Sam Saves the Night

by Shari Simpson

  “Hey, guys? Can we focus, please?” Sam was about ready for a cosmic night guard, since she was grinding her soul teeth by this point. She grabbed Alyssa’s hand, and Alyssa squealed happily and grabbed Dev’s. He nodded and grabbed Noa’s. Noa took Emmy’s hand. Emmy sighed dramatically and held a reluctant hand out to Byron. After a moment, he grabbed it.

  It worked. As they stood, linked together, a feeling of SleepWaker solidarity passed from soul hand to soul hand. And possibly some cosmic germs as well, but that comes with the territory of togetherness.

  Sam waited until she heard voices outside her door. “Let’s go,” she said, suddenly afraid that if she had to see Fletch and Joanne, or watch Jax pull Margie’s hand away from her buzzed hair, it would all be over; Sam knew she would just want to hide herself behind their always solid bodies.

  The nameless tribe misted through the wall out onto the lawn as the group of vigilant Laters circled Sam’s body inside.

  The rain was pounding, and it felt like a continuous pressing weight on Sam’s heart. She tried to ignore the foreboding heaviness, motioning to Emmy and Noa, who rapidly misted through a spruce tree to hide. Alyssa hugged Sam ferociously around the waist, and Dev patted her on the back, somehow managing to adjust her collar at the same time. They morphed into Margie’s Toyota as Byron stepped up next to Sam and took her hand. She looked at him in surprise.

  “What can I say?” Byron managed a smile. “I read the room.”

  Sam gripped Byron’s hand back so tightly she nearly crushed the solid right out of it.

  They turned back to stare out into the squall. The rain was so heavy, coming down in blinding sheets, they didn’t see or hear the MeanDreams until they popped up right in front of them, which is a very unpleasant way to start a showdown. But there was something far more unpleasant in store.

  At first, Sam thought it was the storm obscuring her vision, but she could clearly see Zac and Bree looking primed and ready for battle, and the dark mass of souls behind them—and the empty space where Madalynn usually stood.

  “Where is she?” Sam demanded.

  “Sorry, Dream Reject, you don’t get to ask the questions,” Bree growled.

  “Sorry, Dream Reject!” echoed the MeanDreams.

  Byron dashed to the bedroom window, looked in, and dashed back so fast, he was his own blur. “All good. You’re still in there and so are the Laters,” he whispered.

  “Is he your whole tribe? Pitiful.” Bree lurched toward them like a faded Frankenstein’s monster, Zac hulking behind.

  “Pitiful, pitiful,” chanted the MeanDreams.

  Sam stepped back, so disoriented by Madalynn’s absence and the menacing presence of Beige and Bullet and their parroting, monotone tribe, that all memory of her plan flew right out of her head. Until she heard the slap! followed by a yelp of pain.

  Emmy and Noa had reappeared in front of the spruce, and they were playing Red Hands. Noa hovered his hands, palms down, above Emmy’s, wincing in agonized anticipation as she swung her hands up and over—he tried to pull away in time, but she smacked him, hard. Noa yelled “OW!” at the top of his lungs.

  Bree immediately saw the danger. “Zac, no!” she shouted, but it was too late. Zac’s eyes lit up, and he charged over to them, knocking Emmy out of the way and sticking his meaty mitts under Noa’s spindly fingers. Noa only had half a second to gawk at the size of those hams before they flew up and over and walloped his digits so vehemently, Noa’s entire soul body followed the downward direction of the smack. Like a nail being whacked by a hammer, his legs shot into the ground up to the knees.

  Sam heard Byron behind her. “Whoa!”

  “What?!” She turned to him.

  “I didn’t know a Waker could go into the ground.” He looked troubled. “Something wrong about that…”

  But Noa rebounded, jolting out of the earth like a yanked lawn dart, and came back for more. He defiantly put his hands out again, palms up this time. Zac grunted in savage delight and stuck his buffet slayers out, palms down, waiting happily to get thwacked.

  Bree turned on Sam and Byron in beige rage. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you, distracting Zac? You think you’re…” Her voice trailed off as her faded eyes lifted above their heads and widened.

