Katalepsis

With the Fadestone snug in Evee’s lap and the bounty of stolen keys tight in Raine’s fist, sneaking back inside the looming fortress of Cygnet Hospital should have been easier than any prior penetration of that sprawling nightmare structure. The towering red brick walls which rambled out over the grounds, the hundreds of darkly staring windows like empty sockets in a skull, the corroded black metal of the many rain gutters and down-spouts like outlines upon the building’s rim, the side-doors in blank brushed steel and heavy lacquered wood — even the front entrance, gaping wide and lightless upon the gnarled innards of the asylum, where nurses drifted back and forth like white-clad ghosts in the mouth of a hungry god — all should have yielded before us, we who were invisible to sight and mind, we who held the keys to every locked door and barred portal of this dream-wrought castle of medical mistreatment.

Any door that Horror’s keys could not open would surely not withstand Twil’s werewolf strength or the cunning ingenuity of Raine’s quick hands. Though the sudden summer sun beat down upon the hospital grounds from an empty sky of wrinkled Eye-flesh, we four — or we five, including Praem — strode unseen and unknown, sliding deeper into the flesh of the hospital, like a virus in the body of the institution, cloaked against any immune system which the asylum might care to muster.

Except we didn’t — stride, that is.

By the time we reached the edge of the woodland, where the shivering canopy gave way to the immaculate green lawns of Cygnet Hospital, I could barely walk.

“Heather, Heather, hey, hey! Heather!” Raine kept repeating my name, trying to keep me grounded, keep me present; but the pain was crashing higher and higher, filling my eyes with tears, choking my throat with raw panic. “Heather, just hold on tight, that’s it, keep one arm around my shoulders and squeeze as hard as you gotta. Just don’t let go. Don’t let go. Come on, keep moving, don’t let go. Across the lawns, it’s only another few minutes. Heather? Heather, you can do it, just keep moving, keep moving.”

“I-I can’t— can’t put on weight on- ahhh! Ow, oh my God. Ah— ah! It— it hurts! It really hurts! Why does it hurt like this?! It didn’t hurt like this before!”

“The dream has changed,” Evelyn murmured, trying to stay calm in the face of my pain. “So has her wound. Raine, you keep a firm grip on both her and my wheelchair. If you lose contact you’ll lose the Fadestone’s effect.”

“Shiiiiit,” Twil hissed. “Shit shit shit! What’s wrong with her?! Big H? Yo? She was fine like five minutes ago! She was running around after me and all! Big H?”

“Don’t talk to her,” Evelyn ground out. “Let her concentrate. Everybody bloody well concentrate and stay together. Stay together and do not let go.”

The wound in my left shin — a shallow but nasty cut from a shard of glass, sustained on the previous day, when I had clambered over the broken one-way mirror to save Evelyn from the dream-spectre of her mother — was on fire.

Each heartbeat jammed knives of molten metal up through my knee and into the meat of my thigh. The lightest pressure on my foot sent fresh waves of nausea and disorientation sloshing upward into my pelvis and gut, gripping me with an intense need to vomit, which never came to fruition. A sheen of cold sweat stuck my t-shirt to my skin and my hair to my scalp and threatened to glue shut my windpipe. I rasped for the smallest volume of air, shaking and shivering, clinging to Raine like driftwood in a storm.

A deep red stain was inching outward upon the left leg of my pajama bottoms, as if the wound had burst Raine’s makeshift dressing.

By myself, I would have fallen.

Raine all but dragged me across the lawns, one-armed from the necessity of maintaining constant physical contact with Evelyn’s wheelchair. Twil took charge of pushing the chair, chewing her lips in near panic, tail tucked between her legs, wolf-ears flat and sharp. Evelyn stared straight ahead, breathing slowly and carefully, trying to sustain magic in the midst of fresh crisis.

Despite the end of the rainstorm and the sudden sunny day which had burst upon the dream, the gardens of Cygnet Hospital were deserted. No patients sat on the benches or took their outdoor lunches in the clement weather. Clusters of pale faces stared out from the upper windows of the hospital wings, sullen and frowny, gathered in protective little groups, grumpy at their confinement. The side door next to the front entrance was closed; the front entrance itself was guarded by a quartet of Knights, facing inward, as if to keep the patients from a hasty escape.

“Shit,” Twil hissed when we drew close enough to see the details. “What the hell? They tightened security? Whole place looks like it’s on lockdown.”

“We go around,” said Raine. “Side door, back door, whatever. We take the first way in we can find.”

“Sure, sure. Just—”

“Just do it, Twil,” Raine grunted. “Keep moving. Let me worry about Heather.”

For me, the journey around the left-hand side of the hospital building was a blur of pain and wheezing breath, marked only by the small adjustments of Raine’s arm around my waist, punctuated by the moments our collective feet left solid brick pathway to cross the softer surfaces of grass and soil. Screwing my eyes up tight helped with the pain for a few seconds, but that was all. Every time I tried to blot out the world, the throbbing in my head grew so much greater, and I was forced to open my eyes again, vision blurred and spinning, head pounding with internal pressure. My entire left leg had been transformed into a bag of broken glass and bone shards, shaking up and down inside my flesh with every staggering half-step.

“Tell her she can scream if she needs,” said Evee.

“Eh? What? Evee, what the—”

“Not you. Raine, tell her she can scream. It won’t break the Fadestone’s invisibility.”

“Heather,” Raine purred my name. “Scream if you—”

I screamed. Or perhaps I merely choked and mewled. I couldn’t be sure.

By the time we stopped before a door — an unassuming windowless slab of grey steel, blurred sideways in my vision like a smear of paste upon the brick wall — I was whining and sobbing, drool hanging from my pain-slackened lips, sagging in Raine’s grasp.

