Mrs. Finch turned to Dr. Strang with a sickly smile. Clearly, the woman was worried.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked. “He’s never this hard to wake up.”
Dr. Strang frowned and stepped toward the bed. She gave Charley a rough tousle, but he didn’t stir. After two more tries, she stood back, clearly flabbergasted to some degree, and looked at the computer screen for his vitals. Everything was normal. He was in deep REM sleep, his alpha waves unusually strong, but that should not prevent his awakening. They tried several more times to wake Charley up. But nothing worked. Charley remained asleep. Deeply asleep.
It took Mrs. Finch to say it with a frightened pitch to her voice:
“Now he’s in a coma, just like Andy.”
* * * *
After another twenty futile minutes, during which every one of them desperately tried to wake Charley up, Dr. Strang reluctantly agreed to call Dr. Arambaala. He arrived at the sleep lab twenty minutes later. By then, it was well past midnight. Dr. Arambaala’s large frame cast a dark shadow over Charley’s room as he entered to examine the boy. Dr. Strang and a panicky Mrs. Finch followed him. She had not yet called Mr. Finch, who was already angry that she was going to such silly lengths to cure the boy of these nightmares . Let him just grow out of them, he had said. Stop babying the boy.
The first thing Dr. Arambaala did at Charley’s bedside was reach down and lift open one of Charley’s eyelids and flash a penlight he was holding in his left hand into Charley’s open eye.
Behind him, Dr. Strang, sounding utterly amazed, said, “He’s still in REM sleep!”
“His pupils are dilated,” said Dr. Arambaala, as he switched off the penlight and turned around to face them. “Totally unresponsive.”
“Is he on any medication?” he asked, then looked to Mrs. Finch. “Even cold pills?”
“No,” said Mrs. Finch, still quite panicked. “Nothing.”
Dr. Arambaala began lifting Charley’s arms, up then down, up then down, perhaps twenty times. He followed this by going in and out with Charley’s arms, in and out, in and out, another twenty times. Every now and then, with his deep baritone voice, he would gently call Charley’s name, sometimes adding, “Wake up, Charley Finch, wake up,” into the mix.
Behind him all that time, Mrs. Finch nervously paced, stopping every now and then to ask, “Is it working, doctor? Is it working?” No one thought to answer the hapless woman’s concerns. If anything, they seemed intent on ignoring her. Finally, Dr. Arambaala, exhausted from his futile exercising of Charley’s arms, turned and glared at Dr. Strang. “Has this ever happened before, doctor?”
Dr. Strang shook her head. “No,” she said. “Never.”
Dr. Arambaala suddenly wondered what was going on at Andy’s end of the sleep experiment. If Charley had fallen into some kind of coma, might Andy have awakened from his? He asked Dr. Strang to find out.
She grabbed a cell phone from deep within the right pocket of her white laboratory frock, and punched a single number. A moment later, the technician at the other end answered the call on his own cell phone.
“Josh,” said Dr. Strang. “What’s the condition of the other boy? The comatose boy.”
After a moment, she grunted, then thanked him for the information. After clipping shut the lid of her cell phone, she turned to Dr. Araambala.
“Andy’s condition hasn’t changed,” she told him. Then, she examined the computer screen monitoring his brain activity. “He’s in the same deep REM sleep pattern as Charley.”
After a sigh, Dr. Strang said, “I wonder what they are dreaming about?”
* * * *
Charley and Andy were cartoon figures again. But not like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It was more like a Disney animation. And in this one, they were lifelike, cartoon caricatures of themselves. In the other cartoon dreams, they had remained themselves, flesh-and-blood.
They rode massive, charcoal Arabian horses, galloping at furious speed toward some unknown destination.
“Where we going?” Charley yelled against the wind. The horses’ thick manes were blowing back in their faces.
Suddenly, Charley realized that they were fleeing a horde of Zorl’s Tasmanian devils, lurid trolls who seemed desperate to do them harm. They were also on horseback, keeping close on their heels. In fact, it seemed to Charley that the devils might be gaining on them. A moonless, dark velvet, star-studded sky bathed the flat landscape in a purplish glow, and the racing dark steeds glistened in the pale starlight.
