Christine just shakes her head. She can’t tell.
She hurries forward first, around the big, circular driveway, past the fountain and straight for the nearest window. Caleb follows. They check all the windows on the first floor. They’re all locked, barred, and dark. Caleb keeps glancing at the woods, expecting to see sleepwalkers in the shadows. But all he sees are the shadows themselves, watching him back.
They reach the basement door, the one that Anna disappeared into once upon a time, and the wind picks up a little. Caleb half expects them to find the door unlocked and waiting for them, but when Christine jerks on the handle it won’t budge. By now they’re soaked to the bone. The rain is cold, biting, almost sleet. Lightning fractures the dark above, illuminating what might be faces in the forest, clawing hands in the branches of the trees all around them.
They pass the old pond Caleb remembers from his childhood.
Little Billy, Anna, and Christine used to splash each other there in those cold, clear, spring-fed waters. Now it sits still and black as the eye of a dead fish. Swollen with rainwater, it’s flooded so much that one leg of its surface reaches nearly to the foundation of the Dream Center. He was always a little scared of that swimming hole as a kid.
He eyes it distrustfully now as they skirt it and walk on. Caleb shivers and glances over his shoulder once, but there is no disturbance on the pond’s obsidian surface except the pocking of raindrops.
They check another window, round the corner, and walk on.
There was a rusted old fire escape on this side of the building when they were kids, but the director—John Morle—must’ve had it torn off during the renovation. Now its skeleton rusts in the weeds by the edge of the woods. More locked windows. Christine is rubbing her hands together. The chill of the rain deadens every extremity.
They round another corner, and they’re back at the front again.
“Did you see any places to climb up?” asks Caleb, keeping a wary eye on the towering building.
She shakes her head.
“Me neither,” he says.
She’s looking away from him at the front door. He grabs her arm.
“We can’t just go in the front door,” he says. Then he feels like an idiot; what other option do they have?
“He knows we’re coming,” she says. “Everything knows we’re coming. The dead are singing about it. The wind is full of them.”
“What are they saying?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“At least let me go first,” he says. He readjusts the hatchet in his hand, as if it will do him any good against an army of restless dead, and walks up the steps to the big double doors.
He grips one of the big brass handles. It’s freezing cold. He glances back at Christine. She’s holding the old pistol casually, like a cowboy ready to shoot from the hip. Rain-soaked pieces of hair frame her big, shining eyes. Drops of water stand on the white, smooth surface of her skin and run down her slender neck. She’s just looking back at him, waiting. She’s beautiful. And she is his best friend, even if he hasn’t seen her in ten years. And he loves her. And he needs her to live through this day.
“You don’t have to come in,” he says.
“Open the door, Caleb.”
“Please, you don’t have to—”
“Open it.”
And he does.
The door opens freely, almost effortlessly.
They step into the lobby of the Dream Center, dripping. The lights are dimmed. Christine swings the door shut again, sealing away some of the sounds of the storm outside. All that seems to permeate the thick concrete walls is the eerie, distant wailing of the wind. At least, Christine hopes it’s the wind.
The minute she steps inside, every muscle in her body clamps up. She can hardly breathe. Goose bumps break out all over her despite the almost impossible heat that hangs in the air.
With one backward glance at her and a feigned cocky grin, Billy— Caleb—is leading them forward, the hatchet hovering next to his head ready to strike. The halls are empty. There is no sound, no movement except for the flicker of the few fluorescent lights that are working. The place looks utterly desolate, but Christine isn’t fooled. She can feel them, the dead. They grasp at her with every step. The energy of their malice makes the air everywhere vibrate, pulse, seethe. They reach an intersection with another long hallway full of doors, and Caleb looks back at her. Which way?
She nods to the left, hoping he won’t see the hopeless terror in her eyes.
“Staircase is at the end of the hall,” she whispers. “We have to go all the way up.”
“You don’t think we should check the doors down here?”
She shakes her head quickly.
“I guess you’re right,” he whispers. “He wouldn’t put them on the first floor and leave the front door wide open.”
They walk on.
Christine reaches out and grasps his forearm as she walks. She feels the strength there and it makes her feel a little better, but not much. The gun is still shaking in her hand. She knows even if a miracle happened and the old thing actually fired, she couldn’t steady herself enough to hit an elephant.
They pass doors and doors and doors. Like in a nightmare, the hallway is endless.
Ahead, they see a set of double doors with round, porthole-like windows in their centers. They squeak in protest as Caleb pushes them wide. As they enter the new room Caleb looks for attackers, his head snapping back and forth, but there are no sleeping demons here, only old cobweb-covered toys.
Here, no lights are on. The only illumination comes from the crackle of lightning through dirty windows.
They move cautiously forward. Apparently this room was never renovated. There’s a rocking horse in front of them, its paint peeling off. To the left is a model train half off the tracks, so covered in dust it looks almost white. There’s a mural on the wall, smiling children swinging on swings under a jolly, smiling sun. A big, happy owl looks on. Some vandal (or Morle himself maybe) has spray-painted out the children’s eyes. Red paint runs down their faces like blood tears. Against the wall to their right, time has reduced a pile of stuffed animals to fur, sawdust, and glass eyes. Against the other wall sits a huge, rusty cage draped in cobwebs. Christine locks her mind against wondering what that cage was used for so many years ago. Surely it wasn’t to restrain the children who played with these toys. . . .
