I’d locked my door, warded the bed, and slept curled on the cold stone floor, with my back pressed against the door. But someone had come in while I was sleeping. An itch of worry scratched between my shoulder blades. That was three times now I’d sunk so deep into sleep that someone could slit my throat and I wouldn’t know it until I was dead.
It had to have been Rou. There was a cardboard box with a stack of folded clothing, a hairbrush, toothbrush and toothpaste, a pair of boots, a knife, a few thunderers, a round metal pill case filled with chalky white powder, and—this was how I knew it had been Rou—a plate of lemon thyme scones and a bell jar filled with dandelion tea.
I hurriedly dressed, eating the lemon thyme scone in quick bites and gulping down the entire jar of lukewarm tea. Yesterday, I’d had more champagne than any one person should ever drink. My mouth felt as if I’d shoved a wool sock in it and let it soak up all the liquid in my body for hours. A slight headache pulsed behind my eyes, ratcheting higher every time I glanced at the glowing wall sconces.
I pinched the skin between my eyebrows and shook myself off. There was something I needed to do, and I had to hurry if I wanted to do it before the rest of Hell Gate—sorry, the asylum—woke up.
I pocketed the knife, the thunderers, and the pill case, then I crouched at the foot of my bed. It took seconds to rub away the smear of blood I’d warded it with.
Then I knocked firmly on the stone three times and said, “Good night, sleep tight, time for me to give a fright.”
The gray stones rippled, wavered, and then disappeared. In their place, the bed’s metal legs floated above a formless void. The room’s cold pressed into me and pushed me toward the edge of the abyss. Staring into the darkness felt like falling into a frigid black ocean that had no bottom and no end.
It was entirely possible that Harry had lied to me. There were plenty of things that crawled in nightmares and tunnels under our beds. Slipshots, by nature, were both deceitful and cowardly. But they also had an uncanny sense of self-preservation. They only lied, cheated, or stole if they figured they’d get away with it. If this void was something other than the monster under the bed’s highway, Harry couldn’t be sure he’d get away with it.
Stealing from me was one thing. Lying and sending me somewhere I shouldn’t go? That was different.
I took a deep breath of the asylum’s dark, stone-tomb scent and then squeezed beneath the bed and dropped into the abyss.
It turned out the abyss was barely deeper than I was tall. I hit a spongy surface that squelched like wet mud, and my boots sank about a thumb’s depth into the floor. I was in a strange tube-shaped tunnel that reached forward and backward as far as I could see. If I stood on my tiptoes and stretched my arm up, then my fingers would brush the ceiling. Or, more accurately, they’d brush the underside of my metal bed.
Years of sneaking into places I didn’t belong had me backing toward the walls and cataloguing my surroundings. From above, the void under my bed had looked pitch-black and empty. From below, though, the walls glowed marrow-white and crimson-red. There was a strange, sloshing hum, and the air was sticky and hot. The tunnel smelled musty, like dirty socks, old mattresses, and moldering carpets.
The walls were the same as the floor—a soft, spongy, sploshy surface that felt a lot like walking over a mudflat. They weren’t solid, but they weren’t liquid or gas either. I looked behind me, my gaze probing the reddish light. There’d been a squeak and a scratching noise. I wasn’t so naïve as to think I was the only living thing walking these tunnels.
My shoulders relaxed when I realized it wasn’t a living thing—only a figment’s legs kicking wildly. Only their bottom half was visible. Their upper half must be sticking out of the floor in their room in the asylum.
There were more figments buried in the ceiling beneath their beds. They flickered in and out of existence, lining the tunnel. This was how Harry had found his way back. I memorized the figment’s shoes. Brown scuffed leather wingtips, with leather laces that were frayed at the ends. He was in the bed next to mine. Good enough.
I needed to travel east. I frowned. If I remembered right, the foot of my bed pointed in that direction. I looked up at my bed’s legs and then headed down the tunnel.
My boots sank into the ground with a soft, splishy whoomph. When I pulled them free, the ground stickily grasped at them and then let them go with a squelching pop. I passed bed after bed. The ceiling was lined with hundreds—thousands—of them. I could only see their underbellies, yet each of them was unique. Solid wood mission-style bed frames; thin wrought-iron bed frames; beds with no frames, only mattresses on the floor. Some had clutter—books or clothing or stacks of old thumbed-through magazines. There were stuffed animals covered in dust, and blankets kicked off and hanging down into the tunnel like ghosts. Some beds were meticulously clean; others had candy wrappers and leaking pop cans.
Sometimes, I could hear people speaking in their bedrooms. Their voices were muffled and distorted as if I were listening through a wall of water. But mostly, the only sound was the rhythmic, sloshing hum of the marrow-white walls.
The walls were narrower now. They’d been sloping down, closing in on me. I pressed my hands to the sides. They were warm and wet, and my fingers sank into them. I yanked my hand back, and the walls let out a sighing wheeze.
Ahead, there were small red lights floating beneath a bed. I’d seen them before. They were under every fifth or sixth bed. The lights were different colors. Yellow, green, blue, orange. They reminded me of swamp gas. They flickered and floated then disappeared. It didn’t take me long to realize the lights were dreams. Sometimes, they spoke. Sometimes, they sang. Whenever I walked past, they scattered and blew away.
I’d not seen red lights. These were crimson, like blood, and they pulsed violently. I paused outside their fiery ring of light.
“No! Don’t . . . don’t . . . Luvic, stop!”
I tilted my head and stared at the red lights. They were as small as fireflies. Most of the lights had been round, but these were diamond-sharp, with spiked edges. I saw the difference now. This must be what nightmares looked like.
I narrowed my eyes. One of the lights flashed bright red and screamed.
“I can’t do it! I can’t! I won’t!”
I looked up at the ceiling. The bed was a twin mattress on the floor. No frame. No box spring. It was dirty, gray, lumpy, and tattered. Nothing special or unique.
But . . . the voice in the nightmare was Celia Bard.
She was supposedly dead. Killed by her brother at the closing ceremony.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
“Please!” The red light pulsed with the plea.
