The Sleepwalkers Read online

  “Think about Christine stuck in there,” says Caleb, trudging back the way they came.

  “Think about us stuck down here,” says Bean. He splashes some water on the cement wall and follows.

  Backtracking, they reach the place where the other tunnel crossed the one they had been following. They look both ways. The new tunnel looks identical to this one.

  “Left, or right?” asks Caleb.

  “Straight ahead and out?” says Bean with a hopeful smile. “Okay, left.”

  They head left and walk for about ten minutes. (Caleb thinks it must be ten minutes, anyway, but his watch is waterlogged and worthless by now. Lousy five-hundred-dollar watch dies in four feet of water when a twenty-dollar Timex would endure the apocalypse. . . . ) The tunnel starts to curve left. At first, the change is slow and, because the walls are so smooth, almost impossible to detect. But Caleb does detect it, and so does Bean. They exchange a glance and walk on. The tunnel splits and they go left. It splits again and they pick left again. Then, they reach a cross tunnel. Straight ahead is a dead end, and to the left and right, the tunnel extends to the limit of their sight in both directions. They go right. They haven’t uttered a word in a long time. They’re tired, sore, numb. And the water is getting colder.

  They reach another cross tunnel. Infinite tunnel straight ahead, infinite tunnel to the left, and to the right: A boy, about fourteen, dark hair, fine features, pale skin, wearing what looks like a nightgown, once white with a blue pattern, now stained a filthy brown. He stands very still.

  And his eyes are closed.

  “Hey,” Caleb whispers to the boy, “are you okay?”

  He doesn’t move. No one moves.

  “What’s your name?”

  The boy cocks his head slowly, like somebody shifting on their pillow in their sleep.

  Then it snaps. His face contorts into a snarl, his limp hands seize up like claws, and he lurches forward and grabs Bean.

  Bean screams, hitting the kid with his flashlight, creating a weird light show on the tunnel wall.

  Caleb splashes up and tries to pull the kid-thing away. It fights like a dog; its teeth gnash and its mouth foams, its head tosses back and forth, finally striking Bean’s forehead with a dull thud. He bites at Bean’s face twice as Bean tries to push him off, and finally succeeds in sinking his teeth in. Bean screams.

  Caleb is there now, and punches the kid in the temple twice, hard. Still clutching Bean, the sleeper lashes out at Caleb with one claw-like hand, scratching his face—but Caleb manages to punch him once more, and this third hit finally knocks him off Bean. The kid hits the water with a splash and disappears beneath it. Bean moves away fast, wailing, cursing, covering his face.

  “Run!” says Caleb. “Come on!”

  “Which way?” whimpers Bean, crying.

  Caleb looks around and realizes he has no idea.

  “Which way?!” cries Bean, louder this time.

  The boy rises from the water, eyes still closed. His face is placid again, but hands are still taut and clawlike, and he begins taking slow steps toward them.

  “Come on,” says Caleb.

  “You know where we’re going?” asks Bean.

  “Yes!” Caleb lies. He grabs his friend by the shirt, dragging him. “Come on!”

  They run and paddle forward, battling the water at every step, looking back often and always seeing him, close behind.

  “I think he got my eye, dude,” says Bean. “Do I look okay?”

  Caleb only has time for a glance, but a glance is enough. Even through the tendrils of blood, he can see the lopsided, deflated globe of his friend’s right eye, now torn and useless, ringed by deep-gashed tooth marks, weeping blood.

  “I think it’s fine,” Caleb lies again. “You just got blood in it.”

  “It doesn’t feel fine,” says Bean, tears betraying his voice.

  “You’ll be fine,” says Caleb. “Just keep running.”

  No matter how fast they go, no matter which way they turn, the boy waits over Caleb’s shoulder, blind, stalking.

  Caleb wants to scream. This is like a scene from some dark surrealist painting, absurd. The faster they go, the faster the sleepwalker goes, and a horrifying thought bleeds into Caleb’s mind: he’s waiting for us to get tired.

  Unending pathways to nothing, running slower and slower. Bean screams now at nothing, just screams.

