Nightmare Academy

by Frank Peretti

  “So who's paying for all this?” Elijah asked.

  “It's a government pilot program, in its fifth year, the only one of its kind. It's kind of an experiment, actually. So, if you choose to participate, your feedback is going to be very important to us.”

  And how do we get high school credit if we don't divulge our names or where we're from, or any other private information?” Elisha asked.

  Margaret had to think a moment. “Um . . . well, if you want the credit, of course, you have the option to provide the information. But that's strictly up to you!”

  Elijah read from the brochure for the benefit of those listening, “A. peaceful, thirty-acre campus deep in the heart of the national forest where guests can relax, restore, and then return to successful lives.' So can we leave whenever we want?”

  “Of course.”

  Elijah yawned despite himself. After a hot meal so late at night, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. “So how do we get there?”

  “A bus leaves here every Sunday morning. If you decide you want to go, your timing couldn't be more perfect. You can spend the night and get on the bus in the morning.”

  Elisha was feeling way past ready for bed. “How early?”

  Margaret smiled. “I think we can get the bus to hang around until you're awake. You both look pretty sleepy.”

  “You got that right.”

  “So, do you think you'd be interested?”

  That was an easy question.

  “Count me in,” said Elisha.

  “Sure,” said Elijah. “I'll give it a try.”

  Sarah was already tapping the information into her computer. “I can't find any information on this place, either. Elisha, if you have your headphones on, let me know.”

  Elisha didn't respond. The three-way conversation just continued. They were leaving the table, heading for the elevator, talking about bed, sleep, soap, and towels.

  Nate and Sarah heard the elevator door open, then close. It began lifting, the cables creaking. Then they heard Margaret's voice: “Jerry you can take room 305. It's to the left and down near the end of the hall. Uh . . . “

  “How about Sally?” Elisha said.

  “Sally, I can show you your room.”

  Nate said, “They're going to get separated.”

  Sarah called, “Elisha, do you have your headphones on?”

  Elisha's voice came back, pretending to talk to Margaret, “Pardon me for putting these on. I'm halfway through the final cut.”

  “No problem,” said Margaret.

  Nate and Sarah heard the elevator door open.

  Sarah said, “We're going to check out the academy. Go ahead and get some sleep, and be sure to call us the moment you wake up in the morning.”

  Margaret was holding the elevator door open. Elisha stood in the elevator, eyes closed, apparently jiving with the music.

  “This is your floor,” Margaret prompted.

  Elisha awoke from her groove. “Oh!” She looked sleepily at her brother and said, “Nighty-night, Jerry. Give us a call in the morning, won't you?”

  He drew a sleepy sigh and acknowledged the message. “Will do.”

  Elisha stepped into the hall with Margaret, waved a lazy good-bye, and then the elevator door closed. Elijah rode the elevator up one more floor, then got out, turned left, and found 305. There was a bed ready and waiting, and soap and towels next to the sink. Nice room. Just like a college dorm.

  He found a toothbrush in a plastic wrapper and managed to brush his teeth, but beyond that, he was just too sleepy. Without undressing, he flopped onto the bed, and that was the last thing he remembered.

  Downstairs, in the kitchen, the cook carefully took Elijah's and Elisha's bowls, spoons, and glasses into a small office and closed the door. He set them in a neat pattern on the tabletop, took out a soft brush, and lightly dusted them with fine, black powder. Carefully holding a drinking glass up to the light, he nodded to himself. Good fingerprints.

  About two in the morning, Nate and Sarah, asleep on narrow cots in the back of the van, were awakened by a loud rapping on the driver's window Nate threw off his blankets and went up to the front.

  There was a police officer standing outside, shining his flashlight in the window.

  This kind of trouble they didn't need.

  Nate had to squint into that offensive light as he rolled the window down a few inches. “Hello, officer.”

