by Amy Plum
“Hey, Cata,” Remi says. “This one looks new.”
I turn to see the boy crouching near one of the corpses, but far enough away that if the thing woke up it couldn’t reach him. He’s right—a few niches in the area are missing the dust and spiderwebs that make the others appear to have been untouched for centuries.
I lean down to look at the face half-hidden under the lowered cowl. And there, lying in the crypt of the cathedral, dressed in monk’s robes, is my father.
I scream.
Pressing my shaking hands to my mouth, I stumble back until I feel a strong arm encircling my shoulder, and I bury my head in Sinclair’s chest. “Who is it?” he asks, pulling me close to him.
“My dad,” I say, and turn to get a second glance. The thing has my father’s white goatee and eyebrows. It has his potato-shaped nose. And the eyes, which are open and staring at the top of his niche, are the same icicle blue. But instead of the rope that the other corpses wear, my father’s waist is encircled by a wide leather belt that I recognize all too well. It is the razor strap he used on me almost every day since I was ten. Its brass ring that he used to hang it on the wall by the kitchen table shines in the light of the torches. That small, perfectly round circle had been imprinted in red welts on my skin so many times, it felt like a part of me.
And then my gaze falls to the compartment below him and I double over in Sinclair’s arms. “Mom,” I gasp.
Fergus and George charge into the crypt, with Fergus brandishing his candlestick menacingly. “What’s wrong?” Fergus asks. “What happened?”
“It’s Cata’s parents,” Sinclair says, letting go of me with one arm so that he can point out their niches.
I look back up and see my brother and sister lying one above the other in the niches to the left of Mom and Dad. “No!” My voice comes out in a sob, but my eyes are dry. I am numb with sorrow. With fear. With guilt. And upon that thought, my sister begins to move.
She slowly swings her legs out of her niche, leaning over as she scoots out of the resting place and stands, facing me with eyes that slowly shift from gray blue to red. And then the red begins to pour from her eyes down her cheeks. Tears of blood flow down her face and stain her white robe as she raises a hand to point at me.
“You killed us,” she says. Julia is twelve, but the voice coming from her lips is that of a much smaller child. “Catalina. It’s your fault. You shouldn’t have told.”
Sinclair lets go of me and scrambles for the hidden door. “Help me out,” he calls to the others. “There’s a door behind here. Only way out.” Fergus joins him and uses the pointed end of his long candlestick to start hacking away at the plaster. George picks up my candlestick and holds it like a barrier between Julia and me, looking ready to whack my sister if she comes any closer.
“Watch out!” Ant says. He and Remi have backed away and are standing in the middle of the room with their backs to the central column. I glance away from Julia to see what they’re looking at. All of the corpses in the room are slowly easing their way out of their niches. The hoods fall so low over their faces that you can’t see anything but a red glow coming from beneath the white linen.
“Faster, Fergus!” George yells.
The boys have the plaster off the door and are scraping off an old keyhole. “We need a key,” Sinclair yells. “Where’s the key?”
“I don’t remember needing a key before,” I yell. My sister has grabbed George’s weapon with both hands and, with a strength that belies her small build, is shoving the bigger girl back toward me. The hooded corpses are now all out of their niches, shuffling toward the middle of the room where Remi and Ant cower. With the exception of Julia, my family stays motionless, dead in their niches.
“The keys from the casket,” Ant says.
“That’s right!” George says. “Sinclair, try the keys that you took from the corpse in the graveyard. They must have been there for a reason.”
Sinclair stares at her for a moment like she’s crazy, then fishes the keys out of his pocket and crouches down near the keyhole. “They’re too small,” he calls. “The keyhole is for one of those big old-fashioned keys.”
“Then kick it in!” George yells. Julia gives the candlestick another violent push, and George shoves her backward so hard that my sister falls into a crumpled heap against the side of the crypt. George turns toward me. “Sorry,” she says, and then swings at an anonymous corpse that is closing in on the boys.
