“No, no. Not me. I never wanted such glory. I don’t even know if I believe in the devil, frankly. All I’m telling you is what the spirits told me. When the end comes, I’ll finally get to sleep. They’ve promised me. The end of the world, to me, is rest. Escape. But first, I must finish my work. And we must hurry, tick, tick, tick.”
The ticking has grown now, not only in speed, but in volume. Caleb grits his teeth against the onslaught of noise. He turns the static in the headphones up to drown it out. And in the sea of rushing silence he hears a tiny child’s voice.
Caleb turns and faces the darkness to his left. Now he can feel the presence there, almost smell the stale breath.
“Well, what if I don’t help? What if I run back through that door and burn myself alive?”
“You can’t,” says the voice.
“Wanna bet?” says Caleb, and he’s sprinting for the bar of orange he knows is the door. He grabs the handle but recoils instantly. The knob is scalding.
Caleb drops to his knees and hears the lasso whip above his head. If his neck were caught in that loop, he’s sure the director could snap it easily.
Caleb does as Anna instructs, and two lamps on the far side of the room spring to life. But the director is already gone, the door on the far wall swinging shut behind him. Caleb runs toward it. Hundreds of clocks line the room. He knocks a few down as he barrels through, just for spite.
On the floor in the corner of the room, he sees it. He snatches it up and shoves through the door. The next room or hallway—Caleb can’t tell which—is utterly without light. He enters tentatively.
He does as he’s instructed, running carefully yet clumsily at first, then at an all-out sprint.
There’s a turn, right, now. good, now run; the hallway is empty, run!>
For all Caleb can tell, he could be running in outer space. The feeling of sprinting through darkness is the feeling of immortality.
He does, and the lasso whips over his head again, closer this time.
And Caleb does.
Through the hiss of static, Caleb can barely hear Johnny Morle’s footfalls as he runs through the darkness ahead.
Finally, after traversing a complex series of blind turns and going through several sets of doors, Anna tells him to stop at one last heavy door. He heaves it open.
When he steps through, he’s surprised to feel rain on his face.
He looks up. High above him rain pours through a broken-out skylight. Leading up to it, a ladder.
“Up there? He could just push the ladder down,” he says aloud.
The rungs are slippery, and more than once his foot slips and he almost falls. Finally, tentatively, he peeks out and scans the rooftop, trying to see through the rainy darkness.
He climbs up and steps onto the gravel of the roof.
He pulls out the hatchet as he strides toward the greenhouse.
“This isn’t what he wanted, is it? I’m not helping him, am I?”
“If I don’t make it, Anna,” he says between breaths, “I wanted to say I’m sorry for daring you to go in the asylum that day. I never meant for you to get hurt.”
In several places, fire has broken through the roof and is spreading fast across the tar and gravel surface.
He runs faster.
The fire seems to be running with him, following him, chasing him. It flares up on either side of him, then in front of him. He almost thinks he sees faces in the flames. He almost thinks they’re calling his name.
The fire shouldn’t be spreading this fast, not in this rain.
Unless . . . that smell. . . .
Caleb has reached the greenhouse. Its broken-out windows are black holes. The remaining panes are too dingy to reflect the livid red glow of the firelight. They don’t reflect it. They trap it.
Everything has been a trap.
As he rounds the corner of the greenhouse, he’s more nervous than he’s ever been in his life. He feels like a million souls are watching him. And they are. Every angel and every demon watches him right now, waiting to see his performance, his choice. Somehow, everything hangs on the next moment, and he knows it. Except he has no idea what the test is, what he’s supposed to do, what— And then he sees. He takes it all in, in an instant, all of it.
Morle is there, his white clown makeup streaked and almost completely washed away by the rain. In his hands he holds a rope. The rope runs up and over a broken, bent-down flag pole. The other end of the rope is around Christine’s neck. She hangs over the edge of the building, her feet flailing in the air. Her face is purple. Her eyes are bulging and bloodshot. Spit glistens on her chin.
“You made it,” says Morle.
This is the test. A test without an answer. Without a solution. If he kills Morle, the maniac lets go of the rope and Christine falls to her death. If he does nothing, she chokes to death. There is no answer.
There is no “right.”
“What do you want?” Caleb says quickly.
“It isn’t what I want,” Morle says. “It’s what they want. Listen to them.”
The fire is in a ring around him now. There’s no running away even if he wanted to. The world is burning.
“Anna?” he whispers desperately. “God? Anyone?”
There is no answer, only static.
He takes a few steps toward Morle.
“Just let her go,” he says. “Let her go and tell me where Ron and Margie are, and everything can be okay.”
Morle laughs. “Ron and Margie are in the dark, my boy! Two of the sixty-six glorious sacrifices. Dead.”
A wave of grief swells in Caleb’s soul, but his concern now is for Christine. “Just let Christine go and I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I know you will,” Morle says, smiling. But he doesn’t move.
