Neverwake

by Amy Plum

  “Three,” Zhu responds frantically.

  There are now two flatlines whining from the Tower’s speakers. The paramedics apply one more round and wait.

  “This cannot be happening,” Zhu says to Vesper. He remains silent, his eyes trained on Remi.

  The flatlines continue until the paramedics put the paddles away and turn off the machines. They carry out a cursory check of vital signs. Then one of them turns to the doctors and shakes her head.

  Chapter 12

  Cata

  I OPEN MY EYES. I DON’T KNOW WHY I CLOSE THEM every time we go through the door, but I do. And this time, when I open them and see we are in my bedroom, our little circle standing arm in arm next to my bed, my knees turn into noodles.

  “Cata’s falling,” Sinclair says from my right, tugging as he tries to hold me upright. Fergus supports me until I remember how to breathe and can stand on my own.

  “I’m guessing this is your dream?” Ant says. Without waiting for my answer, she crouches down to knock on the floor five times. Fergus meets my eyes, but we barely notice it anymore. It’s just part of Ant. Something she needs.

  Fergus keeps his arm around my shoulders as he looks around the room: high ceiling, hardwood floor, giant windows that open to the darkness, the white linen curtains moving with the breath of the night: sucked outward on the inhale and fluttering in on the exhale. “Is this your room?” he whispers.

  “Yes,” I respond. My voice sounds hollow. Like I’m hiding somewhere far away, in an invisible cobwebbed corner of my body.

  “Can you stand?” he asks.

  “I’m okay. It was just the last place I wanted to see when I opened my eyes.” I say. But I don’t move, preferring his arm to stay where it is.

  Fergus nods, understanding. “What do we need to know?”

  “Yeah,” says Sinclair. “What are we looking at here? Fanged statues? Monks with glowing red eyes? Prepare us.”

  I take a deep breath and nod toward the bathroom. “The skinless man you saw me running from in the first dream. He’s probably in there.”

  Sinclair swings the crossbow off his back and checks it over. Then, getting down on one knee, he aims it toward the bathroom. Nothing happens.

  “Should I go check?” Fergus asks.

  “I wouldn’t get close to the door,” I say. “He has this way of moving really fast without warning.”

  “Cover me,” Fergus says to Sinclair, pulling the short sword from the scabbard on his belt. Ant and I draw our knives and position ourselves on either side of Sinclair. Fergus inches his way toward the bathroom. I hear the slap of a bloody foot on the tile floor. Fergus turns toward me. I nod and whisper, “That’s him.”

  Fergus inches forward, holding the sword in both hands. He is close enough to see inside the bathroom. He leans to one side, and then to the other, searching. “There are bloody footprints on the floor, but they stop at the threshold,” he says in a hushed voice.

  “It always comes from in there,” I insist.

  He reaches forward with one hand and pushes the door inward. It swings all the way back, banging against the wall. “There’s nothing in there now,” he says.

  That’s when I see the prints. They have skipped half the room, and reappear to the right of where we’re standing. I turn and scream. The Flayed Man stands directly behind me, the white linen of the curtains billowing out from behind him like demonic wings.

  His lidless eyeballs bulge out of their bloody sockets, and his cheekless jaw drops open to let out an earsplitting screech as he lashes forward. The long, jagged fingernails jutting from his bloody finger bones pierce the thin fabric of my T-shirt and carve deeply into my chest.

  It all happens so fast that I don’t have time to think. My body reacts faster than my mind. My hand holding the knife whips out and meets his wrist, slicing cleanly through the exposed muscle and—somehow—the bone. The hand falls to the ground and writhes on the floor like a dissected worm, spattering blood in an arc around the stump.

  “Duck!” yells Sinclair. I don’t need his warning—I am already careening toward the bed, knocked aside by the force of the Flayed Man’s blow. I hear the twang of a string and a whoosh overhead, and see the crossbow’s arrow lodge deep into the center of the monster’s forehead. The man roars and his hands fly upward, grasping at the bolt and trying to pull it free. Another bolt flies and hits him in the chest, embedding itself so deeply that it disappears into the bloody muscly gore.