  “I'm sorry, but you can't park here. If you want to go up three blocks, there's space to park next to the on-ramp. I've seen some truckers stopping there for the night and so far there's no ordinance against it.”

  “Well, sure thing, officer. Thanks.”

  Sarah hated it. “We won't be able to keep an eye on the youth shelter.”

  “We'll just have to make it a short night and get back here first thing in the morning.”

  They drove away and found the spot the officer had told them about. Sarah double-checked the receiving equipment one last time. She and Nate could hear Elisha turn over in her bed, and they heard Elijah snoring. Satisfied the kids were safe for the night, they turned in.

  The hallway was quiet, and most of the lights were out in Observation and Evaluation. One room was filled with doctors and nurses almost speechlessly treating a patient. A night nurse sat alone behind her small reception desk, working on paperwork by the light of a desk lamp, waiting for the rest of the night staff to return from their dinner break. From somewhere she could hear someone yelling. She looked up. Was that—

  The elevator dinged, the door opened, and three men came stumbling, sliding, and wrestling out. The one in the middle, held tightly by the other two and struggling to get loose, was the one doing the yelling, his eyes wild, his mouth drooling. “Assassins! Assassins!”

  Dressed in hospital whites, the two men trying to hold him were obviously hospital orderlies—and obviously on the wrong floor. “Which way to Safe Confinement?”

  The nurse hurried into the hall, trying to be heard above the crazy man's hollering. “Fourth floor! Fourth floor!"

  While the nurse was out in the hall, a tall, shadowy figure emerged quickly from the stairway door, slipped past her unoccupied desk, and into Observation and Evaluation. Keeping one ear tuned to the commotion, he hurried silently down the narrow hallway to a padded room, locked against the occupant's escaping, but easily opened from the outside. Silently, he entered and went to the bedside of a sleeping boy. He reached into a leather case at his side, selecting his instruments. This would not take long.

  “Nate!”

  It took several nudges before Nate realized it was Sarah who was nudging him. He rolled over on his cot, eyes still blurry, and muttered, “What time is it?”

  “I'm not getting a signal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She went to the radio bench and fussed with the tuners.

  “There's no signal! They've quit transmitting!”

  Nate rolled off his cot and took the chair next to her. The frequency was dead, nothing but static. He rechecked the tuners, rousing a mental checklist of possible causes from his sleepy memory. “Could be a number of things: the distance from the transmitters, the building the kids are in, where we're parked, power lines nearby . . . “

  “Let's get over there.”

  He checked his watch. It was ten minutes after six in the morning. “Absolutely.”

  Sarah got to the driver's seat first. With a rumble and roar, the van came to life, and she steered for the Light of Day Youth Shelter, 203 Miller Street. The city block looked different in the morning light, but she thought she recognized the buildings as she drove down the hill: the two newer ones, most likely office space, and then the old, stone building wedged between them, the . . .

  Silently, he entered and went

  to the bedside of a sleeping boy.

  The Dartmoor Hotel.

  She eased the big van farther down the hill and parked in a loading zone. They hopped out and ran back.
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  The letters painted on the window and on the front door read, Dartmoor Hotel, followed by a phone number.

  “Oh, okay” Nate said. “The youth shelter's using an old hotel.

  It makes sense.”

  “So why isn't their sign up in the window?”

  “Uh . . . don't stare too long.”

  She forced herself to look away and appear detached. “What now?”

  “Let's get back in the van. We might still get a signal, but if we don't we can wait for that bus to come for the kids, and then we can just make a visual contact.” Nate started back. Sarah remained, looking through the window in the front door. “What?”

  “It is a hotel,” she said, her voice choked with foreboding.

  He joined her and looked through the window as well. He could see a small lobby and a registration desk with a clerk sitting behind it. He took a step toward the door, looked more intently, and then walked toward the door with Sarah right beside him. He pushed the door open, they went inside . . .