Caleb raises the hatchet. “I’ll kill you if you make me, I swear to God. If she has to die, I’m making sure you go with her.”
Morle just smiles back at him. With the makeup almost completely gone now, his grin looks less lurid and more—familiar. As Caleb’s brain races to come up with an impossible solution, something threatens to click, some horrible revelation.
Caleb feels the fire at his back now, prodding him forward. The noose of flame is closing in on him. He takes another step toward Morle. And he sees. He sees it all. He looks so different now, without the beard, with the streaked makeup on his face, but those eyes . . .
It can’t be. It must be . . .
Nausea cuts through his stomach. His head spins. It’s awful, impossible. . . .
“ . . . Dad?”
The rain on the director’s face is mixed with tears so he can’t tell that the man in front of him is crying until he takes another step closer. Finally, the clown speaks.
“I am so proud of you,” he says.
“But you were dead! I saw you in the base
ment. I saw your corpse.”
“No,” the man with the rope says. “You saw the corpse of that obsessed detective. But your loving dad is not the rotting, dead cop. The loser. No, your father is the man he hunted: the lawyer, psychiatrist, rodeo man, friend of the spirits, and Bringer of the End. The winner. I am the one they called Michael Mason, who your pretty friend here knew as the director, though in the beginning and the end I shall always be Johnny Morle—and now, my dear son, we’re together one last time. And I’m so proud.”
Caleb’s mind races to understand. At the end of the rope, Christine is moving less and less.
“Dad, why are you doing this?”
“To die,” he says simply.
“Why?”
“Because it’s all I’ve ever wanted. BECAUSE I CAN’T TAKE THIS WORLD!” he says. “I mean look at this: I have a beautiful son, and now he’s going to die in fire. Everyone’s going to die.”
“If you want to die so bad, then kill yourself, Dad, but leave Christine alone! Look at her!”
“I tried to kill myself over and over and over, and I lived! The spirits said there was only one way . . . ”
“What? WHAT WAY, DAD? Look at her—we don’t have time!”
Fire is all around, everything burns.
“They said only my son could kill me,” he says softly, “and if I helped them, they would make sure he did.”
Christine isn’t moving.
Smoke billows between father and son. The roof groans under their feet, about to give way.
“And with sixty-six souls in the darkest hole, the devil’s work is done.”
“Let her go, Dad. Everything can change. Everything can be okay—just let her go.” Billy is crying now, his teardrops falling as hard as the rain.
Behind the smoke, the man shakes his head.
“I love you, son,” he says, through tears, smiling. “Help me. Help me die.”
“Dad, let her go. Now. NOW!”
Christine’s face is almost blue.
And then comes the moment that, for the rest of his life, will teach Caleb the true definition of “nightmare.” This moment he will always remember. He knows what he has to do. He can’t let Christine die. There is no other way.
“I love you too, Dad,” he whispers.
And he throws the hatchet.
It all happens so fast:
The sound is dull, hollow, but it echoes, and when it’s finished, the hatchet is still quivering in his father’s head.
Morle takes ones step back, as if about to turn and walk away, then falls backward off the roof.
Caleb is already moving. He sees everything so clearly that he’ll remember every fiber of the rope for the rest of his life. It slips through John Morle’s fingers as he falls, dead, from the rooftop, and Caleb throws himself over the edge and grabs it in midair.
At first, he’s sure the wet rope, still attached to the flagpole, will slip through its fingers. It doesn’t. His broken wrist explodes with pain, but his grip holds as he swings out off the edge of the building then back, and finds himself standing on the rooftop again. He wraps the rope around his hand twice to keep it from slipping, and reaches over, grabbing Christine’s foot with his free hand. He pulls her to him as far as he can back onto the rooftop, then lets go of the rope. There’s an instant when he loses his balance and thinks both of them will tumble down and fall seven stories to their deaths. But miraculously, he’s able to steady himself. He eases Christine down. Everything is bright with fire now. In another minute, everything will have burned.
He pulls the rope off her neck and looks at her closely.
“Christine! Wake up, please!”
There’s no movement, no glimmer of breath. Her eye sockets are a deep purple from all the broken blood vessels. Her lips are dark blue.
He sniffs hard, sucking up all his tears instantly, plugs her nose, puts his lips to hers and pushes his breath into her. He tries desperately to remember all the CPR he ever learned, but it all eludes him, so he breathes into her again, and again. He presses on the center of her chest where he knows her heart is. He presses hard, and there’s a cracking sound there, and he starts crying again, knowing he’s hurt her, broken a rib maybe. Her lips are still blue, hopeless. He breathes into her again.
Nothing. He’s failed. He’s failed everything. The world has ended.
“Please, please, please, God, please,” he begs.
And he breathes into her again.
And the flames are about to turn them to ash.
And then, she breathes back.
