Лорел Гамильтон - Strange Candy

Vanessa paced back and forth, then whirled, smiling. “I didn’t finish college. They needed me here to help with all the little telepaths.”

Jasmine worked very hard at keeping her own mind locked tight. No empath’s control can match a telepath, but she tried. Her face was absolutely blank, pleasantly so, practice, years of practice. “Do you enjoy.. .teaching?”

“Oh, yes, I really feel like I make a difference—you?”

Jasmine nodded.

“You’ve done really well. My best friend, the famous doctor.” Vanessa laughed and hugged her again.

Best friend—they hadn’t seen or talked to each other in ten years. Jasmine found herself crying, hugging the tall stranger who used to be her friend, and crying.

“Hey,” Vanessa said, “Hey, what’s the matter?”

She pulled away and shook her head. What could she say that wouldn’t hurt Vanessa? You betrayed our dreams. You gave up and came back here to hide. We swore an oath that we would never come here to hide, better death than this tomb. Jasmine wanted to scream it all out. To find out why Vanessa had failed, the ultimate failure, she had come back here. Once you came back, you never left. No one ever left a second time. The words echoed in her head, and the walls seemed to be closing around her, narrow. Jasmine hadn’t noticed how narrow the halls were. The roof was close enough to touch. The school was crowding her, crowding.

“Jasmine, what’s wrong?”

She drew a deep, shaking breath. “Panic attack.”

“Do you still get those?”

“First one in.” Breathe deep and even, breathe. “Twelve years.”

“Open your mind to me. Jasmine, I can help. Remember.” Jasmine backed away until she hit the wall.

She pressed against it. Vanessa took a step forward, reaching.

“No!”

“Let me help you.”

Her breathing was beginning to slow, pulse going down. The corridor was still hot and too close, but it was going to be all right. It was going to be all right. “I’ll be all right, Vanessa.”

“I can help you with whatever is wrong. Telepaths are great counselors.”

Jasmine stared into her eyes. “You wouldn’t like what I was thinking.”

Vanessa froze, hands still outstretched, smile sliding away from her face. It was one of those moments when you don’t need empathy. When truth stretches between two people. Truth could be violent, could strip you of dignity and hope just as quickly as a gun.

It was one of those moments when you can look in someone else’s eyes and see your own reflection so sharp and true that it slices like glass.

Vanessa turned away first and began to walk down the hall, then to run. Her footsteps thundered against the narrow walls.

Jasmine stared up into the watching monitor, red light blinking. She spoke to it. “The monitor in my room better be disabled before I get there, Bromley. If it’s not, I’m going to tear it out of the wall.” She took a deep shaking breath. “You should have told me Vanessa was here. What else haven’t you told me?”

There was no answer from the whirring monitor. She hadn’t expected one. If Bromley had answered, she wouldn’t have believed him anyway.

THE room was like all the other rooms. It was rectangular with pale blue walls. A single bed was against the right-hand wall, white sheets, brown blanket. When Jasmine was a child, she had longed for colored sheets. The kind with animals and clowns on them. In her house were bright-colored sheets, and none of the rooms were painted blue.

There was a white bureau with mirror against the lef twall, and a closet in the far wall. That was all. Small or not, the rooms always seemed empty.

There was a monitor up in one corner. The red recording light was off, no whirring, no moving to scan the room. Bromley had turned it off; supposedly that meant that Jasmine was alone, unobserved.

Jasmine pressed her palms on top of the perfectly clean bureau top. She leaned forward until she was almost touching her own reflection. The old litany came back, “This is not the whole world. You will get out. You will make it on the outside. You can do it. This isn’t forever.” How many nights had she told her reflection that? How many years?

This wasn’t the whole world. She had gotten out. She had made it on the outside. She could do it. It hadn’t been forever. And now she was back. To save another little girl. The thought came, But does she deserve saving?

Jasmine answered aloud, “I save monsters all the time.” Fear had settled in the pit of her stomach, hard and thick. This place pressed so many of her buttons, so much shit to wade through here. And the child, that frightening, beautiful child. Why was so much evil pleasant, pretty on the outside, like poisoned candy? Most mass murderers were the nicest people.

Lisbeth Pearson was already in bed. It was an hour past dark. She would be out there in the dream network, hunting. For the first time someone would be hunting Lisbeth. Did the child suspect? No. There was one other trait of the serial killer that Lisbeth shared: arrogance. The predator never expects to be hunted.

Jasmine had never been hunted either. It would be a night of firsts.

That night Jasmine dreamed. Her own dreams first. Nothing pleasant; fears about the school, Lisbeth, Bromley, childhood nightmares, she brushed them away. Then the sensation that her skull evaporated and her mind eased outward like mist. She floated through one dream at a time. She could touch more than one mind at a time, bringing other people into the same dream, but they had to share a single dream. Multiple minds, but not multiple fantasies. No one was sure why that particular restriction. It was just the way it worked.

Jasmine swam through the colors of other people’s dreams, searching. A boy played catch with his dead father, sorrow, things left unsaid; a woman held a stranger in her arms, naked, unafraid, private, lust flowed warm and felt like anger; Bromley dreamed of flowers surrounding a coffin, rage, hate. Jasmine moved on before she could see who was inside the coffin. She could have wandered all night from dream to dream like a butterfly in a field of fantastic flowers, but something burned through her mind, screamed along her nerves: terror.

Jasmine followed it like a beacon. The silent rush of fear called her as surely as a scream for help. She appeared in the dream with an almost physical jolt. She had rushed, hadn’t taken her time; the reality of the nightmare was concrete, touchable, breathable, visible, real. A boy stood with his back to her. He was tall, slender, hair neatly buzzed next to his scalp, skin the color of dark coffee. He was struggling to lock the door to a dingy room. Windows leaked gray daylight through dirty glass. Wallpaper fell in strips from yellowed walls. The place reeked of damp, rot, urine.

The bolt slid home and he turned, leaning against the door, relieved. His eyes flew wide. “Who are you?” His voice hadn’t caught up to his tall, leggy body; it sounded like a child’s voice.

“I’m Jasmine. I’ve come to help.”

“You’re that new dream teacher.”

Jasmine started to explain that she was not a teacher, was not a part of the school, but standing there soaking up Malcolm’s terror, she let it go. “Yes.”

The smell was growing worse, a choking outhouse stench that was filling the room, coming from under the door. Malcolm backed away from the door, until he bumped into Jasmine. He jumped and she gripped his shoulders. He didn’t pull away. His breathing was coming in short gasps. The whole dream focused on that door. Jasmine could feel the pull of it. Fear. Fear forced down their throat until more than anything in the whole world you didn’t want that door to open. You didn’t want IT to come through and get you. And you knew that that was exactly what was going to happen, and there was nothing you could do about it. The helplessness of nightmare, but Jasmine could do something about it. Nightmares were her specialty.