Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight) (7 page)

A bell jingled from down the
street, and they both turned to see a bicyclist peddling toward them.

“Sandy Windham and Jina Harper?”
the rider asked.

They simultaneously answered, “Yes?”

The bike stopped, and the man
shoved a red, heart-shaped box decorated with plastic flowers into Sandy’s
hand.  Then he rode away.

“I’m not even going to open
this.  Come on Jina, let’s just get out of here.”  She reared back to toss the
box into the small yard of five-twelve, but she felt a sharp pain on her thumb.

“Ouch!”  She looked at the box
and turned it slightly to see what had stung her.  A folded bit of paper on the
bottom caught her eye.

Poison kills, but not too
quickly.

You must enter the house if you’re
feeling sickly.

S.A.

“What the—” She examined the box
a little closer, and found a small, silver needle among the flowers.

“What’s going on, Sandy?  You
said we were leaving.”

Sandy felt suddenly very warm. 
Sweat began bead up on her face.  “I’m sorry to say this, Jina, but I have to
go into the house.”

“What are you talking about?  Are
you crazy??”

“I don’t know.  I might be.  Read
this. 
Don’t
touch the box.”

Jina read the note and her tan
lighted a shade or two.

“There’s a needle, right there.” 
Sandy pointed it out.

“We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

“You aren’t, but I am.”

“No way.  If you go in there, I’m
going too.”

“I’m not going to let you.  There
is
nothing
that says you have to follow me into this any further than
you have.”

“Yes there is.  I’m your friend,
damn it.  And besides, if I don’t go in there, he’ll just find a way to make me
go in.”

“Surely you don’t believe that. 
He can’t be omniscient.  I won’t—”  A bead of perspiration fell from Sandy’s
forehead.  She wavered.

“Sandy?”

“I’m ok.  I’m just dizzy.”

“Dizzy my ass!  Get in there
now!  I’m coming with you.”

Sandy felt weak and confused. 
She nodded and opened the little chain link gate.  She tried to open it
quietly, but it screeched loudly anyway.  Jina followed her up the brittle
steps to the front door.  The doorknob turned with a squeak, and the door
opened easily.

They were greeted with the smell
that all old buildings have: a mixture of mildew, rotting wood, forgotten lives
and mothballs.  Sandy stepped cautiously into the long dark hallway.  Two
doorways marred the wall at each end of the hallway on the right.  The only
light came from the door Jina held open and the window at the end of the hall. 
The pale tattered rug that ran the length of the hall did little to hide the
water-stained wood floor. Wispy curtains billowed over a small round table. 
The rest of the hall lay bare of furnishings.

The table had something on it. 

She stared, and slowly walked
towards the end of the hall.

“Sandy!” Jina whispered.  “Where
are you going?”

“Stay right there.”

Jina stepped inside, and lightly
allowed the door to close.

Sandy stood on the dirty rug
looking at the clean and polished little table, noting its contrast with the
rest of the room.  Twelve black roses in a maroon vase were backlit with
sunlight falling through the curtains.  On the table was a black velvet box,
the kind jewelry comes in.  There was no note, as she would have expected. 

She slowly stepped forward and
tensed as she picked up the box.  It creaked slightly upon opening, and a glint
of light reflected on the wall. 

It was a diamond ring. 

Sandy trembled.  A message like
that needed no note.

A sudden sound of cathedral bells
caused Jina to jump and Sandy to throw the ring back onto the table.  The roses
bobbed a little as the box hit the vase and snapped shut with the force.

“Sorry, Sand.  It’s just my
phone.”  Jina still stood near the entrance and hadn’t seen the ring.  She
unzipped the gym bag and started digging through it.  By the time she found the
phone, it had stopped ringing.

“I don’t recognize the number.  I’ll
call them back.  Find anything over there?” 

Sandy just hugged herself and
tried to relax.  She turned back to the table and examined the roses closely,
looking for the antidote or some kind of clue as to where she would find it. 
She had played her part in the game; it was time for relief.

“Huh, I can’t get a signal. 
Someone
just
called me and I can’t get a signal.  Can you get a signal?”

Sandy felt her pocket.  “Oh no… 
I left my phone back at the hotel.”

“Screw it.  I’m changing carriers
next week.” 

Sandy ignored her, and began
looking under the table. 

Jina stuffed the phone in her
pocket and walked over to Sandy.  “Any luck?  Any pills, syringes, potions,
cures?”

“Nothing.  No clues.”

“What’s this?” Jina picked up the
box.  “Ohhh.  This looks bad.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“What about in here?”  Jina put
the ring back on the table and walked through the doorway into the next room.

Sandy cautiously peered through.

The room was much more dimly lit
and even more sparsely furnished.  Directly across from her lay a door to what
appeared to be a kitchen.   Sandy walked into the middle of the room and could
see that it opened out into a larger room at the front of the house.  Which
would make this a dining room, and that a living room.  The second doorway to
the hall lay at the other end of the room, and a stairway sat between the
doors, leading up.  The walls were covered in vertically stripped wallpaper
that appeared to once have been red and white, but now barely managed a faded
mauve and off-white. 