“Holy shit, holy shit,” Twil was hissing. “What the fuck is wrong with her?! That’s just not from a fucking leg wound, that’s more like— I don’t know! Like a gut wound or a—”

“Get the door open,” Raine said, quiet and soft and more dangerous than I had ever heard her before. “I can’t let go of her. Take the keys, open the door.”

“Yeah, yeah, but like, is she—”

“Open the door,” Raine said. “Right now.”

If I hadn’t been drowning in pain and fever, Raine’s tone would have sent me reeling away from her in something akin to fear — or perhaps drawn me closer, aroused beyond words. I had never heard her speak with such quivering quiet, such cold clarity of promised violence.

Twil let out a weird little canine yelp. “S-sure, sure, fine! Fuck, don’t get pissed at me, Raine!”

“Sorry,” said Raine, hard and sharp as fresh-cut steel.

Getting the door open took hours — or what felt like hours, as I sagged against Raine’s side, my vision throbbing and darkening, my skin flushed with sweat and fever and a tidal wave of pain sloshing upward from my left leg. Twil kept trying likely-looking keys in the lock, but there were so many keys on that ring. She was forced to work one-handed, keeping her other hand on Evee’s wheelchair to maintain our invisible coherency. Rattle-rattle-rattle-click-click-clink-clink-rattle-rattle — the noise of the keys and the lock and the door wormed into my head, making the pain worse, drawing a most pitiful mewling from my throat.

Eventually the lock gave way with a soft metallic thunk. Twil swung the door wide and pushed Evelyn through. Raine and myself trailed behind, anchored by Raine’s other hand. We plunged into the cool darkness of a little-used passageway.

“We need to find an infirmary,” Raine said. “A sickbay, something like that. Those kinds of rooms should be on the ground floor, for ease of access. Place like this should have more than one.”

“N-no … ” I wheezed. I could barely open my eyes. “H-have to free Zheng first. We have to—”

“Heather, save your strength,” Raine purred. “Stop trying to talk.”

“But—”

“Stop talking, unless you have important information.”

“We have to—”

“Do as I say.”

The cold snap in Raine’s voice left no room for argument. If I’d been coherent I would have flinched, and most likely argued back. Raine never spoke to me that way. I rolled against her side, whining at the renewed pain radiating upward from the occluded wound in my left shin.

I was near helpless. Raine was my rock.

The walk from the edge of woods to the side of the hospital had been a confused blur, but the pain had not finished rising; the search for an infirmary was a feverish nightmare. I gave myself completely over to the guidance and protection of my friends, to the strength of Raine’s arms, to Evee’s wisdom and skill, and Twil’s wolfish instincts and boldness of heart. My vision throbbed red and black around the edges as Raine dragged me through the hospital corridors. Sweat soaked through all my clothes until I was dripping. My breath came in constricted, ragged wheezes. My eyelids drooped as we went, then fluttered shut, until I was just luggage, an insensate bag of blind pain. My leg felt like it was going to fall off — or perhaps it was already gone, and the pain I felt was the bleeding stump rubbed raw on the open air. But whenever I mustered enough lucidity to look down, there it was, hanging off me, pajama bottom leg soaking through with deep crimson.

More than once we all had to stop and step aside as groups of nurses hurried past, sticking close together, some of them carrying the same kinds of weapons that they’d used against yesterday’s riot. They couldn’t see us, of course, but we didn’t want to risk blundering into them and initiating accidental contact. We saw almost no patients down on the ground floor, as if they had all been confined to the upper levels.

Fifteen minutes — or fifteen hours, or fifteen weeks, or fifteen years of agony later, we finally passed from a corridor and into a room. I could only tell because of the change in the sound of our footsteps. The adjustment roused me enough to raise my head and pry open my eyes.

An infirmary.

I should have felt hope and relief, but the pain was too much. Thought was mostly gone.

The room looked like something from a 1950s parody. Bare wooden floorboards supported a little desk — thankfully unoccupied — along with a short row of six steel bed frames, each bed outfitted with a narrow mattress wrapped in immaculately clean and neatly pressed sheets. Tall windows punctuated the wall between the beds, the glass grimy on the outside and smeared on the inside, the light dulled and dimmed by the muck and murk. A white porcelain sink stood in the far corner, flanked by old-fashioned metal bedpans, stained and rusty. The wall opposite the beds was lined with wooden cabinets above and below a counter top, all covered in peeling white paint. Most of the cabinets were marked by big red cross symbols, like we were in one of Raine’s video games. A row of bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling.

“Bingo!” Twil yelped. “And it’s empty, perfect!” She reached over and slapped at a light switch next to the door frame, but the bulbs stayed dark. “Ahh shit, leccy’s dead.”

Raine spoke quickly. “Evee, drop the Fadestone’s effect. Twil, shut that door and get it locked.”

“Done,” snapped Evelyn.

With her other hand finally free, Raine lifted me off my feet, princess carry style; the sudden pressure on the rear of my knee made me gasp and pant with a fresh wave of pain, but the weight off my injured leg was worth the trade.

Raine carried me over to the nearest bed and laid me down atop the sheets. My head fall back against the pillow, sinking into semi-conscious exhaustion, staring up at the dirty ceiling.

“Stay still. Don’t try to move,” Raine ordered. Then she left my dwindling field of vision.

Raine lifted my left ankle with a firm grip; I whined through my teeth. She eased the leg of my pajama bottoms up and over the makeshift dressing. Then she carefully peeled away the dressing itself, but the fabric was adhered to my skin with dried blood. I let out an involuntary scream, grabbing at the bedsheets.

“Shit!” Twil snapped. “We’re not fucking cloaked anymore, that racket is gonna bring someone running!”

