Blink—darkness
Blink—fog
Blink—light, dim and distant
Blink—growing brighter now
Blink—shining, hot
Blink—like a spotlight
Blink—like staring into the sun
Blink—like going blind
Blink—it’s blinding me
Blink—it’s BLINDING me
Blink—it’s—
<gasp>
I suck in air like I’m breaking the surface of water that I’ve been submerged in for almost too long. Shielding my eyes from a train’s glaring headlight, I stumble over metal tracks until I find a wall against which to steady myself.
I take a moment to acclimate to my surroundings. I’m in the tunnels of Grand Central, directly in the path of an idling train…that’s not real. If I concentrate hard enough, I don’t have to see it. Don’t think outside the box. Know there is no box. I focus on my breathing and let my vision blur. I feel no tension, no stress, nothing closing in on or confining me.
The train vanishes.
The walls fall away.
I’m standing in the fog of my very first dream with Wes, before the Dexid, the night I tried to kill Gigi. And there is nothing but the misty void that once bored me. What I’d give for such a banal complaint now.
I push my way through nothingness until I notice a glow ahead on my right. A door. Luminous, gleaming softly. There’s another one across, on my left, and yet another beyond that. A corridor of dreams just waiting for me to enter. All the people Wes dosed. How many are there? Where is he? And where is Tessa?
Tessa. Tie her up, I think. Why didn’t I tell Grady to tie her up? I was too tired, too focused on Wes. But if I had told him to do that one thing, Tessa would be safe. I look at the glowing doors around me. But that wouldn’t have helped the other dreamers. What is Wes planning to do to them?
I travel on, stopping at a door. Faded mahogany, slightly ajar. My hand reaches out to push the handle, but I stop short as the air heats up, the fog grows denser. A smell of what—rot?—curls my nostrils, and a low grumble drums in my ears.
Primal fear saps my concentration, and the architecture of the train station—Wes’s train station—reconstructs itself around me. I am inside the car but outside a dream, looking directly into the mangled face of a hungry Burner.
I stumble backward, unintentionally pinning myself against the glass partition of the sliding door’s vestibule. From inside the dream, the Burner looks directly at me, right into my very soul, and snarls. It’s over. There’s nowhere to go, no way to hide. I’m in arm’s reach of the one thing that can prevent me from stopping Wes before I’ve had the chance to try. I brace myself for impact.
But the Burner doesn’t cross the threshold of the dream. It doesn’t take me.
Instead, it grunts through its nose, like a horse on a cold morning. Then it retreats and continues to stand sentinel on the other side of the doorway.
I am safe.
But why?
Why didn’t it devour me, stop me before I could get anywhere near the dreamer? I stand in the open car and watch as the Burner patrols the inside of this dream. It registers my presence every time it passes by the door, but it never makes a move toward me. It’s playing defense by holding the line. It’s waiting for something else to come—protecting the dreamer from something that’s much bigger and badder than I am.
“Oh, Wes,” I whisper to myself. “How much Dexid did you take?”
I look around the train and am shocked by what I see. The cabin is empty. Not a single commuter. Paper and garbage litter the compartment, and graffiti defaces the walls. This is not the gleaming car I know. This place is poisoned. I run ahead.
I pass sliding doors in various states of access. Some are closed; most are either partially or fully open. They all reveal different dreamscapes on the other side. All featuring my classmates.
In one doorway, Trisha Goldmark runs from a blood-soaked madman through a frozen forest, while my sixth grade crush, Denny Kringle, treads croc-infested swamp water in another. Across from him, Christa from the bake sale weeps as a half pig, half woman hybrid shoves forkful after forkful of chocolate cake into her mouth. Tears and chocolate smear her face as a Burner appears in the doorway of her nightmare.
Because that’s what these are—nightmares. Nightmares because the Burners are inside them, their general being of disease infecting the subconscious of the dreamer. Another thing to thank me and Wes for.
Wes. Where is he?
I soften my eyes, empty my mind, see past the architecture of the train. There is a subtle glow nearby, like in Jamie’s dream, dancing in my peripheral vision. I turn toward it, hoping it will lead me to Wes, hoping it can help me understand why he’s doing this.
Before I can take a step, an object manifests in the ether, defines itself as…an arm?
