Neverwake

  “It looks like there’s another hallway around the corner from this one,” Cata says. “There have got to be hundreds of doors down here!”

  Fergus heads in the opposite direction from Cata and holds up a hand. He goes a few more steps, then says, “It’s getting quieter this way!”

  “Couldn’t the Dreamfall be a little less evil and just play really annoying elevator music instead of exploding our eardrums like this?” Cata says.

  “If it wanted to be nice, it could have set us up with a wide-screen TV and comfortable chairs in the Void,” Sinclair says, then looks at me. “Hey—that’s an idea!”

  “Seeing that we have ten minutes in the next Void, and a minute less in each subsequent Void, I don’t think light entertainment should be our priority,” I hear myself say. Wow. I’m channeling George again. And, based on Sinclair’s scowl, I’m doing pretty well at it. It feels weird, but knowing that she came from my brain anyway, I guess I can embrace it instead of feeling like I’m possessed.

  The farther we move down the hallway, the softer the screeching gets, until we’re standing outside door 303 and the noise stops. There’s no padlock on this door. Cata turns the knob. “It’s not locked!”

  Cautiously poking her head in and looking around, she flicks a switch to the right of the door. An overhead light goes on to show . . . nothing. With the exception of a few dust bunnies in the corners, the cement room is completely bare.

  “Um, what are we supposed to do here?” says Fergus, stepping in past Cata and looking around. I follow him in.

  Sinclair hesitates. “Isn’t it considered stupid to go into a place . . .” And then he shrugs and steps into the room.

  “Well, the sound has stopped,” Cata says. “The dream must want us here. But why?”

  “How much time do we have?” Fergus asks.

  “Fourteen,” I reply.

  “Well, then we’d better hurry and find whatever we’re supposed to find, because I can’t imagine the Wall showing up in a storage space.”

  There’s a faint smell of something I can’t quite place in here. It resembles the zombie smell from the mall, but not quite. Instead of sinister, it smells sad. I sniff again. It reminds me of the time a squirrel got in the house and died behind the washing machine. At first it smelled like this, and no one could figure out what it was. Then it started smelling like the Porta-Potties at the state fair, and Mom and I went on an “odiferous treasure hunt,” as she called it, and found the decomposing culprit.

  This was before we got Dog, of course. He would have found it straightaway.

  So maybe it smells like new death. But that sounds weird, so I don’t say anything to the others.

  “Wait! There’s something over here,” says Cata, looking behind the door.

  “Well, it looks like someone’s been partying in the basement,” says Sinclair, plucking an empty bottle of vodka from the ground.

  “These aren’t cigarette butts,” Fergus says, retrieving an ashtray from next to it. “What kind of person would have a vodka-fueled pot party in a storage space?”

  “A minor whose parents were at home. Not speaking from experience or anything.” Cata holds up her hands in innocence. She scans the room. “Is there anything else?”

  I pick up a nail from the other side of the door. It has a trace of gray paint on the sharp end.

  “Well, we’ve got a nail, an empty bottle, and some joint butts. What does the Dreamfall want us to do with that?” As the words leave Fergus’s lips, the door slams shut.

  I try the handle. “It’s locked!” I say. Actually, I don’t say it. It’s more of a squeak. My throat has closed up tight in terror. I try again, jiggling the handle.

  Cata comes over and kicks the door, then puts her weight into it while turning the handle, but it doesn’t budge.

  “I was going to say something about it maybe being stupid to walk into a small, lockable space before we came in, but I thought it was stating the obvious,” says Sinclair.

  “Well, it was either come in here or put up with the screeching, so small, lockable space won,” Fergus says testily.

  “Okay, let’s figure this out,” I say, trying to quiet my panic enough to hear myself think. “How can this be a part of BethAnn’s dream? The first place we were—the bedroom—could have been a horrible thing that happened to a friend of hers . . . or even her sister. The second place . . . maybe she had had a frightening experience with a gang, or was followed down a scary street . . . or maybe she’s just afraid of them in general.”

