Dreamfall

by Amy Plum

  In a second he’s back where he started, lying full-length on his end of the casket. “Her hand’s in the way,” he says. “The hand with the clock.”

  “Push it back down beside her,” I instruct.

  “I can’t,” he says. “I don’t want to touch her again.”

  “You’re about to freaking squish her with your body—what difference does it make if you touch her hand?” says Sinclair, exasperated.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll do it myself, if I can reach.” But when I try to push her hand back toward Remi, the clock’s thin, pointed legs catch in the knitted fabric of the girl’s shroud. I push a little harder, and her hand rebounds and springs forward, tilting the clock face against her chest and extinguishing the little light we had.

  Remi sucks in his breath in response to the darkness.

  I shuffle to my side and use both hands to try to wedge the clock out of the girl’s grasp, pulling on her fingers until I feel one snap. I freeze.

  “What was that sound?” Remi asks.

  “I-I think . . .” I stammer, “. . . I think I broke her finger.”

  “Break all her fucking fingers and get the clock away from her so we can see!” Sinclair growls.

  I realize with a chill that that’s exactly what I have to do. The more I struggle with her corpse, the more her body tightens. There’s no other way.

  Fighting a fresh wave of revulsion, I get a good grip on the clock with my right hand, and with my left I pull another finger back. It doesn’t take much pressure for her brittle bone to snap. It makes a hollow sound that drowns out the ticking of the clock for one horrific second. I shudder violently and try not to gag. I hear Remi whimper, and then start whispering something. “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .” He’s praying in the darkness.

  Yeah, well, I don’t have a god to pray to. Not anymore. But I have my cabin in the woods.

  It’s my safe place. The one Dr. C had me create. I’ve never actually laid eyes on more than an inch of snow in my life, but this is what popped into my mind when he told me to think of somewhere safe.

  I’m inside a cozy one-room cabin hidden in the snowy woods. I’m stretched out on a couch, wrapped up in furs, and there’s a roaring fire in a fireplace. The snow outside the windows is thick, and there is no visible path leading to civilization. No one can get to me. I feel my heart slow from a fast, painful thump to a slow regular beat. The fire crackles and warms my skin. I feel my breathing shift from panicked to even.

  As I feel the horror rise inside me, I shove it back down with thoughts of the crackling fire and soft furs. I try to focus on the white snow outside the windows instead of the fact that my lungs are absorbing airborne molecules of decaying children. I take a third finger and pull it back with all my force, ignoring the snap and going immediately for another.

  And then I’m holding the clock and can see again. The girl’s mouth has fallen wide open. It looks like she’s silently screaming. As I’m seized by a blinding white fear, I feel something happen in my head. Like my brain is disconnecting and my body getting lighter, and I realize that if I don’t focus I’m going to dissociate. There’s a difference in thinking about the cabin in the woods in order to calm down and actually going there. And although it would be the nicest thing in the world to let my brain escape what my body cannot, I remind myself that this is not the time.

  I breathe in deeply, and the putrid air brings me back to myself in an instant. “Hold this,” I say, shoving the clock at Sinclair. He sets it on his chest, facing me, illuminating the space with its glowing green aura.

  I turn and, reaching over the girl, wrench her arm back down to her left side. “Now!” I say to Remi, and he swings his feet up above the girl’s and pushes them against the bottom of the casket as he wriggles his way up on top of her. His body is wedged between hers and the casket lid. “Keep going until you’re on the other side of me,” I say. As soon as he lifts himself off her, I begin shoving the girl sideways with my shoulder and hip, fitting her into the space Remi just vacated. As he shuffles over me, his elbow jabs me hard in my gut, and I gasp for air.

  “Sorry!” he says.

  “Just go,” I pant, and use all my weight to shove left. I don’t even look at what I’m doing to the body beside me, I just free up as much room as I can until Remi tumbles into the space I’ve made on my right.

  We both lie there panting. Now that I’m done with the girl, I try to pretend she’s not there. That there’s nothing to my left . . . just empty casket.

  “Well, that’s one down. Two to go,” Sinclair comments darkly.

