Nightmare Academy

by Frank Peretti

  They were watching the mindless, blank-eyed behavior of Alvin Rogers. He was in hospital pajamas, standing in the center of the padded room and twitching nervously, looking at nothing, as a hospital nurse tried to start a conversation.

  “Can you raise your arms for me?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Don't you want to put on a fresh shirt?”

  “I don't know.”

  “We'll get you changed, and then you can have some lunch. Would you like that?”

  “I don't know.”

  The recording played on for several minutes, showing the nurse feeding him, Dr. Madison examining him, a therapist exercising him, and all of them trying to get through to the boy, trying to get him to acknowledge knowing something, knowing anything.

  They all failed.

  “He sounds like a skeptical philosopher,” Elisha cracked. They all looked at her strangely, so she tried to explain. “You know: the ones who say nothing is true, that truth doesn't exist. If truth doesn't exist, then you can't know anything.”

  “Watch what happens next,” said Morgan.

  A man and a woman entered the padded room, and the kid, crazy or not, fell into their arms and started crying.

  “He knows who Mom and Dad are,” said Sarah, getting a tear in her eye.

  “So he knows something,” said Nate.

  “And immediately he started talking,” said Morgan, “but check this out.”

  The recording cut to a later scene. Now the kid, frightened and agitated, was spilling a torrent of words to his folks as they sat on the floor beside his bed. “I, I come to see the sky, but it was upside down. And I run, but not swimming, just, you know, running, and climbing . . . scratch myself. It was dark, too, hurt my eyes.”

  “Could you wind that back?” Elijah asked.

  “Don't worry,” said Morgan, “there's more just like it.”

  The kid kept going. “Terrible. Terrible. I kept falling, going up, never stopped and it hurt and I just didn't know.”

  “Where was this?” his father asked.

  “Bending down, couldn't reach i t . . . couldn't climb, either . . . had to go swimming . . . but the door wasn't there.”

  His father said to someone off-camera, “Where in the world has he been? Who did this to him?”

  Morgan interjected, “Listen to this.”

  “Nightmare,” said Alvin Rogers.

  Alvin's mother asked, “What?”

  “Nightmare.” The boy began to tremble. “Nightmare Academy.” His eyes grew wide as if looking into a hell only he could see—and no more words came, only a long, pitiful wail. He began to kick and struggle, trying to back away from whatever he was seeing.

  “Turn . . . turn the camera off,” said his father while trying to hold the boy down.

  The image shook, then blinked out.

  Morgan pressed the stop button. “One month before this was recorded, Alvin Rogers was a fairly normal high school sophomore in Thousand Oaks, California. He was bright, did well in math and science, and stayed out of trouble. For whatever reason, maybe just for something crazy to do, he and a friend named Harold Carlson ran away from home and got as far as Seattle before disappearing altogether. Now Alvin has turned up crazy and Harold is still missing. I guess you can figure out what your assignment is going to be, if you want it.”

  “Find out what happened to Alvin,” Nate responded.

  “And what became of Harold,” Sarah added.

  “And what the Nightmare Academy is,” Elijah said.

  “And what the truth is behind the whole thing,” Elisha concluded.

  Morgan nodded. “We'll put you in touch with a youth shelter in Seattle where the boys were last seen, and see if you can pick up their trail from there. I'll help you in any way I can, but remember, we're hunting for something that cannot know it's being hunted or it might disappear before we can find it.”

  “And we don't even know what it is,” Elijah said. “Cool.”

  Nate leafed through the documents spread out on the coffee table, reviewing each one and passing it along to the others. “We're going to have a lot to discuss.”

  “Guess I'd better unsaddle the horses,” Elisha said, a hint of disappointment in her voice.

  Seattle, Washington, is a beautiful city at night—a blanket of jewels mirrored in water—and when the sky is clear, the glimmering towers of downtown mingle with the stars.

