When I open my eyes, I am lying facedown across him. My first thought is that the pain is gone. My second thought is, Oh my God, I’m lying on top of Fergus.
My face flames with embarrassment, and I begin muttering something to the effect of, “Sorry. Getting off,” when he raises his arms and wraps them around me.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure. I think so,” I respond. But the memory of the torturous brokenness is still reverberating in the pain centers of my brain. I was broken. Now I’m not. Nothing makes sense in this place.
I don’t dare move. Fergus is hugging me. No one hugs me except my parents and my sister, Penny. And my neighbor, Edward, who has been in love with me since we were toddlers, but I only let him hug me on my birthday. I hug Dog, of course, but that’s different. He’s a dog.
It’s not that I can’t stand human touch. If someone shakes my hand or brushes up against me, I don’t freak out. It’s only affectionate touching that makes me cringe. But Fergus is affectionately hugging me and I’m not cringing.
He lets me go, and we sit up. Holding me back by my shoulders, he inspects me like he expects to see bones still broken. He exhales, looking visibly relieved.
“What?”
“Your legs,” he says. “You had two compound fractures. Your shin bones were actually sticking out of the skin.”
My head starts swimming and my stomach twists. I knock feebly five times on the floor.
He doesn’t even seem to notice. Which is kind of nice, because I know how my knocking bothers people. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”
“It’s okay.” I say and hesitate.
“What?” asks Fergus.
“Did it look as gross as those slasher films you watch to desensitize yourself?”
He looks like he’s about to laugh and then catches himself, glancing down at his tattoo. He trades the laugh for a smile. “Twice as gross as Halloween, but only half as bad as Saw.”
Our weapons and backpacks that had been seized by the rebels lie in a heap between us and Sinclair, who lies on his back looking straight up into the whiteness. He breathes heavy, one hand on his heart, like he’s recovering from a heart attack. “You okay?” asks Fergus.
“I’m alive,” Sinclair responds, not moving.
I blink, and there is Cata, lying a few feet away. As soon as her eyes flutter open, she is on her feet, peering around. “Look!” she yells, pointing.
Two forms lie on their backs side by side. Remi is covered in blood. His eyes are open but stare upward, unseeing. His lips move, but no sound comes out. He begins to fade at the same time as the boy next to him starts thrashing his head from side to side. It’s Brett—the boy version from the mirror—and his eyes look just as wild and empty as they did back in his dream.
His mouth moves, but unlike Remi’s, his throat actually produces sounds. “Mama,” he says in a little boy’s voice. “Papa.” And then, like that, he’s gone. While Remi still has a ghost of a form, Brett disappears all at once.
Cata kneels next to Remi and puts her hand on him. It passes right through. “Oh my God,” she says, her face turning as white as the Void.
Fergus puts a hand on her shoulder. She looks like she’s about to shake it off, then reaches up and grabs hold of it.
“I can’t stand this anymore,” she says. “I’m not going through the door again. I don’t care if the Void swallows me whole.”
“Won’t work,” Sinclair says. “It sucked me in even though I was running away.”
“I can’t take it,” Cata repeats. “I’m too exhausted. I can’t run. I can’t fight. I can’t watch anyone else die.”
Fergus waits until the last wisps of Remi disappear. “What happened back there?”
“Brett was surrounded by gunmen. Remi said he couldn’t let him die because it was his fault, and went to save him,” Cata says, not bothering to tell the end of the story. It was obvious that Remi’s attempt had failed.
“Told you,” Sinclair adds. “He as much as admitted it to me when we were up on that watchtower. He manipulated the whole thing. Sounds like a typical psychopath move.”
Cata seems not to hear him. She’s back in the dream, trying to remember the details. “Brett showed up not far from the Wall. He must have been trying to get through it again. He actually looked like a boy this time . . . not a monster.”
