Sleeper

by MacKenzie Cadenhead

  “Gigi would never take a pill from Wes,” I say. “But if it was hidden in something else…”

  The only thing Wes learned from boarding school was how to slip a girl a roofie undetected, I think. My stomach drops to the center of the earth, and I trip on my feet as I scramble over the bed to Tessa.

  I shake her hard. “How many brownies did you eat?”

  “Huh?” she asks groggily.

  “How many brownie bites did you eat? The ones from the bake sale. The ones I bought?”

  For a brief moment, she’s wide awake. “Five, six? I ate six of them.”

  “Genius,” Grady mutters. I glare at him. “I mean, uh-oh. Be right back.” He runs to the bathroom and makes himself puke up the Dexid-laced baked good.

  “Listen to me, Tessa,” I say desperately. “Wes won’t hurt you if I’m there. He just wants me. And I’ll be with you soon. You’ll be okay. I promise.”

  I try not to let her see the panic that screams inside me. Tessa will be asleep and vulnerable to Wes within moments. How much did I eat? How soon will I be in the dream with her? With him?

  “I should have known he was after you that first time we saw him,” Tessa says, the fear subtle but evident in her exhausted voice.

  “Wes?”

  She yawns again, and I follow suit. “He was too quick to smack down Gigi for a girl he’d never even met before.”

  “You mean in the hallway at school?” I shake my head, which is starting to feel awfully heavy. “No, remember? I told you tonight. That wasn’t the first time he and I saw each other. It was a few nights before, the night of the sleepover. Wes was in my dream in the woods.”

  I still. How could I not have realized this sooner? The first time I ever saw Wes, the first dream I shared with him, took place in the preserve behind the Horsemen’s football field. It didn’t originate in the train station, because it was my dream.

  “And I wasn’t on Dexid,” I say out loud.

  Grady’s right. Everyone has access to the dream realm, whether they’re on Dexid or not. We each make sense of it in our own way. Wes’s train station is just another version of my nature preserve, of Grady’s carnival, of Gigi’s kitchen. We order the chaos of the unknown to control it.

  Only Wes and I are different from everyone else. Since we were kids, our bodies have reacted to our dreams in a way that other peoples’ don’t. That gave us access to the entirety of the dream world; we just didn’t know it until the magic cocktail of RBD, teenaged hormones, and Dexid brought our conscious thought into the game. It’s how I found Tessa in her dream at the beach and how Wes found me in the woods. The doorway into each other’s dreams has always been there—the Dexid just gives us the key to unlock it.

  Now I have to slam the door shut.

  “Tessa, when you fall asleep, go to the woods behind the school. Hide in the trees and wait for me. I’ll find you there.”

  “The woods,” she repeats on an exhale.

  “I’ll be there soon,” I say. My limbs start to tingle. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

  She looks at me through half-closed lids before falling deeply asleep.

  Grady appears in the doorway to his room.

  My eyes are heavy now. “He’ll be on more Dexid, so he’ll be stronger than me,” I say, my words beginning to slur.

  “Then be smarter than him,” Grady replies. “You just told Tessa that you weren’t even on Dexid the first time you saw Wes, right? Use that. You may need the Dexid to control other people, but not to take on Wes. You two are special. You really are linked. But while he’s whining about it, you can use it. Use everything you know that he doesn’t to gain an advantage. Give me the list.”

  “I don’t need the Dexid to reach him,” I mumble as I lie down beside Tessa.

  Grady nods.

  “The train station isn’t real.”

  He kneels beside me. “Because there is no physical landscape. Ignore the architecture. It’s all just there to order something you don’t understand. So stop relying on it. Break through it. Wes believes he’s living outside the box. But you know there isn’t any box at all.”

  The length of my blinking is getting longer now. Another yawn forces its way out.

  “I’ve seen you on the field, Sarah,” Grady says, his voice distant, as if coming from the far end of a tunnel. “You’re a killer. So take him out.”

  My eyelids slide shut.

