The man was lying there, in the glass, his body sprawled with the indignity of all things dead and unburied. Cate's breath caught in her throat, the unspent fog almost choking her. Oh, God!
It wasn't here--hadn't happened here--but it was happening now.
There was an argument lingering, on the air. She couldn't see the moment of confrontation, or the altercation, but it had been about the mutilated body on the ground. About how to deal with it, to cast off blame with as much ease as they'd cast away his life.
Only, they didn't realize he could hear them still. Hear them and hate them.
Because it had always been about his looks. His looks, and justifying what he was. The grave they were giving him, the twisted notoriety they were planning, would leave him neither looks nor justice.
Cate's eyes focused on his face. What they'd done, what they were doing to the rest of him didn't bear watching.
But, apparently, she did. Bear watching, that is.
The corpse's eyes opened, to stare straight at her.
Cate flinched, twitched, recoiled, but she couldn't let go. Some part of her was screaming, but she was no longer sure whether it was her ... or him.
She clung to the pane, trapped. When, a forever it seemed, later, she freed her fingers enough to fling it, she remained there rigid, staring, as the moon's glowing image shattered in a hundred spiky shards.
Some part of her was still recoiling, as if in reflex to a striking snake.
God help me!
In those instants of metaphysical contact, she felt as though one shriveled digit had touched her. Spanned the gap between life and death--
I'm *not* a medium!
She'd never been a medium--never even come close. It had been the one blessing, in an otherwise twisted gift, that however conversant she might have become with a dead person's past, she was never conversant with the dead!
Until now, it seemed. Cate backed away, panted white puffs coiling and twisting in the otherwise still air.
I'm not alone.
It should have been comforting, that there was a taxi driver waiting just outside, but somehow, it came out differently. That "I'm not alone" was filled with horror. The taxi driver might be outside, but something else moved within. In a dreadful moment, she knew she'd brought this on herself--by coming here she'd been willing, demanding almost, a contact with his person--had wanted so badly to save him, that she'd drawn in a soul barely severed from its body.
Cate backed, tripped, twisted, and ran. She tore across the length of the room as though the Devil were at her heels, and slammed open the end door with a loud squawking thunk. Using two hands, Cate wrenched the door closed again, locking evil within. She stumbled back, the small door pane fixing her into its framed panel.
He wasn't within. Behind her, his hatred ever so much more pronounced in proximity, was the mutilated visage of the recently deceased.
)
