Dot was next to me immediately. “He’s still alive,” I said.
“He did that for us. He knocked himself out to protect us.”
I nodded, still in shock.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get him out of here.”
That’s when the lights went out.
My eyes adjust to differences in light much better now. It might be the one good thing. But then, back then, a sudden change in light blinded me for too long, making it hard to understand what was happening.
I heard a howl that was unlike anything I’d ever heard, guttural but also a high-pitched scream. No animal at the zoo, no train screaming through a subway tunnel, nothing was like it. And then a loud crash on the stage. Something grabbed at me, and at first I pulled away hard, but then I realized it was Dot taking my hand, making sure she knew where I was. I squeezed her hand in mine.
I tugged at her to follow me, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, we started crawling toward the machine to hide behind it. We managed to get up against it on the side opposite from the creature, which was making heavy footsteps across the stage.
“Ink,” Dot whispered, and pointed. I followed the direction and saw four large buckets filled with it. We moved as far away from it as we could.
My eyes were finally used to the light. I saw now that it wasn’t completely dark. The work lights were still on, but they were dim now in the inky shadows that seemed to follow the creature. They got brighter and dimmer as the shadows swam around, and I realized I needed to know what this creature looked like. If I could see now, then I could see it. And I needed to know what we were facing. Finally.
I carefully leaned around the corner of the machine, peering out just enough to see, most of my view still cut off by the side.
The creature stood still in the middle of the stage. Like he was sniffing us out, like that first time near the Infirmary. I wasn’t really thinking too hard about that because what I saw in front of me froze me so completely. Not just my body but also my mind. My heart. My everything.
Standing there was the creature from Sammy’s notebook. It wasn’t just some made-up doodle, it was real. And it was …
Bendy.
At least some strange version of the cartoon character. The head was the most like him. Shaped in the same way, round with the two points for horns. He had that same smile too. Big and white, with lines separating each tooth, only these teeth were real. They glistened with saliva. The rest? Well, the rest of his face was covered in ink, ink dripping from his head over where his eyes should be. Did that mean he was blind? I didn’t think there needed to be logic with such a creature.
His body was long and lean, and he too was dripping ink. No, not just lean, but almost like a dripping skeleton. I could see the indentation beneath his rib cage. But he was still partly cartoon character, which was probably the most terrifying part about him. He still had that white bow tie and one white glove like the ones all the characters had.
He stood there. A growl deep inside him like a revving engine. He knew we were somewhere. I watched as he made his way across the stage. As he made his way across to the bodies on the stage.
Jacob.
But he went to Dave instead. He sniffed at the figure carefully. Suddenly he snarled, grabbed at it, and pulled, yanking Dave’s arm right out of the socket and throwing it across the stage.
I felt Dot grab my shoulder and squeeze. I nodded, but I didn’t know what else to do. The beast now seemed to be growing in size. His arms and legs lengthening, his head spreading, his teeth getting sharper. He lumbered over toward Jacob now. No, no, no, no. This couldn’t happen.
“Hey!” I said, standing up and stepping out onto the stage. The lights went almost black as the creature turned to me.
“Hey!” Dot cried out then. I turned to see she had jumped out from the other side. I stared at her. “It can’t hunt both of us,” she whispered to me.
She was right, of course. Like always. The beast looked at her, then back at me, with the eyes he didn’t have. Or did have.
I think over this moment every day. I try to remember it in all its details. But it’s hard. There was so much in this moment. So much that was happening. Not just with the creature and Dot and Jacob, but inside me. My fear, my need to end this all, my guilt. My guilt that I’d let this creature out in the first place.
I remember things, though not everything.
I remember that he decided to charge Dot, not me. I remember him racing toward her as she ran away, and I remember racing toward him. I tripped over a pipe that must have been part of the machine and for a moment felt hopeless as I watched him hunt Dot. But then the rage I felt watching him stalking after Dot made me strong again and I hefted the axe. I had a weapon.
