“That’s why you didn’t seem terribly surprised about lying in that coffin with maggoty corpses,” I say, remembering how calm Sinclair seemed under the circumstances. I let myself return to that horrible place in my memory. “You knew the coffin was underground, so you must have been there before. You knew that the ticking in the coffin was a clock, even before we found it. And I had my doubts when you freaked out over the hunting knife. I wondered then if the dream might be yours.”
“Well, aren’t you the perfect little Sherlock Holmes?” Sinclair replies. His face is getting uglier by the moment. Like an ocean of hate and spite that he has been holding in is now seeping through his pores.
“What was the poem on the gravestone?” Ant says, ignoring us. She reaches back into her memory and pulls it out:
“‘The traitor spread honey atop pretty lies.
Only the love of his victims he asked.
For deceiving the lamb is the wolf’s cherished prize.
And only in death is the true beast unmasked.’”
“You tricked those kids,” Fergus says. “You befriended them and tricked them.”
“You all seem to be forgetting one thing. These are freaking DREAMS. They come from our subconscious, but they do not represent real life. Cata, was there really a skinless man living in your house?”
I start to answer no, and then, because of the way he phrased it, I pause. Skinless man living in my house. What is skin? A barrier. My dad had no barriers with me. The Flayed Man is my father, I realize. I feel like someone has punched me in the stomach and turn away from the group.
“O . . . kay,” Sinclair replies. “And how about you two?” I hear him continue. “Blue Gollum Dad in the slime cave and Stephen King–style clowns running a circus of death? How much real life was there in those dreams?”
No one answers. “There was something different about your dreams,” Ant says.
“Why did you lie about the cemetery?” Fergus presses. “When all the rest of us were owning up to our deep, dark dreams, you denied it.”
“I don’t like to let people inside my personal space,” Sinclair replies.
“We were almost killed in your personal space,” Fergus replies. “It would have been helpful to know more about it.”
Sinclair shrugs.
I have managed to shove the revelation about the Flayed Man’s identity back into the box in the corner of my mind that comes in handy in situations like this: ones that threaten my sanity.
I turn to Ant. “You remembered seeing everyone at the informational meeting before the experiment. Do you remember Sinclair? Because I don’t.”
“Hey,” Sinclair says. “I’m standing right here.”
“Yes, but you haven’t participated in solving things in the past. Why would you suddenly be helpful?”
Ant flips back to a page in her notebook and thinks. Her eyes widen, and she stares at Sinclair. “I remember seeing everyone except Fergus, but he and Cata saw each other. I saw BethAnn, I saw Remi with his aunt, and I saw those two parents without a kid. Brett’s parents is what I’m guessing. But now I remember the last group. Sitting in the middle right of the room.” She squeezes her eyes shut to summon the image.
“There were a man and woman sitting together. They were tanned. Well dressed. Rich-people hair. And they were sitting with this boy who doesn’t look a thing like you. He had dirty-blond hair and freckles. And didn’t look like a movie star.”
Sinclair looks visibly uncomfortable.
“Hey, I remember him!” I confirm. “And . . . oh my God . . . I saw him again! In the dream in my house. There was this second . . . split second . . . where you didn’t look like yourself, Sinclair. You looked like him! But when I blinked, you looked like this again.”
“Like that actor in the zombie love movie. That Nicholas guy,” Fergus adds. “The similarity is striking.”
Sinclair sighs and rolls his eyes.
Ant looks at him. “We appear in the Dreamfall as we think of ourselves. You see yourself as a handsome movie star. And you’ve been able to maintain that image for hours, under extremely stressful circumstances. Cata only noticed you slip once. It would take a truly delusional mind to pull that kind of stunt. Someone suffering delusions of grandeur.”
“A psychopath,” Fergus finishes for her.
I gasp. “Oh my God, you’re the psychopath! And you tried to make us think it was Remi!”
“Well, I’m not the one who came up with that theory,” Sinclair rebuts. “And who knows? He might have been a psychopath!”
