Dreams Come to Life

by Adrienne Kress

  “Dot got away.” My muscles instantly relaxed. “I don’t know where she is. Jacob … he took. He took him … Buddy, I think he plans on …” Richie stopped talking like he’d heard something.

  I heard it too. The sound of the door opening.

  We turned and looked at the same time.

  “Is that Sammy?” I whispered.

  Richie nodded a kind of crazy fast nod but didn’t say anything. His eyes were wide, his whole body shaking.

  “Well, look what the beast dragged in,” said Sammy in that superior-sounding voice. It was him. It was him behind the mask.

  It was so strange and wrong. He was wearing a cardboard cutout kind of mask, the sort of thing you’d get from the back of a cereal box for Halloween. Like a mask of a kitty or something.

  But this was no kitty.

  It was Bendy. Bendy’s face. With that grin. That wide, toothy grin. For the second time that night I was staring at that face and I was starting to realize just how not-cute it was.

  But the mask wasn’t the only disturbing thing about him. Sammy was dressed in his trousers and suspenders like always, but he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Instead his torso, hands, neck, and—I assumed—face behind the mask were covered in shiny black ink. It was hard to tell if it was wet or dry, as it glinted in the lamplight. But it looked like somehow it was a part of him. Had been a part of him for a while.

  “Sammy, what are you doing?” I asked as he slowly walked over to his music stand and looked at us.

  It sounded like he was smiling behind the mask. Like he was happy. “Only I know what he wants.”

  This was crazy.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Ha!” laughed Sammy in a bark. “What happened to me? You know what happened to me! You were there! You saw it!”

  I was? I did?

  “That day the ink found me. It wanted me. He wanted me. At first I was scared. At first I could feel it inside, the drops I’d swallowed by accident. By luck. I could feel them moving around inside me. I shouldn’t have been scared. I was foolish.” He was picking up speed, his words tumbling out almost faster than he could speak them. “Then the cravings started. I needed more ink. There was no choice. I had to. And the more I consumed the more I understood. The more I felt him. Heard him. I need to please him.”

  Sammy started pacing the room now, and if I could just keep him talking … I started pulling at my hands in the ropes. Trying to wrestle my way free.

  “Look at the two of you in your sad little lives. Living day to day. For what? To please Joey Drew?” He laughed again, this time longer and heavier. He breathed in deeply. “Why please a man when you can please a god?”

  I pulled harder and harder at the ropes.

  “Where’s Jacob?” I demanded.

  “Where it all began. A small gesture at the start. And then, well … then …”

  “Where is that?”

  Sammy stopped walking. He stood in the center of the room, far enough away that he was almost entirely in shadow. The Bendy eyes stared at me, stared into my soul. Even though it was just cardboard and ink.

  Ink.

  Damned ink.

  “Shhhhhh. No more questions, little sheep.” He giggled after he said that. “Sheep, sheep, sheep, it’s time for sleep,” he said in a singsong voice.

  Crash.

  And then Sammy was flat on the floor, under a large projector, unconscious and mercifully quiet.

  “Are you boys okay?” called out a familiar voice from up in the Projector Booth.

  “Dot!” I cried out.

  “He does go on, doesn’t he?” she asked, shaking her head as she leaned over the railing.

  “Yeah,” I replied, stunned, but a little giddy to see her.

  “I’ll be right down.” She vanished into the dark again.

  I looked at Richie with a grin, but he was white as a sheet, like he’d seen a ghost. “What the hell was that?” he squeaked.

  Just as I opened my mouth, Dot opened the door and ran into the room.

  “I’m sorry it took so long, I needed him to be in just the right spot. I’m not strong, but I am strategic. I had one push in me,” she said, coming up behind Richie and untying his hands. Then she made her way over to mine.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “When he attacked, I’m not even sure he really noticed me, just the boys. I was able to escape and I hid for a long time, but then I saw him dragging Jacob, and I knew I couldn’t just hide forever.” She finally untied my hands. I brought them around in front and rubbed my wrists for a moment. “You came.”

