by Amy Plum
“Do you have any other recurring nightmares?” I ask. “Because my first one, when I was alone, and the cathedral one are dreams I have all the time.”
Ant adjusts his gloves and stares at the nonexistent ceiling. “There’s one where my bed is in a forest and there’s a robber sneaking up on tiptoes to give me a shot in the nose that will make me die. There’s one where ghosts with axes are chasing me through a scary house. There’s one where poisonous snakes are under my bed, so I can’t get out without dying.” He counts the dreams off on his fingers. One. Two. Three. I’m surprised he doesn’t try to find three more so he can have six, but he only looks at us and shrugs. “I never have good dreams. Except when Dog sleeps in bed with me.”
“Dog?” Sinclair asks.
Ant hesitates, looking like he’s afraid he’s said too much. In a timid voice, he says, “Dog. He’s my dog. A rescued pit bull mix.”
“And his name is Dog?”
“That’s what he is. A dog,” Ant says with a tone of defensiveness.
“Your parents didn’t name you Child,” Sinclair says.
“They let me name the puppy, so I named him Dog,” Ant says, looking like he’s about to lose his cool. He wraps his arms around himself, and it’s clear that that’s all he’s going to say.
“My dreams are all pretty vague,” George interjects. “It would be hard to prepare for any of them.”
“So all we’ve got to do is tackle a robber before he gives Ant a shot in the nose, rescue Ant from the snakes under his bed, or escape from the haunted house without being hacked to pieces by ax-wielding ghosts,” Sinclair says. “No problem.”
George rolls her eyes. “I think that what we did last time worked pretty well—finding objects we could use as weapons and knowing what we were up against. If we hadn’t done that, I’m pretty sure we would have lost more than Fergus in the cathedral.”
“We’re not sure Fergus is dead,” I insist.
“Well, he’s as good as,” says Sinclair. “He’ll be trapped in that creepy cathedral forever.”
“No. We talked about this. He could be in the next dream. He could have gotten out of the Dreamfall. Why are you being so negative?” I ask.
“I’m not being negative. I’m being realistic,” says Sinclair, shrugging.
Even though I realize he might be right, I don’t want to accept it. I give him a frown, and he says, “What?” and reaches out to touch my arm.
George interrupts. “Just . . . stop, you two. Let’s think about this. What if we end up somewhere where there aren’t weapons conveniently lying around all over the place?”
Everyone is silent for a moment.
“Sinclair, do you still have those keys?” I ask.
He fishes in his back pocket and pulls them out.
“Sinclair brought something from a nightmare into the Void. So maybe we can bring something from the Void into the nightmares!”
“I had my notebook and pen with me in the cathedral,” Ant confesses. “They were in my back pocket.”
“Oh my God,” I say. “Do you know what this means? We could make weapons here and take them with us.” This idea seems to energize everyone. “Ant, how did you say you make things appear?” I ask.
“I put myself into a meditative state,” he says, “switch my brain off, and then focus on the one thing I want.”
“I tried to meditate,” Sinclair says. “Couldn’t ever do it.”
“Ant, could you try to make a sword?” George asks.
“I’d rather have a gun,” Remi says.
“Now we’re talking!” crows Sinclair.
“Does it have to be a weapon?” Ant asks. “Weapons wouldn’t have helped in the cemetery dream. Maybe shovels and a crowbar.”
“Ant’s right,” George says. “Maybe we should think about more useful items. Like rope. A flashlight . . .”
“How about knives? Those can serve all sorts of purposes,” says Remi.
“Not quite as much as a semiautomatic,” murmurs Sinclair, then he grins when I give him a look.
“Remi is right,” George says. “Start small.”
Ant shuffles down to the floor, resting his back against his couch. He crosses his legs and places his hands lightly on his kneecaps. A minute passes. Remi looks like he’s getting impatient, but George holds a finger to her lips to silence him.
