by Amy Plum
“Hey, tiger,” Sinclair calls. “Come on. Come get me.” He flashes his knife around. The glint of the metal in the circus spotlights catches the animal’s attention and it lunges without even pausing to crouch and spring like it had before. I’m so shocked that I hesitate a second, but then I hear George scream, “Run, Cata!” and I throw my body across the space of the cage toward the door, ignoring the sounds of the struggle behind me.
I hurl myself onto the door, pushing with all my might. The rusty hinges groan as it opens just wide enough for me to slip out. Leaving it ajar, I sprint around to the far corner of the cage in time to see Sinclair tear himself away from the animal. His left arm hangs by his side, blood streaming from his shoulder. He grasps the knife in his right hand and slumps slightly, breathing heavily as the tiger retreats, readying for its next attack.
“Sinclair!” I yell from outside the bars. “The door is open. Go!” And then I stick my arm with my dagger through the bars and wave it around, yelling for all I’m worth to catch the tiger’s attention. The animal looks stunned for a moment, then takes a couple of steps toward me.
But instead of going for the door, Sinclair runs toward the animal, grabs a tuft of mane, yanks its head back, and pulls the knife across its throat. Blood sprays across my face, blinding me.
My muscles seem to dissolve and I fall limp to the ground. Screams come from behind me, cries of horror from Ant and George. I use my shirt to wipe the tiger blood from my eyes and stare aghast at Sinclair. He releases the tiger’s head and watches it slump to the floor.
“Why did you do that?” I shriek.
“What?” Sinclair says, looking confused. “I just saved us.”
“You didn’t have to kill it!” I cry. “The door was open. You could have gotten out.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Sinclair yells back at me. “It’s just a dream!”
We are interrupted by the arrival of the three clowns who had led the tiger into the ring. They flop up to the cage in their giant shoes and freakish smiles, clapping slowly, and swing the door wide to let Sinclair step out. One of them holds Sinclair’s injured arm up in the air. “Bravo!” the clown sneers.
Sinclair slashes at him with the knife, but the clown is faster and jumps out of the way while his two companions grab Sinclair by the arms, shove a chair under him, and tie him down.
“You’ve just won yourselves a front-row seat for the next show,” the clown says, and then, pointing to me, snaps his fingers, and in a split second I go from lying in the sawdust to sitting tied to a chair next to Sinclair.
Suddenly remembering Remi, I look up to the high wire to see that the boy has shuffled his way back to the platform and is watching us with wide eyes.
A spotlight flicks on, illuminating the puppet ringmaster. “Ladies and gentlemen, what a show that was!” says the nasal voice, as he walks toward us with exaggerated movements, strings moving his knees up and down to propel him forward. He claps a congratulatory hand on Sinclair’s shoulder. “This is the kind of hero every crowd loves.”
“You’re sick! You’re all sick!” I scream at the grotesque ringmaster, and struggle against the ropes binding me to the chair. The string holding his head slackens, lowering his face toward mine.
“Sick. That’s a funny word,” the voice says as the jointed mouth flaps, but the creature stares at me with an intensity that sends a shiver through my spine. There’s something familiar about those sea-green eyes. From beneath the velvet top hat spills chin-length black hair. And inked on the inside of the forearm is a Gothic-lettered tattoo reading “DFF.”
“Fergus!” I gasp. “Oh my God, you’re alive!”
“Alive?” he murmurs, as if it’s a word he’s never heard. His face is unrecognizable: It’s the pasty white, painted-on face of every circus clown that ever existed, but there’s something wrong with it. It looks lumpy, like white dough has been pushed and pressed onto his skull in a haphazard manner. It looks like a face transplant. It is a face transplant, I realize with horror.
Unlike before, with the mouth flapping open and shut while the voice came from elsewhere, now it’s Fergus’s lips, not his jaw, that move. With great effort, he squeezes out a breath. “Help me,” he wheezes.
“It’s Fergus!” I yell, and strain against the cords binding my chest.
