The Villager Pub was a tiny place, with a short bar just inside the front entrance. There were two tables opposite the bar, a jukebox (silent now), and an old Galaga tabletop video game. Between the bar and the bathrooms was an open area for dart players. Dream waited for a pause in the in-progress dart games, smiled her thanks to the waiting players, and made her way to the bar. She felt the gazes of the male dart players on her every step of the way. The lust they felt as they drank in her long, long legs and abundant curves was a palpable thing. It made her feel good.

And powerful.

She took a seat at the end of the bar, a good place for watching the dart games. The players were all college-age boys. A look through their wallets would reveal more than one fake ID. Maybe tonight the mark would be one of them. These young guys, bursting with hormones and fueled by too many beers, would be easy. She would lure one of them to a motel room. Dope his drink. Maybe even fuck him before he lost consciousness. Then rob him blind and light out of town before sunrise. It was the way she lived now. Town to town. Mark after mark. Sometimes, when she’d dosed them just right, they were delirious enough to share credit card PIN numbers. There was an art to timing everything just right. She was getting better at it all the time.

One of the players elbowed his buddy-a square-jawed, bushy-haired frat type-and nodded in her direction. Frat Boy saw her looking at him and grinned.

Dream smiled and lit a cigarette.

The barmaid-a thin woman of about forty with long, dishwater hair-approached her and said, “What’ll you have?”

“Shiner Bock.”

The barmaid removed a frosty pint glass from a cooler behind the bar and began to fill it from the tap. Dream licked her lips as she watched the amber liquid fill the frost-rimmed glass. She loved the taste of the stuff, but more than that she craved the fuzziness of mind it would bring, that added buffer between her present life and the painful memories of her past. The barmaid placed a napkin in front of Dream and set the nearly overflowing mug on it. Dream waited for the head to settle before taking a first sip of the deliciously cold, cold brew.

The skinny girl emerged from the bathroom and wobbled through the game area, oblivious to the men with their darts. She bumped into one, eliciting a startled yelp.

Frat Boy sneered. “Watch where you’re going, bitch.”

One of his friends snickered and said, “Yeah, skank.”

The girl didn’t say anything. Dream watched her from the corner of her eye as she continued toward the bar. She experienced a flash of sense-memory, a vivid moment in which she again felt the girl’s soft flesh yield beneath her hard fist.

The girl gave her a wide berth, continuing down to the far end of the bar, where she paused long enough to dig into her purse and extract several rumpled bills. She tossed these on the bar and left in a hurry, the bell over the door jangling behind her. An untouched pint of Bud Light gleamed in the light of the neon Miller sign mounted behind the bar.

The barmaid frowned. “Well, shit, girl didn’t even drink her beer.”

A middle-aged man in a cowboy hat rose from his seat at one of the tables. “Hell, I’ll drink that, darlin’.”

The barmaid shrugged. “What the hell, it’s paid for. Today’s your lucky day.”

Cowboy Hat gripped the mug’s handle with a beefy hand and winked at Dream. Dream kept her expression blank and returned her attention to the young boys playing darts. Frat Boy caught her eye again and grinned. Dream flashed another smile, hoping to encourage the kid to make a move. He’d better get the hint soon, because she had a feeling Cowboy Hat would lumber over any moment and hit on her. But Frat Boy’s attention was again on the dartboard. He was squinting, a dart pinched between thumb and forefinger held at about shoulder level.

It was then she heard the slightly labored breath behind her and knew the time had come to shoot down another dirty old man. The bar stool to her left creaked as a weight settled onto it. Dream set her mug down with a sigh. She looked longingly at Frat Boy a moment longer, but he was still too focused on his damnable game. Vowing to make him pay for that later, she swiveled around on her stool to tell Cowboy Hat off…

But the smackdown went undelivered, the words dying on the tip of her tongue as a paralyzing numbness swept rapidly through her body.

There was someone on the bar stool next to her, but it wasn’t Cowboy Hat.

The apparition smiled hideously through rotting lips. “Hello, Dream.”

A ghost. A fucking ghost. Or a hallucination. That was more likely, she supposed, but how could anyone tell the difference?

It was Alicia Jackson, her one-time best friend in the world. Alicia had been dead for more than three and a half years. She didn’t look like an old-time movie ghost, though. She wasn’t flickering or floating in mid-air. She looked as solid and three-dimensional as the bar stool under Dream’s ass. She was a walking corpse, her flesh bloated and rotting. The back of her head was a pulped, sticky mess-the exit wound from the self-inflicted gunshot wound that had ended her life. She wore a slinky little black dress, which meant a lot of visible putrescent flesh. The tortures she’d endured prior to her suicide were much in evidence, including the uncountable razor-blade cuts the demonic Ms. Wickman had inflicted on her. Each wound weeped blood.

Alicia’s gruesome smile widened, exposing rows of teeth that protruded alarmingly from her blackened, shrunken gums. Maggots trickled from one corner of her mouth. “It’s been a while, girl.” She laughed and more maggots tumbled from her mouth. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking-I’m not real. But you’re wrong. I’m not a ghost. Not exactly. And I’m sure as shit no hallucination.”

Dream opened her mouth to say something, managed a single, incoherent syllable before falling silent again. Her mouth hung open in astonishment. She simply couldn’t speak. What could she say to this…thing? The idea of holding a conversation with it was absurd.

Alicia chuckled. “You’re still not believing it.”

Dream nodded, a very slight downward tilt of her head. She didn’t want anyone in the bar to see her interacting with this thing that looked like her old friend. She knew they’d only see a thirtysomething chick in slut gear conversing with an empty bar stool. An aging barfly with severe mental problems would be the likely perception.

She picked up her beer mug and drank deeply from it again. She looked at the television mounted on the wall behind the bar. The Simpsons was on, and she pretended to pay attention to Homer’s shenanigans.

Alicia scooted closer and slapped a cold, clammy hand down on Dream’s upper left thigh. Dream sucked in a deep breath. The hand on her leg felt rough and leathery. She glanced down, noted the contrast between Alicia’s rot-brown hand and her own pale, unblemished flesh, and began to feel light-headed.

Alicia leaned closer still and Dream felt the dead woman’s bony knee press against her. “There, girl. Do I feel like a motherfucking hallucination?”

Dream trembled. She gripped the handle of her beer mug tighter. Her eyes flicked toward the bar’s front door. She could go. Just slide off the stool and hit the ground running. Bang through the door and leg it across the street to the lot where her old Honda Accord was parked. Then drive. Get the hell out of this stink ing, gray, miserable New England town, find some other place to prowl for a while.

Alicia’s dead hand gave her thigh a squeeze. “Don’t matter where you go, baby. I’ll be there. It’s like I said, I’m not exactly a ghost.”

Dream looked at the bar and kept her voice as low as possible. “Then what are you?”

“I’m something you created.”

Dream frowned. “Bullshit.”