Sleeper

by MacKenzie Cadenhead

  Ralphie retreats from my room to the adjacent observation center where he’ll monitor me all night long. It’s a comfort knowing he’s there, even when I’m annoyed with him for giving me good advice that I don’t want to take. I stare at my phone, debating my next move.

  “Trust me, kid,” Ralphie’s voice booms through an intercom. “The Dexid takes effect fast.”

  “But I don’t feel remotely tired,” I reply to the air.

  “You will. So text him now or don’t, but I’m making you turn off the phone in a minute.”

  “Okay, okay,” I say as I give in.

  Going to sleep now. Sorry about today, I text Jamie.

  Good to hear from u, he replies immediately. Good luck and good dreams S. Sorry too.

  I stare at his text, tears wetting my eyelashes. What’s wrong with me? Despite all the crap in my life, I know I’m lucky to have someone as kind and solid as Jamie to care about me, especially after I’ve broken his heart and am being a total ass. I’m not sure if I deserve him, even as a friend, but I know I’m thankful for him.

  I lift my finger to text him back, but my hand suddenly feels too heavy. My eyelids droop, and my breathing slows. I try to say something to Ralphie, but my jaw melts into goo. I hear a distant, echoing thud as my cell phone slips from my hand, landing somewhere beside me on the bed. I fight to push my eyelids open, but my eyes are already rolling into the back of my head.

  Everything

  goes

  black

  …

  and quiet

  …

  am I even breathing?

  …

  Then…

  StingingWindFaceOnFire

  FlutFlutFlutterExplodingEardrums

  DryMouthCottonMouthSalivalessMouthChokingOnTheTasteOfNothingness

  UNTIL

  blink—A marble concourse.

  blink—Gold lights.

  blink—Stars in a green night sky.

  blink—My eyes pop open, and I spring to my feet. I shake my body all over, relieved to have control of my limbs once more. I open my mouth to call for Ralphie but stop when my brain catches up to my eyes.

  I am not in Kansas anymore.

  Standing at the top of a huge marble staircase, I see an enormous concourse with people passing through it below me. Arched windows, at least sixty feet high, surround me. A mural on the ceiling, bedazzled with stars from the night sky, hovers above. Below is a four-sided clock atop a circular information booth, and everywhere I look is another shining gold chandelier.

  Grand Central Terminal. I’ve been here before, but not like this. Everything has a warm, honey glow to it. Veins of buttery bronze snake through the white marble, which stretches well beyond the staircase, covering the entire terminal floor. The tiny crystals that make up the acorn-shaped chandeliers shimmer softly, and the whole scene has a timeless, sepia tone to it. The lines of the staircase, the clock, the windows, even the people, are soft without being dull, subtly blurred, like a picture shot through gauze.

  A parade of commuters glides across the floor in a grid-like formation, too choreographed to be real. “This is a dream,” I say, and my body releases. My head grows heavy in my hand. Is it possible to fall asleep in a dream? Is this what the Dexid can offer? I breathe in, ready, finally, to rest. My eyelids are closing when I notice him.

  He’s running fast, a figure moving against the wave of commuters. He pushes through the people with little regard, but they’re unfazed by the disruption and quickly resume course. The closer he gets, the more sharply he comes into focus. A jolt of energy surges through my body like a hit of caffeine, and I bolt upright.

  Wes Nolan is coming right at me.

  Bounding up the staircase, he leaps over a railing and lands at my feet. His green eyes are electric, sharp, awake. He is a techno beat raging against the three-quarter time of a waltz.

  “Come with me,” he says, and he holds out his hand.

  I take it, and we run.

  Chapter Five

  “Sorry!” I call to a commuter that I’ve just elbowed as Wes pulls me through the valley of the dazed.

  “Don’t waste your time,” he says over his shoulder. “It doesn’t bother them. They just reset onto their paths and keep going.”

