Oates takes another step.
Shivering, Jessie watches the dead man come.
She can see him, all right. She sees Larry Oates all too well. After all, this is her world. She knows that now. She made it, this thing-that-used-to-be-a-dream-but-isn’t-anymore.
Dead men live here because she can’t let go of them.
Joe Shepard walks here because she loves him.
Larry Oates walks here because she hates him.
And money controls everything, because money drove both men to their deaths.
Oates smiles at Jessie, his guts hanging from his belly like coiled snakes. He opens his mouth, and he’s smirking while he does it, and Jessie’s afraid that she’ll see a forked tongue flick over his lips while he brands her with words that will surely burn like hellfire —
Jessie swallows hard. She never imagined that a nightmare could talk, but she knows that it’s possible now, the same way she knows that Oates’ words will change her forever if she hears them.
Oates takes a breath. Fills his dead lungs. He’s ready to tell Jessie something.
But Jessie doesn’t plan on listening.
She opens her own mouth.
She screams Larry Oates’ words away.
Oates starts to laugh, but Jessie can’t hear him. She can’t hear anything. She’s still screaming.
Her finger tightens on the shotgun trigger.
Quite suddenly, she realizes that she knows how to kill a nightmare.
You kill one the same way you kill a dream.
Jessie doesn’t know how many times she fired the shotgun. All she knows is that Larry Oates isn’t moving anymore, and what’s left of his head wouldn’t fill a sock.
Jessie pries the money from Oates’ dead fingers. Smitty doesn’t say a word. Neither does the doctor.
She looks both men in the eye.
She thinks about that little tie-dyed waitress.
She points the shotgun at the doctor.
“Give me your keys,” she says.
He opens his mouth, ready to argue. Then he glances down at what’s left of Larry Oates, and a second later his keys hit the ground at Jessie’s feet.
Jessie pockets them. She finds a roll of duct tape on the workbench and tells the doc to get busy. Before long Smitty is on the ground, half-mummified in silver tape. Then she gets her boots and jacket on, as fast as she can.
“Head for the highway,” she tells the doctor, aiming the shotgun his way. “My advice is this — leave town and don’t look back.”
The doctor knows good advice when he hears it. He grabs his coat and hurries into the storm.
Jessie climbs behind the wheel of the Mercedes and backs out of the barn.
Raindrops pelt the bloodstained hood, washing Larry Oates’ blood over the fenders, into the mud.
Jessie only has one place to go.
She drives fast. She keeps her eyes on the road, but her thoughts travel elsewhere.
To Joe. She can’t see him now. She can’t see what he’s doing… or what he’s done. But she can still see the last vision she had of him in her mind’s eve.
Joe Shepard standing in that restaurant parking lot, swallowing hard, taking his first step forward with Larry Oates’ shotgun gripped between his dead fingers.
She wonders how long it would take Joe to cross that parking lot. It wasn’t what you’d call a long trip. Not really. Not if you measured it in footsteps. But measured another way, it was the longest trip imaginable. Because Joe was walking in a nightmare, not a dream. It was a nightmare that belonged to the woman he loved, and he knew all too well how she felt about the things it demanded of him.
Still, even if he hesitated, it would only take him a minute or two to cross the parking lot. Jessie wonders if that might have been long enough. She tries to remember the things that took place in Larry Oates’ barn. She tries to put everything into perspective.
Oates returned to life about the same time that Jessie regained consciousness. She grabbed the shotgun off the workbench… and then Oates walked across the barn, came at her, ready to tell her something —
That couldn’t have taken very long, could it?
A minute? Maybe two? But maybe that was long enough. Maybe she had fired the shotgun in time. Maybe Joe was still walking across the parking lot when she killed the walking nightmare called Larry Oates —
Maybe killing Oates had changed everything.
Maybe. If killing a nightmare could restore a dream.
Maybe. If second chances — the kind worth having — existed in her world.
Maybe…
Jessie doesn’t know, but she’s about to find out. The restaurant is just ahead. She turns into the parking lot. The rain is really coming down now. She can’t see very far at all.
She pulls to a stop, throws open the door, steps into the downpour.
It won’t take her long to cross the lot.
Not even a minute. Not even that long.
Dull light glows behind the windows, but Jessie can’t see anything inside with rainwater bleeding down the glass. She pulls her coat over her head and hurries toward the door, dodging puddles as best she can. She jumps a big one near a storm-drain grate, sees something half submerged in dark water.
A shotgun.
Jessie stops cold, staring down at the gun.
But you can’t tell if a shotgun’s been fired by staring at it, not even if you’ve got an eye like Jessie’s. There are other ways to find out, though. Jessie is close to the window now. She can see inside the restaurant.
And there’s the waitress, smiling and laughing, showing off her soggy bankroll to a couple of truckers. But that’s not all Jessie sees, not really. Because she looks at the waitress and she sees a woman who’s been handed a second chance and doesn’t even know it.
Jessie knows, though.
Because she’s been handed a second chance, too.
Across the parking lot, a pair of headlights flash at her.
She hurries toward the Mustang.
She hurries toward her dream.
LAST KISS
If you’re like me, there are things you need to tell people, but you can’t get the words out. You want to, but you can’t. The machinery just won’t work, and everything gets all jammed up, churning in your guts long after those people are gone from your life.