“It— it hurts— I can’t— I can’t—”

Gentle hands offered me a folded corner of towel on which to bite down. Evelyn murmured something I couldn’t make out, but her words were soft and warm and full of aching sympathy. Her hand — her maimed hand — found mine and squeezed hard. I bit down into the folded piece of towel to muffle my next scream.

Raine worked as gently as she could. The fabric of the makeshift dressing finally peeled away.

Raine said nothing. Evelyn swallowed, loud and dry. 

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck me,” Twil hissed. “She was running around on that not an hour ago! How did it get so bad so fast?”

I spat out my corner of towel and raised my head from the pillow, squinting down at my shin.

The wound looked horrible — a ragged double-line of split flesh either side of a deep incision filled with a trench of fresh, dark, ruby-red blood. The skin around the wound was inflamed, hot and aching; I thought I could see every pulse of my heart mirrored in the quiver of my flesh. The air reeked of blood and sweat and fear, but of something else also, a putrid, too-sweet, ammonia-like scent.

Infection. I started to gag and hyperventilate.

“Heather, lie back down,” Raine snapped, pressing a hand to my forehead.

“But— but—”

“We will deal with it. Lie back down. Now.”

“It— it’s infected! I can smell it in the air! I can smell it!”

My hands rose toward the wound in my leg, twitching with some mad desire to rip at my own flesh and dig out the infection. I bared my teeth, wishing they were sharp, my chest filling with the echo of some instinctive need to bite and tear at my own skin.

Raine grabbed my shoulders and pushed me to the bed, holding me down. Brown eyes like banked fires bored into mine.

“Stay,” she said.

I obeyed, head sinking into the pillow, breath coming in ragged gasps of animal panic.

I was no stranger to pain. I, who had grown the truth of my own body from scratch upon my flanks, from nothing more than pneuma-somatic suggestion and phantom limbs; I, who had endured internal bruising and bleeding and the repeated agony of bodily loss over and over again, all for the sake of euphoria and clarity and the shining rightness of Homo abyssus; I, who had plunged my hands and my mind directly into the dark and burning controls of reality more times than I could count. I knew pain like an old and difficult friend who never left. I should not have been so disabled by a mere cut on my leg.

But I was not whole. The Heather who had experienced those pains was sevenfold more than I was then, lying in a damp patch of cold and fearful sweat on an unfamiliar bed. I was but a sliver of myself, and I could not endure this.

“Wait, wait, hey,” Twil said, sniffing at the air. “Is she serious, is that infected? I think I can smell it too!”

“Yes,” Raine said. “She’s burning up. Fever, and it’s bad.”

“How?!” Twil spluttered. Her tail was tucked over her own belly, her wolf-ears gone flat and limp. “She was running around on it like an hour ago! I mean sure, she was a bit unsteady, but nothing like this! Infection doesn’t progress this quickly! What the fuck?!”

“It’s the dream,” Evelyn grunted.

“Eh? What does that have to do with Heather’s leg?”

Evelyn sighed. I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear the tension in her throat, the worry in her dry swallow.

“We changed the genre and tone of the dream,” she said. “We injected more horror — ha! Pun intended. Flushing that wound with water and wrapping it in torn-up bits of t-shirt is no longer viable. Heather needs proper medical treatment.” She paused. “Raine? What’s wrong now?”

I could only just about see Raine’s face in my peripheral vision. She no longer looked like my faithful hound, always grinning, wagging her own metaphorical tail as she awaited my orders. She was stony-faced and focused, staring at my leg.

“Raine?” I wheezed. “I-I’m scared, I’m really scared, I—”

Raine stood up and snapped off a string of orders. “Evee, you keep one hand on Heather, in case we need to use the Fadestone to hide. Twil, barricade the way in. Get one of those filing cabinets from behind the desk, drag it in front of the door. Now, please.”

As Raine spoke she unhooked the makeshift sling from over her shoulders — the loop of towel which contained Horror’s gagged head, Horror’s stolen heart, and Horror’s amputated arm — and dumped it on the next bed over.

“What?” Twil said. “That won’t keep anybody out for long. They’ll just bust the door down.”

“A barricade will buy us time to touch Evee so she can activate the Fadestone. Just do it.” Raine’s footsteps thumped on the bare floorboards as she strode away from the beds. I raised my head to see where she was going. She was walking to the far end of the room, talking to Twil. “Then get going through these medicine cabinets. We need antibiotics, disinfectant, maybe medical alcohol. Stitching thread and a needle, gauze, bandages, all that sort of stuff.”

“And what are you doing?” Twil said.

Raine went for the sink in the corner. “Washing my hands. With plenty of soap.”

Twil dragged a filing cabinet in front of the door to block any curious nurses, then flew to the cupboards and flung them open, rummaging through medical equipment, slapping needles and thread and packets of bandages down on the worktop.

“Raine, Raine!” she called out. “I don’t know what the hell I’m even looking for! There’s a ton of bottles, but—”

“Isopropyl alcohol, anything that says seventy percent or more. Iodine, or saline.” I couldn’t see Raine in the corner, but she was making a splashing noise in the sink. “Antibiotics too. Look for bottles that say mupirocin, neomycin, polymyxin, or bacitracin. Vancomycin too, but I doubt they’ll have that here. We also need painkillers. Look for codeine or hydrocodone. Morphine would be better. And a basin, for water. A glass too, we need her to drink. Scissors, don’t forget scissors. And gloves, we need gloves, for extra safety.”

Evee called out: “How the hell do you suddenly know all that, Raine?”

“I just do!” Raine called back.

Twil froze. I could see the top of her head, not moving, wolf-ears flat with anxiety.

Evelyn twisted around at my side. “Twil,” she said, firm and calm. “Take it slow. Do as Raine says.”

“ … r-right, right. Okay. Cool. Right.”

Raine finished up washing her hands and joined Twil moments later. She started tossing bottles and packets onto the foot of the next bed over. Within a few minutes they had everything they needed.