  I couldn’t look her in the eye, I felt so ashamed. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Mister Drew … I don’t think I trust him anymore,” I said. It was an understatement but at the same time I was feeling really stupid. Like a fool for believing in him. “And it wasn’t that. It was also …” I didn’t know how to say it.

  “It’s okay—” Dot said. But I shook my head.

  “I’ll just say it quick. Direct. Like you do,” I said. “I thought taking care of the people who mattered was making money for my ma and grandpa, was looking after them. And it is. But it’s more than that. I can get another job, I’ll always support them. But you needed my help tonight. You were in danger. I was at some stupid party. What I said to you before, what I did, was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

  Finally I looked her in the eye.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I understand. You have no idea how much I understand.” She had an expression that I couldn’t read, it wasn’t anything I’d seen before. Sad, but kind. And tired.

  “Guys,” said Richie. I’d forgotten he was there.

  “We have to save Jacob,” said Dot, her voice all business again. I nodded and bent over quickly to free my feet while she helped Richie, who was still sitting there stunned.

  “Do you know where he took him?” I asked, standing up.

  “I don’t. I think it’s wherever the machine is. But I feel like I’ve searched every corner of the studio over the last few weeks. I’ve been everywhere, Buddy. It’s like it’s invisible or something.” Richie was free and stretched out his whole body as he stood.

  It hit me then. The speech. At the party.

  “The theater,” I said. “It’s got to be the theater.”

  “What theater?” asked Richie.

  “Next door. Mister Drew bought it. The play closed ages ago. Maybe … I don’t think it’s a maybe. That’s where it is.”

  Dot nodded, agreeing with me instantly. She turned back to Richie. “Okay, Richie, you have to go to the party and tell someone what’s happening here. Get Mister Drew,” she said.

  My stomach turned at that. It felt wrong. “Are you sure?” I asked. I thought about Tom, maybe he could help. But then I realized I had no way of knowing where he was or how to contact him.

  “I don’t know what else to do.”

  I nodded. We didn’t have time to just stand there and talk about all our choices. “Yeah, he won’t approve of what Sammy’s doing, so whatever else he thinks, he’d want to stop it,” I said.

  “Exactly. We can’t call the cops,” she said. “This is all just too strange, and who knows who they’d blame?”

  At this point, all of us could be arrested, for trespassing, for just … being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Okay. Richie, go get Mister Drew. He’s at the party.”

  “Yeah,” said Richie. He was shaking.

  “You can do it,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder the way Dot always placed one on mine. It seemed to have the same effect on him.

  “I can do it,” he said with more confidence.

  “Good.” Dot turned to me. “And you and I, well, I guess we’re going to the theater.”

  * * *

  “We’re up high, so be careful,” I warned her. She nodded and we entered the dark catwalk. Immediately Dot turned on her flashlight, and I felt a wave of relief knowing we had some light to ke
ep us safe. Or to at least warn us if we weren’t. We stood there taking stock of our surroundings. The theater was a lot more intimidating in the dark. I wasn’t able to see as clearly. The shadows of the ropes ahead were toying with my imagination, sometimes almost appearing alive, like a forest of snakes. Then Dot shined the light through the grated walkway down to the stage far below. The crisscross of shadows as they grew and disappeared with the light reminded me of the grasping shadows in the Music Room. And then the light caught something. A quick glimpse and it was gone.

  “Dot, go back,” I whispered. She brought the light back and that’s when we saw it. Something. Something dangling just below us on one of the bars used to hold up backdrops.

  “What is that?” I whispered.

  Without answering she moved toward the mass in the center of the space and I followed close behind. The something just below us swung slowly in response to our shaking the catwalk. Like a slight breeze was blowing. We were above it now, and Dot got onto her stomach. Again I followed her actions and we lay on the catwalk, staring through the grating.