  “Your turn to do some of the work,” I huff. “Remi, do the same thing as before. Crawl first over the dead boy to your right and then over Sinclair. While you do, Sinclair will push the dead boy toward me.”

  “Why do I have to move?” Sinclair asks. “Can’t Remi push the kid over by himself?”

  “The girl was heavy,” I reply. “Remi’s like half your size. You and I can do the grunt work.” Sinclair mumbles, but shifts his feet and arms in preparation.

  Remi gets into position, reaches over the boy to begin shuffling backward over him, and freezes. “What’s this?” he asks. “This was lying on his stomach!” In the shallow space above us, he grasps a hunting knife in his fingers. The green clock light glows off the sinister blade.

  A gasp of surprise escapes Sinclair’s lips.

  “What’s wrong, Sinclair?” I ask.

  “First a My Little Pony clock and now a slasher-film bowie knife?” he says, recovering his cool a little too late. His reaction to the knife seemed excessive compared to how he’s been handling the rest of this gory scene. A little seed of doubt plants itself inside my mind . . . Could this dream be his, and he’s pretending he hasn’t seen it before?

  “This has got to be the weirdest dream in the history of nightmares,” he explained. “I wonder what this one’s got.” There’s a sound of scuffling. I lift my head to see him patting down the corpse on the far end of the coffin. There is a jingling noise, and he holds something up for us to see. “Keys. This one’s holding keys.”

  “What does it mean?” Remi asks.

  “We don’t have time to think about it,” I say. “Sinclair, push the one on your right up onto its side and against the end of the coffin. That gives us a few more inches of space. Remi, give him the knife to set on top of the end corpse. We might be able to use it to wedge the coffin open farther. Keep the keys, Sinclair. Who knows what they’re for.”

  I hear the keys clink as Sinclair shoves them into his pocket, and then the shuffling sound of him shoving the last corpse as far over as he can.

  “Okay, Remi. Go. Get over Sinclair, and wedge yourself next to the last corpse,” I say. There are a claustrophobic few minutes or so of grunting and shoving before everyone is in place.

  “Done,” Remi says.

  “Okay, Sinclair,” I say. “I’m going to crawl on top of this boy and over you. Once I’m on top of you, try to shove him over next to the dead girl, and I’ll roll into place between you and Remi. Ready?”

  Sinclair looks uncertain, but nods. I take in a lungful of toxic air, and, holding it in, inch my feet to the top of the coffin and try to shift my body backward up on top of the boy. I know immediately that it’s not going to work. My butt is wedged against the boy’s hips and my hands are trapped on either side of him. I quickly shift back into my previous space.

  “I’m going to try it on my front.” I say the words trying not to think about what they mean.

  Summoning all of my strength, I roll up onto my side and then forward up onto the boy, reaching over him to grab Sinclair’s hand. Sinclair pulls my arm as I shuffle over the body. My knees knock hard against the leg bones as I arch myself up, trying not to touch anything else.

  Sinclair pries one hand between me and the boy and, grabbing me by the waist, attempts to pull me onto him. I squeeze my eyes shut as my head passes over the dead boy’s face, scrambling with superhuman str
ength over the putrid corpse. But I open them too soon, and instead of looking at Sinclair, I am staring into the dead boy’s empty eye sockets. Which are teeming with maggots.

  I can’t help myself. I’m no longer in control. I scream, loud and long, flailing as I try to get away, and my panicked movements pitch me forward, flat onto the boy. For one claustrophobic moment, I am stuck. My cheek is wedged against the dead boy’s rotting flesh, which squishes wetly next to my ear. I want to scream, but feel something slither against the edge of my mouth, and press my lips tightly shut.

  My heart stops. My brain turns off. I feel my body being pulled onto Sinclair, who is shoving the boy corpse away from us with all his might. With a roar, he gives the body one last shove. Remi’s hands tug at the back of my shirt, rolling me limply into the space between him and Sinclair, as Sinclair shuffles far enough to his left for me to land on the cushioned base of the coffin.

  “Are you okay?” Remi asks me.

