by Amy Plum
“It’s like the Dreamfall wants to trap us in the nightmares,” George says. “We have no choice about going into it, and then have to struggle to get out.”
“Maybe it’s trying to kill us,” Sinclair says darkly.
“Or test us,” I suggest.
“The only other thing that’s been the same in all of the dreams is that static monster that shows up each time,” Remi states.
“Yeah, what’s that about?” Sinclair asks. “It shows up right before the Wall appears and tries to keep us from going in.”
“Well, if the Dreamfall’s trying to trap us inside the nightmares, maybe the monster is part of it . . . like an extension of it . . . It’s just another thing making it difficult for us to escape,” Fergus says.
“I think I hurt it last time,” George says. “Maybe it won’t be in the next nightmare. Maybe it will die in between.”
“We can only hope,” says Sinclair.
“How about the dreams themselves?” asks Remi. He has a determined gleam in his eye. Like he finally believes some good will come of talking through things. “The last one . . . I mean before the graveyard . . . took place in my town. The Dreamfall must have pulled that from my mind. What about the other dreams?”
There’s another contemplative silence.
“Like I said, the cave is mine,” Fergus says. “Remember, where we smashed my dad’s brains in? And I’ve been thinking . . . the cave itself could be straight out of a Lovecraft story. I’ve been reading a lot of them lately.”
“Horror lit to go along with your love of horror movies?” George asks.
“I never said I love them,” Fergus responds.
“So . . . why?” Sinclair prods.
“Desensitization,” Fergus says, rubbing his tattoo. “Don’t ask.”
Drama queen, Sinclair mouths at me, punctuating it with a wink. Fergus ignores him.
“Whose nightmare is the graveyard?” I ask. “That one’s definitely not mine.”
Everyone else shakes their head. “Besides the generic horror-movie setting, not mine,” Fergus says.
“It seemed different from the others,” I continue. “With the genocide and the cave, we were just trying to run away from scary things, human or . . . not. But what was up with the dead kids and all of those weird objects in the coffin?”
“What objects?” Fergus asks. George studies me with that off-putting tilted-head thing she does.
“The corpses were all kids . . . teenagers . . . and they each had something: a knife, a My Little Pony alarm clock, and that set of keys Sinclair was able to bring back. They were holding them in their hands, like they had been buried with them.”
“You’re talking like they were real people,” Sinclair argues. “They’re just characters in a nightmare. So what if they were holding weird things? It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“Maybe,” Fergus says, “but there’s also the fact that they were all buried together, and their gravestones all had the same poem. Something about a wolf and honey.”
George gets this thoughtful look, directs her gaze toward the sky, and says,
“The traitor spread honey atop pretty lies.
Only the love of his victims he asked.
For deceiving the lamb is the wolf’s cherished prize.
And only in death is the true beast unmasked.”
“Okaaaaay,” says Sinclair, lifting an eyebrow.
“Photographic memory?” I ask.
She nods and shrugs as if it were nothing.
“Wow!” Fergus says, impressed. “So . . . does that remind anyone of anything?”
Another shake of heads.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the next nightmare ‘belongs’ to anybody or if it was just pure chance that one was Remi-specific, and the other belonged to Fergus,” George says.
Sinclair lies back on the floor and folds his fingers together across his stomach. “I’m so tired,” he moans. “Maybe the best way to get ready for the next nightmare is by taking a nap. If I could just imagine myself up a comfortable bed and a mountain of pillows . . .”
George follows his lead, lying back on the ground, stretching her legs out and crossing her Docs. “I could do with some sleep. Feels like days.”
Remi flops back, crossing his hands behind his head. “Sleep? What’s that?”
Fergus and I stretch our legs out and lean back on our elbows. I yawn. “You too?” he asks.
“Yeah, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months . . . I mean, I think it’s been months.”
“It’s been years for me,” he says.
“Years?” I ask skeptically.