  It was a hotel lobby. A registration desk. A clerk. An old man sitting in a chair reading the paper. Potted plants. An old ceiling fan slowly spinning. There was no archway to the right that led to a dining hall; there was only a wall with a faded painting and two potted plants. There was an archway on the left, but there was no game and activity room beyond it, no pool table, no library, no television—only an empty banquet hall with yellowing wallpaper, peeling woodwork, and dirty, pedestal ashtrays.

  The place was dead quiet. The clerk behind the registration desk looked bored, reading the paper. He didn't even look up to see who came in.

  They approached the desk. “Excuse me?” Nate said.

  The clerk looked up. He was a little man with a round head and thin, black hair. “Yes, can I help you?”

  “We're looking for the Light of Day Youth Shelter.”

  The clerk looked at them blankly, then apologetically. “I'm sorry?”

  Nate repeated, “We're trying to find the Light of Day Youth Shelter.”

  “Oh! There's a youth shelter down on Second, uh, Living Way, something like that—”

  “No,” said Sarah, quite edgy. “We're looking for the Light of Day Youth Shelter, the one at 203 Miller Street.”

  He looked at her quizzically again. “I guess you have the wrong address. This is the Dartmoor Hotel. It's been at this address for fifty years.”

  Nate was stuck for a moment, but then he chuckled, his face a little pink. “Sorry. We're in the wrong place.”

  He started for the door. Sarah needed a little prodding, so he took her arm. She almost objected, but he told her, “We've got the wrong building.”

  When they reached the sidewalk outside, she looked back.

  “Nate, this was it. This was the building!”

  He was embarrassed. “It can't be! Come on, we'd better circle the block. We've got to find our kids before that bus comes.”

  He drove from the driver's seat and she “drove” from the passenger seat as they rounded the block, then tried the next block, then the next, then went up the hill to the next avenue and doubled back, circling all those blocks. They found no Light of Day Youth Shelter, nor any building that even resembled it, and of course, the address they'd copied down the night before had not changed. Wish as they might for a mistake, a misread, a different address in the morning light, it stubbornly remained 203 Miller Street.

  A little after 7:00 in the morning, Nate parked the van across the street and half a block from the Dartmoor Hotel. Sarah went in the back and searched through the recording they'd made the night before until she found Elijah's voice reading the address off Margaret Jones's business card: “203 Miller Street.”

  Then she and Nate sat silently in the front seat of the van, staring, wondering, as the recording kept playing and they heard the voices of Elijah and Elisha describing the game room, the kitchen, the dining hall. They could hear the voices of young people in the background, laughter, talking, dishes clinking, the distant clack of pool balls hitting each other, the goofy one-liners of Jay Leno opening the Tonight Show.

  They were trying to think instead of panicking.

  Then they heard Margaret's voice telling Elijah, “Jerry, you can take room 305.”

  They were out of the van in an instant, dashing across the street, up the block, and down the narrow alley The Dartmoor Hotel had a back stairway They went up the stairs as quickly as quiet would allow, then stole down the third-floor hallway. It was messy. Trash lay on the old carpet, and graffiti marred the walls.

  They found the door to room 305. Inside, a radio was playing softly.

  Sarah knocked on the door. “Uh . . . Jerry?”

  A woman's voice answered from inside, “Who is it?”

  Then a man's gruff voice rumbled, “Whatever you're selling, we don't want any!”

  Back in the front seat of the van, Nate and Sarah were speechless for an unnatural length of time.

  “It's like I'm having a nightmare,” said Sarah, “and I can't wake up.”

  “Like we're going crazy” said Nate, staring at the building across the street.

  Then Sarah almost whispered, “ I don't know.'”

  “What don't you know?”

  “No, no, the boy in the hospital. He kept saying 'I don't know' as if . . .”

  Nate caught her meaning—". . . as if all knowledge and logic were gone.”

  “As if he's been here. We're in another world, Nate. I know we followed the kids here last night. . . but now that isn't true anymore. It's as if someone's trying to erase my memory, maybe even my sanity.”