  I am asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Blink—darkness

  Blink—fog

  Blink—light, dim and distant

  Blink—growing brighter now

  Blink—shining, hot

  Blink—like a spotlight

  Blink—like staring into the sun

  Blink—like going blind

  Blink—it’s blinding me

  Blink—it’s BLINDING me

  Blink—it’s—

 

  I suck in air like I’m breaking the surface of water that I’ve been submerged in for almost too long. Shielding my eyes from a train’s glaring headlight, I stumble over metal tracks until I find a wall against which to steady myself.

  I take a moment to acclimate to my surroundings. I’m in the tunnels of Grand Central, directly in the path of an idling train…that’s not real. If I concentrate hard enough, I don’t have to see it. Don’t think outside the box. Know there is no box. I focus on my breathing and let my vision blur. I feel no tension, no stress, nothing closing in on or confining me.

  The train vanishes.

  The walls fall away.

  I’m standing in the fog of my very first dream with Wes, before the Dexid, the night I tried to kill Gigi. And there is nothing but the misty void that once bored me. What I’d give for such a banal complaint now.

  I push my way through nothingness until I notice a glow ahead on my right. A door. Luminous, gleaming softly. There’s another one across, on my left, and yet another beyond that. A corridor of dreams just waiting for me to enter. All the people Wes dosed. How many are there? Where is he? And where is Tessa?

  Tessa. Tie her up, I think. Why didn’t I tell Grady to tie her up? I was too tired, too focused on Wes. But if I had told him to do that one thing, Tessa would be safe. I look at the glowing doors around me. But that wouldn’t have helped the other dreamers. What is Wes planning to do to them?

  I travel on, stopping at a door. Faded mahogany, slightly ajar. My hand reaches out to push the handle, but I stop short as the air heats up, the fog grows denser. A smell of what—rot?—curls my nostrils, and a low grumble drums in my ears.

  Primal fear saps my concentration, and the architecture of the train station—Wes’s train station—reconstructs itself around me. I am inside the car but outside a dream, looking directly into the mangled face of a hungry Burner.

  I stumble backward, unintentionally pinning myself against the glass partition of the sliding door’s vestibule. From inside the dream, the Burner looks directly at me, right into my very soul, and snarls. It’s over. There’s nowhere to go, no way to hide. I’m in arm’s reach of the one thing that can prevent me from stopping Wes before I’ve had the chance to try. I brace myself for impact.

  But the Burner doesn’t cross the threshold of the dream. It doesn’t take me.

  Instead, it grunts through its nose, like a horse on a cold morning. Then it retreats and continues to stand sentinel on the other side of the doorway.

  I am safe.

  But why?

  Why didn’t it devour me, stop me before I could get anywhere near the dreamer? I stand in the open car and watch as the Burner patrols the inside of this dream. It registers my presence every time it passes by the door, but it never makes a move toward me. It’s playing defense by holding the line. It’s waiting for something else to come—protecting the dreamer from som
ething that’s much bigger and badder than I am.

  “Oh, Wes,” I whisper to myself. “How much Dexid did you take?”

  I look around the train and am shocked by what I see. The cabin is empty. Not a single commuter. Paper and garbage litter the compartment, and graffiti defaces the walls. This is not the gleaming car I know. This place is poisoned. I run ahead.

  I pass sliding doors in various states of access. Some are closed; most are either partially or fully open. They all reveal different dreamscapes on the other side. All featuring my classmates.

  In one doorway, Trisha Goldmark runs from a blood-soaked madman through a frozen forest, while my sixth grade crush, Denny Kringle, treads croc-infested swamp water in another. Across from him, Christa from the bake sale weeps as a half pig, half woman hybrid shoves forkful after forkful of chocolate cake into her mouth. Tears and chocolate smear her face as a Burner appears in the doorway of her nightmare.

  Because that’s what these are—nightmares. Nightmares because the Burners are inside them, their general being of disease infecting the subconscious of the dreamer. Another thing to thank me and Wes for.

  Wes. Where is he?

