Out of Body

Chapter 25

Marley’s flesh quivered.

She had closed her eyes, but now she opened them and barely held back a scream. Hurtling through spaces too fast to grasp any one image, light and texture changed as she passed.

Vibrations buffeted her.

She spun around and around, then rotated head over heels.

Through an empty, dark-paneled room in an instant.

Into a pale chamber echoing with the Ushers’ voices. We had to take you. We could not wait. You have failed each time. They need your help.

“What do you want me to do? Where are Liza and Amber?” Each word felt thrust back into her throat where it faded away.

A corridor grew narrower as she shot toward an open door. Then she burst through.

Sunlight shone on a woman’s face, a woman with dark hair—and a blindfold. Marley could tell it was Liza Soaper.

Marley started to call out to her. Too late. In a crushing collision, she passed inside Liza’s seated body. This time there was no doubt what had happened. Marley was in a tight, clamoring place where she stared out at blackness, then down, past a narrow gap, at a stone floor. She looked left as far as she could, then right. Nearby was a wooden furniture leg. A table leg? Baseboards beneath cabinets. A white enamel door.

Marley was seeing through Liza’s eyes, out of a small opening at the bottom of the blindfold.

She must find out where this was. Until she did she couldn’t change anything.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

Startled by the loud voice, its vibration, Marley blinked. Liza had spoken.

“You were getting above yourself,” a man said in an unremarkable voice. “You’re very sexy, but you know that.”

Marley felt fear emanating from Liza.

“Please let me go.”

The man laughed. “So you can turn me in to the police? Now, Liza, you know better than that.”

“I thought I was coming here to talk about my career,” Liza said. “I haven’t been here long enough to be missed yet. If I go now I’ll be quiet and no one will ever know a thing about this.”

The man sniggered. “You’ll get out of here how and when I decide. But you’re here to talk about your career. You’ve hit that glass ceiling, baby. Time to get out of the way and make room for people with more talent.”

Marley felt Liza’s confusion. And she had her own questions that didn’t produce sensible answers. If Liza had only been missing a short time like she’d just said, then…

Time and events had changed.

Panic set in. Marley understood. For some reason she had gone back in time to the beginning of all this, when Liza first disappeared. This had happened just after her abduction.

Liza jerked to her feet. She struggled. “Get your hands off me. Don’t touch me like that.”

Helpless, Marley tossed with Liza’s emotions. The sliver of vision beneath the blindfold moved, twisted. Liza scuffed forward. Still the floor was white, but Marley watched the tiles pass until Liza stopped again and a door opened. They moved into a room where brown paper packages were tied shut with string and pressed tightly together on a bottom shelf.

Another door opened and while Liza gave muffled shrieks, Marley fought against closing her eyes while a steep wooden staircase tumbled away beneath them.

“I’m good, y’know,” the man almost purred. “No woman ever complained about being with me. They all want more when I’m finished. You’re lucky.”

Liza’s scream pounded Marley’s brain. She wanted to scream herself, to find a way to drag Liza away.

Very little light showed now. Liza was on her back, writhing from side to side, trying to escape.

“You’ll only hurt yourself,” the man said, intense excitement in his voice. “But struggle. I like it when they fight me.”

Marley heard Liza cry out and tried to shut out the noise.

A thud, followed by more and increasingly hard and rapid impacts made Marley’s mind feel dull. She was helpless and trapped inside the mind of a desperate woman.

As precipitously as her joining with Liza had begun, it ceased.

Revolving slowly, moving away from a scene she couldn’t see clearly and didn’t want to see at all, she felt herself begin to swim. There was the funnel, its opening facing her. She was so tired. Even lifting her arms was too much.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” came the Ushers’ cries. “She went the wrong way.”

She couldn’t concentrate on what they might mean.

“She wasn’t supposed to go back.”

Marley moved weakly, like an exhausted swimmer treading water.

“We must get her to the right place or it will be too late. She can’t stay much longer.”

A sound like a tornado, a freight-train roar, buffeted Marley. She felt consciousness slip.

Once more she spun and projected forward at a pace that shook her through and through. She looked, but couldn’t see anything but darkness. The sound turned into a screech like brakes fighting to take hold.

She landed on a hard floor against something hard. She touched it, but pipes and other pieces of metal were all she felt.

A wheel. Marley ran her hand over the tire and over a frame to a seat. A bicycle in a rack. Small items pressed into the underside of her thigh. She pulled out hard things; most she couldn’t identify, but there was a little pair of scissors, a round piece of rubber, a lipstick, a key.

Through utter darkness came a familiar sight, two glowing scarlet eyes with the quality of fire. She kept absolutely still.

Coughing. The thing coughed and wheezed to catch its breath.

Marley lost sight of the eyes as it must have turned away.

A breeze filled with a foul stench passed across her face.

Then the eyes were over her, burning down. This thing was aware of her presence, but she didn’t feel it had power over her. Closer it moved and made a slashing downward motion with those eyes. She threw up a hand and moaned inwardly. Searing heat jabbed her palm and dragged its way for several inches. She heard the sleeve of her T-shirt tear.

The coughing began again and the eyes were obscured.

Seconds later a door opened and an elongated neon sign on a nearby building flashed from top to bottom. A picture of an animal, or a bird. Marley wasn’t sure. Turquoise and yellow reflections slipped into the place where she was, across a dirty floor. An empty place, but for a figure crumpled in a dark heap.

Marley tried to reach the person, only to see him or her dragged over the floor.

The door closed again.

From outside came a low rumble, an engine turning over. Then the crunch of wheels on gravel.

“Now!” the Ushers gibbered with excitement. “Go now before it’s too late.”

Marley saw the funnel again and reached for it—but unconsciousness claimed her.