“Oof.” It clotheslines me. I crumple to the ground. The walls of the train snap back into place, imprisoning me as Wes comes into focus. He kneels beside me as I catch my breath.
“You came,” he says brightly.
“Did I have a choice?” I ask through grinding teeth. As I pull myself to a seated position, I scoot closer to Christa’s dream, Burner and all. I want as much distance between me and the real monster as possible. “How many people did you dose, Wes?”
He shrugs. “Not sure. I let the bake sale gods decide. Well, mostly,” he adds, playful, flirtatious. “I did make sure a couple of special guests were invited.” The impish smirk beams, and my fury rises. “How many did you eat before you realized?”
I do not reply.
That once-sexy, now-infuriating grin widens. “Come on, Sarah. Admit it. You’re glad to be here. You wanted to come. You can’t stop wanting to be here. To be with me. To—”
“I’m not here for you,” I snap, his interminable refrain getting the better of me. Though I stop myself before I say her name, I can see the realization the moment it hits him. I am such an idiot.
“Tessa!” he cries with delight. “Tessa’s here?”
“No,” I lie.
Wes chuckles as he turns and scans the doors. “I wonder which one is hers.”
The now-familiar feeling of panic sets in. “Wes. Do not touch her.”
He ignores me. “It’s kind of poetic, don’t you think? I mean, technically, you were the one who gave her the laced brownies, not me. You’re the one responsible for her being here at all.” He faces me. “But if you’d like, we can make a deal.”
I tense. “What kind of deal?”
“I’ll trade you all these poor, defenseless dreamers—promise not to harm a hair on any one of their sweet, innocent heads—if you give up Tessa.” His eyes narrow, and the smile vanishes. “I’ll walk her down the middle of a dark highway at four a.m. or guzzle pint after pint of castor oil until she bursts all the blood vessels in her eyeballs puking it up. I’ll beat the crap out of her sleeping body, anything I want, and you won’t do a thing about it. Except watch.”
“Bite me,” I snap, my saliva curdling.
“Been there, done that,” he snarls back. He looks down at me, lust now turned to disgust. “It’s time I move on. What we had was fun, but you have an embarrassing lack of imagination. I’ve got big dreams, and you’re focused on petty problems. What’s that Emerson quote? ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’”
“Right,” I scoff. “Because I don’t want to hurt people just for the fun of it. I know Mommy and Stepdad didn’t love you enough, but isn’t anarchistic destruction a bit of a clichéd way to act out?”
“God, you’re boring.” He turns and walks down the aisle.
I jump to my feet and hurry after him. If nothing else, I can try to slow him down, because the longer I keep his attention on me, the less time he has to find Tessa.
“What if this isn’t you, Wes? What if it’s the Dexid making you act like this? I remember how weird I felt when we took four pills. I wasn’t in my right mind. It affected my judgment. I thought of doing things I’d never—”
“Ugh, this again?” He stops short, and it’s all I can do not to slam into him. “That was your thing, not mine. It isn’t my problem if you can’t handle your drugs. I’m fine. In fact, I’m great.” He shakes his head. “You know, Sarah, I liked you for you. Why can’t you get that I’m really still me but, like, a thousand times better. I feel fantastic, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” He peers through a doorway into a dream.
No Tessa.
It’s like we’re playing Russian roulette, and though I’ve survived one more round, the bullet creeps closer.
“That’s what addicts say,” I remark.
Wes continues down the aisle. “You know that’s total bull, right? It’s true, I don’t care about any of these people. They’re dull and weak. But neither did you when we were enacting your little revenge plays.”
“I seem to recall that was originally your idea,” I say.
He peers into another sliding door, and I hold my breath until I see a bookworm sophomore racing through library stacks as heavy tomes spill down on her.
“But it was your desire,” he replies. “They embarrassed you, so you embarrassed them. An eye for an eye.” He looks at me hard. “And you loved it.”
My face flushes. I hate it, but Wes is right. I can tell myself that I was blinded by lust, but who am I kidding? It wasn’t just Wes I was in love with. It was control. It was power.
He reaches another door before I realize I’ve stopped moving. As I run to catch up with him, he starts back. A Burner growls at him from across the threshold of the doorway but doesn’t cross it. He laughs.