  But my lips won’t move. My eyes stare blindly at the top of the coffin as the form of a man begins to materialize against the purple silk. In slow motion, he folds a leather razor belt in two between his hands, and then snaps it loudly.

  “We’ll have to push without her.” Sinclair’s words barely register in my mind as my father’s shape looms over me. “One, two . . . push!” I hear from worlds away, and then they’ve disappeared and I’m alone with my dad.

  He snaps the belt one more time, and then lets go of one end and rears back with one arm. “I’m going to break that stubborn will of yours, Catalina. And this time, I’m not stopping until I see you cry.”

  CHAPTER 17

  FERGUS

  I AM SITTING IN THE CORNER OF A ROOM, LOOKING at five long rectangles of light shining through the wall in front of me. Against my back is cold, hard stone. I wrap my arms around my knees for warmth. This place is freezing.

  As my eyes adjust to the darkness, the light columns transform into a window divided by vertical iron bars. Outside, I see dead tree branches and the sliver of a moon. Between me and the window is a large hunk of stone . . . what looks like an enormous gray box, so old it’s crumbling at the edges.

  The place smells musty, and thick cobwebs stretch like translucent curtains from the corners of the ceilings to the leaf-strewn floor below. It looks like an over-the-top set for a low-budget vampire movie, I think as I scramble to my feet. The little square room is a mausoleum, and the box in the middle is an enormous granite tomb that takes up most of the space.

  “Fergus!” I hear George’s voice and look over to see her huddled with Ant in the far corner. Ant’s head is down on his knees, two fingers on one wrist—taking his pulse, I suppose—and George has her arm around him.

  I scoot past the sarcophagus toward them, pausing to take a long glance out the window. “Are you guys okay? Where are the others?”

  Without looking up, Ant says mournfully, “I let go of Remi.” He taps the ground four times, and then wraps his arms around his knees and peers out at me from beneath the knit chullo with wide, scared eyes.

  “Where are we?” George asks.

  “In a graveyard. Or, more specifically, in a mausoleum in a graveyard.” I offer her my hand to help her up.

  She looks at it for a second, like she’s considering whether or not to accept my help. Her eyes flick up to mine, narrow, and she tilts her head to one side. I have never felt so analyzed . . . so judged . . . in my life. But apparently I pass muster, because she sighs and, grabbing my hand firmly in hers, drags herself up, bringing Ant with her.

  “What’s outside?” she asks, brushing dead leaves off her legs. She’s wearing the same punk-looking plaid miniskirt and black band T-shirt she was the first time I saw her, but something’s different. I can’t quite place a finger on it, but don’t want to stare and risk drawing her wrath.

  “Creepy old trees. Moonlight. Crumbling graves. You know, the usual.” I try to sound flippant. Brave. “Looks like a mash-up of Carrie and Return of the Living Dead with a touch of Pet Sematary.”

  “Wow, sounds like you really know your classic horror films,” George says.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen pretty much every one ever made. Multiple times,” I admit.

  “I don’t like scary movies,” Ant says, watching me with mistrust.

  “I never said I liked them.”

  George laughs. “You are a strange boy, Fergus . . . whoever you are.”

  “Tights,” I respond.

  “Fergus Tights?” George says, arching an eyebrow.

  “No, your tights. They were like a neon yellow before. Now they’re purple.”

  She looks down at her legs, at Ant, then back at me, and shrugs. “Well, purple is my favorite color. And, by the way . . . someone’s tights are probably not the first thing I would notice if I found myself standing next to a sarcophagus.”

  She presses her lips together in a teasing smile, her eyes sparkling with repressed humor. The way she said it—the way she says everything, with that bone-dry humor—makes me want to laugh.

  Oh no, not again. I repress it . . . twist the funny out of it as I press hard on my tattoo. I clear my throat and the feeling of hilarity is fortunately gone.

  George loses her smile and looks curiously at my arm. “I know you didn’t want to tell Sinclair about it. But I’m curious . . . what’s with the ink?”

  I shrug, not wanting to get into it. “What’s with yours?” I ask, looking at the minimalist yin-yang tattoo on her wrist.

