by Amy Plum
I have to know more, but don’t even know where to start. Vesper definitely isn’t going to listen to me. But maybe if I dig up something else. Maybe if there is another event that makes them doubt their everyone’s-in-a-coma theory. Maybe I can actually do something that could help.
Glancing over at the researchers to make sure they’re not watching, I log into my Gmail and send a message to a friend who’s studying IT at Yale. He’s practically a celebrity in the hacker world. He’s even done stuff for Anonymous. Hal, I need something urgently. Will pay you in game tickets, whiskey . . . whatever I can snag from friends. Could you give me anything you can on these names . . . especially this one with a locked police file?
CHAPTER 21
FERGUS
SOMETHING IS TUGGING ON MY ARM. AS MY vision focuses, my eyes adapt to the dim light of what looks like an empty cathedral. The place is huge. Like Notre Dame huge. Not that I’ve ever been to France, but when you see pictures of people standing in it, they look like ants inside a giant’s house.
Cata has my right arm linked through hers. Ant has clamped on to my left, determined not to make the same mistake he did last time. Remi is on his other side, eyes screwed tightly shut. George is distractedly trying to extricate herself from Remi and Sinclair as she gawks upward at the domed ceiling. Sinclair peers around, squinting to see in the dark space. But Cata’s expression is different from the others. Eyes wide, she focuses on the far end of the church. There, an altar is lit by an aura of light that seems to radiate from behind it, backlighting two enormous bouquets of dark flowers, one on either side.
“What’s wrong, Cata?” My voice comes out in a whisper.
“Mine,” she says in a soft voice. “This dream’s mine.”
“Is it bad?” George asks.
“The worst.”
For the first time, George looks worried. This place is pretty spooky. She sees me watching her. “I don’t like churches,” she says.
“I don’t like this church,” Remi says. Now that he’s opened his eyes, they’re traveling over every inch of the space, mapping out our new prison, probably strategizing for our survival.
“What’s under the purple sheets?” Ant asks in a hushed tone.
Carved into the walls are alcoves furnished with what must be statues hidden under purple satin veils. Opening off of the enormous room we’re standing in are smaller side chapels, each with its own altar and statues posed around it, all hung in shiny purple.
“My family’s church did that during Lent,” Cata explains. “They veil all of the religious objects three weeks before Easter, then on Easter Sunday the coverings are pulled off.”
“Like symbolizing they were dead and then come back to life again?” George asks.
“Happy Zombie Jesus Day,” mumbles Sinclair, and I flinch.
I guess I’m extrasensitive about mocking other people’s religions. It hasn’t been easy growing up in a wealthy all-white East Coast town with a Hindu mom from Delhi. Dad’s pasty-white-bad-caricature-of-a-Scotsman appearance blended with my mom’s striking looks to make me kind of a boring blend of the two. Which means I was never picked on until my narcolepsy got severe. But whenever Mom came to a school activity, I heard people whisper dot-head and a few even asked me if she worshipped Buddha. Idiots.
Sinclair notices my reaction. “What? Some ancient guy is dead for three days before busting out of his tomb and scaring the shit out of the soldiers guarding him? Bet he ate their brains, and the Bible just skipped that part.”
A jovial smile spreads across his face, but seeing the lack of reaction from Cata, he nears her and puts an arm around her shoulders. “What did I say?” he asks, flashing this totally fake look of sincerity. How can he even think she would fall for that?
“You are such a numskull,” George says, glaring at him. “Can’t you see this is important to Cata?”
Cata shakes her head. “It was important to me. It isn’t anymore. Although it’s hard to completely forget about it when you’ve had it shoved down your throat since the day you were born.”
“Why are we here?” Remi asks. “What’s going to happen?”
“It always starts quiet like this,” Cata responds. Her eyes flit from the eerily lit altar at the front to one of the darkened chapels to our right. She shudders. “But the statues will eventually come alive. And then there are the monks with the glowing red eyes.”