  As the Flayed Man stumbles, his back brushing against the window, Ant acts. Grabbing my floor lamp, she flips it around and uses it like a battering ram. She slams it against the Flayed Man’s chest, putting all her weight behind the thrust. Already off balance, the monster topples backward, crashing through the thin panes of glass and falling out of the second-story window, folded into the darkness of the night.

  “Are there more of him?” Sinclair asks, rising from his kneel.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Will he be back?” Ant asks.

  “Possibly,” I respond. “I’ve never been able to hurt him before.”

  “Okay, then let’s get out of here,” Fergus says. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, pushing myself to my feet.

  Resheathing his sword, he takes me by the shoulders and turns me around so that I’m facing my vanity table mirror. Four evenly spaced slashes are ripped into my shirt, and I’m drenched in blood. It isn’t until I see it that I feel it and double over with the burning pain.

  “You can use that shirt to mop up the blood if you tell me where to find you another one,” Ant suggests.

  I hesitate, glancing at the boys, before thinking, What the hell? Slipping the shirt over my head, I stand there in my bra. My chest is a bloody mess. I dab at the blood with my balled-up T-shirt.

  Ant sucks air between her teeth, experiencing my pain vicariously.

  “Ouch,” Sinclair comments.

  “My T-shirts are in the second drawer,” I say to Ant, gesturing toward my dresser.

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

  “Fifty-seven minutes for this nightmare. Twelve down,” Ant replies, throwing me a shirt. It’s my favorite—a vintage T-shirt of this movie Flatliners I found at Goodwill. It’s so worn-out that the cotton feels like silk.

  “Unless that thing has poisoned claws, I doubt you will bleed out or get infected in the next forty-five minutes,” Fergus calculates. There is something in his eyes that goes beyond pity. It almost feels like care. I nod and slip the fresh T-shirt over my head, and though the wounds still burn, I immediately feel better. “So you’ve had this dream before?” he asks.

  “I’ve been having this dream for the last few years. This is my old house.”

  Sinclair looks around and shudders. “I can see why you guys moved. It’s creeptastic, to put it lightly.”

  I look down at the ground. “My family still lives there. I left them.”

  Everyone stares at me. “Well, if that crypt nightmare family is anything like your real one, that seems like a reasonable decision,” Sinclair says.

  Fergus touches my arm. “You don’t have to tell us everything now. But we have a while to go, and your warning about the Flayed Man probably saved our lives. So anything you can tell us about this place could be helpful.”

  I’m not sure where to start. Should I tell them that the monster we just saw wasn’t the real monster in this house? That living here was its own nightmare?

  As my father’s face flashes through my mind, a high buzzing sound flicks on inside my head. My eyes shift out of focus. I try to breathe, but it feels like I’m sucking molasses through my nostrils instead of air.

  Ant taps my dresser five times and glances at the window.

  “I hate to rush you,” Sinclair says, “but I have a feeling that Ant and I are on the same wavelength here, being that there is a skinned monster out there that could be crawling back this way.”

  “
Dude, give her a minute,” Fergus says. He takes me carefully by the shoulders and looks me straight in the eyes. “Cata. Your eyes look weird. Are you doing that thing . . . dissociating?”

  “My face feels fuzzy,” I hear myself slur.

  “Cata,” Fergus says, and his grip tightens on my shoulders. “This is a nightmare. It’s not real. You just said that you left this place, and I imagine it was for a good reason. But however shitty it was for you back then, this time we’re here with you. You need to focus and tell us what to do. Come back. Now.” He snaps his fingers in front of my eyes, and that’s all it takes. I shake my head, and the fog lifts.

  “What else can happen here?” he asks, staring intently into my eyes.

  “The house,” I respond, filling my lungs with the fresh, cold air streaming in from the window.

  “What else is in the house?”

  “It’s not what’s in the house. It’s the house itself.”

  “What do you mean the house itself?” Sinclair raises the crossbow defensively.

  I swallow, and break Fergus’s gaze. “My dad believed in spirits. Evil spirits,” I say to Sinclair. “When we moved in, the place was trashed. The people who lived here before us left hypodermic needles, condoms, and other stuff that my dad said was proof that the house had been under the devil’s influence. He had a priest come with a Bible to exorcise the place.

