The Hunter Page 0,39

myself first," she said.

"No. Me."

Dee slanted a sloe-eyed look at him, then nodded. She tilted the candle to apply the flame to a leaf on his arm.

The leaf seemed to melt slightly in a crescent where the flame touched it. There was a bad smell as the edge blackened. Nothing else happened.

"Try the roots."

Dee tried lower, very close to Michael's skin. Michael flinched away from the heat, but Audrey held him steady.

The plant started to shrivel.

"That's it!"

"Can you stand it?" Dee asked.

"I can stand anything to get these off. With the right kind of incentive, of course." He looked hopefully at Audrey, who was still holding him and murmuring encouragement.

Jenny smiled to herself. To be inane and lecherous when you're scared to death required a special kind of bravery.

Dee burned more roots. The plants began to drop off more and more quickly, shriveling at the first touch of the flame.

Michael was almost sobbing in relief. His arms and torso were clear.

"Anything-ah, lower?" Dee gestured with the candle at Michael's sweatpants.

"No! And watch where you're waving that thing. I plan to be a family man."

"Look," Jenny said softly.

The patch of moss on her skin was getting smaller and smaller. In a moment it had faded altogether. The same was happening to Dee and Audrey. Michael's feet came free of the floor.

And then they were all laughing, admiring their clear, perfect skin, touching it, holding it up to the others. Just exactly like the scene at the end of Ben Hur, Jenny thought, where the two women are miraculously cured of leprosy. Michael put his sweatshirt back on and kissed Audrey once more.

"You had some mold on your lips before," he said. "I didn't like to mention it."

"No, you didn't, Aud," Dee muttered in Audrey's ear. Audrey looked helplessly at Mike, but with some indulgence.

"So this was your nightmare, and we got through it," Jenny said. "This hallway is your nightmare room. Which means that if we go back through that door..."

The door opened under Dee's hand. They walked through into the hallway, apparently the same hallway they had just left. But with two differences, Jenny noticed. In this hallway there was no candle missing from the bracket. And there was a scrap of white paper on the floor.

A picture of a huge green plant, something on the order of a rubber plant, with arms and legs sticking out. No head.

"Ugh," Jenny said.

"My nightmare," Michael said, still looking embarrassed. "Turning into a plant. It's so stupid-I think it came from this book I read when I was in third grade. It had a story about a kid who was so dirty that things started to grow on her-little radishes and veggies. And it just freaked me out. i mean, it was this harmless story, but for some reason I just flipped. I kept thinking about that kid, all crusted with dirt, with green stuff sprouting from her-it made me sick."

"You're making me sick," Audrey said.

"And then the parents pulled them-the veggies -they pulled them off her-"

"Stop it," Dee commanded.

"Like I said, it was stupid, a kid's thing."

"I don't think it was stupid, I think it was horrible. And I think you were smart and brave, the way you dealt with it," Jenny said. Michael's soulful eyes widened at the unprecedented compliments, and he gave her a rumpled grin.

The unseen clock struck one. There was something

eerie about the way it echoed. Morning is coming, Jenny thought.

"We'd better get moving," Dee said, just as Michael made a stifled sound.

"What's wrong-" Audrey began, but then she saw it, too, in the darkness of the hall where nothing had been before.

A staircase.

Chapter 10

Excitement bubbled up in Jenny. "Finally we can go somewhere."

"And get out of this freaking hallway," Dee said.

Michael was looking awed. "It's just like going up to the next level of a video game."

But Audrey pursed her lips. When Jenny asked why, Audrey gave her a sideways glance under spiky dark lashes.

"One thing about video games-the farther you go, the harder they get," she said. "N'est-ce pas?"

The stairs had rubber padding with the ridges worn almost to nothing. Jenny couldn't see the top from where she stood-the roof of the Haunted Mansion hall was in the way.

"What are we waiting for?" Dee said and vaulted onto the steps. Then she grabbed for the railing-as soon as her foot touched a step, the whole staircase had started moving with a jerk. It was a wheezing, groaning, shivering escalator.

"Oh, geez," Michael said. "I hate to