The Dream Sanctum: Beyond The End (16 page)

“Where’s our ship?”

For a moment, Kwin looked stunned, almost afraid, then she shook her
head.

“Of course. They would have been smart enough to remove our only method
of escape. It looks like we’re trapped here.”

“What do we do?” Lindsay asked quietly, still scanning the shore as
though expecting the ship to be hiding somewhere within reach.

“There’s only one thing we can do,” Kwin answered, and she looked
genuinely worried now. “We need to find it. Soon. Of course, that’s assuming
they didn’t destroy it.”

“I don’t think they’d do that,” Kai started, but Kwin interrupted.

“Don’t put it past them. They’re desperate to keep us here. I’m sure they
wouldn’t pass up an excuse for more firewood, much less all of Carpenter’s
handiwork. No, if the ship is gone, we will be left with no way of leaving.
With that in mind, if it is true that at some point we will not be able to wake
up, it is very likely we will have to say goodbye to the Dream Sanctum
forever.”

A
fter what Kwin said the
night before, Kai thoroughly enjoyed waking up the next morning. He couldn’t
remember ever being so happy to have escaped his dreams, not even after some of
his worst nightmares.

Upon waking, he decided to check his phone, more than sure that Kwin or
one of the others would already be setting up a meeting to discuss things. What
they had just discovered was one of the most important and chilling revelations
they’d had since finding out that the mirror world existed in the first place.
Therefore, he was puzzled when he glanced at his phone to find no messages at
all.

However, he didn’t have long to be puzzled. As he dressed, there was a
knock on his door, and his mother’s voice drifted through.

“Kai? There’s a man named Frederick here to see you. He says you and
Lindsay planned to go visit your friend Alastor again today?”

Kai paused.
Looks like we’ll be
meeting up after all
.

“Hurry and don’t keep him waiting, all right?” his mother continued. “If
nothing else, hurry up for my sake. I invited him inside and he’s eating all of
my pastries.”

Kai heard her turn back downstairs, then snickered. The crazy was finally
starting to infiltrate his home.

However, he thought, his mother might be pleased with that. She was often
more than willing to indulge his wishes, no matter what they were, if they involved
going out with friends. She had occasionally expressed her concern with his
introverted behavior, and he had tried and failed to explain to her that being
introverted was not the same as being antisocial. All the same, it presented
him with some unique opportunities, such as his mother’s nonchalance when a
strange man in a sleek car arrived out of the blue to take Kai to the mansion
of a person she had never met.

Kai dressed quickly, brushed his teeth, dragged a comb through his hair
and headed downstairs as he pulled on his coat. As he arrived in the front
hall, he heard the sounds of his mother attempting to make conversation with
the other person in the kitchen, a man with a nasally voice who sounded as
though his mouth were stuffed with more food than it could safely hold.
However, before he got far, he saw Lindsay sitting on the couch in the living
room.

“Lindsay, he got you already?” he asked, and she looked up with a jolt of
surprise.

“Oh! Yes. It was completely unexpected. He got here before I was even
awake. I had to make up something quick so my mom would let me go, but I’m
already regretting it.”

Kai chuckled and sat next to her, putting a comforting hand on her
shoulder.

“I know you want to go. If you didn’t make it, you wouldn’t get to see
Kwin and Alastor. This could be important, and we need you there.”

Lindsay nodded, then let out a deep sigh.

“I don’t mind being there! It’s
getting
there I don’t like.”

No sooner had she finished than Frederick came out of the kitchen, one
pastry in each hand and a few more sticking out of his coat pockets. Behind
him, Kai’s mother was staring at the back of his head with an expression that
Kai usually took to mean trouble was coming. Deciding they needed their driver
alive, he got to his feet immediately and took Lindsay’s hand.

“Ah, you’re ready. Good. We just need to stop to get your short friend
and then we can be on our way,” Frederick said.

Kai had to grin. Frederick reminded him of Hercules in that he was
somehow impervious to Kwin’s imposing demeanor.

A few minutes later they pulled into Kwin’s driveway. Kai was almost
certain they had broken a few records along the way; in addition, he had also
learned that it was possible to get from his house to Kwin’s before he had
finished putting on his seatbelt.

