Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

Pushes. From me. This haunting had really started.

“I figure that having Gavin asleep made our interaction a little different today,” I said. “Being in his head was like conducting an interview in Hades, but I think I learned a thing or two about him.”

“I think so, too. And, for future reference, we know a little bit more about how you work. When humans are awake, you enter a hallucinatory plane with them. When they’re asleep, you’re in what you call a dreamland.”

“Yeah, definitely good to know. But you know what was extra-strange about today?”

“There seem to be many levels of strange going on.”

No kidding. “Well, on this particular level, the dreamland had similarities to that star place. You know, with fake Dean?”

“Right. What sort of similarities?”

“I had a solid form in this dreamland, just like I did in the star place. What’s that about?”

A frown from Amanda Lee. Uh-oh.

“That is strange,” she said. “I wonder…”

Of course there was a huge BUT.

She shook her head, laughed a bit. “It’s a ridiculous idea. Never mind.”

“We went beyond ridiculous a while ago,” I said, gesturing to myself, because… seriously?

She inclined her head toward me. “All right. You were in a solid body during this dream today. And you were solid in the star place. Is there a possibility that this fake Dean character had the power to put you into a sort of sleeping state and then he entered your dream? Or maybe it’s even the other way around. You were in his mind?”

“I’m not sure if a creature like him has a regular mind.” I had no clue what that jerk was capable of. I mean, if he wasn’t an angel of death, then what the hell was he? In this Boo World, anything was possible.

“So you’re saying that the star place might not even be a place,” I said. “It’s more a state of mind.”

“It’s only a theory.”

The murmur of the spa’s water continued, and Amanda Lee straightened up, exposing the red halter straps of her suit as she cupped water in her hands and splashed it over her face.

“Long day, huh?” I said.

“Just an interesting one. It’s too bad you can’t come in here, too, for some unwinding.”

I laughed, and Amanda Lee closed her eyes and leaned back again.

“You feeling better about what happened in the forest?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I still didn’t want to talk about the spooky psychic vision she’d shared with me today. “Way better.”

“Good. I knew you’d bounce back.”

“Luckily, it didn’t take me long to juice up again.” My death spot had given me enough natural energy to last for a while, I supposed. “After I entered Gavin’s dream, I even had enough rah-rah to comb through his office for information before he started to wake up. I didn’t find much, though.”

“No evidence about Elizabeth?”

“None. Not out in the open, at least.” I still couldn’t figure out how to open drawers and closets—and squirming into them through the cracks only left me in closed and dark places—so who knew what was hidden away from me?

She let her arms float on the top of the churning water, as weightless as I was. Maybe she needed a lot of weight taken off her today and this was just another way a psychic and medium could do it.

“I want you to tell me every detail about his dream,” she said. “Nothing is too minor for you not to mention. We’re going to see what we can get out of it, and what it tells us about his state of mind.”

I did what she asked, and when I was done, her eyes were wide.

“I could interpret that dream for hours,” she said. “Wasn’t it terrifying to be in there?”

“Nah.”

Seriously, it was, but I wasn’t about to shout it out.

“When I have visions,” she said, “they aren’t even that intense. I’ve had a few that have come close, but…” She looked up at the sky, like it held every answer she needed. “Where do I even start with this one?”

“The dragon?” I asked.

“It’s as fine a place as any, but I have to tell you that the problem with interpreting dreams is that it’s more effective when you have feedback from the dreamer. That’s how it is when I read the tarot, too.”

So she was an experienced dream interpreter. Surprise, surprise.

“What do dragons even mean?” I asked.

“In this dream, it could be a symbol of a fiery, passionate nature. But those two traits can lead to trouble in a person. It could also mean the killer knows he needs some self-control.” She looked straight ahead. “Yet isn’t that something every murderer needs?”

I wished all killers had it, believe me. “What about the huge black bird in the fire sky?”

“Usually a bird signifies hopes and goals, but this creature sounds like a protector since it was flying over the girl in her air machine, like a wingman. Still, it was a black bird. A crow?”

“I think so.”

“Death,” she said. “Misfortune, disharmony. Or even a new phase in life on a metaphorical level. Death seems the most appropriate reading.”

Or was that the reading she wanted?

I still wasn’t sure. “And that weird air machine with the girl in it?”

“It could mean our subject is trying to rise to a new level, above the crime he committed. An escape from it. The girl, though… I wonder if she’s the feminine side of him, the feeling side, and it’s flying free even while shadowed by Elizabeth’s death, and that’s producing the disharmony.”

She sounded so positive of Gavin’s guilt that I felt naive for still wanting more definite proof. True, the bloody towel/scarf Elizabeth had dropped had looked pretty bad, but it still wasn’t enough for me.

She went on. “As far as the fire sky goes, it could mean destruction or desire or purification… or anger. That would apply most of all to him. And the walls with the water rising upward could mean that he’s overcome by his emotions. Since the water is moving toward that fire, it’s as if it’s trying to put out that anger in him because it’s burning him up.”

A thought intruded into my head. Anger that still remained after Elizabeth’s death, right? I wasn’t sure about that, either.

“At the end of that portion of the dream,” she said, “he shielded your eyes as you heard the sound of a sword, which put an end to those insane images and started a batch of new ones.”

“In the room with the books.” I added my two cents. “Books mean knowledge.”

“Yes, and also calmness.”

“He sure was calm in that chair.” With the blood running down from his fingers and the gun in his lap.

“It’s interesting to note that he wasn’t afraid of you, only curious. And since that part of his dream played out in real time, I think his brain was clearer than it was before in the fire and water room. I believe the things you saw in the book room are far more straightforward.”

“So the blood on Elizabeth’s scarf is his guilt coming out.” I think I’d read about a scarf the investigators had found in a pond near her body. The blood hadn’t come all the way out of it, and it was believed that the killer had used it to choke her.

I wanted to counter Amanda Lee’s interpretation with another dream image—the tears of blood on his masked face. It just didn’t sit right with me for some reason, and I didn’t know if it was because the red streaks made him look like a suffering martyr or an even bigger monster than I’d thought.

“At any rate,” she said, “the closed books mean he’s mysterious, which we already knew.”

“Could they also mean that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover?”

If she could stare a hole through me, she would’ve.