“You slaughtered that guard without even flinching. Just like you did the tiger. You’re the one Fergus was warned about,” I insist.
“In his dream about the lab?” Sinclair asks critically. “I’m not sure how seriously we need to take that warning.”
“Even if the warning wasn’t real . . . if it was just a creation of Fergus’s mind,” Ant says, “then it seems his subconscious was perceptive about your true nature.”
“What makes you so sure about that?”
“I can’t read any of your expressions,” Ant says.
Sinclair’s face is blank for all of a second, and then he responds, focusing directly on Ant. “Listen. You’re the one who said you don’t like to be put in a box. So don’t put me in one. Even if I have traits that fall under the category you call psychopath, they also fall under the diagnoses of sociopath and narcissist. I think the acceptable term, in any case, is ‘antisocial personality disorder.’ And, like you’ve said before, it’s not always a bad thing.”
“Manipulating people, playing people against each other, lying . . . Those aren’t bad things?” I say accusingly.
“It turned out to be a good thing when I manipulated that gang in the alleyway,” he says with a grin.
We stand there in shocked silence. “That’s why they attacked each other. It was your dream, so you were manipulating them!”
“And in the process, saved our lives,” Sinclair comments smugly.
“But . . . wait a minute,” I say. “You tried to turn me against George, saying she was ordering us around too much. You tried to pal up with each of us when you wanted something from us. You palled up to those kids too, didn’t you? That’s the ‘traitor spreading honey,’ wanting-the-love-of-his-victims part of the poem, right?” I say.
“Everyone does things to make people like them. And even if I have thoughts of revenge or manipulation, that doesn’t mean that I follow through on them.”
“And you know all this because you studied it?” Ant says, giving him the stink-eye.
“Bam,” says Fergus.
“I’m telling you, my dreams are just as fictional as yours have been. It doesn’t matter if you believe me. Even if I were a dangerous, violent, murderous psychopath, which I assure you I’m not . . . it wouldn’t be in my interest to hurt any of you. We all need one another to get out of here.”
And as he says it, I see the fluorescent blue out of the corner of my eye and hear the first knock sound out.
“What the . . .” Fergus says, looking wide-eyed at Ant.
“That was ten minutes,” she says, shrugging. “That’s all we’ve got. Next Void will be nine.”
We stare at Sinclair. Everyone’s thinking the same thing . . . even him. “Don’t look at me like I’m going to murder you all as soon as we get into the next dream,” he says. “Which, by the way, should be yours, Ant, from the way things look.”
He holds out his arm for me to link mine through. I hesitate, wrinkle my nose, then wrap my arm through his. Fergus steps in to take his other arm so that Ant doesn’t have to.
“You don’t have to keep trying to look like a movie star now that we know who you are,” he says to Sinclair as the second knock comes.
“Who’s trying?” Sinclair says. “Like Ant said, this is how we perceive ourselves. What’s wrong with having really high self-esteem?”
Fergus shakes his head. “Delusional,” he mumbles.
&nb
sp; Ant squeezes my arm hard in hers. “It’s going to be okay,” I reassure her without thinking.
“How do you know?” she replies. “How can you imagine that anything’s ever going to be okay again?”
Chapter 26
Jaime
I’M JOTTING DOWN TIMES AND LOCATIONS. THIS is going to be tight . . . if it’s even doable. I need to get back to the clinic and down into the lab before the subjects hit the next window of NREM sleep. From my calculations, they are currently in REM, will come out of it in forty minutes, and then have only nine minutes of stability before they are plunged into the next dream.
It will take me fifteen minutes to drive back to the clinic. I have to leave now. I raise my hand for the check and toss back the rest of my coffee. I haven’t heard back from Hal, and I don’t have a phone number for him. I’ll just have to trust that he gets my message, is willing (and able) to do what I asked, and can get it done in time.
