The Sleep Experiment Page 22

  “Stop it, Brook!”

  “Let me go!”

  “Stop it!”

  He launched her sideways. She bounced off the cement wall and crumpled to her hands and knees. Towering over her, he gripped fistfuls of her blouse and hiked her to her feet.

  “Two choices, Brook,” he snarled, his face inches from hers. “You walk with me back to the basement, nice and civil, or I knock the sense out of you one more time and drag you by the hair. What’s it going to be?”

  ◆◆◆

  Guru was in the sleep laboratory seated on Chad’s bed with his head held in his hands when Dr. Wallis marched Brook through the door.

  “Thanks for the help, buddy,” Wallis remarked sardonically.

  Guru looked up. “I was waiting for you to return, professor. I wanted to tell you—you cannot do this.” His eyes flicked momentarily to Brook.

  “Can’t do what?” Wallis asked.

  Suddenly and comically, Guru produced a steak knife that had been stuck in the waistband of his pants against the small of his back. He held it before him in a shaking hand.

  “What the hell is that?” Wallis demanded.

  “Do not harm her, professor!”

  “Put the goddamn knife way.”

  “Let her go!”

  Dr. Wallis considered the situation, then said, “You’re fucking up, my man. But I’m going to offer you a way out.”

  Guru frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Kill her with that knife.”

  “What?”

  “She’s going to tell the police on us—”

  “I am not—”

  “Shut up, Brook!” Wallis shouted, glaring at her until she broke eye contact. To Guru: “She’s going to tell the police on us. Try to pin Chad and Sharon’s deaths on us.”

  “But we did nothing…”

  “That’s exactly it, buddy. We did nothing after Sharon died. We continued the experiment with Chad. The cops aren’t going to look too favorably on that. But when you kill Brook, we no longer have that problem. We’ll come back tomorrow and discover the three bodies.”

  “Three?”

  “Just like I told you earlier. The experiment concluded. We turned off the gas. We went out to celebrate. Now—here’s the new twist. Brook comes by to monitor the Australians for us while they sleep off the gas. They begin behaving oddly. She goes in to check on them and they kill her, then they kill themselves. It’s even better than the original story!”

  After this declaration, a momentous silence filled the sleep laboratory. Then Brook began to cry. Guru shook his head frantically.

  “No, professor,” he said, waving the knife. “We cannot! We cannot!”

  “We have no choice!”

  “That is murder!”

  “Jesus, Guru, do you want to go to prison?”

  “This cannot be happening. How did you talk me into any of this in the first place?”

  “I’ll hold her down. All you have to do is cover her face with a pillow. Then it’ll be over—”

  A bloodcurdling, filthy sound erupted from the other side of the sleep laboratory.

  Chad was sitting up.

  And laughing.

  ◆◆◆

  Dr. Roy Wallis stared at the faceless abomination in disbelief.

  It was impossible, utterly impossible, that Chad could be alive. I watched him die! I witnessed his brainwaves flatline!

  But there he was, sitting up.

  And laughing.

  At us?

  Chad pushed himself to his feet then, not in the lumbering manner of the rotting undead, but in the easy, graceful way of a virile twenty-two year old in perfect health.

  “What are you?” Wallis demanded as reality seemed to fade around him in a hot wave of melting light. “What are you?”

  “I. Think. You. Know.”

  Although Chad’s lipless mouth didn’t appear to move, the slow, mushy words most definitely originated from within the permanent rictus.

  Dr. Wallis shuffled backward a step. Guru and Brook seemed rooted to the floor in wide-eyed, slack-jawed shock.

  “What are you?” Wallis demanded once more, ashamed by the naked fear in his voice.

  “You,” the thing that was Chad rasped. “The deepest animal part of you…that you hide from…in your beds.” He stepped forward, sightless yet surefooted. “What you sedate into silence…every night.” Another step. “We are you.”

  Issuing a low, fragile whimper, Guru bolted for the door.

