Disclaimer: The characters of the Stephanie Plum Series belong to Janet Evanovich and are used here without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.
Challenges: 100_Prompts Challenge – 088. Locked and Week 3 challenge: “Forget the ghosts,” the voice whispered darkly. “Beware of me.”
Rating: Suitable for people over 17. - horror/ghost-story
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WARNING!! – THIS FIC IS A BIT CREEPY. IF YOU DON’T LIKE THAT SORT OF THING, PLEASE DON’T READ THIS.

Dreams And Reality
By TT

Stephanie sighed as she shifted her car into park. Tonight she was exhausted and she could only pray for a good night’s sleep.

Things had been busy, but not overwhelmingly so with regard to work. What was really throwing her off was the lack of good sleep.

Oh, she was still sleeping her normal hours, but it wasn’t restful. She usually woke up more exhausted than when she went to sleep. It was almost guaranteed now that when she woke up, her bed would be a complete mess – the sheets torn off and the covers bunched around her. More than once she’d woken up with a sore throat and tearstains on her face.

The bad thing was she could never remember her nightmares.

Forcing herself to move, Stephanie exited the car and stretched.

She let her head drop back and looked up at the night sky.

The sky was never truly black in Trenton, light pollution saw to that, but with the full moon in tonight’s sky, it was a midnight blue. The heavy, red-orange moon hung low in the sky, speaking to high levels of pollution in the air. There were silver-edged clouds sweeping across the sky, temporarily blocking out the reflected light from the lunar satellite. Where the intermittent clouds failed to cover the sky, stars shone brightly against the fathomless field of the night sky.

Righting her head, Stephanie shook it to clear it out. She really needed some sleep.

With a heavy step, she made her way into the apartment. She hit the button for the elevator, but it didn’t light. Glancing at the numbers above it, she saw it was on the third floor and not moving.

Releasing a sigh, she headed toward the stairway.

Her path brought her past her mailbox and she decided to stop and check for mail. As she opened her box, she glanced to either side. That was odd. Her box was the only one with her name on it. She could swear that the other mailboxes had had names on them this morning. With a shrug she dismissed the notion and flipped through her mail. There was something from the people who owned the building.

As she pushed open the door to the stairwell, she opened that letter. Skimming through it, she saw it detailed new security measures that the company was putting in place. One of the items she found on the tenant responsibility list was to remove your name from your mailbox. That would explain the change.

When she reached her floor, she opened the door and made her way down the hall. Standing outside her apartment, she reached into her purse to search for her keys.

Finally finding them, she pulled them out and inserted them into the lock. She had just opened the door when she stopped and tilted her head.

She shot a glance both ways down the hall and for the first time realized how very quiet it was. Her brow furrowed in confusion. If she didn’t know better and hadn’t seen the cars on the lot, she would say that the building was completely empty. There was an empty, dead feel to it that she only felt in abandoned buildings.

A shiver ran down her spine at the thought before she shook it off and mentally chided herself for being foolish. It was late and all her neighbors retired early. She knew that.

Entering her apartment, she closed the door behind her and placed her bag on the small hall table she had there, dropping her keys in the bowl she had set on it earlier.

Before continuing into her house, she turned to lock the door, only to find it already locked and the chain already slid into place.

She paused, her hand in the air as her brow furrowed in confusion.

Another chill ran down her spine and unease settled deep in the pit of her stomach.

“Calm down, Stephanie,” she coached. “You’re just more tired than you thought. You must have locked the door and just not remembered. Of course, now that you’re talking to yourself, we may need to worry about you sanity.”

Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she slipped into the kitchen and flicked on the light. Rex was hiding in his can. That was a little unusual since this was normal running time for him, but even he was allowed to take a day off every now and then.

She grabbed a glass out of the cupboard and opened the refrigerator to get some water.

As she grabbed the water jug, she felt a cold breath against the back of her neck. Spinning around, she nearly dropped her glass, but didn’t see anything.

Her unease grew even as she shook her head at her own squeamishness. She’d had the refrigerator door open, for heaven’s sake. Of course she was going to feel a cold draft as the cooler air escaped.

Yeah, but that doesn’t explain why it hit the back of your neck or why you immediately thought someone else was here with you, a small voice inside of her taunted.

Blowing out a breath in frustration, she turned back to the refrigerator and went to grab the jug. Her hand froze, however, when she spotted a cooler settled on the back part of the shelf. She knew that cooler, or at least one like it. It was identical to the one she had brought to Virginia. The original cooler had contained a human heart.

The glass she had been holding dropped to the floor and shattered.

Slamming the door shut she backed away from the refrigerator, shaking.

Her thoughts were awhirl and she couldn’t formulate a coherent thought.

With her horror-filled eyes locked on the offending appliance, she saw a hand reach forward to open it again. It took her a moment to realize it was her hand.

Taking several deep breaths, she chided herself for her foolishness. It couldn’t possibly be the same cooler. Most likely either Joe or Ranger had dropped off some food for her and left it in the cooler.

Far more calm, and chiding herself for her foolishness, she opened the door. Maybe they had left her some chocolate cake in the cooler. Chocolate cake would taste really good right now.

Glancing into the open refrigerator, she went to reach for the cooler, but it wasn’t there.

Her newfound boldness faded a bit and her unease began to turn into fear.

When she moved her foot to take a step away from the appliance, something under her foot crunched.

Glancing down, she noticed the shattered glass and sighed. She really was too tired to deal with all this, but if she didn’t clean it up now, she’d probably walk on it in bare feet tomorrow.

It wasn’t far to the closet where the broom and dustpan rested. Opening the door, she quickly retrieved them and had the glass swept up in no time.