“Where’s your father?” called Charley. He was huffing and puffing as hard as the horses. It was also somewhat disconcerting that he and Andy had themselves become cartoon caricatures.
Andy gave no response.
“Andy?” Charley shouted. He suddenly remembered being in the sleep lab. He heard voices somewhere in his head, trying to wake him up. This is a dream , he thought. A crazy dream. That realization had never before occurred to Charley while in one of these dreams with Andy. But the idea was fleeting, and quickly he was brought back to their immediate predicament: Zorl and his demons chasing them, intent on taking Andy away forever.
Suddenly, Andy was tugging at his horse’s reins, and they came to a complete stop. Charley did likewise, giving a frightened glance back at the Tasmanian army rushing up to them.
“Andy? What? We have to go!”
Andy’s face crinkled up in anguish. “My father,” he said, “went back.”
“Went back?”
“He’s dead, Charley,” Andy said. “Zorl finally caught him and took him back. Cast him through the Door of Death on Mount Doom.”
Charley felt hopeless. He could hear the galloping hooves of a thousand horses pounding on the plain behind them. The vicious high-pitched wails of the Tasmanian devils. They are going to tear us limb from limb , Charley thought.
“He was dead all along,” Andy continued, seemingly oblivious to the danger of Zorl’s approaching army. “He was allowed only so long to stay within this dream, Charley. Where this is—a place between the realm of conscious life and death.
“Just wake up and go back, Charley,” Andy said. “You tried to help me. It didn’t work. Zorl’s going to catch me and bring me to the other side, whether or not I want to go. Whether or not you want me to go.”
Charley suddenly realized his problem. For some reason, he couldn’t go back. Not right now. Zorl had done something to keep him here. Zorl saw that he might have two for the price of one.
“I can’t wake up,” Charley told Andy. “At least, not right now. I’m not sure why. I just know that I am stuck here for the time being like you. So you have to run – this time to help me!”
Andy’s eyes widened. He saw that this was no bluff on the part of his friend. The fright in Charley’s animated bright blue cartoon eyes told him that. Andy suddenly whirled his steed around, kicked its sides, and went off into a furious gallop. Charley did likewise.
They kept their distance for a time from the devil cavalry but soon their horses started to tire. Then, they saw it. In the starry night, along the rise of a steep hill, stood a castle keep.
* * * *
“What the hell is going on here?”
Mr. Finch’s eyes bugged out and his nostrils flared. He had that same fierce, pissed off look whenever Charley hadn’t done some chore fast enough around the house. He stood at the foot of the bed in the sleep room where Charley lay as still as a statue. Comatose. Still locked in some vivid dream, the same dream, perhaps, that Andy Moss was having miles away.
Mrs. Finch tried to calm him by putting an arm around his shoulders, but he quickly brushed her off. She didn’t know that as he glared down at the boy, his boy, that he wasn’t just angry, he was sorry; full of regret. Charley’s plight suddenly made him realize that perhaps he hadn’t been the greatest dad to an only son. He couldn’t remember the last time they had tossed a baseball around in the back yard. He worked a lot, and didn’t make time like other fathers had; like Andy Moss’s f
ather had, for instance. He had ignored Charley, pure and simple, as if he didn’t even have a son. As he stood there, at that moment staring down as his sleeping boy, he promised God and Jesus that if Charley woke up, he’d be a better father.
The doctors had told Mrs. Finch she couldn’t have another baby shortly after Charley was born. Maybe Mr. Finch blamed Charley for that. Maybe that’s why he ignored him. Not to mention, Charley hadn’t really turned out to his high standards. He was somewhat of a runt, and wasn’t much of an athlete. Mr. Finch had even cruelly joked that he and Charley should call what they did, ‘miss’, rather than ‘catch’, those few times that he actually went outside to play with Charley.
“Charley seems to be,” Dr. Arambaala sheepishly tried to explain, pausing to search for the words, “trapped in a deep, deep sleep. We are having trouble waking him up from it.”