I grab one of the torches from the central pillar, slide it out of its socket, and sweep it from side to side to fend off the slow-moving figures. They are all headed toward Sinclair and Fergus, who are delivering powerful kicks to the small door. A low hum comes from all around the room, growing louder every second. It isn’t until I smash one of the figures in the chest and his robe catches on fire, sending him thrashing backward screaming, that I realize the hum is coming from the monks themselves.
A cry comes from behind me, and I turn to see that one of the creatures has grabbed Remi and is dragging him toward an empty niche. Remi is struggling so hard that he knocks the cowl back off the creature’s head, exposing a zombielike head, flesh hanging from the skull, the hollow eye sockets set with glowing red coals. “Let go of me!” Remi screams.
And then something whizzes through the air, flashing gold in the light of the torches. Ant’s plate strikes the neck of the corpse holding Remi, and slices through so smoothly that the body stays erect for several seconds while the head rolls cleanly off and topples with a sodden thud to the floor. Remi struggles with the headless corpse until it too falls to the ground.
I gape at Ant, who, seeing me looking, shrugs humbly and hides behind George, who is fighting like a madwoman to keep that side of the room’s corpses at bay.
A sound of splintering wood drowns the humming corpses, and with a final powerful kick, Fergus and Sinclair have smashed the door outward. “Come on!” Fergus yells, and, lunging for where Remi stands covered in the headless monk’s blood, tugs him to the door and pushes him through. He turns and drags Ant through the door, sending Sinclair after them. “Come on, George!” he yells, and she retreats, dropping the candlestick, and ducks through.
“Cata!” Fergus says. I realize that I’m standing there paralyzed, torch in hand, staring at my family’s bodies as the dead monks regroup and start back toward us. And as I stare, my father blinks, turns his head slowly toward me, and opens his chalk-white lips. “Everything I did was because I loved you,” he says. “And you betrayed me.”
“No!” I cry, holding the torch in front of me like a shield as he swings his legs over the edge of his niche and begins to stand.
“Come on!” Fergus yells, brandishing his candlestick in one hand, and with the other shoving me through the doorway into the space beyond, where a stone stairway curves upward in what seems like an endless spiral.
I hear him take a whack at my father and yell over my shoulder, “Don’t hurt him, Fergus!” Where did that come from? I ask myself. I spent years wanting to get back at him. To hurt him as much as he had hurt me. And now I’m trying to protect him?
“Go,” Fergus says from right behind me, and we begin dashing upward. I see the others in front of us, taking the stairs two at a time, running as fast as they can.
The humming is coming from beneath us now, rising in pitch, and I glance back to see a white-robed figure step into the stairway, far below us. “Go faster!” Fergus yells to the others. “They’re following us.”
We run up the spiral stairs for what seems like forever—my heart is beating out of my chest, and my head is spinning with the sharp curves—until suddenly we are standing on a balcony inside the cathedral, a mind-boggling height above the ground. The only way for us to take is a narrow walkway with a feeble wood railing running around the circumference of the dome’s interior. We are so high that the lit central altar looks like a tiny Lego piece far below. In front of the altar, grouped around the entrance to the crypt, are a dozen minuscule
white shapes: the statues, waiting motionless for us to come out. I shiver, not knowing which is creepier, the monks or the statues.
The walkway is only wide enough for one person, and Sinclair, Remi, Ant, and George are lined up side by side, backs pressed firmly against the wall. I scoot next to George to leave room for Fergus.
“Whoa,” he says, as he emerges from the stairway, wobbling as he comes to a quick stop. He looks slightly sick as he peers over the edge.
The humming noise is getting louder. “Those things are coming up the stairs,” Fergus says.
George leans forward, scoping out the walkway. “There’s another door on the far side. We’ll have to get over to it. It’s the only other way out that I can see.”
“Then let’s go!” Fergus says. Sinclair unglues himself from the wall and begins walking carefully, like he’s on a tightrope, one hand on the railing and the other pressed to the side of the dome.
