St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

This story is told from the perspective of Elijah, one of the residents at Z. Z.’s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers, which is a summer camp intended to treat kids with sleep disorders. The camp has 13 cabins, organized by different sleep problems, like sleep apnea, sleep walking, night terrors, etc.

The story opens with Elijah and Emma in the Thomas Edison Insomnia Balloon, a device invented by camp founder Zorba to “let your thoughts dry out beneath an electric light” as a precursor to sleep (50). Elijah likes Emma and hopes they will be able to drift to sleep together. Emma doesn’t think she can, but Elijah encourages her to trust him and she starts to slowly nod off.

They are interrupted by the arrival of Ogilvy AKA Ogli, Elijah’s best friend at camp. He apologizes for interrupting their sleep and informs them that Annie, Zorba’s wife, has begun her Inspiration Assembly. They arrive late, as Annie is explaining how her “dream contagion has gone into remission, and I’ve been dreaming my own dreams for nearly three years” (53). Elijah and Ogli have been to camp many times and already know this speech.

Elijah explains the unwritten camp hierarchy, defined by one’s disorder. Sleep apneics and somnambulists are at the top of the food chain, while incubuses and incontinents are at the bottom. Elijah and Ogli are in Cabin 4, the miscellaneous cabin. Their bunkmates include Espalda and Espina, hunchbacked twins who rub their humps together while they sleep; Felipe, who becomes possessed by a revolutionary while he sleeps; and a lycanthrope. Emma is also in their cabin, as her sleep walking recently mutated into something unknown. However, Ogli and Elijah both share the same disorder: They are prophets of the past. They dream of historical events as if they were actually there, and usually bad ones.

They discovered they were twins when they both dreamt of a rocket exploding and have been dreaming identical dreams ever since. At first, they were both misdiagnosed as having night terrors. Elijah wishes the “dreams didn’t have the fated, crimson-tinged horror of prophecy” (58).

During Annie’s lecture, Zorba bursts into the room to announce that Heimdall, one of the camp’s three sheep, has gone missing. This is not unusual, but there is the danger that he might fall into the nearby sinkhole. Annie also begins to panic, thinking that dogs—which she used to have nightmares about—might attack him. The entire camp mobilizes to search for the sheep.

Zorba and the group find Heimdall in the woods with a slit throat. Elijah suggests that he, Ogli, and Emma sneak out and stand watch over the remaining two sheep that night even as Zorba shepherds the campers toward their cabins and encourages them to sleep.

The death of the sheep gives all of the campers a reason to indulge in their sleep disorders. In their bunks, Elijah and Ogli wonder what might have killed Heimdall, and Elijah asks Emma if she is afraid. He offers to let her sleep in his bed, which they both find to be uncomfortable. The next night, the three of them sneak out at night to go and keep watch over the remaining two sheep, Merino and Moufflon. However, when they arrive, they find that the gate open and Merino killed.

On the other side of the pen, they see Annie, dressed in a nightgown and is soaking wet. She sends Emma back to the cabin and asks the boys if they’ve “had any postmonitions about the dogs?” (66). They say no, and Elijah notices blood on her nightgown and her hands. Ogli then reveals that he has mostly stopped remembering his dreams at all, which surprises Elijah.

Annie gets Elijah to help her dispose of Merino’s body, to avoid scaring the other campers, while Ogli goes back to the cabin. They carry Merino to the sinkhole and throw her in. However, Elijah recalls that the water in the sinkhole supplies the water to the camp, so eventually Merino will dissolve into the drinking supply. He also wonders what Annie will remember the next day.

Back at the cabin, Elijah confronts Ogli about his dreams. Elijah feels hurt that his friend appears to be getting better while he is not. He is also angry at Ogli for being able to forget and feels “it’s worse, somehow, that it wasn’t deliberate, that the dream sickness just left him like a fever lifting. Ogli gets to wake up to cheery blankness and cereal, and I’ll spend the rest of my life counting dead sheep” (70).

He goes back to the Insomnia Balloon alone. He hears Moufflon bleating and wonders if Annie is still in the woods “alone with a rabid pack of her own delusions” while the sheep “is alone with Annie” (70). As he drifts to sleep, he starts to dream of the sinkhole, of Ogli, of Annie in the woods, and of the dead Merino. It is the first time he has dreamed of his own past and the first time in a long time he hasn’t had Ogli with him to experience a dream; he wonders “how the healthy dreamers can bear to sleep at all, if sleep means that you have to peer into that sinkhole by yourself” (71).