Kwin was already waiting outside, ready to go. She opened the car door
and climbed in quickly, nodding at Frederick, who didn’t need to be told twice.

“You all right?” Kai asked quietly. Kwin had a look of grim impatience on
her face, and again she looked exhausted. However, at Kai’s inquiry, she gave
him a small smile.

“I’m fine. Just tired and anxious to speak with Alastor. All will be well
once we get there, I’m sure.”

“Not sleeping well again?”

“It’s not that. Are you not feeling it yourself?”

Kai paused. Now he thought about it, he felt more tired than usual
lately, but he wasn’t sure why. For the past few nights he had been sleeping
fine, all things considered. Kwin nodded at his unspoken understanding.

“We’ll cover everything once we speak with Alastor.”

“You’re not mad at him, are you?” Lindsay asked suddenly. Kwin tilted her
head slightly, and Lindsay continued, “Well, you know… he didn’t help us get
you out of prison, so I wondered…”

“No, I’m not angry. Not at all. As I said before, Alastor has reasons for
what he does. However, we will need to update him on everything as soon as
possible. Our time is running out. I believe we are in more danger now than we
ever were facing down the Nightmares.”

Kai felt a chill run down his spine, but despite their requests for more
information, Kwin refused to say anything more until they reached the house.
The car screeched to a halt outside the front door, and Kai realized he had
been so preoccupied with his thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed the ride.

They wasted no time walking upstairs to where Alastor waited. But while
Kwin seemed anxious and impatient, Alastor greeted them as cheerfully as ever.
He opened his bedroom door with a smile and welcomed them in, hastily shoving
piles of clothes, books and scattered papers away to clear a space for them to
sit. Kai didn’t think it was possible, but even more books, notebooks and
papers lay strewn about the room, and he wondered what Alastor could have
possibly been doing.

“My room is also my office, as you can tell!” Alastor exclaimed. He threw
a few papers over his shoulder as he cleared a space on his desk, his back to
them. “Trust me, this is what it looks like after some extensive cleaning.
What’s important is that I know where everything is. Lindsay, I’ll need the
book that’s under your left foot.”

Lindsay leaned down and carefully picked up a thick book that looked as
though it might weigh half as much as her, then walked over and handed it to
him. He set it down with a thud that shook the desk, then sat down in his
swivel chair and turned to face them.

“Right, before we start, I want to hear everything that happened. I got
Kwin’s perspective, but as she was alone in a prison cell for most of it, it’s
not exactly a very detailed account.”

“Well, we came looking for Kwin,” Kai started. “Our friends went in to
distract whoever might be in the way, and we were almost there when Devnon came
and asked us to come with him. He thought we were our copies, so we just played
along. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but he did say that after a
certain amount of time we won’t be able to wake up anymore, and when that
happens he’ll burn us alive.”

“He was worried that people would want to run away with us when they
found out where we came from, and he was really angry,” Lindsay continued
softly. “He said he wasn’t a bad man, but that if too many people left,
everything would fall apart.”

Alastor’s expression became thoughtful, though he didn’t reply. Kwin took
this chance to speak, and her voice was quiet.

“As of now, we have two main issues. The first one is obvious: if what he
says is true, then at some point we will lose the ability to wake up. The
second is our sudden, unfortunate mortality. I believe the two are related,
though I’m not quite sure how. I was hoping you could shed more light on the
matter.”

“Was that it?” Alastor asked, looking disappointed. “Well, as you can
probably tell, I’ve been studying. I believe we’re becoming more attached to
the world the longer we stay there. Why the symptoms are what they are, though,
I can’t say. It seems strange that we would be affected in the real world, and
Lindsay’s injury shouldn’t have happened. However, before we think on that too
much, there is something more dangerous we need to deal with. It’s something
that is affecting us right now, even though we’re outside the dream world.”

“I was thinking that could also be a clue to our predicament, but again,
I’m not sure how,” Kwin took over, and she looked frustrated at her own lack of
knowledge. Kai and Lindsay looked at her blankly, and she continued, “I’m not
sure if you two are aware of this, but humans need to sleep. It isn’t just to
keep us from being tired; it’s to keep us alive. We also need to dream. Dreams
are a rarely explored part of the mind, but some studies show that dreaming
isn’t just for fun, but necessary for our mental health.”

