The 11th Floor: Awakening (4 page)

“No, that’s what they want you to do.”

“They?
Meaning these Lou and Nate guys you were talking about?” Danielle chimed in.

“Yeah, probably,” said Luke.

“Probably?” shouted Tom. “Forget you!  Come on honey, let’s go.”

“Sorry Luke. I’m with them on this one,” said Danielle.

“But I can help you guys, I know it.”

“I don’t see how. I have to trust my own eyes and gut here, not the wild stories of a stranger that I just met,” Danielle said, placing her hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Take care, Luke. Thanks again for getting my door open before.”

“You’re all making a huge mistake.”

Tom began walking off. “Come on, let’s go find the captain and see if he can help,” he said.

Luke was left standing alone in front of the elevator. Mary Beth, Tom, and Danielle had walked away together, intent on finding the captain of the ship and, hopefully,
answers
. As Luke watched them walk away, he was left wondering if he really was crazy.

“I need to know if this really is a dream or not. What did the doctor tell me, something about finding a sign?” he wondered. “Crap. I should have listened instead of dismissing him.
Umm, something about flying and dead people?
Can’t say I’ve seen either of those yet.”

Above, there was a loud caw sound. The large black crow from earlier was back, circling overhead. As if it sensed Luke’s gaze, it broke the circle and glided up toward the front of the ship.

“Might as well follow it again,” said Luke. “Last time it led toward someone who needed my help.”

Luke followed the bird around the outer edge of the ship, leaning out over the railing occasionally and looking up to make sure he was heading in the proper direction. Up ahead, near the end of the corridor, the bird let out another caw sound and flew around the corner. Almost as if it said, “Here I am, follow me in this direction now,” the bird made one more caw sound while out of sight. Luke obliged and hurried around the corner to keep track of the bird.

As Luke rounded the corner, he nearly knocked into a man who was mopping the floor, whistling to himself. The man was wearing an all-white jumpsuit and tan colored work boots, and appeared to be one of the ship’s maintenance workers.

“Whoa!” said
Luke,
startled by the discovery of yet another person. “Sorry about that. I didn’t expect anyone to be in the way.”

The man turned and with a slight grin, asked, “No worries. Is there something I can help you with, buddy?”

Luke’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest when the man turned toward him. The voice and face were all too familiar.

“You!” yelled Luke.

With a puzzled tone, the man replied, “Do I know you?”

“You’re Lou!”

“Yeah, how’d you know that?”

“Come on, don’t play games, we’re beyond that. What the hell is going on here?”

“I’ve just been here for the last hour mopping up, so I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, buddy.”

“Let me guess, the boss has some VIPs coming today and he told you to make sure the whole area is especially clean, right?

“That’s incredible. How’d you know?”

“Because we’ve been through this before.
You and me.
The city.
The empty building.
Koenig.
Ring a bell?

“Hmm, can’t say it does.”

“Okay, feign ignorance, but I know how this plays out and I’m going to stop it before it happens. You lure us to the boss, Nate, where he systematically kills us all off because the devil wants trophies.”

Looking past Luke, Lou said to him, “Us?
You all?
You mean all those people behind you?”

When Luke turned to look, he felt a hard crack against the back of his head. He briefly lost consciousness and fell to the floor. When he came to, he felt himself being dragged.

“Sorry, Luke.
Unfortunately, I do remember you and we can’t have you interfering with our work again.”

Woozy and unable
to
offer any kind of resistance, Luke could do nothing but listen to Lou make his confession and watch the surroundings pass with blurry vision.

“This is for the best. You’re lucky you aren’t on the list. If the boss had it his way, you’d become just another trophy on a shelf, damned for eternity. Now you’ll just be dead.”

Lou effortlessly picked up Luke and tossed him overboard.

Luke woke up, gasping for air and thrashing about the bed like a fish out of water. Aware that he was now awake and not drowning in an ocean, he managed to gradually calm down. When Luke finally came to rest, he was lying on his back looking up at the ceiling. The
bedsheets
were curled up into a ball and he’d managed to knock the lamp off the nightstand onto the floor. Luckily, it remained unbroken. He leaned over and grabbed the lamp, placed it back on the nightstand, and then sat up.

He licked his lips and made a horrible sour face. His mouth had a foul taste that could only be described as having
gargled
a glass of water mixed with a couple
spoonfuls
of salt. Luke immediately jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom sink to rinse out his mouth.

“What is going on?” he wondered. “How can my dreams be so real?”

Luke went out to the living room and sat in the chair for a while to finish calming down and collect his thoughts. The sun blaring around the curtains meant it was morning. Just then he realized the newspaper was probably waiting on his doorstep. He rushed over to the door and retrieved the daily paper. When he pulled off the rubber band holding it together, the thing he feared most was staring him right in the face. There, on the front page of the paper, was the headline he was hoping wasn’t going to exist.

“Three found dead on cruise ship.”