Ant raises his head and opens his eyes, and there on the floor in front of him is a dagger. And not just any dagger. This looks straight out of a museum: a blue-and-gold handle with a fancy leather sheath.
“Holy crap!” Sinclair yells, and scrambles over. Ant holds the weapon out to him, and Sinclair inspects it carefully, his eyebrows raised so high they’re practically touching his hairline.
“Not to ask too much,” George says, “but can you get one for each of us? If this is the last nightmare, maybe it’s all we’ll need to survive before we can get out of here.”
Within minutes, we are each holding our own dagger, as well as a belt with a sheath so that we can link arms without having to hold our weapons in our hands.
“How much more time do we have?” Sinclair asks Ant.
“Five minutes. No, wait . . . I mean three,” Ant says with a look like he’s hiding something.
“What’s wrong, Ant?” I ask.
Ant looks at George, and they seem to come to a silent agreement. “Ant told me during the last Void that the timing actually isn’t completely consistent,” George says.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“I’m not sure yet,” Ant responds. “We haven’t been here long enough for me to confirm a pattern.” Why does he look like he’s holding something back? Why would the timing be that important?
“It doesn’t matter,” George reassures us. “Like Sinclair said, if we’re only in here for less than six hours, it might be the last time anyway.”
“Okay, then let’s plan,” Sinclair says. “There are just five of us now. We need to stay together, whatever dream is coming: Ant’s or George’s.”
“Or yours,” Remi adds.
Sinclair nods his head, as if that went for granted. “Once in the nightmare, Ant will keep us up-to-date on time we have left, and near the end we’ll be ready to make a run for the Wall. Like Cata said, this could be the last time.”
Or we could be stuck in here forever. Nobody says it, but we’re all thinking it. How long would we survive if we have to continue going up against the freakish creatures populating one another’s subconscious?
I wonder if, after a while, I would just give up. If I would choose death over a never-ending wheel of fear and pain. In real life I was able to escape my monsters. Monster. But what if I had been trapped there like I am here, knowing I would suffer an endless cycle of torture? What if I had been told I could never leave my home . . . my father? Would I have chosen to die?
In that situation, I was able to escape, but it meant abandoning my brother and sister. Could this time be different? Could I save everyone else along with myself?
This time I’m facing possible death. But what is my life worth if I have to face the world alone?
My thoughts are interrupted by the noise we’d all been waiting for. From around us comes the first knock.
“Come on,” George urges, shaking us into action. We group together in our increasingly smaller circle and join arms. Ant pats the dagger at his waist to reassure himself it’s still there. Sweat beads on Remi’s forehead, and Sinclair licks his lips nervously.
The blue lights appear just as the second knock deafens us. And as the door creaks slowly open, the wind begins to tear at our clothes and hair. “Lock your arms!” George cries over the howling wind, and everyone tightens their hands around the arms they’re gripping.
“I forgot one of my dreams,” Ant yells. “The worst one!”
“What is it?” I yell back as our group begins to sway and stagger against the gale-force wind.
As we are picked up off our feet and flung toward
the door, Ant’s words are barely audible. But a chill goes through me when I understand what he said.
The clowns.
CHAPTER 25
JAIME
THE NURSES ARRIVE WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES and start setting up a table next to each bed. The subjects already have IVs supplying hydration, but nutrition bags are added. I try not to think about what this means: long-term care. But I can’t help wondering if the kids’ parents aren’t going out of their minds with anxiety.
I know Zhu and Vesper are working on a solution: some way of shocking the kids back into consciousness. What if it doesn’t work? What if it kills them? What if it causes permanent brain damage?
I look around at the six subjects lying on the beds and feel a mix of hopelessness and determination. I have this completely irrational delusion that I can do something. That it’s up to me to figure out what is going on and find a solution.
A ventilator is also set up next to each subject. Zhu tells the nurses that they don’t need to attach them just yet, but she wants them on hand in case “care becomes extended.” I notice she doesn’t look them in the eyes when she says that. Although she wants to be prepared, she doesn’t want to think in that direction.