Sinclair lets out a muffled laugh. “Now, that’s original.” He shakes his head. “Hey, Fergus. How many of those horror films you’ve watched had monks with glowing red eyes?”
“None,” I say slowly, and raise a quivering finger to point past his left shoulder. “At least nothing like the one standing behind you.”
“What the . . .” Sinclair yells as he spins.
George giggles as Sinclair turns back toward me with a sour look. “Ha-ha.”
Sinclair is like one of those kids who tries to be jokey with everyone—wants everyone to like them—but never quite gets it right because you can tell it’s not sincere. I can’t stand that kind of thing. And I can’t help showing it.
“The monks are downstairs in the crypt,” Cata says, bringing us back to the point.
“Then we’ll just be sure to stay out of the crypt.” I try my best to sound unruffled by the idea of evil monks in a place of the dead.
Cata shakes her head. “The crypt is the only way to get away from the statues. The cathedral doors are always sealed tight. And I’ve never found another way out.”
“Have you ever actually escaped?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I’m always running or hiding in this dream. First from the statues and then from the monks. But I always wake up before they get me.”
“I doubt we’ll have that option this time,” George says. “We have to survive for fifty minutes to get back into the Void.”
“Forty-nine now,” Ant says.
“Okay, this is the first time in the nightmares where we’ve known what’s coming,” I say. “Maybe we can actually prepare.”
“How?” asks Cata.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking around. “We could try to find some weapons.”
Everyone begins to explore. Unlike in the cave, the place is crowded with objects of all sorts. Heavy candlesticks, large metal crosses, and vases of flowers cover every possible surface, but of course there are no actual weapons. “Just grab anything heavy,” I suggest.
“I never tried to fight them off before,” Cata says.
“Yeah, but you’ve always been by yourself, right?” I ask. “This time there are six of us.”
She looks uncertain.
I walk three steps away, pick up a skinny brass candlestick that’s as tall as my waist, and pry off the fat white candle impaled on a mean-looking metal spike. I hand it to Cata and choose a matching one for myself. They’re heavy, but not much more than one of my dad’s golf clubs.
Remi is struggling with a larger candlestick, so I trade him. This one is almost taller than I am and feels solid in my hands. If I have to fight moving statues or red-eyed monks, this weapon is about the best I’m going to find.
I turn to see Sinclair empty a bouquet of dead flowers and some putrid green water on the floor out of a three-foot-high copper vase. Holding it by its narrow base in both hands, he swings it like a baseball bat. George walks up with a six-foot pole with a big gold cross stuck on top, and Ant is by her side, holding what looks like a shiny gold dinner plate.
“What are you going to do with that?” Sinclair says, cracking up. “Serve them appetizers?”
Now that he’s no longer trying to win over George, Sinclair’s obviously not worried about being careful with Ant.
“It’s the heaviest thing I can manage,” says Ant matter-of-factly.
Sinclair presses his lips together, trying to suppress a laugh.
“Want a cross up the nose, asswipe?” George brandishes her weapon in his direction.
Grasping his vase in one
hand, Sinclair holds his arms up in defeat, and, taking a few steps back from her, leans against a marble column as big around as a sequoia. “My motto’s always been don’t anger the band chick holding a cross on a stick.”
“That’s funny,” George replies, looking up at him, since he’s a good five inches taller than her. “My motto is don’t hurt people who are smaller than me. Lucky for me, you don’t qualify.”
“Forty-four minutes,” Ant whispers.
“Where do we go, Cata?” I ask.
“Um, I think they’re coming to us,” she says, her face as white as chalk. She nods her head toward Sinclair, focusing on the shadows behind him.
“Yeah, right. I’m not falling for that again.” He turns back to George and says, “Listen, sorry for laughing at your protégé. Truce?”
George responds by swinging her cross high into the air and, with a scream that freezes the blood in my veins, brings it down in a powerful arc toward Sinclair’s head.