Immediately, his head is yanked up and one arm raises. He points a white-gloved hand toward our left where Ant and George had been sitting, and as his mouth flaps open and shut, the voice over the loudspeaker announces, “And for the final show, we have a thrilling display of death-defying knife throwing!”
A spotlight shines down on George, whose wrists and ankles are manacled to a round wooden target propped upright in the sawdust. She is dressed in a skimpy green outfit—like a one-piece bathing suit but made of shiny satin lined with black fringe—and is wearing a headpiece crowned with big green feathers.
Facing her is Ant, who is being restrained by two clowns. A third clown stands aside, brandishing a handful of knives. Ant thrashes, yelling, “No, I won’t do it!”
“It seems like we’re having a bit of a technical difficulty, ladies and gentlemen,” puppet Fergus says, taking an exaggerated step away from me toward the clowns. “I think we’re going to have to use some persuasion here to convince our knife thrower to cooperate.”
One of the clowns raises a hand and flourishes Ant’s notebook and pen. He holds them up high above his head. “Would anyone enjoy a magic show?” he asks in a voice that sounds like he’s been inhaling helium. He points a finger and the objects explode in a flash of light. A stream of smoke wafts upward in the harsh light of the spotlight as Ant gapes in shock.
“Maybe our brave knife thrower is ready to throw,” Fergus puppet says.
“I won’t!” Ant screams, red-faced.
“Assistants, more encouragement, please?” The clown holding Ant forces his hands forward as the other clown peels off the fingerless gloves. Ant thrashes and begins to tap his fingers even though there is no surface for them to touch. It looks like he’s doing Morse code in the air. The clown holds them up above his head, and in a poof of flame, they’re gone.
“And now. Are you ready to throw?” Fergus’s mouth moves, and the voice booms over the speakers.
“Never!” Ant screams.
“Good sirs?” the ringmaster says.
Ant throws himself forward, breaking free from the clown restraining him for one breathless second before the clown catches him again, and digs his clawlike fingernails into Ant’s arms. Ant screams in pain as blood blooms red on his skin.
The magician clown rips the hat off Ant’s head and dances around with it, whirling it around in the air. Ant screams and jerks away, jumping, arms stretched upward, trying to grab the hat back from the gleeful clown. The clown who was his captor grasps at his thin cotton shirt, shredding it with his sharp clown nails and ripping it from Ant’s back as the boy lunges for the hat.
The magician clown points his finger at the hat and it disappears in a flame that illuminates Ant’s face as tears pour from his eyes.
No, I realize with shock. Her eyes.
I stare, incredulous, at the thirteen-year-old kneeling on the ground, weeping. My eyes take in the short, spiky strawberry blond hair pulled back in glittery blue barrettes and the striped sports bra and it suddenly clicks. Ant is a girl.
“Let’s see if Antonia,” the magician clown says, accentuating the name in a way that makes it clear that speaking it is meant as its own form of torture, “is ready to throw the knives!”
“No.” Ant’s voice is quiet, but the silence of the big top makes it resound as if it were a gong.
“Gentlemen,” Fergus says, high-stepping over to where Ant is crouched, “I think we will need your assistance.”
The clowns grab Ant and force her to rise. The clown with the knives places one blade in Ant’s hand and closes her fingers around it. Another clown lifts her arm above her head into a throwing position. Ant isn�
��t even looking. She stares at the ground as sobs rack her body.
“Ant,” a voice says. My eyes race to George, who has been standing silently this whole time, pinnacled to the throwing board.
“Ant,” she says again, and Ant drags her head upward as if it is made of lead.
“It’s okay. Really,” George says, and glances at where her arm is cuffed to the side. My gaze follows hers to her tattoo, and as I watch, half of the yin-yang fades and disappears.
“No,” Ant weeps. “I can’t. I’m not ready.”
“And the first knife flies,” announces Fergus, who has jiggled over to stand next to Ant.
The clown holding Ant’s arm jerks it forward, stabbing her palm with his nails so that she lets go. The knife flies toward George. It lodges in her right arm, but she doesn’t even flinch, her gaze fixed firmly on Ant.
“Well thrown!” crows the ringmaster. “Knife number two!”