  The light bounced off the mass suspended in the middle of a series of ropes coming from all different directions, like a fly in a spider’s web. It shone in the light, that sickening, inky-wet shine.

  “Is that a person?” I asked, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach.

  “I don’t know.” Dot didn’t sound scared or sick.

  “Is it Jacob?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Whatever or whoever it is, we have to get it down. There has got to be a way to lower it. After all, there was a way to get it up there.”

  We stood and quickly made our way to the far side of the catwalk to a narrow ladder attached to the theater’s outside wall that would take us down to the stage level. Dot went first, turning off the light as she did. I followed her. Climbing down in the dark like that, just taking each rung of the ladder as it came, felt like time had stood still. I could hear every creak in the place. I held my breath to listen for more than that. For a lot more.

  “I’m at the floor,” Dot whispered up to me, and then I was too. We stood there for a moment. I could hear her steady breathing that somehow didn’t feel calm. It sounded more like she was trying to keep it under control, and failing.

  She turned on the light once more and swung it upward. She gasped.

  I understood why. There wasn’t just one mass suspended up there. There were at least three. Dark inky figures each within a web silhouetted against the theater curtains.

  “Three,” I said out loud.

  “There!” Dot pointed. She shone the flashlight on one of the figures. It was struggling against the ropes. Not with a lot of effort, but it was moving.

  “We need to get them all down,” I said, but Dot was already racing toward the pulleys that ran along the wall. I was glad she was with me, but also terrified that any moment it might be us up there. That we’d be snatched up from behind and suddenly in a web of our own, covered like them. Ink on our faces, mouths, dripping down the back of our throats.

  “Buddy, help me!”

  I tried to shake away the fear but it held fast as I quickly joined her and we counted the ropes until we found the ones that seemed to match with the bar. Dot carefully undid the knot holding the rope in place, and together we began to lower the bar. The webs began to descend. The winches the ropes were fed through squeaked as we did, and even though it wasn’t loud, it was enough for my heart rate to pick up even more. I glanced down at the flashlight glowing on the floor. A steady beam. Good.

  A few more moments and the masses were on the ground. I ran over right away, and as I did the lights buzzed on overhead. I turned and stared as Dot ran to catch up. “We can’t see anything, and I figured the light would actually make us safer.”

  It was true. But there was something terrifying about being so exposed now, standing on the stage in the lights. I quickly looked around, just to see. In case the creature was somewhere. In case the ink was slowly crawling to us, like I’d seen it crawl up my grandfather. There was no one. The seats in the audience were a black hole of nothing. But there was something. There, right in the middle of the stage, in the middle of everything, was the machine.

  I held my breath as I stared at it. It was large and square, with a huge curving tube out of which thick goopy ink dripped. It looked like you could easily climb up inside of it if you wanted to. It also looked rough, like it was homemade, not finely crafted. The bolts were big and clumsy, and the sides were welded to each other, buckling and bubbling at the seams.

  “Buddy, it’s Jacob!” Dot had completely ignored the machine and raced over to the masses.

  I quickly joined her and saw what it was. She was right. It was Jacob. Covered head to toe in thick globs of ink. It reminded me a bit of when I’d first met Sammy. That first day. The day the ink took him.

  “We have to clean him off,” I said, quickly removing my jacket and wiping his face. His features materialized from under the goo and Jacob took a sudden sharp inhalation of breath.

  “Run, you have to run,” he gasped.

  Dot shook her head. “It’s okay, the lights are bright. We’re okay.” She pulled off her sweater now and we continued to wipe the ink off him. “I’ll do this, you undo all the ropes,” she told me.

  I stared at the web. They were tied all over his body, slick with ink. It seemed impossible. “I need something to cut with.”

  “There’s an axe in the firemen’s box,” said Dot.

  “In a minute—I’m going to check on the others.”

  I was up quickly on my feet and I ran to the other bodies. I began to clean off the ink. A face appeared. It was Dave. From my department.

  “It’s Dave,” I said. Old, always quiet, just doing his job Dave.