  Alyssa was standing in front of the Toyota now, her electric-blue hair and matching nightgown positively incandescent as she posed in the “brights” setting of the car’s headlights. She looked like some kind of ultramarine angel as she gestured to Bree with a gentle sweep of her brilliant-blue arm. Dev appeared next to Alyssa with handfuls of color swatches that he’d obviously, uh, borrowed from the Container Store. He held them up and fanned out the swirling, vibrant palettes.

  And Bree, the beige behemoth, the tan titan, the invisible Goliath, who was really just a sad little girl, after all, couldn’t help herself. Especially after Alyssa reached into the car and pulled out a glowing magenta robe, big enough for even the most colossal colossus. This put the colorful nail in the coffin for the colorless girl. She gave Sam a bland side-eye.

  “You suck,” Bree muttered, and lumbered off to Alyssa and Dev like a clumsy moth to the flame.

  “You suck,” echoed the remaining MeanDreams, but Sam could feel the slight shift in their demeanor, a hint of confusion, a tinge of “who are we supposed to follow if no one is leading?” A tiny crack had opened, and Sam jumped in.

  Literally.

  “Wish me luck,” she whispered to Byron, only waiting for his “Luck!” before she took a flying leap, right into the dark mass of souls.

  I CAN’T BREATHE.

  Sam knew this was ridiculous, a soul didn’t need air. But she still felt suffocated. The sensation of being inside a small space—shut and locked in—was overwhelming. She forced herself to see clearly, to distinguish the separate bodies, the individual essences, fighting her way through the swarm, looking for holes, gaps through which to pass, but everything and everyone looked the same, and not just identical, but blended together into a continuous moving wall of SleepWakers. Sam put her head down and kept going, determined to succeed at her task.

  “Arthur!”

  In what she supposed was the center of the tribe, although it was so dim and full of flailing limbs it was hard to tell, was the Prank. Sam’s heart sank, as he looked paler, skinnier, and itchier than ever.

  “Come with me!” Sam grabbed his hand, but when she turned to go, it suddenly seemed like there was no way out, as if the souls had completely melted together around them. Sam felt that clutch of consciousness claustrophobia again, and she forced the panic down, afraid she might start screaming like a lunatic.

  “Arthur, we’ll have to mist out! Don’t you remember? You can do that! Make yourself un-solid and we’ll go right through!” As unpleasant as it was to pass through another Waker, it had to be better than enduring this stifling, soul-sucking swarm. Sam tightened her grip on Arthur’s hand, took a deep breath, and made herself as insubstantial as possible, a gossamer girl made of vapor.

  But as they permeated the mass around them, “unpleasant” turned to “ghastly.” Every soul Sam passed through was so dark, so angry, so trapped, that by the time she reached the edge of the tribe, all her energy was sapped and replaced with the binding weight of hopelessness.

  Oh, Madalynn, what did you do? What did you do to them?

  Sam finally crossed the border, limping out of the tribe, but Arthur bounced back as if he’d hit a brick wall. She lost her grip on him, and he started to disappear again, sucked back into the throng.

  “No…” Sam wanted to scream, but all that came out was a moan. Byron caught her and held her upright as she strained to remember what was supposed to come next. There was a plan, right? She could hear Byron calling her name, but it seemed so far away.

  I’m so tired. It was so nice and dark in there. I wouldn’t have to think so hard, or help anyone.…

  “SAM!” Byron’s voice finally pierced her fog. At the same time, over by the tree, Z
ac smacked Noa’s hands and roared, “HURTS, DON’T IT?”

  Sam jolted alive again, a charge of adrenaline stiffening her soul spine. She quickly looked over to make sure that Bree was also still distracted, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw Alyssa and Dev wrapping the hue-hypnotized Waker’s beige hair in a brightly patterned turban. Sam turned back to the tribe. “Dreams! I have a request!”

  The tribe drew together, looking communally suspicious. “What?”

  “I have someone here who would like to talk to one of you.” Sam leaned into the “one,” shading it casually, but purposefully. “One-on-one. You know, mano a mano.”

  The MeanDreams started to shift uncomfortably, and when they spoke again, their chorus was a bit ragged. “We… You… Who… What?”