He nods, and this supersad look monopolizes his face. I noticed his eyes before, but in this light their jade hue is striking. They seem to be magnified by his jet-black hair. He has a look on his face like he’s trying to decide if he can trust me. He glances at the others, George in particular. Of course, here in the silence of the Void, if he tells me something, everyone will hear it.
“I have narcolepsy,” he whispers to me.
“What did you say?” Remi asks.
Fergus glances over at him and sighs.
“Why don’t we take a walk?” I suggest.
“Where?” Fergus asks with surprise.
“Um,” I say, squinting my eyes, and point to our right. “How about that way?”
He smiles and scrambles to his feet. “Yeah, that way looks good. And it would be nice to walk for once instead of running from something trying to kill us.”
“Where are you going?” Sinclair asks. He seems bothered, either that I’m going somewhere with Fergus, or that he’s not being included.
“Exercise,” I say.
He frowns as we turn and walk away.
George calls, “Don’t go too far. If you get lost here, there’s no way we’ll find each other in the nightmare!”
Fergus sticks his hands in his front pockets and I fold my arms across my chest as we walk, turning every once in a while to make sure the others are still within view.
“I keep hoping that we’ll go through a Wall, and instead of the Void, we’ll come out in the real world,” I say.
“Kind of like in Time Bandits,” Fergus responds. “When they’re in the desert with no end in sight, and they run up against the invisible force field, and one of the little people throws a skull and breaks it, and there’s this whole other world just on the other side?” He’s looking at me like he expects me to recognize what he’s talking about.
“Um . . . maybe?” I say.
“You haven’t seen Time Bandits?” Fergus asks, gobsmacked.
I shake my head.
“Man, that should be the first thing you do when you get out of here,” he says. “Terry Gilliam. Classic.”
I glance back and see that the others have become penny-sized shapes floating in the floorless, horizonless white. “We probably shouldn’t go much farther,” I say. I stretch my hands up above my head and lean far to the left and then to the right, feeling my muscles ache as I do. Fergus rubs his shoulders with his hands and moves his head from side to side.
“Even though we don’t bring injuries from the nightmares into the Void,” I say, “I still feel like I just ran a marathon and climbed Mt. Everest.”
“I know,” Fergus says. “And I’m just as tired as I ever was.”
“Because of your narcolepsy?”
He nods. “Not everyone with narcolepsy suffers from insomnia, but lucky me—I got the whole package.” As he speaks, the circles under his eyes seem to darken.
“I’ve heard of narcolepsy, but I don’t actually know what it means,” I admit. “Is it when you fall asleep without warning?”
“That’s part of it. I’m always really tired. I nod off during the day, and have a hard time sleeping at night. I have these freaky hallucinations while I’m sinking into sleep and waking back up. And I have cataplexy, not low blood sugar. It’s the passing-out thing. Your muscles just
give out and you fall over and can be unconscious . . . or not.”
“That sounds like it sucks,” I say.
“You can’t imagine,” he responds. “I was able to start college this year, but have to live at home. I can’t drive. Can’t go out for sports.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because if I have a cataplectic attack I can hurt myself, or worse, other people.”
He holds out his arms and inspects them. “Looks like my bruises didn’t make it to the Dreamfall. Usually, I’m black and blue from falling into furniture.”
I gasp as I see dark shapes form on his skin. “Look!” I say, pointing.
“Wow!” he says, studying a particularly painful-looking bruise on his forearm. “Okay, that was weird. But yeah, this is what I usually look like.”
“God. I’m sorry,” I say. “Does it happen when you’re really sleepy?”
Fergus shakes his head. “It happens when I have a strong emotion. For most people it’s fear, surprise, or laughter. I’ve been trying to take care of it by desensitizing myself.”
“That’s why you watch horror movies even though you don’t like them!”
