I want to turn away, to ignore it, but I force myself to stare right back at him. “How’s the hand?” I ask, and have the weirdest feeling that George is speaking through me. He lifts the bloodied dish towel and narrows his eyes.
“How much time?” Fergus interrupts.
I search the clock space in my mind and feel my pulse to double-check. “Thirteen minutes.”
“We need to get outside,” Fergus says to Cata. “I doubt the Wall is going to show up inside your house.”
Cata nods toward the far end of the room, where there is a dark opening without a door. “The shower rooms,” she says. “At the far end are steps that go up and outside to the pool.” The way her face constricts (disgust? fear?) when she says pool strikes a chord of horror in my heart.
“Swimming pool?” I ask.
“It used to be a swimming pool. It’s been left to rot for the last twenty years,” Cata says, squishing her nose and shuddering. Disgust and fear. “It’s more like a swamp.”
“Let’s go,” Sinclair says, but Cata shakes her head.
“We might need our weapons.”
“You said we should go downstairs. You didn’t say there was a catch,” Sinclair says.
“There are things in the walls. But they’ve never gotten out.”
“Things in the walls? Could you be more specific?” asks Sinclair.
Cata gives him a frown. “Just draw your weapons.”
I pull out my knife, Fergus unsheaths his short sword, and Sinclair manages with his towel bandage to pull the crossbow from his back, swing it around, and aim it in front of him.
“How do you know how to use that?” I ask, hardly knowing how I had even created it after only having seen one in a museum.
“Like I said, I’ve gone hunting with my dad,” he replies.
“You actually hadn’t told us you went hunting with him,” I say.
He shrugs and falls into line behind Cata, who leads us with her knife clutched before her in both hands. She steps over the threshold and flicks a switch to her left.
A naked bulb hangs from a wire in the middle of a cement corridor. Three doorless openings punctuate the wall to our right, and on the far end, a stone staircase leads upward.
Cata approaches the first opening and peeks in. Sinclair follows her, pointing the crossbow into the room and swinging it around like a TV cop doing a drug bust. “Nothing here,” he says.
They continue down the hall and Fergus and I poke our heads into the room. There is a showerhead on one side, with a concrete bench across from it. In the far wall, a vent is embedded near the ceiling. It was probably meant to let out steam and moisture, but with years of disuse, it’s become completely encrusted with dirt and moss.
Ahead of us, Cata and Sinclair peer into the second room. I hold my breath. Cata looks back at us. Shakes her head no. They move on to the third room. Sinclair lowers his crossbow and looks at Cata cynically.
“Good job, Cata. You had me crapping myself over the ‘things in the walls.’ Maybe they got fried by the inferno upstairs,” he suggests. “Or turned into goo by the bloody slime.”
Cata scowls back at him. “It doesn’t happen every time.” She turns to Fergus. “You told me to tell you guys everything I could think of to prepare.”
He holds up a hand defensively. “Hey, I’m not the one in danger of crapping my pants. I say the more information, the better.”
Their arguing is making me nervous. I try to focus on my knife, holding it in both hands like Cata. But as they squabble, a pressure builds up inside me until finally I can’t resist. I knock on the wall four times.
Something reaches out and grabs my wrist.
“Help!” I yell as the cement fingers entrapping me grow outward from the wall into a hand, and then a wrist, and then an arm. The form of a very tall, very thin man starts to emerge as I struggle to free myself.
There is a twang, and one of Sinclair’s bolts bounces off the cement arm and ricochets off the ceiling onto the floor of the shower room.
I look over at Sinclair. A shape is emerging from the wall beside him—a cement head leaning forward like it is trying to free itself from a membranous web. It tips its head upward, and its mouth stretches open in a silent scream. “Behind you!” I yell.
Now shapes are bulging out of the walls on all sides. “How do we fight them?” Fergus yells.
“We run!” Cata responds.
“Pull as far back as you can, Ant!” Fergus orders.
I lean back from where the cement man has me trapped. Fergus swings his sword above his head in both hands and brings it down with all his strength. The arm crumbles under the force of his blow, leaving a hand still clamped around my wrist. “Go!” Fergus yells, and I dart toward the stairs at the end of the hall.