  “It doesn’t have to be something from our direct experience,” says Fergus. “Like the dream in the cave. I’ve definitely never been anywhere like that before in real life.”

  “But this place?” asks Cata. “What would an empty storage space have to do with BethAnn? I can’t imagine her coming down here for a drink and a smoke.”

  “Maybe she lived in this building?” suggests Sinclair.

  “If that was BethAnn’s sister’s room we were in, then BethAnn didn’t live in this building,” I say.

  “It doesn’t really matter, as long as we figure out how to get out of here before the Wall comes,” says Fergus.

  “Wait! There’s something here.” Cata crouches and inspects the back of the door. “Someone scratched a message in the paint. I’ll bet they used that nail you found, Ant.”

  I hold up the nail. It’s flecked with the same dark gray paint that coats the door.

  “Why would someone scratch a message into the back of the door?” asks Sinclair.

  “Because the walls are made of cement,” I say.

  “That’s not what I meant.” Sinclair rolls his eyes.

  “Okay, let’s try to read this,” Cata says. “‘Griffin Anderson. Born 2000. Unless someone comes soon . . . died 2014. I’ve knocked until my knuckles are bleeding. I’ve screamed until my voice is gone. I’m starving. Weak. I keep hallucinating, thinking I hear footsteps. I keep thinking he’ll come back. Never, ever trust your friends. They might just turn out to be your worst enemies. Bye, Mom and Dad. I love you. Griff.’”

  Cata turns. The blood has left her face. “Oh my God. Someone died down here.” She backs away from the door like it’s got a contagious disease.

  Griffin Anderson. Why does that name sound familiar? There’s something . . . a memory . . . just on the edge of my consciousness, but I’m not making the connection.

  “How much time?” Fergus asks me.

  I give up on the name and switch to my internal clock. “Six minutes.”

  Fergus lays a comforting hand on Cata’s shoulder. She reaches up to hold it. “We can figure this out in the Void,” he says softly. Comfortingly. He likes her. “But right now, we need to get out. Let’s see how strong the doorknob is.”

  Cata backs up and Fergus starts attacking the doorknob with his sword, but it only dents the metal.

  “How about the air vent?” I point to the far end of the ceiling. “If you lift me up, maybe I can crawl through.”

  Sinclair leans against the wall with his arms crossed, lost in thought.

  “Come help me!” I insist.

  “I’m thinking!” he replies with a scowl.

  Fergus gives him a disgusted look, and walking to the back wall, makes a cradle out of his hands. I put a foot in, and he lifts me up. “Step onto my shoulders for balance,” he suggests.

  I maneuver myself up to a standing position, then Fergus grips my ankles while I run my fingers over the screws holding the metal grill in place. “I wish I had thought of making a screwdriver in the Void.” I pull my knife from its sheath and use it to wedge the vent cover open.

  I’ve only succeeded in popping one screw out when the first boom comes. It sounds hollow and farther away than usual, but it still shakes the ground where we are. The knife drops from my fingers as I flail and then push my hands against the ceiling to stabilize myself.

  “Okay?” Fergus asks, tightening his grip on my ankles.

  “Fine,” I
respond and, taking the knife from Sinclair, renew my efforts at the screws.

  On the other side of the room, Cata is attacking the doorknob, wiggling it and forcing it up and down, trying to unstick the lock. “This is not going to work, you guys.” There’s a note of hysteria in her voice.

  I keep working. The other screw comes out and the plate falls with a clang to the floor. I reach up into the hole, and feel around to measure the size of the metal air shaft. “It’s definitely too small for me!” I yell.

  The second boom comes, stronger than the first. I can’t keep my balance this time, and topple forward off Fergus. Luckily, Sinclair is in the way and breaks my fall, half catching me, half dropping me to the ground.

  We stare at each other, breathless and panicky. “What happens if we miss the Wall?” Cata asks.

  “We go to the next dream,” Fergus says. “But when I did that, I woke up with a clown sitting on my chest, peeling my face off. No time to prepare or even look around.”