I lunged at him. Leapt up and swung, striking him hard in the back. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even stop moving forward. I fell backward like I’d hit a wall. No, I wasn’t going to feel hopeless again, even if it felt impossible to win this. There had to be another way, I’d find another way.
He had Dot blocked in now, in the far corner of the stage, back in the deeper shadows of the wings. I stood up with the axe. He was too far away to swing at, so I threw it instead. I knew it wouldn’t hurt him, but maybe, just maybe … it hit the back of his head and the monster turned sharply to howl at me. In that moment Dot dove between his legs and away from the corner. I was impressed for that one moment until the beast realized what had happened and lunged. Dot raced toward me and I ran, reaching out for her.
I grabbed her hand just as the creature caught her foot.
“Dot!” I yelled. I felt for her other hand and she snagged mine, her fingers slipping in my grip. I couldn’t hold on. I was scared that if I did, the creature and I would rip her apart. She flew out of my hands and into the air as the monster whipped her across the stage.
She landed with a heavy thud.
“Dot!”
“Buddy,” I heard her say softly. I tried to rush over, leaping over the pipes and around the buckets of thick black goo. The creature crashed between us and pushed me hard in the chest. I skidded backward, my head clanging on the side of the machine. “You have to get out of here,” she called out, her voice hoarse and thin. “Take Jacob and get out of here.”
“No,” I replied. “This is my fault. I let it escape. We’re going to fix this together.”
“It’s not—you didn’t create him. You didn’t—”
The creature roared between us. Spit flew out of his mouth and landed in thick globs in front of me. Suddenly I could see Dot in the air, her scream echoing through the theater. The creature had picked her up with one of his claw-like hands and squeezed tightly.
It’s playing with us, Jacob had said.
He was like a cat torturing a mouse. Not squeezing hard enough to kill her, but just enough to hurt her.
“Stop!” I yelled. I ran at the beast and grabbed his leg. I tried to trip him up, but he was solid on the ground, almost like he was rooted there. He raised his leg then, and with a wild kick I was thrown again.
I fell once more with a hard crash. I winced in pain. Everything hurt—my shoulder, my back, my head. I stared ahead of me on the floor, at the ink everywhere. At the … axe.
The pain somehow vanished as I grabbed the weapon. I charged the beast again and sliced hard at his leg. He staggered and roared. And I saw I’d created a deep, black wound oozing ink. Still he didn’t let go of Dot but I felt better now. I chopped at the leg again and he swung at me with his free hand. I jumped away to catch my breath.
Then to my horror, I watched as the wound on the creature’s leg with a sickening sucking sound began to heal, the ink reshaping and re-forming. He couldn’t be hacked up. He couldn’t be knocked out.
I stared at Dot. She seemed so far away.
No, this wasn’t it. It wasn’t impossible. Even when things seemed that way.
I looked at the machine in anger. I hated it so much. I hated that it existed and I ha
ted the vats of ink surrounding it.
I never thought I’d ever hate ink this much.
Puddles of it everywhere, covering my clothes. Where did I begin and the ink end?
Dot screamed again.
“Dot!” I called out. “I’m going to drown it!”
I didn’t know if she heard me but I remembered then; I remembered the trapdoor the actor had fallen through in the play I’d watched from above with Mister Drew. And I thought about all the ink that had come out of the pipe in the sheet music closet. And maybe … maybe if I could get the beast trapped under the stage, maybe if I could fill that sub-room with ink …
I staggered across the space as close as I could get to the monster without him lunging at me.
“You need to cut yourself free!” I called out to Dot. She wasn’t moving much. My stomach felt hollow. No, she can’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
Her head moved just a bit. There was a pause and then she turned it a little more. She could hear me.
“I need to get you the axe. I need to … throw it to you.” Stupid plan. Stupid, stupid plan.
“Okay,” she said. She was trying to call back but her voice was thin and breathless.