  They both fell silent. They were thinking.

  Nate finally commented, “Whoever they are, they're very good at what they do.”

  Sarah's voice tightened with fear. “And they have our kids.”

  Nate punched in a number on the van's cell phone, switching it to speakerphone so they could both converse.

  Mr. Morgan answered on the second ring. “Nate, I was going to call you—”

  “Morgan, I want you to tell us we're not going crazy.”

  There was silence, and then a sigh at the other end. “What's happened?”

  “Reality is shifting before our very eyes!” Sarah told him.

  Nate quickly recapped what had happened, then said, “So we've tracked the kids to a certain point, and . . . “

  “And . . . ?”

  “The kids aren't there—but that point isn't there anymore, either. It's gone, like it never existed.” Nate raised his voice, his anger apparent. “Morgan, who in the world are we dealing with?”

  There was another significant pause before Morgan replied, “I have one clue for you: Alvin Rogers, the boy in the hospital, is dead. The death certificate will undoubtedly say it was a massive heart attack. But I'm quite sure he was murdered.”

  “It's like I'm having a nightmare,"

  said Sarah, “and 1 can't wake up.”

  4

  WAKING UP IN

  NIGHTMARE

  ELIJAH BEGAN TO WAKE UP, but very slowly. He'd already spent several rough days and nights hanging out on the streets of Seattle without much sleep, and now he was paying for it. His body felt like lead, and he could hardly open his eyes.

  He became aware of his clothes, the same clothes he'd been wearing for days. Now he'd worn them all night, and if he didn't get a shower and something fresh to wear, he was going to be one very smelly “runaway.” Then he became aware of something else: kids' voices laughing, cheering, hollering, as if a rollicking game was going on. Yes, he could hear the distinctive sound of a volleyball being batted about.

  Volleyball in the middle of the city?

  He opened his eyes. Sunshine was pouring in through the window, warm and dazzling. It made him squint.

  He raised his head and looked around. He didn't remember this room very well, but, of course, he was so sleepy last night he wasn't paying much attention. It wasn't large, just a typical hotel room. It looked
cleaner than he remembered. The walls and ceiling were painted white, and an attractive blue carpet was on the floor. His bed was set against one wall, and against another wall were a small dresser and a desk.

  Volleyball in the middle of the city?

  He sat up on the bed, pausing a moment to let some dizziness pass. He didn't remember the dresser or the desk from last night. On the other hand, he did remember brushing his teeth in a small bathroom that now appeared to be a closet.

  With some effort, he rose to his feet and went to the window.

  He froze where he stood, hardly breathing, nothing moving but his eyes as he scanned left and right, taking in scenery he wasn't ready to believe.

  He was looking out on what appeared to be a summer camp. Immediately outside the window was a wide-open field of green grass—a baseball diamond, a soccer and football field, and a volleyball court where a good-sized bunch of kids were having a rollicking game, volleying and spiking the ball over the net. The field was bordered on all four sides by campus structures that reminded him of a YMCA camp, most likely a dining hall, recreation building, maybe some classrooms, and dormitories like the one he was standing in right now. Beyond all of it were steep, forested hills, possibly mountains—from this window he couldn't see their tops.

  There'd been a change during the night.

  Elijah immediately checked himself over, patting his pockets. Everything was still there: a little spare change, a handkerchief, half a stick of gum, and especially the small radio transmitter he was wearing under his shirt. A mirror hung on the wall just opposite the closet. He studied his reflection, but apart from looking like a street bum who'd slept in his clothes all night, he found nothing of concern. As far as he could tell, his body and everything on it had not been disturbed, simply moved.

  He searched his memory and found it disappointingly blank. He remembered he and Elisha did agree to give the Knight-Moore Academy a try, but he hadn't the slightest memory of how they got from that moment and that place to this one.