Dreamfall

by Amy Plum

  I want to throw up, but it’s not because of the gore. It’s because I have this totally irrational feeling that we just bashed in my father’s head.

  What is wrong with me? That wasn’t my father. It was a freaky blue monster. A monster that was trying to kill us.

  You’re always having dreams about your dad trying to kill you. The thought zigzags through my brain like a lightning bolt. Dream. This is your dream. And you’ve been here before.

  “Is it dead?” BethAnn calls. Now that her moment of glory is over, she’s cowering a few feet away, hands clenched into fists.

  “Looks dead, but who knows,” I respond, trying to keep my voice calm. “We have to get out of here.”

  The brown-haired girl stands there, zoned out, staring at the monster.

  “Are you okay, Cata?” yells BethAnn. “Did it hurt you?”

  The girl, Cata, shakes her head like she’s coming out of a daze. “I’m okay.” She looks at BethAnn, and then at me, her blank expression melting into a scowl. “Why did you tell me to wait? I had it!”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Something felt . . . wrong.” I don’t want to tell them we’re in my dream. It sounds too crazy. And besides, even though I know I’ve been here before, I have no idea what could happen next.

  She shoots me the stink-eye, then turns back to BethAnn. “Thanks for saving me.”

  “No one’s safe yet,” I cut in. “We have to move.”

  “Where?” BethAnn asks, looking around like she expects to see an exit sign hanging on the wall.

  “Looks like there are two ways out,” I say, pointing to the tunnels on either side of the room.

  “You mean get back in the water?” BethAnn asks, horrified.

  Cata forgets that she’s pissed with me and looks out doubtfully over the lake. “I guess it’s either that or just wait here and see what else comes out of the slime.”

  “There might not be any more of those things,” BethAnn says. “And if there are, we can defend ourselves better on dry land than swimming in that . . . stuff.”

  Cata looks back down at the dead monster and shakes her head. “We have to get out.”

  “Maybe we should just stay here, where it’s safe,” BethAnn insists.

  The words are barely out of her mouth when it seems like the entire ceiling detaches and swoops down upon us in a suffocating cloud of wings and claws.

  “Bats!” Cata screams, and crouches over, swatting them out of her hair.

  She’s only partially right. The body and wings are those of bats, but the heads look exactly like the creature we just killed. Flying monsters with my dad’s eyes. What. The. Fuck. I definitely don’t remember ever seeing this before. There are dozens of them swarming all over me, scratching my face and my arms with their claws. My dad whispers, “You choose to remain a prisoner of your own mind.”

  “Get out of my head!” I growl back, then turn, yelling, “Into the lake!”

  I can’t even see the girls, the cloud of bats is so thick, but as I make a run for the lake and plunge into its nasty slime, I hear two splashes behind me, one after the other. I dive under the surface, squeezing my eyes shut, and swim a few strokes through the phlegmy liquid before coming up for air. I wipe the goo from my eyes and look around. The girls are right behind me, swimming with panicked strokes away from the bat creatures, who have landed on the shelf, having given up the chase as soon as we entered the water.

  “Which way do we go?” asks Cata, holding her head above the slime, though her hair is drenched in it.

  A bone-chilling animal shriek comes from the tunnel farthest from us. “Away from that!” I respond, turning to head for the closest tunnel. We swim toward its opening like our lives depend on it. Which, all things considered, they probably do.

  As we near the passageway out of the cavern, I look back to the far side of the room where the noise came from. Something is taking form inside that tunnel entrance, and even though it’s practically a football field away, I can tell what it is: an army of the blue lake creatures, heads bobbing horrifically above the surface of the slime as they enter the room.

  “Swim faster,” I yell. “We’re almost out of here.”

  The lake has risen by the time we reach the tunnel, the slime lapping against the underside of the arch. “We’ll have to dive under to the other side!” Cata yells.

  “How long is the tunnel? Can we swim that far without air?” BethAnn gasps from beside me.

  A chorus of shrieks come from behind us. Closer.

