feet. He looked around him and saw that he was walking through the high fields of corn which had surrounded his childhood. When a road appeared beneath his feet and then houses to either side he found himself in his home town for the first time in seven years.

  His old high school squatted ahead of him, grey and unwelcoming, and he realised where and when he was - and understood why the spirit world had drawn him here. It had brought him to the moment that was the central truth of his life, a black hole in his past. His entire existence lay within the event horizon of this day, and he could never escape its terrible gravitational pull.

  Children fled past him, screaming but not seeing him. It surprised him how small they were. He'd remembered his victims being taller. It was a little disappointing to see what easy targets they'd been. The police had established a perimeter around the building, hunkered down behind their guns and cars, but not one of them saw him as he walked past. He was still cloaked in the spirit world and would remain there until he'd done what he came here to do. The years he'd spent studying the realm and its rules allowed him at least that much control, though he could never have entered it without Alex's help.

  In the entrance hall, he found his first kill. He remembered the shock of it. Like a jolt of 100 per cent proof alcohol in his stomach, it had taken a little while to transmute into pleasure. Mrs O'Grady lay where he'd left her, the wreckage of her skull facing the ceiling, her face pressed to the floor.

  He smiled and walked on, understanding a lot of things now: why he'd been sent to the Croatoan centre, who his saviour in San Francisco had been.

  The nameless jock he'd killed on the stairs was next. He hadn't stayed to enjoy that murder the first time. Now he paused to examine the boy's smooth face. He was so incredibly young, a life ended before it had even discovered its purpose.

  Sirens began outside the school, but they didn't worry him. He wasn't truly here and they wouldn't catch him - either of him, even though back then he'd meant to die. Something had and would intervene.

  The door to Mr Skeete's classroom was shut. He remembered that he'd kicked it closed behind him, trapping his classmates inside with him and his guns. He eased it open, careful not to make a sound. He remembered that he hadn't heard himself coming.

  His younger self stood in the centre of the carnage, the barrel of a gun pressed against his temple beneath the George Bush mask.

  "If you knew where you were going," Coby told him, "you wouldn't be in such a hurry to get there."

  The gun hesitated, shook a moment, and then lowered. "I don't believe in hell," the 17-year-old said.

  He smiled at his own naivety. "That's OK, they believe in you. And now they know about you and so do a lot of other people. The cops are here. You need to get out."

  A hand reached up to remove the mask and beneath it he recognised the look of faux toughness on his own face. "I only bought a one-way ticket today."

  "Don't worry - I'll cover the round trip." He stooped to pick up the shell casings from the floor and passed them to his younger self. He took the George Bush mask and slipped it on Joshua Heligman, then wiped the grips of the guns and put them in his hands. He pulled the boy's finger on the trigger to fire one round before he released him, ensuring there'd be gunshot residue when the police checked.

  When he'd finished, he held out his hand, and his younger self shrugged and took it. He remembered the strange compulsion he'd felt to trust the man who'd approached him in the school, and the almost dreamlike journey which had followed. At the time, he'd attributed it to shock and the adrenaline high.

  Together, they retraced his path through the school, past the body of the jock and around O'Grady's slowly stiffening corpse. When they reached the gate he saw that a SWAT team had arrived and were preparing to enter the building.

  His younger self tensed as he tried to draw away and retreat, but he held himself fast. After a moment, he felt a different sort of tension in the fingers clasped in his as they walked straight through the police line. No eyes or guns lifted to follow them and no one asked who they were.

  "They can't see us," the younger him said.

  He nodded and kept on walking, past the outer ring of police cars, flashing lights reflecting red and blue from the puddles of rainwater on the tarmac. When they were out of sight of the school, only a block from his childhood home, he released his own hand.

  "You're safe now," he said. "Just keep your mouth shut and they'll never catch you. They'll blame it on Josh instead and you get the added bonus of watching his family fall apart from the shame."

  His younger self nodded. His eyes were a little wild, his hair mussed where the mask had pressed against it, but he seemed to understand. Coby knew that he did - he had. He wouldn't be caught.

  They stared at each other in silence for a long moment. "Who are you?" his younger self asked finally.

  He shrugged, knowing he wouldn't answer, and turned to walk away. He had a lot to do and learn in the next seven years, a lot of things to get ready. He needed to track down Alex, the spirit-travelling CIA agent, and make sure she'd be there on that crucial day - along with Morgan and everyone else.

