by Amy Plum
He looks so unnatural, so twisted and freakish, that even the statues don’t seem to know what to do with him. I take advantage of their confusion and stay hidden behind him, backing up to one of the side walls. The monster matches my retreat step by step, shielding me from the animated sculptures. We arrive at one of the niches that was abandoned—a depression carved out of the wall a few feet off the ground, large enough to fit a man-sized statue. I climb up into it, press my back against the wall, and allow the static monster to block me with his jittering form.
From behind him it looks like he’s almost sizzling, popping with electricity as he morphs from one unrecognizable being to another. He always seems to come back to the form of a man, though, no matter what other forms he takes: the octopus alien I’ve seen before, a creepy rooster-looking thing, a skeleton with barely any flesh connecting the bones. His jerky electrical movements remind me of a film we saw in science class showing how stimulus jumps between nerve endings. Or maybe it was synapses firing in the brain.
The two statues stand on the other side of him, hissing and baring their fangs, tears of blood running down their stone cheeks. The monster seems to be protecting me, but why?
“Hello?” I call.
The thing takes a break from swiping at the statues and looks at me with multiple eyes. There is something human in there. I can see it.
“Who are you?” I ask.
It stares at me a good moment, eyes changing form and color every second like a slide show on speed, then turns his attention back to the statues. Over his shoulder, he groans the same word he’s said before: “Red.” But this time it sounds more like bread. What’s that supposed to mean?
As I crouch in my saint’s niche, watching this freaky monstrosity guard me from man-eating sculptures, I wonder why he has appeared in each of our dreams. What’s he been doing the whole time? I try to remember when I’ve seen him: in the slime cave, just before we went through the Wall; by the Wall in the middle of Remi’s desert; while we were digging up the coffin in the graveyard; and here in the cathedral . . . right before the Wall showed up. He’s been trying to get into the Void this whole time. But why?
Since he never showed up in the Void, he must be traveling directly from nightmare to nightmare.
That thought leads me directly to the predicament of how the hell I’m going to get out of here and back with the others. Will I be stuck here, huddling behind the static monster until he runs out of energy, and then get eaten by a marble homeless guy and a girl carrying her eyes on a plate?
No. If he’s traveling from dream to dream, he should be able to get into the next one. I’ll just have to hope I’m able to follow him.
The two statues finally decide to attack, surging forward, trying to get past the static monster. I duck down, shielding my head defensively, forgetting about my broken bone. I scream in pain, and shove myself into the curve of the niche, squatting and cursing as I cradle my arm.
The statues swipe out at the static monster, but he moves so fast they lose their footing and stumble around in their stop-motion stiffness. Homeless guy finally rips a hole in the monster’s other arm, which begins dripping blood, but it doesn’t look as bad as what George did with the pick.
The eyeless woman closes in, letting out an eerie shriek, but is thrown backward by the force of the thing, whipped away by its tentacles as if by a giant blender. Homeless guy suffers the same fate, and is thrown several yards back, splintering into pieces when he hits the ground. This has, however, caught the attention of the rest of the statues, who, one by one, turn and begin making their way toward us. If they attack all at once, at least some of them will get through. I’d better be ready to fight those he doesn’t throw aside with his spinning blender action.
My arm is throbbing so painfully that I finally rip off my shirt and tie it like a tourniquet as tightly as I can around the spot that hurts. Tears of pain stream down my face as I struggle with the cloth, but finally, using my teeth and my good hand, I’m able to maneuver it into a good, tight knot and the pain subsides a little.
I rub my tattoo for comfort, thinking that I’m finally in a place where I don’t have to worry about a cataplectic attack. I’ve gone so far past fear that my senses are dulled. Nothing can scare me any more than it already has, and I’m certainly not going to laugh. The Dreamfall seems to have cured me, at least temporarily.
Crouching down, I ready myself for the oncoming attack. Just then, I hear something I never thought I would actually welcome, but when I do my heart makes a hopeful leap. It is the knock of an invisible fist on a wooden door.