  “No choice,” I say.

  She meets my eyes, and her own look deranged with fear.

  “We’ll do it together,” I say, looking over at Cata.

  She nods her agreement. “On the count of three,” she says. “One . . . two . . .”

  I inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the putrid air. Then, grabbing BethAnn’s hand, I dive, swimming blindly, eyes squeezed shut, for what seems like an eternity. I feel her hand tugging mine, and we surface, only to find ourselves trapped in the top of the archway, only a few inches of air between us and the curved stone. “Breathe in!” I gasp. “We’re almost there.” I hear her sputtering and gasping beside me, before she squeezes my hand and we submerge once more. I wonder if Cata has made it to the other side, and then wonder what we’ll do if she hasn’t. My lungs are burning from the lack of oxygen when BethAnn pulls on my hand once again, and we surface, sputtering and wheezing and spitting the nasty liquid from our mouths and wiping it from our eyes. We’re in another room, larger than the one we started in.

  To our right, Cata surfaces, flailing as she slaps her hands on the surface of the lake, testing to make sure she’s out of the tunnel, before wiping her eyes and looking around. “We made it,” she gasps, treading hard to stay afloat.

  I peer through the low light around the room. On another rock shelf, not far away, are four people—human people—staring at us like they can’t believe their eyes. At their feet lie two dead monsters, identical to the one we killed.

  “Help us!” BethAnn yells. “There are more of those things coming!”

  A cawlike cry comes from the tunnel behind us. I swim as fast as I can, fear propelling me forward until I am close to shore and the people step down into the liquid to help drag me and the girls out. One of their group—a small boy wearing a knit hat—is sprawled on the ground with blood oozing out of a huge bite mark on his leg.

  I’m wiping the foul slime out of my eyes when I turn and see the first of the grotesque heads emerge from our side of the tunnel.

  “Here they come,” says Cata.

  Then, as we watch, something appears between the monsters and us. It looks vaguely human, but it’s flickering in and out like static on an old TV screen. And it’s walking on the surface of the water. Toward us.

  BethAnn gives this kind of half shriek, half scream, and then from all around us comes a booming noise, like someone banging on a giant door. Everyone stares at one another, frozen in confusion.

  Another bang comes, and this time I know what it is. It’s the noise I heard right before I left the dark place and was plunged into the slimy lake.

  A third knock comes, and a black wall opens beside us, stretching far above and below the limits of the cave. A wind whips around us, dislodging dirt from the cave floor and lifting it into a swirling cloud of dust.

  As another shriek comes from the water we run full speed toward the darkness, two of the kids scooping up the hurt boy and dragging him between them.

  As we plunge through the wall, the cave disappears, the wind stops, and we are back in the silent blackness where we started.

  CHAPTER 8

  JAIME

  IT SEEMS LIKE THE RESEARCHERS ARE STALLING. They record everything that happened in meticulous detail, talking into their microphones and typing furiously on their laptops. I suspect it’s not just for the sake of faithful record-keeping, but because they’re dreading what comes next: telling the parents—and the rest of the world—what h
appened.

  They haven’t asked me to leave yet, so I’m guessing they hope that this can still turn around, that the sleepers will awake on their own.

  I do my best to stay inconspicuous in case they’ve actually just forgotten that I’m here. It would probably be the right thing, under the circumstances, for me to offer to leave. But I want to see what happens.

  My eyes flick up to the monitor, where seven bodies lie motionless on their beds. Seven lives have been affected—possibly permanently—by a fluke of nature. Who are these kids? What kind of problems do they have that would prompt them—and their parents—to agree to such a risky experiment?

  Glancing back to make sure the researchers are still absorbed in their work, I flip through my binder, turning pages as quietly as I can, until I get to the section with the subject files. It takes up half the binder. I might not get the time to read all the way through, but I’m suddenly desperate to attach real lives to the anonymous people lying below me. A strange emotion thrumming in my chest, I turn the page and start with trial subject one.