“Look! A phone!”  Jina had found
an old-style wooden telephone mounted on the wall opposite the stairs.  It had
a round dial, like Jina’s grandpa’s phone had when she was a kid. 

Sandy wandered into the next
room.  She had never seen a kitchen so small.  Linoleum curled up from the
corners of the counters, and grime caked around the sink.  She started opening
the cupboards one by one.

“Hey Sandy, this thing still
works!  I’ve got a dial tone!”  Jina pulled out her cellphone, which still had
no signal, so she could dial the number from the missed call. 

The phone rang twice.  Then she
heard, “
The number you have dialed is on your party line.  Please hang up
and allow sufficient time for the party you are calling to answer before you
return to the line.
”  The message started to repeat and she stared at the
receiver as if it had grown horns.

“Jina!  Quit messing around and
help me find the antidote so we can get out of here.”

“Hey Sand, remember that call a
minute ago?  I think it came from
this
house.”  She hung up the phone
and it started ringing.

Sandy poked her head out of the
kitchen.  “What are you doing?” she asked in a dim voice.

“Maybe S.A. will pick up the
phone.”

“That’s crazy!  We don’t want to
talk to S.A.  He’s some kind of psycho, and the last thing I want is for him to
know we’re here!”

“S.A. already knows we’re here. 
And if he’d pick up the damn phone, I could give him a piece of my mind and
make him get the hell down here and give you the antidote!”

Sandy shut up.  She felt too weak
to fight with Jina.

Jina let it ring ten times.  “The
jerk is too afraid to talk to me.” 

She snatched up the receiver and
listened to the recording say, “
Someone on your line is calling you.  Please
wait for a moment for them to return to the line.
” 

Silence.

“Helloooooooo. . .” she said. 
She hung up and looked at Sandy.  “So now what?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t feel
so good.”

“If I get my hands on that—”

“Jina, please don’t be like that
right now.”

“But he—”

Jina’s phone chirped twice.

“A text.”  Sandy read over her
shoulder:

The game has
started

in full swing

To save her life

go do this thing.

Climb the stairs

if you won’t, you
will,

The game will go
on

till I’ve had my
fill.

S.A.

“God, I’ve had enough of these
corny poems.”

“Jina,” Sandy whispered, “I think
we should leave.  Right now.  While we still can.”

“What?” she whispered back,
turning to look at Sandy.

“We never should have come in
here.  I’m feeling a little stronger now.  Maybe we can make it to the hospital
in time still.  Don’t you see?  It’s not going to get any better.  We’ve chosen
to play along, and look where we are.  Let’s not get any deeper into this.”

“Sandy, that’s BS.  Look at you. 
You’re sweating gallons.  We’ve got to—” 

She stopped at a noise. 

A coin rolled across the floor
towards the center of the room.  As it slowed, Sandy saw that it was a silver
dollar, one of the old Liberty Head dollars from the 1920s.  When it reached
the middle of the floor, turned a little, fell, rattled and stopped.

They stood and stared.  It had
come from the kitchen.

“There was nothing in there,”
Sandy whispered.  Jina walked over and cautiously peered through the doorway. 
She saw no one.  She
did
see movement out of the corner of her eye. 
Sandy squealed and Jina turned to look.

A crow alighted on the floor,
picked up the silver dollar with its claws.  It flew up the staircase.

“Let’s just run,” Jina
suggested.  Sandy nodded.

Jina took the lead, but two feet
from the hall door, she stopped. Sandy collided with her.

“Wha—?”

Jina pointed.

Praying mantises crowded each
other, completely covering the door frame.  Some light green, some tan, they
snatched at one another with clawed forearms.  Some turned their little
triangle alien-eyed heads to watch the two young girls. 

“Jina, don’t worry.  They can’t
hurt us.  They’re only on the frame, so we can run between them.”

Two mantises in the center had
been fighting while several more crawled over them.  At that moment, one lost
its footing.  They fell, a clawing, clinging mess, dangling in the doorway.  

One jumped off of the door frame
and flew across the room making a fluttering buzz.  Another flew in the other
direction, and for some reason, Sandy thought of her old picture books
depicting fairies flitting between flowers.

Backing away, they saw that the
other hall door was in a similar condition.  The stairs lay immediately to the
right.  Jina panicked and ran up them.  Sandy called up at her, “No, we can
just... Damn it, Jina!”  Sandy raced up after her into the unknown. 

J
ina didn’t
stop until she reached the top, past the landing, and into another room.  When
Sandy caught up to her, she looked back, gasping for breath.

Between breaths, she turned on
Jina. 

“For fuck’s sake, Jean!  They’re
only
four inches long!
  They can’t hurt!  The worst they can do is bite,
and peeling off a
Band-Aid
hurts worse!  We could have just run through
them!  But
now
we are on the
third
story of this decrepit old
building, with a psycho after us, and I’ve had a good workout to pump all that
poison
through my body!”

“The third story?  I didn’t think
we’d climbed that many flights.”  Jina peered down.  “Besides, I never took
biology.  I don’t know anything about bugs.”