Raine fed me antibiotics and painkillers; I couldn’t tell which was which, and I was beyond caring by that point. She helped me sit up long enough to swallow the pills with a glass of water, then had me lie back down again. The painkillers worked quickly, but not quickly enough. When Raine started washing my wound, I had to bite down into the folded corner of towel again, to keep from screaming my lungs out. The water hurt bad enough, but the disinfectant was worse. I whined and sobbed until my head was ringing with the pounding of my own blood. My left leg was a field of fire and acid. I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed and screamed and screamed.

“I’m sorry, sweet thing,” Raine murmured. “But we gotta.”

“Raine,” Evelyn said. Then again, harder. “Raine. Raine!”

“What?”

“We cannot do wound debridement on Heather’s shin. You understand? We don’t have the right chemicals or equipment, let alone the right kinds of painkillers.”

“It’s infected—”

“And you will be torturing her. Raine, this is a dream. You don’t need to be physically accurate. We’re not debriding that wound. Do you understand?”

Raine went silent; I didn’t comprehend what they were talking about, but then—

“Alright,” said Raine. “Twil, pass me the needle and thread.”

Twil swallowed. “Are you fucking sure you know how to do this shit?”

“We need to stitch this wound up.”

“Yeah, but, like, do you know how?”

“She does,” Evelyn grunted. “I’ve seen her do it before. And I wouldn’t let her do this to Heather unless I trusted she can do it right.” Evelyn turned back to me, her face filling the left side of my wavering vision. “Heather, you’re in safe hands. I promise. She does know what she’s doing, even if she’s acting funny.”

“Yeah,” Raine said. “I do know how to do this. I learned back in … in … ”

Raine trailed off. I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear the sudden disjunction, the jarring slam of memory’s vault.

“ … Raine?” Twil said. “Fuck me, you don’t look right.” Evelyn twisted around as well.

Raine took a deep breath. Amusement forced its way back into her voice: “Well, I don’t know where I learned to stitch up wounds. But I did learn. Guess the real me doesn’t want me to know, huh? Here, pass the needle. Quicker we do this the quicker Heather can get more antibiotics down her.”

To my relief and surprise, the sensation of having my skin punctured by a needle and threaded back together was barely painful at all, at least not compared with the deep-tissue ache of the wound itself and the waves of cold fire washing up through my hips. Raine worked quickly and precisely, though I didn’t watch; any time I threatened to raise my head and look, Evelyn gently reached over and tapped my chin or cheeks, making her point with excellent clarity.

I wasn’t sure how long the stitches took; time seemed to stretch out to infinity as I lay on that bed, staring at the ceiling or at Evelyn’s face. Evee didn’t say much, though an awkward pressure lingered in her lips and around her eyes. I couldn’t see more than the top and side of Raine’s head, and Twil was beyond my limited sight completely. Sunlight wavered on the opposite wall, dancing as if scattered by a leafy canopy, then dimming and darkening until the room was plunged into a sudden midday gloom.

“You sure you can’t get the lights on?” Raine said.

“Nah,” Twil grunted. “There’s only one switch and it doesn’t do shit. Leccy’s fucked, I reckon.”

“Mm,” Raine grunted, and bent back to her work.

When she was done, she snipped off the thread with a pair of scissors. I almost flinched as the shiny steel blades descended toward my aching flesh, but my trust in Raine kept me from jerking aside. The moment she cut the line, I felt a throb of strange release flow through my heart. Raine smeared some kind of oily gunk onto my shin, then packed sterile gauze over the wound site. She and Twil worked together to wrap my shin with bandages, walling up the wound behind clean white fabric. They fixed the bandage in place with a trio of safety pins.

Finally Raine stood up and stepped back, re-entering my field of vision, wiping sweat from her brow on the back of her arm.

Twil muttered, “We done? That’s it?” Then she stood up as well, eyeing me with curious caution, as if I might cough up blood or go into convulsions at any moment. Her tail was tucked between her legs, but her wolf-ears stood tall. She and Raine both peeled off the disposable blue gloves they’d been wearing.

Three faces peered down at me. A fourth looked upward from within the crook of my arm — the Praem plushie was nestled against my ribs. Evelyn must have put her there to comfort me. I stared back into those blank eyes of stitched fabric in mute gratitude.

Twil said, “Is she, like, conscious, or what?”

“She’s fine,” Evelyn grunted. “She’s hopped up on enough morphine pills to knock me out for a week, that’s all.”

Raine leaned closer, touching the back of her hand to my sweat-soaked forehead, then brushing my hair out of my face. “Heather? Heather, look at me. Concentrate, look at my eyes. Heather?”

“Mm,” I croaked. “Raine. G—” I had to clear my throat, dry as a bone. “Good girl.”

Raine did not smile. “How do you feel?”

“Bad.”

Twil laughed. “Understatement of the year.”

“Water, please.” I croaked.

Raine fetched me a fresh glass of water from the sink and helped me sit up long enough to drink it all. I stared at my bandaged leg as I drank; the bandage was very clean and very white, without any bloodstains seeping through to mar the perfect surface. I knew next to nothing about proper wound treatment and care, but something about that bandage felt right, as if Raine had saved me in a way I didn’t fully understand.

After I lay back down, the others all drank their fill as well. Everyone was tired and worn out, thirsty and a little hungry. Raine rummaged around in the canvas carrier bag and extracted the last of our looted food — some packets of crisps and random confectionery — then shared it out. She ate standing up. Twil sat on the next bed over, hunched forward, the sides of her open shirt hanging downward. Evelyn chewed slowly, staring at my bandaged leg in silent contemplation.