  “We’d better not come out on top of that Leatherface guy,” I say. “Because I don’t think I can handle running from a chainsaw again.”

  Then, out of nowhere, Sinclair lets out this enormous sigh. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a set of keys.

  “The keys from the coffin!” Cata gasps as Sinclair strides over to the door and, choosing one, fits it in and opens the door with one smooth move.

  Fergus, Cata, and I stare at each other in shock.

  “If you want to make it to the Wall, you’d better move,” he mumbles without looking back, and sets off running down the hallway, turning right when he gets to the end. He knows exactly where he’s going.

  I dash out behind him, with Fergus and Cata following me. Turning the corner, I see Sinclair jam the up button of an elevator, change his mind, and throw open a door next to it. I trail him as he sprints up a flight of stairs and opens another door. We burst out into a luxurious, red-carpeted lobby, lined in mirrors. A doorman in a uniform stands behind a desk.

  “The Wall’s just outside!” Sinclair bolts in the direction of a revolving glass door.

  “No running in the lobby, Mr. Hartford!” the doorman shouts.

  “What’s going on?” I yell as Sinclair dodges an elderly lady in a fur coat.

  “Really! Thomas, stop these hooligans this minute!” the woman screeches at the doorman.

  Sinclair runs into the revolving door and, as soon as he gets to the other side, disappears into the blackness of the Wall. I step into the turning glass and push on it for all I’m worth. The machinery grinds to a stop, and I’m stuck between the lobby and the black Wall outside. Fergus and Cata are squeezed into the compartment behind me.

  “Don’t push it,” the doorman yells, “it has to move by itself!”

  “We’re going to miss the Wall!” I yell, my voice hoarse with terror. I knock on the glass five times. It doesn’t help me or the door. Then there is a scraping of gears, and the door lurches forward. Before it gets completely around, I slip through the crack and into the darkness of the Void.

  Chapter 24

  Jaime

  I GATHER MY THINGS. MY JACKET. MY BOOK BAG. My notebook. I fold up the charts and shove them into my bag, waiting for someone to say something, but they don’t. I leave everything else as it was.

  The doctors are so angry that they don’t even watch me go. I cast one last look at the four subjects, sending them a kind of half prayer, half wish of positive vibes, and then walk out the door.

  I stop at the front desk and ask the receptionist for my phone. “Sign out,” she orders as she reaches into the drawer and places it on the counter in front of me.

  I step through the glass doors into the cold March evening. The parking lot is almost empty. I have the same sense of stepping out of a spaceship onto another planet, and walk zombielike toward my car.

  What now? I can’t just go back home. I can’t leave things like this. Those kids are going to die, and I’m the only person on earth who knows what’s really going on. Even though I have no delusions of being the expert who’s going to save their lives, I still have a responsibility. I can’t explain what happened. But if I could only get them to watch the videos, Zhu and Vesper could approach the situation in the way it should be treated: with the knowledge that the kids have some kind of psychic link and are stuck together in a collective subconscious, while continually going up against deadly situations.

  If Zhu and Vesper can’t wake them up, at least they could try to stop them from dreaming. Put them into real medical comas, where their brain waves are not active, until they recover.

  I go to the parking lot and sit in my car for what seems like forever, not knowing what to do. I keep going over and over what happened. What could I have said differently to make the doctors listen?

  After ten minutes of indecision, I turn the ignition and start driving. I have no idea where I’m going. I don’t know Larkmont that well, even though it’s only forty-five minutes from school.

  It’s almost seven thirty p.m. I’m not really hungry, but I do need to sit down and think. I keep an eye out for a restaurant or café. And at the next intersection, I see exactly what I need. Denny’s. Nothing like twenty-four/seven breakfast to get the brain cells hopping.

  I park near the front door and slide my laptop out of its regular hiding place under the passenger seat. I take a corner booth, ask for the Wi-Fi code, and order a Grand Slam breakfast. It doesn’t matter how bad the coffee is; I’m in such shock that my taste buds don’t work.

  What can I do?

  Or maybe I should be asking what I would do if I could.