“I’m scared of heights,” Remi admits.
“Then don’t look down,” George instructs.
“Famous last words,” Sinclair mutters and continues shuffling forward at a snail’s pace.
“You have to go faster,” Fergus urges, peering nervously behind us as the humming nears.
Following George’s advice, I keep my eyes on the space directly in front of my feet, one hand gripping the wood railing and the other pressing the flaking paint of the dome wall.
From behind me, I hear Fergus say, “They’re out.”
I turn to see one of the white-robed monks race out of the entrance to the stairway and immediately pitch forward over the railing. The body turns head over feet several times before it hits the ground far below with a distant thud, facedown, arms spread out wide.
Sinclair yells, “Holy shit!” and picks up his pace.
I glance back to see another figure emerge from the stairway. The hood is pulled back, revealing my father’s face. Blood runs in rivulets from his eyes down his hollow cheeks. He moves more carefully than the previous monk, turning to follow us onto the walkway.
“Your dad, right?” Fergus asks me.
“Yes.” My throat clenches with emotion, but no tears come.
“I can’t go much farther,” Sinclair calls. “There’s stuff blocking our way.”
He has stopped in front of a pile of tools and paint cans. A rope ladder hangs past the walkway from where it is suspended high up in the dome. One rung is attached with a hook to the railing next to the paint cans, and the interior of the dome around it is white with fresh paint.
“You’ll just have to get around it!” George yells from behind him.
Cursing, Sinclair begins to pick up the paint cans and stack them against the wall, trying to clear enough space to pass. Behind us, my father starts humming.
I turn to see Fergus lift the candelabra like a lance and shove it hard through my father’s chest. Dad’s feet keep moving as he tries to walk forward against the candlestick, while a chrysanthemum of red blooms on his white robe where the sharp tip is buried.
Dad stops humming and makes clawing motions toward Fergus, even though the metal rod separates them by a good six feet.
“Hurry!” Fergus yells. “I don’t know how long I can hold him back.”
“It’s too late anyway,” Ant says, his voice impassive.
A deafening boom rocks the cathedral, rattling the windows and shaking the walkway so violently that a section just a few feet in front of Sinclair breaks off and plummets in what seems like slow motion to the floor far below.
I press myself up against the wall and crouch down, bracing myself. Fergus looks over at me with an agonized look. “I’m sorry, Cata. I have to do this.” And, shoving his back against the wall, he pivots the candlestick outward, flinging my father over the side of the railing. A lump forms in my throat as my father falls—hissing as he reaches out toward me—but I steady my back against the wall and force myself to watch. As he hits the ground, the black wall materializes in front of us, bisecting the dome. Behind it, the rest of the cathedral disappears.
If we could run around the walkway, we could go right through the Wall into the Void. But the section of the walkway that caved in—just beyond where Sinclair stands—has left a gaping hole in our path, making it impossible to reach. We look at one another, our expressions ranging from dazed to hopeless.
“Can we jump from where you’re standing through the Wall?” Fergus calls to Sinclair.
“It’s too far!” Sinclair yells back. “There’s got to be a good twenty feet between me and it. There’s no way we can make that jump.”
We all stare at the Wall, the floor, and back to each other. The silence is broken only by the vibration of the stained glass in the windows, which are still rattling from the shock of the boom.
Then George says, “Sinclair! The rope ladder!”
Sinclair looks at her, confused.
“The rope ladder that the painters left. Unhook it from the railing and use it to swing out toward the Wall.”
The ladder stretches up to where it disappears through an open trapdoor high up near the pinnacle of the dome and down past us to where it ends a good five feet below the walkway. If it weren’t attached to our railing with the iron hook, it would hang straight down the center of the dome, ending in midair. But obviously the workers had been using the hook, along with a pull cord tied from the rail to the ladder’s bottom rung, to move it around to where they were painting.
I can see what George is suggesting: treating the ladder like a rope swing over a lake. Except, instead of being able to get a running start, Sinclair will be using the wide angle of the rope’s position, plus gravity, to launch him out into the space and through the Wall.
