The Sleepwalkers (42 page)

“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

I
N THE WHITE HOSPITAL ROOM IN
P
ANAMA
C
ITY
, 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.”

“And your head? What about the CAT scan?”

Her eyes darken. “Like we thought. He, uh . . . he took out part of my brain.”

“What does that mean? I mean, is it going to affect you? Memory, coordination, stuff like that?”

“No. The doctors think it’s an unused section of brain tissue. I think it has to be like a filter, you know? To keep the spirits out. Like a lock on the door to our minds. Without it, they can come in and possess you any time. Or at least during sleep. And it also makes the voices easier to hear, I think.”

“I’m sorry,” says Caleb again.

“It’s okay. That’s how it had to be, I guess.”

Caleb looks at her. “That’s what your sister kept saying.”

She looks at the stuffed monkey absently.

He clears his throat. “They still pulling bodies out of the Dream Center?”

She nods. “Forty-seven now, I think, but they said there are more in there. I stopped watching.”

“We should probably leave soon. Morle—my dad—had a lot of friends who might be pretty pissed off right now. Like that doctor. I keep thinking he’s going to walk in here. It’s creeping me out. I think we should take off soon, just get as far away as we can.”

“Yeah,” she says to the monkey, “but there’s one thing we need to do first.”

Trees shoot past outside the car windows.

“We gotta make it fast. This might not be safe for us at all.”

As they pull in the driveway even the air feels different. The Dream Center is gone, and sunlight now shines on the front lawn where its shadow would have fallen. But there’s something else, Christine thinks. Even with the sun shining right on them, it still seems a little . . . dim.

They park beside a Channel 13 news van and get out. Christine glances at Caleb. His brow is furrowed; his eyes are fixed on nothing.

He’s been like that for most of the trip.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she says.

He smiles halfheartedly over the roof of the car.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Okay, two dollars.”