The Sleepwalkers (10 page)

“Dude, what did she write on your hand?” asks Bean with an amused grin.

Caleb responds only with an absent gesture of negation. “Let’s go,” he says, and starts for the door.

No one is there to escort the guys back to the exit, and when they reach the little “ticket window” where the man in the white shirt had been, they find it dark and empty. They push through the front doors into the insect songs, bird calls, and blaring light of the world.

Neither of them speaks. They get in the car and drive away, watching the sleeping colossus bearing the dream center banner disappear amongst the green boughs of the forest. It isn’t until they’ve reached the street that one of them cracks the silence, and naturally it’s Bean.

“Dude, that’s messed up,” he says with outrage.

“Huh?”

Bean frowns and pats his pockets. “She kept my favorite pen!”

Chapter Five

“F
IVE THIRTY-FIVE AM,
” C
ALEB SAYS
with a shrug.

He and Bean sit in the living room of the abandoned Mason house. After some major dusting and bringing the sleeping bags and backpacks in from the car, they’ve managed to set up a fairly cozy campsite in the living room, complete with a roaring fire in the fireplace, thanks to some wood Caleb gathered out back and the can of lighter fluid Bean found under the kitchen sink. The fire pops and sputters, casting strange, dramatic shadows on the far wall. The guys sit in a cocoon of firelight—no streetlight shines through the windows, no electricity burns through the household bulbs. Still, in their pale halo, everything glows orange and feels safe. The fire makes the hot Florida air almost unbearable, but darkness would be even worse.

Caleb slouches in a wing chair and Bean lies on his stomach, sprawled across an ottoman.

“Let me see,” says Bean, and positions Caleb’s hand so he can read the writing.

“Ow,” says Caleb. “I don’t really bend that way.”

“Oh, you’re not double-jointed like your girlfriend, eh?”

“Ha-ha,” Caleb says distractedly. He stares at his hand for a moment, then continues: “And she mentioned Anna, but Anna has been missing for years. Everyone but her mom was pretty sure she was dead. But maybe she’s not.”

Bean squints at Caleb’s hand again. “I don’t know, man. Maybe an
S
. Could be S-three-Sam.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means, of course that . . . um . . . I don’t know! I’m just here for moral support, anyway. This is all you, Sherlock. Maybe it
is
five thirty-five am. What does that mean? She wants us to rescue her at five thirty in the morning? I don’t think so. It’s five thirty in the morning and I’m either sleeping or drunk—in which case I’m still probably sleeping.”

“I think maybe we should be there then. We can just wait in the woods and watch, see what happens. Just in case,” says Caleb.

“Are you out of your friggin’ mind?” says Bean. “First of all, she’s crazy. Really, obviously, like, whacked-out. And if we actually help her escape, I’m pretty sure that has to be a major, serious crime.”

“What are we supposed to do then? She’s asking us for help. She’s counting on us. And granted, she does seem a little out there, but just hypothetically speaking, what if she is telling the truth? Wouldn’t we owe it to her to find out? I could even write a story about it and have it run in the papers and get the place closed down or something.”

Bean laughs. “God, here you go again with the journalism bit. Does everything have to be an investigative report for you? This was supposed to be a vacation.”

Caleb looks at his friend. “Alright. Tomorrow we’ll go to the beach, okay?”

“The beach is cool, but I’m talking about going home, man. This place sucks. It’s humid, the people are like redneck zombies, with the exception of your buddy who gave us the pie and . . . let’s see, what else? Well, your dad’s gone, we’re staying in an abandoned, probably condemned, rat-infested shitbox, there are no chicks here who aren’t wards of the state, and let’s not forget
numero uno
, we live on the beach already! Why are we here? Your friend is nuts, mystery solved.”

“But she has no one else to help her,” Caleb says.

“What about her mom?” Bean says. “She even said in her letter that her mom gets weekly reports about her progress.”

“Her mom got a little weird after Anna went missing . . . I don’t know if she’d be much help.”

“There you go! Her mom is nuts, she’s nuts, case closed.”

Caleb looks at his friend. “You really want to get out of here that bad?”

“Yes!” says Bean. “I got places to be, ladies to do, my friend. And while we’re in Podunkville, USA, none of that is happening. I vote we go back tomorrow.”

The fire pops and a spark shoots up the chimney. There’s a scuttling sound from upstairs. Probably a rat. Bean is right. What can they do for Christine anyway? She’s already getting professional help.

Still, a tiny voice of protest in Caleb’s head won’t shut up. He tries to reason with it, he tries to ignore it, but it keeps whispering in his ear as he watches the gyrating, primal dance of the flame. It whispers to him like Christine did earlier. And it won’t be ignored.