  “Symbolic,” she says mysteriously. “Someone else chose it for me.”

  A boyfriend, I think. Of course she has a boyfriend. How could she not? “Let’s get out of here and find the others,” I say.

  The barred window is set in the upper half of an ancient iron door. Its glass, presumably meant to keep out the elements, has failed at its mission, and is letting in a stream of cold night air through a broken section in the top right corner. I try the creaking doorknob, twisting it carefully back and forth before putting more muscle into it. “It’s jammed,” I conclude.

  “Or locked,” George suggests. She clears away the cobwebs inside the door frame and presses her head into the corner of the lintel to peer sideways out the window. “There’s a key in the lock outside.” She looks down at her hand, and then at Ant’s. “Ant’s arm is small enough to fit through the bars if we can break the glass near the doorknob.”

  My hands automatically go to my pockets to see if I’ve got anything we can use, but they’re empty.

  George watches me with that intense stare of hers. She’s giving me a kind of sideways smile. The kind my old girlfriend used to give me before making some comment like Oh, Fergus, you’re so adorable. Which she never actually meant as a compliment. It was more to say, You’re a bumbling idiot but I like you anyway. I feel my face redden.

  George’s smile widens a fraction, but she has mercy and sweeps her gaze away from me and across the room. “God, this place is empty. The Dreamfall doesn’t exactly equip one for surviving its nightmares.”

  “No,” I agree. I run my hand through my hair and peer around the space. “Not much here to break glass with.”

  “How about this?” George moves to the head of the sarcophagus, which is crowned with a marble cross the size of one of my dad’s prized golfing trophies. She pulls on it with both hands, but it doesn’t budge.

  “You can’t break that off!” I say, surprising myself by the dismay in my voice.

  “Why not?” she asks. “Are you religious or something?”

  “No. I mean, my mom’s Hindu. But it’s got to be really bad karma to . . . what . . . defile a religious object?”

  “The cross is a man-made symbol of a concept representing security in the afterlife for one of several rival world religions,” George says. “If a god exists out there, I don’t think she’ll mind.” And backing up, she performs this perfect jujitsu swing kick, her Doc Marten breaking the cross cleanly off at its stem and toppling it to the floor.

>   My jaw drops. I stare in a mixture of disbelief and awe.

  She smiles at me, bemused. “You’re catching flies,” she comments, tapping my chin lightly with her finger, before bending over to scoop up the granite cross.

  Within minutes, we’ve broken the glass out of the entire left section of the window. I’ve cleaned the splinters away from the sill with the bunched-up edge of my T-shirt, so Ant won’t cut himself. He easily sticks his hand through and pulls the key out of the lock and back through the window.

  With a bit of effort, it turns in the lock, and we are outside, standing on a hill overlooking a graveyard that stretches so far in every direction that we can’t see an end to the jumbled, misaligned rows of stones. Besides the swaying of the dead clawlike branches of centuries-old trees blown by bone-chilling gusts of wind, nothing moves among the graves. Although the moon shines large and cold, it isn’t dark yet. Just gray and dismal-looking, like it’s going to rain, but there are no clouds in the sky.

  “Where do you think the others are?” I ask, raising my voice to be heard above the wind, which picks up and begins to howl.

  “How far apart have we been when we landed in the nightmares the last couple of times?” George asks. Her hair whips around her face, and she brushes it out of her mouth.

  “In the Cave, we were one room over from you. Not far,” I say.

  “In Remi’s village, Sinclair was the farthest, and that was about eight of those village blocks away,” George reflects.

  “They can’t be that far, since we were standing pretty close in the Void before Ant let go.” He flinches at my words and frowns at me. “Hey, it’s okay. You didn’t mean to,” I add. He just looks down at his shoes.

  “There are three paths leading down the hill. Why don’t we split up and each take a path to see if we spot anything?” I suggest.

  “Out of the question,” Ant says, looking terrified.

  George glances at him, and then lifts her eyebrows at me as if apologizing. “How about Ant and I go together? You can take another path. It’s probably wise to keep in view of each other.”