  I soften my eyes, empty my mind, see past the architecture of the train. There is a subtle glow nearby, like in Jamie’s dream, dancing in my peripheral vision. I turn toward it, hoping it will lead me to Wes, hoping it can help me understand why he’s doing this.

  Before I can take a step, an object manifests in the ether, defines itself as…an arm?

  “Oof.” It clotheslines me. I crumple to the ground. The walls of the train snap back into place, imprisoning me as Wes comes into focus. He kneels beside me as I catch my breath.

  “You came,” he says brightly.

  “Did I have a choice?” I ask through grinding teeth. As I pull myself to a seated position, I scoot closer to Christa’s dream, Burner and all. I want as much distance between me and the real monster as possible. “How many people did you dose, Wes?”

  He shrugs. “Not sure. I let the bake sale gods decide. Well, mostly,” he adds, playful, flirtatious. “I did make sure a couple of special guests were invited.” The impish smirk beams, and my fury rises. “How many did you eat before you realized?”

  I do not reply.

  That once-sexy, now-infuriating grin widens. “Come on, Sarah. Admit it. You’re glad to be here. You wanted to come. You can’t stop wanting to be here. To be with me. To—”

  “I’m not here for you,” I snap, his interminable refrain getting the better of me. Though I stop myself before I say her name, I can see the realization the moment it hits him. I am such an idiot.

  “Tessa!” he cries with delight. “Tessa’s here?”

  “No,” I lie.

  Wes chuckles as he turns and scans the doors. “I wonder which one is hers.”

  The now-familiar feeling of panic sets in. “Wes. Do not touch her.”

  He ignores me. “It’s kind of poetic, don’t you think? I mean, technically, you were the one who gave her the laced brownies, not me. You’re the one responsible for her being here at all.” He faces me. “But if you’d like, we can make a deal.”

  I tense. “What kind of deal?”

  “I’ll trade you all these poor, defenseless dreamers—promise not to harm a hair on any one of their sweet, innocent heads—if you give up Tessa.” His eyes narrow, and the smile vanishes. “I’ll walk her down the middle of a dark highway at four a.m. or guzzle pint after pint of castor oil until she bursts all the blood vessels in her eyeballs puking it up. I’ll beat the crap out of her sleeping body, anything I want, and you won’t do a thing about it. Except watch.”

  “Bite me,” I snap, my saliva curdling.

  “Been there, done that,” he snarls back. He looks down at me, lust now turned to disgust. “It’s time I move on. What we had was fun, but you have an embarrassing lack of imagination. I’ve got big dreams, and you’re focused on petty problems. What’s that Emerson quote? ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’”

  “Right,” I scoff. “Because I don’t want to hurt people just for the fun of it. I know Mommy and Stepdad didn’t love you enough, but isn’t anarchistic destruction a bit of a clichéd way to act out?”

  “God, you’re boring.” He turns and walks down the aisle.

  I jump to my feet and hurry after him. If nothing else, I can try to slow him down, because the longer I keep his attention on me, the less time he has to find Tessa.

  “What if this isn’t you, Wes? What if it’s the Dexid making you act like this? I remember how weird I felt when we took four pills. I wasn’t in my right mind. It affected my judgment. I thought of doing things I’d never—”

  “Ugh, this again?” He stops short, and it’s all I can do not to slam into him. “That was your thing, not mine. It isn’t my problem if you can’t handle your drugs. I’m fine. In fact, I’m great.” He shakes his head. “You know, Sarah, I liked you for you. Why can’t you get that I’m really still me but, like, a thousand times better. I feel fantastic, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” He peers through a doorway into a dream.

  No Tessa.

  It’s like we’re playing Russian roulette, and though I’ve survived one more round, the bullet creeps closer.

  “That’s what addicts say,” I remark.

  Wes continues down the aisle. “You know that’s total bull, right? It’s true, I don’t care about any of these people. They’re dull and weak. But neither did you when we were enacting your little revenge plays.”