“I’m guessing this has to do with the Sanctum, right?” Lindsay asked.

“Not our Sanctum.
Their
Sanctum. Because we retain our consciousness completely inside the Sanctum, I
studied the effects of prolonged used for a while to make sure it wasn’t
causing any problems. Luckily it appears that our Sanctum registers in our mind
as a normal dream, so we don’t suffer any adverse health effects. However… this
does not appear to be the case in the other world.”

“Have either of you felt tired? More tired than you’d usually be with the
amount of sleep that you’re getting?” Alastor asked.

“Yes!” Lindsay exclaimed. “It’s annoying. I’ve been nodding off a lot
lately, even when it’s really early.”

“I thought so. I have a kind of crazy theory about this mirror world,”
Alastor mused, a hand to his chin. “For whatever reason, this copy world is
acting like the real world. I’m not sure why yet, that’s deeper stuff. But
we’re seeing the effects: we don’t have our powers, and apparently we can get
hurt.”

“I’m confused what all of this means, though,” Kai said.

“Well, if we’re in a dream world that acts like the real world, our mind
won’t know we’re actually asleep,” Kwin explained. “As long as we’re there,
we’re not getting any of the benefits of sleep. This means that, in essence,
we’ve all been awake for days.”

“Add to that our lack of powers, we have no way to escape,” Alastor added.
“If we can’t escape, we’ll continue to suffer these effects. And, at some
point, apparently we’ll lose our ability to wake up, meaning we’ll be at
Devnon’s mercy.”

“What happens if we don’t sleep?” Lindsay asked worriedly.

“The effects of sleep deprivation come quickly,” Kwin explained. “Our
short-term memory will start to get worse and our cortisol levels will elevate,
causing us to become irritable. At a certain point we will start to experience
visual and auditory hallucinations. There’s more, but I very much hope to have
reached a solution before we reach that point.”

“So what do we do?” Kai asked urgently.

“We have two options and two options only,” Alastor replied quietly. “We
either find a way to escape, and quickly, or we say goodbye to the Sanctum.
Forever.”

Kai didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t that. Try as he
might, he couldn’t find any way around Alastor’s logic. He wanted desperately
to find an alternative, but they were stuck. Even though they had successfully
freed Kwin, they still had no definite means of escape – and by now everyone in
the mirror world was likely looking for them.

“There’s another problem we have to consider,” Alastor continued. “While
we know that at some point we won’t be able to wake up, we don’t know
when
that will happen. It could be in a
week, or it could be tonight. Whatever happens, if we’re to enter the Sanctum
tonight, we need to have a guaranteed method for escape. If we don’t escape,
and we find we can’t wake up, that could be it for us.”

“I still don’t understand how we can get hurt, though,” Lindsay said,
touching her arm where the knife had struck her. “Even if it acts like the real
world, it isn’t… it just isn’t.”

“It’s also not our dream world, either,” Kwin sighed. “For them, it is
the real world. No powers, no limitless supplies, none of that. It would make
sense that if we were to stay there, it would eventually treat us the same way
it does them.”

“Which brings up a troubling hypothesis, as though we don’t have enough
to worry about,” Alastor said, standing up and beginning to pace. “If we begin
to live like them, it means we can die like them as well. If we can become so
attached to that world that we would die in real life from lack of sleep, it
stands to reason that if we were killed in that world, we would die here as
well.”

Kai’s blood ran cold at his words. He had read theories that the reason
you always wake up right before you die in your dreams is because dying in your
dreams meant dying in real life, but he had always dismissed them as baseless
paranoia. Now, however, the problem seemed all too real.

“Now I must pose the inevitable question,” Alastor finished quietly,
looking at his friends. “Do we try to escape and risk injury and death? Or do
we play it safe and never return, but lose access to the Sanctum forever?”

“How can you ask that?” Lindsay asked quietly, her voice shaking. “How
can you be so calm about saying that if I go to bed tonight I might never wake
up again?”