Ant is sagging in the arms of the clown. I would think she had fainted except she raises her head to look George in the eyes as the second knife is wedged between her fingers. The clown pulls Ant’s arm back and the knife flies, lodging into George’s right thigh. Streams of blood flow from where the two knives pierce her flesh, but still she doesn’t move, her gaze cemented on Ant.
“You’ll be fine on your own,” George says calmly.
“No,” Ant sobs. “I won’t. I never have been. I need you. You’re six. My sixth thing. My most important thing.”
“Yet again, another excellent throw,” comes the ringmaster’s voice from the speakers. “Knife number three! Let’s try for the head this time, why don’t we?”
The knife-holding clown hands another knife to Ant’s captor.
But something strange is happening to puppet Fergus, who has started to shudder. He’s moving his arms and legs slowly back and forth, straining like he’s stuck in honey, or in a giant spiderweb. The knife-bearing clown backs away in alarm. Fergus plucks a knife from his hand and, with zombielike jerking motions, slices through the strings attached to his arms and legs. He waves the knife over his head, cutting the string holding him up, slumps for a second, and then, regaining his strength, lunges toward George.
The clown holding Ant’s arm swings back and lets the knife fly toward George’s head. For a moment, it seems suspended in midair as clown-faced Fergus flings himself in front of George, shielding her. A trajectory that would have hit George in the forehead instead plants the knife firmly in much-taller Fergus’s chest.
“Fergus!” I cry, and Ant whips her head up to look at the marionette ringmaster, shoots a questioning look back to me, and then realizes who the knife has struck.
“NO!!!!” Ant screams.
And as she thrashes violently against her clown captor, a familiar boom rings out, shaking the tent around us and rattling the empty seats.
“The Wall!” Remi yells from high up on his platform. He scrambles down the ladder toward the floor.
Fergus stands there, frozen, his clown mouth posed in an astonished O shape. The face starts melting, dripping off in big white doughy chunks, and underneath is Fergus—high cheekbones, jade eyes, light brown skin. His teeth are bared, clenched in pain. He slowly reaches up and pulls the knife from his chest, and then collapses onto the ground.
As the second boom rings out, Remi runs up behind me and starts hacking at my ropes with his dagger. To our right, stretching beyond the edges and far above the crest of the big top, the black wall appears. And as it does, the clowns begin to deflate like balloons until all that’s left of them are empty piles of shoes and clothes scattered on the ground. The tiger carcass shrinks inside the cage, becoming a lump of fur and teeth and blood.
My ropes drop to the ground and Remi yells, “Go!” as he starts on Sinclair.
I fall forward out of my chair, catch myself and sprint toward the others. “Come on, you guys!” I bellow. “Quick! The Wall’s going to disappear!”
Ant is stretched out on top of Fergus, weeping as George looks on, her face twisted in distress. “Ant, get up and go!” she urges. “You have to get out of here!”
“Ant, try to get Fergus to the Wall, and I’ll work on getting George down!” I yell. Taking out my knife, I drive it under the manacle holding her arm, and use it to wedge the metal away from the wood.
“Thanks, Cata, but that’s not necessary.” George gives me a sad smile.
I pause and look at her like she’s insane. “What do you mean? I have to get you down.”
She shakes her head. “It’s been nice knowing you,” she whispers. And then, looking down, she calls, “Ant?”
The girl raises her head to look George in the eyes.
“Take care of yourself,” George says. And then she disappears, leaving only dangling manacles and bloodstains on the giant wheel.
“What the . . . ?” I yell. I glance around the circus ring, but George hasn’t reappeared anywhere I can see.
“Help me with Fergus!” Ant yells, tears streaming down her face as she tries to wrap his arm around her shoulder.
“What happened to George?” I ask.
“Just help me with Fergus,” Ant insists, and as the wind rises, the third boom shakes the tent so violently that it begins to cave in on one end, canvas plunging heavily toward the ground. Sawdust rises in a blinding cloud, and the spotlights crash down one by one.
