Free Before I Wake by Anne Frasier Page A

she told herself. Shut up! If you can’t say anything helpful, then just shut the fuck up .
    Right.
    So she would find those pesky kids, she told herself in a chipper voice. Silly, silly… kids …
    She was no better off than a child who was afraid of the—
    A door.
    Painted black.
    She’d seen that door before.
    She stared at it a long time. She tested the knob.
    Unlocked,
    She pushed it open.
    A couple of small safety lights illuminated the gray cement floor. Bulky shapes like coffins with legs were waiting.
    Not coffins.
    Float tanks.
    The name bobbed into her head.
    Some people called them isolation chambers.
    Like going back to the womb.
    Had Harley said that?
    The smell: metal corroded by salt.
    The rubber-lined tanks were filled with water and enough salt to float the occupant like a cork. No submersion. Just total darkness. With nothing but your own thoughts.
    And the voice of a madman…
    A jolt of consciousness brought her back to now, to the immediate time and place.
    For a moment, she’d backtracked. For a little while, she’d forgotten the mission and why she was there. Forgotten about Franny and Eli and the kid who’d run off. What was his name? Noah. That’s it. They were on a quest for Noah.
    She crossed the room. She headed for the nearest tank.
    They’d always reminded her of iron lungs used by TB patients. Metal, with gauges on the side. Temperature and heat gauges so the water wouldn’t get cold. A timer.
    That could be set for hours…
    It wasn’t so much what they looked like, but what they did.
    The suffocating isolation.
    Locked in a box.
    In the dark.
    No control, completely dependent on another person to let you out.
    And then the added element of water…
    It didn’t make it any better.
    She undid the latch and swung the lid open. Even though the tank was empty and dry, it still smelled like disinfectant and old rubber, and like somebody’s wet, cotton swimsuit that had been left in the corner.
    Her memory was fuzzy, but tactilely her fingers recalled the edge of the metal encasement. Her feet remembered the tread on the ladder. The temperature of the water. Almost as if someone had peed in it. And its buoyancy, the way the salt felt as it worked its way into every crack in your skin, every little abrasion. Burning like a vat of battery acid.
    When she was done, her fingers and toes would be wrinkled, her legs white and trembling. Like some pickled old woman, she used to think as she struggled from the container with the weakness of an astronaut back from six weeks in space.
    Arden slammed the lid.
    Float tanks were supposed to be good things. Hippies and New Agers loved them, claiming that an hour or two in the tank every few weeks made them better able to focus. That it cleared their heads of excess garbage.
    But then, most objects weren’t bad until the human component came into play. A stick was just a stick unless someone picked it up and beat the shit out of you with it.
    There were three tanks in the room. All identical, all industrial green.
    She approached the second tank. She opened it.
    Also dry.
    The third one was warm to the touch.
    The power of three…
    Two hours was the maximum amount of time a person should remain inside. Arden had the feeling she’d been locked in there for much, much longer.
    Somebody’s words came back to her. My head is getting fucked up .
    Was there water in the tank? They should be emptied every time they were used.
    Was the tank occupied? Right now?
    She wanted to run. She wanted to turn and get the hell out of there. But what if someone was trapped in the tank?
    Harley. Could it be Harley? Maybe he hadn’t really left. Maybe he’d been right here all along.
    She unlocked the lid.
    Snap. Snap . Two metal latches that reminded her of the latches on an old lunchbox you might find in a junk shop.
    She swung the lunchbox open.
    She recoiled. She blinked.
    A body.
    Nude.
    Male.
    Long, dark hair.
    She let out a gasp, dropped the lid, and jumped