The whole infirmary was sunk deep in grey shadows; the only illumination came from the row of uncurtained windows between the beds, stained dim and dreary by the sudden cloud cover. The air smelled of antiseptic cream and harsh soap. The reek of infection was gone.

Twil stared out of a window, up at the ‘sky’, then sighed. “Weather doesn’t know if it’s coming or going.”

Evelyn snorted. “It’s the dream. How many times do I have to explain?”

“Eh? How’d you figure that? What do you mean?”

Evelyn sighed. “We were triumphant, so the sun came out. But now we’re back down in the horror, quite literally. The weather has adjusted accordingly. Watch out if night starts to fall. That’s when the real monsters come out, though we haven’t seen one up close yet. Except for Raine. She killed one. Didn’t you?”

Raine didn’t answer.

Twil tutted. “I hate that shit. Bad stuff happens in full sunlight too, you know. Isn’t this kinda like a bad cliché or something?”

“My fault,” I croaked, little more than a whisper, staring at the ceiling, my head numb with opiate painkillers. “I like clichés. Stormy nights. Dark and spooky. Woooooooooo. All that.”

Twil laughed softly. “Wow. She really is drugged to the gills. You okay, Big H?”

“No,” I croaked.

Raine still said nothing, munching through her bag of crisps without much expression on her face. She stared at me, as if thinking holes straight through me. I stared back, but she didn’t even smile.

“Raine?” I croaked. She didn’t respond. Perhaps my voice was too weak.

Evelyn said, “I hope there aren’t any further shifts in tone and genre. You do realise that I haven’t taken a piss the whole last two days?”

Twil blinked several times, then blushed faintly. “E-Evee? What are you—”

“Don’t make it weird, Twil,” she snapped. “It just occurred to me, after drinking that water. I haven’t needed to use the toilet since Heather woke me up, which must be near twenty four hours now. I still don’t need to. Whatever patterns the dream is following, our realistic bodily functions are not part of it. Pray that hasn’t just changed, or one of you is going to have to lift me out of this chair so I can take a shit.”

“No problem,” Twil said. “Whatever you need.”

Evelyn snorted. “As if. I’m being rhetorical.”

Twil chewed on her tongue, then shrugged. “I guess Heather doesn’t exactly play a lot of survival games?”

Evelyn reached over and patted my arm with sudden affection. “Yes, we should be thankful she doesn’t have a Minecraft addiction.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I croaked. “It’s all very esoteric.”

“Good,” Evelyn said, surprisingly gentle. “Let’s keep it that way, for now. You just rest, Heather. Stop trying to think.”

“No thinky,” I murmured. My eyelids were so heavy. “Head empty.”

The room lapsed into silence. Cloud shadows drifted across the peeling paint of the walls and the undressed bare floorboards, brushing Raine’s naked, filthy feet. Twil let out a series of long sighs, rubbing her eyes and running her hands through her hair, then poking at her recently acquired wolf-ears. Evelyn leaned to one side to peer at the Praem plushie, then shrugged and left her where she was, tucked into the crook of my arm. Tiny sounds filtered through from the rest of the hospital building — snapping footsteps, muffled voices, the gentle ticking and banging of old radiator pipes.

And Raine just stared at me, unsmiling, so very still. Something was wrong with her, I could tell that much, but I was too high on painkillers to put it into words.

“Sooooooooooo,” Twil said eventually. “What now? We gonna just rest up here for a bit? What’s our next move?”

I shook my head — well, I rolled it back and forth against the pillow. “We have to get to Zheng,” I croaked. “We can’t wait. Have to free her next.”

“No,” Raine said, so gentle and soft, too soft, like a predatory big cat rising from repose. “You have to rest, Heather.”

“I just need a— a— a lemon or two,” I said, trying to sit up. Evee put out one hand to encourage me to remain lying down, but I pushed past her and levered myself upright, supporting myself on my hands. My head throbbed with a rush of blood; my vision swirled, then cleared. I stared down at the bandage around my left leg. “A lemon, right. Or a … fish and chips? Or a bottle of soy sauce. I could just drink it neat—”

“I can head out and try to secure some more food,” Raine said, still not smiling. “But you’re not going anywhere.”

Screwing up my eyes did not help the fuzzy feeling inside my head, nor slow the throb of dull pain still radiating upward from my leg, but it did allow me to gather my thoughts. I opened my eyes again and squinted at Raine.

She was staring back, eyes propped just slightly too wide, no smile upon her lips.

I said: “Raine, we have to go get Zheng. Me and you, together—”

“No, you have to rest,” Raine said.

I shook my head. “That doesn’t matter. This isn’t real, it’s all a dream. The sooner we wake Zheng—”

“You’re stuffed with painkillers and you cannot walk on that leg,” Raine said. “You won’t even be able to get there.”

“Then carry me!” I snapped. “Carry me on your back and—”

“You need to rest.”

Twil stood up and held out both hands. “Woah, woah, you two, fucking hell. I’ve never heard you argue like this before. Big H, you are hopped all the way up on a big fat dose of morphine. So chill, ‘kay?”

Raine said: “That’s exactly what I was—”

“And you,” Twil said, rounding on her. “You are acting freaky as fuck. Snap out of this robot mode or whatever it is. You’re giving me the heebie-jeebies, Raine.”

Raine turned her expressionless stare on Twil. “Am I?”

“Fuck!” Twil snapped. Her tail curled straight upward, standing along with her wolfish ears. She bared her teeth and flexed her fingers like claws. A growl rose in her throat. “Stop it!”

“Stop what?” said Raine.

“Heather,” Twil said between gritted teeth. “You gotta tell your girlfriend to stop acting like this or I’m gonna lose my shit.”

“I … I don’t know what she’s doing,” I said slowly. My skin broke out with a fresh wave of cold sweat. “I’ve never seen her like this before. Raine? Raine, what’s wrong? Raine, you’ve been a very good girl. I don’t understand what’s wrong.”