“Yeah,” Fergus admits. “That’s worked pretty well. It’s not like I can’t be scared anymore, but I’ve learned how to see pretty gruesome things and keep calm. My own personalized behavioral conditioning routine. But my Achilles’ heel is laughing. I haven’t found anything to work for laughter. Which is why I got this tattoo.”
He holds out his left arm, and I finally get a good look at it. The curving, Gothic script spells out three capital letters: DFF, the letters Sinclair had teased him about.
“What’s it stand for?” I ask.
“‘Don’t Fucking Feel,’” says Fergus with an amused grin.
I burst out laughing. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Still grinning, he shakes his head. “If I feel a strong emotion coming on, laughter or anything else, I have that reminder right in front of me. It has saved my ass on numerous occasions.”
“Whatever works,” I say, smiling at him.
Insomnia . . . and not accepting our situation without a fight: that’s two things we’ve got in common. It makes me feel closer to this tall, handsome boy. Like we’re connected. I feel like hugging him, but don’t want him to take it wrong, so I just squeeze his bicep in a more acceptable you’re-okay kind of gesture.
He returns it, brushing my arm with his fingertips before glancing back at the others. “I can’t tell time using my pulse, but we should probably start back,” he says.
We walk in silence for a moment. “You know what you said about the scary hallucinations you have when you’re falling asleep?”
Fergus nods.
“Well, I have night terrors.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Fergus says. His dark hair flops down as he walks, hiding his big green eyes. “Do the terrors keep you from sleeping?”
I nod. “They don’t help. I don’t sleep too well anyway, but when you know you’re going to have some skinless, bleeding monster chasing you as soon as you close your eyes, you learn not to close them.”
Fergus turns toward me. “I saw that!” he says excitedly. “The first time I saw you. You were being chased by this zombie kind of thing. But much faster than the regular Hollywood zombies.”
“I call him the Flayed Man,” I say, trying not to let the image take form in my mind. “It’s one of the more frequent recurring dreams I’ve had for the last few years.”
“Lucky you,” Fergus says sardonically, dipping his head and looking at me sideways. I must look pretty traumatized, because he throws an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in toward him, giving me a side-hug before releasing me. “I guess that coffin dream probably didn’t help things, with the dead kids and the maggots.”
I shake my head. “I’ve had worse.”
“Worse?” Fergus exclaims. “That’s already pretty bad.”
Not worse than real life, I think, but of course I’m not going to say that to him. He seems like the kind of guy who’s a good listener. And I haven’t talked about those things to anyone except Barbara and my shrink. And the school counselor, of course. But she’s the reason I am where I am. She told someone else. And that set the wheels in motion.
We’re almost back to the others when Fergus says, “Wait. You have night terrors. I have narcolepsy. George and Sinclair and Remi all said something about not sleeping. What if this is the thing?”
“What thing?”
Fergus muses. “What if this has something to do with why we’re all here. It’s the only thing we seem to have in common so far.” He picks up his pace, and we’re practically jogging by the time we get back to the others. They’re all still lying in a semicircle, not talking. They’d be staring at the ceiling if the Void had one. As we approach, they turn to look at us.
“Do all of you have problems sleeping?” Fergus asks excitedly.
After a beat of silence, George says, “What?”
“Sleeping! Do you have sleep disorders? I have narcolepsy. Cata has night terrors. Do you guys have anything like that?”
George admits, “I have insomnia.”
“Night terrors and insomnia,” Remi replies, like they’re items on a shopping list and not tools of torture.
Sinclair looks worried. “Insomnia.”
Fergus turns to look over to where Ant was sitting, but the boy is standing right behind us. “Do you have insomnia, Ant?” Fergus asks him. Ant looks thoughtful and nods. “I don’t sleep much,” he admits.
“We all have insomnia,” Fergus says, holding out his hands as if offering a gift. “That’s got to mean something. It’s got to be a key.”
“Or else the Dreamfall has a sense of humor,” Sinclair says. “None of us can sleep in the real world, but here we’re trapped in a nonstop series of nightmares?”