“He must have had a moment of clarity,” I say, pulling my notebook out of my pocket. I sit down on the ground and turn to the right page. At the top, static monster is crossed out. Twice. I replaced it with the name Brett after the last dream. Underneath, I had jotted a few guesses at what was wrong with him. They’re all crossed out. Only fatal familial insomnia is left.
Underneath that is written: Saw at informational meeting. I have ticked that with a check mark and written beside it: Must be the two parents without child. He was probably too sick to come.
A box under that lists each nightmare we’ve had, and at what point Brett appeared. And finally, I list his incarnations—at least the ones we saw—with my thoughts about them. My notes don’t have to make sense. Free association is often more enlightening than trying to form a thought before writing it down.
Skeleton: fear of death. Realization of oncoming death.
Octopus: reaching, grasping, trying to keep hold on reality, on the people he loves, on this world.
Picassoboy: boy who is splintered, trying to put himself back together, broken.
Roosterhead: awake, crow, animal, alarm clock for farmer, NO IDEA.
I write under Roosterhead: appeared as human boy in Dream #8. “What happened next?” I ask Cata before looking up and seeing her expression. I flinch. She and Fergus are watching me like I’m some sort of exotic animal species that hasn’t yet been categorized.
“You’re figuring this thing out for us, aren’t you?” Fergus asks.
“I’m figuring it out for me.” I hesitate, then admit, “I can’t help it. I have to make sense of things or I get too many problems circling in my head and then I get overwhelmed. But yes . . . it might help us if I can get things straight.”
Sinclair makes a huffing noise. I know he’s making fun of me, even if he apologizes when the others point it out. I don’t care. People have made fun of me since I was little. Unless it’s someone I care about, I don’t give a flip. And I definitely don’t care about Sinclair.
“You look like you’re about to fall over,” Fergus says to Cata. Taking her by the hand, he leads her to one of the couches and sits at one end. She flops down, stretching out and using his leg as a pillow. Fergus perches there like he’s not sure what to do. He reaches out to pet her head, then pulls his hand back, looks uncomfortable, and crosses his arms.
He can hug me with no compunction, but with Cata there’s awkwardness. I guess that’s normal. She’s his age, and I look like a little girl. I mean, I am a little girl. I’m just not a child in my head. I feel unwanted for a second, then remember how moony-eyed he looked at George and feel better.
I sit on the ground next to them, cross my legs, and close my eyes. A blanket of calm wraps around me. I focus on relaxing, starting with my toes, working up toward the crown of my head. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. And, like I do when I introduce specific desires when I meditate—a goal, something from my wish list—I imagine the object I want right now appearing in my hands. My palms grow warm and my fingers tingle.
When I open my eyes, I’m holding a box of tissues. It is pretty and has an intricate floral design on it like one of those coloring books for adults. I hand it to Cata and read her raised eyebrows and the little O she makes with her lips as surprise.
“I’m not crying, am I?” she asks.
I shake my head. “But you looked like you were about to.”
She plucks out a tissue, blows her nose, and balances the box on her stomach. “I forced myself to stop crying years ago, and now, unless I get hurt like I d
id back there . . . no tears. They’re gone. But I kind of wish I could.” She closes her eyes as if trying to squeeze a few tears out, then opens them again, dry-eyed. “I know Remi might have been a psychopath, but I feel gutted—like I just lost a friend,” she admits. “It’s tragic. Every dream he had was practically the same. They’ve all been set in the genocide. Even in the first one, when we were all separate but could see one another, he was hiding from the soldiers.”
“I wonder if he kept dreaming the same dream over and over because he was trying to figure something out. Or solve something,” I say.
“Looks like he already solved it,” Sinclair says. “He’s the one who escaped. His family didn’t.”
Cata considers this. “I don’t think he really meant for us to be killed. I think he was just trying to save himself. And do you blame him? After all of the death he’s seen?”
