They? He was immediately concerned for Elisha.
Knock knock knock! A male voice called from outside the door, “Hello? Jerry? You awake?”
Okay, Elijah told himself, I'm still Jerry. "Uh, who is it?”
“Clyde Stern, the dorm superintendent. Let's go; you've got a meeting with the dean in five minutes.”
Elijah opened the door. The man standing outside was well-built, in his thirties, with brown, curly hair and a smile that looked a little grim. He was dressed a bit formal, in burgundy blazer, white shirt, black slacks, and black tie. Elijah felt like a slob just being in his presence. The man made a face as if he were looking at a slob. “Where's your uniform?”
“I, I don't know about any uniform.”
He was immediately concerned
for Elisha.
Stern looked past Elijah into the room. “Don't give me that. It's right there in your closet.”
Elijah ventured a look in the closet, and there it was: a burgundy blazer, black slacks, white shirt, and black tie, all freshly pressed and ready to go.
“What have you been doing all morning?” Stern demanded. “Bingham's gonna have a cow!”
“Who?”
“Mr. Bingham. The dean. Remember?”
“Guess I'd better change—”
Stern just yanked on Elijah's shirtsleeve. “No time, kid. Bingham doesn't wait.”
Elijah followed Stern, walking briskly down the hall because it was the only thing he knew to do. The hall was messy; litter and clothing were lying about, and there was graffiti on the walls. Considering Stern's snappy, uniformed, hop-to-it manner, the condition of this place didn't make a lot of sense. Oh, well. Nothing was making much sense yet. Elijah's mind was still fuzzy, he could definitely smell himself, and he was still trying to catch up with . . . well, everything.
“What about that girl who was with me?” he asked.
“She's gonna meet us there.”
“So she's okay?”
Stern looked at him with that same judgmental eye. “She's great. In a lot better shape than you right now.”
They went out a door and into the sunshine, taking a walkway that led across the campus.
Stern waved toward the volleyball game. “Hey, Easley!”
Easley looked like a typical coach. He was young and athletic, dressed in black shorts and burgundy tee shirt. He waved from the sidelines of the game. “So that's the new guy?”
“Yeah. Isn't he a mess?”
Now the whole game stopped and about thirty kids took a moment to stare at the mess. He looked back, waving hello. The friendly ones waved; the rest didn't look friendly. They came in all colors, types, and sizes, with short hair, long hair, no hair, frizzed hair, purple hair, dreadlocked hair. Some were jocks and proud of it, some were flirts and proud of that, some were just followers, not proud of anything. They were all dressed in the same outfit as the coach: black shorts, burgundy tee shirts, snazzy running shoes.
“Come on,” said a big guy holding the ball. It was his serve.
“Let's get on with the game!”
They all went back to their game, and Elijah and Mr. Stern kept walking.
“I take it this is the Knight-Moore Academy?” Elijah asked.
“This is the place,” said Stern. “That's the library right there—you can check out books, CDs, videos, whatever you want. That building over there is the recreation hall. They've got pool tables, Ping-Pong, foozball, video games, lots of stuff. That's the dining hall, three squares a day. We have four dorm buildings, A, B, C, and D. A and B are where you just came from, over there. As for girls, B's for boys, so you're in B. Over on the other side there are two more: C's for girls, D's for boys. Don't get 'em mixed up.”
The buildings looked new and freshly painted—basic white, with burgundy trim; all the lawns were neatly kept; the planting beds along the buildings, though small, were weeded and flowers were blooming. The scenery all around the place was spectacular: mountains, tall forests, even some snow-covered peaks in the distance.
“Where is this place?”
Stern just waved off the question. “In the mountains, up in the trees. Don't worry about it.”
“So how did I get here?”
Stern made a face at that question. “Man, you'd better get tuned in. You rode the bus up here. Don't tell me you don't remember.”
“I don't remember.”