Sinclair stares at George, then looks back at the Wall, and then at the rest of us. “No fucking way!” he exclaims.
The second boom is more violent than the first. It is immediately followed by the sound of a million panes of glass breaking simultaneously as the two stained-glass windows beneath the dome explode.
“Do it, Sinclair!” I yell. “It’s our only hope!”
Sinclair detaches the rope ladder from the hook and yanks on it to test it. It holds. With ashen face, he grips on to one of the rungs above his head with both hands. “This is crazy,” he says. For the first time since he ran off in the Void, he looks seriously frightened.
“Do it!” George says. “Climb over the rail and jump.”
Sinclair shakes his head but obeys, slinging one leg over the rail and shoving that heel between the bars holding the rail to the walkway. Slowly, he edges the other foot over, and then, with a shriek of terror, he pushes off. For a second he is falling through space.
Then the rope picks up the slack and he is swinging in an arc toward the Wall. He bisects a column of light streaming through the broken window, and it illuminates his body as he explodes through a cloud of dust motes swirling in its glow. When he gets close enough, he curses loudly and lets go. As soon as he touches the Wall, he disappears.
“It worked!” Remi shouts.
“Grab the pull cord and haul the ladder back,” George instructs, shepherding Remi and Ant toward the spot where Sinclair had been standing. Remi grabs it and starts pulling, fist over fist, until he’s grasping the ladder in his trembling hands.
“Go. Fast!” George says, and holds on to Remi, steadying him as he climbs atop the rail.
“I can’t do this!” he says, looking like he’s going to faint.
“You don’t have to. I’ll push you. Hold on tight, and then let go when you get close to the Wall,” George says. And before he can argue, she shoves him hard. Remi goes swinging out into the sparkling dust-strewn air, hits the Wall, and disappears.
George pulls the rope back and says, “Ant can go with me.” Cocooning Ant with her body, his arms fastened around her neck and legs circling her waist, she swings the two of them out across the Void and into the Wall.
Fergus and I shift down to their spot and hastily pul
l the cord back until we have the rope ladder in our hands. As the third boom comes, the inevitable wind arises, whipping out around us from inside the Wall. Fergus shouts, “There’s no time left! We have to go together!” He grabs one rung, and I grab the one beneath it. He raises his foot up and kicks the rail hard. The wood disintegrates under the impact and is swept around us by the wind like debris in a tornado.
“Now!” Fergus yells, and we swing through the gap in the rail out into the air over the cathedral floor that is so far away it seems to be worlds beneath us. Just as we near the Wall, something comes flying at us—a barely human form, shaking and flailing like it’s suffering an epileptic fit. Blinking in and out of view so quickly it is no more than a blur, the static monster flies at us. It stretches out its claws and swipes wildly at Fergus.
Fergus screams, his head tilting backward, loosening his grip on the rope to bat the thing away. The last thing I see before I’m engulfed by the darkness of the Wall is Fergus wrapped in the monster’s arms. Falling.
CHAPTER 23
JAIME
I AM ALMOST SURE NOW THAT THE PERIODS OF heightened heart rates and muscle tension are phases of dreaming for the subjects and that the stable periods are NREM. I have kept a list of the phases—they vary slightly in length, but are close enough to be consistent. If I’m right about this, including the normal twenty-minute REM phase before the system crashed, the subjects are coming to the end of the fifth dream cycle.
I watch as the timer I set on my computer hits fifty minutes, and get ready to jot the time in my notebook. But fifty minutes passes with no change. With a feeling of uneasiness, I watch the numbers climb. Fifty-one minutes. Fifty-two. Could I have been wrong?
I prop my forehead on my hand and think about what an idiot I’ve been. Who am I to think I would know more than these researchers who have decades of experience? The phases have probably been a fluke, and I’ve just been grasping at straws because I want to be able to do something. Not just to look good to Zhu and Vesper, but because I actually want to help.