  The Chad-thing moved incredibly fast. It rushed across the room, crashing blindly into Sharon’s bed. It fell to its knees atop the mattress but regained its feet with barely a second lost.

  It reached Guru just as he opened the door, seizing the Indian from behind and throwing him back into the sleep laboratory as if he weighed little more than a rag doll.

  Guru must have soared a good fifteen feet through the air before crashing into the refrigerator. The steak knife clattered away from him across the floor.

  The Chad-thing cocked its head to one side.

  Listening, Wallis thought.

  Guru seemed to understand this too as he clamped his trembling mouth closed in a desperate effort to suppress any unwanted sounds.

  The Chad-thing moved toward the kitchen.

  It passed within a foot of Dr. Wallis, who summoned all his willpower to remain still and silent.

  Brook, he noticed, was a bloodless white statute.

  The Chad-thing continued moving toward the last sound it heard.

  Eyes bulging, Guru raised his hands in the slow, cautious manner of a man who had a gun pointed at him, then pressed them over his mouth.

  The Chad-thing cocked its head to the left, then to the right.

  In the face of the approaching nightmare, Guru’s bladder gave out. The groin area of his beige khaki trousers darkened, then the legs, and then urine was leaking out of his left cuff, spraying the floor.

  The Chad-thing zeroed in on the noise.

  It grabbed Guru by the head and lifted him high enough his feet dangled in the air.

  Guru was screaming now, and Dr. Wallis thought it was in terror before realizing it was in pain, for the Chad-thing had dug its thumbs into Guru’s eye sockets as if they were the finger holes of a ten-pin bowling ball.

  Blood gushed down the Indian’s cheeks like bright red tears.

  Backing away from the gruesome scene as silently as possible, Wallis slipped unnoticed from the sleep laboratory.

  ◆◆◆

  Brook had gotten her shit together enough to follow him, and together they hurried through the observation room. Yet as soon as Dr. Wallis opened the door to the hallway, he heard the Chad-thing wail, followed by a loud commotion.

  It had heard the door open.

  It was coming.

  “Run!” Brook shouted from behind him, shoving him through the door.

  Wallis ran for all he was worth. He didn’t hesitate when he came to the defunct elevator. He blew straight past it and made a hard right to reach the main staircase. Moments later he reached the ground floor. He shoved open one of the glass doors and shot through it. In his haste and panic, however, he tripped over his own feet and toppled forward, his knees and palms skinning the wet pavement before his body rolled twice. But then he was back on his feet, bee-lining toward his car, thanking God he had parked in one of the disability spots right out front of the building.

  Digging the remote key from his pocket, he jabbed the unlock button, whipped open the Audi’s driver’s side door, and slid inside. At the same time the passenger side door opened, and Brook jumped in next to him.

  Both doors thudded closed moments before the Chad-thing burst through them into the storming night.

  Dr. Wallis reached for the push-button ignition, but before he pressed it, Brook seized his wrist.

  She was shaking her head: no.

  Wallis looked past her to the Chad-thing.

  It was moving in their direction, but it seem
ed aimless now, as if it had lost their scent.

  Our sound, Wallis amended.

  He nodded so Brook knew he understood the meaning of her head shake, though he kept his hand hovering near the push-button, ready to press it in a heartbeat.

  ◆◆◆

  The Chad-thing banged blindly into the Audi. It raged against the roof with its fists, then began making its way around the trunk. It moved down Dr. Wallis’ side of the car and stopped next to his window. It stood there for a dreadfully long moment, silent, no doubt listening for movement with its super-human hearing, which seemed matched only by its super-human strength. Wallis didn’t understand the physiology behind these amazing feats, and he realized the Sleep Experiment had not reached its conclusion. In fact, it had only just begun.

  There’s so much to learn about these…demon souls.

  So much to learn about…us.

  The Demon Soul—for that was now how Dr. Wallis thought of the Chad-thing—turned quickly so it was facing Hearst Avenue.

  Wallis saw a flashlight beam arcing through the dark some fifty feet away.

  Brook saw it too and gasped.

