Foreverland Is Dead

cowering.
    Without another word, he slips into the bedroom next to the stairwell. Miranda doesn’t move from the chair, curled up and shivering. It’s very late. She is scared and awake, but sleep eventually comes.
    At some point, she hears drawers opening and closing.

39

    The wind harvesters’ blades are locked in place against the punishing wind. Mad stops in the kitchen. Cyn looks up from the footstool.
    “It’s me,” Cyn says. “I’m the one.”
    “What?”
    She holds her head like she’s clamping it together, hair tufts sticking out between her inky fingers.
    “In the mornings…” Cyn starts, trailing off. “In the mornings my feet are cold, my bandages wet and muddy. But I don’t go to bed like that—I just wake up that way.”
    “What’re you talking about?”
    Cyn holds up her hand, exposes the ink stains. “I’m stealing the bags.”
    “You’re not making any sense.”
    “I know!” She squeezes her head, rocking back and forth. “I’m sleepwalking in here, stealing the bags, but I don’t remember. I don’t know why.”
    “And doing what?”
    “Taking them to that…” She waves her hand at the wall. “That cabin in the woods, I think.”
    She doesn’t tell her how she ruined her feet, walking all the way back the night of the excursion, not remembering a thing.
    “But you don’t have a key.” Mad holds two keycards, both around her neck. “How are you getting in here?”
    Cyn’s eyes sit in deep, dark pockets. “I don’t know.”
    She stares at her feet. The toenails are cracked and caked with mud, her skin slightly off-color. Throbbing.
    Mad’s hand is cool on her forehead. “I think the fever is back. We need to try another bottle. And unwrap your feet—”
    The outside kitchen door opens. The wind spits sleet inside. Kat backs into the room, hood over her face. She hugs herself, stomping her feet.
    “The chickens are dead.”
    “What?” Mad says.
    “Chickens. They’re dead.”
    “All of them?” Mad says.
    “Yeah, all of them. Something got inside, feathers everywhere.”
    Kat pushes the hood back, looks at Cyn, who is hunched over. “What’s up with her?”
    “Sleepwalker,” Mad says.
    Kat waits, rubbing warmth into her arms. The chill creeps into Cyn just under her sternum. She shakes all over, looks up, her face about to cave in.
    “I walk at night,” she says. “I get up, I steal one of the bags, and I take it to the cabin in the woods. That’s what the old woman was doing when she died on the path—I saw the plastic bag in her hand.”
    “So you took her place?”
    “How the hell should I know? Does anything make sense?”
    Cyn shakes her head. No one has an answer. The more they know, the less they understand.
    The front door slams, someone stomps their feet. Humming a little tune and flapping their lips. Jen is dressed in enough clothes for two Eskimos. She turns her head left and right, aiming the long snorkel at each of them, her face deep inside the hood.
    “Anyone come out of the brick house?”
    No one answers.
    When the long, fuzzy hood points at Cyn, a deep breath is sucked in. She pushes the hood off, kneeling in front of her.
    “You don’t look good,” she says. “And the bandages are wet and nasty, why aren’t you wearing the boots? Get those off. We need to start a new medicine. Right, Mad? She looks flushed. Someone get some water.”
    Jen opens the cabinet, grabs one of the three brown bottles still left. Kat reaches in before the door closes, snatches a clear bag.
    “You’re feeding someone,” she says. “This ain’t medicine, I bet. These are nutrients, you’re feeding someone through the veins.”
    Cyn takes pills from Jen and water from Mad. She sits up, lets Jen begin unwrapping her right foot, trying to remember taking the bags. But it’s the same, always the same, every night. Blank. Empty.
    How would she know how to fix an IV? How could someone force her?
    The dreamer.
    She doesn’t want to believe the old man, doesn’t want to think about the dreamer hiding away in the woods, making her sleepwalk to care for her.
    “Ooh.” Mad turns away, covering her nose. “Don’t look, Cyn.”
    The odor is obscene.
    The wound is pitted, the edges inflamed, the center white with pus. Her ankle is stiff and achy.
    “That’s not good,” Kat says. “Double up on the pills, I say.”
    “Okay.” Jen backs away. “All right. Mad, get a bucket of water and a rag. We’re going to clean this up, get it wrapped.