  “I was just a kid. And all I could think was, ‘They forgot to do the attic.’ I was sure there were still evil spirits lurking up there that would float down during the night.”

  Sinclair laughs. “So you were scared of the ghosts in the attic?”

  “Yeah. When I couldn’t sleep. But in my dreams, it was the house itself that was possessed.”

  “What’s that mean, exactly?” asks Ant, her eyes growing wide. “I mean, I understand the concept. But in practical terms.” As she speaks, the wall behind her begins to bulge . . . slowly and smoothly, like a lava lamp . . . and a bloodred gel begins to ooze from the bubble forming behind the plaster.

  I grab Ant’s hand and pull her toward me. “It means that,” I say, pointing to the frothy gel seeping from the pores of the room.

  “What the hell is that?” Fergus yelps.

  “I don’t know,” I say keeping my eyes on the blob, “but in one of my dreams I couldn’t get away and it ate my skin.”

  “Holy shit!” swears Sinclair as the other walls begin to heave and crimson phlegm oozes out, steaming and hissing as the substance hits the floor. Black, burned holes begin to spread over the hardwood planks.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Fergus yells.

  I throw myself toward the bedroom door, grab the knob, and pull. It’s locked.

  “Figures,” growls Sinclair, grabbing for it. I step aside and let him try the handle, which he attempts to force while slamming his shoulder against the door. A ticking sound jogs my memory, and I yell, “Let go of the handle!”

  But I’m too late. Sinclair’s scream drowns out my words. A blade has popped out and sliced through the back of his hand. Another flashes up, barely missing his thumb. He yanks back, but he’s pinioned there and thrashes ineffectually. Then, just as quickly as they appeared, the blades retract back into the doorknob.

  Sinclair spins and, holding his hand by the wrist as blood pours from it, yells at me, “That came from your brain? You sick bitch!” But for a second, he’s not Sinclair. For a split second he transforms into a shorter, freckled boy with dirty-blond hair. I blink and he’s back to his tall, dark-haired self, his face twisted in pain and anger. “What the . . . ?” I murmur.

  “It’s open!” yells Ant as the door swings outward.

  “How’d that happen?” Fergus asks me.

  “The house,” I say, not meeting his eyes. “It wants blood.”

  Sinclair lets out a string of expletives and throws himself out the door. The rest of us follow close behind. “Which way?” he shrieks. Blood from his hand splashes on the floor as he looks between the winding staircase and the door to my parents’ room.

  “Down!” I say, and we rush down the spiral staircase. “Don’t touch the bannister!” I yell as Fergus grabs on to it. He lets go just in time, the spikes that flick upward just grazing his hand instead of impaling it. He curses and pulls his sliced hand to his chest.

  Sinclair arrives at the base of the stairs and hurls himself toward the front door, which bursts into a wall of flames. He slams to a stop. Fergus almost runs over him. Ant perches two steps up from the floor, looking between me and the boys as if waiting for instructions.

  Hearing something behind me, I look up. Standing at the top of the stairs is my father. His gray hair sticks up on end, and his ice-blue eyes stare down at me. In his hand is the razor strap. He folds it in half and gives it a snap, the corners of his lips curving cruelly. The buzzing comes back to my ears and my vision swims.

  I stumble numbly down the last few stairs, sweeping Ant along with me, and stand before the bonfire that used to be my front door. The windows on either side ignite with a whoosh, and the four of us stumble back, blinded by the heat.

  An unearthly shriek comes from behind the flaming door as a man-sized form takes shape in the blaze. A bloody hand, fingernails as long and sharp as switchblades, thrusts through the fire toward us, and through shivering waves of heat steps the Flayed Man.

  Chapter 13

  Ant

  “THIS WAY!” SCREAMS CATA, GRABBING MY HAND and dragging me through a doorway leading away from the front hall. I stumble behind her, trying to map the house out in my mind but there’s no time. I don’t like being in a space I can’t measure. But she doesn’t give me the chance, and it’s hard to quantify dimensions with the heat from the fires making the air all wavy.

