All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(11)

And of course Emmett, in spite of being an enormous, conceited ass, had been the one to help me realize that there was more I could do. Since that last night, when I had come face to face with Mr. Big Empty, my powers had been on the fritz. I didn’t know the full extent of what I could do, and I certainly couldn’t control my abilities, but I didn’t feel trapped and helpless the way I had before. Watching Becca squirm, trying to shield her face with one arm even in her dreams, I made my decision. I needed to help her. I needed, at the very least, to try.

As I laced my fingers through Becca’s, I reached towards her with my mind. Reaching, though, isn’t the best way to describe it. It was more like fumbling. Or stumbling. Stumbling through a cluttered room in the dark, stubbing my toes on dusty boxes and canvas-shrouded furniture, and my passageway towards Becca growing tighter and tighter, until I had to strain, stretching, and the tips of my fingers tingled and lightning ricocheted inside me. I brushed the door, the door at the edge of my consciousness that was always propped open an inch, and I strained to open it a little more. Almost, almost—

I fell into somewhere else, stumbling and catching myself before I hit the ground. Becca’s memory, I guessed. Or a dream. I stood on Vehpese’s Main Street, a few blocks east of Bighorn Burger, not far from the Greyhound station. An uneven row of streetlights limped north-south, and the cones of orange light stuttered and buzzed. Farther south, engine breaks popped and hissed, and to the east, barely audible in the distance, the river.

In the dream, for I was growing more and more sure that this was a dream, Becca passed me on the sidewalk wearing the same clothes she was wearing now. Quick, short steps carried her along the broken cement, and her head swung from side to side, then back, then forward. This wasn’t a dangerous part of town; as far as Vehpese went, it was downright safe. But as I watched, Becca’s shoulders fell, and she ducked her head and stepped a little faster.

“Becca,” I called.

No answer, only the precise, brisk, click-click of her heels, and then the rumble of a diesel motor, and the smell of exhaust. And, underneath it, the muddy, mineral-heavy smell of the river.

Trotting after Becca, I glanced around to see what was troubling her. Many of the storefronts on Main Street were boarded up, but many were open and illuminated. Not until I examined the street more closely did I realize what I had missed on first view.

Everything running north-south, following the fractured line of streetlights, was just the way it looked in real life: the Spin-Stop record store, with two lengths of plywood tacked across its door, and the Outdoor Shop, its open sign blasting pink fluorescence against the glass, and at the next street corner, three coin-operated newspaper racks with their glass fronts shattered. But when I glanced up Seventh, towards a dingy stripmall that held Vehpese’s only laundromat, the world pixelated. Everything looked granular, crude, the colors overdone, almost cartoonish. I had been in a place like this before. This was something Mr. Big Empty had created, and he had pulled Becca here.

The two most important questions were: why Becca? And did he know I was here too? Now that I recognized his work, I could feel Mr. Big Empty radiating through the dream. He was immanent, infused in it, and out of the corner of my eye I thought I could see him like a shadow, ballooning against the dome of the stars. Could he feel me too? Was this a game for him? My skin crawled, and as I scurried after Becca, I waited for it, for Mr. Big Empty to reach out and pick me up between two fingers, to shake me, just one hard little shake, and snap my neck.

“Becca,” I whispered, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

But she was almost at the Eighth, and before I could catch her, she turned north. I picked up my pace now, running, but it really was a dream and, because it was a dream, it had that same, impossible dream-time. No matter how fast I moved, Becca moved faster, just a twinkle of blond at the edge of my vision. I knew where we were going now, I knew. The whips, the chains, the smell of rusted metal. Ahead, the outline of Jigger Boss came into view. Vehpese’s only club, it was a ramshackle building of sheet metal, bleeding red-brown stains along corrugated seams. Inside, I knew, Lawayne Karkkanew—Vehpese’s mob boss—had a special room: a dungeon where he liked to play.

But instead of entering the building, Becca turned down an alley, following the cramped channel between the buildings behind Jigger Boss. I was getting closer. I was being allowed, I realized, to catch up. He knew I was here. He knew and he was toying with me. Whatever was going to happen next, Mr. Big Empty wanted me to see it. The whips. The chains. The knives.

Let it not be Becca. Not anybody, nobody, but please not Becca.

We emerged in the employee lot behind the club. As with the rest of the dream, the pertinent details stood out with shocking clarity: a lone security light, dropping a heavy orange curtain across a swath of asphalt; a Dumpster, its lids closed; and the back door to Jigger Boss. Every inch of me said run. There was something behind that door, something pressing against the steel, warping the hinges and the frame, something insane and slavering and impossibly hungry, a hunger like the farthest point between two stars, and at any moment it would crash through that flimsy barrier and we would be face to face. And I didn’t think Becca and I would survive that.

Becca, sobbing now, click-clicked on her heels towards the Dumpster. She had her face in her hands, and she was trying to turn away, but something dragged her towards the refuse bin. From the door to Jigger Boss came the squeal of twisting metal, and the door buckled outwards. I sprinted towards Becca. If I could grab her, if I could hold her, maybe we could escape. Maybe there was an exit from this insanity.