Ant and I are trying to drag Fergus between us, but although he is semiconscious and mumbling, he is deadweight and we are barely moving. Sinclair and Remi run up behind us. “Ant, Remi, go!” Sinclair yells, and takes over for Ant. We lug him between us toward the Wall. Ant and Remi turn and wait for us at the edge of the darkness.
“Just go!” I yell. And as we reach them and plow with Fergus into the Void, I see the static monster out the side of my eye. It crouches by the edge of the Wall, reaching out toward us, its wails muted by the howling of the wind.
CHAPTER 28
JAIME
THERE ARE TEN MINUTES BEFORE THE SLEEPERS enter what I’m guessing will be their next NREM cycle. I wonder what they’re going through in their dreams right now.
There’s only one file I haven’t read yet. I flip to subject six, a thirteen-year-old named Antonia Gates. In her photo, she’s wearing a knit hat with earflaps and looks like a boy.
Antonia goes to a charter school in Princeton, where she has already finished all of her high-school-level requirements. It was suggested that she begin university early, but she chose to stay in the same school and do as many AP courses as she could before having to “change environments and integrate into a new social system,” as her school counselor wrote.
Her IQ is 160. Holy crap. That’s up there in the genius tier of the scale. There is a full file of notes from a string of psychiatrists and psychologists, but they are headed with a memo from Dr. Vesper. Note: despite the multitude of differing diagnoses for Antonia, her parents are vehemently against her being referred to as having any particular DSM classification. However, it should be kept in mind that this highly intelligent child does manifest symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, with obvious physical tics, as well as behaviors normally associated with autism, specifically Asperger’s syndrome. She has suffered from sleep disorders for the last year, and in the past few months her insomnia has become crippling enough to recommend this trial.
Seven . . . now six teenagers. All with their own problems. No, that word seems wrong. Challenges? Conditions?
They each have something that has either happened to them in their life . . . an external force, as far as Catalina and Remi are concerned . . . or, in the cases of Antonia, Brett, and Fergus, something affecting their brains. As for Sinclair, I don’t really understand how that works. I read something recently saying that it was a genetic condition, but as far as the nature versus nurture debate, I’ve heard arguments for both sides.
In any case, all of these kids have something to fight against. They all have the scales tipped against them. All I can hope is that
no one else dies like BethAnn did, before the group either snaps out of it on their own or the doctors figure out some way to pull them out.
My thoughts are interrupted by a motion on my monitor. It’s hard to tell from here, but it looks like one of the subjects just moved. I lean closer to the screen, watching carefully.
There it goes again: it’s subject two . . . Fergus. The one whose feedback never went back to normal after the last cycle. His right hand has flown up to his chest. I turn around and see that he has ripped out his IV tube, which is dripping on the floor.
I jump up and start running down the stairs toward him, then, remembering what Zhu said about emergencies, scramble back up to my workstation. I flail around for the card she gave me, find it, and punch her pager number into the telephone. As soon as it registers, I slam the receiver back down and run to Fergus’s side. Leaning in to look at his Tower monitor, I see that his heart rate is rising off the charts.
His eyes fly open. Holding a fist over his heart, he seems to be pulling some invisible object from his chest before his fingers open and his hand drops back down to his side.
I glance at the defibrillator. It is activated and ready to use, but I don’t dare try it myself. This is a real person. A living, breathing human being, not the test dummy I used in ER class. I look toward the door, but there’s no sign of Zhu.
My heart is beating so fast, my rate is probably right up there with Fergus’s. His eyes grow wider, and as he glances around the room in panic, his gaze lands on me. “Help me,” he wheezes.
“Fergus, can you hear me?” I ask.
He nods, and then asks in a choked voice, “Did BethAnn make it?”
Time stops as I realize what his question means. Fergus knows something happened to BethAnn. The subjects are in there together, wherever “there” is. They are in a state of consciousness that doesn’t show up on regular brain-wave monitoring. They are in each other’s dreams.
I snap back into myself. “BethAnn . . . She died.”
Fergus squeezes his eyes shut. “It’s the dreams,” he says. “They’re killing us.”