  Her name is Catalina Cordova. She’s sixteen. Her official diagnosis is post-traumatic stress disorder. There are a few pages of background history written by a psychiatrist. I skim through them, picking up phrases like “abusive father,” “domestic violence,” “death of mother,” “petition filed for emancipation of minor.” I find a section entitled “legal guardian.” It states that Catalina was made a ward of the state eight months ago and is living with a friend of her late mother’s.

  The last paragraph summarizes why she’s here. “Night terrors, resulting in chronic insomnia. Medication and counseling have failed to ameliorate her condition. A more radical therapy is suggested in order to avoid debilitating mental breakdown and permit possible future participation in a regular school situation instead of continuing her current homeschooled status.”

  I glance up at my screen at the window labeled “1” and look at the girl. Dark hair. Tall. Pretty, or at least as she appears so in black and white on a pixelated screen. Whatever she experienced in her past must have been bad if she was willing to go through all this in order to sleep.

  Although my dad died when I was twelve, I still had a reasonably good childhood. I mean, it hasn’t always been easy, but the mild bullying I had to put up with is nothing compared to violence at home. To having the person who is supposed to protect you turn out to be the one who hurts you.

  I flip back to the first page, preparing to read her psychiatrist’s notes from beginning to end, when something happens on the researchers’ monitors. The feedback has been showing stable (meaning no) activity. Now it’s kicking into high gear.

  “Eye movement and heart rates are spiking,” Vesper says.

  Zhu leaps up to stand behind him, leaning forward to inspect his monitor. She points to a window with rows of numbers scrolling down it. “Sensors show a decrease in skeletal muscle tension.”

  The two doctors watch the readouts, breathless. “It looks like they’re dreaming,” Zhu says, “but that’s impossible—their brain activity is primarily delta.” After another moment of staring at Vesper’s screen, she turns and walks down the stairs to the sleepers. “It doesn’t make sense.” She picks up one of their limp hands and taps it softly with her fingertips. “What are their bodies reacting to? They’re comatose.”

  “I see some low-level theta waves,” Vesper says, leaning forward and tracing the screen with his finger. “They could be dreaming.”

  “No way are they dreaming,” Zhu retorts, clenching her hands behind her back as she leans in to inspect the screens embedded in the Tower. “Their bodies could still be responding to the abrupt interruption in electric flow. They were left without electrical current for seven seconds before it kicked back in. Anything could have happened inside their minds. There’s no way we can know.”

  Vesper swivels his chair to look at her. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Qiuyue, we can’t just wait around for them to wake up on their own. We have to do something.”

  Zhu suddenly remembers that I’m there. “Jaime, I have no idea what is going to happen today. If you want, you can leave.”

  Although I felt like getting the hell out of here earlier, there’s no way I want to go now. This isn’t my experiment: I won’t get any credit or blame. But I was here when it started, I was here when catastrophe struck, and I want to see it through to the end, whatever that turns out to be.

  And even though I don’t know these kids from Adam, if the rest of their stories are anything like subject one—Catalina’s—I want them to have a second chance at a normal life. I chose medicine to help people. Not to abandon them when things look hopeless.

  “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to stay,” I say as evenly as I can. “If there’s nothing I can help you with, I’m happy to observe. I’m supposed to do at least six hours of field experience. This should count, even if you don’t get the outcome you were expecting.”

  A look of despair passes between the two researchers. This is far from the outcome they were expecting. Zhu raises an eyebrow in question, and Vesper nods. She looks back at me. “You can stay while we are waiting for conditions to change. But if we have to call the paramedics again—if we get into a lifesaving situation—you will need to leave.”

  “I understand,” I say. “Thank you.” I try to disappear again, hunching over my workstation and pretending to immerse myself in the test file.

  Zhu and Vesper start discussing different experts they can consult. Vesper pulls out a cell phone and makes a call. He begins explaining the situation to someone he calls “Murphy.”

  Zhu lets him talk a long time before interrupting him. She points to her screen. “Look. Eye, heart, and muscle activity have all lowered and returned to normal. We’re back to where we were fifty minutes ago.”

