We walked past the crowd on the south side of the street, moving through a whirlwind of chatter.
I glanced up again. The building appeared normal. Yet that chill was still with me.
A hand seized my shoulder. I whipped about to grab it.
My fingers clamped air.
The crowd had dissipated, and no one but Ann stood within a yard of me.
Another something stroked the side of my face.
'They're touching you, too?' Ann asked. She snapped her right arm sharply as if to free her wrist.
'Ann-what is this? Ghosts in broad daylight?' A bunch of wet fingers dragged over my face like snails. Voices hissed in my ears.
Ann gritted her teeth and broke into a run.
I ignored the invisible tentacles that clutched at my hair and raced after her. She ran wildly, trying to escape the phantasmal hands. The effort was pointless. They kept pace with us, tapping and stroking and grabbing and tugging. Shadows darted about at the edge of my vision, always vanishing at the turn of my head.
My longer strides brought me to Ann's side in a few frenzied paces. The Hollywood Cemetery blurred by to our left. I half-expected the graves to pop open and expel dead actors, looking as pale and grey as their fading images trapped in silver.
Despite my jitters, nothing arose from the graveyard. The trouble lay ahead on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Ann screamed, stopping suddenly to clutch at me. At first I thought hers was another invisible hand and ignored it. She nearly pulled me to the concrete.
'Look, Dell!'
A runny red fluid gurgled up out of the storm drains and sewers, filling the street with blood. Once again, some cars stopped, others honked angrily and sped about. Wheels splashed blood in crimson sheets across pedestrians. Dozens of people stopped in midstride to scream. Or vomit. Or faint. Others noticed nothing but their fellowtravelers' strange behavior.
'It's not real!' I shouted to Ann and the crowds. 'We
it! How come it's still there?'
Ann looked as if she'd been worked over by a cop. She still flinched at the hands running over her, but she ignored them as much as she could, same as I.
She took shallow, long breaths to control her panic. 'We're getting psychic impressions from an outside source. It'll affect us regardless of what we believe. Let's
'
The light changed. She delicately lowered a petite foot into the flowing ichorous river. A couple of cars tried to run the light while swerving around the petrified rubberneckers. They skidded to a halt, splashing gore in all directions. Ann nodded at them and crossed.
I followed. Though our crossing produced a queasy sloshing sound, it didn't
as if we were fighting a torrential stream. Even the slap of the blood against my ankles-a warm and sticky sensation-didn't feel like wetness.
We managed to make it across Santa Monica without serious consequences. The clamor of terrified pedestrians and motorists made the streets sound like an insane Shriner's convention. The air was drenched with the smell of blood, like a low, dank fog.
When we stepped out of the stream, blood stained our legs all the way up to midcalf. I felt as if we'd taken a stroll through a slaughterhouse.
I can't say when, but the stains vanished a few seconds after we were out. I looked down and they were gone.