I couldn’t. I couldn’t just throw her an axe. That would kill her.
“I can catch,” she said. “Just throw … slow.” She sort of made a laugh sound.
It didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel petrified. She was still Dot. She was still fighting. I couldn’t let her down.
The beast roared and whipped around and staggered toward me. Good, in just a few feet he’d be over the door.
“Come on!” I yelled at him, and stepped back some more. I glanced down and saw where the stage had a square marked out. The edges of the door. The creature just stood still. Didn’t move. Just held Dot up a little higher as if he was showing her to me. I was so angry, I was so full of rage, I just yelled. I opened my mouth and yelled at him from deep in my gut, from the back of my throat. From every part of me.
And the creature roared back and stepped forward and he was there, and Dot had pulled her hand free and this felt so impossible but it was all I had.
“Ready?” I called out.
“Why not,” she shouted hoarsely back.
“One, two, three …”
I threw it and flinched at the thought of her catching it on the sharp end. But she caught it, just below the head, and she almost dropped it right away but she managed to catch the bottom part as it turned over in her hand. She grinned. I felt relief and then it was gone as I turned and raced toward the wings, trying to find the lever for the door.
It felt more and more like a terrible plan. But I didn’t have another one. Finally I found the lever, dark red but in the shadows, almost black.
“I found it!” I called out. I hoped she could hear me, understand me. She probably didn’t but at least I knew she could do this.
“Now!” I cried out. Dot swung the axe hard on the monster’s wrist, once, twice, three times, while I pulled the lever. The floor fell out from under the creature as I flew by, and he whipped his head back in shock as Dot fell to the stage, still wrapped in the creature’s hand, but the hand no longer attached to the creature.
He fell into the darkness as Dot raced back to the machine. She hacked at the pipe feeding into the side, until the pipe burst. Ink flooded out and raced toward the hole. My shoulders ached, my breath was shallow, my feet slipped in the wet around me. I looked up and saw the creature reaching out of the trapdoor with his one good hand, grasping at the edge as the ink swallowed him. He was fighting hard against it.
“Buddy!” said Dot. She was suddenly beside me, helping me redirect the flow of the ink into the hole. Seeing her right there made me feel strong again.
That was it, it was all we could do. And we stared. And we watched. Watched as the beast’s arm seemed to melt into the ink. His face appeared at the surface again for a moment, and he let out a roar that then was swallowed by a gurgle. His mouth got wide and then flat and then wasn’t a mouth anymore.
It was mixing with the ink.
It was ink.
The lights brightened and seemed almost too much after having been so used to the darkness. Dot and I stared for a moment in quiet.
Then I could tell she was looking at me. So I looked at her.
“You did it,” she said with a huge smile.
“Well, we did it …” I replied, and then suddenly she was hugging me. Out of the blue. I just sort of stood there and then realized I should probably hug her back. Which I did. For the first time in a long time my fears took a step to the side. And just let me relax into the moment.
“Do you think it’s gone?” asked Dot when she finally pulled away.
I had no idea. I didn’t trust that it was. I couldn’t believe it was all over. “I don’t think we have time to find out. Let’s grab Jacob and get out of here,” I said.
“Yes.” She immediately went over to Jacob, who I noticed was moving a little.
I turned back to the hole. The ink was still there, like a lake under the stage. I wondered if there was any way to get rid of it. If it would just stay there. Forever. Haunting the studio.
Waiting.
Patient.
Hungry.
I took a deep breath. I was scaring myself again. It was time to leave. It was time to finally confront Mister Drew.
A hand burst out of the ink and grabbed my leg.
“Buddy!”
It happened so fast I don’t actually know how. I just know I was suddenly through the trapdoor, neck deep in thick ink as Dot grabbed my hands just in time. He had me fast by the leg, in a viselike grip. There was no breaking free.