  “It’s working,” Byron spoke right into her ear. “Keep going!”

  “Yeah, individually.” She hit the word hard. “You know that word. After all, it’s individuals that make up a tribe, right? Otherwise, you get that groupthink mob mentality and then you start doing things you never thought you’d do, like, oh, I don’t know, maybe… stealing SleepWakers from other tribes?”

  At this, the MeanDreams went into a collective tizzy. They started to jostle, bump, collide. The outlines of separate Wakers started to come into focus and this started a chain reaction of events: one MeanDream accidentally stepped on another’s foot and there was a yelp of pain. Another MeanDream apparently forgot to be solid momentarily and misted through his neighboring MeanDream, who did not appreciate the essence intrusion and muttered a nasty rebuke. A shorter MeanDream got elbowed in the eye and retaliated with a mighty shove. His taller tribemate tipped backward, and that’s when Arthur came into view, his pale face hovering just inside the invisible, yet seemingly impassable border of the tribe.

  “There he is!” Sam pointed excitedly.

  Byron turned back to the house and shouted, “Jaida!”

  The front door opened and an umbrella bloomed. This caused an uproar among the MeanDreams, as they knew that only a Later would need rain gear. Jaida dashed over to Sam and Byron, the storm streaming down around her circle of protection, looking panicked.

  “Sam, I can’t see him. I can’t see any of them!” Jaida cried.

  “I know, but they’re there!” Sam exclaimed. “You can do this, Jaida! Just call him. Quick!”

  “Arthur!” Jaida shouted over the downpour. “I know you’re the one who did all that stuff to me! The things you did, they were dangerous and wrong! I almost drank something that could have really hurt me! So I want you to hear this!”

  The Prank’s white face became downright ghostly, looking horrified and guilty and terribly sad. The MeanDreams started to wail and thrash, becoming one pulsing organism again, drawing him in farther.

  “Hurry!” Sam shouted.

  Arthur was almost gone, almost disappeared into the mass of souls, only a wisp of light in their overwhelming darkness, when Jaida cried:

  “I forgive you!”

  And everything stopped. A hush. A standstill.

  Except for Jaida, who kept on.

  “I forgive you. Because I know what it’s like to do bad things to people who didn’t do anything to me. Who didn’t deserve the way I treated them.” Jaida reached out a hand without looking. Sam swallowed hard and took it, coming up to stand beside her. “But they forgave me. So, I can forgive you.”

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a low, melodic hum pierced through the storm. Byron groaned, “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Forgiveness, is the mightiest sword…”

  Emmy, who was now delivering some Red Hands torment to Zac, yelled, “OMG, seriously?”

  “Forgiveness of those you hate will be your highest reward…”

  “I thought the meanies soul-napped the Broadways!” squealed Alyssa, who was busy putting magenta maribou slippers on Bree.

  Byron roared, “Not enough of ’em!”

  The Broadways materialized through a fence, but Jaida seemed unaware of their unwelcome ballad, her focus being on the MeanDreams. “I was a bully. I guess I did it because I was being bullied, too, and I thought it would make me feel better. But it never did.”

  The MeanDreams were rapt, listening intently. Arthur’s skinny form started to reappear.

  “It’s like, it just keeps going, like this endless cycle of being mean, ’cause what’s gonna stop it?” Jaida looked at Sam. “You need someone to help you stop it. You need a Helper.”

  The Broadways began to soar.

  “You must never lose faith! You must never lose heart! Be willing to be brave! Brave enough for love!”

  “Dude, what is this song?!” Sam hissed to Byron.

  “ ‘Forgiveness’ from Jane Eyre: The Musical,” Byron hissed back. “They’ve already sung it at me five or six times. Makes me want to poke my eyes out with a fork.”

  “Okay, Sam, bring it home!” Jaida whispered.

  Sam grinned at her and called out, “Arthur! MeanDreams! You have to help us stop this! I know you all have stories, you all have things to forgive and be forgiven for! But we’ve started a new tribe, made up of SleepWakers from other tribes, and we’re coming together, even with our differences, and we’re ending the cycle! We’re closing the loop! It can stop here if you join us!”

  “Forgiveness… is the mightiest… SWORD!” the Broadways wailed.