“He’s dreaming with Andy,” said Mr. Finch. “Isn’t he?”
“It could be…” started Dr. Strang.
Dr. Arambaala waved a hand at her and said, “We’re not certain of that.”
Mr. Finch looked at both of them with an amazed expression.
“You people better have plenty of malpractice insurance,” he said, “if he don’t wake up.”
Dr. Arambaala scowled, while Dr. Strang swallowed.
“We are working on it,” said Dr. Arambaala. “I assure you.”
The sleep team finally settled Mr. and Mrs. Finch in low, leather chairs at Charley’s bedside, before retreating with Dr. Arambaala into the control room to consider a plan of action.
Chapter Five
The Sleeping Princess
The perpetual onslaught of huge, cartoon ice bombs onto the deserted granite streets of the castle keep compelled Charley and Andy deeper into the bowels of the granitefortress. Finally, behind the thick, dark gray walls, Charley and Andy stopped their horses and dismounted.
Andy turned to Charley and, after a moment, burst out laughing.
“What’s so damned funny, Andy?”
“You,” he said. “You’re a ‘toon.”
It was Charley’s turn to laugh. “So are you.”
They stood there grinning at each other for a while before they heard the whoosh and crashing impact of an ice bomb on the narrow stone street just beyond the wall where they stood.
“Where do you think this leads?” Andy asked, nodding to a narrow, dark passage before them, leading upwards to an unknown chamber. Charley shrugged. “I guess we got no other choice than to find out,” he said. Andy nodded, and up they went, leading the horses behind them. Finally, the passage narrowed to a doorway so low that the horses couldn’t follow.
“Whoa!” Andy whispered, to settle them. “We’ll be right back.”
Charley frowned. We’re cartoons , he thought. Fictions. Still, they had been good, fast horses whose speed and determination had saved them from Zorl’s Tasmanian devils. He patted the side of his horse and felt the oily texture of
‘toon flesh. Uck! He rubbed his face and felt the same thing. Double-yuck!
“C’mon.” Andy waved him to follow. “Leave them.”
Charley followed Andy down a short, narrow hall. Both of them had to bend their cartoon heads below a low ceiling. At the end of the hall were stairs and they started up them. Charley lost count after twenty, but still they went up.
“Where the hell is this leading?” Charley asked.
“How the hell…?” Andy stopped talking when he came to the top step, emerging into a wide chamber. On the other side of the room was a large, square canopied bed. On the bed was a girl—a sleeping princess.
* * * *
“Electroshock?” Dr. Arambaala said. It had just been suggested by one of the technicians as a way to ‘spark’ Charley into consciousness.
“It may work,” said Dr. Strang, though she felt painfully insecure after the night’s turn of events. “A light dose, of course. Not enough to do any real damage. It might jolt him out of the dream. We can do it right here in the lab. Right in his bedroom.”
Dr. Arambaala stared for a time at the computer screen readings registering the sleep patterns for Charley and Andy. The EEG lines were so damned similar. But how could
that be? A shared dream? He was a psychiatrist, a medical doctor. He could not buy into that New Age slop that so many of his brethren were selling these days. Shared mass consciousness. The afterlife. Near death experiences.
He also was no great fan of shock treatment, the slang for its medical term, electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. After all, electroshock was first used to knock animals unconscious before slaughtering them. Ever since Italian psychiatrist, Ugo Cerletti, had used it on a human being in 1938, there had been much controversy surrounding its application. Nazi scientists had used it to experiment on human guinea pigs. Later, it was used in secret CIA projects and against blacks in South Africa. Still, it remained in widespread use, without any real proof of its effectiveness in treating mental disorders. Over 100,000 patients received ECT every year in the United States alone. There was a devious claim that the treatment’s continued use was related solely to its profitability. It took no more than a few minutes to administer, while reaping over $3 million a year for the psychiatric industry.
“Of course,” added Dr. Strang, “we’ll have to get the consent of the boy’s parents.”