  "Wait!" the younger him shouted.
"Where are you going? Where can I find you?"

  He smiled but didn't turn. "Wait a while," he said. "We'll meet again."

  Morgan could hear the wet flap of the demon's wings behind them. Alex's hand was slick with sweat in his and fear coiled tight in his stomach, ready to unravel into unreasoning panic if he let it. The demon was faster than them. There was a giggling laugh then a whistle of wind as claws slashed through the air and he felt five lines of pain open across his shoulders.

  He spun and fired and the demon laughed louder as the bullet travelled an inch from the barrel, then dropped to the ground.

  "No good," Alex gasped. "This place. Driven by will. Bullet... has none."

  Morgan dropped his gun and drew his knife, but when he slashed with it the creature flapped higher. It screeched in mixed defiance and pain and he saw a strip of leathery skin hanging loose on its left wing. But he'd been hurt worse than it was and in a war of attrition he knew it would win.

  Fighting was futile. Running was suicidal. "What the hell do we do?" Morgan said.

  Alex hid behind his shoulder. "We've got to escape."

  "No shit!" he yelled, slashing again at the demon. Its return stroke opened a raw line of blood along his forearm. "How about you get us out of here?"

  "Sill too weak after Coby," she gasped. "And I might pull that thing with us."

  When he snatched a look at her, her black bird eyes were blank, her attention focused inward. The demon seemed to sense her inattention and swivelled in midair as its talons lunged towards her face. Morgan cursed, dropped the knife and jumped at the creature, grabbing its claws in his hands.

  The nails pierced his palms. He stifled a yell of pain and held on grimly. The demon struggled against him for a moment, the upward pressure of its wings almost lifting him from his feet. Then it laughed again and stopped struggling. When he caught its eye he could see it had realised what he already knew: with their hands locked, his face was unprotected from the pointed teeth which filled its mouth to overflowing.

  It struck, lips stretched inhumanly wide. He ducked his head and the teeth only scraped his cheek as they passed. A droplet of drool fell from them and burned his skin like acid as the demon drew back its head to strike again.

  "Let him go!" Alex shouted.

  There was a note of command in her voice Morgan had never heard before and he obeyed without thinking. The demon flew back and up, wings pumping to counter a force which was no longer there.

  "Think of a maze," Alex said, grabbing his arm and spinning him to face her.

  "What?" he tried to pull away and turn back to the demon but she was stronger than she looked.

  "A maze. Any maze. Trust me!" she yelled.

  Morgan didn't, but now she'd said it he couldn't stop the thought. He remembered one rainy school trip to Hampton Court Maze, the hedges drooping and dripping and some of the boys getting in trouble for trying to cut their way through.

  And then Alex had hold of his hand and was pulling hard - and he felt himself moving, but not quite physically. There was a blur of yellow below him and blue above and then a jolt he felt all the way down his spine as they stopped.

  He'd expected to be somewhere else entirely, but they were still in the desert. The wastelands stretched into the distance as featureless and unwelcoming as before. And when he heard the flap of wings he saw that the demon was with them as well.

  "You don't shake me that easily," it said.

  Its wings rose and its claws extended as it prepared for another dive. Morgan had lost his knife in their sudden move, but he prepared to face it, fingers clawed in a weak imitation of the demon's. He resisted Alex's tug on his arm. He couldn't let himself be distracted from the demon's attack.

  "Come on!" she said, pulling harder.

  The demon giggled and dived and Morgan hesitated only a moment before letting Alex drag him out of its path. Its red eyes glared into his as its wings pulled it up and round for a second pass, but now Alex was running across the sand and Morgan was pulled after. They topped a rise, the demon inches behind them, and suddenly the sands were spread out in a vista beneath them. For a moment he thought it was an illusion, then he realised the complex network of swirls and lines really were there, writ large over acres of the desert in piles of rock.

  "The Topock Maze," Alex said. "We can lose him here."

  The lines of rock were barely a foot high. Even if it hadn't been able to fly, they would have been no barrier to the demon. But Alex was yanking Morgan's arm and gravity carried him down the slope towards the maze in a run that teetered on the brink of a fall.

  The demon hissed and struck. Its talons caught Morgan's head, tearing out a chunk of his hair and scalp. He yelled and would have spun to face it, but the momentum of his run was unstoppable and he felt it strike again and miss, a rank breeze brushing the back of his neck as its claw passed by. Then they were at the bottom of the slope, the entrance to the maze in front of them, a gap between two low lines of stone.

