Free The Sleepwalkers by J. Gabriel Gates

much and was usually the first to give up in such contests. Billy and Christine were neck and neck, until Billy stepped on a sand burr and had to stop instantly and dig the painful little thorn out of his foot. But Christine finished like an Olympic champ. She caught up with Dave and jammed a stick in the spinning front wheel of the bike, sending the bike to the hardware shop for repairs and Dave, who soared impressively over the handlebars, straight home, crying (and, Caleb imagines, to the doctor’s office in Bristol). That was the Christine Caleb remembers. She loved dirt and boogers and singing and ice cream. She was loud and happy and fearless.
    The girl before him, though bearing a physical resemblance, will hardly raise her eyes to his.
    “I’ve missed you so much, Billy, you have no idea; it’s been terrible. But how have you been?” Her voice is a soft Southern drawl.
    “I’ve been pretty good. Just graduated, out in California,” he says.
    Christine nods. “I’d have graduated—near the top of my class too, if it wasn’t for the accident.”
    “I heard about that,” says Caleb. “Seems like you’re walking okay now, though.”
    Christine nods jerkily and adds a distant, “Yeah.”
    “So what’s with this place?” says Bean. “Are you okay here, or what?”
    Her eyes become wide and dark, and she shakes her head and keeps shaking it, to the point where she looks like some kind of machine gone haywire.
    “Why don’t you like it?” says Bean.
    Christine snaps an index finger to her lips and shushes him so fiercely that he’s instantly brought back to the assembly days again.
    The sensation is distasteful, and he shuts up.
    “So you had the accident,” says Caleb, trying to walk the minefield without getting shushed himself. “Why did you end up here?”
    “Mom sent me for the nightmares,” she says.
    “What were they about?”
    “Lots of things.”
    “Like what? Christine, you can tell me. It’s okay.”
    She performs an elaborate ritual of looking all around, up to the rafters, over both shoulders, and under the table. Satisfied no one is there to hear her, she whispers: “The devil is here.”
    “What do you mean? Where?” Caleb asks.
    “Sleeping. Close. In a cold, cold cave very close. And,” she says, pointing to her temple, “here.”
    “The devil is in your head?” Caleb asks with a glance to Bean.
    She nods.
    “What does he do in your head? Does he say things to you?” asks Caleb.
    “He put him there.” She points upward.
    “God put him there?”
    She shakes her head and mouths a word that looks like “arrester.”
    Caleb just nods, uncomprehending.
    Footsteps in the hallway, distant and hollow.
    Christine looks over her shoulder at the gaping arch of the doorway, then back at Caleb with fearful eyes. She jerks to her feet and clambers frantically around the table to a startled Caleb, cups her hand, and whispers in his ear:
    “They’re taking me back now, upstairs—you have to get me out, Billy, you have to, he’s going to cut me, she told me, he’s doing terrible things, I just don’t know, I just haven’t figured it out, but my dreams are gone out of my head and there’s something else there instead, something—they’re coming!”
    She stands upright. Caleb watches her chest move beneath her gown in shallow, quick breaths.
    “Do you have a pen?” she asks, staring at the door.
    “Uh . . . ” says Caleb, feeling his pockets.
    “Do you have a pen?” she hisses desperately.
    “Yeah,” Bean says, pulling one out and handing it to her.
    She grabs Caleb’s hand and yanks it toward her with surprising strength, bringing his palm close to her face.
    “Anna told me to tell you . . . ” she says, writing, pushing the pen into his hand so hard with her shaking fingers that Caleb is afraid she might actually puncture his skin. “The clocks are ticking.” She kisses his hand, glancing back at the door with a look of wild determination. The footsteps have