He only chuckled and sneered. “I can believe it. We get a lot of your kind in here, so strung out they don't remember anything. But don't worry about it.”
Elijah had been eyeing one thing that looked a little out of place: At the far edge of the athletic field was a high stone wall with a big iron gate, and on the forested hill beyond that wall, surrounded by green lawns and lush gardens, stood an impressive mansion with ornate gables, complex corners, and tall windows. “What in the world is that place?”
“You don't want to go there,” said Stern.
“But what is it?”
“Where is this place?”
“It's the headquarters for—oh, brother, not again!” Stern stopped, exasperated, looking at some garbage cans knocked over and rolled about, their contents strewn all over the grass and sidewalk. “This is getting serious!”
Elijah ventured, “Looks like you have some bears around here.”
“You got that right. They're getting to be a real problem. Hey, by the way, get a clue: Don't go into the woods, okay? Just stay on the campus, stay right here on the grounds. Had a gal last summer just about got her face torn off. It was terrible.”
“Right,” Elijah answered, chilled by the warning. “But if there are bears around, why are you using conventional garbage cans? I mean, any bear that wants to can pop these right open—”
“All right, here comes that girlfriend of yours.”
Elijah looked up the sidewalk and the sight made his day: His sister—well, make that girl acquaintance going by the name Sally coming their way, accompanied by a small, bookish woman in a female version of the standard Knight-Moore uniform: burgundy blazer, black skirt, white blouse, black scarf. Somebody made a fortune selling uniforms to this place.
Elisha was wearing the same thing, and looked great, a far cry from the street kid she'd been portraying the night before. Her face was clean, her washed hair, still jet-black, was blowing in the breeze. She looked like a posh, private-school girl. She broke into a big smile when she saw him. “Hey, you're alive!”
“Pretty much,” he answered, deciding not to run and hug her.
“You look like dirt.”
“Yeah, rub it in.”
“Jerry, this is Mrs. Meeks.”
He extended his hand and she greeted him. “Welcome to Knight-Moore, Jerry. Did you have a pleasant trip?”
“Well, actually, I—”
“Step this way” said Mr. Stern. “Mr. Bingham's waiting.”
Stern and Meeks led them—they felt herded, actually—through a nearby doorway marked “OFFICE.” They passed by a front office with a counter, some desks, lots of papers lying around, and a computer but no one there at the moment. Then they hurried down the central hallway, Elijah and Elisha in front, their hosts right behind them, maintaining a brisk pace.
“You feeling okay?” Elisha asked in a near whisper.
“Kind of woozy,” Elijah answered.
“Me, too.”
A door at the end of the hall stood open, and through that door they saw a man sitting behind a desk, hands folded, looking over his reading glasses at them. His hair was a fright wig of black and gray, he was definitely on the paunchy side, and he seemed to be studying them before they even got there. Stern and Meeks whisked them through the door, guided them to two chairs in front of Bingham's desk, and went out, closing the door behind them. Slam!
They sat still, exchanging a look, feeling like two newspapers tossed on someone's doorstep.
“Hello,” Mr. Bingham said in a slow, sweeping manner. “Welcome to Knight-Moore Aca
demy. You do not have to give me your real names. I am Mr. Bingham, the academy dean.”
“Hi,” they said.
He eyed them with a strange fascination, his gaze shifting from one to the other and back. “Young lady, if you weren't so beautiful, and young man, if you weren't so disgusting, the two of you could be twins.”
They looked at each other, did some mental comparisons, and then laughed. Great joke.
Mr. Bingham wasn't laughing. “Young man, you do have a uniform, don't you?”
“I wasn't aware of it until five minutes ago.”
“Uniforms are one of the few requirements we have here. They're important, don't you see, to maintain comradeship among the students, to eliminate any semblance of superiority We are all equals here.”
Elisha asked, “Mr. Bingham, just where is this place?”