Cata and Sinclair are fighting the grasping hands, Sinclair using his crossbow as a club to hammer them away as he struggles toward the stairway. Cata screams, and I grab her arm as I run past. I drag her away from where she has just freed herself from a hand by stabbing at it with her dagger. We make it to the stairs before I see that her arm is bleeding profusely. “I stabbed myself,” she explains, looking like she’s about to faint.
“Three minutes,” I pant, out of breath.
She nods, and avoiding looking at her arm, takes a deep breath.
A shout comes from beneath us. We look back from where we perch just inside the stairway and see that one of the cement men is halfway out of the wall and has Sinclair trapped. One hand is clutched around Sinclair’s chin, and the other is cupped around the back of his head, forcing his face up to stare the man in what would be his eyes if his face weren’t a smooth plane of cement. The man is sinking back into the wall, pulling Sinclair with him.
Fergus swings his sword and breaks off the fingers of a cement man grabbing at him. Then, dropping the sword, he grabs Sinclair around the waist and tries to wrestle him away from the man. Sinclair is struggling and trying to scream through clenched jaws, but his arms have already disappeared inside the wall, and with a suction-sounding slurp, his head is dragged in too.
“No!” Fergus yells and, wrapping his arms more tightly around Sinclair’s waist, gives another hard pull. Cata and I stumble down from our perch into the hallway, dodging grasping fingers with our knives drawn, ready to help Fergus, when all of a sudden the bulging forms recede into the concrete walls.
Sinclair remains there, half swallowed by the wall, before a wet belching noise comes from the cement around him, and he drops backward onto the floor, holding his throat and gasping for breath.
“What happened?” I whisper in the sudden silence. “Why did they all disappear?”
A dripping sound comes from the far end of the hallway. Cata’s eyes flit from my face to the space behind me, and her eyes grow wide. I turn to see a red puddle spreading slowly into the hall from the darkness beyond. Above it, a form emerges.
The weak light of the hanging bulb illuminates the liquid whiteness of his bulging lidless eyeballs. Then the exposed teeth with no lips to hide them emerge from the shadow. Dark red bands of muscle drip with blood as the skinless man’s arm slowly rises, pointing a bony finger, and then he runs full tilt toward us, shrieking his spine-chilling scream.
I stand frozen in terror until Cata grabs me and pulls me toward the stairs. Fergus and Sinclair are already scrambling up the staircase into the cold air of the night, and we barrel out behind them as the first boom sounds.
A full moon drifts overhead in a sky the color of a three-day bruise. A breeze stirs up the carpet of dead leaves covering the lawn. The wind blows against my bare ears, and I feel like screaming from the exposure.
“Over there!” Sinclair yells, pointing across the lawn to where the Wall has appeared. Just in front of it is a swimming pool that looks like something out of an old black-and-white movie. The large stones paving its edges are cracked and crumbling.
Cata moans. “Why does the Wall have to be behind the pool?”
I glance back at the stairway leading down to the house, but the skinless man has disappeared.
We dash through the whirlwind of leaves toward the Wall. Cata steers us toward one end of the pool so we can skirt around it. The cement hand weighs heavily on my wrist, the burn on my face is aching, and the sensation is returning to my electrocuted arm, searing pain stabbing at the bloody gash from the cords. It doesn’t matter, I remind myself. Once I’m through the Wall, I’ll be whole again.
I’m almost to the pool when I see something in my peripheral vision moving at a fast pace toward us from a far corner of the yard. For a second, I wonder if Brett is back. But I turn my head to see the skinless man running at us from far away, then glitching and appearing just a few yards to our right.
“Watch out!” I yell as he glitches again and reappears next to Cata. He takes a swipe at her, tearing the flesh of her shoulder with his fingernails and sending her toppling over the side of the pool. He lets out a wild shriek and turns to face the rest of us. Fergus has his sword out in a flash and takes a swipe at the monster, slicing cleanly into its arm. Thrown off balance, it teeters and, clawing the air, falls over the edge of the pool. It lands a few feet away from where Cata lies flat on her back, unmoving, in several inches of algae-coated water.