  “Is he still back there?” Bean’s voice is shaky.

  “Just keep running.”

  “Wake me up!” screams Bean. “Somebody wake me up!”

  They turn a corner and pull up short.

  It’s another one.

  Another sleepwalker; this one, a blond boy of no more than thirteen, walks toward them through the black water.

  And Caleb says: “We are awake.”

  The blond boy melts into fury just as the first one did. He snarls and lunges forward. Caleb shoves his friend down the tunnel in the opposite direction and scans the barren walls for a weapon, anything. There’s nothing. All he has is speed, and the water has stolen that. Still, he tries to run, following Bean.

  “I can’t run,” says Bean. “I’m dizzy.”

  Caleb looks over his shoulder.

  The two sleeping boys meet at the crossing of the tunnels, then turn toward him as one. They pause, standing together for an instant, looking peaceful, like a pair of sleeping twins in a nineteenth-century portrait, then they advance.

  Caleb sees a tunnel splitting off to the right and takes it, dragging Bean with him.

  They take one turn, then another, and their pursuers are lost from sight, at least for a moment.

  Bean’s breath is fast and shallow.

  “I can’t make it,” says Bean. “I can’t run.”

  “Come on,” says Caleb, “you can do it.”

  “I can’t, I really can’t,” Bean says, gasping for air.

  Caleb looks hard at his friend, and realizes he’s right. The entire right side of his face, his neck, his shirt, all are drenched with red. The light reflects on a bead of blood, which forms just above Bean’s eye, then trickles down his check like a tear. A moment later, another bead follows, then another. They keep pumping out, one by one, from this particularly deep gash and from several others, and Bean is looking paler and paler by the moment. There’s no way he can keep running.

  Caleb looks over his shoulder. The echo of splashes is drawing close.

  “I’ll stay and fight—you go,” says Bean in a raspy whisper.

  “No,” says Caleb. “I have another idea.” He looks around. They’re at a place where two tunnels cross, and probably still have a few moments until the sleepers navigate the turns and find them.

  “Go down this tunnel,” says Caleb, fast and feverish. “I’m pretty sure this is the way out. Be very quiet and keep your light off. I’ll keep my light on and draw them off this way.”

  “No,” says Bean. “I’m not leaving you. We’ll stay and fight together.”

  “Bean, shut up. You can’t run, you can’t fight. You’ve lost too much blood, man. Now get your ass going. I’ll get rid of them and double back. Just sneak back to the door, I’ll be there. Keep your light off! Go!”

  The sounds of frothing water is getting terrifyingly close. Caleb shoves his friend and takes off down the other tunnel. He propels himself through the water as fast as he can, exploding with his legs and paddling awkwardly with his one free hand, trying to put as much distance between himself and the place where the tunnels cross as he can so that the psychotic brothers don’t realize there’s only one of him. When he’s gone about twenty feet, he glances back and is comforted to see that Bean has shut off his light. At least he has the sense to listen to Caleb now, when it really matters. He listens hard and doesn’t hear the sound of pursuit—of course it could be that he’s drowning it out with his own racket. He glances back again. Nothing. Gotta fight them off somehow. Go back, get Bean. Gotta wake up. Can’t wake up. Not dreaming.

  No
one knows what real darkness is until they experience it. This isn’t like a moonless night or a room with the door shut and all the lights out. In real life, there’s always some kind of light—a crack in the curtain, a distant streetlight, even one solitary star. This isn’t real life. But this is real darkness. It vibrates. It chases itself in circles. It wraps itself around you like a python. It lives. And it’s terrifying.

  Bean is very still, except for the violent shaking. His arms are wrapped tightly around himself for warmth (the water is terribly cold now) and his hand is clamped on his now-dead flashlight.

  His face pulses in a constant rhythm. It even makes a sound, kind of like the deep bass line of the music they played at a rave he went to one time.

  Bean listens as the sounds of Caleb’s thrashing get fainter, fainter, and disappear.

  Just vaguely sad.

  He stands very still.

  Maybe he should have gone a little farther down the corridor, but suddenly he can’t move much. Legs feel hard and heavy, not right. He just sort of took a few floating steps out of the intersection and stopped.