  But like every city, Seattle has its darkside—its troubled streets, its districts of decay that become gathering places for those who have nowhere else to go. In the cold glare of the streetlights, in the shadows of the alleys, the homeless, the lost, the destitute, and the runaways walk up and down the blocks, hands in pockets, eyes downward. They are lonely, but afraid of strangers, without shelter and hoping to find a lonely curb, porch, landing, or doorway to call their own for the night. Sometimes they cluster with other wanderers, either for company or simply because there is only one place available out of the rain.

  This night, two wanderers apparently found each other while trying to stake a claim to a small stretch of concrete sidewalk and marble building that were still warm from the daytime sun. One was a boy about sixteen, dressed in ragged jeans, stocking cap, and tattered, oversized mackinaw. The other was a girl about the same age, with black, stringy hair, wearing a khaki jacket, jeans with holes in the knees, and a second-hand wool cap. Her only luxury was a pair of headphones, apparently her way of shutting out the outside world. They spoke little, but curled up against the exhaust-blackened marble of the old publishing firm, trying to share the same precious piece of ground without getting too close or too friendly.

  Across the street and up half a block, in the doorway of a bygone brewery, a tired old vagrant relaxed on the concrete steps, his back against the bricks, just watching the never-stopping traffic. He coughed, pulled the collar of his old coat closer around his face, and spoke in a quiet voice, “Are you warm enough?”

  Down the street, the girl heard the question through her headphones and called softly to the boy, “Dad wants to know if we're warm enough.”

  “Plenty,” said the boy.

  “We're fine,” she spoke to the air.

  “Fine and bored,” the boy added. “Except for that panhandler, we haven't found anyone to talk to. Things were better last night.”

  “Do you think we should try somewhere else?” Elisha asked.

  The vagrant spoke into his collar, “How does it look to you, Sarah?”

  At the other end of the block, in the back of a large van, Sarah sat before an impressive bench of electronic gear and radio receivers, monitoring the conversation, a headset to her ear. “We might try under the overpass again. The people at the youth shelter say a lot of runaway kids congregate there on the weekends after it gets late.”

  Elisha passed the word along.

  Elijah looked at his watch. “It's 11:07 and 40 seconds.”

  Elisha smiled. Her brother was proud of his extremely accurate watch. “I think it's getting late.”

  Nate responded, “Are you kids ready for another night under the overpass?”

  Elisha made a face despite herself. “Working on it.” She told her brother, “They're talking about another night under the over­pass.”

  “Well, hopefully we'll meet a different bunch,” Elijah offered, “somebody who might know something.”

  “It's just hard to—Whoa, just a minute. Somebody's coming.”

  Elijah tried to look without looking. He saw her, too. “I think she's looking at us.”

  While Elijah and Elisha acted indifferent and preoccupied, Nate could see the woman they were referring to. She was a young and pretty redhead, and obviously not a runaway or vagrant; she was dressed casually, but dressed well in dark slacks, woolly red sweater, light jacket, and pricey running shoes.

  “She's looking at us, all right,” Elisha reported.

  “Hi,” said the woman, and Nate and Sarah could hear her voice over their k
ids' radios.

  “Hi,” Elisha responded in the dull tone of a glum, leave-me-alone teenager.

  The woman knelt down to Elisha's eye level, and offered a business card. “I'm Margaret Jones. I work with the Light of Day Youth Shelter, just a few blocks from here.” She looked toward Elijah. “Is he with you?”

  Elisha shot her brother a sideways glance and shrugged. “I don't know. He's just sitting there and I'm sitting here.”

  She addressed both of them. “Well, if you need a place to stay tonight, we have rooms. We'll give you a good hot meal, a shower if you like, and your own room with your own bed, no questions asked.”

  Elijah asked, “What's the catch?”

  “No catch. We're a charitable organization, we've been working the streets for nine years, and all we really want to do is get you off the street where you'll be safe and have some shelter.”

