The Dream Runner by Kerry Schafer Read Free Book Online Page B

Diamonds?"
    "Dreams," I said.
    His eyes narrowed. "Enough with the games. You're stone cold broke, any fool can see that. How did you get this?"
    I stood there, breathing hard, trying to think. I'd already let him see that the bottle mattered to me, so it was too late to act like I didn't care. And the sex come-on wasn't going to work. Which left only one possibility.
    Looking back on what happened next, I see it all like a movie playing out in slow motion. The grin moving across his face as he sees that he has won some sort of power over me—me moving back another step for maximum impact. His right hand lowering the bottle as his left reaches for the stopper. My foot connecting squarely with his woody and the pressurized balls behind it.
    The impact threw the stone bottle out of his hands as he doubled over in agony and I slid to catch it, hands outstretched, like a kid in a made-for-TV baseball movie where everything in the world depends on catching that ball. I was good at sports as a kid, but it had been years and I held no real hope of success.
    Against all the odds, I actually managed to make the catch, but the cork stayed in Marsh's hand. Black liquid sloshed out and down the sides of the bottle, and the whole damn thing slipped and slid right through my grasping, desperate fingers and struck the floor.
    It exploded like a little bomb.
    Shards of stone shrapnel littered the room. Dark liquid sprayed everywhere. Floor, walls, sleeping bag. My hands dripped with it. It seemed impossible that one tiny bottle could hold so much of the stuff.
    My skin crawled. Cold seeped into my bones and I shivered uncontrollably. Distant voices seemed to shriek and mutter and curse; they were so real that my eyes turned toward the window, but nothing was visible except for sky and a bit of distant mountain.
    It's only a dream , I told myself. And we're both awake. Wide-awake. It can't hurt us.
    "What did you do to me?" Marsh gasped, still doubled over, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.
    I wanted to shout at him. To beat him senseless, but then reality hit me square and fair. I was the one who had asked for the dream in the first place. It was mine—all of the ugly and the evil and the hate belonged to me. And my own actions had resulted in this disaster, the scope and extent of which was making me want to get on Red and run away again.
    This time there was nowhere left to run.
    Marsh's hands shifted from between his legs to his ears, and his eyes were wild. His whole face had gone white and his lips trembled. "Make it stop," he said. "Jesse, please make it stop."
    "It's okay," I murmured, which was beyond doubt the biggest whopper I'd told in my life. "Come on, let's get you out of here."
    My hands were still coated in the stuff and I didn't want to touch him, so I pulled one of my t-shirts from my backpack and wiped them clean. Then I dragged him out of my room and closed the door behind us.
    I tried to strip him out of his contaminated clothes and put him in the shower, but he wrenched away from me and ran for it. Down the stairs two at a time, out the door without bothering to close it, and into his truck like all the demons from hell were at his back.
    He spun the tires in the gravel and fishtailed out of my yard, leaving me alone with a house I was pretty sure was now officially haunted. Damn it—I could never sell it with a dream that ugly permeating the walls and floor of one of the rooms. The Bunny Room at that. Somebody would put a kid in there, and scar the poor thing for life. Even renting would be a problem, and I sure as hell had no intentions of staying in this town to take care of the house myself.
    An image of matches and gasoline flickered through my brain. Burn it down, collect the insurance money. It was a thought. But then the memories came, thick and fast. All I still had of my dad was here. And Will, a little voice whispered, but that one was easy to shush.

Chapter Eight
    Â 
    Â 
    B y the time