Bean is humming Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” and putting a marshmallow on a stick to sacrifice to the fire god in that ancient ritual called “s’mores” when Caleb makes his decision.

“Okay,” he says. “We’ll leave tomorrow. But there’s one stop we have to make tonight.”

“What’s that?” Bean asks warily.

Caleb is staring at the fire again. “Remember when that guy said we should go see the witch?”

The flashlight beams cut through the night like shears through layer after layer of thick, black velvet. It’s a long walk. Branches claw and unseen things rustle in the weeds, always just out of the light. The path is uneven, studded with roots and puddles and branches. Sometimes it’s not really even a path at all; still, Caleb seems to know his way, leading them onward with step after determined step. Shrouds of Spanish moss hang all around them like wisps of lingering smoke. They pass the huge, deformed stump of a long-rotten tree. Bean’s light flashes over it, revealing a nest of crawling bugs—a kind he doesn’t recognize. All he knows is they’re big. He looks away and keeps walking.

Caleb’s thoughts race through his mind like a fire through a meadow:
I don’t like this. I don’t like it here. This is not my home. This
isn’t what I remember. There’s something about Christine, something
in her letter—damn spiderweb.
(He brushes it from his face.)
Nothing
worse than walking in the forest and catching a mouth full of spider-webs.
Big-ass spiders in this forest. Remember plucking their legs off,
me and Christine. And Anna. Why do I always forget she was there?
How awful, to be forgotten. Jesus, Bean sounds like a steam engine
back there, out-of-shape bastard. A few more sit-ups and a little less
beer maybe, buddy. I’m lucky he’s behind me at all. Who else would
follow me here? We shouldn’t be here. We don’t belong here. I don’t
belong anywhere. But no one belongs
here
. I don’t remember the path
angling left here; I remember it angling right. I remember for sure there
was a big rose-colored piece of granite. See, this is what I’m talking
about—this isn’t right.

And that’s when he hears it. He tries to pretend it’s nothing—just part of a song he’s singing in his mind, maybe, just some atonal notes strung together to drown out the sound of bugs, the sound of fear. He glances at Bean. Bean isn’t behind him. For an instant, he feels his heart quicken—then he sees his friend, maybe ten yards back, standing still. Listening. He’s standing under one of the rare breaks in the leafy canopy through which moonlight has been able to spill through. And from the look on his face, Caleb knows he hears the singing too.

“What the hell is that?” Bean asks.

“What?”

“It’s freakin’ eerie,” says Bean. He doesn’t move.

“Probably just . . .” and Caleb has no platitude to fit this. This is inhuman singing. Chanting.

The devil is close.
Her words blow through every synapse in his brain.

But Christine is crazy, isn’t she?

They walk on.

This whole thing is screwed. He shouldn’t have brought Bean. He has to get his friend out of here.

“Do you want to go back?” asks Caleb suddenly. Bean clearly does. He’s sweating badly and keeps looking over his shoulder at nothing.

“Do
you
?” Bean asks.

Caleb does want to go back. And not even just back to his dad’s house, but back to Malibu. Back home, to surf and go for runs on the beach every morning, to get ready for college, read some good books, to meet Amber at a hotel in Santa Barbara and screw her and bask in the secret thought that he doesn’t really care about her anyway. To do some writing, maybe even finally get something in the
LA
Times
. These are all things that Caleb understands. Here, he understands nothing.

The singing starts up again. It’s a howl now, chopped up with a few explosive consonants that ring through the woods like gunshots.

Caleb looks in the direction of the sound. He whispers: “Look, I think the witch the guy was talking about is Christine’s mother. The kids in school always used to make fun of her, saying her mom was a witch and everything. I only met her a few times, but she seemed okay—and they say kids are the best judges of character, right?”

Bean gives him a wary look.

“Okay, man.” Caleb says, “I promise, if everything is cool with Christine’s mom, and we still think that Christine is just a crazy girl getting the help she needs, I swear we’ll get on a plane tomorrow, deal?”

Bean looks at his friend and exhales heavily. “Deal.”

“But we have to talk to her mom tonight,” says Caleb.

“Dude, I said ‘deal.’ Move your ass before I renege.”

Caleb turns and takes a step forward to lead the way—and sees that he has come to a fork in the path.

“Whoa . . . ” he says, half to himself. “I don’t remember a split here.”

“Stop trying to scare me, dickhole,” says Bean. “Which way?”

“This way,” Caleb says, leading his friend down the left fork. What he doesn’t mention is that he wasn’t trying to frighten Bean at all. In fact, Caleb is the scared one. Because the path is changing.