Raine turned back to me and broke into a grin — wide and sharp and manic, a burning light behind her eyes. I flinched; there was my Raine, but raw and unfiltered, like her confidence and charm was a switch she had flicked.

“Sorry, sweet thing,” she purred. “Didn’t mean to freak you out. Nothing’s wrong. I just don’t want you to burst all those stitches we just did.”

Twil and I exchanged a worried glance. Twil swallowed. I tried not to shake and shiver. “Uh … R-Raine, are you feeling okay?”

“Never better. Now you’re safe.”

Evelyn cleared her throat. “She’s regressing.”

Raine turned her worryingly tight grin on Evee instead. Evelyn did not flinch or balk or turn pale, she just sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Toward what, my darkling lady?” Raine asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Twil echoed. “What do you mean, regressing to what?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Evelyn said, voice tight, holding Raine’s manic gaze. “Regressing further toward how she used to be, how she was long before she met either of you.”

“Evee,” I croaked. “Didn’t you say Raine is already acting like when you first met her?”

Evelyn spoke slowly, measuring each word. “Partially. Since I woke up, she’s been rougher, yes, but not all the way there. She’s been acting similar to how she did when we were teenagers, that’s correct. But this … this is more like Raine at our actual first meeting. The first few days or weeks. She’s regressing toward that. I think. I can’t be certain.”

“And what was she like?” I said. “Back then?”

“Feral.”

Twil snorted. “She’s pretty damn fucking feral already! You mean this gets worse? Why the fuck is she acting like this?”

“I don’t know,” Evelyn said, low and tight. “Perhaps because we adjusted the nature and tone of the dream. Or perhaps because Heather got wounded and needed real treatment. Remember, Raine is technically not awake, not like the three of us. She’s still dreaming. She’s just dreaming usefully.”

Raine chuckled. “I feel wide awake, my darlings.”

“This doesn’t change that we need to go help Zheng,” I said.

Raine’s gaze flickered back to me. Her smile vanished. She pointed a finger. “No. You’re hurt. You lie right there and rest—”

“Raine, please—”

“You lie there,” Raine repeated. “And rest.”

“ … Raine, are you … ?”

Raine blinked rapidly. She was shaking, as if poised on the verge of screaming rage or wild weeping. Her grin jumped back onto her face, splitting her mouth wide, then flickered off again. She blinked more and looked away, swallowing hard.

Twil said: “Is she waking up? Yo, Raine? You waking up?”

“I don’t think so,” Evelyn grunted. “I think she’s stuck.”

“Raine?” I said gently. “Raine, what’s wrong? Try to put it into words? Please, for me. Be a good girl, for me, please?”

Raine’s lips started to move, but her muttering was so quiet that it did not reach my ears. She shook her head gently, then hard, jerking it from side to side. A whisper scratched at her throat. The room fell silent as her voice rose.

“Can’t let you get hurt. Can’t let you get hurt. Can’t let you get hurt,” she kept saying, over and over. “Can’t let you get—”

Raine cut off all of a sudden and walked over to the sink in the corner. She grabbed one of the glasses we’d been using, filled it with cold water, and dumped the contents over her own head. She set the glass back down with a clack and just stood there, water dripping off her face and sticking her hair to her scalp. Then she wiped her eyes and mouth with her hands and walked back to the foot of the bed. She swept her hair back and rubbed her damp face on her arms.

Then she smiled at me, almost back to normal. “I’ll go.”

“ … Raine?”

“Fucking hell,” Evelyn hissed. “She may have been waking up, in fact, and she just bloody well suppressed it! Raine, for fuck’s sake!”

Raine smiled wider and held out both hands. “It’s cool. Heather’s correct, we can’t delay because of her leg wound. We need to be on point and ready for Lozzie’s next riot. But Heather can’t walk, not yet. I might be able to carry her, but that’s too risky with the heightened security. So I’ll go alone. I’ll take the meat to Zheng myself, make sure she eats it all, and do what I can to free her.”

“Uh, um.” I hesitated. “Raine, I really think it has to be both of us. Zheng and you have a special relationship, and she loves me too. She probably needs both of us to—”

Raine held up a gentle hand. “That’s not possible right now. This is the next best option. And you’re right, sweet thing, we have to keep moving.”

“Raine, it has to be like it was in reality! That’s the only way this makes sense.”

Evelyn broke in: “Actually I think this is already a little bit too much like reality.”

“Ah?”

Evelyn clicked her fingers to catch my attention. I met her eyes and found her looking rather unimpressed. “Self-sacrifice,” she grunted. “You’re always so bloody terrible about that, Heather. And now you’re trying to do it again. You promised, so many times, no more of this. If you keep pushing, there’s no telling what that stubborn impulse might do to the dream. No needless self-sacrifice.”

“You … you think it’s right to let Raine do this alone?” I asked. “She’s all messed up!”

“And she’s right,” Evelyn grunted, then sighed. “She’s the only one who can go do this alone. You or I can’t make it up there. Twil isn’t as stealthy, so she needs to stay and protect us.” Twil muttered a gently offended little ‘hey’, but Evee ignored it. “It only makes sense, Heather. Raine and Zheng, they have their … thing, together, so she should try this. She’s right.”

Raine stared at me, waiting for an answer. Her eyes began to tighten, her smile slipping into that too-sharp, too-wide, manic grin once again, the feral look creeping over her as she regressed toward something she did not wish to be anymore.

“You can’t do everything alone,” Raine said. “This is your dream, but we’re all in it too, right? You don’t do everything alone. Can’t do everything alone. Can’t let you lose that leg to gangrene or infection. You gotta rest. You gotta take care of yourself. Gotta let somebody else shoulder the burden.”