  Elijah, staying in character, gave a cynical sneer. “You're not the Living Way Youth Shelter? We've already been there.”

  The woman laughed apologetically and added, “No, no, we're somebody else, just a bunch of do-gooders, trying to help kids in trouble. You may like us, you may not, but at least you'll have a room for the night.” She held out another business card.

  Elijah accepted it with a shrug, then read it out loud. “Margaret Jones, Light of Day Youth Shelter, 203 Miller Street. Shelter, rescue, counseling.”

  Sarah entered the name and address on a laptop computer.

  It could be perfectly legitimate, or it could be a very sly trap.

  “I'm not getting any matches. I thought Living Way was the only youth shelter around here.”

  Nate carefully eyed the woman talking to his kids, thinking it over: no matches in the computer; no record of this particular youth shelter; a pleasant, nonthreatening woman with business cards.

  It could be perfectly legitimate, or it could be a very sly trap. He spoke into his collar, “This could be it. Let's take it slow, one step at a time, and check it out.”

  3

  TRUTH AND SOUP

  I'M READY AND WILLING,” Elisha replied.

  “It beats another night on the street,” Elijah conceded, taking his sister's cue.

  Margaret Jones thought they were talking to her. “Great! Come on, I'll walk you there.” She started up the street at a leisurely pace and the kids followed her. “It can get rough out here. Not too many people who believe in Right and Wrong. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” Elisha answered.

  “Sure,” said Elijah.

  “But it looks like you two trust each other, and that's the start of friendship right there, doing right by our friends. You know what I'm talking about? Do you think there's a right and there's a wrong?”

  They came to an intersection and turned right, heading up the hill.

  “They've turned right on Spencer,” Nate reported, walking a block behind them.

  Sarah was behind the wheel and driving the van, watching a moving map on the dashboard linked with a GPS receiver.

  “Miller's three blocks north of Spencer on Second. I'll check it out.” She turned up Spencer and drove right by her kids as they walked with Margaret Jones.

  Margaret Jones kept on talking, but there was something strangely “rehearsed” about it as if she was driving at something. “Some kids grow up going to church, things like that, and they seem to have a pretty good sense of right and wrong. Were either of you raised in church?”

  Go with the flow, Elisha thought. “I was.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Sure. I'm a Christian.”

  Margaret Jones was delighted. “You are? Well, that says a lot, doesn't it? I'll bet you're a very honest person then.”

  “I try to be.”

  “That's great. How about you . . . uh, what should I call you? You don't have to use your real name.”

  “Call me Jerry.”

  “Jerry, how about you? Do you believe in God?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So, do you think that helps you to be honest?”

  He decided to act “dull” about it. “Sure, I guess.”

  “I mean, I've been wondering if a person's religious beliefs have anything to do with their morals. What do you think?”

  Sarah drove past an old stone building cubbyholed between two newer ones and saw the little sign on the front window: Light of Day Youth Shelter. “I've found it and it looks real. I'm going to park somewhere.”

  “I still have the kids,” Nate reported, following them up Second Avenue toward Miller.

  Sarah parked against the curb a block past the shelter, shut down the engine, and clambered into the back where she once again manned the radio receivers and recording equipment.

  “Here we are,” said Margaret, pulling the door open.

  Inside was a small reception area with chairs, couches, and a table neatly arranged with fashion, sports, and teen interest magazines. Through a wide archway to the right was a dining hall; several kids were sitting around the tables enjoying late-night soup and fresh baked bread. Through another wide archway to the left was a game and activity room; three boys and a girl were playing a game of pool, and Jay Leno was doing his opening monologue on television.

  “Wow,” said Elijah as they followed Margaret from room to room. “A game room, a pool table, a library . . . “

  Elisha narrated as well. “Hey you even have an elevator!”

  “That takes you up to the rooms. Do you want to see your rooms first, or do you want to eat first?”