The air is so thick in here she can’t breathe. She literally feels underwater. A tear runs down her cheek, and she doesn’t know why. She lets go of Caleb’s arm as he continues ahead of her, weaving through the wasteland of dead toys. She fumbles in her pocket before finally finding what she’s looking for and pulling the little radio free. Trembling, she puts the headphones on. She adjusts the dial. Five thirty-five AM. Up ahead Billy, Caleb, has reached the double doors at the other end of the room.
“It’s the staircase,” she hears him say.
And she flips the switch and turns the radio on.
Caleb has the doors open now and looks in on a forgotten staircase strewn with plaster debris and dust. He’s about to step into the stairwell when he realizes Christine isn’t behind him. He turns back and finds her, and his heart stops.
She stands in the middle of the room shaking. Tears run in slick lines down both her cheeks. Her eyes dart back and forth. Her body is drawn up, tense and quivering, but her feet remain rooted in place.
“Christine? Christine!”
The second time she hears her name and looks at him. Her voice is a tiny squeak.
“They’re all around us.”
And it happens: the wooden horse begins rocking insanely; the pile of dismembered stuffed animals begins rolling toward her. The wail of the wind somehow becomes high, horrible laughter. The dust in the room comes to life, whipping up in blinding, swirling gusts.
Christine is screaming.
The door of the cage is slamming and slamming and slamming.
Thunder shakes ever
ything.
Through the storm of debris, Caleb rushes to her. Her eyes are squeezed tightly shut and her scream has becomes a rasping gurgle.
He stuffs the hatchet in his belt and grabs her arm, still gripping the gas can in his other hand, and yanks her into motion.
“Come on!”
He drags her toward the stairwell. They slam through the double doors.
In here they are cut off from the dying fluorescent lights of the hallway, and darkness is deeper, so deep you could swim in it. And things are swimming in it. Caleb sees them all around now, contorted faces, hands, claws, eyes, ethereal but real.
“I’m getting you out of here. If we go down we should be able to find the back door,” Caleb yells.
Christine is biting her nails, cradling the gun against her chest like a baby doll.
“It’s a trap,” she whispers.
“Come on,” he says, tugging her arm.
“IT’S A TRAP,” she screams.
And then he hears it.
It’s distant at first: a pounding. It could almost be war drums. It could almost be thunder.
“It’s all a trap,” she says, another tear falling.
And then he knows. He looks over the railing, down the stairwell. The pounding is footfalls.
The sleepwalkers are coming.
There must be hundreds of them. They jam the stairwell, a rising, living tide.
They claw each other and fight their way ahead like a swarm of rats fleeing a flood.
“Up,” says Caleb. “GO!”
He shoves Christine ahead of him up the stairwell.
She seems to snap back into reality and scrambles up one flight, then another, then another.
Caleb is just behind her, guiding her forward with one hand and gripping the hatchet with the other. On every landing they try the door. On every landing the door is locked tight.
Christine was right. This is a trap.
Caleb runs with one eye over the banister, watching in choking horror as, step by step, the throng of possessed ones gains on them. By the time he’s reached the next landing he’s made up his mind. He unscrews the gas can and stops, dousing the stairs below him.
“Billy!”
Caleb looks up and sees Christine leaning over the banister one flight above him.
“Go!” he says. “Keep running!”
“You’re burning them?”
“Go!” he says. “I won’t let them get you. I’ll catch up.”
By now the sleepwalkers are so close he can smell the sickness in their sweat. They’re three stairwells down, now two, now one—there’s no time to empty the last bit of gas; they’re almost on him. He fumbles in the pocket of his soaked jeans for the lighter, finally pulling it out, trying to light it. And it clicks, and clicks, and clicks. Nothing.
Now they’re at the landing just below him. Now their feet are slipping on the stairs a few feet away. Their claws, human hands filled with inhuman power, grope at the steps beneath him.
And the lighter clicks and clicks.
And now they’re on him.
Caleb swings the gas can to fend them off. Gas splashes on them.
The can thuds hollowly on a possessed girl’s head, and it’s too late.
The lighter falls from his hand. A hundred hands grab him with impossible strength. He cries out as some of the fingers puncture his skin, worming into his muscle. He feels teeth bite deep into the flesh of his side and hears the sound as they tear a small piece away. His own scream is piercing in his ears.
And so is the clap and echo of the gunshot. He looks up and sees Christine’s face over the railing above him, illuminated by the spark of fire from the barrel.
Then he feels the heat all around him, and knows the gas is going up. Firelight flashes across the walls. There’s a collective shriek, and the hands that were tearing into his flesh fall away. Caleb tumbles down the stairwell into the flames, into a tangle of thrashing limbs.