  Never underestimate powerful words with tear-jerking vocals as backup. Arthur un-sucked himself from the MeanDreams and broke free, racing over to Sam’s line of Wakers like a lovefest version of Red Rover.

  Jaida gasped. “Arthur? I can see you!”

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he implored. Jaida caught his visible, solid body in an embrace as the mass of MeanDreams boiled and burbled and belched out another soul.

  “Kyra!” Noa shouted joyfully. He raced away from Zac and Emmy to catch Kyra as she stumbled, just snagging her red flannel pajama top in time before she fell. Kyra held on to him, gasping out, “My parents… they never did anything wrong… they weren’t ignoring me, they were just worried about my brother—”

  “I know, I know,” Noa soothed her. “It’s okay.”

  And then three Wakers grand-jetéd out of the MeanDreams and did a jazz run over to Chadney and the Broadways, bursting into an emotional rendition of the title song of the Civil War musical Reunion.

  The spell was broken, the MeanDreams shattered. SleepWakers were reeling out of the throng, each talking loudly as if to reassure themselves that they still had their own voice, each with a story of how they had been sucked in, taken over, crushed by the weight of their own anger and fueled by the anger of others.

  Sam and Jaida turned and stared at each other in wonder. They moved closer and might have ended up in the first hug of their bizarre relationship, if it hadn’t been for the scream.

  Margie’s bloodcurdling scream that came from inside the house and stopped everything on the lawn. Dead.

  SAM DIDN’T THINK, SHE JUST ran, jumped, sailed through the wall into her empty bedroom.

  Empty?

  Not quite empty. Sleeping Sam was still Sleeping peacefully on the bed, but her mother, Jax, Fletch, and Joanne were gone. Soul Sam looked around wildly, registering that the bedroom door was wide open and she was alone in the room. Her nameless tribe had not followed her for some unknown reason, and she was now the only one there to protect her—

  Body.

  Of course.

  It was already too late.

  She turned slowly to face the bed.

  Just in time to see her body sit up and smile at her.

  And even though Sam had expected it, the sight was so horrifying, so macabre, that she lost her balance and fell backward.

  And downward.

  And inward.

  The very thing she had feared the very first time she had detached was now real. Sam lost all of her solidity, or perhaps relinquished it, and she just kept falling, through the bedroom floor, though the foundation
of the house, feeling the differing molecules rush through her essence, unable to stop, unable to right herself, all the feelings of falling tied up with the feelings of failing, she had failed her family, she had failed herself, her own body, and it would just be easier to quit now and let the earth swallow up her soul—

  And then, suddenly, something stopped her.

  And reversed her, yanking her back with an invisible hand, enveloping her in an ethereal embrace, a father’s embrace, and rushing her back to the surface, as the voice in her head cried out, You came, you helped, you didn’t let me drown, thank you, thank you… Dad…

  All at once, she was back on her misty feet in the empty bedroom, where she stood, panting and trembling and wondering.

  Did I imagine him?

  It was far too much to take in, the glimmer of a world beyond even this second world of the night. Overwhelming, and she was already far too overwhelmed, so Sam stuffed it down, shook it off, banished it from her mind, and turned to the task at hand. Which was rescuing her body, as Madalynn had disappeared with it. In it.

  Sam barreled through the wall, back out into the storm, and into complete chaos. The rain, the lightning, wailing souls everywhere; she didn’t know where to look, how to even begin.

  “Sam!” It was her mother’s voice, followed by a muffled shout. Sam turned toward the sound frantically.

  “Where are you?!” Sam screamed.

  Finally the moving wall of essences cleared enough for her to see Margie. She and Jax, his mouth covered with a bright cloth, were being roughly restrained by Wakers, most of whom were unfamiliar, but there was one she would know anywhere. The sharp chin, the pointed ears—

  “Wichachpi?!” Sam gasped.

  The Clutch leader’s elfin face contorted in anguish as a figure emerged from behind her.

  Madalynn/Sam staggered out, her pajamas drenched, her hair plastered to her head. Her gait was odd, jerky, like a marionette on loose strings, Sam’s familiar face twisted into a humorless and loveless, but extremely toothpasty, grin.