Caleb smiles and cries, “Christine, come on. Please.”
Her eyelids flutter. Her eyes are rolled back into her head.
“Come on, please, there’s no time!” Caleb says.
And then, her eyes open. They look around at nothing, then finally focus on Caleb.
“Billy . . . you okay?” she asks.
He smiles. “Fine. But we gotta go.”
He helps her up, and she can barely stand. They only have a tiny corner of the roof left; flames have claimed the rest. Caleb looks around. There’s no way down. There are some treetops, but they’re too far to jump to.
Christine slumps, about to collapse.
“No, no. Come on, you have to stay awake, just for now,” he says.
“Okay,” she mumbles.
Caleb sees the rope sitting nearby, limp and forgotten, and grabs it, snatching it away from the flames, pulling it free of the bent-over flagpole. In another ten seconds it would have been burned up. He coils it in his hands, eyeing the distance to the stub of a broken-off branch on a pine tree that should be big enough to support their weight. It’s about fifteen feet away.
Christine is slumping again.
“Come on! Hey!” he says, gently shaking her. But it’s no use; her eyelids are rolling back again. This isn’t going to work. She can’t hold on to him. He takes the end of the rope and ties it around her waist. He ransacks his brain for a single Boy Scout knot, but finds nothing. He settles on a double knot and a prayer. He takes the loop in his hand, gauges the distance, then hears a thunderous sound.
He looks over his shoulder to see the far end of the building collapse. No time.
He cocks back and tosses the lasso. At first, he’s sure the throw is short—and there’s no time for another; the sparks are burning little holes in his jeans as it is—but somehow, the loop catches on the branch. He pulls the rope taut. It doesn’t seem as secure as he had hoped it would be, but no time to worry now. Christine’s eyes flutter open again as he helps her steady herself and pats out a little spark on her shirt. He grabs the rope.
“Ready? We’re going to swing,” he whispers frantically. One, two, three.”
Before there’s time for a second thought, they jump.
The initial downswing is terrifying, and Caleb is pretty sure they’re through. He feels like he’s flying through the air at a hundred miles per hour when he clips the trunk of the big pine tree with his rib cage. It knocks the wind out of him, and he nearly loses his grip.
He probably would have fallen and died, except for the fact that there was a small branch under his feet to release himself onto. The first thing he does when he’s secure is look for Christine.
He’s relieved to find her safe and even semiconscious, clambering onto a big branch maybe five feet below him, one end of the rope still secured around her waist.
There’s another crash and a rain of sparks as a roof support nearby gives way.
Caleb hugs the tree trunk, his ribs and wrist aching. “You okay?” he calls down.
“My head’s killing me. And this pine sap stinks,” says Christine weakly. “You?”
“Well, we’re still here. And the world’s still here.”
“I noticed,” she says faintly.
They sit in silence for a moment, watching the show of flames and sparks play itself out for them.
“Christine,” he says.
He looks down at her.
> “I missed you all these years.”
She looks up at him.
“I missed you too.”
Half an hour later the sun is coming up. The rain clouds paint themselves in cool pinks and blues of sunrise and drift away.
The Dream Center continues to burn. Still perched in the tree together, Billy and Christine watch it fall.
Mostly, the minutes pass in silence; Christine sits with her head on Billy’s shoulder, his arm around her, their chests rising and falling together in breath after grateful breath. When they do talk, it’s about silly stuff, like building a tree house and living there forever.
Except somehow childish ideas don’t seem so childish anymore.
Chapter Twenty
IN THE WHITE HOSPITAL ROOM IN PANAMA CITY, the flowers on the table by the window have already wilted a little. Sunlight pours in.
On the television, a local news anchor stands in front of the charred remains of a building, talking into his microphone and gesturing.
In the hospital bed, Christine doesn’t hear a word of it. She has the volume turned all the way down. She’s staring out the window, watching how fast the clouds go by. Maybe she never looked before, but she never noticed they went by so fast.
“Knock, knock,” says a voice. It’s Caleb. He has a stuffed monkey in his hand and a notebook tucked under his arm. His other arm is in a sling.
He presents the monkey to Christine.
“I told you not to get me anything else,” she says. “Bribery won’t make me heal any faster. But thank you. Did you have a good walk?”
She nods at the notebook. “How’s the article coming?”
Caleb smiles and shakes his head. “I couldn’t even figure out where to begin. I wrote a poem instead. It’s called ‘And the World Remained.’ Kinda cheesy, actually.”
“A poet, how sexy. Let’s hear it.”
Caleb blushes a little and shakes his head. “The whole poetry thing’s a little new right now. But I promise I’ll let you read it sometime. So, did the doctors come back? What’d they say?”
She shrugs. “Just a cracked rib, minor burns, and a really, really bruised neck.”
Caleb winces. “I’m so sorry.”
“Shut up,” she says. “You saved my life.”
The Sleepwalkers Page 28