  On the level ground Morgan finally got control of their headlong flight. Dust and rocks skidded beneath his feet as he crunched to a halt inside the maze. Alex pulled at his arm but he ignored her, turning to face the demon hovering at the bottom of the slope.

  "I think it can still see us," he said dryly.

  She smiled. "You'd be surprised."

  The creature could certainly hear them. Its pointed ears twitched and then its wings pushed the air down in one powerful stroke as it launched itself towards them. It giggled, flapped harder - and struck something Morgan couldn't see.

  The demon's laughter morphed into a scream of shock and rage. Its claws struck and struck again at the invisible barrier, scrabbling futilely against air.

  "I need to start listening to you," Morgan said.

  Alex shrugged. "I wasn't sure it would work. But the Mojave Indians built this place to trap evil spirits. I thought in the spirit world it might actually work."

  Morgan nodded and let her lead him through the twists and turns of the maze. In a moment of curiosity he reached out his hand to hover above the line of stones on the ground. There was no resistance.

  "Why don't we just walk straight across?" Morgan asked as they turned left and then right and were suddenly only a few feet from the start of the maze. The hovering demon grinned as it heard them and Morgan teetered for a moment on his toes before Alex grabbed his collar and pulled him back as the creature dove and rebounded from the invisible barrier.

  "Best not," Alex said. "We need to respect the metaphor."

  "OK," he said. "But this place is fucking huge. Do you know the way through?"

  "We should just find it automatically. We're not evil."

  Morgan wasn't so sure. It seemed to him he might be exactly the sort of thing this place was designed to trap.

  Alex's eyes cut to him, black and unreadable. "Worried?"

  The sounds of the demon grew faint, but Morgan couldn't tell if they were making progress. They twisted and turned and the maze went on and on and it all looked the bloody same. Then, just when he'd stopped expecting it, the end came.

  They halted between the low walls of stone, gazing at the desert beyond.

  "If we step out, is that where we'll end up?" Morgan asked, nodding at the scrubland stretching to the horizon.

  "Maybe. I think it has a lot of exits."

  "Could one of them lead out of the spirit world?"

  "Let's see," Alex said, taking his hand and stepping forward.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Alex felt a dizzy sensation of falling as she stepped from one place and into somewhere else entirely. There was the hard snap of something out of alignment slotting back into place, and she knew they'd left the spirit realm - at least for now. She looked at Morgan, unchanged beside her, and was relieved to see the shofar still tucked in his belt.

  "We're back," she said. They were in a desert far bleaker and more barren than the one they'd left. There was no greenery, just rolling sand dunes and, in the d
istance, mountains. "I think this is Death Valley."

  "But why did it bring us here?" Morgan said. "There's... nothing."

  "Not quite nothing." She pointed to her left, where the sand was churned, spoiling the silken smoothness of the dunes. It was too fine to hold prints, but she guessed the trail had been left by a vehicle, maybe more than one. Though the sun was nearer to the horizon than its zenith, it was still hot enough to steal her breath. She knew how dangerous that kind of heat could be and they had no water with them. Her fair skin would burn agonisingly if they didn't find cover soon.

  "Whoever that is, they've got to be going somewhere," Morgan said. "We need to follow them."

  Alex looked at the tracks which led towards the horizon in either direction. There was no way to tell which way they'd come from and which they were going. "Or we could wander around for hours and then die of heat exhaustion. Why don't I take us back into the spirit world?"

  Morgan shivered. "No thanks." He walked away before she could protest, following the broad trail to the top of the nearest sand dune and down.

  Alex trotted to catch up with him, cursing as the sand slipped away in sheets beneath her feet and she lost almost as much ground as she gained.

  "How the hell are you walking so easily?" she asked Morgan.

  "I've spent a lot of time in deserts."

  "I thought you were British."

  He rolled his eyes as she drew alongside, gasping for breath. "We have got passports, you know. Anyway, I was in the army."

  "In Iraq?"

  "Afghanistan. And other places."

  She heard something in his tone that told her he didn't want to elaborate and she didn't press him. They walked in silence, not even the sound of the wind to disturb the perfect stillness.

  Alex knew she was sweating, but the parched air snatched up the moisture before she could feel it. The painful band of a headache tightened around her temples and although she knew they were moving they didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

  When she heard the faint sound she thought at first that the wind had picked up. Then the pitch rose and she knew what she was hearing. "PD's here."