I study the pages on resuscitation I found on the internet one last time: What happens when a respirator is turned off for a period of minutes? How long can a patient flatline before being resuscitated? Manual shutdown of pacemaker and the effects upon the human body.
I can do this. I know I can. And if I can’t, there will still be a window of time for the paramedics to resuscitate them. They don’t have to die. They just have to get close.
My hands are clammy, and I feel shaky all over as I leave a ten on the table and pack my laptop into its bag. I can’t think about the danger or I’ll lose my courage. Walking into the parking lot, the frigid air sweeps under my collar and up the back of my neck. I shiver, but not from the cold.
I climb back into my car and head back to the Pasithea clinic, switching on the radio as a distraction. When I hear the song playing on the classic rock station, I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cry.
Dreams of war, dreams of liars
Dreams of dragon’s fire
And of things that will bite
Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
We’re off to never-never land.
Metallica seems to have read my mind and is singing about the sleepers through my beater car’s speakers. But, unless Hal comes through, the four kids might never escape from their never-never land.
I pull into the clinic’s parking lot and check my phone. Eight twenty-five. I’ve got eighteen minutes before the subjects transfer into NREM sleep.
Eighteen minutes to go through the door, get past the receptionist, and sneak downstairs into the lab. And still no word from Hal. I rest my head on the steering wheel. It’ll never work. What am I . . . completely insane? Do I have a Messiah complex or something? Who am I to think I can do anything . . . should do anything . . . for these dying kids?
And then the alert sound dings on my phone. It’s a text from Hal: The eagle has landed.
I jump out of my car and race toward the clinic entrance.
Chapter 27
Ant
WE ARE SITTING IN A BOAT. WELL, NOT REALLY A boat, but one of those fake boats that run on tracks through any carnival attraction that includes an indoor river exploration. Pirate rides, tunnels of love, some haunted house rides . . . wherever, they want to force you to look at what’s on display by strapping you into a small space encircled by murky water.
It’s a four-person boat, and Fergus is beside me, thank the gods. I grab his hand without any hesitation at all, and he takes mine in both of his. Cata and Sinclair are in the seat behind us. She has scooted all the way over away from him and is shoved up against the door on her side. He’s acting like he doesn’t notice, but his face is a gray cloud of fury.
It’s dark for a moment, with just the smell of chlorine and murk and the lapping of water against the boat, and then all the lights go on and we’re in a low-budget version of “It’s a Small World.”
No question we’re in my nightmare. When I went to Disney with my parents at age three, I had such a major freak-out that they had to stop the whole ride and send someone to come out in those plastic fishermen’s wader overalls to carry me to “land” and take me out through a door hidden behind a miniature Eiffel Tower.
“‘It’s a Small World’! I used to love this as a kid!” says Cata.
I can’t even talk I’m so horrified. “Why are you scared, Ant?” Fergus asks me softly. “It’s the least frightening ride of any amusement park. It’s the one they take babies on.”
“Everything about this ride is unnatural,” I say. “The water is exactly five feet deep and is dyed a shade of green so dark that you can’t see the bottom. The boats don’t even float; they’re on tracks. Someone in Florida recently got two of his fingers chopped off when he got his hand stuck underneath.”
“Well, we won’t put our hands under the boat,” Sinclair says, sarcasm dripping from his voice. He no longer has anything to hide.
“Look at their faces,” I say, ignoring him. “Three hundred audio-animatronic dolls, each with exactly the same face. They’ve just been painted different colors and wear different wigs. Which, though it avoids regional facial differences (and thus racial stereotyping), it means that three hundred versions of the exact same face are staring at us.”
Everyone is silent for a moment, I guess checking out the identical features on the creepy dolls. A shepherdess with blond, curly locks and a blue fluffy pinafore, waves her staff to welcome us as her sheep gleefully jump on a rotary wheel that makes them go around and around in a never-ending fluffy loop.
On our other side, Dutch children ice-skate in figure eights next to a windmill with tulips in its windows, which have apparently been biogenetically engineered to bloom during ice-skating season.
