Zachary Rawlins - The Academy

“You seem to really… like candy,” Alex observed, lamely casting about for a topic, any topic.

Eerie seemed to give the question serious consideration, nibbling on a Red Vine, before nodding gravely.

“But, I have been practicing eating other food. Actually,” she added, looking thoughtful, “that’s why I was in the cafeteria the other day. I don’t usually go there.”

Alex felt mildly encouraged. He was starting to get the hang of her bizarre intonation, and her last statement had even referenced what he had wanted to talk about. This, Alex thought proudly, was communication.

All of a sudden, then, Eerie was standing very, very close to him, on her tip toes so that her eyes would be level with his. Her pupils were black and glittering and huge, and he could see a ghost image of himself reflected in them, looking far more nervous and less cool than he would have liked.

“You’ve only just been activated. But it’s already started, hasn’t it?”

Alex backed away a step, and then shook his head.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Eerie took another step forward, dropping the paper bag into her knitting basket and then clutching the basket handle in both hands.

“Don’t you remember, Alex? Hasn’t this happened already?” Eerie voice was distant, her eyes wet and unfocused. “Are you dreaming now, Alex? Isn’t it hard to tell?”

Alex shook his head, utterly dumbfounded. He had no idea what the girl was talking about, but at the same time, it made him terribly nervous. Something he had dreamed, maybe, a strange sense of deja vu… he wasn’t certain. He was, however, certain that Eerie was standing too close to him, and he half-stumbled a few steps away.

“I don’t understand.” Alex felt hot, almost feverish. There was a strange buzzing sound that seemed to emanate from the back of his neck, like static from the base of his skull. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

“Can you feel it already?” Eerie asked softly. “The slippage. Dislocation. Oh, so very lonely. Haven’t I already told you my secret?”

Eerie’s eyes were half-closed now, and her arms were wrapped around herself tightly. She stumbled forward, dazed, almost colliding with Alex in the process. He caught her awkwardly, trying to push her away and stand her upright at the same time, without much success in either endeavor.

“The Church of Sleep, Alex.” Her melodic voice was barely a whisper, and he had to strain to hear it. “Surely you’ve noticed. Don’t you fall asleep earlier and earlier, since you came here? Can you remember going to bed when you wake up?”

“Yes,” Alex replied, his throat hoarse, “and no.”

Eerie clutched herself even tighter, the folds of sweater pulled tight across her chest in a way that he found quite distracting. Her skin was flushed, and icy cold where Alex’s fingers brushed against her shoulder. She pressed her forehead against his chest, and he was afraid that she really would fall over, she seemed so out of it.

“And when you wake up, sometimes, and you feel like someone is there with you.” Eerie’s voice had lost all of its interrogative qualities, replaced with something that sounded more like a bald statement of fact. “And sometimes, when you wake up, you know things that you didn’t know before. But you’ll never remember another dream, now that you’ve come here.”

“H-How,” Alex stammered, “how is it that you know these things?”

“The Church of Sleep, Alex.” Eerie looked at him as if she had answered his question in full. “When we sleep, we are programmed. What else could sleep be? But who does the programming, and to what end? To where do they drive us?”

Li put his hand on Alex’s shoulder, and the strange atmosphere immediately deflated, Eerie retreating back from him hurriedly, as if she’d only now realized how close they were. Alex felt confusion as well as a profound sense of relief.

“Try not to overwhelm Alex,” Li said to Eerie, patting her on the head affectionately. “You can’t try and tell him everything all at once.”

Eerie’s shoulders slumped and she looked distraught, and for some reason, Alex immediately felt guilty. What was it with this girl? He didn’t understand anything. But his head was starting to clear, and whatever strange effect the girl’s words had on him was already fading.

“I’m sorry, Alex.” Eerie looked at him, unaccountably sad. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

“Everything is fine, Eerie,” Alex insisted. “Nothing bad happened.”

Eerie looked one way, then the other, and then leaned in close so that Alex could hear her whisper.

“I’ll help you out with something, then, to make up for it.” Alex felt a bit nervous with her standing this close, but this time he didn’t pull away. Whatever it was Eerie had to say, he was sure he wanted to hear it. “Walking in the snow, under a grey sky, you will wonder if it is okay. I won’t be able to say it, then, because I’m shy. Alex,” Eerie whispered, her lips so close to his ear that he could feel her breathe. “It’s okay with me.”

Eerie straightened back up, and then smiled at him. Her oval face lit up when she smiled, and he was struck by how familiar she looked, how nostalgic, in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. Alex could only stare at her and wonder what any of what she said had meant.

Alex found himself shaking his head, trying to clear it. Had this all happened before? Why was it that he kept thinking about a cloud of golden butterflies, wheeling and diving in rough unison under the brilliant afternoon sunlight near Half Moon Bay? Had he ever actually seen that? Whose memory was it?

“Something bad is coming, Alex. Right now. It’ll hurt a bit,” Eerie said sadly, kicking at the ground absently, “but you’ll have to make it through without my help. Don’t worry, though,” she said reassuringly. “I know you will.”

Where Eerie had stood, there was only a cloud of golden smoke, dissipating in the wind, smelling delicately of sandalwood. Alex turned back toward the rest of the party, wanting to ask someone what had happened.

The party had become a still-life portrait. Sarah was frozen in midsentence, caught up in conversation with Renton and a black girl he didn’t recognize. Li was right behind them, along with Vivik, Todd, and two other guys that Alex vaguely remembered from class. All of them were rigid, silent, flesh-colored statues arrayed across the jumbled surface of the roof. Alex took a step closer, and realized that even the beer in the bottle Renton was drinking from was inert, held in perfect suspension in the neck of the bottle.

He heard a strange, metallic sound from behind him and spun around. Hovering in front of him, perhaps twenty feet above the roof of the building, a thing that he could not stand to look at directly loomed over him with its many terrible eyes, and screamed.

The scream was not like anything Alex had heard before. It was barely even a sound. He felt revulsion from the very depths of his being, and was immediately sick, coughing up bile as his stomach contracted and heaved. The sound the creature made was like a terrible reverberating siren, endless and punishing, battering his mind and thoughts into fragments. His chest and abdomen were racked with spasms, and his legs twisted and collapsed underneath him. He spilled onto his contorted back, unable to move, pinned down by the sheer horror of the thing, the noise, the horrible piercing shriek.

There was a sudden wetness on his face, and then he realized that his nose was bleeding. His vision blurred, and an impression of the thing seemed to be burned into his retina, so that every time he blinked he saw an afterimage of its horrible shape. The light refracted around it bizarrely, disorienting Alex, filling him with a formless and intolerable anxiety. The scream drilled into him, it ate away at everything around him, corroding reality. The world would not tolerate an existence like the one above him and in its desperate attempt to shed the abomination, the world itself was unraveling around him.