“You see this?” he says. “Just like I said at the vigil, the Burners got smart. They learned from their little two-step with Jamie. They don’t want to enter the dreamer, on purpose or by accident. But they need to stop us from doing it. So now they’re staying close to their wards instead of going out looking for us. Which is absolutely fantastic!”
He approaches the doorway, and the Burner faces him on the other side. Wes is right. It doesn’t make a move to catch him. “See? This is how to manage them. Take enough Dexid and dose enough dreamers so the beasts stand guard inside their dreams.”
“You mean one Burner is assigned to each dream?” I ask, fascinated in spite of myself. “And they stay there? No matter what?”
He nods and points to the metal saddle on the floor that creates a border between train car and dream. “They won’t chase me unless I cross that. So all I have to do is wait for Ugly to patrol past the door, slip into the dream, and make it to the dreamer first. Not so hard when its one-on-one. Because if I go into just one dream at a time, there’s only one Burner to contend with—no one’s coming as backup. I get the monster to fall into the dreamer, and poof! I can take each Burner out one by one.” He smiles in the beast’s face, taunting him. “I love this!”
I look at the snarling monster. It wants a piece of Wes so bad, it can barely contain itself. If only I could get it out of the dream, out here—get all of them out here at once. But how?
Wes struts to the next dream door. “For once, I’m not the lab rat. They are. And I’m conducting the experiment. This is my calling. My life’s work. To understand this vast mysterious landscape as I become king of it. To bring order and control to the chaos. To discover—”
“Hey, Wes,” I interrupt. “Do you know what the best part is of having dumped your sorry ass? I don’t have to listen to your stupid bullshit.” I lurch toward the nearest dream and throw my arm across the threshold of the open sliding door. The Burner that’s been on patrol is suddenly free, and I swear I see its mangled, monstrous face smile.
The beast comes crashing through the doorway, out of the dream, tumbling awkwardly onto the train car floor. Wes looks back, stilled by confusion until fear lights a fire under his ass. The Burner gets to its feet and roars.
Wes runs. So do I.
I run after him through the train, throwing my hand, foot, elbow, whatever body part is closest into every dream doorway I pass, releasing Burner after Burner after Burner. Wes is too busy saving himself to realize what I’m doing at first. And we make it through another car and a half before it dawns on him. Suddenly, he stops, turns, and tackles me. We fly through an open dream doorway and fall into…
A classroom.
Undecorated.
Sterile.
Fluorescent lights cast a slightly jaundiced glow over the scene. At every desk is a student taking a test. Army personnel patrol the aisles, daring cheaters to make their day. And on the board are three letters: S.A.T.
The dream seems innocuous enough, not like the nightmares I’ve encountered elsewhere on the train. Then I see Meat Butchowski, Grady’s older brother, sitting at a desk center stage, directly under the brightest fluorescent in the room. He hasn’t made a single mark on his test, and he’s sweating from every pore on his body. And I literally mean every one of them, because I can see them all. Meat is taking the SATs, utterly clueless and completely naked.
I flush, embarrassed for both the dreamer and myself, but I get over it the second I catch something moving in my periphery. Wes runs from the opposite side of the classroom, right for Meat. I push past a soldier and slide across a desk. I reach Meat a second before Wes, but that’s all I need to jump into his body first.
Whoosh.
The lights are on in Meat’s room. He’s fallen asleep at his desk. I rub the sleep out of his eyes and push back on his rolling chair. I throw the door to his bedroom open and run across the hall.
“Hey, door’s closed for a reason,” Grady says as I—Meat—push our way into his room.
“Secure Tessa,” I order in a register at least two octaves below my own.
“Sarah?” Grady asks as he looks from Meat to my body lying motionless beside Tessa on his bed. He’s white as sugar. “Of course, I-I’ll protect her,” he stutters.
I shake Meat’s head. “No, I mean secure her literally. Tie her up.”
He stares at me.
“Grady, can you do that?” I demand. “Answer me.”
“Yes. Yes, I can do that.”
“Good. Now hit me—Meat—and tie him up too.”
“What?” He looks at me in horror.
“It’s the only way for me to exit his body,” I say, “and you can’t tell me you’ve never wanted to punch your brother.”
“Well, yeah, but…Sarah, wait. There’s something else.”
“What?” I snap. I have to get back to the station.
“After you left, I was thinking.”
“No time for thinking, Grady. Hit me!”