  I glance back to see that he’s right. The guy I hit floats back into line, moving toward his destination, unaware of assault or assailant. As Wes pulls me through the main concourse, I look up at the mural on the ceiling. So many painted stars. It’s night, isn’t it? I am sleeping, dreaming. How funny to be so aware.

  I move my fingers lightly over Wes’s skin, its creamy ivory a contrast to my own deep olive hue. I trace his cool softness, enjoying the slightness of my hand in his. I blush and steal a look at my guide just as he shoves another commuter out of our way. The pregnant woman stumbles to the ground.

  “Wes!” I say, and I pull my hand from his. I hurry over to the mother-to-be.

  “Come on,” he commands. “There’s no time.”

  “Are you all right?” I ask the woman as I help her to her feet. She says nothing. “Hello?”

  She doesn’t respond. No words, no movement. I wave my hand in front of her face. Nothing. Then, without ever acknowledging me, she slips back into her line of commuters and drifts away.

  “I told you not to bother,” Wes says, the exasperation raising the pitch of his voice a whiny octave. “We have to keep moving.”

  I make myself heavy on the ground and fold my arms. “I heard you the first time,” I say. “But I’m not much of a follower. I won’t take another step until you tell me what’s so important you trample pregnant women without flinching.”

  Ask a stupid question…

  Wes’s eyes flick past me, and his skin pales even more. “That,” he says as he spins me around to face a nightmare.

  Barreling through the assembly-line commuters are two hulking figures headed straight for us. From the neck down, they look like extreme body builders whose ’roid rage I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Their bodies bulge and thicken wherever there’s a muscle to exploit. If these boogeymen catch me, there will be no use putting up a fight. And yet their physiques scare me far less than their horrible, deformed faces: lips long and thin, pointing down in a sad-clown grimace; noses mashed and pulpy with crusty slits that at one time might have been nostrils. Their skin is pockmarked and craggy, and I imagine that, if I touch it, it will rub me raw.

  But the eyes are the worst. In place of where they should be are two empty sockets, scabbed over with purple-bruised skin. If there is any truth to the cliché that the eyes are the windows of the soul, then these offer a view of violence, abuse, and infection.

  I am too scared to move, too breathless to scream. But Wes yanks me out of my paralysis and pulls me to him.

  “Can we run now?”

  He doesn’t wait for an answer.

  We take off.

  FastThroughZombieCommuters

  DownStairsTwoAtATime

  UnderArchwayOntoRampDownToTrack

  Where…

  A shining silver and red commuter train roars to life, and a bell chimes as the doors begin to close.

  Wes sprints to the closest car and wedges himself between the closing doors, keeping them open just long enough for me to slip through. I am running fast, and I don’t slow down. I fly through the doorway and slam against the wall opposite before collapsing onto the ground. Wes releases the doors and stumbles forward. Kneeling over me, he catches his breath.

  “Not bad,” he says with a smile.

  I hoist myself up to sit and stare at the boy with whom I’ve just escaped something worse than Freddie Krueger and Jason Voorhees combined. “Not bad?” I ask. “I’d hate to see what’s worse.”

  He lifts me to my feet as the train pulls out of the station. He leads me
into the next car. Scattered throughout the compartment are the commuters I watched float across the concourse, sitting quietly now in their seats, staring ahead at nothing. We walk from one car to the next in silence. Occasionally, Wes looks back at me, as if to check that I am still here. I am. After what we just experienced, I’m sticking to him like glue.

  About five cars in, I ask, “Where are we going?”

  “Anywhere that’s not where those things are,” he says, more resigned than panicked. It’s not that his tone is nonchalant, but neither is it terrified or desperate. Running from these creatures isn’t new to him.

  “What are they?” I ask.

  “I wish I could tell you,” he says with a shrug. “All I know is that when a Burner shows up, I run.”

  “Burner?”