  Dot looked up in shock.

  I didn’t even know he’d been missing. Of course not. The man went home early every night. He barely seemed to be around sometimes, always on break or something. I shook him by the shoulders. “Dave,” I said. “Come on, wake up!” His head flopped to one side, lifeless. How long had he been up there? How long had he been suffocating in that ink? Struggling to escape? The horror was too much to imagine. “I’m so sorry, Dave,” I said. I had to turn to the other body, but I was deeply scared. Scared that there was an order to the madness. The way the bodies had been put up on the bar. I tried to wipe the ink away as fast as I could, but I knew, deep down, it wouldn’t make a difference.

  A face appeared.

  Norman.

  Oh no.

  Oh, Norman.

  Of course no one would notice he was missing. Of everyone in the building. He watched everyone, but no one really saw him. Not much anyway.

  I stood slowly and looked at the two bodies side by side. I felt a huge sadness well up inside of me. I didn’t have time to mourn, and I didn’t know either of these men well. But dead. Really, truly dead. Whatever this machine had done, however it had happened, people were dying. I thought about the violinist. I thought about her on the ground. I hadn’t thought she might actually be dead now.

  Mister Drew couldn’t know about this. He couldn’t. This was too much and he never wanted this. He’d destroy the machine. Now that he knew.

  Wouldn’t he?

  “No, Jacob, please, just stay calm,” I heard Dot say. It brought me back into the moment and I went over to her.

  “You have to listen to me,” he said, trying to push himself up but failing, slipping on the ink beneath him, falling hard onto his elbows. He grunted in pain and lay back.

  “What is it?” I asked Dot.

  “He’s traumatized, obviously. From the creature. We need to get him out of here. We all need to get out of here.”

  I nodded and turned once more to get the axe. But just as I did Jacob called my name: “Buddy, leave me.”

  I looked up for a moment at the stage floor, at the light. It was still bright. I was still safe.

  “Not before we untie you.�
� I ran now to the wings, searching frantically for the axe. Finally I found it locked in its glass box. I ran back to Dot, grabbed her flashlight without even thinking about it, and charged back. With one big swing I smashed the glass. I flinched as the pieces flew in the air. I felt a sharp pain on my cheek where one sliced me. I reached through the broken pieces and grabbed the axe, tearing up my dress shirt as I did. I really didn’t care, though, about any of it. I just ran back to Jacob.

  “Lie back.” Dot pushed on his shoulders a little. He was still struggling.

  “No!” His eyes looked almost red with fury. “You don’t understand. It’s toying with us!” He struggled hard, and I quickly came up and swung down the axe on the first rope. I hit it and felt very satisfied watching it split in two. I kept going, and going. It was hard, as Jacob wouldn’t stop pulling and thrashing around, but I was focused and when I finally came to the last rope I said, “There!” with satisfaction.

  Jacob flung himself up with the same amount of energy as if he was tied down. He crashed into Dot and she fell backward hard against the stage.

  “Dot!” I called out.

  Jacob was pushing himself upward, struggling in the pools of ink around him, totally out of his mind. His body language looked a lot like Sammy’s. It could’ve been Sammy.

  The ink. The ink had him. But he was also fighting it. I watched as he flinched and flung his arms out wide, as if trying to wave the ink away. He twisted and then screamed an otherworldly, inhuman kind of scream. He reached one arm out as if clawing for Dot, and the other hand grabbed it and pulled it back. I stood ready to toss the axe aside and tackle him.

  “Stay away, Buddy! I don’t want to hurt you!” he cried out again. He thrashed around, flinging his own body in all directions. And then we made eye contact for a moment. For a brief moment. And I saw Jacob in there. I saw him. And he had this strange look in his eyes, like he was sad, but happy, determined. And then he turned his head toward the ceiling and roared loudly and threw himself hard down onto the stage.

  And he stopped moving.

  I raced to his side, placed an ear to chest. His torso moved just a bit, and I could hear his heartbeat.