Lets Drink To The Dead by Simon Bestwick Read Free Book Online Page A

spectators, still sat there, now silent, are covered in dust and cobwebs. Slowly they turn and face her.
    She tries to scream, but can’t. The wounds that killed them gape in their grey flesh, dried crusted and black. Long dead. Long dead. One rises, turns to face her. He wears an army uniform and is dark-haired, with a drinker’s reddened, puffy face and oyster eyes. His eyes are sad, not cruel. In all of this, he’s the first thing she’s seen to strike her with sorrow rather than fear.
    But the man in the suit is turning. Shadow falls across his face and stays there as he climbs the stairs towards her, limping as he comes, and she knows she needs to run, especially when the others, the dead ones, rise from their seats in all their ruined finery – evening dress and cocktail gowns, because it had been a fine night out they’d died on – and follow. But she can’t move.
    He comes into the light, and she knows him. He wears full evening dress. His lips are loose and wet. Of course, he was younger then. They’re thinner now. And his hair’s fair, not grey, and his face is unlined. But the hair is swept into the same side-parting, falling almost over the eye, and the thin face, the sharp nose – and the eyes, the dark eyes, cold and pitiless now as a shark’s – it’s John, but of course, his name isn’t really John at all.
    And finally she breaks free of the spell and turns to run but as she reaches for the doors they fly open and hands lunge out to seize her.
    And then Dani is waking; waking to another bad dream.
    Waking to find John standing over her, bringing a reeking cloth down towards her face.
     
     
    5
     
    D ANI YELLED AND lashed out at him, knocking the cloth aside. He grabbed at her hair, pulling her head back, and brought the cloth down again. She twisted her head side to side; the cloth missed her face and his long thin fingers struggled to get a proper grip on her hair. She got free, bit at the wrist holding the cloth. He shouted in pain; she tasted blood and threw a punch straight at his groin. John yelled and doubled up, but kept trying to shove the cloth in her face. She kicked out; he fell, rolled away, started scrambling to his feet.
    Jesus. He was supposed to be old and decrepit. But he was standing now, flicking his head to throw his hair back into place, passing the cloth to his free hand and reaching under his coat to draw a knife: something nearly a foot long with serrated edges.
    Dani wasn’t getting into a fight like that in a space like this. She jumped off the bed and ran. She made a token grab for her rucksack, but missed and didn’t stop to try again. He lunged at her, but he missed too. She yanked the door open and ran outside, blindly.
    Which way? Everything was tilting in different directions. She grabbed a wall for support. Had to keep moving. She ran on, nearly falling. Keep going.
    Doors. Rooms. Offices. Shapes. Standing in the rooms. One, wearing army uniform, stood, head bowed, before a trestle table on which a row of masks were laid out. Very lifelike masks, like the one the thing in the chair had worn in her dream. The man reached out and fumbled blindly across the table, touching mask after mask and discarding them. A muffled, distorted wailing came from him. Then he found a mask and lifted it, with a cry of joy that was almost as bad as the wailing, and put it to his face. He looked and stared at her. The mask studied her. Its eyes were black, empty holes. And then she was running again.
    Couldn’t think clearly. She’d felt tired before. Her drink. John had put something in her drink. Drugged her. Obviously hadn’t thought it was working. Something had woken her.
    Figures in smocks and uniforms all around, watching her. Their faces. No, she mustn’t look. She had to keep moving. Had to run.
    But which way was out? Which way was out?
    Didn’t matter. Long as she kept moving. Burn off the drug; she could think straight again then. Just keep out of John’s reach