  My plan A had been that if we restarted the brain-wave monitor it might prove my hypothesis. Zhu nixed that. Plan B was showing the doctors the videos. It would have provided enough evidence that the subjects were dreaming, so that the doctors would take the necessary steps. That was one big fail.

  So forget about proving my hypothesis to anyone. The only plan I have left is direct intervention. But that seems so crazy, I can’t even imagine how it would work.

  Something has been bugging me about the videos. It’s the knowledge that three of them actually came out of the dreams. They emerged back into a conscious state. And it happened when they were flatlining.

  In two of the cases, Remi and BethAnn, they sounded like they were on the verge of dying in the dream . . . almost dead. BethAnn said she’d been shot, and Remi actually claimed to be dying.

  Fergus was different. He was making that movement like he was pulling something from his chest. He said he’d been injured, but not that he was dying. It seemed like he could have woken up, but that he chose not to. He said he had to go back.

  What if the trick is getting them close enough to death to allow them to wake up, but not close enough to kill them? Then they would need to be resuscitated.

  I face-palm. That’s the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard. And even if it were feasible, how could I do it? Zhu and Vesper think I’m crazy. They aren’t going to listen to anything else I say. I would have to sneak in and do it on my own. But how? The researchers have already said they’re not leaving the room again.

  What is clear is that if the teenagers aren’t woken soon, they will die. The doctors will try to stabilize them, but after the failed attempt at electroshock, they have no further plan.

  My breakfast comes. I gobble down the bacon and start picking at the eggs while I run the whole thing through my mind. The images of the three subjects waking. The words they had spoken. What their messages had been: They killed me. I’m dying. And I can’t leave them.

  It seems that the subjects have to make a conscious decision to come back—something Fergus wasn’t ready to do—and have to be stable enough to make the jump. The more I think about it, the more I believe it might work.

  I open my laptop and connect to the Wi-Fi. I write my hacker friend Hal a note.

  Guess who? Back for another favor. I swear I’ll make this up to you. My last and fin
al request: are you able to send a text message to two cell phones from a number that isn’t your own?

  Chapter 25

  Cata

  “THAT WAS YOUR DREAM!” I YELL BEFORE MY EYES are even open. I swing my head around to locate Sinclair, and then I charge. He is struggling to his feet, and I push him so hard that he falls over backward. “What the hell, Sinclair? Why were you pretending that was BethAnn’s dream when you knew it was yours the whole time?”

  “Because the cemetery dream was his too.” Fergus joins me to loom over Sinclair. “Isn’t that right? You knew exactly what that key was for. You barely looked at it before you fit it in the lock.”

  Sinclair crab-walks away from us before scrambling to his feet. He crosses his arms as if daring us to come closer.

  Joining us, Ant opens her notebook and studies a page. “Cemetery dream,” she says. “You guys were buried with three dead kids. I didn’t have time to write down the names, but I remember them now. The gravestone said Faith Lemaire, Etemad Khayyam, and Griffin Anderson; sixteen, sixteen, and fourteen years old.”

  George had a photographic memory, I think. So, of course, Ant does too.

  Sinclair continues staring at us haughtily, not even trying to defend himself. Fergus looks at me. “Cata, you said the My Little Pony clock was in the coffin. And the keys. What was the third kid holding?”

  “A knife,” I say. I think for a moment. “The clock goes with the part of the dream in the girl’s bedroom. The keys go with the part in the storage area. There were lots of knives in the street gang part of the dream . . .”

  Ant looks at Sinclair. “When we were sinking in the blood, that guy said to you, ‘I think you should have this,’ and cut your hand with that knife. Why did he think you should have it? They talked about a ‘tragic accident’ where a guy ‘fell on his knife.’ Did they recognize you from that?”

  Sinclair watches us like a trapped animal: like he feels he is threatened and is searching for a way to escape. He throws his hands up. “Okay. You got me. Those were my dreams. So put me in handcuffs. I have dreams of vengeance. Doesn’t everyone dream of hurting the people they hate?”