This time she was pulling me, trying to save me. I held her hands tightly, but there was no way she could win. The creature was too strong. And the ink all around me was pulling too. Almost like a suction both squeezing and drawing me in. She had to let go or I’d just drag her under. We’d drag her under.
“Let me go,” I said, the ink splashing in my mouth when I opened it. I coughed and sputtered. It tasted bitter and salty. It burned the back of my throat.
“Buddy, I can’t,” she said, adjusting her grip on my wrist, her fingers slipping and then catching mine at the last moment.
My body ached, a wrenching stinging feeling shot up my spine. I felt something sharp in my thigh, like I’d been stabbed with a knife. The creature’s claws. I couldn’t scream out, not without inhaling more ink. I kicked and scraped my foot along his arm in the black depths. Then a white-hot pain. Something so different. So overwhelming that everything just stopped. The monster had sunk his sharp teeth into my torso, biting through my flesh, my muscles, my tendons. I gasped silently and ink filled my mouth again. Everything started to get dizzy and I didn’t understand what was going on. Dot’s look of horror swam through my vision.
Save yourself. I thought it and needed her to read my mind. The way she always somehow was able to read my mind. It’s okay. It’s okay. Just save yourself. Save Jacob.
It’s okay.
I stared at her, gulping more and more ink, coughing and unable to breathe as it filled my lungs. There was no air. There was nothing. Just ink.
Then a moment in her eyes. A moment I recognized.
She understood. She shook her head and I squeezed her hand. It was the last real choice I made.
It’s okay.
You have to go now.
You have to save yourself. Save Jacob.
You have to save everyone.
And you let go of my hand. I was so grateful. The darkness came up fast around me and I saw you only for a moment longer, and I felt proud and so lucky to have met you. To have had that chance. And then you were gone. Or I was gone. And I sank into the ink, and it filled my ears and the creature pulled me down and the pain was so bad that I almost couldn’t feel it anymore. I couldn’t feel anything.
The five senses:
Touch: nothing.
Tas
te: nothing.
Sound: nothing.
Smell: nothing.
Sight: blackness.
* * *
And then:
Nothing.
I don’t have answers to all your questions, Dot. I know you thought I was dead. I know what it feels like to think someone is dead. I know the hollow emptiness. The disbelief. The way you fight your own mind. Like you didn’t understand. Like it’s all a lie. Or a bad dream.
The thing is, of course …
Dreams come to life.
I’m not dead.
But I’m also not alive.
And you can’t save me.
But you can save everyone else.
* * *
I don’t know the moment when I woke up. It came in stages, which isn’t normal. Normally you are asleep and then you are awake. But I’ve learned that when you have two minds living together, when you have two sets of memories, sometimes one mind wakes up sooner than the other.
The first time I woke up I was confused about where I was. The world around me was dark and shadowy, and I was used to things being bright. I touched the floor and saw my hand. It looked different. I turned it. It seemed rounder. It wasn’t as flat as I was used to. There were more sides to it. I didn’t understand. I sat up and looked around now in a panic, and there was someone standing there. He was shaped strangely, his head too small, his body too long. He was all shadow and was difficult to identify. Who was he? What did he want from me?
“Buddy?” he asked.
Who was Buddy?
The second time I woke up it was my mind. Not his. I was staring right at Mister Drew.
That confused me. Why was he here? He was still in his tuxedo.
It was then that I realized I was sitting upright and I didn’t remember how I’d done that. Where was I? I closed my eyes for a moment and then remembered. The theater. The creature.
Dot.
Drowning.
Death.
The monster. I quickly turned to look, but he was gone. We were alone. I released a long sigh and it felt really good. I’d never realized how good breathing felt before.
I looked at Mister Drew again and he was smiling at me. I realized then that I wasn’t under the stage, I was on top of it. Right in the middle. The audience seats sprawled out into a dark void behind him. I turned to look the other way. Above me loomed the machine. Huge from this angle. It dripped a steady drip. The sound was hypnotic and also a little painful.
Dreams Come to Life Page 20