Finally, a manual external defibrillator is placed on each table, paddles at the ready.
By the time all six life support tables are set up, I hear the beeping of the monitors accelerate and check my clock. Only fifteen minutes this cycle. Something’s off. I need to recheck my notes.
Zhu and Vesper take another sweep around the beds to check all vital signs, and then come up to me. “Jaime, Dr. Vesper and I are going to have an emergency video conference with a couple of our colleagues. I will stay long enough to brief them on what has happened, then ask Vesper to conduct the rest of the meeting so you won’t be left on your own for more than a few minutes. Here is my pager number, just in case.” She hands me a business card.
They gather up their laptops and files, and then they’re gone, leaving me, a premed student, alone with the six subjects. This has got to be breaking about a million hospital policies. I guess it shows exactly how desperate Zhu and Vesper are. They could have at least left an EMT with me, but I remember that Zhu only plans on being gone for a few minutes. I think that at this point everyone is so panicked that rationality has been thrown out the window.
I gaze around the low-lit room at the sleepers fanned out around the Tower like living corpses. Red and green diodes flicker on and off, spilling threads of colored light across the bodies, creating the impression of movement.
I will not get creeped out. I will not get creeped out.
I pull out the test file and flip back to trial subject seven. Zhu and Vesper keep bringing him up, and I remember one of them referring to him at the beginning of the test as a wild card. I let my curiosity take over, and quickly become absorbed in a story so horrific that I forget about everything else except a boy named Brett Alighieri.
Scrawled in large letters across the top of his file are the words “Fatal Familial Insomnia.” An informational sheet stapled to the first page defines FFI as a very rare inherited disease that results in a rapid and lethal deterioration of the brain, comparable to mad cow disease. It only affects forty families worldwide, but if one parent carries the gene, their offspring have fifty percent chance of inheriting it and developing the disease. So basically, if you happen to be born into one of those forty families, you’re screwed.
The following notes were written by Zhu herself. She was the one who diagnosed Brett and remained the specialist overseeing his case. I get out my pen and note:
•FFI’s symptoms don’t usually show up until middle age.
•By the time Brett’s grandfather died of FFI and his family discovered what it was, his mom already had five kids.
•She tested positive for FFI, but the kids (all under the age of twenty) chose not to be tested.
I put down the file and think of what that means. I imagine, at my age, being offered a test that will tell me if I’m going to die from a horrible brain-degenerating disease in the next twenty years. Fifty percent chance I don’t have it and can live my life normally. But fifty percent I do, and I’ll be obsessing about it until I get sick and die. Do I spend those years single or get together with someone who’s going to have to watch me die? Not even to mention having kids . . . who would be born with a fifty percent chance of having the disease too. Is ignorance bliss, or just stupidity? I honestly don’t know if I would agree to the test either.
I rub my forehead and keep reading. Brett started showing signs of sleep disturbances around his eighteenth birthday. His parents weren’t worried right away—he was too young to develop FFI. But when his insomnia rapidly grew worse, they brought him to the Pasithea Facility, and Zhu diagnosed him with FFI. It was just two days after his eighteenth birthday. He was one of the youngest people to have ever been diagnosed.
Within weeks, he had difficulty walking and began to slur. He moved from home to an inpatient room in the hospital.
Zhu documented Brett’s decline in detail: while he was unconscious, he made movements like combing his hair, buttoning up his shirt, and eating with an invisible fork and knife. He was living in a permanent state of presleep behavior, unable to go deeper.
I read how the disease typically progresses, and realize it’s one of the scariest ones I’ve ever come across. Victims go from increasing insomnia resulting in paranoia and phobias, to hallucinations and panic attacks, then complete inability to sleep, accompanied by rapid weight loss, and dementia, at which point they become unresponsive or mute.
Death soon follows.