  “Let's eat,” said Elijah, and he wasn't acting.

  Sarah opened the passenger door of the van to let a dirty vagrant enter.

  He climbed into the expansive freight compartment, removed his coat and hat, then took a chair next to the radio console. From where they were parked, they had a good view of the shelter through the van's passenger window. They could hear the kids still talking, describing the place. “Looks like they're going to be warm and safe.”

  Sarah wagged her head. “Life is full of surprises.”

  Elisha's voice came over the radio as she conversed with Margaret. “So, how many kids are here?”

  “At last count, I think around twenty. Some have been here for a week or so, and some are fresh off the street, like you. Grab a spoon. Bowls are over there.”

  'A game room, a pool table, a library.. “

  “I think I'll take these headphones off.”

  Sarah and Nate exchanged a glance. Elisha was letting them know she wouldn't be able to hear them for a while.

  They sat at one of the dining tables with bowls of hot soup and slices of fresh bread, and Margaret sat down across from them.

  Elisha muttered, “Who wants to say grace?”

  Margaret smiled. “You go ahead.”

  Elisha bowed her head and prayed, “Dear Lord, thank you for this food and for a place to spend the night. In Jesus' name, Amen.”

  The kids got right down to the business of eating, trying to observe their surroundings and ask—or answer—questions between bites and slurps.

  “It's nice to see kids who still say grace before they eat,” Margaret commented.

  “It's a God thing,” said Elisha.

  “So how long have you been on the road?” Margaret asked.

  Elisha admitted, “A while.”

  “Yeah,” Elijah muttered. “A while.”

  “So how's it been going?”

  Elijah admitted, “Not great. We're both low on money, guess that's obvious, and stealing's wrong, so—”

  “Really?”

  He looked up from his soup. “Really what?”

  “You believe stealing is wrong?”

  He gave her a look. “Yeah. Is that news?”

  She laughed. “Oh, no, not at all. But it's refreshing to see, especially under these circumstances. Say, I want to show you something.” She slid two brochures across the t
able, one for each of them. “I don't show this to everybody, but you two are kind of special. Now, as always, there's no obligation . . . “

  Well, thought Elijah, now here's a new twist: a youth shelter with a sales presentation. We should have known there was a catch.

  What's it going to be? Elisha thought. A vacation package? A time-share? Maybe they're recruiting people to sell candy door-to-door.

  Their thoughts came to a dead halt the moment their eyes fell upon the brochure's large, bold title.

  Elijah picked up the brochure and opened it. It was a simple brochure, printed on glossy paper and folded into thirds, with color photographs. He read some of the copy inside: A very special opportunity to be all you can be, and we pay the bill. Classes, activities, new friends . . .

  He was reading for information, of course, but also stalling for time, trying to make sure his voice would not quiver when he finally read the title out loud: “The Knight-Moore Academy.”

  As one, Nate and Sarah leaned forward, eyes wide open, pressing the headsets against their ears.

  “Uhh . . . what is it?” Elisha asked, careful to control her voice.

  “It's like a cross between a summer school and a summer camp,” Margaret replied. “It's a place where kids just like yourselves can get away from the city, get away from distractions and hassles and just have the chance to, you know, get a grip on things. It's located in the woods, close to nature. We offer classes for high school credits, if you're interested—and if you want, counseling, guidance, discussion groups. And there are plenty of activities to blow off steam: sports, tennis, volleyball, a video arcade with all the latest games.”

  “And where is it?” Elijah asked.

  “Up in the mountains, not far from here.”

  Elijah and Elisha looked at each other. Pay dirt.

  Nate and Sarah looked at each other. Bingo.

  Margaret came on like a saleslady. “It's free. Free room and board for as long as you need to stay—and you can maintain all the privacy you want. No one will ask you for your real name, or where you're from, or any other private information. The academy is there for you, just to give you time to sort things out, to find yourself.”