The skinless man lies still for a moment and then begins scrabbling onto his side and pushes himself up. A thwang rings out, and one of Sinclair’s arrows hits the monster square in the forehead. He stands motionless for a moment and then crumples. The algae moves out from him in green waves, splashing slimy water over Cata’s face. She doesn’t react.
“Is she dead?” I ask, and then realize that the boys can’t hear me over the wind. I spot a ladder on the deep end of the pool, and run for it, slinging myself down its metal rungs. Halfway to the bottom, I feel something brush against my fingers, and look up to see a large brown rat clinging to a broken piece of tile on the side of the pool. I freeze and look around. There are rats everywhere.
They are only large rodents . . . like guinea pigs, I tell myself, forcing my foot down another step. People keep them as pets. But rats are the thing I am most afraid of, after dentists and clowns. The pain radiating from my face, my arms, my side, helps me shut the fear into a small corner of my mind and keep moving. That, and the knowledge that Cata needs me. I can’t turn back now.
I land at the bottom of the pool with a splash, the green water covering the tops of my shoes. It smells like infection down here, and I stifle a gag and try to breathe through my mouth. I slosh over to Cata and bend down to hold my hand in front of her mouth.
“She’s alive!” I yell up to Fergus and Sinclair. “She must have just knocked herself out.”
The second boom rings out, and hundreds of rats squeal as one and plummet from their sideways perches on the wall down to the floor of the pool.
I scream as they begin swarming toward me and kick them away from Cata’s head.
Fergus appears by my side and, unslinging his backpack, pulls out the coil of rope. “Prop her up,” he says, ignoring the fact that I’m having a meltdown. Rats scurry over my feet, and another scream tears from my chest.
Fergus looks up at me. “Ant, I need you to channel George for me. I know she’s somewhere inside you. And she’s brave enough to do this. You’re brave enough to do this. Now help me prop Cata up.”
I reach down into the writhing mass of rats and pull Cata up by the shoulders. Fergus loops the rope under her arms and around her torso and ties it in a tight knot. “Up the ladder, Ant!” he yells.
I’m off, climbing like a monkey up the metal bars, barely touching them I’m going so fast.
Fergus shuffles Cata over to the side of the pool directly under where Sinclair squats, reaching for the rope. Fergus throws it, and it slips through Sinclair’s fingers. Fergus curses and throws it again. Sinclair catches it. I grab the rope from behind him, and the two of us start pulling Cata up the side of the pool.
We’ve gotten her halfway up when Fergus arrives and takes over for me. They drag her over the rim of the pool, not even being careful, bumping her head hard on the side as they reach over and pull her up. She’ll be fine once we get through the Wall . . . if we get through the Wall.
The third boom rings out, shaking another flurry of leaves from the trees and causing a squealing mass exodus of the pool by the rats, who come pouring over the sides.
Fergus and Sinclair have Cata by the arms and legs, and we only have a few feet to go. The wind whips around us so hard it feels like a tornado, and I get sucked up and turned backward just before I pass through.
That gives me the perfect view of the pool as we leave Cata’s nightmare. The perfect view of the skinless man, who has risen to his feet and stands there shrieking and flailing as he watches us disappear.
Chapter 14
Jaime
THE PARAMEDICS ARE GONE. THE DEATH CERTIFICATES have been filled in and signed. The nursing assistants move at a pace that befits death, slowly settling Remi and Brett into body bags. They are the opposite of the efficient, bustling paramedics. It’s like if they go slowly enough, avoiding any abrupt movements, it will buffer what just happened. That it will ease the realization that those two people who were just there, no longer are.
But the researchers are all too aware of what has happened and what it means. They look like they’ve aged twenty years in the last twenty minutes. After asking, “Did you get all of that, Jaime?” they forget I’m here. Vesper leaves to notify Osterman and alert the bereavement team, and Zhu alternates between typing data into her computer and making phone calls.