  He half laughs. “Like a burnout. I started calling them that after the first time one of them chased me onto a train. I hid in the conductor’s booth and tried to calm myself down by saying it was a figment of my imagination, some speed-freak monster I’d created from watching too many B movies where normal kids turn into crater-faced hell beasts after one night of robodosing. Plus, their faces look like someone held them to a stove.”

  I shiver at the memory. “So, did it work?”

  “Not at all,” he laughs, fully this time, and his whole face lifts. He is so beautiful here, so firm, so defined against the fuzziness of my dream. “I spent most of the ride in the fetal position…” His brightness dims, and he trails off. “Anyway, the name stuck. All I know is, if I keep moving, I have a good chance of avoiding them.”

  “What happens if they catch you?” I ask.

  “You don’t want to find out. C’mon.” He pulls me into the next car.

  “You know, we’re running out of train,” I say. I can hear the irritation in my voice. Awake or asleep, I do not like being dismissed. “Unless we pull into a station soon, I think we have a problem.”

  His eyes light up, and he stops. “Funny you should say that,” he says and points to a commuter getting to his feet.

  He is an older man, white, late fifties. He’d be unremarkable in a pair of simple striped pajamas were it not for two things. Unlike the other commuters on the train, he sways slightly, a marked contrast to the straight backs and orderly lines of his compatriots.

  Also, I recognize him. Mr. Houston, the sleepwalker from clinic.

  He moves to one of the closed automatic double doors and stands in front of it, staring blankly ahead. It’s as if he’s waiting to get off at the next stop, but the train isn’t slowing. I open my mouth to say as much when the doors slide open.

  A gust of cool air shoots in as the train continues at full speed. Mr. Houston wobbles on the edge of the doorway, and darkness whizzes by. I feel the urge to grab him, to pull him back from the danger he’s unaware of, when what’s on the other side of the doorway changes.

  A series of disconnected images replace empty blackness until the collage of bright colors and geometric shapes kaleidoscope into a portrait of a park on a bright summer’s day.

  No, not a portrait. A very real, three-dimensional world all its own.

  Though the train continues to move, what’s on the other side of the doorway remains fixed. If I were to step through the door, would I enter this other world? As if in answer to my question, Mr. Houston does exactly that. Stretching one foot over the threshold into the park, he is about to touch down when I feel Wes move forward. What does he plan to do? Save the guy? Go with him?

  Without thinking, I grab Wes and pull him back just as Mr. Houston’s foot hits the grass.

  His body is swallowed whole, enveloped by the scene.

  The green and blue of the pastoral scene speeds away with the sleepwalker inside it.

  And the train doors slam shut.

  Wes yanks himself free of my grip and lunges at the door. He presses his face against the glass, but Mr. Houston and his world are long gone.

  “What’d you do that for?” he demands. “That was our ticket off this train.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “He just got swallowed up—”

  “Into a dream.” He says each word slowly, the emphasis implying my stupidity. He stares out the window. “I told you we have to keep moving. You said it yourself—we’re running out of train. If that happens before another dreamer opens a doorway out for us…”

  A flickering in the shadows catches my eye, and I stop listening. I spin to find a monster with a spiked club arm standing in the doorway of the car behind us, staring us down.

  Steam shoots out its mashed nostrils.

  It grunts. It charges.

  My feet move two steps forward on instinct, but my brain is so busy screaming that it forgets to tell my legs to follow. I trip and fall hard on the ground.

  The Burner is instantly above me. He roars a hacking, congested battle cry that is all sour stench and radioactive heat. I scramble to make myself as small as possible, my intuition telling me not to touch the corroded beast. The next scream I hear is my own as my nightmare raises its spiked arm and prepares to bring it down on me.

  Wes pulls me backward onto my feet just in time.

  We turn and run.

  We go from car to car until none are left, and we are trapped. “Help me,” Wes commands, and he leads me to an automatic double door. We slip our fingers into the soft groove between the sliding doors, each grabbing an opposite panel to pull apart. We’ve barely moved them an inch when I feel a rush of air from the back of the car. Two Burners have arrived.