As she lifted the dustpan, the hair at the back of her neck stirred as an intense cold caressed the skin there. Spinning quickly, she looked behind her, but nothing was there.

“I’m losing my mind,” she muttered, shaking her head at her jumpiness. In one quick step she was at the garbage can and emptied the dustpan.

Moving back to the closet she opened it and saw a bunny suit hanging there.

Letting out a scream of horror, she slammed the door shut and stepped away. She had actually felt the blood drain from her face at the sight of that costume. The dustpan rattled against the broom as she trembled from fear.

Dropping the cleaning supplies, she moved to her purse and grabbed her cell phone. She quickly moved to her cookie jar to retrieve her gun. Lifting it out of it’s home, she was surprised to find it loaded.

Hitting speed-dial one, she waited a moment and cursed when she heard nothing. A glimpse of her phone let her know that the battery was dead. That seemed odd to her, because she had just charged it that afternoon. She wasn’t going to question it too closely, though. After all, she and technology didn’t always get along.

With a minimum of movements, she stowed her cell in her back pocket and held the gun in front of her.

Slowly she approached the closet again and threw the door open, ready to shoot at the slightest movement.

She found nothing. Well, nothing that didn’t belong. It was simply her supply closet.

Putting the safety back on her gun, she lifted the broom and dustpan from the floor and put them away.

Finished with that task, she felt a shiver run down her spine and goose bumps appear on her flesh.

She turned around to see behind her and gasped.

Once again, all the blood drained from her face and she struggled to get air in her lungs.

“Not happy to see me?” Jimmy Alpha asked, only it wasn’t really Jimmy. This image of him was see-through.

Stephanie was frozen in place by her fear. Eventually she was able to stammer out, “Y-y-yo-you’re dead.”

“Thanks to you,” he answered floating closer.

As he moved closer to her, Stephanie felt the temperature in the room continue to drop. Her eyes widening even further as the specter came closer, she lifted her gun.

Jimmy’s ghost laughed. “Bullets don’t hurt me anymore,” he informed.

Unable to lower the only defense she had, Stephanie kept the gun trained on the ghost. “God, please,” she begged.

The ghost stopped when she said that and threw his head back and laughed. He slowly faded to nothing, but his chilling laughter echoed for several seconds afterward.

Turning toward her front door, she tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge and she remembered it was locked.

It took her only seconds to open the locks, but when she tried to open the door, it wouldn’t budge.

Her breaths were short and shallow now as fear began to overwhelm her. “This can’t be real,” she squeaked. “Think, Steph,” she commanded herself.

She remembered the fire escape and headed in the direction of her bedroom.

As she entered the living room, a scraping sound caught her attention. Turning toward the sound, she lifted her gun again, though her hand was trembling so badly, she was sure she wouldn’t be able to hit anything.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, barely recognizing her own voice.

Female laughter met her ears as the candle she kept on her coffee table suddenly burst into life.

Staring at the candle, Stephanie realized that the scraping noise she had heard was the candle spinning on the table, completely on it’s own.

“Not impressed?” someone asked.

Frantically searching the dark, Stephanie saw no one. “Who’s here?” she demanded.

The female laughter sounded again and an apparition stepped from the shadows in the corner of the room into the circle of candlelight.

“Mama Macaroni,” Stephanie whispered. Her body began shaking once more. Whether it was from the pervasive cold or from fear, she couldn’t tell, but with all her heart she wished she were somewhere else, anywhere else instead of in her living room looking both at and through this woman.

“Yes,” the ghost replied. “A few crocodile tears at my funeral won’t change what you did. I’m here with the others to make sure you get what’s coming to you,”

“O-others?” Stephanie stuttered, stumbling backward toward her bedroom, as far away from the spirit as she could.

“The others,” Mama Macaroni repeated.

From the darkness, other forms began to appear in the light of the candle. Jimmy Alpha was there again, standing beside Benito Ramirez. Fishercat and Cone were standing opposite them. Abruzzi was standing next to Mama Macaroni along with all the other skips, stalkers and Slayers who she had seen dead.

“You are the thing that ties us together,” Mama continued.

“You have become our goal, our game,” Abruzzi added.

“Time to die,” one of the Slayers said.

Stephanie continued to back from the ghosts.

She reached her bedroom door and bumped into something.

She froze in place. She hadn’t run into a door.

“Forget the ghosts,” the voice whispered darkly. “Beware of me!”

Spinning around, Stephanie found herself face to face with Con Stiva.

She screamed aloud as she took in his appearance.

His eyes were the milky color of the dead, his skin was gray and a slit ran across his throat. He was in his orange prison uniform, his prisoner number stamped across it: 278557666.

Stephanie stumbled back a half step as Con reached for her throat.

She screamed again and reached out to fend him off.

Despite the fight she put up, Con’s hands encircled her throat and began to squeeze.

Her world was growing dark as she grabbed for anything she could. She felt the material of the uniform rip beneath her had just as unconsciousness claimed her.

Stephanie sat up with a huge gasp, trembling and shaking.

She quickly reached over and turned on the light, looking around her room.

Everything was just the way it was supposed to be.

When she calmed down enough to get her breathing and heartbeat under control, she listened. The only sound was of Rex running on his wheel.

Leaning against the headboard, she could only thank God it had all been a dream.

Three days ago she had learned that Con Stiva had somehow gotten involved in a fight in the prison yard and ended up with a slit throat. Despite assuring everyone she was all right, she was beginning to think she might need help to get over the guilt.

Throwing off her covers, she moved to get out of bed and get some water, when she noticed she had something clenched in her left hand.

Opening her hand, she found a piece of torn, orange cloth. The same type of cloth they used for prison uniforms. On the cloth, stamped in black was the number 6.

End

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