him to his knees. Another player stood in front of him, flexing the fingers of a hand wrapped in tape. “I bet you wanted to watch us run around in our tight uniforms, didn’t you? You fucking butt pirates make me sick.”
Chad started to cry. “Please don’t hurt me.”
The tears and the plea elicited only more of that ugly laughter. Chad wanted to scream for help, but who would help him? Some of the other football players? That didn’t seem likely. A sense of hopelessness began to suffocate him. He wasn’t gay. Not that it mattered. The fucking jocks assumed anyone the slightest bit fey was homosexual. The word “tolerance” wasn’t in the jock dictionary. Their social order was simple, guided by one unyielding principle-the strong of the world exist to subjugate the weak.
They were the strong.
And he was definitely the weak.
Hence, he was fucked.
But then he became aware of another presence. There was a subtle shift in the stance of his tormentors, though they weren’t yet backing off. He heard female voices. A group of girlfriends, maybe, or cheerleaders. Great, they could do a sis-boom-bah routine while the athletes took turns using his head as a punching bag.
“What’s going on here?” he heard one of them say.
A leggy blonde pushed through the circle of players, saw Chad pinned to the ground, and unleashed an impressive display of verbal indignation. “What the fuck are you primates doing to this kid!?” She stepped right up to the player holding him down. “Let him go, Moose, or I’ll make sure Mr. Chandler hears all about this.”
Chad recognized the name of the school’s principal, and he was instantly filled with a new source of dread- the prospect of his father hearing about the incident. Chad liked to believe his father had no idea what a reject he was, and he desperately wanted to maintain the facade of a normal kid. A beating at the hands of strangers was infinitely more acceptable than that awful possibility.
But he didn’t yet know that Dream Weaver was one of the most popular girls at his new school. Or that her father was a close friend of Principal Chandler. So he was amazed when the football player who’d been holding him released him and began apologizing profusely to Dream.
“Hey, Dream,” he said, his voice full of patently false good humor. “We didn’t mean any harm, really. We were just messing around, giving the new kid a hard time. So chill, okay? It’s no biggie.”
Dream stepped right up to him. “Yeah, no biggie. Like your dick, Moose.”
Some of Dream’s girlfriends laughed.
The football player’s face went a bright shade of scarlet. “Come on, Dream. Lighten up. You know how it is. He’s a geek.”
“No, Moose, I don’t know how it is.” Chad listened to her in awe, unable to believe this girl was showing no fear as she assailed a boy more than twice her size. “But I know that beating up people smaller than you is a real limp-dick thing to do.”
They were gone moments later, thoroughly cowed by this amazing girl.
She helped him to his feet and brushed a fleck of dirt from his face. She smiled, an expression so radiantly beau-beautiful it stirred his heart in a way he could only compare to the way watching a sunset at the beach made him feel. Something about looking at Dream made him feel good, like he was gazing into some marvel of nature when he looked into her eyes. He would soon realize this was part of Dream’s gift. Kindness was her life’s guiding principle. She’d been raised to treat people-all people-with decency and respect, and it was this inward beauty people responded to when they fell under her spell. Her outward beauty only enhanced her admirable personality traits, making her a kind of goddess figure to nearly everyone who met her.
Chad knew this was the real reason her love life was such a shambles. Everything about her intimidated the men who might have been a good match for her. So she screwed a lot of unworthy people.
Like Dan Bishop.
All the while believing he was the only right one for her.
The memory of that afternoon on the practice field stung him now as he thought about his indiscretion with Karen Hidecki. The enormity of the betrayal finally hit him, and he recognized the way the revelation pushed every one of Dream’s emotional hot buttons. To think he’d described her as the “passive-aggressive” side of their relationship.
So here it was, the self-confrontation he could no longer avoid.
He came to a stop, set the bag down on the road, and sighed. “Fuck me.”
Everything was his fault.
Well, what now?
Part of him wanted to run back to the Accord and pour his heart out to Dream. To let her know how much she’d really meant to him over the years. To apologize until his voice was hoarse. To cry on her shoulder while she held him. He could do that. She would forgive him. He knew her too well. But he wasn’t about to forgive himself. There was only one right thing to do, and that was to let Dream get on with her own life. His initial reasoning had been all wrong, but leaving was still the right thing to do.
He picked up the travel bag, slung it over his shoulder again, and resumed walking. But his legs didn’t feel lighter than air anymore. A heavy conscience weighed him down, a burden that imbued every step with lethargy. He was only a few more yards down the road by the time he finally perceived the approach of heavy footsteps somewhere behind him.
The sound of bare feet thumping on the asphalt.
He sensed speed and feral intent.
Chad gripped the shoulder strap of the travel bag tighter, readying to sling it in the face of anything that came near him. The bag left lots to be desired as a weapon, packed as it was with clothes and a few chintzy souvenirs. A pillow might pack a little less wallop. But only a little.
Running didn’t seem like a viable option, either.
His heart pounded as whatever it was pulled up short behind him. He heard moist, smacking sounds, and felt hot breath at the back of his neck. He flashed on Karen’s vague description of a monster, and he muttered a silent apology to her.
Because he really didn’t need to see the thing behind him to know he’d been wrong.
Her monster was real.
And it had found him.
He turned slowly around, a thick lump of fear lodged like a sardine in his throat, and the paper-thin wall separating his conscious mind and an incapacitating wave of terror gave way.
A snippet from an old Monty Python movie floated into his head as he stood there paralyzed by this up-close encounter with the outright surreal: Run awaaay!
Yes, a dash into the woods might be the best idea all around.
Too bad he felt nailed to the asphalt.
The creature commanded his attention, obliterated rational thought. It was big-really big. A huge, misshapen head with a long, leathery snout sat atop a massive body covered with fur and corded with impossibly huge muscles. It leered at him, hissing through a lot of sharp, glittering teeth.
Saliva dripped from its mouth, splashing the pavement.
Chad’s head hurt.
He felt dizzy.
Why was it just staring at him like that?
Was it toying with him?
Maybe.
The fucker.
But then it was reaching for him, extending one of the unnaturally long, distended arms. …
Chad slumped to the pavement unconscious.
And the creature scooped him up in its arms.
Eddie dreamed of white-water rapids, the heat of the summer sun, and a spray of water against his face as his raft slapped the roiling river. He was with friends he hadn’t seen in what seemed like a span of lifetimes. He dreamed of rum and sweet, slow sex with an island girl on a beach in the Caribbean. He experienced the reassuring solidity of rock beneath his hands as he scaled a mountain in some other exotic place. And now he was with another woman, a stunning blonde like something ripped from the pages of a fashion magazine. She was wearing a