He ignores me but speeds up. “Just because you and Wes are different in the same way doesn’t mean you’re alike. The Dexid might have opened you up to your shared abilities, but it doesn’t dictate what you do with them.”
“Meaning what?”
“Just because you’re both high doesn’t mean you’re on the same trip.”
“Too many metaphors,” I warn. “I need battle tactics.”
“Wes is an addict,” he blurts. “Give him an overdose.”
Pop.
Grady’s words are lost in the space between Meat’s body and his dream. I am lying on the ground beside the dreamer, but I don’t remember Grady hitting me. Then I realize he hasn’t.
Wes is inside Meat now. He jumped in and booted me out, just like I did to him the night we haunted Gigi.
I watch a possessed, naked Meat run around the nightmare classroom, knocking over desks, steamrolling through soldiers, and barreling into students. I cringe at what damage the six foot two linebacker is doing in the waking world, when he suddenly stops and collapses to the ground. Wes falls out, and I smile.
Grady totally just nailed his brother.
The half dozen Burners I released from the other dreams pour in through the doorway, and there’s no time to waste. I am on my feet and running. I concentrate, blur my eyes, search through the fog, and notice an area ahead with a slight glow to it. It has to be the dream’s exit. Pretty soon, Wes is beside me. He’s no fool. He might not know how I’ve figured it out, but he knows where I’m headed. I throw open the door to a janitor’s closet, and we exit the dream.
We’re back in the dirty train car, and the Burners are not far behind. Wes takes off down the aisle, glancing in every dream door that he passes. He’s about four doors down when something catches his eye, and he stops. He looks back at me and smiles. It’s a playful, dangerous grin that chills me to my soul. Please, God, don’t be Tessa.
He jumps into the dream.
I follow.
Unlike Meat’s fluorescent dream, this one is midnight blue, dark, and shadowy. It takes me a minute to adjust my eyes, blinking a surreal landscape into focus. It’s the clinic, my clinic, the place where this all began. I follow dim lights, blinking on and off in a chaotic rhythm, down a corridor of patient and observation rooms. Zombified people groan in their beds while faceless techs listlessly go about their mindless tasks: taking vitals, reading printouts, entering data. Over and over again.
A howl echoes down the hallway, and I keep moving, aware that the Burners are close behind. I search every room I pass, wondering whose dream I’m in and where I will find Wes, when a catcall whistle guides my search. I follow the sound to an observation room, where I see Wes standing just a few feet away from the dreamer: Josh Mowrey.
“The Burners will be here any second,” he says. “But if we set up Josh like a bowling pin and slip out of the way as they strike, he’ll get what’s coming to him, and we can get out.” He smiles blithely, and my hands ball into fists. “So are you with me?” he asks. “Or will you be noble and go down for this perverted jackass?”
It’s the perfect dilemma. I can save myself by being the utter hypocrite Wes says I am—that he wants me to be—or be ejected from the dream realm and wake up in Burner-induced paralysis with no way to help Tessa.
“Had it not been for Gigi, this predator would’ve done way worse to you,” he slyly reminds me. “You know how good payback feels. And let’s be honest. The Pollyanna look just isn’t you.” The taunting snark suddenly disappears, and quietly, thoughtfully, he adds, “Make the honest choice, Sarah. Even if it’s not the right one.”
I glance at the door, which rattles from the weight of heavy, advancing footsteps. That way will lead me into the arms of the Burners, with no hope of protecting Tessa or bringing Wes down. But even if I refuse to hurt Josh, Wes will jump into his body or throw him to the Burners and make his escape.
I look at Josh. He’s done for, no matter what. And the sick truth is, I really don’t care. Wes is right. If I’m completely honest, I feel a little pleasure in knowing he’ll finally be punished for his sins.
But this decision isn’t about Josh. It’s about me. I nod my head as I accept the fact that the bad choices and dark deeds were not all Wes’s doing. They were mine too. And it’s high time I stop them from happening again.
“Fine,” I say, heading for Josh as the Burners burst into the room. Wes’s eyes twinkle as he relishes my fall. The only thing better than confronting me with my true nature is having manipulated me into doing so myself. But as Grady said, there are some things Wes doesn’t know. The twinkle disappears as the Burners rush toward us. I pivot before I reach Josh and throw my body into Wes’s.