Twil sighed. “She’s got a point, Big H, even though this is pretty weird. This ain’t just all about you. Let her try for Zheng, hey? What harm can it do?”

I swallowed and nodded. “All right. All right then. I don’t like it, but okay, Raine. I’ll rest. You take the meat to Zheng.”

Raine nodded, then leaned forward, cupped the back of my skull, and kissed my forehead. Then, despite the presence of Evelyn and Twil, she kissed me on the lips too, hard and fleeting.

“Love you, sweet thing.”

“I love you too,” I said. “Good … good girl.”

Raine prepared for her solo mission. I told her the location of Zheng’s residential room as best I could, hoping that the logic of the dream would guide her feet. She took her machete and slung the towel full of body parts over her shoulders again. But then she paused and removed Horror’s towel-wrapped head. She placed it on the next bed over from mine, upright, gagged and bound and sealed up.

Twil wrinkled her nose in disgust. “She’s staying with us?” 

Raine nodded, straightening up and stretching her limbs one by one to limber up her muscles. “Gotta travel as light as I can. Sneaking missions by daylight are a lot harder. I can deal with a nurse or two, but one scream or one runner would bring the whole place down on me, so I gotta do this without being seen. Light and fast, in and out, quick as I can.” She nodded at the towel-wrapped ball on the bed. “Plus she might try to mess with me. Nah, she’s gotta stay here. Leave her wrapped up, yeah?”

Twil snorted. “Nah, I thought I’d play footy with her. Course we’re gonna leave her wrapped up, shit!”

“You be careful, Raine,” Evelyn snapped. “We lose you now, we’re behind again. Don’t you screw up.”

“Same to you three,” Raine said. She nodded at us as she stepped away from the beds. “Keep the Fadestone ready to go, stay close to each other. Twil, you shove that filing cabinet back into position as soon as I’m gone. I’ll move as fast as I can. If the meat doesn’t work, I’ll try to pick Zheng up and carry her back here. Sounds good?”

“Sounds good,” I croaked. “Take care, Raine.”

She shot me a wink and a final grin. “I will, sweet thing. You rest that leg. Love you.”

“What if you don’t make it back?” Evelyn asked. “If we make it through the night here and you haven’t returned, we’ll have to keep going. Heather’s right about that.”

Raine winked for her too. “Carry on without me for a bit. I’ll find you again. Ain’t no cell on earth can hold me for long.”

“We aren’t on earth,” Evelyn grunted.

“Exactly.”

Twil followed Raine over to the door and prepared to pull the filing cabinet aside. Just before she did, Raine reached out and grabbed the loose collar of Twil’s open shirt, pulling her around so they were face to face.

Twil spluttered. “H-hey, yo, Raine, what—”

“I am trusting you to look after these two,” Raine said, stony-faced, back behind her unsmiling mask.

“Yeah, yeah, of course I will, what are you—”

Raine shook her head. “That means you listen out. You stay alert. You don’t charge into a fight. You stay here, you stay with them. If you have to sleep here, you stand watch. If the worst happens, you fight so they can hide. Understand?”

Twil stopped struggling and looked Raine right in the eyes. “‘Course I do. That’s two of my best friends over there.” Twil’s eyes flickered to Evelyn. “And maybe something else, too.”

Raine smiled, all warm again, suddenly switched back on. “Good. Let’s go, wolfie. Lock the door behind me.”

Filing cabinet squeaked aside; door lock opened with a soft click. The door itself swung just wide enough for a single furtive exit. Raine paused to check left and right, then she was gone, padding off down the corridor at speed, racing away from our hidden refuge.

All I could think was that we’d done this before, back in the locker room. Raine would not stay lucky forever.

Twil got the door locked and barricaded again, then walked back over to the bed. She looked a little sheepish, tail tucked low, ears flat.

“So, uh, what now?” she asked.

Evelyn sighed and glanced at me. “Heather, for pity’s sake, lie the hell back down.”

I did as I was told, sinking back into the bed.

The three of us — four, if one counted Praem tucked into the crook of my arm — took Raine’s sagely advice and stayed close together, well within arm’s reach, lest a sudden assault by nurses or Knights seek to breach the barred door. Evelyn stayed right beside me, huddled down in her wheelchair, Fadestone in one hand, the other hand free to reach up and touch me at a moment’s notice. Twil grabbed the chair from behind the single desk and joined us, knee-to-knee with Evelyn. Twil did what she could to make me comfortable; she pulled the sides of my yellow blanket around my front and tucked me in, to keep me warm, to cover my bandaged leg with the physical manifestation of Sevens’ affection.

“I shouldn’t be here,” I croaked. “I should be helping. Should be helping. This is the dream, trying to slow me down. I was so stupid, shouldn’t have gotten hurt … ”

“You got that wound saving me,” said Evelyn. “Was that worth the pain?”

“ … what?”

“Was saving me worth the pain?”

“ … of course. Of course.”

“Well, there you go then,” she said as if that was the end of the subject. “You’ve already helped. Now try to relax. In four hours you can have a second dose of morphine, but not before.”

For a long time I drifted on the edge of consciousness, floating on the cushion of opiates in my blood, kept from true sleep by the insistent throbbing pain in my shin. I stared up at the ceiling, watching the dirty white surface darken toward dusk. Twil and Evelyn carried on a whispered conversation at my bedside, but I only caught snatches of their words, dipping in and out of the oblivious haze of slumber.

“—you still look great, you know? Even if you’re all messed up by this bullshit dream or whatever, you look—”

“Oh do shut up, Twil. I look like a mummified frog and I know it.”

“You look beautiful.”

“ … ”

“You always look beautiful.”

“Shut up. And this is not the time.”

