Haunted Humans Part 17

"Morgan, integrate him."

"What?" He sounded panic-stricken. "I don't want him in here!"

"Each of you take a different piece."

"No! I don't want anything he has!" "Is what you're doing working?"

"No! We keep trying to beat him up, but he's stronger. He's awful, D.J. He looks around and everything he sees is ugly and he makes us look at it like that and we can't find our own eyes. He looks at us and we're all ugly. And we get all weak when he looks at us like that! All my insiders had ugly places in their vision, but we talked about them and they got better, but he won't let us talk, he won't listen, he just hurts us and hurts us --"

"I know."

"He's going to poison us!"

"Yes. But maybe if you all integrate him, the doses will be small enough for you to survive. Clift said integration would destroy your insiders."

"Destroy . . ." Morgan closed his eyes again.

After a long moment of restless silence, Morgan opened his mouth. "Dorothy Jean!" cried Chase. "Never forget. I always loved you, even after you betrayed me. I love you now even though you've betrayed me again. My lamb, my savior, my judas --"

"Shut up!" said D.J., fighting tears and anger.

Morgan began coughing and choking. Harley climbed out of the car and opened the back door, standing back a respectful distance, but watching Morgan.

What have I done? D.J. thought. If they take the pleasure he had killing those women, if they take that he likes pain, if they find out why he did it, won't that turn them into him? Won't they do it themselves? What about little Mishka?

She's too young to understand. What about Saul? What if he turns really nasty the way Chase was? What about Valerie, what if she takes that hate he had?

Morgan was coughing deep coughs that forced their way up from the bottom of his lungs. He was holding his stomach with his hand-cuffed hands, curling up.

After what seemed like a long time, when he was actually coughing up blood, he stopped, and slumped, exhausted, on the back seat.

"Now," he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "Now we're going to close the door, okay?

Close the door."

"Buddy?" Harley said, stooping to stare at him.

Morgan looked at him with bloodshot eyes, wiping his mouth on his pirate sleeve.

"You need a hospital or something?"

Morgan swallowed. "Gla.s.s of water?" he managed.

Harley ran inside and came out with a big paper cup of water. He climbed in the back seat with Morgan, pushed him upright, and held the cup to his lips. D.J.

hugged herself, wondering if Chase would make a move, strangle Harley with the handcuffs, push the water in his face and make a break. But Morgan sipped, coughed, sipped, sagged against the seat.

"Did you do it?" Harley asked.

"Yeah," said someone. It was hard to tell who, Morgan's voice was so strained.

It sounded like it might be Gary. "You were right, Doro; couldn't take him in a fight, but when we went to -- pull him inside us, the way Morgan does with ghosts, he came apart."

"Does this mean you're all -- polluted by him?" she asked in a small voice.

"Ah, sugar," said Valerie, and took another sip of water. "Not like we didn't have our dark sides before."

"Are you going to kill people?" D.J. asked, her voice still high and tiny. She put her feet up on the seat and hugged her knees to her chest, her back against the pa.s.senger door.

"As the oldest, I took that part," Afra said, her voice clear. "I can own it without acting on it. Just as you could know about horrors and not become them.

We have the power to say no."

"No more ghosts," Clift said.

"No more ghosts," agreed Elaine.

"You don't mind if I leave these cuffs on you for now, though, do you?" Harley asked.

"Cuffed me wrong," said Gary. "Should have done it behind my back, Buford."

"I know," said Harley.

"I don't mind," said Morgan. "Except I'd like breakfast."

"So would I," Harley said. "We've got to hang around here until the crime lab finishes, got to have our hands and guns tested -- you know the routine, Gary-- but I bet we could order something in." He went into the hotel office.

Morgan leaned forward, looking through the divider into D.J.'s eyes. She stared back, saw his eyes darken into Gary's. "Doro," he whispered. "I took the love."

"What?"

"They let me take what I could stand of him, and I took the love he had for you."

She closed her eyes. "I don't want that back

"It's the cleanest thing he owned."

"Put it away, Gary. "She stared into his eyes. "Whatever happens now, let that be just between us. All eleven of us, but --"

He took a deep breath, let it out. "All right," he said. "All right." He leaned back and relaxed against the seat. "As long as there's a future at all."

Was that possible? All the parts of Morgan she had begun to fall in love with, infected with pieces of what she most wanted to escape?

She looked at him. His eyes were closed and his breathing had slowed into sleep.

She was tired of running away. She couldn't abandon him because he had followed her advice.

By the time Harley was back with food, she was thinking of ways to cover up spray-painted graffiti on apartment walls.