No one answers. I don’t know what to say. I could tell that Remi was secretly helping us, but that’s because I read his face. Maybe people who find it natural to decipher others’ emotions forget to stop and really look when they’re distracted. Like when they’re being marched around with guns to their backs.
Cata sniffs back a nonexistent tear. “What do you think happened to Brett?” she asks me.
“Like I said before, I think Brett had a degenerative brain disease that leads to the person hallucinating before they descend into delirium and finally death. I’ll bet he had a moment of clarity when he showed up looking real. Maybe that means he was on the verge of death anyway. Sometimes that kind of thing happens to old people with dementia who are about to die. But the fact that he changed back into Roosterhead means he lost touch with reality again.”
“Which might be a good thing if he was about to be shot to death,” she concludes.
“I just need a minute,” I say, and shift my attention back to my notebook. I draw a thick diagonal line across Brett’s page. Then I turn to Remi’s page. I glance at my notes.
15 years old.
PTSD.
From central Africa.
Brought by paternal aunt to America. Lives Minnesota.
Dream: #3. Genocide.
Interpretation: survivor’s guilt, fear, post-traumatic stress, flashback.
Saw at informational meeting. Was with older woman: aunt.
I jot down #8. Militant camp, next to the “Dream” category. Then, with a tightening of my throat that means I’m sad, I draw a thick diagonal line from the upper left corner of the page to the lower right.
Turning to another section of the notebook, I jot down Dream #8, Militant camp Africa, Remi’s dream, lasted 56 minutes, and then close the notebook and stick it, with the pen, in my pocket.
When I look up, Sinclair is sitting on the couch at Cata’s feet. I realize that they’ve been talking, but I was so focused on my notes that I didn’t catch what they said. I look at them one by one. “You guys look awful.”
“Lay off the compliments. They’re going to my head,” says Sinclair, glancing over to see if Cata thinks he’s funny.
“No, really, Fergus. You have dark circles around your eyes. You too, Cata. And there’s something different about you,” I say to Sinclair. He looks at me strangely, but whatever it is escapes me, and I yawn and rub my eyes, suddenly feeling very tired.
“Well, I, for one, am exhausted,” Fergus responds. “Like, much more than in the other Voids.”
Cata nods and reaches back to touch Fergus’s arm with her fingertips. This means she feels comfortable with him. It might also mean that he makes her feel secure. I’m not sure. But when she feels him there, her face smooths out.
“I’m emotionally exhausted,” she says. “But I also feel like I do after not sleeping for days and days.”
“Ditto,” says Sinclair, who has noticed Cata’s fingers and is frowning.
I flip to the timetable I’ve made at the back of the notebook. “We’ve been in here for nine hours and twenty-one minutes, with seven-eighths of our time spent in the dreams and only one-eighth here in the Void—time where we can slow down and rest. Since our brains have been behaving like we were aware this whole time, it’s like we’ve been running a marathon. In real sleep, the activity—the REM sleep—only happens in short intervals. But here, we’re running on two hundred percent energy almost all the time, only taking short breaks. We’re wearing ourselves out.”
“That doesn’t bode well if we’re going to be spending more and more time in the dreams. That is . . . if we hope to survive them,” Cata replies.
“Come on, guys, we have to train,” Sinclair says. “I am the only one who has been actively fighting the things threatening us in our dreams. Besides when George attacked Brett, that is.” He looks at me with an expression of superiority.
“She thought he was a monster,” I say.
“Well, she was wrong.” Sinclair winks at me. I don’t know why. I look away.
“Well, if ‘actively fighting’ means violently striking out like you have, you’re on your own as far as I’m concerned,” Cata says to Sinclair. “I don’t want to be like that.”
Sinclair looks defensive. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asks. And then recognition dawns. “The tiger. Like I said, it was either us or it!”
“No,” Cata says, shaking her head. “We had a plan. And it was working. I distracted the tiger, and you could easily have run right past it. But you killed it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sinclair says, and then, seeing that she’s not going to back down, continues, “What’s the difference between that and big game hunting? Ask any hunter. Ask my dad! There’s something about the thrill of the hunt. The thrill of the kill.”