He smells his own hair burning, hears his screams mingle with those of the sleepwalkers.
In the next instant he’s scrambling upward, out of the conflagration. He reaches the next landing, rolling, burning, rubbing his body feverishly, then looks down at himself, expecting to see his body wrapped in flames. Instead, his clothes are steaming, but he’s fine. Then he realizes: his wet clothes, soaked by the rain, saved him.
But the sleepwalkers are burning alive.
Two of them break through the flames, flailing and hissing. Caleb yanks the hatchet out of his belt and swings only twice. Each of them drops with a hollow thud and keeps burning.
The rest of them are already burned black.
The smell of them makes Caleb puke as he runs. Vomit comes out of his nose and burns and makes him puke more, but still he runs, onward, upward.
The fire follows him, moving fast, almost burning his heels.
“Come on!” he hears Christine’s voice echo from the landing above. “The door up here is unlocked!”
He runs hard, the fire licking his feet. He’s already slick with sweat from the heat.
The way the fire is spreading the whole place will burn.
“Come on!”
Caleb rounds the corner and sees Christine at the top of the next flight of stairs, looking beautiful in the firelight.
Funny how things come around.
Funny how just when you’ve grown up and you think you’re finally safe from your nightmares, you realize they were real after all.
There’s Christine on the landing only a few feet away. Behind her, a door.
Caleb sees this all very clearly.
He sees it even before it happens, because he’s seen it a thousand times before. It’s more than déjà vu.
The door behind Christine opens, reveals a rectangle of black.
And before Caleb’s foot hits the next step, Christine is jerked back into the dark.
Gone.
“CHRISTINE!” On the landing now, he slams himself against the door.
Locked.
“CHRISTINE!” He hits the steel door with the hatchet again and again and again and again and again.
Behind it the faintest scream fades into silence.
Caleb doesn’t stop pounding on the door, doesn’t stop until the flames are all around him and he can smell himself burning again.
The door won’t budge. He looks up. Only two more floors until the top. If both of these doors are locked then that’s the end of him.
On the steps, just out of the blaze, he sees Christine’s radio.
Must’ve fallen there.
He snatches it up and runs, coughing now, blinded by smoke and tears, dizzy. Tries the next door. Locked. One more flight to go.
The smoke is so thick he sees nothing. He knows where he is only by the feel of his hand on the railing. He reaches the landing, gropes and finds the door. The heat is almost unbearable now. He reels and almost falls, almost blacks out, but fights his way out of it. He finds the doorknob.
And it turns. He steps into the coolness and slams the door on the swirling flames behind him.
In the blackness, there is no sound but the ticking of clocks.
Caleb steps into the room, blind.
The only light is a bar of orange coming from beneath the closed door at his back.
He steps forward, gripping the hatchet tightly.
The sound of ticking is all around him, maddening as the buzzing of a million mosquitoes. He reaches out, groping in oblivion.
“I don’t need to see you,” says a deep voice. “They will tell me where you are.”
Caleb jerks his head in the direction of the sound, but echoes jumble his perception, and he just winds up spinning around, lost.
There’s laughter. He knows it’s the voice of the director, Morle, but in the shadows he can almost hear hundreds of other voices laughing too.
“I could snap your neck at any moment. This is what surrender feels like.”
“I’m not scared of you,” Cale
b lies.
There’s no answer, not even the laughter Caleb expected. Then there’s the sound of something whipping through the air, and the hatchet disappears, yanked from his hand.
The lasso.
“Now do you believe me?” says the voice.
Caleb tries to catch his breath. His mind is racing. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing you won’t give freely.”
“I won’t help you make the world end.”
“That’s exactly what you’ve come here to do.”
He can’t tell if he’s imagining it or not, but the ticking seems to speed up. The heat is maddening. Sweat runs into his eyes.
Then he gets an idea. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the little radio. He puts on the headphones. At first only white noise greets his ears.
Please, Anna. Come on. Be there.
The only sound is the rush of nothing and the ticking of the clocks.
“You should be enjoying these moments. The spirits of a million dead are chanting your name, do you hear it?” the voice says. It seems to be coming from everywhere at once. “For decades, witches, sorcerers, Satanists, a few enlightened Druids, have all ached for this moment.”
Caleb’s throat is so dry he can barely croak a reply. “Why?”
He can hear the fire crackling behind the door now, hear the door bowing in its frame from the heat.
“Because the followers of Lucifer have no place in heaven. But once they’ve awakened their master, they’ll be able to create their own place here, on earth.”
“What about the rest of us?”
“Those who survive will be enslaved. The rest will simply be gone.”
“And you expect me to help you?”
“Aren’t you listening? You already are. We couldn’t do it without you, Billy.”
Caleb is lost in the dark. He simply keeps spinning around, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice.
Come on, Anna, talk to me! Help me save your sister!
Only static answers his plea.
“Where’s Christine?” Caleb barks.
“You will be reunited soon, rest assured.”
“And what do you get? What’s your reward for all this? You get to be the devil’s right-hand man, or what?”
The Sleepwalkers Page 27