They all knew that in order to do that, they had to be careful in explaining how an ECT is administered, and what it might do to Charley’s brain. The Finches would doubtless deny permission for its application if they were bluntly informed that after placing a rubber gag in Charley’s mouth to prevent him from breaking his teeth, and putting him on artificial respiration, they’d send a current of up to 450 volts of electricity through his brain, resulting in a grand mal seizure, similar to an epileptic fit. As Dr. Strang had suggested, the jolt of electricity would have the effect of scrambling the brain function, and would likely interrupt the dream into which Charley had apparently so deeply fallen. Though Dr. Arambaala objected to the use of ECT as an ordinary treatment for mental disease, in this instance it did seem to make sense.
“I’ll approach them,” he said. “After all, he’s my patient.”
Dr. Arambaala shuffled the Finches into waiting room down the hall from Charley’s sleep room. He sat on the couch between them and held Mrs. Finch’s hand as he explained the ECT procedure while Mr. Finch looked on with a deep scowl.
“We can’t explain to you what’s happened to Charley,” he began. “Why coming to this lab and monitoring his sleep has resulted in our inability to wake him up. Maybe it’s just coincidence, and would have happened even if he was in his own bed tonight.”
“Look-it, Doctor Arambelli, or whatever your name is,” interrupted Mr. Finch,
“don’t give us that song and dance. Charley’s fallen into a coma on your watch. It’s your problem—your malpractice—not ours. The thing we want to know is what you’re going to do about it.”
Dr. Arambaala turned to Mr. Finch with a mirthless smile. “The name’s Arambaala,”
he said. “And that, of course, is our primary interest at this moment – waking Charley up.” He turned again to Mrs. Finch. “What we propose doing is administering electroconvulsive therapy, what is commonly known as electroshock.”
Mr. Finch’s eyes widened. “Shock treatment!”
Dr. Arambaala gave him a Pollyanna, short version explanation for how it worked, and what they hoped to achieve. If we can break his alpha waves, he said, and stop the dream, Charley should wake up.
He left them alone a few minutes to think about it.
“What other choice do we have?” Mr. Finch asked. “Either that, or he’ll end up a vegetable, like that Moss kid.”
“Oh, Jesus!” yelped Mrs. Finch.
Mr. Finch went to find Dr. Arambaala. After signing consent forms, they returned to the waiting room. On the way back, Mrs. Finch had the funny thought that what was supposed to have been a study of Charley’s d
reams had become a real life nightmare!
Chapter Six
The Sleeping Princess, Part II
At the edge of the bed, Andy let out a gasp.
“It’s her,” he said, gazing down at the sleeping cartoon girl.
“Who?” Charley asked. “You know her?”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Her name is Esmeralda. I met her last summer when we went on vacation to visit my aunt in Austria. You remember. I was gone for two weeks. Esmeralda’s a real princess or something.”
Even as a ‘toon, Esmeralda looked to be about twelve or so. She was pretty, with long blonde hair and a thin, tall body. Tiny breasts were just starting to peek out.
“Princess?”
Andy shrugged. “That’s what my mother told me. Old money, she said.”
It was Charley’s turn to shrug. “So she’s a sleeping princess,” he said. “Maybe she needs a kiss to wake her up.”
“You’ve been reading too many fairytales, my friend,” Andy said. Looking down at the girl, he had to admit that she did look kissable. Girls had become something of an interest to both Charley and him over the last few months.
“We’re living in a fairytale, my friend,” was Charley’s smart retort. He looked over at Andy and raised his eyebrows. “What do we have to lose?”
“Who gets to do it, then?” Andy asked. It was clear that he wanted to. He had probably already done it in real life over in Austria last summer.
“Be my guest,” Charley said. “But, remember, she’s ‘toon flesh.”
Andy nodded. He drew in a breath and leaned over the girl. After a moment’s hesitation, he did it, kissed her flush on the lips. He even tried to push his tongue into her mouth. Then, he pulled away and stood up with his face all screwed up.
“Blah,” he said. “'Toon flesh is weird to the touch.”
Charley laughed, but kept staring at the girl. At first, nothing happened. Then, finally, she opened her eyes. The kiss had worked magic.
“It worked!” Charley said.
The girl sat up and it took a while for her to focus. Finally, she squinted at them.