Everything’s fake. I hate fake. I am terrified of fake, and my hat with its comforting earflaps and my soft, tight gloves are not enough to insulate me from that fakeness. To protect me. I hold on to Fergus for all I’ve got.
“I don’t understand what’s scary,” Sinclair says. “They’re all cute and smiling and dressed in stupid national clothes that I’m sure no one actually wears, but what’s wrong with that?”
“They’re smiling,” I say.
He looks confused.
“It’s the kind of smile baristas use in coffee shops. It’s the kind of smile that you make sometimes where it doesn’t match your eyes, and so it isn’t on my flash cards. It’s not real.”
“Hey!” Sinclair says. “Don’t take your trust issues out on me. And if you can’t even tell what someone is feeling without memorizing flash cards . . .”
Fergus turns fully around, and Sinclair’s tirade peters out. “Listen,” he says. “Whether you’re the psychopath I may or may not have been warned about, until you can prove for a fact that all the violent shit happening in your nightmares is just your own weird notion of vengeance, I’m watching you. So don’t even try to mess with the rest of us.
“We all have our challenges. But we need one another to get out of here. Since you’re so good at pretending to be something you’re not, why don’t you fake being a nice normal human being . . . just for the rest of the dream.”
Cata looks like she’s about to burst out laughing. Sinclair gets this look of pure hatred in his eyes that only lasts about five seconds, and then it’s like he’s processed what Fergus said and pretty much accepted it. I squeeze Fergus’s hand hard to show him how amazing I thought he was and turn my attention back to the dolls.
“You’re right, they are all smiling at us,” Cata says after a minute. “Their eyes are all trained right on us.”
Another boat rounds the corner and bumps fake boat bumpers with ours. I want to throw up when I see what’s in it: more gleeful animatronic dolls. The ones in the front row are wearing Mary Poppins–style clothes, with the boy doll taking its top hat off and on and the girl doll swirling its parasol above its head. Behind them are French cancan dolls who kick their legs in the air and whoop.
They are all staring straight at us. And as w
e watch, their smiles morph from plastic grins to horrible, leering grimaces, their lips stretching back to show brown, rotting teeth. The music slows down just a beat, transforming from a song that’s meant to sound joyful into a creepy-sounding dirge.
“Fuck me sideways!” yelps Sinclair.
“Okay. Now I’m scared too,” Cata says.
“What’s going to happen, Ant?” Fergus asks.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I say. “I have nightmares about this, but nothing happens. I know we shouldn’t try to get out of the boat, but almost anything could be next.”
“Um, yeah, getting out might not be the best idea anyway,” Sinclair says, staring down into the water. “What did you say, it’s five feet deep? Well, those five feet are chockablock full of extras for Chucky Twelve: It’s a Small, Small Massacre.”
I look down. Floating dolls clog the water. They face in different directions but move the way they were made to: Hawaiian dolls doing the hula dance, their grimacing faces marked with red dye as if they had been slashed with machetes. Scottish dolls with bagpipes, large knife marks painted across their plastic skin. And then some categories of dolls I’ve never seen in real amusement parks. They look like a line that the creators decided to reject—one featuring professions. Doctors holding scalpels, tiny white masks stretched across their faces. Butcher dolls in bloodstained aprons, holding cleavers high above their heads, smiling grotesquely as they bring them up and down.
With unmoving lips, the dolls sing about a world filled with love and sunshine and laughter, while the background music is piped from invisible speakers in a ceiling that seems to stretch as far as the universe.
Out of nowhere, Cata lets out a bloodcurdling scream and holds up her hand. Half of her index finger is missing, and blood is spurting out of the end. She stares at it in horror, then leans over, curling up in a ball around it and rocking back and forth.
A small hand clutches the edge of the boat next to her, and a head appears as a doll hoists itself up. It’s the butcher doll, and it’s carrying a bloody cleaver.