Authors: Robin Roseau
Solange nodded.
“Of course not. Nine.” Her tone became serious. “You’re still afraid I’m going to grow tired of you and dump you.”
I sighed. “True.”
“It’s not going to happen. Ever. I will love you forever, Sidney.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “You don’t know the future.”
“I could never stop loving you.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that.
“Ten. You have a romantic view of vampires and wonder if that’s why I’m so amazing a lover.”
I laughed uproariously at that one. When I could finally answer, I said, “True.”
In the end, I knew she was keeping secrets from me. I thought I’d stressed to her she could tell me, that I would love her unconditionally. I got just the vaguest of hints. I wondered if perhaps she’d open to me eventually.
* * * *
I began to lose sleep from the dreams as they accelerated. I started having them nightly. There were a lot of repeats, but nothing that told me what I was supposed to do. I was simply left with an urgency that I needed to do something.
Then, there was a change.
I followed Solange again. Then I watched as she entered the code. And she entered the code. And she entered the code.
Seven-five-nine-eight-one-three-nine-nine
. Over and over.
Suddenly,
I was in the underground facility. I wasn’t sure how I got there. I wandered the rows, moving up and down, looking at some of the people, walking past others.
This time, they were all watching me.
But I was searching for something. I didn’t know what, but I kept searching and searching. I hate dreams like that.
In the middle of the big room, in the dead center of those rows of vacuum-packed people, I found it.
Hanging in one of the bags was Solange. Aubree was next to her.
As soon as I walked up, they both turned to me.
“No…” I said.
Then they spoke. They shouldn’t have been able to speak, of course, but anything can happen in a dream.
“It begins here,” Solange said in a dead voice.
“Our secrets are here,” Aubree added.
“You must find a way,” Solange said.
“She’ll forgive you,” Aubree told me.
“Eventually,” Solange added.
“Will you forgive her?” Aubree asked.
“I will love you forever,” Solange said.
“You must betray her to help us,” Aubree said.
“You must betray me to help me,” Solange said.
And then, from all around me, the people all turned to me. They began pressing against me in the cold plastic. “Find us. Find us. Find us.”
I tried pushing them away, but they clung to me, the enveloping plastic clinging to me, clinging to them. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t push them away.
“Find us. Find us. Find us.”
I woke, screaming, “Get off me! Get off me!”
It took me two days to find the farm. I waited until Solange left for work each day, and then I tried to recreate the drive from my dreams. When I finally found it, I stopped on the road, staring.
This was it. I was sure it was.
It was nondescript, looking a lot like all the other farms in Minnesota. But from the dream, I remembered the shape of one of the trees. And the farmhouse itself looked run down, like no one lived there, but there were tracks leading to the barn.
I was sure this was it.
I didn’t drive in. If it were as secretive a facility as the dreams implied, then I thought there might be surveillance cameras. Instead, I noted the location and drove away. But I didn’t go home. I went to a local sporting goods store. I bought a good pair of binoculars. At another store, I bought a set of all-black clothing.
I stopped by the house, picked up my bicycle, and drove to a point a mile from the farm
. I biked the rest of the way, but I found a secluded space, and I pulled off the road. Then I watched.
I tried to find security cameras. I found two. They were obvious. I wondered if there were any I couldn’t find. The cameras were aimed towards the front door of the barn. I didn’t see any other entrance. I though there must be another, but if so, it was on a wall I couldn’t see.
I wondered how I was going to get in.
* * * *
I suffered through three nights of dreams, more of the same, before one told me what I was going to do.
Solange and Aubree were going to visit the farm together. She was going to call me from the office and tell me, “I made reservations at
Gambol’s tonight. I’ll pick you up at six.” After that, together they would drive to the farm.
In the morning, while Solange was in the shower, I dug through her purse. I hate when people do that to me, so I hadn’t gone through hers before. I found the card key and pocketed it, then put her purse back.
Then it was time to wait.
It wasn’t that day, but it was the next. She called shortly after two in the afternoon. “I made reservations at
Gambol’s tonight.”
As soon as we were off the phone, I changed into the clothes I had bought, ran to my car, tossed my mountain bike in, and drove, helter-skelter, to the same spot near the farm. I pedaled like mad, ditched the bike,
then moved to a large oak tree about thirty yards from the corner of the barn.
Then I waited.
I almost wished they didn’t come. I almost wished the dreams were wrong, a figment of an over-active imagination. Or maybe I had the wrong farm.
I didn’t have the wrong farm.
Aubree was driving. I ducked behind the tree, plenty large enough to hide me, then I peered carefully around the corner. As soon as the doors were open and the car was pulling in, I ran for all I was worth for the door. I’d be on the video cameras for a second or two, but I hoped no one was actively watching.
The tail end of the car was just pulling into the barn as I arrived at the edge. I ducked down, made a quick dash to the back, then followed the car until it came to a stop, crouching down low enough no one could see me in the review mirror. There would have been a flash of vision in the right side mirror, but I hoped Aubree didn’t notice.
As soon as the car came to a stop, I dropped to the floor and rolled under it. It was a tight fit, but there was enough room. I came to a stop between the two rear tires.