  Panicking, I release my grip.

  Wes is on me in an instant. Gently, he places his hands on my face, turning it up to meet his. “You can do this,” he says. “We can do this together.”

  I don’t know if it’s the evenness of his voice or the steadiness of his hands, but I believe him. Though my hands are shaking, I shove them into the space between the doors again as Wes counts us down.

  “Three, two, one.”

  I dig my heels into the floor and brace my lower back against the vestibule wall. With each micro movement of the door, I inch my fingers deeper into the frame until I get a firm grasp on the casement. I pull with all my strength, sweating, grunting, until, finally, the two panels give way, and the doors spring open.

  On the other side is blackness. A night sky with no stars.

  I turn to Wes just as a Burner appears. Before I can even consider my options, he throws himself between the monster and me.

  I stumble backward, teetering on the edge of the doorway. The Burner grabs Wes, who is reaching for me, and I watch, useless, as his arm vanishes, actually disintegrates, along with the rest of his body before I can grab hold. Then, a meaty, deformed claw swipes at the air in front of me, and I do the only thing I can.

  I go through the door.

  Everything—

  the train,

  the monsters,

  Wes—

  falls away, and I am flying, floating, falling in the dark.

  I know these falling dreams where you wake up just before you hit the ground. But what if there is no ground? Will I fall and fall and fall forever?

  This dream is different, too real from the start. I shake. I hyperventilate. My pulse races. I have to calm down, but how?

  When I was a little kid, before the RBD, back when a bad dream was just something that woke me up in the night, my mom would come into my room and kneel beside my bed. She’d tell me to think of someone I loved (at that time, it was either her or my teddy bear Mabel) and put them into my dream with me. Then she’d tell me to pick a different location and start a new adventure with my companion. Nine times out of ten, the nightmare would be gone, and I’d have a restful night. Of course, once my disorder took center stage, such childhood efforts seemed beside the point. Desperate times, however…

  I close my eyes and think of
Tessa.

  My best friend, my rock. She always knows exactly how to help me take it all less seriously. She’d remind me it’s only a dream, convince me it’s just in my head. She’d make it all okay.

  I picture her, laughing, running on the beach where she’s a lifeguard in the summer. She’s smiling, so I smile too. I begin to breathe more easily as I imagine that the air hitting my face is a warm summer breeze. The falling sensation is just like floating in the water.

  It’s going to be okay.

  I’m going to be okay.

  I open my eyes. Below me is a coral-blue hatch. I begin to accelerate.

  I hold out my hands and brace for impact as the door approaches.

  Faster…

  Faster…

  Faster until—

  The hatch flies open, and I fall through it. I land on a soft cushion of sandy beach. As I brush myself off, I see Tessa on a sand court, a volleyball pressed to her hip.

  I watch from a distance as she flirts and plays doubles with a cute guy in board shorts. Though I glance over my shoulder more than once, no one comes looking for me, and after a while, I relax.

  More or less.

  Though she never sees me, I watch Tessa for the rest of the night.

  • • •

  “Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Ralphie says as I rub my eyes. “You were seriously out, huh?”

  I look down at my clinic bed and yawn. As Ralphie reviews printouts from the machines, Barry the orderly helps me sit up.

  “What time is it?” I ask groggily.

  “Six a.m.,” Ralphie replies. “How’d you sleep last night? Vivid dreams?”

  “The most,” I say. I think of the running, the falling, the convulsing. “I can only imagine what I did in here.” I blink my eyes into focus and search the room for evidence of a sleep-time tirade. But everything is intact.

  “Well, that’s the thing, kiddo,” he says, beaming. “Your REM readings were off the charts, but your body didn’t move an inch!” He grins goofily and slaps his knee. “You slept like a baby! How do you like that?” He holds out his hand to me and waits.

  This is the news I’ve been praying for for the past six years. So I smile and return his high five enthusiastically. But the truth is, I’m scared. The nightmare was so real, the monsters so alive.