I relax my eyes
my breath
my mind
and break free of the dream
break free of the box
because I know there isn’t any box at all.
We fall backward, through the floor, and into the fog, where there are no walls and no rules.
My stomach drops like on the first dip of a roller coaster. For a moment, we are flying through the void, and I savor it. There’s a freedom to this release. I might have fallen all night in this nothingness had I been alone. But I’m not. As Wes digs his teeth into my shoulder, I lose my focus, and we slam into the ground.
We’re back on the train, inside the box Wes has constructed. Immediately, he’s on me, and we grapple on the floor. Wes grabs my arm and twists it behind my back. I yell as I thrust the pinkie finger of my free hand deep into his ear canal. He howls in pain. His fingers wrap around chunks of hair on either side of my head, and I scream as he lifts me from my roots. I’m kicking, biting at air, but when he smashes my skull down hard against the train floor, the fight stops. My peripheral vision completely blacks out, and all I can see is his body drag itself away from me. Slow at first, he picks up speed as he runs down the long, narrow aisle of my tunnel vision and into the next car of the train.
There’s a low rumble. The Burners have picked up our scent. I stumble to my feet and shake my head to excise the ringing that goes from ear to ear. My vision fights its way back as I move awkwardly down the aisle, steadying myself with a tight grip as I move from seat to seat until I can limp after Wes on my own. Groaning, grunting, and growling chokes the air behind me, but I don’t look back.
Ahead of me, I see a bright glowing orb beside a set of sliding dream doors. Try as he might, Wes can’t shake me. I will always find him. He’s disappeared into a dream, but before long, I’m there too. Exhausted and bruised but determined, I tumble, head first, into…
Leaves.
Brittle.
Crunching.
Thick.
They engulf me. They’re sticking to my clothes, tangled in my hair. I raise myself on elbows, and as I brush them away, I realize where I am. The nature preserve behind the Horsemen’s football field. Where I told Tessa to go before she fell asleep.
I’m in her dream.
I pull myself to my feet and begin searching for her, knowing that somewhere in this dream, Wes is too.
I stumble over rocks and roots and pebbly paths. I become clumsy as my desperation deepens, and I fall, scraping my hands and knees. I know what’s coming, and I’m terrified.
Snarls and moans mingle with the whistling windy air. The Burners are closing in, and I’ve no way of knowing how close they are or how many have come. But it doesn’t matter, so long as I get to Tessa and Wes first.
Then…
The trees thin as they open onto a clearing.
Tessa sits quietly at its center.
Wes stands beside her.
I start to speak, but it’s pointless.
He jumps
into
her
body.
I race over to Tessa and watch, helpless, as she falls backward to the ground. Her eyes glaze over as her body begins to twitch, then shudder, then jerk. She looks like she’s having one hell of an epileptic fit, but she doesn’t get up. She remains on her back, writhing but not moving more than a foot in any direction.
I exhale relief. Tessa is safe. Grady tied her up, just like I asked him to. Wes can’t do anything to her body; he can’t even knock himself out to return to the dreams. He’s trapped.
I take a moment to breathe. To steel myself against the awful decision I’ve made. The only choice I have left.
I sit beside my best friend’s quivering body until, finally, she stills. Can Wes guess what’s coming? Is he making a plan? Or has he accepted his fate?
The grunts and growls grow louder as the Burners circle the clearing. I cannot tell how many there are. Drawn by the massive amount of Dexid in Wes’s system, they look infinite. They surround us.
As they come toward me in an enormous heaving mass, I lean down beside Tessa and whisper in her ear.
“I’m so sorry, Wes,” I say. “I wish it didn’t have to end like this.”
Then I jump into Tessa’s body and push Wes out.
My eyes open on a flushed face. Grady holds a heavy book above my head. “Hit me,” I command. “Now.”
His Adam’s apple bulges as he swallows his fear and brings the encyclopedia down.
An agonized scream fills my ears as I return to my best friend’s nightmare, and it takes me a moment to realize that the cry is not my own. I look over to see Wes tangled up in a thicket of Burners, struggling as they crush him tighter and tighter.
Overdose, I think.
His wild eyes meet mine for just a second. Then I too am enveloped in a Burner’s cold embrace, and we both dissolve into the dark nothingness of the hungry, paralyzing beasts.