  Hearing her, the creature turned back to the car, bending over to peer into the driver’s side window with its empty, bloody eye sockets.

  Wallis didn’t flex a muscle. Didn’t dare to breathe. A bead of perspiration slid down his brow and into his left eye, stinging it.

  He didn’t blink.

  “Roy?” the distant voice of Roger Henn called. “That you?”

  The Demon Soul vanished from the window, reappearing a moment later moving in a quick gait on all fours toward the police officer.

  “No!” Brook breathed, and tried to smack the car horn.

  Wallis grabbed her hand and said, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “It’s going to kill him!”

  “Better him than us!”

  “Roy, no! Enough!”

  When she couldn’t yank her hand free from his grip, she screamed.

  The Demon Soul, Dr. Wallis saw in alarm, stopped to look back at the car.

  “Hey, who’s there?” Roger Henn called, picking up his pace. The curtain of rain and inky darkness clearly obscured his vision, and he didn’t see the creature until he was nearly on top of it. Skidding to a stop, he said, “Whoa—oh boy! What?”

  Brook slapped the horn.

  The Demon Soul paid the sharp honk! no notice. It sprang toward Roger Henn. The big cop, nimble for his girth, dodged the attack, tearing his pistol free from its holster.

  “Freeze!” he shouted, aiming the weapon at the creature. Then, almost as an afterthought: “Police!”

  Thunder exploded. A detonation of lightning shredded the night sky, casting a stroboscopic effect over the unfolding action. The Demon Soul scrambled forward. Henn fired two shots at point-blank range, the twin rounds dropping the creature to the ground.

  Brook threw open her door. Wallis reached in front of her and pulled the door shut again.

  “Let me go!” she shrieked.

  “Quiet!” he hissed.

  “Roy?” Henn called, close enough to now recognize the Audi. “Roy?” he repeated, his voice several octaves higher than usual. “What the fuck is going on? What happened to this guy?”

  “Help!” Brook yelled. “Help me!”

  Wallis punched her in the mouth. She slumped against the door, blood leaking from her lips, but still holding onto consciousness. He punched her again, this time in the nose, and heard her nasal cartilage crunch. She went slack.

  ◆◆◆

  “Out of the car, Roy!” Police Officer Roger Henn shouted. “I can see you! Leave that woman alone!”

  But all Roger Henn could think was, I shot that man, I killed him, goddammit I killed him! And in concert with this, What happened to him? He had no face! It looked like it’d been chewed off!

  “Hear me, Roy? Come out of the car with your hands where I can—Jesus!”

  Henn stared dumbfounded as the guy with no face and two .40 caliber rounds in his chest pushed himself to his knees, then his feet.

  Henn raised the Glock 22, but the man’s Lazarus-act had filled his veins with ice and slowed his reflexes. Before he could squeeze off another round, the man was on him, tackling him to the ground, clawing and biting him with a strength and ferocity that defied comprehension.

  ◆◆◆

  Dr. Wallis jabbed the ignition button, put the Audi into reverse, and swung out of the parking spot. He shifted to first and stepped on the gas. His first thought was to speed away down Hearst Avenue. In the same instant, however, he changed his mind and swerved left toward the Demon Soul. Lit up in the stark white light of the LED headlights, it was hunched over Roger Henn’s unmoving body, throwing fistfuls of the cop’s innards into the air as one might throw rice or confetti at a wedding.

  Dr. Wallis realized he was screaming uncontrollably as the Audi barreled down on the monstrosity.

  Hearing the vehicle approach, it leapt to its feet.

  Wallis shut his eyes as the three-thousand pounds of German engineering plowed into the Demon Soul, launching it up the hood and over the roof.

  Slamming the brakes, he opened his eyes to find the windshield spider-webbed and bloodied.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the creature lying on the pavement awash in the hellish red glow of the car’s taillights.

  It twitched.

  Wallis shifted into reverse, floored the accelerator. The tires squealed.

  The Audi jumped, once, twice.

  Whud! Whud!