“Holy shit!” he yells, and ducks. George’s huge gold cross connects with a stone figure that has lurched out from behind the column. Long gray fingers tipped with razor-sharp fingernails slash at Sinclair before George’s staff smashes the stone arm to the floor.
Sinclair stares down at his torn shirt. Blood blooms crimson across the sleeve of the yellow button-down at the level of his bicep. He looks back up at his attacker—a stone statue of what looks like a homeless guy with a long beard dressed in Bible-era rags—and lifts his vase to attack it, but it sweeps out with its remaining hand to slice the underside of his lifted arm. Sinclair screams and falls back.
“Knock it over!” I yell and, dashing forward, swing my candlestick back and aim low behind its legs. Seeing what I’m trying for, George lunges forward with the cross and shoves the statue hard in the chest. The thing stumbles, my stick smashes against its calves, and it reels for a second before toppling over backward. The statue shatters into a hundred chunks of jagged stone against the hard marble floor of the cathedral.
Cata, Remi, and Ant watch, petrified. “Are they all like this?” I call to Cata.
“Pretty much,” she says, her voice shrill with panic as she lowers into a defensive posture, holding her candlestick aloft. From all of the niches in the walls and the side chapels, figures draped in purple cloths begin moving forward into the nave. Cata points a finger at a life-sized figure inching toward us from across the space. Its giant wings are spread wide, a sword held upright with both hands, and a purple cloth draped over its head past its shoulders, hiding the face. “The angels are the worst,” she gasps.
“What do we do?” asks Remi, his voice quaking with fear.
George has taken a defensive stance next to Sinclair, who is holding his wounded arm and cursing.
“Well, five and a half of us aren’t going to be able to take on”—I glance around and venture a guess—“fifty animated statues with claws like bowie knives.”
Ant stands there wide-eyed, holding his plate like a Frisbee. “Where’s the crypt?” he asks Cata.
“This way!” she says, and, scooping up her candlestick, sprints toward the front of the church.
The angel is halfway across the nave and is waving its sword in jerky movements like a stop-motion character. “Go!” I yell, and the rest of us run full tilt behind her.
Halfway there, Remi has to use his candlestick to beat back what looks like a rabid stone wolf that has been stealthily circling the periphery of our group. Statues are closing in on both sides, and the angel is bringing up the rear. The purple cloth has finally fallen off his head, showing curly Michelangelo’s David hair paired with evil-looking eyes and bared, pointed teeth.
Something lunges from our right, cutting Sinclair and me off from the rest of the group: a saint whose mournful eyes are directed toward the ceiling as he nears. What looks like real blood drips from perfectly round stone holes in the centers of his palms and feet, pooling on the marble floor as he moves silently toward us. Slowly, his eyes lower and focus on me, and his hands reach forward, clawing the air.
“Trip him!” I yell to Sinclair as I raise my candlestick.
Sinclair scrambles behind him and braces his leg behind the hem of the long robe while I rear back and ram the pointed end of the candlestick into the saint’s chest. The statue topples and falls, but hits the ground in one piece and slowly begins to levitate upward, rising back into a standing position.
Sinclair takes his vase in both hands and starts bashing the thing in the head over and over again, so quickly and with so much force that I am stunned by his transformation from slacker joker to gladiator wannabe. “You got it!” I yell as the thing’s head smashes into fragments and the body collapses to the ground. “Let’s go!”
We run, dodging statues, to catch up to the others.
“Hurry!” yells Cata. She has pried a large brass grate up from the floor in front of the altar, revealing a stone stairway descending belowground. “Don’t wait for us, just go!” I yell, and she disappears into the darkness of the crypt, followed by Remi and Ant.
George waits for us, hunkering in the stairway until Sinclair scrambles down past her. “We have to pull the grate closed,” she says. I look back to see that the angel is just a few paces away, and the rest of the zombielike statues have grouped around and are slowly crouching, arms outstretched toward the entrance of the crypt. The two of us grab the heavy metal grill and strain to pull it back into place above our heads. Almost immediately, stone fingers are sticking through the holes in the grate, clawing and scrabbling at the metal.