The static monster looks up and around, searching for the same blue lights that I am. The fluorescent lights flicker a short distance to our right. As the second knock sounds, the wooden door materializes between the blue lines. The monster looks around at me, and I climb down from my hiding place to the marble floor, cradling my injured arm in my good hand. The two of us shuffle closer to the door, keeping an eye on the statues that watch us as if ready to pounce. As the third knock comes, the door swings open, and the wind surrounds us, tipping over vases of dead flowers and blowing piles of abandoned purple veils across the floor.
This time I move purposefully toward the door, not even waiting for the hurricane to force me through. I lose sight of the static monster in my rush to escape this nightmare and enter whatever comes next. The wind catches me up and sucks me over the threshold and into the dark.
This time, awareness comes slowly. There is an intense pressure on my chest. My vision swims as I become slowly aware of two large yellow eyes staring down at me. They have vertical irises, like a cat. I blink a couple of times. The eyes blink back. The head shifts mechanically to the side, regarding me from an angle.
The face is a shiny, oily white, but is so close to my own that I can’t focus until it pulls back and widens its eyes, as if surprised. The red ball nose, the painted-on eyebrows, the oblong of red paint outlining the lips . . . My consciousness finally clicks in and I recognize what is kneeling on my chest.
And as the lips spread, the clown bares a set of rotting teeth at me. It grabs the skin on either side of my jawline as if my face is made of dough and not flesh and bone. It digs its nails under my skin, and I scream in pain as it lowers its eyes to mine and hisses, “Are you ready for a facelift?”
CHAPTER 27
CATA
WE ARE STANDING IN DARKNESS, ARM LINKED IN arm, the circle we made in the Void unbroken.
“Where are we?” Remi asks softly. Before anyone can answer, there is a loud popping noise and a floodlight flashes on from high above us, angling down to illuminate our group. I hold up my arm to shield my eyes from the blinding whiteness.
“Ladies and gentlemen, do we have a show for you today!” comes a nasal voice through a loudspeaker. “Death-defying feats of bravery! Breathtaking spectacles of skill! Tonight and tonight only we plan to thrill, chill, and possibly even kill. And now for some madcap performances by your favorite merrymakers”—the voice lowers to a sinister growl—“the clowns.”
A tinny-sounding circus tune blares out of invisible speakers at a painful volume as a dozen spotlights click on, sweeping the circumference of the circus ring to follow a troupe of circus clowns riding unicycles. Though there are no spectators under the big top, the clowns wave wildly at the empty bleachers. One of them honks a horn as a signal, and half peel off and head in the opposite direction, weaving expertly in and out of each other’s paths. They fake near-crashes and wobble dangerously before righting themselves as they pedal around the ring.
“Is this your dream, Ant?” I yell over the deafening music.
“Yes,” he says. His face is almost as white as the clowns. A lump forms in my throat as I witness his panic.
“What happens?” Sinclair calls from Ant’s other side.
“They put on a show and try to kill everyone,” the boy responds, wide eyes trailing the clowns’ trajectory.
“Kind of figured it was
something like that,” Sinclair says, licking his lips nervously.
We have stayed in our circle formation but face outward now, grouped together defensively.
The clowns are riding progressively closer to us, and are swinging lassos around their heads. They are making cowboy noises—yee-haw and giddyap—spinning the lassos until, all at once, they throw them and suddenly I can’t move. My arms are pinned down to my sides, and as the lasso tightens around me, I’m jerked off my feet, stumbling backward out of the harsh glare of the floodlight.
The clowns have abandoned their unicycles and are walking each one of us on the end of their rope. “Why don’t you take a load off,” screeches my captor, loud enough for an audience to enjoy, and from nowhere he produces a wooden chair that he shoves me into. He slips the lasso over the back of the chair and wraps the rope around and around until I am immobilized. After tying it off into a knot, the clown leans in close to my face, giving me a clear view of him for the first time.