No cure for FFI has ever been found. The death rate is one hundred percent.
At month nine of the disease, Brett had reached the hallucinatory stage. Half the time he thought he was some sort of tentacled alien, and the other half he had no idea who or where he was. And he had begun losing weight. The majority of victims die around eighteen months. This test was to be his last hope. A shot in the dark, from what it sounded like, but at least it was something.
I swivel my chair around and look at the boy lying on bed seven. He is gaunt and sickly looking. Now I understand the conversations Zhu and Vesper were having during the first few minutes of the test . . . before disaster struck. No wonder they were so excited that he had passed into REM sleep with the other subjects after the five brief rounds of electrical pulses. For them, it must have seemed like a miracle.
This boy who had barely slept for nine months had actually gone into REM sleep. Might still be sleeping now, if my hunch is right. If it weren’t for the brain waves, Zhu and Vesper might believe it too.
Something occurs to me. What if the brain waves aren’t actually delta at all? What if, when the electrical current went berserk, it created brain waves that are different enough from regular REM and NREM states that they can’t be measured by a traditional EEG monitor?
What if I am becoming completely delusional? I thought-check myself. Who am I to be coming up with these crazy theories when the experts themselves don’t have a clue what’s going on?
But a small, nagging voice prods me: It’s exactly because you don’t have their experience that you’re not blinded by their presuppositions. You’re able to think outside the box.
Shaking my head, I shut the voice out. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing I can do. The one time I tried to talk to Vesper about it, he shot me down so fast that I wasn’t even able to respond. I’m not brave or stupid enough to try something like that again.
I look at the timer I’ve set on my desktop. Shit. Zhu and Vesper have been gone for thirty minutes. I open my Gmail to find a message from Hal entitled, You’re not going to believe this.
I read it in a state of shock. A shiver travels down my spine as I look up at my monitor at the immobile form of the boy lying on bed four. It could mean nothing. It could mean everything. It cannot mean anything good.
CHAPT
ER 26
FERGUS
I’M FALLING WITH THE STATIC MONSTER CREATURE wrapped around me. We hit the ground hard, and I feel a bone in my upper arm break with a crunch and a knife of pain stab my shoulder. Tears spring to my eyes as I roll onto my back and cradle my arm against my chest.
I glance around to get my bearings. We’re still in the cathedral. It’s the marble floor under the dome that I hit with all my weight.
To my right, the static monster rolls a couple of times, and then, scrambling back to its feet, lurches toward the black wall. He reaches it just as it dissolves, and lets out a howl of despair. Throwing himself into the space where the Wall was, he flashes between a tentacled monster and what actually looks like a boy, now that I have time to really look. A boy about my age. His eyes look as mad as the homeless guy that sits outside the art supply store Mom goes to in Manhattan.
I pull my gaze away and try to shove past the pain for an explanation of what just happened. It didn’t feel like an attack. When he latched on to me, it felt like he was trying to climb me—to get back up to the rope and through the black wall. He was using me to try to get into the Void. Why?
Now that the monster no longer seems like a threat, I stagger to my feet and look around. Just yards away from us is the body of the monk I knocked off of the walkway way up in the dome: Cata’s dad. The statues are grouped around it. I can’t tell what they’re doing to it, and I don’t think I want to know. They don’t seem to notice us until the static monster’s loud keening attracts their attention. One by one they turn to focus on it, and then on me.
A couple of the statues—the homeless-looking one and a woman carrying what looks like a pair of stone eyes on a plate—break off from the others and head my way. My arm is killing me, and every step I take away from them shoots off a flare of pain, every movement its own slice of torture. But they’re gaining on me, so however painful it is, I have to make a run for it.
Then, with a garbled roar, the static monster throws himself in front of me, writhing in his channel-surfing-quick changes between man and beast. His left arm dangles by his side, dripping blood on the cathedral floor. That’s where George hacked him with the grave-digging pick, and from the look of it she did some serious damage.