  “Besides subject seven,” Vesper adds. “He’s staying at the heightened feedback.”

  Zhu shakes her head in futility. Vesper closes his eyes and sighs, then continues his conversation with Murphy, reading him statistics from his screen. He hangs up and says, “Murphy says he would pull the plug on the test. Move them all to their own rooms in the ICU.”

  Zhu is indignant. “What? He would move them? Why? They’re fine here. It’s better if we can keep an eye on all of them together. I am not giving up on these kids. Or on this test. I still think this can turn around, even if it means taking unforeseen action.”

  “What kind of unforeseen action?” Vesper asks.

  “Repeating the electrical pulses, but at a higher level,” she responds, blank-faced.

  “Do you know what you’re suggesting?” Vesper asks in disbelief. “Basically shocking their brains out of a coma? You can’t just jump-start a brain like you can a heart. We’re not working with a defibrillator here. We’re working with an electric current that could easily give seven teenagers permanent brain damage if we do it wrong.”

  “Or they could remain in comas if we don’t do anything,” Zhu responds. She hesitates. “There are precedents.”

  “On animals,” Vesper says crisply. He pulls a Kleenex out of his pocket and mops off his face—he’s sweating profusely even though it’s chilly in here. He peers at the clock on his desk. “We’ve given it enough time. We have to tell Mike.”

  Zhu sighs and throws a glance behind her at the subjects, as if hoping their condition changed in the last few minutes. Shoulders slumping, she picks up the telephone. “Jonathan, it’s Dr. Zhu. Please put me through to Mr. Osterman’s office.” She waits for a moment and then says, “Mike, we’ve got a crisis on our hands.”

  CHAPTER 9

  CATA

  IT’S LIKE IT WAS BEFORE. I’M STANDING IN PITCH-BLACKNESS. But it’s different from mere blackness—it is the absence of light, sound, feeling, any sensation at all. I’m completely alone in the dark, my heart beating a million miles an hour, my breath ragged, pressure making my head feel like it’s a balloon that’s about to explode.<
br />
  Now that I’m out of the cave, I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the horror of it. The slime, the pain, the hideous blue creature lying at my feet with its brains bashed in. Panic and nausea come in waves, crippling me, bending me over as I lock my arms across my middle. My body wants to throw up, but nothing comes out as I crouch down and heave over and over, my stomach cramping worse each time.

  The nausea finally subsides, and I sit down, leaning forward, my head in my hands. Where am I? I feel like crying, but I stopped doing that years ago and don’t even remember how.

  And then I hear something. The same rhythmic tapping I heard the first time I was here. Four taps. A pause, and then four taps again. My heart shoots to my throat. Is it one of the blue creatures? Or what about that thing at the end, walking on water and flickering like a dying candle? Could it have followed me through the black hole into the darkness? Or does this place have its own monsters?

  I sit motionless, too petrified to move, until finally I can’t stand the silence any longer. “Is anyone else here?” My voice comes out all wobbly with fear.

  There is one silent second. From a ways away, a voice sounding a hundred percent human says, “Yes.”

  And then, coming from closer, is a voice I recognize. “Cata, is that you?” It’s the boy from the cave. Fergus.

  “Yes, it’s me,” I respond, scrambling to my feet and groping, hands held up in front of me, toward his voice.

  “Over here,” he says. I reach forward and grab an arm. We fumble around until I’m clenching his hand in one of mine and clamping his arm in a death grip with the other. Just having that contact, that support, makes me dizzy with relief.

  “Are you okay?” His voice is low. Calm.

  “I think so,” I whisper back.

  “I wish there were light,” says a small voice, and as soon as the words are spoken, the place is flooded with light. It’s not blinding, but I shade my eyes while they adjust. The pervasive glow illuminates the space we’re standing in—a space with no visible ceiling or walls, or even shadows. Just a sort of blank whiteness as far as I can see. Fergus stands beside me, and now that we are visible we drop hands.