Chapter 56: A Night of Surprises

"What is she talking about?" Shannon asked.

"I have no idea." Allison answered. "Okay, Jimmy, you've had your fun, now put the house back together and let's see if we can find out what's going on here."

"And you may want to consider putting some clothes on her while you're at it." Shannon added.

"One thing at a time," I thought as I pressed Samantha gently away. Despite the tears her face was almost shining with something I had never seen in any of my previous visits. Hope. "Samantha. What are you talking about?" I asked.

She wiped the tears from her cheeks and said, "She said that a boy would come to help. I kept waiting and waiting and you never came and I had given up, but now you're here. Can you really help?"

"That's what I came here for. You knew I was coming?"

"Well, not you specifically but someone. Where are the others?"

"What others?"

"Your two girlfriends," She stopped and suddenly pulled away, fear frozen on her face. "Oh God! You're not him." She started backing further away. Her voice took on a hysterical edge as she went on, "Oh god, this can't be happening, I should have known. Please don't hurt me, don't punish me again, it was a mistake..."

I grabbed her and crushed her to my chest as I said, "It's okay. No one is going to hurt you. They're here. See, look." I turned her toward the door way and Shannon was standing there in Angela's body. I took a moment to disguise Allison in Marsha Ostren's body and she too stepped through the still smoking doorway. The girls moved quickly over and without hesitation wrapped their arms around us.

Allison began stroking Samantha's hair and whispered, "It's okay, Samantha, we're really here to help, we just don't understand how you knew we were coming. Do you know who we are?"

"No, she didn't tell me your names, only that a boy would be coming and that he would have two girls helping him."

"Who told you this?" Allison asked.

"Mandy," she answered.

Talk about being blown away! I was speechless. Shannon and Allison were staring at me, apparently waiting for me to explain it. All I could do was shrug and shake my head. I slowly released Samantha and asked, "Mandy? You mean your sister, Amanda?"

"Yes."

"When..." I started, but Shannon interrupted.

"Hold on a second. Obviously there are a lot questions that are going to need to be answered on both sides, but I don't think this is the place. Samantha? Do you have a bathing suit?"

"Of course, it's in my..."

"That's okay," I said. "Just picture yourself wearing it."

"But..."

"It's alright." Allison said, "He's going to take us some place we can talk and we don't want you to sunburn. Besides, it'll help him concentrate. Otherwise he'll spend all of his time wondering why your tits aren't answering any of his questions."

"Hey!" I said.

"Oh yeah," Shannon said. "Like you've got another reason for leaving her standing here naked all this time?"

"I don't mind," Samantha said, her eyes suddenly downcast again. "I'm used to it."

"No." I said, gently raising her chin until she once more met my eyes. "Samantha, I am not now, nor will I ever look at you like that. Here." I handed her a terry cloth robe, "We'll worry about your suit later. Now get dressed." I then turned my back, waited and said, "Ready?"

"Yes."

By the time I turned back we were all standing on the beach outside the cabana.

"How did you do that?" Samantha asked as she looked around in awe.

"Didn't you know?" Shannon said, "This is a dream."

Her face fell. "It's not real? You didn't come to help. I just dreamed you up?" Suddenly she began to cry. "I can't do this anymore!"

Again Allison and Shannon rushed to comfort her. Allison stroked and kissed her hair and whispered, "It's okay, baby. It'll be okay. Just let us explain. Yes, it's a dream, but it's real too. Be patient. Here, come in and sit down." Taking her hand she walked the distraught girl to the cabana. I took Shannon's hand in mine and we followed.

I felt Shannon squeeze my hand and turned to look at her. She had a pout on her face and a single tear had leaked from her watery eyes. I hugged her to my side and continued up the walkway. Fortunately I hadn't changed the furnishings from the last time we were here with Rebecca. I don't know how well Samantha would have reacted to the bed. I suspect she would have thought she had been set up again. Allison walked her directly to the chair and pulled her down into her lap.

I froze Samantha for just a moment and quickly asked, "Names? Are we using our own or changing them?"

The girls exchanged glances and Allison answered. "I think changing them would be best. I'm Alice; she's Sharon. Jimmy is still close enough, so you can keep using it."

I unfroze the scene and as far as Samantha knew nothing had happened.

"Okay, Samantha, this is going to take a while to explain. If you can save your questions until later I may answer them as I go. My name is Jimmy, this is Sharon, and you're sitting in Alice's lap. I'm working with someone investigating your sister's murder. You've met her once already, her name is Rebecca Hampton and she is with the FBI."

Samantha's eyes got big and she started to get up but 'Alice' held her tight and whispered, "It's okay."

I continued, "When Rebecca came to interview your family it was obvious that something was wrong. Let me back up for a second. The man who killed your sister has killed two other girls as well. The first was a girl from northern California, Amanda was the second, the third girl was from Ventura, out on the coast of Southern California. I can't tell you all the details but there are several things that the victims all had in common. They were all young, recent high school graduates; all athletes at the top of their sports who were going to college on full scholarships; and they were all sexually active in some unusual fashion. One girl was into group sex, the other was trading sex for presents. When your father insisted that your sister was not active it meant that she didn't fit the profile, so we knew it wasn't true. We didn't find out about her having sex with your father until after Rebecca came to see your family. Once we found out the truth she knew he was lying but she had no way to find out what was going on. So she asked me to try and talk to you and convince you to tell us what's happening.

"Samantha, I have a very special gift. I can move around in other people's dreams, and I can move them around as well. It's how I found out about your sister and the other two girls. It's also how we knew your father was lying. Tonight, when this all started, we were in your dream, or nightmare. Now, we have moved to one of my dreams. This is a place I created a while back to relax and talk to people. So when we came here, we left your dream and entered mine."