“Duck,” George says. I crouch down as she sweeps the metal icon across the bottom of the grate, chopping off marble fingers and hands, which fall to the stairs and bounce their way to the bottom. George flips the staff around backward and forces the pointed end of it through a gold ring in one end of the grill, all the way across, wedging it into a hole drilled into the stone on the other side.
She looks at me, panting from exertion. “That should do for now.”
“You are so incredibly kick-ass,” I say, and then immediately regret it. But George gives me an amused smile instead of the scowl I was expecting, and punches me lightly on the arm. “You’re not too bad yourself.”
Our warm, fuzzy moment doesn’t last long. From the darkness below, a scream pierces the air.
CHAPTER 22
CATA
I HAVE HAD THIS DREAM BEFORE. I RECOGNIZE the cathedral, and the freaky angel statue. I remember once running to the massive front doors and finding them bolted closed and the angel baring his fangs and swiping at me with his stone sword, ready to cleave me in two. I was saved that time by my alarm clock going off for school, waking me at the very moment I knew I was a goner.
And another time, I started closer to the front altar, saw the statues coming for me, pushed aside the grate, and flung myself down the stairs into the crypt. Zombielike monks were waiting for me, and I had to run through endless tunnels and hide behind rotting wooden doors to escape them.
But, although I recall certain details with clarity, the rest is foggy. I don’t know which way to lead the group. I’m not sure what happens next. And there Remi and Ant are, watching me like I’m going to protect them. Sinclair comes barreling down the stairs while George waits for Fergus, and the two of them work together to secure the grate so the statues can’t come down.
“Which way?” Sinclair asks, breathing hard. His arm is hurt, blood soaking his shirtsleeve, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Come on.” I lead them down a tunnel wide enough to drive a car through. Its curved brick ceiling arches just high enough over our heads that we can walk upright. Small niches in the wall hold earthen pots with candles inside, and as we pass them, our shadows are magnified giant-sized onto the stones.
The tunnel opens into a large, round room with the same vaulted brick ceiling. It’s supported in the center by a pillar that branches out at the top like a tree and is set with burning torches, their flames flickeri
ng in spectral shadows across the walls. All around the room are large niches cut in the wall, stacked in columns of four, the lowest raised just above ground level, and the highest touching the ceiling. Each compartment is about seven feet long and three feet high and just wide enough for the bodies that lay stretched out in them, heads to the right, feet to the left. They wear the white robes I’ve seen before, tied at the waist with a rope. Their hands are folded over their chests, one placed on top of the other, with rosaries dangling down from their gnarly fingers. Spiderwebs laced with dust drape their resting places like curtains.
“Have you seen this before?” Remi asks.
“Pretty much,” I say.
“Who are they?” Ant asks.
“I don’t know,” I respond. “I’ve never seen the faces. The hoods are pulled over their heads.”
“And they’re going to get up pretty soon?”
I turn to the three boys. “Honestly,” I admit, “I don’t remember how this works. I remember running from these hooded guys. But I don’t know if it’s these dead monks, or if there are others that come in. It’s all really fuzzy.”
“Is there any other way out of here besides the way we came?” Sinclair asks.
“A door,” I say. “There’s always a door. But I don’t see it now.” My voice is quivering. I know what’s coming.
Sinclair takes my hand and squeezes it supportively. “I’m here for you,” he says.
His reassurance, not to mention the comfort of his touch, makes me braver. I squeeze back gratefully and walk past him to the far end of the round room, where there is a space between the niches in the wall that could be large enough for a door. Sinclair joins me, and, setting our improvised weapons down on the floor, we begin running our fingers over the dusty white rock. It flakes like chalk under our touch. It seems to have been plastered over, and the plaster is so old that it crumbles away. The outline of a door begins to appear, low enough that we would need to duck to get through it.