He smiled, leaned over his desk, and asked over his reading glasses, “Where would you like it to be?” They looked at each other, searching for an answer, but he just kept going. “I don't mean to evade your question, but starting now, you must consider this a rare opportunity to create your own world the way you would have it. Wherever you came from—and I don't care to know where, thank you—you were confined to and controlled by the expectations of those around you: parents, teachers, church, and so forth. You did what they told you, you believed what they told you, and Truth, well, Truth was theirs, not yours. Are you with me thus far?”
He eyed them with a strange
fascination, his gaze shifting from one to the other and back
Elijah started to say, “Well, no, not really . . .”
But Bingham just kept going. “But, of course, you fled from that, didn't you? Here you are, run away from home, trying to find your own way, a world, a truth that fits you better than what you had at home. Well, . . . “ He stood behind his desk and held his lapels. “Consider this the first real step of your journey. Here is where you can think for yourself, find out for yourself, study for yourself, and find your own truth, whatever you want it to be.”
“My own truth?” Elisha asked, eyebrows up.
“You're certainly permitted to be yourself if you so choose, but if you so choose, you can be somebody else. What matters is that you are happy with whom and what you've decided to be.”
He began to walk slowly around the room, studying them from different angles. “As part of this process, you can, if you wish, attend optional classes for high school credit. We offer classes in English, remedial reading, humanities, math, history, art . . . “ He passed them each a list of classes and a schedule. “Pick out what you like, but don't delay. You're coming in a few days late, I'm sure you realize that.
“Also, as part of the process, we require participation in discussion circles with Mr. Easley, a chance for you to toss around new ideas and for us to gauge how well we're doing. There will be a discussion circle in Mr. Easley's classroom at 1:30. Please be there.
“Everyone is a guest here, but for your own safety, this is a closed campus, and there can be no leaving. We're out in the middle of hostile wilderness, with national forest for miles in all directions. If you venture too far into those woods, you could become lost and we would have no way to find you. And besides . . . I suppose you've already seen indications of our bear problem? We not only have bears, we have cougars, and the only safe place is within the boundaries of the campus. Are you with me thus far?”
“Are there telephones?” Elijah asked.
“Oh, heavens, no. That would bring in the outside world, and that would taint everything we're trying to accomplish here.”
“But what are you trying to accomplish?”
“No doubt you have noticed the mansion on the hill.”
“Sure have,” said Elijah. “What's up there?”
“The mansion is off-limits; be absolutely certain of that. This campus is your home, the mansion belongs to your faculty and leadership. We all have our own little kingdoms, don't you see:
You have yours here, we have ours there. Respect that. Agreed?”
They nodded. “Agreed.”
“Now. It's safe to assume that you have very little money.”
Bingham brought out two small, cloth bags closed with drawstrings. “These are Knight-Moore dollars.” He handed each of them a bag. Inside were shiny metal coins the size of a quarter, light in weight, probably made of tin or aluminum. On one side was the “value,” 1 KM Dollar, and on the other side were fancy letters, KM, with “The Knight-Moore Academy” inscribed around the outside. Elijah was expecting to see Mr. Bingham's profile, but no.
“These are the academy currency,” Bingham continued, “good for purchases at the Campus Exchange, treats from the cafeteria vending machines, games in the Rec Center, and so forth. It's an additional measure to provide our own in-house economy while discouraging theft and greed. Each of you gets twenty-five KMs to start. You can earn more, spend it all; it's up to you.”
He sank into his chair again and looked across his desk at them. “On behalf of the faculty and staff, I bid you welcome.”
“Thank you,” they answered, still bewildered.
The door opened again, on cue, and Mr. Stern and Mrs. Meeks ushered them out of the office and back down the hall toward the front door.
“I'm over in dorm B,” said Elijah. “Where are you staying?”
“Dorm C, room 4, facing the playfield. What's your room number?”
“Room 6,” Stern answered for Elijah, then told him, “Come on, I'll walk you back, show you the showers.”
“Where will you be?” Elijah asked Elisha.