Both doors opened. Aubree and Solange were discussing a client. They got out, and I could see
Solange’s shoes. If they actually ducked down and looked under the car, they would find me. But as long as they didn’t look too carefully, they shouldn’t see me.
I watched
as they both moved forwards, exactly where my dream said the secret elevator was.
Solange broke off talking. “I can’t find my key card.” She rattled through her purse. “It should be right here. Did you take it?”
“Not me,” Aubree replied. “I have mine.”
“I wonder if it’s in another purse, but I could have sworn it was in this one. I should have checked. I guess we’ll use yours.”
Once they were on the elevator and the door was closed, I pulled out my phone and set a timer. Ten minutes. Ten minutes should get them downstairs and to whatever they were doing.
Then I waited.
I’d never been more frightened.
“What are you doing, Sidney?” I asked. “This isn’t you. If Solange catches you, she’s going to be angry.”
I sighed. “But the dreams.”
Yeah. The dreams.
The timer went off. I rolled out from below the car. The barn floor was dirty, and now I was. I brushed off as best I could, but I was still dirty.
I made my way to the back of the barn and stared at the keypad.
If this much of the dream was real, when did the metaphor start?
I dug out the key card, swiped it through the reader,
then punched in the code I’d seen over and over in my dreams. I hoped it didn’t work.
Seven-five-nine-eight-one-three-nine-nine
.
Two seconds later, the green light lit, and there was a buzzing.
“Damn it. Solange, what is this place?”
I opened the door and waited for the elevator.
I half expected Solange and Aubree to catch me right there, riding back up on the elevator, but when the door opened, the elevator was empty. I stared at it for a moment, a long time really, and the doors started to close, but I stuck my hand in, opening them back up, and stepped on.
There were two buttons. They weren’t labeled, “Heaven” and “Hell”. It was simply 1 and 2. Solange had pressed the lower of the two buttons, which was labeled “2”. I pressed the button. It lit up, the doors closed, and the elevator began to descend.
By the time the elevator reached its destination, I was hiding behind the edge, not in direct line of the door. There was a friendly “ding” when the doors opened. I waited.
Nothing happened. And the elevator doors stayed open besides.
I poked my nose around the edge of the door. And stared.
“Oh god,” I said. “Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.”
I couldn’t help myself. I stepped forward.
I was in a large, dimly lit room. The floor was concrete. To my right was a wall, also concrete. Ahead of me was an open corridor with a one-inch yellow safety line painted on the floor marking the edge of the walkway.
And to the left of that was row after row of people, vacuum-packed people suspended on chains from the ceiling. Just like in the dreams.
“Oh god,” I said. “Solange. What are you doing here?”
I stepped forward, not even taking care for my safety anymore. I should have run. I should have taken one look and run. Would they catch me? Did I show up on some video camera? Did they record? I didn’t know.
But at the time, I didn’t think of that. I didn’t think of any of that.
I stepped up to the nearest person, a rough-looking man. His eyes were closed. His hair was long, and he was unshaven. There were tubes in his body. One was in his mouth. I decided that was probably a ventilator. Another entered his nose. There was one in each wrist. I expected to see blood flowing in one or the other, but both appeared clear through the plastic.
He was naked, and I saw a thin catheter was inserted. I looked away from that. There was another one disappearing in back, and I was pretty sure I knew what that was for. Thankfully that tube wasn’t clear.
There was a machine next to him filled with lights. It looked like the tubes from his body threaded through the frame that supported the plastic — the same frame that was sucking the air from the plastic. The tubes fed through the frame and disappeared into the machine.
I stared at him for a while.
I began moving from person to person. There were only four in a row. I went around the end. The next row of people was immediately behind the first row, then a gap. I walked through, staring at the bodies.
I found a woman. I didn’t recognize her. She looked young.
I got to the walkway near the elevator. At the end of the row was a desk with a computer monitor. I moved to it and hit the keyboard. A moment later, the screen came to life, but it asked for a username and password.
I wasn’t going to stand here and try to break into a computer. I didn’t have those types of hacker skills, so without some pretty good clues, I wasn’t going to get in.
But on a hunch, I tried username “solange” and the set of digits from the touchpad. No such luck. “Scasper” didn’t work, either.” Neither did Solange’s initials. I didn’t try anything further than that.
After that, I wandered up and down the rows, staring at some of the people.
Some of them were awake and stared back. One man had his hand curled in a one-finger salute. It was after I’d gone past three or four that had their eyes opened that I realized all the ones who were awake had one thing in common, different from the others.
One of the I.V. tubes was red.
I don’t know how long I was there, wandering up and down the rows of people. I stood in front of them, wondering what I was supposed to do.
Was I supposed to rescue them? If so, I didn’t know how. If I disconnected them from the machine, would I be able to free them before they suffocated?
How many hours would it take to free all these people? How many days?
Was I supposed to confront Solange?
Was I supposed to report this facility to law enforcement?
The room was loud. I hadn’t realized it in the dreams, but of course the room would be loud. They had to keep sucking the air out of those bags. Imagine a hundred vacuum cleaners, all going at once.
Why keep them this way?
And what were they doing to them?
I know, I know, that should have been obvious. My brain wasn’t working very well.
But it was loud, and I didn’t hear her approach, but then from behind me, Solange said, “Oh Sidney. You shouldn’t be here.”
I spun around to face her.