…

“—dream is based on Heather’s experiences at Cygnet Hospital, when she was little. That much is blindingly obvious, but it’s also the Eye, at the same time, like two metaphors intertwined with each other. This whole place is a mess, I can’t even begin to pick it apart. We need a shrink who is also a mage.”

“And what about her over there?”

“Who?”

“Horror, in her towel. You buy Heather’s theory that she’s part of the Eye too?”

“Somewhat. But she’s more Heather’s fears than the Eye’s ego or whatever. I’m very worried by the fact she’s still alive and talking, even if she is just a head.”

“Ah? But she’s harmless. Unless she goes all body horror on us, like you said.”

“Yes, yes, but what if she really does represent Heather’s trauma? What does that tell us?”

“ … ah. Oh shit. Yeah, like, that’s bad.”

“Indeed.”

…

“—wish we knew where the Cattys were. Can you imagine them busting through all this? I’d ride one into battle, no shit, that would be the coolest thing ever.”

“If wishes were fishes, et cetera, et cetera. I don’t actually recall how that saying goes, but you get the point.”

“Did you just say ‘et cetera’ out loud?”

“I did. What of it?”

“ … ”

“What, Twil?”

“You’re so fucking cute.”

A sigh. “I don’t appreciate these attempts to flirt—”

“We’re in like, life-or-death peril, right? When else am I going to flirt with you? Come on.”

“Twil—”

“It’s not like I’m trying to bang you. Heather’s out cold right here. There’s a disembodied head over there. We’re in some real Scooby Doo surrounds. Not exactly sexy time. But hey, if you—”

“Miss Twilight Hopton.”

“Oof! Come on, Evee, don’t call me that, that’s worse than ‘Twillamina’.”

“Really?”

“Well, no, it’s actually much funnier. But still.”

A short silence, broken by audible smiles.

“I do … I do … love you, Twil.” A huff, the loudest sound I’d heard so far. “But you and I are so incompatible it’s not even funny.”

“We don’t have to be like girlfriend and girlfriend or anything.”

“No, I suppose we don’t.”

“ … would you like that, though? Going steady, nice and stable, all that?”

A shrug, heard in the clicking and grinding of the bones in Evelyn’s shoulders and back.

Twil again: “What do you think of me, really? Come on, no filter. Just say it.”

“I already told you, don’t make me repeat it. Or are you pretending not to have heard?”

“Nah, nah. Not like, how you feel about me. What do you think of me? Come on, Saye.” A grin crossed Twil’s words. “Hit me as hard as you can.”

Evelyn leaned forward in her chair — I could hear the seat of the wheelchair creaking — and hissed, low and sharp with a teasing grin in her voice that I’d never heard from her before, a side of Evelyn that was not mine to see, but which only Twil could draw out.

“You’re hot shit and you know it,” Evelyn whispered. “I want to put a collar around your neck and force your head between my thighs with a yank on your leash, but I’m afraid you’ll bite.”

Another creak — Evelyn leaning back.

Twil swallowed, dry and tight, then cleared her throat. “Uh … o-okay.”

“You did ask.”

“I did, but … okay then.”

…

After that, I finally drifted too deep beyond the wall of sleep. If Twil and Evelyn flirted further, I did not hear them. I heard only the throb of blood in my own ears, backed by the ticking and tingling of pain deep down in my left shin, ebbing down and down and down, into the darkness of my tender healing flesh.

When I awoke into a dream within the dream, the pain was gone.

The infirmary had fallen into evening shadows, deep and heavy, clustered up in the corners of the dirty ceiling. I lay on my back, on the bed, staring upward at those shadows, wishing they would descend to lull me back to true sleep. A gentle scratching sound whispered at the edge of my hearing, punctuated by little tick-tap-tick-tap noises, in between the scratchy motion of chalk on a board.

I knew I must be dreaming, because the pain was gone. Surely I was overdue for my next dose of morphine. Nothing seemed to matter very much. All emotion, all worry, all concerns had fled. I was dreaming. Dreams were safe.

But curiosity lingered. What was that sound, the scratching and the tapping?

I turned my head on the pillow. Evelyn and Twil had fallen asleep in their respective chairs, holding hands. Evelyn looked like a comfy little sprite, tucked up inside her grey dressing gown. Twil’s head had nodded onto her chest. She’d finally buttoned up her shirt again. Perhaps she was cold. The door was still barricaded. Raine had not yet returned.

A tall figure stood behind the desk, facing away from me.

She had long blonde hair, hanging down over the back of a white laboratory coat. A towel-wrapped bundle hung from her left hand — Horror’s head. Her right hand worked with chalk upon a blackboard, which had not been present in the waking world. She had covered half the board in a single long equation, sprawling forth from a particularly difficult knot of numbers in the top left of the blackboard. She was still writing, still adding figures to the mathematics, scratching and clicking with a stick of raw white chalk.

The Governor of Cygnet Asylum had come to visit.

“Hello?” I croaked.

The Governor’s hand paused. Her head twitched, but she did not turn to look.

“Crutch,” she said. “Next to your bed.”

I started to sit up; somebody had helpfully propped a plastic and metal crutch against the side of my bed, so I would be able to walk on my wounded leg. As I sat up, I almost knocked an object out of the crook of my arm — the Praem plushie!

I caught Praem before I could so rudely knock her to the floor, then cradled her in both hands, smiling down at her funny flat eyes and the straight line of her mouth, dim and dark in the evening shadows. I finished sitting up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, ready to reach for my new-found crutch.

Praem stared; I stared back. Her flat eyes insisted that I pay attention.

Pay attention, Heather.

Lucidity returned, rushing into my head as the adrenaline rushed into my veins. My left shin throbbed with renewed pain. I swallowed a gasp, because I really did need that second dose of morphine.

Scratch-tick-tap-scratch-tick-tap; the Governor returned to her equation, writing upon the board in clean white chalk.

This was no dream.