I faded myself to invisibility, "I can be invisible if I want." I faded back in. "I've been watching your dreams for about three weeks. I've seen what's been happening to you. I've seen two other men take advantage of you. I have a pretty good idea of what your father has in store for Rachel when she grows up. Samantha, look at me. I'm going to stop this. It will take time and I have to stop your sister's killer first; he is my number one priority right now because it's coming up on time for him to kill again. The FBI is working on that with me. But for now, it's only me working on this for you. The FBI can't get involved unless I find a reason that they can show someone. From what we've seen, this is a lot bigger than we thought. Samantha, do you know how many people are involved?"

"No. But there are a lot. No one knows everyone. Even my father doesn't know them all. I don't..."

I held up my hand. "That's okay. Now, from what we have seen, they are threatening you to keep you from talking. They're having you spy on other girls and other people spying on you that you don't know, is that right?" She nodded. "What happens if someone talks?"

"They die or disappear."

"You mean they're threatening to kill you if you tell anyone?"

"Not just you, your whole family."

"But they could never get away with it."

"They already have. The year before Mandy died, one of the girls went to the police. They arrested her father. He was murdered in jail. The very next day she, her mother, her sister, were all found dead in their house. The paper said her mother flipped out and killed the girls, then committed suicide. My dad showed us a copy of the paper."

"Everybody was scared when Mandy disappeared. They were afraid she had turned. My father was actually happy when they found her dead. Well, maybe not happy, but relieved. There was another girl, Cindy, who talked. I didn't know her, but she disappeared. The paper said she ran away from home but it's not true."

"How do you know?"

"My dad showed me pictures. She was holding a newspaper but it wasn't printed in English. I think she's in the middle-east somewhere because she was wearing one of those "I dream of Jeannie" outfits and had a big gold shackle with a padlock around one ankle. She had a black eye too. They sold her."

"How do you know she told someone?"

"She told another girl she was going to run away, they caught her and made her tell the name of the girl. Theresa was her name. They put her in the chair for a whole weekend for not turning her in before she did it."

"The chair?" Shannon asked.

Samantha shuddered and seemed to shrink into Allison's lap. "That's what they call it. It's this thing they strap you into, with your legs out wide and your hands tied behind your back. They can turn it all different ways. Usually they just suspend you in the air flat, and then they take turns with you, lots of them. They wear robes and masks so no one knows who anybody is. They just leave you there with no food or water; they just keep fucking you, over and over, sometimes two and three at a time. With Theresa, they started Friday night and went until late Sunday. They made us watch. By the time they took her out she couldn't even stand up. They had to keep mopping the floor because it got slippery from all the stuff running out of her.

"Someone had to notice something was wrong with her? Didn't she miss school?"

She shook her head. "She was out for over a week. It still hurt to walk and her voice was gone for another week after she came back. One of them is a doctor, I think. He has a room in his basement where they take you if you need a doctor. He's who we see for checkups and stuff. He gives us our birth control pills too. Every two months we get an exam, he fucks us and gives us our pills and then we go home."

"Could you identify him?"

"Sure, if I saw him, any of us could, I even have the address, but no one would dare. I usually take the bus when it's my time to go." She turned and looked out the window. "You have to find them all or it's not safe, and they know you can't catch them all."

"I already figured that part out. Samantha, I promise you, I am going to find them, all of them. I don't care how long it takes, but eventually I will find them. I will find a way to stop them. But it will take time and until then I can't stop what's happening to you. I hate that I can't stop it sooner, but I can't. Will you be okay?"

"Yes. I'm used to it. Just don't tell me what you're doing. I don't want to know what's happening, that might give me hope and that might make me careless. I don't want to be punished again. I'll be fine."

I looked at her sitting there in Allison's lap, eyes once more downcast and I wanted to kill someone. "Tell me about what Amanda told you."

"It was the day after they found her," she said. Tears began to form and her voice began to crack as she spoke, "She came to me in a dream that night. She was worried about Rachel. She made me promise to look out for her and protect her. She told me that a boy would come to help me. She didn't give a name, just that it would be a boy with two girls that helped him. She made me promise that I would be strong, and... and I tried but it's been so long... and I miss her so much." She finally broke down and cried. Huge wracking sobs tore over her body. "She was all I had. The only one who understood; the only one who loved me, and soon they will come for Rachel and I can't stop them." She cried for a long time. I don't know if she had ever been allowed to cry when her sister died. From the brief glimpses we had had, I don't think she was allowed to cry at all. Finally she had her chance and once she started all you could do was let it run its course.

Allison just held her and stroked her and rocked the chair back and forth. It took me a second to realize that she had added the rockers. I glanced at Shannon and tears were streaming down her face as well. I pulled her too me, stroked and kissed her hair, and then stood and crossed the room. As I moved toward them Allison's chair stretched and changed until it was big enough for all of us. I sat on the edge as it continued to reshape itself. Soon they were lying together on a soft double bed. Allison on her back with the sobbing girl nestled in her arms. I motioned to Shannon. She promptly came over and cuddled up close behind Samantha, wrapping her arms around her and spooning up close. I kissed Shannon's cheek, stroked Samantha's hair and whispered, "Rest." She gave a final sigh and settled into Allison's arms, asleep. Okay, technically she had been asleep the whole time but I kind of pushed her into relaxing and resting.

I left them there and went outside, pulling my phone from my pocket as I closed the door. I hit the button and waited for Rebecca to answer.

"Hi, Jimmy, what's up?"

"We need to talk. Bring Bob with you."