  He fantasizes about leaning against a wall, but can’t bring himself to take a step and find it. Too cold.

  Just wait for Caleb. Just wait here.

  Sometimes, fear pricks through the sadness, and he listens hard, very hard, but once Caleb is gone there’s nothing but the dripping all around. Not even a slosh.

  He’s just kind of sad.

  For some reason, he thinks of a Christmas, the one before his mom split from her third husband, Rich. Rich was a good guy. Dressed up as Santa. Tried real hard. Got Bean a Louisville Slugger with his name on it. A real pro bat. Rich was always doing nice stuff like that. And his Mom was like, “Oh, Rich, stop being an ass. The boy knows Santa isn’t real,” and Rich got real quiet and didn’t say much for the rest of the day. But Bean always loved him for trying. They must’ve split, what? A year after that? Six months? He never heard a word from old Rich again. Rich was a good guy.

  Splash.

  The flashlight fell.

  The thought slices into Bean’s brain, and he panics.

  If it fell, the water will ruin it.

  It’ll always be dark.

  There might never be light.

  He might never get out.

  And he lost his eye. Caleb said he didn’t, but he knows he did.

  He lost it.

  He gropes for the light, but the water is too deep. To get it, he has to dunk himself all the way in. Going down. He tries to shut up his eyes and nose and ears, but he knows the water is getting in, black and unclean.

  He lost his eye.

  The floor is gritty and smooth.

  Water is warm as blood now.

  Gropes and gropes and finds the slippery shaft of the flashlight a few feet away. He pulls himself up, taking a big, shuddering breath.

  Suddenly, he’s so dizzy he isn’t sure he’s on earth anymore, isn’t sure he’s right-side up, isn’t sure he’s himself.

  In a moment, reality comes back. He steps over to the left, finds the wall with a tentative hand, steadies himself.

  Clicks the flashlight switch. It doesn’t work.

  Clicks the flashlight switch. It doesn’t work.

  Feels himself crying. It hurts his face, bad.

  Shakes the light, clicks it on, it doesn’t work.

  Shakes it hard, clicks it on. It works.

  And in the light, he sees—

  Them.

  Maybe twenty pale faces. White gowns.

  Eyes closed.

  Facing him.

  Very still.

  The flashlight paints them white against the wet, black cement.

  Don’t wake them up, he thinks.

  Dreaming eyes snap back and forth beneath their lids.

  Suddenly twenty faces contort into rage.

  Bean hears his own scream, and it echoes and echoes and echoes, and all those hands grab him, and he fights and fails, and he doesn’t know what’s the water and what’s his blood, and he wonders—if there is a God, does he know about this?

  And all those hands tear him, deep.

  The corridor is long, but the water’s getting shallower. Caleb’s legs burn, feels like his blood’s battery acid, but he chugs on. Gotta put enough distance behind him. This is almost enough. He glances back. No sleepwalking faces. Good. Maybe he lost them in those turns. Maybe they gave up.

  Maybe Bean’s already made it to the door, or even back to the car, and the sleepwalkers have given up. Everything will be okay. It always is. It has to be.

  Something ahead. A moon. A crescent moon, in the heart of the blackness. Closer; it’s light! And the water is getting shallower, and— it’s the door.

  Caleb clatters up the lopsided steps, throws his weight on the door, and it grinds open. He smells the air.

  The morning after a nightmare.

  His cheeks tense up to cry.

  But . . .

  He pulls himself off the door, tears his eyes from the light.

  Suddenly his stomach winds into a knot.

  The way he sent Bean was supposed to lead to the exit, not this way. That means Bean is still in there, alone.

  He listens. No splashing.

  “Bean?”

  No one behind him . . .

  “Bean!”

  . . . means the sleepwalkers didn’t follow him.

  He half falls down the steps, sloshes forward.

  “Beeean!”

  . . . Means they might have followed Bean instead.

  A scream.

  Echoing, it seems to amplify, wave upon wave, a tooth-gritting, blistering, piercing sound. The sound of an animal dying.

  “Beeeean!”