  “I seem to recall that was originally your idea,” I say.

  He peers into another sliding door, and I hold my breath until I see a bookworm sophomore racing through library stacks as heavy tomes spill down on her.

  “But it was your desire,” he replies. “They embarrassed you, so you embarrassed them. An eye for an eye.” He looks at me hard. “And you loved it.”

  My face flushes. I hate it, but Wes is right. I can tell myself that I was blinded by lust, but who am I kidding? It wasn’t just Wes I was in love with. It was control. It was power.

  He reaches another door before I realize I’ve stopped moving. As I run to catch up with him, he starts back. A Burner growls at him from across the threshold of the doorway but doesn’t cross it. He laughs.

  “You see this?” he says. “Just like I said at the vigil, the Burners got smart. They learned from their little two-step with Jamie. They don’t want to enter the dreamer, on purpose or by accident. But they need to stop us from doing it. So now they’re staying close to their wards instead of going out looking for us. Which is absolutely fantastic!”

  He approaches the doorway, and the Burner faces him on the other side. Wes is right. It doesn’t make a move to catch him. “See? This is how to manage them. Take enough Dexid and dose enough dreamers so the beasts stand guard inside their dreams.”

  “You mean one Burner is assigned to each dream?” I ask, fascinated in spite of myself. “And they stay there? No matter what?”

  He nods and points to the metal saddle on the floor that creates a border between train car and dream. “They won’t chase me unless I cross that. So all I have to do is wait for Ugly to patrol past the door, slip into the dream, and make it to the dreamer first. Not so hard when its one-on-one. Because if I go into just one dream at a time, there’s only one Burner to contend with—no one’s coming as backup. I get the monster to fall into the dreamer, and poof! I can take each Burner out one by one.” He smiles in the beast’s face, taunting him. “I love this!”

  I look at the snarling monster. It wants a piece of Wes so bad, it can barely contain itself. If only I could get it out of the dream, out here—get all of them out here at once. But how?

  Wes struts to the next dream door. “For once, I’m not the lab rat. They are. And I’m conducting the experiment. This is my call
ing. My life’s work. To understand this vast mysterious landscape as I become king of it. To bring order and control to the chaos. To discover—”

  “Hey, Wes,” I interrupt. “Do you know what the best part is of having dumped your sorry ass? I don’t have to listen to your stupid bullshit.” I lurch toward the nearest dream and throw my arm across the threshold of the open sliding door. The Burner that’s been on patrol is suddenly free, and I swear I see its mangled, monstrous face smile.

  The beast comes crashing through the doorway, out of the dream, tumbling awkwardly onto the train car floor. Wes looks back, stilled by confusion until fear lights a fire under his ass. The Burner gets to its feet and roars.

  Wes runs. So do I.

  I run after him through the train, throwing my hand, foot, elbow, whatever body part is closest into every dream doorway I pass, releasing Burner after Burner after Burner. Wes is too busy saving himself to realize what I’m doing at first. And we make it through another car and a half before it dawns on him. Suddenly, he stops, turns, and tackles me. We fly through an open dream doorway and fall into…

  A classroom.

  Undecorated.

  Sterile.

  Fluorescent lights cast a slightly jaundiced glow over the scene. At every desk is a student taking a test. Army personnel patrol the aisles, daring cheaters to make their day. And on the board are three letters: S.A.T.

  The dream seems innocuous enough, not like the nightmares I’ve encountered elsewhere on the train. Then I see Meat Butchowski, Grady’s older brother, sitting at a desk center stage, directly under the brightest fluorescent in the room. He hasn’t made a single mark on his test, and he’s sweating from every pore on his body. And I literally mean every one of them, because I can see them all. Meat is taking the SATs, utterly clueless and completely naked.

  I flush, embarrassed for both the dreamer and myself, but I get over it the second I catch something moving in my periphery. Wes runs from the opposite side of the classroom, right for Meat. I push past a soldier and slide across a desk. I reach Meat a second before Wes, but that’s all I need to jump into his body first.