“Was it just as thrilling to kill that guard?” I ask. “Because you didn’t look too bothered about doing that either.”
Sinclair shoots me a look of pure hatred. “There’s something you guys don’t seem to realize. We. Are. In. A. Dream. This shit isn’t real. That tiger deflated like a balloon at the end of the circus nightmare. And the guard was just a figment of Remi’s imagination. It wasn’t like some guy in the real world fell down dead when I shot him.”
We’re all quiet for a moment, running over that possibility in our minds.
Sinclair breaks the silence. “The difference between them and us is that we exist in the real world. And from what Fergus says, if we die in the dreams we die out there. The monsters don’t. The zombies and clowns or red-eyed monks are here in the Dreamfall. They die with the dream. They’re not out there wandering around in real life. Come on, you guys. You can’t argue with that!”
No one argues.
“There’s a huge difference between killing imaginary tigers and soldiers and betraying the group or leaving one of the others behind,” he continues. “And I don’t hear you ragging on Remi.”
I hold my tongue.
“So what we have to do is be ready. We need to be able to fight,” Sinclair prods.
“You’re right,” Fergus agrees, his shoulders slumping.
Cata closes her eyes and then nods tiredly.
“It’s just the four of us now,” Sinclair says.
“How long?” Cata asks me.
“We had thirteen minutes.” I check my pulse. “Only two left.”
“Okay. We start training next time,” Sinclair says, heading for the pile of supplies and slinging the crossbow Remi had been carrying over his shoulder. Everything is there, even the stuff separated out by the soldiers is back in the backpacks.
“Whatever we bring in comes out with us,” I say to no one in particular. It’s something I already knew. I mean, my gloves and hat burned to a crisp. But that was clothing. That seemed to be an established rule since the beginning. I make a mental note to add it to my notebook when I have time.
If I have time.
The first knock comes, and we rush to arm ourselves. But how can we ever actually be prepared? Who can prepare for a nightmare?
The whipping wind sucks up our silen
ce as we brace ourselves for whatever horrors await us next.
Chapter 11
Jaime
MY CONCENTRATION IS BROKEN BY THE ACCELERATED beeping of heart rate monitors. I look around to see a red light flashing on Vesper’s screen. As Zhu leans over to have a look, the monitors go crazy, accelerating so quickly they sound like a rocket taking off. All three of us run down to the test area to locate the noise. “It’s subject seven!” yells Zhu from next to Brett.
“No, subject five,” calls Vesper, standing next to Remi’s head. The doctors look at each other in shock.
“They’re both in cardiac arrest?” Zhu asks.
“Quick . . . defibrillators!” says Vesper.
“Jaime, call for emergency backup!” yells Zhu, already ripping the blanket from Brett and detaching the paddles from the defibrillator.
I race up the stairs and ask the operator to send backup. “Tell them we have two patients in cardiac arrest!” Zhu yells. I relay the message and hang up. The doctors have applied the first round of shock and are studying the screens on the Tower.
“What can I do?” I half expect them not to answer.
“Go to your desk,” Zhu yells. “Write everything down. Times, everything.”
I throw myself into my chair and flip to an open page. I register the time on my screen and start writing.
The doctors apply a second round of charges. One of the monitors has stopped accelerating, and the chilling steady tone of the flatline begins. I look up to my screen and see the boy in window seven thrashing his head back and forth as Zhu drops the paddles and tries to hold his head still. She picks up an instrument and forces it between his teeth, preventing him from swallowing his tongue.
“Subject five’s mouth is moving,” Vesper says as paramedics burst through the door. The doctors start the third round of charges. The team of four EMTs surround the doctors, leaning in to check the monitors before taking the doctors’ place at the paddles.
“How many rounds have you applied?” one asks.