  The sound of a dying man.

  Caleb battles through the water, blind with fury and tears. The echo dies away and his ears are starving for something more, for the slightest sound, and for a half an instant he thinks he hears a whimper, faint as the sound of a flower opening, then nothing. Nothing. His own flailing. His own howl of blind rage.

  He finally reaches the crossing of the corridors, the place where he left his friend.

  Blood in the water.

  The tunnel ahead is empty. The tunnel to the left is bare. The tunnel to the right is vacant. Not even a ripple there.

  “I’M HERE!” screams Caleb, veins beating, voice grating.

  “I’M HERE!”

  His voice echoes back to him, mocking.

  He growls through his tears and punches the wall of the tunnel with all his force.

  He hears a snap and doesn’t care.

  He cries harder.

  “I’m right here!”

  But there’s no one to hear him call. Bean is gone.

  Chapter Eight

  THE SUN SHINES, BUT THE LIGHT FEELS HOLLOW.

  Bob Dylan’s on the radio, singing the story of the “Hurricane,” and even though it should be as familiar as the voice of an old friend, the campfires and late-night talks and crisp, hungover mornings and late-night lovemaking sessions that Bob’s tunes usually evoke in Ron Bent’s memory are somehow missing. All he sees is a pine-hemmed stretch of two-lane highway and the whistle of the wind through the broken rearview mirror.

  Ron feels like an eggshell today. Helpless, useless, fragile, empty. In another time, he’d be in jail right now. He’d have grabbed that damned smug pig’s neck in the crook of his arm, grabbed his face with his hand, his good hand, and jerked his head to the side. Snapped his smug pig neck. He was a thick fella, it might have taken a couple of tries, but he’d have done it. Even to think of it gives him a shot of adrenaline, makes him smile around his cigarette. Then he’d have pulled the dead cop’s gun, turned it on the woman, which probably would have made her wetter than a Seattle winter. Yeah, she’d have liked that. And he’d have made her spill her guts. He’d have made her get him into the police database, show him all the files, call in the families of the other missing kids, the lonely, the bereaved, and they co
uld figure it out together, ride out like a posse from one of those Old West movies they always played on Sunday afternoons—and, of course, he’d be the leader, like a real-life John Wayne. The Duke. And they’d find Keisha. Get revenge with smoke and lead, as it should be. And he’d take her home, his Keisha, and they’d make macaroni and cheese with hot dogs and she’d sit on his lap and put her arms around his neck and say, “Thank you, Daddy, I knew you’d never give up.”

  Except he did give up. Well, not exactly—but he sure hadn’t snapped the cop’s neck, that’s for sure. He’d asked some questions, pressed them as much as he could, tried to make them at least understand. But in the end, he’d left as empty-handed as ever. Except with the knowledge of what she had said, what Deputy Janet had let slip, what he couldn’t make her repeat or even acknowledge in front of the sheriff: hundreds are missing. Ron shivered.

  Pine trees whooshed past and white clouds with bottoms of heavy gray hung motionless in the blue sky. Maybe it was for the best, the way he had shut up and walked away. It was easy to be rash when he was young and full of whiskey. Easy to be stupid and heroic. His heroism had earned him breakfast in jail on more than one occasion. Maybe it was a good thing to walk away sometimes, “know when to fold ’em,” as Kenny Rogers once said. Or hell, maybe he was just getting old, getting soft, getting tired.

  Now he drives that old stretch of road all over again, seeking what he looked for more and more nowadays. Not vengeance, but communion, with Keisha or with God. He doesn’t really know which. It’s hard to know the difference between the two sometimes. Times like these, he always goes to the spot of beach where he lost her, and that’s where he’s going now. Times like these, he sits on a driftwood log (his knees won’t tolerate sitting Indian-style anymore) and he looks into the wind, into the sunset, and finds the will to search on.

  As he drives, he prays:

  Hey there, Lord.

  Here we are again.

  How many times have we talked

  On this same stretch of highway?

  On the way to the same empty beach?

  I don’t even know what to say anymore.

  It’s all been said.

  Only thing new is a number, and it can’t be real.