Cold Fire

With a soft cry of terror, she woke. No disorientation. She knew immediately where she was: the motel, Laguna Hills.

Whoosh.

The sound of the dream was still with her. A great blade slicing through the air. But it was not a dream sound. It was real. And the room was cold as the pitch-black place in the nightmare. As if weighted down by a heart swollen with terror, she tried to move, could not. She smelled limestone. From below her, as if there were vast rooms under them came a soft rumbling sound of she somehow knew-large stones were grinding against each other.

Whoosh.

Something unspeakable was still squirming along the back of her neck, writhing sinuously within her skull, a hideous parasite that had chosen her for a host, worming its way into her, going to lay its eggs in her brain. But she could not move.

Whoosh.

She could see nothing but bars of pale, pale light against part of the black ceiling, where the moonsoft glow of landscape lighting projected the image of the windowblind slats. She desperately wanted more light.

Whoosh.

She was making pathetic whimpers of terror, and she so thoroughly despised herself for her weakness that she was finally able to shatter her paralysis. Gasping, she sat up. Clawed at the back of her neck, trying to tear off the oily, frigid, wormlike probe. Nothing there.

Nothing. Swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Fumbled for the lamp.

Almost knocked it over. Found the switch. Light.

Whoosh.

She sprang off the bed. Felt the back of her head again. Her neck.

Between her shoulderblades. Nothing. Nothing there. Yet she felt it.

Whoosh.

She was over the edge of hysteria and unable to return, making queer little animal sounds of fear and desperation. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement. Swung around. The wall behind the bed.

Sweating.

Glistening. The entire wall bulged toward her, as if it were a membrane against which a great and terrible mass was pressing insistently. It throbbed repulsively, like an enormous internal organ in the exposed and steaming guts of a prehistoric behemoth.

Whoosh.

She backed away from the wet, malignantly animated wall. Turned.

Ran. Had to get out. Fast. The Enemy. It was coming. Had followed her.

Out of the dream. The door. Locked. Deadbolt. Disengaged it. Hands shaking. The Enemy. Coming. Brass security chain. Rattled it free.

Door.

Jerked it open. Something was on the threshold, filling the doorway, bigger than she was, something beyond human experience, simultaneously insectile and arachnoid and reptilian, squirming and jittering, a tangled mass of spider legs and antennae and serpentine coils and roachlike mandibles and multifaceted eyes and rattlesnake fangs and claws, a thousand nightmares rolled into one, but she was awake. It burst through the door, seized her, pain exploding from her sides where its talons tore at her, and she screamed — a night breeze.

That was the only thing coming through the open door. A soft, summery night breeze.

Holly stood in the doorway, shuddering and gasping for breath, looking out in astonishment at the concrete promenade of the motel. Lacy queen palms, Australian tree ferns, and other greenery swayed sensuously under the caress of the tropical zephyr. The surface of the swimming pool rippled gently, creating countless ever-changing facets, refracting the pool-bottom lights, so it seemed as if there was not a body of water in the middle of the courtyard but a hole filled with a pirate's treasure of polished sapphires.

The creature that had attacked her was gone as if it had never existed.

It had not scuttled away or scurried up some web; it had simply evaporated in an instant.

She no longer felt the icy, squirming tendril on the back of her neck or inside her skull.

A couple of other guests had come out of rooms farther along the promenade, evidently to investigate her scream.

Holly stepped back from the threshold. She did not want to attract their attention now.

She glanced over her shoulder. The wall behind the bed was only a wall again.

The clock built into the nightstand showed 5:08 A.M.

She eased the door shut, and suddenly she had to lean against it, because all the strength went out of her legs.

Instead of being relieved that the strange ordeal had ended, she was shattered. She hugged herself and shivered so hard, her teeth chattered. She began to cry softly, not from fear of the experience, concern for her: current safety, or concern about her sanity, but from a profound sense of having been totally violated. Briefly but for too long, she had been helplessly, victimized, enslaved by terror, controlled by an entity beyond her understanding. She'd been psychologically raped. Something needful had overpowered her, forced its way into her, denying her free will; though gone now, it had left traces of itself within her, a residue that stained her mind, her soul.

Just a dream, she told herself encouragingly.