“Watching the volleyball game,” said Mrs. Meeks. “Come, Sally, I'll introduce you to the others.”
Morgan's face spoke from the screen on Sarah's laptop. “All right. Hello. Is the signal clear?”
Nate and Sarah, in the back of their big van, answered, “Yes. We can see you clearly.”
“Good. I can see you as well. We'll have to communicate through this discrete system for the time being and not trust the telephones. Someone knew all they needed to know to kill Alvin Rogers: his whereabouts, his condition, the layout of the hospital, who the nurse was on the night shift, everything. Let's not help our adversaries any further.”
“Who are they?” Nate asked.
“We still don't know, and we still need you to find out. Apparently, Alvin Rogers could have told us once he regained his sanity.”
“Morgan,” said Sarah, “they have our children.”
“They mustn't know it. They have to think they've picked up two runaways, not two investigators. Keep in mind that whoever it is could have spies in the sheriff's department, the police, the Bureau for Missing Children, the hospital staff—anyone and everyone who had anything to do with Alvin Rogers.”
“So we can't talk to the hospital,” Sarah lamented.
“Or the police, or the sheriff. And until we can find out more about this Nelson Farmer character, I wouldn't go anywhere near the BMC. To do so would give someone a clue that your kids are not what they appear to be.”
“You're not making this easy,” said Nate.
“I'll do all I can to make it less difficult.”
“We'll be in touch.”
“Good-bye.”
The image blinked off the screen, leaving Nate and Sarah feeling very alone.
Sarah wasn't about to sit still, not with her kids missing. “Nate, we have to trust somebody."
“How about our friends at the youth shelter—the real one?”
Elisha definitely had that “new girl in school” feeling as she approached the volleyball game. Mrs. Meeks kept a motherly hand on her shoulder to encourage—or perhaps force—her along, until she stood next to Mr. Easley, who said a quick hello. None of the kids playing the game paid her any mind. The game was getting intense, coming down to the wire. The ball was sailing over the net and bouncing off hands at a frantic pace, and the yells and screams were reaching one big, unintelligible roar.
&
nbsp; Bap! A girl swatted the ball over the net.
Bip, bap, the ball bounced from one player's hands to the next, and then bump! it hit the ground. A tall white guy with a nearly shaved head scooped it up and put it back into play.
“Hey!” came some protests from the opposing team, but the game kept going.
Bip, bap, bung, bat, the ball bounced from one player to the next, and then Bam! a big, muscular guy spiked it back.
It shot like a cannonball between two players and bounded off the ground. Everybody on that side wailed in defeat—and disgust.
Mr. Easley sounded his whistle. “Okay that's it. That's game, twenty-one to eighteen. Good job!”
“No fair!” a black girl in dreadlocks wailed, pointing at the tall white guy. “The ball hit the ground before he hit it!”
The culprit on the other side retorted, “You played on it.”
“So?” said the black girl's companion, a stocky Hispanic who must have cut her own hair.
“Ah, but listen,” said Mr. Easley. He had to blow his whistle to get their attention. “Listen. See what you're doing? You're falling into that old trap again, trying to see things as either/or.”
Elisha wasn't sure what he was talking about, but some of the kids rolled their eyes when he said it.
“Aren't you?” Easley prodded. “You're saying, 'Either they won or we did.'”
“They didn't!” said the black girl.
“We did” said the tall white guy.
“See?” said Easley. “That's either/or. But let me ask you this:
Did you enjoy the game?”
“Yeah, 'til a few seconds ago,” said the little Hispanic.
“Then it was an experience, wasn't it?” He raised his voice so everyone could hear. “You have power over the experience, to make it what you want, so it's the experience that matters. If you enjoyed playing the game, then you've already won as long as you think you've won. You can all be winners and the score doesn't have to mean anything. That's both/and.” He asked the little Hispanic, “Come on, Maria, see if you can say it using both/and.”
Nightmare Academy Page 5