“Maybe your fictional game players get their thrills from torturing groups of insomniac teenagers,” George says to Sinclair.
Something blooms on the edge of my consciousness. Something about game players and a group of teenagers. It lingers for a second and then, as quickly as it came, disappears.
“Well, we’ll have to figure it out later,” says George. “Because we only have a few minutes until the next night—”
Before she can even finish, the first knock comes. Everyone scrambles to their feet. The air around us seems to dim a little as the blue lines begin glowing off to my right.
We all look at each other, and Ant holds out his hands with an expression of distaste, like it’s offensive to touch another human being. Except for George, I think. And they’re practically joined at the hip.
“Let’s lock arms this time,” George suggests. “It will be harder for the wind to rip us apart.”
Everyone steps in a bit, and one by one we link arms until we’re standing side by side, pressed tightly against one another. The second knock splits the air around us, and the wind picks up, levitating my hair and blowing it into my eyes. I shake my head without letting go of Fergus and Sinclair, and see the door creaking slowly open.
“Hold on tight!” I yell. “We have to stay together this time!”
The wind is blowing so hard it’s hard to stand, and our circle leans and stumbles to one side. And then we tilt so far over that it seems like we’re falling. The wind scoops us up and we are gone.
CHAPTER 20
JAIME
TRIAL SUBJECT FIVE’S NAME IS REMI AMADI. HE’S fifteen years old, and is a political refugee from Matangwe, a former French colony in Africa.
There are photocopies of US government documents showing a passport photo of a scared-looking boy with short-cropped hair. The forms say he entered the US on February 5 and list his sponsor as an aunt who lives in Minnesota and works as a nurse.
There is a case summary from a Minneapolis social worker: “Remi’s village was destroyed last year on Christmas Day by antigovernment rebel forces. His entire family was gunned down i
n front of him in his house. Remi survived by playing dead, and was found pinned under the body of his older brother by an international rescue organization that swept the village the next day. He was relocated to a refugee camp until his aunt came to retrieve him.
“Remi suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, which manifests in night terrors, insomnia, and hyperrealistic flashbacks. He deals with survivor’s syndrome and has expressed crippling guilt for not being able to save his family.”
This is followed by a few pages of notes by the psychiatrist who recommended Remi for Zhu and Vesper’s trial.
I set the file down, thoughts roiling, something nagging at the edge of my consciousness. The lab door swings open and two white-coated nursing assistants enter, rolling a gurney between them. They pause, looking to the doctors for instruction. “She’s over here,” Vesper says, and steps down from the monitoring station to walk over to BethAnn.
Working carefully, the men unzip a body bag laid out on the gurney and transfer her limp body from the bed into the bag, zipping it up around her. They take the copy of the death certificate from Vesper, place it in a clear pouch on the top of the body bag, and give him another document in return, which all three men sign. This little ceremony seems to seal the deal. The nursing assistants are basically giving the doctors a receipt for a corpse.
I glance back at the open file in front of me, and something catches my eye that I hadn’t noticed before. A red stamp at the top of the photocopied government political refugee document spells out in capital letters “GENOCIDE.”
An ice-cold finger runs its way down my spine. That’s what BethAnn was talking about before she died. She said something about Africa, being shot by soldiers, and then she actually used the word genocide. Could that be a coincidence? This boy’s dreams must be replete with men with guns. With genocide.
My thoughts are racing. There is something going on here that is way beyond what Zhu and Vesper assume. I’m sure of it. The secondary symptoms of REM sleep showing up during the fifty-minute cycles. The complete lack of them during the twenty-minute cycles. Are the subjects dreaming?
If so, things are backward: the test was supposed to be twenty minutes REM and fifty NREM. I wonder if the system crash scrambled things somehow. And based on what BethAnn said, I wonder if this glitch could have also created some sort of link between their minds. That sounds way too crazy to be possible. But what hasn’t been crazy about this test so far?