I look up at my screen. It is now a patchwork of squares: Windows three, five, and seven are dark. Windows one, two, four, and six are lit up, displaying the remaining subjects: Catalina, Fergus, Sinclair, and Antonia. They’re in the period of accelerated feedback. I wonder what they’re dreaming about.
Catalina with her violent father and dead mother. Fergus with his severe neurological disorder. Antonia with her high intelligence and behavioral tics. And Sinclair . . . Sinclair with his possibly murderous past.
Based on what BethAnn said about soldiers with guns and Fergus’s statement that the dreams were killing them, I can only imagine that they have seen some horrific scenarios. I hope not all their dreams are nightmares. But with three of them already dead and one narrowly escaping the same fate, I doubt they’re experiencing all rainbows and sunshine.
I think about my own dreams . . . those that I remember. I do a lot of flying. So much that I know that feeling in my chest that lifts me up off the ground—lungs full of air, shoulders leaning just the slightest bit to change directions. It’s as if I live another life in my dreams . . . one as real as this one. Real enough to give me sensory memories, and when I think hard enough about it, I feel my muscles flex, allowing movements my body has never made.
I dream about my dad too. I dream he didn’t really die. That it was all a mistake. I walk into my parents’ kitchen, and there he is, chopping vegetables for his famous Cajun stir-fry. I ask him why he let us believe he was dead. He always acts surprised, then pats me on the back. “What are you talking about? I’ve been here this whole time.”
Those are the dreams I wake up from in tears. The ones that make me want to stay in bed for the rest of the day, half of me wanting the dream to return so I can see him again, and the other half wishing those dreams would stop so I wouldn’t feel so ruined afterward.
Yes, my dreams are vivid enough to imagine what the test subjects could be experiencing. But a regular night of sleep only contains short periods of dream activity. These kids are living through dreams that are almost nonstop.
I look down at the charts I’m making. From what I can see so far, they started out with fifty minutes of heightened feedback and twenty of lowered. If my theory is right . . . and I am almost convinced that it is . . . they pass those longer periods in REM sleep and shorter in NREM. Fifty minutes of dreaming. Twenty minutes of rest.
B
ut over the hours, the REM activity has become longer and the NREM shorter. I check the timing of the last few periods of heightened and lowered feedback. It’s clear now that they are continually shifting by one minute each. More dreams, less rest.
No wonder their bodies are wearing out. Their heart rates are gradually getting weaker every hour. Their lungs are showing signs of exhaustion, their breathing becoming less regular. According to my calculations, their “rest” time is now down to twelve minutes. They’re going to burn out. And if what has happened to BethAnn, Remi, and Brett is any reflection of what is happening inside the dreams, if nothing is done, they’re all going to die.
I finish the charts. Why do the phases move by exactly sixty seconds each time? Perhaps because the Tower was regulated in minutes for the treatment. The sleepers’ bodies were set, in a way, like a clock.
In any case, the regularity of the timing can’t be questioned. 50/20, 51/19, 52/18, 53/17 . . . No one can dispute that data: not even the researchers. How they interpret it is another matter. Which is why I need to carry out phase two of my plan: finding the videos of the moments of death. The times when the sleepers woke up and spoke.
Chapter 15
Cata
A FUZZY WHITENESS GROWS FROM A TINY PINPOINT to spread across my entire field of vision as I become aware of my surroundings. I’m lying on the ground . . . in the Void.
“What. Was. That?” I hear Sinclair’s voice and turn to see the others sprawled nearby. “I couldn’t even dream up something that freaky if I tried.”
We all push ourselves up. Fergus weaves on his feet before stretching out a hand to help me up. “You’re okay,” he says, checking me over.
“I don’t even remember what happened.” I rub my hand over the back of my head. As usual, my clothes are in pristine condition, I have no cuts or scrapes, but I’m so tired I feel like I was run over by a truck. Noticing me wobble, Fergus leads me to a couch, wraps his arm around me, and lets me lay my head on his shoulder. It feels so good that I close my eyes and just soak in the comfort of touching another person. Of letting go of all my defenses and trusting someone, if only for a moment.