He looks like the clown from that Stephen King book. A bald wig with red fuzzy hair glued to the back and sides, evilly stenciled eyebrows, red rubber nose. As he smiles, he reveals sharp yellow teeth. “You’re going to enjoy this show,” he says in the deranged voice of a clown from one of those old children’s television series—the ones broadcast before programmers realized how scary kids really thought clowns were. “I just know you’ll love it. Especially the ringmaster!”
As he flings his arm back to gesture toward a dark corner of the ring, a light flickers on and off, until finally it holds steady, illuminating a tall, thin clown in a top hat. Strings are attached to the clown’s arms, legs, and head, hanging down from the darkness at the top of the tent. His limbs flail around like a marionette. Black lines are drawn from either corner of his lips down to his jawline, making him look like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
“Our first show tonight will be the high wire,” he says, his mouth randomly falling open and snapping shut, unsynchronized with the words coming through the speakers. “Come on, little boy. Take it away!”
The rope pulls the marionette clown’s arm up, and his white-gloved hand points to a wire suspended between two wooden posts high above the ground. A white-faced clown is wrestling with Remi on one of the platforms leading to the wire. “I can’t!” Remi yells. “I’m scared of heights.”
“Then this should help,” the clown retorts. He jerks Remi’s head back with one hand and ties a blindfold around his eyes.
“No!” Remi screeches as the clown shoves him forward. The boy stumbles, his foot catching the wire purely by chance, and he windmills his arms to get his balance.
“There’s not even a net!” I scream at the ringmaster. “Get him down from there!”
“Oh, he’ll get down, all right,” says the marionette. “Sooner rather than later, from what it looks like!”
Holding his head erect, Remi shuffles forward, inch by inch. It’s amazing he hasn’t fallen yet, but it’s obvious he won’t make it far.
“Need some help, little boy?” asks the clown watching him from the platform, arms crossed impatiently. Pressing his oversized shoe on the wire, he gives it a bounce.
Remi screams and topples over, twisting and flailing and somehow catching the wire under both arms. He hangs there precariously for a second before whipping one hand up and ripping the blindfold from his head, and grabbing back on to the wire for dear life.
“Don’t let go!” George screams.
Remi hangs immobile for a moment, and then, summoning all of his strength, he swings one leg out and over the wire so that he’s straddling it and lying along it on his belly. His legs twist around the wire, his hands grasping it firmly, and forehead pressed to it for balance.
“Well, that was boring!” announces the clown on the platform and, grabbing on to a rope hanging from the pillar next to him, swings down to the sawdust-covered ring floor.
“Keep holding on, Remi,” I yell. “We’ll get you down!”
The clowns find this hilarious, and bend over in exaggerated laughs, slapping their knees and holding their bellies.
“Our next show will be provided by more of our courageous volunteers,” says the mouth of the ringmaster. “Bring in the beast!” A cage the size of my bedroom materializes in the middle of the ring, its metal bars rusty and bent. My clown appears in front of me holding a large butcher knife. Laughing evilly, he moves behind me. I frantically arch my neck to see what he is doing. He swings the knife high into the air, its blade flashing silver in the spotlight, and then brings it down, slicing through the ropes binding me to my chair.
I leap up and begin to run, toppling the chair over and stumbling in my effort to get away, but the clown catches me. Holding the knife to my throat, he says, “That’s no way to behave as the star of the featured act!” The blade nicks my skin, and I feel blood trickle down my neck.
He shoves me forward, his large floppy shoes flanking my Converse as he thrusts me across the ring and through the open door of the cage. A second later, Sinclair joins me, thrown in by his own gleeful clown.
The creepy circus music starts back up, and a string of horses prance out of the darkness to pace around the edge of the ring. On the back of each horse, a clown balances, waving at the empty bleachers with one hand and holding the reins with the other. The horses are a horror: emaciated, lifeless, with dull fur hanging from protruding bones. They clop wearily around the ring once, before exiting from where they entered: into the dark.