  Wallis stamped the brakes.

  Lying on the pavement in front of the car now, lit up once more in the headlights, the Demon Soul was a bloody lump of flesh and blood.

  A bloody unmoving lump of flesh and blood.

  ◆◆◆

  Brook stirred, and maybe moaned, but the darkness remained impenetrable, cloaking her thoughts in a black fog. Dimly she knew she was in the passenger’s seat of Roy’s car. Understood her life was in danger, from both Roy and the poor Australian, or whatever it was that the poor Australian had become. Yet she couldn’t seem to clear her mind or move her body…and then, from a place very far away, someone spoke her name.

  She moved her mouth, formed a word, though what it was she wasn’t sure.

  “Brook?”

  The voice was closer now.

  “Roy…?” she managed.

  “Brook?”

  She forced open her eyes. This set off bright lances of agony inside her skull. She could see little more than dark shapes, though she could hear the steady, angry drone of the rain falling on the roof of the car.

  Cool, wet air. Hands shaking her shoulder.

  Someone had opened her door.

  It was Roy, soaking wet, his hair plastered to his skull, rain streaking his face.

  He hit me—again.

  She touched her face. It felt numb, like it belonged to a different person. Yet there was sharp pain as well.

  “Wherezhe…?” she asked, finding it extremely difficult to work her lips. She tasted slippery blood.

  “It’s dead,” Roy said, holding out his hand for her.

  “Dead…?”

  “Come on,” he said.

  “Where…?”

  She couldn’t complete the sentence and simply took his hand. He all but lifted her from the car until she stood on jellied legs. She teetered against his chest and felt his arms encircle her body in an embrace. The rain hammered her head and splashed the ground at her feet.

  You have to get away.

  Yet she didn’t know how to go about achieving this feat. She couldn’t think clearly, could barely stand, let alone fight him off her. “The policeman…?” she said.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Roy said soothingly, and kissed her on the forehead.

  His arms moved up her back and wrapped around her head, and she didn’t like this, it wasn’t right, wasn’t how you hugged someone—

  “Roy…?”

/>   His arms flexed and twisted.

  The next thing Brook knew she was flat on the ground, staring at Roy’s cap-toe Oxfords. She tried to get up, couldn’t. Her right arm was pinned beneath her, but it wouldn’t move. She felt no pain, but she found it was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe, and this sent a wild panic through her.

  Roy crouched. Although she couldn’t see his face, she could hear his voice.

  “It’s okay, Brook. It won’t be long now. Everything’s okay.”

  What have you done to me, you bastard? What have you done to me? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

  She was still screaming these silent questions inside her head when she died from asphyxiation two minutes later.

  Epilogue

  Dr. Roy Wallis scavenged Sharon’s bloody tension bandages from the floor of the sleep laboratory and dumped them, along with the used syringes and empty vials of Vecuronium, through the iron grates of a rainwater gutter on Shattuck Avenue. Next he went to Chad’s body and wrapped his arms around it, to transfer the Australian’s blood to his clothes.

  Then he called the police.

  Within minutes, three squad cars and an ambulance, gumballs flashing, screeched to a halt in front of Tolman Hall. Half a dozen officers secured the scene. Paramedics attended to the victims and confirmed there were no survivors. The senior cop grilled Dr. Wallis on what happened. When Wallis refused to make a statement without his attorney present, he was hauled off to the Berkeley Police Department Jail Facility, questioned some more by a pair of detectives, and eventually arrested and booked.

  After being fingerprinted and photographed, Wallis said, “I have the right to one phone call.”

  The guard shrugged. “Make it quick.”

  Wallis used the telephone on the guard’s desk to call his personal attorney.

  “Don?” he said, turning away from the guard. “It’s Roy Wallis.”

  “Roy,” Don Finke said, a note of concern in his voice. “A call at this hour can’t be good news.”

  “I’ve been arrested,” he said. “They’re holding me at the Berkeley Police Department Jail Facility, and I really don’t want to sit around here for any longer than I have to.”