  The skinless monster lunges through the flames and lets out a shriek that makes me jerk my hand back from hers to cover my ears. Luckily, Cata doesn’t give up and leave me. She grabs my arm with both hands and yanks me through the door.

  The boys follow us as we careen into a living room fronted with windows that ignite one by one as we enter. Fergus spins around and, avoiding the ticking knob, kicks the door closed. Grabbing a high-backed chair, he wedges it under the doorknob.

  The walls bulge and ooze red mucus, which is even grosser when I realize it reminds me of an exploding bloody zit. A ripping noise comes from behind the flowered wallpaper. Seams protrude from beneath like inflating varicose veins, and then wires break free and start flailing around like a tromped-on nest of snakes. One grazes my arm, and the electric charge knocks me sideways off my feet. I land in a mound of the red slime. The smell of burning flesh hits my nose before the pain blazes up my left side. It hurts so badly that my mouth opens, but the scream sticks in my throat.

  Fergus scoops me off the ground and carries me to the center of the room, plopping me down on an overstuffed floral couch. He whips my hat off my head and uses it to wipe my face and neck, and then, turning it inside out, scrapes the slime off my arm before tossing it away in disgust. He lifts my other arm, where the electrical wires cut a deep gash near my elbow, and uses the hem of his T-shirt to mop away the blood. “Does that hurt?” he asks.

  “I can’t feel it at all,” I respond. “It’s numb. I think I got electrocuted.”

  “Can you walk?” he asks, pulling me to my feet. I take a tentative step and nod.

  “Then let’s go!”

  Cata and Sinclair stand in a doorway, waving us toward them, as the red slime burns holes in the floor between us. Dodging to avoid the flailing electrical wires, Fergus pulls me by the hand, sidestepping a lava flow of acid slime that I’m forced to leap across.

  We follow the others into a kitchen where every surface is on fire—old iron stovetop, marble counters, enormous stainless steel refrigerators—everything spews flames so hot they’re white. Coughing from the smoke, Cata heads toward a door leading to the backyard, but it explodes into ice-white flames before she can get to it.

  “Everything leading o
utside is on fire,” Sinclair yells over the whooshing, crackling sound of the flames. “Where else can we go?”

  Cata swings around and looks at a door next to the stove that looks like it leads to a pantry. “Down!” she says, and lunges toward the door handle before stopping abruptly. She turns and sprints back into the room we just came from, reappearing a second later with a pair of fireplace tongs.

  Taking it in both hands, she grabs the doorknob in its metal teeth. Long blades snap out of the doorknob like a throwing star, the metal glowing cruelly in the firelight. Cata turns the knob, and the door opens outward, revealing a stairway.

  “What’s down there?” Sinclair asks. He’s grabbed a dish towel off a rack and is wrapping it around his bleeding hand.

  “Basement. Laundry room. The shower rooms for the pool.”

  “Sounds lovely,” Sinclair comments, wrinkling his nose. But, glancing back at the flaming-kitchen option, he says, “Let’s go!”

  As we pile down the stairs, Fergus grabs the side of the door and slams it behind us. We emerge into a cellar with cement walls and floor. A quick guess would be a hundred-foot square, but I don’t allow myself to calculate further. Damp-looking towels are strewn around on the ground like rugs. It smells strongly of mildew. I sneeze and, realizing I don’t have a tissue, wipe my nose on the back of my glove. Then, feeling dirty, I tap four times on the wall. No one looks.

  “At least there aren’t any windows,” Sinclair says. He’s right. There is no fire. The walls aren’t seeping corrosive pus, and there are no live wires flailing around. It’s so quiet down here that we seem to have passed into another dimension from the heaving, flaming, bleeding house above us.

  He looks at me and flinches. “Damn, girl, that’s gotta hurt,” he says, studying the burned side of my face.

  I touch it with my fingers. It feels wet and raw, and, where I rub it, bursts of pain shoot from my cheek to my jaw. But that doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that my hat is gone. My head feels exposed. I knock on my leg four times. Glove. Glove. Notebook. Pen.