The article went on to say that they were discovered floating in one of the pools of a cruise ship that was docked for maintenance. The ship had just gotten back from a 10-night trip. An investigation was underway and the crew was being held for questioning.

Closing the paper and tossing it aside, Luke thought, “Why does this keep happening to me? I have to know how to stop this. Maybe I should go back to that doctor.”

Luke went back into the bedroom, grabbed his phone, and immediately dialed the doctor’s office. He knew full well that it was too early for the secretary to be there, but hopefully he could make an appointment with the service.

The phone rang way longer than it should have. He had almost given up when finally a man answered.

“Hi. I need to make an appointment for today, it’s urgent.”

“Sorry sir, this is the police. There was an accident here at the doctor’s office yesterday and unfortunately Dr. Walsh was fatally injured. If you need urgent help, you should contact the—”

“He’s dead?” Luke asked loudly, in shock.

“Yes sir, he passed away. Look, if you need help, contact the mental health hotline at the hospital. Do you need their number?”

Luke pulled the phone back and just stared at the screen, without saying a word.

“Hello? Sir, are you still there?” asked the officer on the phone.

The voice snapped Luke out of his stare and he promptly ended the call without another word. He walked back out to the living room and sat down in the chair.

“He was killed because of me, I know it. It was no accident.” Luke thought. “He tried to help me and they killed him for it.”

Some of the last words he remembered from his dream were those of Lou saying to him, “We can’t have you interfering with our work again.”  Was the doctor killed
because he was trying to help? Luke wondered if perhaps there was something related to ‘lucid dreaming’ that they didn’t want him experimenting with. He wondered if maybe it was worth a shot. If these types of dreams were going to be a common occurrence, it would be prudent to learn how to control them, and if at all possible, save some lives in the process.

Luke called in sick to work and went to the library where he spent the entire day furiously researching lucid dreaming. He found many websites dedicated to the subject, as well as online user groups with people discussing their experiences and tips. Throughout the course of the day, Luke learned quite a bit about the subject. Some of the terminology the doctor used, such as dream signs and reality checks, were now familiar to him. Armed with his new-found knowledge, he decided to test it out that very night.

In an attempt to keep everything consistent, he stopped at the store on his way home and bought the exact same food that he had eaten the night before. After arriving back at home, he grabbed his mail from the mailbox and flipped through them as he walked down the sidewalk toward his apartment. One letter stood out from the usual bills and grocery store fliers, because the sender was the local police department.

Still walking down the sidewalk, Luke slowed as he opened the letter. Inside was a traffic violation notice for failure to stop at a red light. Included with the summons was a picture of his vehicle from a red light camera that his city had installed earlier that year. Shocked, Luke dropped the groceries and the other mail on the ground. The picture showed him behind the wheel and another person, dressed in all black with a hood, sitting in the passenger seat next to him. Lou was back. This picture was taken before his nightmare on the cruise ship.

Luke picked up the rest of the mail and groceries off the ground and hurried into his apartment to better examine the picture. Once inside, he rushed over to his junk drawer with the picture in hand. He dug through, pulling out a magnifying glass. Holding it close to the picture confirmed his fear. It was Lou, and it appeared that he was smiling at the camera as it took the picture.

The picture of Lou just made Luke more driven to put an end to this whole thing. He didn’t want to keep waking up next to dead people and, for more reasons than his own
selfishness,
he wanted to be able to help the next victims of Lou and Nate.

Now resolved in his quest, Luke repeated his prior evening. He ate the same meal for dinner, watched the same show on television, and took another sleeping pill. When the show ended, he turned off the television and took his laptop to bed and
surfed
Reddit
a bit more. To his surprise, there was a group dedicated to lucid dreaming. A lot of people were on there, discussing their experiences and how they were able to do this and that in their dreams. One post stood out, as it talked about weapons and how to “summon” them.

“Wow, am I
tired
all of a sudden. I feel like I just got hit by a truck!” exclaimed Luke.

He closed the lid on his laptop and placed it on the nightstand. Almost as suddenly as he turned off the lamp, he was asleep.

Luke woke up suddenly. His eyes rocketed open to the sound of a large bang, like someone was setting off fireworks outside. When he looked to his right, he was staring squarely at a tile wall. He sat up and realized he was sitting in a bathtub. The toilet seat was up and there were towels scattered all over the floor.

He climbed out of the tub and walked out of the bathroom. Luke found himself standing in a small hotel room. The television was on, but it was only showing static and the volume was apparently on mute. The single bed in the room was unkempt. On top of the bed was an open and empty suitcase. Women’s clothing and undergarments were scattered all over the floor.

“Well this isn’t what I expected,” said Luke quietly. “I assumed I’d wake up next to a dead body again, but there isn’t one. No blood either. This is just like all the other times I usually wake up in strange places.”

He approached the hotel room door cautiously and gazed out the peephole. It showed only an empty hallway.