The macabre circus music stops and is replaced by a drumroll.
“Ant!” I call. “What’s coming?”
Ant and George sit side by side, bound to their chairs, on the far side of the cage from the ringmaster.
“Tiger. Lion. I’m not sure,” Ant says mournfully.
We don’t have to wait long to find out. Three clowns grimacing grotesquely enter the ring with a tiger on a leash. The large cat is as emaciated as the horses were. I glance at Ant. So this is what fills his nightmares: abused animals, murderous clowns, and powerlessness in the face of evil. For a kid who seems to have major control issues, this seems like a worst-case scenario.
One clown walks the tiger like it’s a dog, while the other two flank it, cracking whips at the pitiful beast to keep it moving. They swing open the cage door with a flourish, unclip the leash from the collar, shove the tiger in, and slam the door behind it, jumping with glee and high-fiving as they complete their task.
Sinclair and I back into a far corner of the cage. At first it seems like the tiger doesn’t see us. It paces slowly from one side of the cage to the other, watching the door like it hopes it will spring open on its own. Finally, when it realizes that’s not going to happen, it stops, sniffs the air, and slowly turns toward us.
The tiger’s ribs jut out, its mangy fur falling into the furrows between the bones. Its eyes bulge, too large for its face, and the sadness that seemed to sedate it dissipates as it recognizes prey. The eyes narrow, the chops draw back, and it bares its flesh-ripping teeth. It seems to be channeling its hatred for its captors into the gaze it directs toward us as it growls in a terrifyingly low rumble. A sharp ridge of striped fur rises on its back as it crouches, compacting its body into a concentrated ball of fury, tail whipping back and forth as it prepares to spring.
“Knives,” Sinclair whispers. I remember that the dagger Ant made for us is attached to the belt around my waist. Moving as imperceptibly as I can, I reach for the sheath and carefully pull the blade free.
Sinclair is holding his dagger in front of his face like a warning to the tiger. But the image of handsome Sinclair and his small blade confronting this enormous wild animal is ridiculous. It’s not even a contest.
Sinclair doesn’t seem to realize this, though, and as the beast springs, a strangled yell escapes his throat, and he lunges toward the animal. In my terrified state, it seems like one of those Japanese action movies where both fighters leap in slow motion, exchange a blow in midair, and then land, just as slo
wly, on opposite sides of each other, throwing sawdust into the air as they come back to earth. When the air clears, Sinclair has a four-claw scratch down one side of his face. Blood drips from it in bright red beads. On the other side of the cage, the tiger limps from a wound to its front leg.
A small voice comes from outside the cage. “Don’t hurt the tiger!” Ant yells.
“Don’t hurt the tiger?” Sinclair exclaims. “If we don’t hurt the tiger, it’s going to fucking kill us!”
I turn to see Ant crying, struggling against the ropes pinning his arms down to his sides. George sits bound beside him, trying to talk him down.
The tiger turns its attention to me, and a rush of pure fear numbs my face and makes my fingertips sting like they’re being pricked by needles. Don’t dissociate, I think, but I don’t need this self-reminder. I dissociate when I feel powerless in a dangerous situation. That isn’t the case here. I can do something. This time I have the power . . . and the means . . . to hurt my aggressor. But I look into the face of the tortured tiger and I choose not to use it.
“Sinclair,” I say. “Let’s just try to escape. If we can work together to slip past the tiger, maybe we can get out the door.”
He looks like he’s thinking. “I’ll get the tiger to come this way,” he says. “You make a run for the door.”
“Okay,” I agree. “Once I’m out, I’ll go to the far end and try to lure it in that direction so you can have a shot for the door.”
“Deal,” he says, and going into this stupid-looking action-hero crouch. He makes a waving-forward gesture with his fingers, like the tiger’s some kind of thug that he’s going to fight in the school parking lot. The tiger looks from Sinclair to me and back. There’s a deranged look in its eyes: it’s probably mad from hunger.